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.