Chapter III.: British Counter-measures and French Retort, Possible Lines of British Policy

THE immediate question, after the bomb which Napoleon had exploded, was what attitude Great Britain would assume toward the new blow directed against the very foundation of her trade and industry. We are confronted here with one of the points in the history of the Continental System which both at that time and later have been most often misunderstood.

Napoleon's intention was to strangle British trade with the Continent. The most natural counterblow of Great Britain in resisting this attempt at strangulation, and one in strict accord with the conceptions of those times, was to maintain the connexion with the Continent in every conceivable way. Nor is there any doubt that this was in reality the main line of action pursued by her, that is to say, chiefly by the British merchants and manufacturers. Consequently, the main economic conflict lay between the French measures of self-blockade and the British endeavours to break through that blockade. But the efforts of the British public authorities along this positive line, which was in reality the decisive one, were very much restricted by natural causes, over and above the extremely important fundamental condition created by the supremacy of the British fleet at sea. And with the usual inclination of mankind in the sphere of economics to attach too great importance to state measures and very little importance to the work of economic machinery itself, the main stress has been laid on obvious but in reality subordinate matters. It is by no means intended to follow the same course in this book; but what, from a deeper point of view, were the decisive matters on the British side do not belong—for reasons at which we have just hinted—to the external course of the Continental System and must therefore be left over for a later treatment.

It is true that one might regard one British measure as a positive counterblow, that is, an effort to compel the enemy, by economic or other pressure, to revoke his self-blockade decree. In form, indeed, this is what was attempted, inasmuch as all measures on both sides were represented as acts of reprisal, that is to say, as being caused by the aggressions of the enemy and as being intended to lead him into better ways. In the English official language the declared object was 'to restrain the violence of the enemy and to retort upon him the evils of his own injustice', as it was expressed in the Order in Council of January 7, 1807. And undoubtedly these declarations were in many cases seriously meant. But if such pressure was to be exerted in the sphere of economics, it almost necessarily had to take the opposite form to penetrating into the continental market: it had to be an effectual (i.e., import-preventing) blockade of the Continent. And this, as we well know, was just what people would not think of doing, for it would have implied, as was indeed said in Parliament, 'that France had shut the door against our commerce and that we had bolted it.' Although this idea came up time and again, everything else contributed to put these positive counter-measures aside: Napoleon's obstinacy, which held out small hopes of any change in his tactics; the slight prospects of giving any appreciable strength to such pressure; and the direct disadvantages thereof for Great Britain's own industrial life. As before, therefore, nothing more was possible than a mere gesture, which was contradicted by every detail of actual trade life.

But by the side not only of attempting to break through the blockade, but also of placing obstacles in the way of imports with the object of bringing economic pressure to bear, there was a third, a negative line, namely, to try to injure the trade of France and her allies in the same way as Napoleon had sought to injure that of Great Britain. In other words, it was intended to cut off their exports, and in that way, according to the then prevailing view, to undermine the possibility of their economic prosperity, just as Napoleon intended to do as regards England. It was 'the policy of commercial rivalry', as distinct from the policy of retaliation, to use Canning's expression. This could not create direct pressure, such as would compel the annulling of a self-blockade; but its purpose, here as on the opposite side, would have been a slow weakening of the enemy financially and economically. This third line, however, clearly led to measures quite different from those of the second line, that is to say, not to a cutting-off of the supplies of the Continent, but to an attack on the trade of the Continent, and especially on its exports.

This third line was, of course, quite in accordance with the general tendency we know, and to that extent had possibilities quite different from those of the second line. But the actual conditions strictly limited this third line too, in a way even more strictly than the former, simply because England's fourteen-year-old supremacy on the sea had not left much of the independent maritime trade with the Continent; and even during peace time, moreover, that trade had had nothing like the same importance for the continental states as British trade had for Great Britain. With these three lines, however, the possibilities of state counter-measures were all but exhausted. From this it follows that the political measures of Great Britain against Napoleon's Continental decree were not, as a whole, of primary importance for the issue of the economic trial of strength. In order to make the connexion clear, however, we must enter into a somewhat detailed study of the nature of British policy; and this is in every respect so peculiar and casts so much light on the driving forces, that such an investigation well repays itself, even apart from the international consequences of the British measures and reaction of these consequences on the economic conflict itself.

What was possible and remained to be done by means of state measures on the part of Great Britain had chiefly to do with colonial trade, and especially with the part played by the neutrals in that trade. In order that this may be comprehensible, however, it is necessary to turn back a little and glance at the connexion between the mainland of Europe and the colonies, especially the West Indies, during the war period down to 1807.