e 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.

Napoleon's grievance against us was thereby materially lessened, and
his protest against fictitious blockades in the preamble of the Berlin
Decree really applied only to our action on the coast between the
Helder and Brest, where our cruisers were watching the naval
preparations still going on. His retort in the interests of outraged
law was certainly curious; he declared our 3,000 miles of