e restrictions as if actually blockaded."
Further, no permission was given, as in the former Orders, to
communicate with the forbidden ports by first entering one of Great
Britain, paying a transit duty, and obtaining a permit to proceed. In
terms, prohibition was now unqualified; and although it was known that
licenses for intercourse with interdicted harbors were freely issued,
the overt offence of prescribing British channels to neutral
navigation was avoided. Within the area of restriction, "No trade save
through England" was thus converted, in form, to no trade at all. This
narrowing of the constructive blockade system, combined with the
relaxations effected by the Non-Intercourse Act, and with the food
requirements of the Spanish peninsula, did much to revive American
commerce; which, however, did not again before the war regain the fair
proportions of the years preceding the embargo. The discrepancy was
most marked in the re-exportation of foreign tropical produce, sugar
and coffee, a trade dependent wholly upon war conditions, and
affecting chiefly the shipping interest engaged in carrying it. For
this falling off there were several causes. After 1809 the Continental
system was more than ever remorselessly enforced, and it was to the
Continent almost wholly that Americans had carried these articles.
The Spanish colonies were now open to British as well as American
customers; and the last of the French West Indies having passed into
British possession, trade with them was denied to foreigners by the
Navigation Act. In 1807 the value of the colonial produce re-exported
from the United States was $59,643,558; in 1811, $16,022,790. The
exports of domestic productions in the same years were: 1807,
$48,699,592; in 1811, $45,294,043. In connection with these figures,
as significant of political conditions, it is interesting to note that
of the latter sum $18,266,466 went to Spain and Portugal, chiefly to
supply demands created by war. So with tropical produce; out of the
total of $16,022,790, $5,772,572 went to the Peninsula, and an equal
amount to the Baltic, that having become the centre of accumulation,
from which subsequent distribution was made to the Continent in
elusion of the Continental System. The increasing poverty of the
Continent, also, under Napoleon's merciless suppression of foreign
commerce, greatly lessened the purchasing power of the inhabitants.
The great colonial trade had wasted under the combined