Obligation to Export

But further the licences were intended to serve Napoleon's aims in the sphere of trade policy. In this connexion the main thing was to encourage the exportation of French, and to some extent also Italian, industrial products and, in good years, foodstuffs from both countries, as well as from Danzig and other granaries. In exchange for this there was granted, as a rule, the importation of colonial goods, which was simultaneously regulated by the Trianon policy, either generally or with special reference to Levantine and American products. But there were also stricter rules where nothing was to be brought back to France except ship-building materials or precious metals, and specie, which were in constant request, and which Napoleon, in consonance with his well-known views, was always seeking to draw from England. Thus from 1809 on there was a long series of varying types of licence, which differed widely in detail, but do not offer many points of interest. One of the most significant types is the combined one which permitted vessels to take corn from German ports in Napoleon's empire to Dunkirk and thence to England, provided the corn was discharged in England and naval stores were taken as return freight to Dunkirk, where French wine, silks, and manufactures had to be taken on board and conveyed to Hamburg. One of the most stringent conditions for licences was that imports into France, and to some extent also into Italy, of whatever kind they might be—apart from foodstuffs during years of famine, as in 1812—required from the importing vessel a return cargo of French goods from France or Italian goods from Italy of at least the same value. Such return freight was particularly silk and other French textiles, but also wine and brandy, and, in good years, natural produce, especially from Italy. All this was to be in proportions which varied a great deal from time to time, but were usually determined in great detail. This very far-reaching system, which also had something, though on a smaller scale, corresponding to it on the British side, as has already been mentioned, had developed from a regulation introduced into the French customs ordinance of 1803 as a kind of punishment for vessels whose papers were not above suspicion in respect of the innocent origin of their cargo. This even applied to incorporated territories, such as the Hanse Towns, when importing to 'the old departments'.

It may be said at once that this attempt on the part of Napoleon to transform the Continental System from a gigantic plan of blockade against Great Britain to an in itself less note-worthy method of augmenting the exports of France, led to an almost complete fiasco. The goods were taken on board, of course, but as their importation was prohibited in England, and as, moreover, they were not in a position to compete with British manufactures, there could be no sale. And it is in the very nature of things that the method of circumventing such export ordinances must be still more varied than in regard to obstacles in the way of imports, and the dodges invented were all the more numerous. On the whole, it may be regarded as a general rule that purely coercive laws in the sphere of economics have far fewer possibilities of being made effective in a positive direction than in a negative one. In most cases, in fact, it is almost impossible that the positive law can effect anything more than the external forms of economic transaction, while the negative regulation or prohibition can much sooner make the transaction impossible both in substance and in form. Of course, goods were exported when their exportation was ordered; but as it was difficult to fix the quality of the goods in the law, the consequence was that people bought up every conceivable kind of rubbish—articles long since out of fashion or useless from the very start—in the French idiom 'nightingales' (rossignols), which sing only by night,—which could be purchased for a song and then priced at any figure whatever. Under these circumstances, of course, there was less chance than ever of effecting any real imports of goods into England, and it was stated openly, for instance, in the French Council of Commerce and Industry in 1812, and was for that matter generally known, that the goods were simply thrown into the sea. All this held good of that part of Napoleon's policy which to some degree stood in connexion with the Continental System, namely, the trade with England. With regard to the countries incorporated or allied with the empire, the possibilities were probably greater, inasmuch as the vessels could be controlled on their arrival with the French goods; but obviously all this was valueless as a weapon in the struggle with the enemy.