He was perfectly correct in his surmise that English goods were about to be sent into the Continent extensively on neutral vessels. After the consequences of the Treaty of Tilsit had been fully developed, that was almost their only means of entry. "In August, September and October, British commerce lay prostrate and motionless until a protecting and self-defensive system was interposed by our Orders in Council."[[179]] The first of these ordered reprisals against the new Napoleonic States (November 4th): a week later came a second[pg.156] which declared that, as the Orders of January had not induced the enemy to relax his commercial hostilities, but these were now enforced with increased rigour, any port whence the British flag was excluded would be treated as if it were actually blockaded; that is, the principle of the legality of a nominal blockade, abandoned in 1801, was now reaffirmed. The carriage of hostile colonial products was likewise prohibited to neutrals, though certain exceptions were allowed. Also any neutral vessel carrying "certificates of origin"—a device for distinguishing between British and neutral goods—was to be considered a lawful prize of war. A third Order in Council of the same date allowed goods to be imported into the United Kingdom from a hostile port in neutral ships, subject to the ordinary duties, and bonding facilities were granted for the re-exportation of such goods to any friendly or neutral port.[[180]] These orders were designed to draw neutral commerce through our ports, and to give secret facilities for the carriage of our goods by neutrals, while pressing upon those that obeyed Napoleon's system.
The harshest of them was that which encouraged the searching of neutral vessels for certificates of origin—a measure as severe as the confiscation of British property by Napoleon, which it was designed to defeat. And we may note here that the friction resulting from our Orders in Council and our enforcement of the right of search led to the United States passing a Non-Intercourse Act (December 23rd, 1807) that preluded active hostilities against us. It also led Napoleon to confiscate all American ships in his harbours after April 17th, 1808.
The November Orders in Council soon drew a reply from Napoleon. He heard of them during a progress through the north of Italy, and from Milan he flung[pg.157] back his retort, the famous Milan Decrees of November 23rd and December 17th. He thereby declared every neutral ship, which submitted to those orders, to be denationalized and good prize of war; and the same doom was pronounced against every vessel sailing to or from any port in the United Kingdom or its colonies or possessions. But these measures were not to affect ships of those States that compelled Great Britain to respect their flag. The islanders might well be dismayed at the prospect of a seclusion which promised to recall the Virgilian line:
"penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos."
Yet they resolved to pit the resources of the outer world against the militarism of Napoleon; and, drawing the resources of the tropics to the new power-looms of Lancashire and Yorkshire, they might well hope to pour their unequalled goods into Europe from points of vantage such as Sicily, Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and Heligoland. There were many Englishmen who believed that the November Orders in Council brought nothing but harm to our cause. They argued that our manufactured goods must find their way into the Continent in spite of the Berlin Decrees; and they could point to the curious fact that Bourrienne, Napoleon's agent at Hamburg, when charged to procure 50,000 overcoats for the French army during the Eylau campaign, was obliged to buy them from England.[[181]]
The incident certainly proves the folly of the Continental System. And if we had had to consult our manufacturing interests alone, a policy of laisser faire would doubtless have been the best. England, however, prided herself on her merchant service: to that she looked as the nursery for the royal navy: and the abandonment of the world's carrying trade to neutrals would have seemed an act of high treason. Her acts of retaliation against the[pg.158] Berlin Decrees and the policy of Tilsit were harsh and high-handed. But they were adopted during a pitiless commercial strife; and, in warfare of so novel and desperate a kind, acts must unfortunately be judged by their efficacy to harm the foe rather than by the standards of morality that hold good during peace. Outwardly, it seemed as if England were doomed. She had lost her allies and alienated the sympathies of neutrals. But from the sea she was able to exert on the Napoleonic States a pressure that was gradual, cumulative, and resistless; and the future was to prove the wisdom of the words of Mollien: "England waged a warfare of modern times; Napoleon, that of ancient times. There are times and cases when an anachronism is fatal."
Moreover, at the very time when the Emperor was about to complete his great experiment by subduing Sweden and preparing for the partition of Turkey, it sustained a fatal shock by the fierce rising of the Spanish people against his usurped authority.[pg.159]