e poor as
well as to the rich. So little of truth is there in the pretence that
this system had for its sole and exclusive object to prevent the sale of
English goods, that licences for their disposal were procured at a high
price by whoever was rich enough to pay for them. The number and quality
of the articles exported from France were extravagantly exaggerated. It
was, indeed, necessary to take out some of the articles is compliance
with the Emperor's wishes, but they were only thrown into the sea. And
yet no one had the honesty to tell the Emperor that England sold on the
continent but bought scarcely anything. The speculation in licences was
carried to a scandalous extent only to enrich a few, and to satisfy the
short-sighted views of the contrivers of the system.

This system proves what is written in the annals of the human heart and
mind, that the cupidity of the one is insatiable, and the errors of the
other incorrigible. Of this I will cite an example, though it refers to
a period posterior to the origin of the Continental system. In Hamburg,
in 1811, under Davoust's government, a poor man had well-nigh been shot
for having introduced into the department of the Elbe a small loaf of
sugar for the use of his family, while at the same moment Napoleon was
perhaps signing a licence for the importation of a million of
sugar-loaves.

--[In this same year (1811) Murat, as King of Naples, not only
winked at the infringement of the Continental system, but almost
openly broke the law himself. His troops in Calabria and all round
his immense line sea coast, carried on an active trade with Sicilian
and English smugglers. This was so much the case that an officer
never set out from Naples to join, without, being, requested by his
wife, his relations or friends, to bring them some English muslins,
some sugar and coffee, together with a few needles, pen-knives, and
razors. Some of the Neapolitan officers embarked in really large
commercial operations, going shares with the custom house people who
were there to enforce the law, and making their soldiers load and
unload the contraband vessels. The Comte de -----, a French officer
on Murat's staff, was very noble, but very poor, and excessively
extravagant. After making several vain efforts to set him up in the
world, the King told him one day he would give him the command of
the troops round the Gulf of Salerno; adding that the d