said to
Mollien: "I seek the good that is practical, not the ideal best: the
world is very old: we must profit by its experience: it teaches that
old practices are worth more than new theories: you are not the only
one who knows trade secrets."[230] This was his general attitude
towards the exponents of new financial or commercial views. Indeed, we
can hardly think of this great champion of external control and state
intervention favouring the open-handed methods of _laisser faire_.
Unhappy France, that gave this motto to the world but let her greatest
ruler emphasize her recent reaction towards commercial mediaevalism!
Luckless Emperor, who aspired to found the United States of Europe,
but outraged the principle which most surely and lastingly works for
international harmony, that of Free Trade!

While the Trianon tariff sought to hinder the import of England's
colonial products, or, failing that, to reap a golden harvest from
them, Napoleon further endeavoured to terrify continental dealers from
accepting any of her manufactures. His Fontainebleau decree of October
18th, 1810, ordered that all such goods should be seized and publicly
burnt; and five weeks later special tribunals were instituted for
enforcing these ukases and for trying all persons, whether smugglers
caught red-handed or shopkeepers who inadvertently offered for sale
the cottons of Lancashire or the silks of Bengal.

The canon was now complete. It only remained to convert the world to
the new gospel of pacific war. The results were soon clearly visible
in a sudden rise of prices throughout France, Germany, and Italy. Raw
cotton now fetched 10 to 11 francs, sugar 6 to 7 francs, coffee 8
francs, and indigo 21 francs, per pound, or on the average about ten
times the prices then ruling at London.[231] The reason for this
advantage to the English consumer and manufacturer is clear. England
swayed the tropics and held the seas; and, having a monopoly of
colonial produce, she could import it easily and abundantly, while the
continental purchaser had ultimately to pay for the risks incurred by
his shopkeeper, by British merchants, and by their smugglers, who "ran
in" from Heligoland, Jersey, or Sicily. These classes vied in their
efforts to prick holes in the continental decrees. Bargees and women,
dogs and hearses, were pressed into service against Napoleon. The
last-named device was for a time tried with much success near Hamburg,
until the French authorit