ports any ship that had touched at those of Great Britain; while any ship that connived at the infraction of the present decree was to be held a good prize of war.[113] This ukase, which was binding for France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the Rhenish Confederation, formed the foundation of the Continental System, a term applicable to the sum total of the measures that aimed at ruining England by excluding her goods from the Continent.

The plan of strangling Britain by her own wealth was not peculiar to Napoleon.  In common with much of his political stock-in-trade he had it from the Jacobins, who stoutly maintained that England’s wealth was fictitious and would collapse as soon as her commerce was attacked in the Indies and excluded from the Rhine and Elbe.  At first the fulminations of Parisian legislators fell idly on the stately pile of British industry; but when the young Bonaparte appeared on the scene, the commercial warfare became serious.  As soon as his victories in Italy widened the sphere of French influence, the Directory banned the entry of all our products, counting all cotton and woollen goods as English unless the contrary could be proved by certificates of origin.[114] Public opinion in France, which, unless held in by an intelligent monarch, has always swung towards protection or prohibition, welcomed that vigorous measure; and great was the outcry of manufacturers when it was rumoured in 1802 that Napoleon was about to make a commercial treaty with the national enemy.  Tradition and custom, therefore, were all on his side, when, after Trafalgar, he concentrated all his energy on his “coast-system."[115]

Ostensibly the Berlin Decree was a retort to our Order in Council of May 16th, 1806, which declared all the coast between Brest and the Elbe in a state of blockade; and French historians have defended it on this ground, asserting that it was a necessary reply to England’s aggressive action.[116] But this plea can scarcely be maintained.  The aggressor, surely, was the man who forced Prussia to close the neutral North German coast to British goods (February, 1806).  Besides, there is indirect proof that Napoleon looked on our blockade of the northern coasts as not unreasonable.  In his subsequent negotiations with us, he raised no protest against it, and made no difficulty about our maritime code:  if we would let him seize Sicily, we might, it seems, have re-enacted that code in all its earlier stringency.  Far from doing so, Fox and his successors relaxed the blockade of North Germany; and by an order dated September 25th, the coast between the Elbe and the Ems was declared free.