A.D. 1776
1850.

hut ded not
break
down her
monopoly ;

Vapoleon
carted to
levelop
industries,

384 LAISSEZ FAIRE
wandering over those wide seas where she claims the monopoly,
and they seek in vain from the Straits of the Sound to the
Hellespont; for one port which will open to receive them. * hd
«The war itself is nothing more or less than a war for the
freedom of commerce. Its violation was the original cause
of the outbreak of hostilities. Europe is well aware of its
danger, and the Emperor has constantly tried to make freedom
for commerce the preliminary of all negotiations. Each of
his conquests, by closing an outlet for English trade, has been
a victory for French commerce. Thus this war, which has for
the moment suspended all the commercial relations of France,
has been a war made in her interest, as well as in the interest
»f the whole of Europe, which up to now has been ground
Jown by the monopoly of England.”
Napoleon looked forward with satisfaction to a speedy
rupture between England and the United States. But it
was much easier to attempt to interrupt existing commerce,
 than to call the machinery of production into being.
Napoleon's positive scheme of establishing a Continental
System, which should foster national prosperity and military
resources in France, was an entire failure. He tried to develop
the cultivation of cotton in Corsica, and the manufacture of
beet-root sugar, so as to provide substitutes for colonial
produce; this industry was widely diffused, but it had no
real vitality, and collapsed on the fall of the Empire. He
allowed the export of food-stuffs to England in 1811, when
they were sorely needed, as he believed this would stimulate
French and Italian agriculture, and drain Britain of gold®

t The report of the Minister of Commerce made 24 Aug. 1807. Correspondance
fe Napoleon Ier, vol. xv. p. 528.
* This point has been excellently worked out by Mr Rose in the Monthly
Review, March, 1902: “Thus, at the time when Napoleon was about to order
British and colonial goods (for he now assumed that all colonial goods were
British) to be confiscated or burnt all over his vast Empire, he seeks to stimulate
axports to our shores. And why? Because such exports would benefit his States
and enable public works to be carried out. We may go even further and say that
Napoleon believed the effect of sending those exports to our shores would be to
weaken us. His economic ideas were those of the crudest section of the old
Mercantilist School. He believed that a nation’s commercial wealth consisted
sssentially in its exports, while imports were to be jealously restricted because
they drew bullion away. Destroy Britain's exports, and allow her to import what.
aver hiz own lands could well spare and she would bleed to death. Such. briefly