Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/121

1807 was more respectable than that of Spencer Perceval and George Canning. He could say with truth that the injury he did to America was wholly consequential on the injury he meant to inflict on England. He had no hidden plan of suppressing American commerce in order to develop the commerce of France; as yet he was not trying to make money by theft. His Berlin Decree interfered in no way with the introduction of American products directly into France; it merely forbade the introduction of English produce or the reception of ships which came from England. Outrageous as its provisions were, "unjust, illegal, and subversive of national sovereignty," as Napoleon himself admitted and avowed, they bore their character and purpose upon their face, and in that sense were legitimate. He had no secrets on this point. In a famous diplomatic audience at Fontainebleau October 14, Armstrong witnessed a melodramatic scene, in which the Emperor proclaimed to the world that his will was to be law. "The House of Braganza shall reign no more," said he to the Portuguese minister; then turning to the representative of the Queen of Etruria,—the same Spanish princess on whose head he had five years before placed the shadowy crown of Tuscany,—


 * "Your mistress," he said, "has her secret attachments to Great Britain,—as you, Messieurs Deputies of the Hanse Towns are also said to have; but I will put an