Economic Dislocations

Probably, however, other matters also played a part. One of these was the rather self-evident idea which has already been incidentally mentioned, viz., that of causing dislocations in the economic life of England, especially in her industry. He caused one of his penmen, d'Hauterive, in a paper published in 1800, De l'état de la France à la fin de l'an VIII, to dwell on the thorough division of labour, on which the economic life of England was built, as a specially detrimental circumstance in every 'sudden change in the channels of trade', to use Ricardo's famous expression. As far as we can judge, it was especially unemployment, and consequent labour unrest, that Napoleon hoped to bring about in England through his policy of exclusion. At any rate, it is a fact that few matters in his own domestic policy occupied his thoughts to the extent that this did. The system of grants which he introduced for the benefit of industry in the crises of 1807 and 1810-11 he justified with his usual, and in this case very sensible, lack of sentimentality in a letter which he addressed on March 27, 1807, to his Minister of the Interior, Champagny, on the ground that he was anxious not to save certain business men from bankruptcy, but to prevent great numbers of workmen from being without work; and for the opposite reason no help was to be obtained for handicraftsmen and petty manufacturers on whom only a few workmen were dependent. Mollien, who entertained an orthodox laissez-faire dislike of this entire system of grants, also describes in detail how a large wool manufacturer, Richard Lenoir, who was in his opinion insolvent, succeeded in obtaining a loan of 1,500,000 francs owing to the fact that he was the owner of a large factory in one of the most populous suburbs of Paris, Faubourg St. Antoine. And Chaptal, whose views scarcely ever coincided with Mollien's, tells us, in full accordance with this, that the Emperor said to him: 'I fear these disturbances based on lack of bread: I should have less fear of a battle against 200,000 men'.

How Napoleon pictured to himself the purely external workings of the Continental System appears perhaps most distinctly from the already cited Survey of the Position of the Empire on August 24, 1807, which the Minister of the Interior laid before the Corps législatif. This purports to be a picture of the workings of the system; but as the latter had scarcely yet been put into execution at that time, it is mainly useful as giving evidence concerning its purpose.

England sees her merchandise repulsed from the whole of Europe, and her vessels laden with useless wealth wandering around the wide seas, where they claim to rule as sole masters, seeking in vain from the Sound to the Hellespont for a port to open and receive them.

It now remains to be seen how this policy was put into execution, and what effects it involved.