It was fortunate for us that Napoleon entertained these crude ideas on political economy; for his action opened for us a loophole of escape from a very serious difficulty. At that time our fast growing population was barely fed by our own wheat even after good seasons; and Providence afflicted us in 1809 and 1810 with very poor harvests. In 1810 the average price was 103 shillings the quarter, the highest ever known except in 1800 and 1801; and as commerce was dislocated by the Continental System and hand-labour was being largely replaced by the new power-looms and improved spinning machinery, the outlook would have been hopeless, had not our great enemy allowed us to import continental corn. This device, which he imagined would impoverish us to enrich his own States, was the greatest aid that he could have rendered to our hard-pressed social system; and readers of Charlotte Brontë's realistic sketches of the Luddite rioting in Yorkshire may imagine what would have befallen England if, besides lack of work and low wages, there had been the added horrors of a bread famine. But fortunately the curious commercial notions harboured by our foe enabled us in the winter of 1810-11 to get supplies of corn not only from Prussia and Poland but even from Italy and France.
In one sense this incident has been misunderstood. It has been referred to by Porter[[233]] and other hopeful persons as proof positive that as long as we can buy corn we shall get it, even from our enemies. It proves nothing of the sort. Napoleon's correspondence and his whole policy with regard to licences, which we shall presently examine, shows clearly that he believed he would greatly benefit his own States and impoverish our people by selling us large stores of corn at a very high price. There is no hint in any of his letters that he ever framed the notion of starving us into surrender. All that he looked to was the draining away of our wealth by cutting off our exports, and by allowing imports to enter our harbours much as usual. As long as he prevented us selling[pg.221] our produce, he heeded little how much we bought from his States: in fact, the more we bought, the sooner we should be bankrupt—such was his notion.
It is strange that he never sought to cut off our corn-supplies. They were then drawn almost entirely from the Baltic ports. The United States and Canada had as yet only sent us a few driblets of corn. La Plata and the Cape of Good Hope were quite undeveloped; and our settlements in New South Wales were at that time often troubled by dearth. The plan of sealing up the cornfields of Europe from Riga to Trieste would have been feasible, at least for a few weeks; French troops held Danzig and Stettin; Russia, Prussia, and Denmark were at his beck and call; and an imperial decree forbidding the export of corn from France and her allied States to the United Kingdom could hardly have failed to reduce us to starvation and surrender in the very critical winter of 1810-11. But that strange mental defect of clinging with ever increasing tenacity to preconceived notions led Napoleon to allow and even to favour exports of corn to us in the time of our utmost need; and Britain survived the strain.[[234]]
What folly, however, to refer to the action of this man of one economic idea as being likely to determine the conduct of continental statesmen in some future naval war with England. In truth, the urgency of the problem of our national food-supply in time of a great war can only be fully understood by those who have studied the Napoleonic era. England then grew nearly enough corn for her needs; her fleets swept the seas; and Napoleon's economic hobby left her foreign food-supply unhampered at the severest crisis. Yet, even so, the price of the quartern loaf rose to more than fifteenpence, and we[pg.222] were brought to the verge of civil war. A comparison of that time with the conditions that now prevail must yield food for reflection to all but the case-hardened optimists.
But already Napoleon was convinced that the Continental System must be secretly relaxed in special cases. Despite the fulsome addresses which some Chambers of Commerce sent up, he knew that his seaports were in the depths of distress, and that French cotton manufacturers could not hope to compete with those of Lancashire now that his own tariff had doubled the price of raw cotton and dyes in France. He therefore hit upon the curious device of allowing continental merchants to buy licences for the privilege of secretly evading his own decrees. The English Government seems to have been the first to issue similar secret permits; but Napoleon had scarcely signed his Berlin Decree for the blockade of England before he connived at its infraction. When sugar, coffee, and other comforts became scarce, they were secretly imported from perfidious Albion for the imperial table. The final stage was reached in July, 1810, when licences to import forbidden goods were secretly sold to favoured merchants, and many officials—among them Bourrienne—reaped a rich harvest from the sale of these imperial indulgences. Merchants were so eager to evade the hated laws that they offered high prices to the treasury and douceurs to officials for the coveted boon; and as much as £40,000 is said to have been paid for a single licence.
On both sides of the Channel this device was abhorred, but its results were specially odious in Napoleon's States, where the burdens to be evaded were far heavier than those entailed by the Orders in Council. In fact, the Continental System was now seen to be an organized hypocrisy, which, in order to ruin the mistress of the seas, exposed the peoples to burdens more grievous than those borne by England, and left all but the wealthiest merchants a prey to a grinding fiscal tyranny. And the sting of it all was its social injustice; for while the poor[pg.223] were severely punished, sometimes with death, for smuggling sugar or tobacco, Napoleon and the favoured few who could buy licences often imported these articles in large quantities. What wonder, then, that Russia and Sweden should decline long to endure these gratuitous hardships, and should seek to evade the behests of the imperial smuggler of the Tuileries!
Nevertheless, as no inventive people can ever be thrown wholly on its own resources without deriving some benefit, we find that France met the crisis with the cheery patience and unflagging ingenuity which she has ever evinced. In a great Empire which embraced all the lands between Hamburg, Bayonne, and Rome, not to mention Illyria and Dalmatia, a great variety of products might readily reward the inventor and the husbandman. Tobacco, rice, and cotton could be reared in the southern portions. Valiant efforts were also made to get Asiatic produce overland, so as to disappoint the English cruisers; and the coffee of Arabia was taxed very lightly, so as to ruin the American producer. When the fragrant berry became more and more scarce, chicory was discovered by good patriots to be a palatable substitute, and scientific men sought to induce French manufacturers to use the isatis plant instead of indigo. Prizes were offered by the State and by local Chambers of Commerce to those who should make up for the lack of tropical goods and dyes.
A notable discovery was made by Chaptal and Delessert, who improved on Markgraf's process of procuring sugar from beetroot and made it a practical success. Napoleon also hoped that a chemical substitute for indigo had been found, and exclaimed to a doleful deputation of merchants, who came to the Tuileries in the early summer of 1811, that chemistry would soon revolutionize commerce as completely as the discovery of the compass had done. Besides, the French Empire was the richest country in the world, and could almost do without foreign commerce, at least until England had given way; and that would soon come to pass; for the pressure of events would soon[pg.224] compel London merchants to throw their sugar and indigo into the Thames.[[235]]
In reality, he placed commerce far behind agriculture, which he considered to be the basis of a nation's wealth and a nation's health. But he also took a keen interest in manufactures. The silk industry at Lyons found in him a generous patron. He ordered that the best scientific training should there be given, so as to improve the processes of manufacture; and, as silk of nearly all kinds could be produced in France and Italy, Lyons was comparatively prosperous. When, however, it suffered from the general rise of prices and from the impaired buying power of the community, he adopted heroic remedies. He ordered that all ships leaving France should carry silk fabrics equal in value to one-fourth of the whole freight; but whether these stuffs went to adorn women or mermaids seems an open question. Or again, on the advice of Chaptal, the Emperor made large purchases of surplus stocks of Lyons silk, Rouen cottons, and Ste. Antoine furniture, so as to prevent an imminent collapse of credit and a recrudescence of Jacobinism in those industrial centres; for as he said: "I fear a rising brought about by want of bread: I had rather fight an army of 200,000 men than that."[[236]]
In the main, this policy of giving panem et circenses was successful in France; at least, it kept her quiet. The national feeling ran strongly in favour of commercial prohibition. In 1787 Arthur Young found the cotton-workers of the north furious at the recent inroads of Lancashire cottons, while the wine-growers of the Garonne were equally favourable to the enlightened Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786. It was Napoleon's lot to win the favour of the rigid[pg.225] protectionists, while not alienating that of the men of the Gironde, who saw in him the champion of agrarian liberty against the feudal nobles. Moreover, the nation still cherished the pathetic belief that the war was due to Albion's perfidy respecting Malta, and burned with a desire to chastise the recreant islanders. For these reasons, Frenchmen endured the drain of men and money with but little show of grumbling.