"Industry or manufactures, and internal trade, made immense progress during my reign. The application of chemistry to the manufactures caused them to advance with giant strides. I gave an impulse, the effects of which extended throughout Europe.
"Foreign trade, which in its results is infinitely inferior to agriculture, was an object of subordinate importance in my mind. Foreign trade is made for agriculture and home industry, and not the two latter for the former. The interests of these three fundamental bases are diverging and frequently conflicting. I always promoted them in their natural gradation; but I could not, and ought not to have ranked them all on an equality. Time will unfold what I have done, the national resources which I created, and the emancipation from the English which I brought about. We have now the secret of the commercial treaty of 1783. France still exclaims against its author; but the English demanded it on pain of resuming the war. They wished to do the same after the treaty of Amiens; but I was then all-powerful; I was a hundred cubits high. I replied that if they were in possession of the heights of Montmartre I would still refuse to sign the treaty. These words were echoed through Europe.
The English will now impose some such treaty on France, at least if popular clamour, and the opposition of the mass of the nation, do not force them to draw back. This thraldom would be an additional disgrace in the eyes of that nation, which is now beginning to acquire a just perception of her own interests.
"When I came to the head of the government, the American ships, which were permitted to enter our ports on the score of their neutrality, brought us raw materials, and had the impudence to sail from France without freight, for the purpose of taking in cargoes of English goods in London. They moreover had the insolence to make their payments, when they had any to make, by giving bills on persons in London. Hence the vast profits reaped by the English manufacturers and brokers, entirely to our prejudice. I made a law that no American should import goods to any amount, without immediately exporting their exact equivalent. A loud outcry was raised against this: it was said that I had ruined trade. But what was the consequence? Notwithstanding the closing of my ports, and in spite of the English who ruled the seas, the Americans returned and submitted to my regulations. What might I not have done under more favourable circumstances?
"Thus I naturalized in France the manufacture of cotton, which includes:—
"1st. Spun-cotton.—We did not previously spin it ourselves; the English supplied us with it as a sort of favour.
"2nd. The woven-stuff.—We did not yet make it; it came to us from abroad.
"3rd. The printing.—This was the only part of the manufacture that we performed ourselves. I wished to naturalize the two first branches; and I proposed to the Council of State that their importation should be prohibited. This excited great alarm. I sent for Oberkamp, and I conversed with him a long time. I learned from him that this prohibition would doubtless produce a shock, but that, after a year or two of perseverance, it would prove a triumph, from which we should derive immense advantages. Then I issued my decree in spite of all; this was a true piece of statesmanship.
"I at first confined myself merely to prohibiting wove-cottons; then I extended the prohibition to spun cotton; and we now possess within ourselves the three branches of the cotton manufacture, to the great benefit of our population, and the injury and regret of the English:—which proves that, in civil government as well as in war, decision of character is often indispensable to success. I offered a million of francs as a reward for the discovery of a method of spinning flax like cotton, and this discovery would undoubtedly have been made,[[24]] but for our unfortunate circumstances. I should then have prohibited cotton, if I could not have naturalized it on the continent.
"The encouragement of the production of silk was an object that equally claimed my attention. As Emperor of France and King of Italy I calculated on receiving an annual revenue of 120 millions from the production of silk.