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 English Government seems to have been the first to issue similar secret permits; but Napoleon had scarcely signed his Berlin Decree for the blockade of England before he connived at its infraction.

When sugar, coffee, and other comforts became scarce, they were secretly imported from perfidious Albion for the imperial table.