much we bought from his States: in fact, the more we bought, the
sooner we should be bankrupt--such was his notion.

It is strange that he never sought to cut off our corn-supplies. They
were then drawn almost entirely from the Baltic ports. The United
States and Canada had as yet only sent us a few driblets of corn. La
Plata and the Cape of Good Hope were quite undeveloped; and our
settlements in New South Wales were at that time often troubled by
dearth. The plan of sealing up the cornfields of Europe from Riga to
Trieste would have been feasible, at least for a few weeks; French
troops held Danzig and Stettin; Russia, Prussia, and Denmark were at
his beck and call; and an imperial decree forbidding the export of
corn from France and her allied States to the United Kingdom could
hardly have failed to reduce us to starvation and surrender in the
very critical winter of 1810-11. But that strange mental defect of
clinging with ever increasing tenacity to preconceived notions led
Napoleon to allow and even to favour exports of corn to us in the time
of our utmost need; and Britain survived the strain.[234]

What folly, however, to refer to the action of this man of one
economic idea as being likely to determine the conduct of continental
statesmen in some future naval war with England. In truth, the urgency
of the problem of our national food-supply in time of a great war can
only be fully understood by those who have studied the Napoleonic era.
England then grew nearly enough corn for her needs; her fleets swept
the seas; and Napoleon's economic hobby left her foreign food-supply
unhampered at the severest crisis. Yet, even so, the price of the
quartern loaf rose to more than fifteenpence, and we were brought to
the verge of civil war. A comparison of that time with the conditions
that now prevail must yield food for reflection to all but the
case-hardened optimists.

But already Napoleon was convinced that the Continental System must be
secretly relaxed in special cases. Despite the fulsome addresses which
some Chambers of Commerce sent up, he knew that his seaports were in
the depths of distress, and that French cotton manufacturers could not
hope to compete with those of Lancashire now that his own tariff had
doubled the price of raw cotton and dyes in France. He therefore hit
upon the curious device of allowing continental merchants to buy
licences for the privilege of secretly evading his own decrees. The
Engli