Neutral ships therefore continued to be openly admitted into Holland, and the emperor's demands for their confiscation to be eluded; and there was besides much smuggling, for which the character of the coast and its nearness to England offered ample facilities. From Holland the goods usually found their way without great difficulty into France, though on two occasions Napoleon, to punish Holland for her waywardness, closed the frontier against her. "Your Majesty," wrote he to Louis, "took advantage of the moment in which I had embarrassments upon the Continent, to allow the relations between Holland and England to be resumed; to violate the laws of the blockade, the only measure by which that power can be seriously injured. I showed my dissatisfaction by forbidding France to you, and made you feel that, without having recourse to my armies, I could, by closing the Rhine, the Weser, the Scheldt, and the Meuse to Holland, place her in a position more critical than by declaring war against her. I was so isolating her as to annihilate her. The blow resounded in Holland. Your Majesty appealed to my generosity.... I removed the line of custom-houses; but your Majesty returned to your former system. It is true I was then at Vienna, and had a grievous war upon my hands. All the American ships which entered the ports of Holland, while they were repelled from those of France, your Majesty received. I have been obliged a second time to close my custom-houses to Dutch commerce.... I will not conceal my intention to re-unite Holland to France, to round off her territory, as the most disastrous blow I can deal to England." He consented, however, to suspend his action, upon condition that the existing stores of colonial merchandise were confiscated, as well as the cargoes of the American ships. [390]
The important part played in the former war by Hamburg and Bremen, as commercial centres and warehouses for continental trade, has already been mentioned. To a certain extent they still fulfilled the same function, but under greatly altered conditions. The political changes following the war of 1806 and 1807, and the presence of French troops in Prussian fortresses and throughout Northern Germany, combined to make them subservient, as Prussia was, to the emperor's wishes. In point of form the continental blockade extended throughout all this region, as in Holland; everywhere vessels and merchandise coming from Great Britain were proscribed and should be confiscated, whenever found. [391] All the shores of the North Sea, those of Denmark, and, by the co-operation of the czar, the coasts of the Baltic, shared the general prohibition. The minister of France at Hamburg found his chief occupations in either demanding subsidies—contributions in money or kind—for the French troops, or in insisting, much against his will, upon increased severity against the introduction of British goods. The distress occasioned by these stringent requirements was very great, even while Napoleon's other preoccupations lasted; but the general consent of all the people in passive resistance, the activity of smugglers, and the corruption that ever hangs about custom-houses and increases with the duties, conspired to mitigate the privations. The coasts of the North Sea, between the mouths of the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, and those of Danish Holstein, low, of difficult approach for large vessels, and hence favorable to the multiplication of small boats and the operations of those having local knowledge, fostered smuggling; to which also conduced the numbers of fishermen, and the fringe of off-lying islands, out of the reach of the ordinary custom-house officer.
To support this contraband trade, the British, on the 5th of September, 1807, seized Heligoland and converted it into a depot for goods waiting to be introduced into Germany or Holstein. "A garrison of six hundred men defended the island, and ships of war cruised continually in its neighborhood. From there contraband traders obtained merchandise, with which they supplied the Continent. Farmers along the coast received these smuggled goods, which were taken from them during the night and spread far and wide. The populations of the various countries aided the smugglers, joined them in opposing the revenue officers and in seducing the latter from their duty." [392] Between Holstein and Hamburg was drawn up a close line of custom-house officials; but the forbidden goods leaked through all barriers. "More than six thousand persons of the lower and middle classes passed their day in going more than twenty times from Altona, in Holstein, to Hamburg. Punishments and confiscations fell upon the guilty; but this did not put an end to the incessant strife, sometimes by cunning, sometimes by force, against this fiscal tyranny." [393] Between five and six hundred women were employed by the merchants of Hamburg daily to convey into the city, each of them, fourteen pounds of coffee and other produce, concealed beneath their garments. [394]
In the Baltic conditions were somewhat different. Much there depended upon the heartiness of the czar in the cause; upon whether he would content himself with a bare perfunctory compliance with the letter of his engagements at Tilsit and Erfurt, or would decisively enforce an entire cessation of traffic with Great Britain. The latter course, however, was impossible to Alexander. Impulsive and ambitious, he yet lacked the hardness of character needed to disregard the cold disapproval of the nobles and the distress of his subjects. Under the influence of Napoleon's presence, of his fascination and his promises, it had seemed possible to do that which in the isolation of his court, and deprived of sympathy, became drearily monotonous; nor did Napoleon, by fidelity to his word, make the task easier. Decrees of great severity were issued, [395] and the British flag was honestly excluded; but the quick mercantile intelligence soon detected that no ill-timed curiosity as to ships' papers would be exercised, [396] nor vexatious impediments thrown in the way of exporting the national products, which, if essential to Great Britain's naval supremacy, were no less the source of Russia's wealth. In truth, British consumption of naval stores, and British capital invested in Russia, had been leading elements in the prosperity of the country; and it had been no light sacrifice to concede such advantages as the czar had already yielded.
Such was the working condition of the Continental System between 1806 and 1810. Despite the general disquietude in Great Britain and the undoubted impediments raised to that free export upon which her prosperity was based, the general confidence was unabated. [397] Much was hoped from the resistance of the continental peoples, more from their steadfast evasion of the edicts. In 1806, just before the Berlin decree was issued, but when the system was already in force, a commercial magazine wrote: "The regulations adopted only show the ignorance of the French government of commercial principles. When the blockade of the Elbe was removed, instead of finding markets exhausted and prices enhanced, they were found overstocked." [398] "In spite of every prohibition British goods continue (Dec. 1, 1806) to find their way in vast quantities into France. They are exported hence on French orders. It is easy to insure them for the whole transit to the town in France where they are to be delivered to the purchaser. They are introduced at almost all parts of the land confines of the French Empire. No sooner are they received into the French merchant's warehouse, than evidence is procured that they are of French manufacture; the proper marks are stamped, and the goods are in a state to be exhibited, in proof that the manufactures of France quite outrival those of England. The writer had this information from gentlemen who have a concern in the trade to which it relates." [399] "Though the port of Venice is now totally shut against British commerce, as also the peninsula of Istria from whence Italian silk has always been obtained, yet through neutral vessels we now obtain Piedmont silk, which is the best and finest, direct from Leghorn, Lucca, and Genoa." [400] "From Malta a brisk trade, yielding quick returns, is kept up with the ports of Italy. Malta is the emporium, the storehouse. From Malta we supply Leghorn and other places in the power of France. But the British goods are sold, even before they are landed, for ready money; and scarcely a pound's worth of British property is at any moment hazarded where the French might seize it." [401]
Indications of embarrassment now begin to accumulate, but still, in January, 1808, we read: "Several ships from Holland have lately entered our harbors, and brought over large quantities of goods usually imported from Hamburg. This is a proof of the futility of Bonaparte's commercial speculations." [402] Russia had by this declared against Great Britain, causing a rise in all Russian produce; and the Embargo Act of the United States had just gone into operation. There is a vast falling off in the Baltic and American trade. In 1805 over eleven thousand ships had passed through the Sound, going and coming; in 1807 barely six thousand, and British ships are excluded from all but Swedish harbors. In August, 1808, the ports of Holland are opened for the export of Dutch butter, and two hundred bales of silk are allowed to be smuggled out, for which a bribe of six thousand guineas was extorted by some person in authority. [403] In 1809 a notice again occurs of the ports of Holland being opened by the king; and concurrently, West India produce, which has been for some months dull, is found more in demand and commanding good prices. [404] Malta is doing a famous business at the same time, and has become one of the greatest depots in the Mediterranean. [405]
The year 1809 was marked by a great, though temporary, revival of trade, due to several causes. Napoleon himself was detained during great part of the year in the heart of Austria, absorbed in one of his most doubtful contests with the empire; and in his absence trade with the North Sea ports went on almost as in time of peace. In the United States an eager British minister, of politics opposed to the party in power, had committed himself without due authority to an official statement to the government that the Orders in Council would be rescinded by June 10. The President, without waiting to hear further, removed the restrictions of the Non-Intercourse Act on that date; and accordingly, for some months there was free traffic and a very great interchange of goods between the United States and Great Britain. In South America, the withdrawal of the Portuguese court to Brazil and the uprising of Spain against Napoleon had resulted in throwing open the colonial ports to Great Britain; and an immense wave of speculative shipments, heavily employing the manufactories, was setting in that direction. In the Baltic, the czar was wearying of his engagements with France, and of the emperor's tergiversations; wearying too, of the opposition of his court and subjects. He adhered faithfully, indeed, to the letter of his bargain and refused admission to British ships: but he would not open his eyes to the fact that British commerce was being carried on in his ports by neutrals with British licenses. He had never promised to exclude neutrals, or forbid all export and import; and it was none of his business to pry behind the papers that covered transactions essential to his people. The imports to Great Britain of naval stores, mainly from the Baltic, more than doubled from 1808 to 1809, and were even greater the following year. [406] Wool from Spain and silk from Italy experienced a similar rise. Even West India produce, so vigorously excluded from the Continent, shared the general advance; and there was a great, though feverish and unsound, hope of returning prosperity. It was evident that Napoleon's measures were meeting only partial success, and men were willing to believe that their failure lay in the nature of things,—in the impossibility of his attempt. They had yet to learn that persecution fails only when it is not, or cannot be, thorough and unrelenting.
Among the multiplied impediments to intercourse between nations, due first of all to the narrow ideas of commercial policy prevalent at that epoch, increased by the state of open maritime war or hostile exclusion existing between Great Britain and most of the continental countries, and further complicated by the continental blockade of Napoleon and the retaliatory orders of the British government, there arose an obscure but extensive usage of "licenses;" which served, though but partially, and in a wholly arbitrary manner, to remove some of the difficulties that prevented the exchange of commodities. A license, from its name, implies a prohibition which is intended to be removed in the particular case; and the license practice of the Napoleonic wars was for the most part not so much a system, as an aggregation of individual permissions to carry on a traffic forbidden by the existing laws of the authority granting them. The licenses were issued both by the British government and by Napoleon; and they were addressed, according to the character of the sway borne by one party or the other, either to the police of the seas, the armed cruisers, or to the customs authorities of the continental ports. It was generally admitted in Great Britain that the Board of Trade was actuated only by upright motives in its action, though the practice was vigorously attacked on many grounds,—chiefly in order to impugn the Orders in Council to which alone their origin was attributed; but in France the taint of court corruption, or favoritism, in the issue of licenses was clearly asserted. [407]