CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND "I know full well that London is a corner of the world, and that Paris is its centre."-- _Letter of Napoleon_, August 18th, 1806.
On the 21st of November, 1806, Napoleon issued at Berlin the decree which proclaimed open and unrelenting war on English industry and commerce, a war that was to embroil the whole civilized world and cease only with his overthrow.

After reciting his complaints against the English maritime code, he declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade, interdicted all commerce with them, threatened seizure and imprisonment to English goods and subjects wherever found by French or allied troops, forbade all trade in English and colonial wares, and excluded from French and allied ports any ship that had touched at those of Great Britain; while any ship that connived at the infraction of the present decree was to be held a good prize of war.[113] This ukase, which was binding for France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the Rhenish Confederation, formed the foundation of the Continental System, a term applicable to the sum total of the measures that aimed at ruining England by excluding her goods from the Continent.
The plan of strangling Britain by her own wealth was not peculiar to Napoleon.

In common with much of his political stock-in-trade he had it from the Jacobins, who stoutly maintained that England's wealth was fictitious and would collapse as soon as her commerce was attacked in the Indies and excluded from the Rhine and Elbe.

At first the fulminations of Parisian legislators fell idly on the stately pile of British industry; but when the young Bonaparte appeared on the scene, the commercial warfare became serious.

As soon as his victories in Italy widened the sphere of French influence, the Directory banned the entry of all our products, counting all cotton and woollen goods as English unless the contrary could be proved by certificates of origin.[114] Public opinion in France, which, unless held in by an intelligent monarch, has always swung towards protection or prohibition, welcomed that vigorous measure; and great was the outcry of manufacturers when it was rumoured in 1802 that Napoleon was about to make a commercial treaty with the national enemy.