Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/546

 508 Readings in European History to accept peace from him at his own terms. The conception was no doubt a grand one, and the measure was no more iniquitous than that of England, but the difference lay in the fact that the latter, in her pretensions to a blockade, was not undertaking anything beyond her strength, and did not stand in need of any other nation's cooperation to carry it out. France, on the contrary, was entering upon an undertak- ing which could not be put into execution without the volun- tary or enforced cooperation of all the European powers. It was therefore sufficient in order to render it fruitless — and the future went to prove this — that a single one of these powers, unable to submit to the privations imposed upon it, should either announce its firm determination not to lend a hand in the matter, or should be content with finding ways of eluding it. . . . Not only was England in a position to supply the conti- nent with the numerous products of her industry, but she also controlled almost the entirety of all colonial wares and provisions. Hence it would become necessary, in the first place, to have recourse to all possible means calculated to make continental industry supply that which English indus- try would no longer furnish. In the second place, with regard to colonial products, some of which, such as sugar and coffee, were almost indispensable necessaries of life, and others of which were the actual raw material on which depended the manufactures which it was proposed to create, it was necessary to devise a means for allowing them the right of entry, but in a proportion calculated on the strictest necessity, and, if possible, by means of an exchange favor- able to the natural products of the continent. So it happened that through the most persevering and at times the most ingenious efforts, by the aid of a succession of decrees, and with the help of that strange invention of licenses which were nothing but organized smuggling, conti- nental industry, or rather French industry, backed up with a million bayonets and with an auxiliary force of coast guards, succeeded in meeting a tremendous competition and in deriv- ing large profits.