False Ships' Papers (Brougham's Description), France

That part of this which made an impression upon Napoleon must above all have been the last-mentioned side of the licence system, for it evidently enabled the British to evade his blockading decrees with success. But the whole fashion of saying one thing, and meaning and doing another, accorded exquisitely with his general bent and created a possibility, which was particularly welcome under the then prevailing circumstances, of altering his régime in fact without formally repealing 'the fundamental law of the Empire' before the English had given way. It was only natural, therefore, that the licensing system on the British side should encourage imitation on the side of Napoleon. Accordingly, the Continental System during its last years developed into a huge system of jugglery on both sides, when neither side honestly applied its own regulations, but both broke them with a capriciousness that to some extent increased the sufferings of the already more than sufficiently harassed peoples.

But this external resemblance between the tactics of Great Britain and Napoleon concealed a fundamental internal dissimilarity. In this case there is an unusual amount of truth in the old dictum quum duo faciunt idem, non est idem. The licences created, or at least had the power to create, a perfectly consistent application of the policy that Great Britain wished to pursue, namely, the promotion of trade with the Continent. For Napoleon, on the other hand, every licence, his own no less than his opponent's, meant a breach in the self-blockade of the Continent and in the isolation of Great Britain, and thus drove one more nail into the coffin of the Continental System. For Napoleon the licences were an integral part of the new order of things, the other half of which was the Trianon régime; and like that, the licences on his side contributed greatly to the more and more dominant fiscalism, which was not the case, to any notable extent, in Great Britain. In this way the licensing system in Great Britain acquired its real importance for the Continental System by inveigling Napoleon into an imitation which removed him still further from his great aim.

Sometimes this fact finds very open expression in Napoleon's copious explanations of the licensing system, alternating with highly confusing and obscure accounts of its significance. 'In this place it is necessary to tell you again what you already understand,' runs an unusually explicatory letter to Eugene, Viceroy of Italy (September 19, 1810), 'namely, what is meant by a licence. A licence is a permission, accorded to a vessel that fulfils the conditions exacted by the said licence, to import or export a certain kind of merchandise specified in that licence. For those vessels the Berlin and Milan decrees are null and void.'