re of his being as to
interfere with no single process of thought and will. Whether that is
possible is a question for psychologists and casuists; but every
open-minded student of Napoleon's career must at times pause in utter
doubt, whether this or that act was prompted by mad ambition, or
followed naturally, perhaps inevitably, from that world-embracing
postulate, the Continental System.

England also derived some secondary advantages from this war of the
elements. In order to stalemate her mighty foe, she pushed on her
colonial conquests so as to control the resources of the tropics, and
thus prevent that deadly tilting of the balance landwards which
Napoleon strove to effect. And fate decreed that the conquests of
English seamen and settlers were to be more enduring than those of
Napoleon's legions. While the French were gaining barren victories
beyond the Vistula and Ebro, our seamen seized French and Dutch
colonies and our pioneers opened up the interior of Australia and
South Africa.

We also used our maritime monopoly to depress neutral commerce. We
have not space to discuss the complex question of the rights of
neutrals in time of war, which would involve an examination of the
"rule of 1756" and the compromises arrived at after the two Armed
Neutrality Leagues. Suffice it to say that our merchants had recently
been indignant at the comparative immunity enjoyed by neutral ships,
and had pressed for more vigorous action against such as traded to
French ports.[117] Yet the statement that our Orders in Council were
determined by the clamour of the mercantile class is an exaggeration:
they were reprisals against Napoleon's acts, following them in almost
geometrical gradations. To his domination over the industrial
resources of the Continent we had nothing to oppose but our
manufacturing skill, our supremacy in the tropics, and our control of
the sea. The methods used on both sides were alike brutal, and, when
carried to their logical conclusion at the close of the year, crushed
the neutrals between the upper and the nether millstone. But it is
difficult to see what other alternative was open to an insular State
that was all-powerful at sea and weak on land. Our very existence was
bound up with maritime commerce; and an abandonment of the carrying
trade to neutrals would have been the tamest of surrenders, at a time
when surrender meant political extinction.

We turn now to follow the chief steps in Napoleon's on