Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

those which he should permit them to import and this chimerical project was perhaps one of the first causes of his disasters. The distant countries which had retained the rank of powers, could not endure this new degradation; and princes who had patiently submitted to see provinces torn from their dominion, rose indignantly to oppose this unheardof monopoly. Buonaparte granted licenses of importation; Russia likewise granted them, but under different regulations from that time the blockade was virtually abandoned: the English merchandize was no longer excluded from the Continent. The resentment of the despot induced him to invade Russia, to compel her to observe rigorously the very blockade which he had himself violated. We all know the important events which resulted from that unjust aggression.

At first the licenses were not numerous; they were solicited as favours productive of great profit, even after payment of the enormous import duties, amounting to nearly two francs upon every pound of sugar or coffee, ten francs for every pound of quinquina, and so in proportion for the other articles imported. But these imports were subjected to another condition of a peculiar nature, namely, that of exporting previously, in the same vessel, and to the same amount as the imports, French merchandizes enumerated in the licenses; particularly silk manufactures, which the exporters were under the necessity of throwing into the sea, during the voyage. Buonaparte believed, or rather pretended to believe, that these manufactues, which could not appear in the English ports without being seized, and subjecting the ship and cargo to forfeiture, would purchase in those ports the Colonial produce required, upon advantageous terms. To destroy goods by way of increasing their consumption was rather an extraordinary expedient*; but it was the

anxious wish of Buonaparte, by a forced employment of national merchandize, to impart somé encouragement to interior commerce and manufactures, then languishing in a state of inactivity, which he viewed with considerable alarm. To have given this artificial excitement to inert capital and industry would have been the most able of all his administrative measures; but his injudicious attempts were only calculated to produce ruin and destruction. It is true that some warehouses were speedily emptied, that internal commerce and some particular manufactures resumed a partial and precarious activity; but the English were not made to contribute to the attainment of this object. They disdained and rejected the merchandize which was brought to their ports against their will, and in a quantity infinitely exceeding their possible occasions or desires. Several French speculators endeavoured to sell this dead stock at sea. Some American ships bought, for the merest trifles, bales of silk, embroidered goods, and other articles. But the greater part of those who congratulated themselves on these sales, as on a sort of bonus, found in them their ruin. Betrayed either by the crews of their vessels or by some unforeseen accident, they were punished for selling at sea merchandize which was excluded from all ports; and on their return their ships were seized, with the whole of the imported cargoes. Such was the oppressive treatment of men who deserved a premium, for having saved to their country property of which the total destruction seemed inevitable.

As each of the licensed vessels had paid at its return about a million of francs in import duties newly imposed, Buonaparte thought that if one vessel produced one million, an hundred ships would bring in an hundred millions; and that, if the forced purchase of a few ship-loads of French produce had given a certain movement to commerce and manufactures, the simultaneous freightIn some of the last voyages, the English ing of an hundred ships would empty also compelled the adventurers to receive, the warehouses, and restore abundance with the Colonial produce, a certain quantity and animation to French manufactures of their manufactures prohibited in like of every description. He therefore dismanner in France. Thus the merchant tributed licenses in great numbers; and who had been compelled to buy and throw in January 1813 one hundred and eleven into the sea silks, wines, and other French were delivered. Here his usual acutemerchandizes, was obliged, on his return, ness deserted him, and his political arithand destroy English pottery, to purchase hardware, &c. The French and English metic was wretchedly erroneous; for merchandize was thus equally destroyed, these hundred voyages from France to But the French merchant had to pay for England could neither be successfully performed, nor performed at all in the

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

short space of a few months. To facili tate these adventures, he found himself compelled to extend the list of the goods decreed to be exported as counter-value; and many articles were now introduced, which, if not likely to be eagerly bought up, were at least certain of not being confiscated the instant they arrived in an English port. Porcelains, furniture, gilt bronzes, and books, of which some invoices of 1812 had been very profitable, constituted the principal part of these new and far more considerable exportations. A reasonable quantity of these goods might perhaps have been advantageously sold in England; but the enormous quantities exported were out of all proportion to the demand. The fact is, that the sale of them was scarcely thought of in freighting the vessels. The whole of the hundred and eleven licenses were not, however, carried into effect but an irregular and unexpected sensation was nevertheless produced, and existed for some months in the commerce of Paris, and of some maritime towns. Let us suppose that the proprietor of a licence wished to import cotton or coffee to the value of a million francs; he was consequently obliged to export to the same amount merchandizes conformable to the French douane. He would have incurred a great and certain loss if he had actually disbursed such a sum to provide the exportable articles. He therefore endeavoured to buy the necessary commodities at very reduced prices, or even to borrow them of merchants who were willing to suffer them to be shipped in the name of the proprietor of the license, but at their own risk and for their own account; for which service a commission was paid, which varied materially. Five per cent, was at first paid to persons who had real freights to furnish; and these, as the most natural operations, were the most successful. The premium rose afterwards to ten, fifteen, and twenty per cent.; it was for two days at twenty-five, then suddenly fell again, and produced only six per cent. to the last who furnished exportable merchandize. The quality of this merchandize was partly inferior, and was little regarded in contracts of this nature, in which the articles exported were considered as lost.

The chief object of the parties acting under licenses, was to obtain from the revenue commissioners the certificate of value of the articles proposed for exportation; little or nothing was expected

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

A

from their sale. The books thus exported were said to be not “in usum Delphini," but "in usum delphinorum.” In many of these transactions neither buyer nor seller considered it of any consequence to which of them the property of the articles exported should be reserved; nevertheless those who made proper stipulations on this subject acted most prudently, as appears by what happened in 1816 and 1817 19 o

In the negotiations, occasioned by these extraordinary sales, it was almost universally customary to quote, the real value of goods in hundreds of thousands, and the value for which certificates were to be procured in millions. Books, an article with which all the dealers in Europe were excessively overstocked, had accumulated in a frightful manner. in the warehouses of the French publishers, in consequence of a long and fatal inactivity: books, therefore, were particularly suited to this sort of traffic. The publisher was glad to obtain even a very low price for heaps of editions which were to him merely so much paper. The merchant could conscien tiously, and without fraud, present these books to the French officers of customs at their legitimate and known prices. Thus the extensive operation of these! licenses, although originating in absur dity and madness, tended to produce a... į partial good, in diminishing and remov ing that state of languor which had long debilitated French manufactures, and. particularly the book-trade. But, as it often happens in complicated and irregu lar transactions, the chief and original object was forgotten in the progress of the business. When these operations became subject to official routine, they were managed by those who did not understand the principles on which alone they could be beneficially, conducted. The intention of Buonaparte had been to occupy the public mind by an extraordinary movement; to absorb a great quantity of French produce; and, above all, to secure the receipt of an hundred millions of francs. To encourage and facilitate the licensed voyages was, therefore, the duty of those whom he had appointed to direct and superintend them: instead of which, they did every thing in their power to embarass and restrain then. It is true that a variety of frauds were practised and attempted. Coloured water was exported for wine; instead of ribbons, the cases were filled with wooden rol lers covered with ends of ribbon,

1

gowns, of which only the bottom was embroidered, and many other singular expedients, were used to elude the law. In vahting the merchandize, much des ception was also practicable, in the doubtful worth of embroidery, bronzes, porcelains, &c. But because frauds might be, and in some instances had been practised, the commissioners would see nothing but fraud; because they had discovered that some declarations of value had been exaggerated, they resolved to reduce all. The narrow, petty conscientiousness of some of them, incapable of comprehending the idea of merchandize devoted to destruction, seemed disposed to require that the exports should consist of the most valuable property in the warehouses. They did not see that these absurd proceedings were calculated to inflict a serious wound on the commerce of France. The book trade was treated the worst of all. The notoriety of its prices exposed it defenceless to all the injuries of the system of arbitrary reduction, and cordingly it suffered severely.

ac

French industry, however, soon discovered a way of suddenly creating erportation values; a measure which excess and abuse only could render reprehensible. New editions, and even new works, were quickly fabricated expressly for exportation under the licenses; engraved plates which had long been useless, were reprinted, and produced custom-house values, in property which might, as soon as the certificates were obtained, be thrown into the sea without impoverishing the country. In short, the most industrious were most successful; and those who thus exported the printed bales taken out of their warehouses, obtained for them little more than the value of the paper, These proceedings were attended with many examinations and reports of the commissioners, who would have thought themselves guilty of a dereliction of their duty if they had not reduced the greater part of the factures or declarations of value*. The

* One speculator conceived the ingenious idea of printing an immense number of portraits of the Imperial Family, accompanied by a text purporting to be historical, written expressly for the purpose, and in the most emphatic terms. He thought that the young auditors of the Council of State would not dare to touch the holy ark, or risk incurring the charge of disaffection. He judged rightly: his declaration was received with respect, and admitted without any reduction.

[ocr errors]

sellers were, therefore, all more or less injured, and some of them even nearly ruined by these reductions, many of which were made at random, and upon the most vague and uncertain grounds, In the sale of the imports the proprie tors of the licenses suffered a loss of a different nature. The twofold effect of the increased importation of Colonial produce into France, was to render it dearer in England, where it was to be purchased, and cheaper in France, where it was to be sold. The expenses of the voyage, the purchase of merchandize or freight for exportation, and the extravagant import duties, formed the most conspicuous articles in their accounts, and the net produce was truly deplorable. Thus this notable system of licenses, which, notwithstanding its extravagant absurdity, might have proved in some degree beneficial, produced to the government less than half of what was expected from it, and disappointed the hopes of the greater part of the spel culators.

It seemed to be all over with the licenses, when they were unexpectedly revived to a certain extent. The English became tired of seeing their docks in cumbered with innumerable cases and›› packages of books, notwithstanding the D enormous quantities which had actually been thrown into the sea during the voyage. A warehouse-duty had been imposed of one shilling per month for every bale; but who was to be com⠀ pelled to pay it? The real proprietors?

ག་

-Where were they to be found? 'and when found, it might have been very difficult to enforce the payment. They resorted to the merchandize itself, and endeavoured to sell it by auction. It produced scarcely any thing, and these sales alarmed the London book-trade. In order, therefore, to get rid of the innumerable masses of books without losing the warehouse-duty, they permitted them to be re-exported exempt from import duty, but after payment of all other charges, which amounted to no less than forty or fifty shillings for one with anevery bale, containing, other, from eight to ten reams of printed paper. By these means a great quantity of French books thus redeemed, left the English docks in 1816 and 1817, and either returned to France, or were consigned to different destinations more or less remote'; but more than half of these goods had been so damaged either by lying so long in damp warehouses, bad packing, or the inevitable injuries of

די

[ocr errors]

two voyages, that the greater part of the books returned might be consider ed as destroyed. Porcelains and gilt bronzes, it is said, were in the same manner restored to their old warehouses. A complete inquiry into the history of these licenses, (which forms a singular episode in that of the political relations between France and England,)

comprehending all the effects of this system on the destinies of Europe, would prove a most fertile subject of investigation. We have here only endeavoured to describe their nature, origin, and immediate effects, on commerce, and particularly on the BOOK TRADE.

ON THE LIVING NOVELISTS.-NO. III.

GODWIN.

MR. GODWIN is the most original not only of living novelists-but of living writers in prose. There are, indeed, very few authors of any age who are so clearly entitled to the praise of having produced works, the first perusal of which is a signal event in man's internal history. His genius is by far the most extraordinary, which the great shaking of nations and of principles the French revolution-impelled and directed in its progress. English literature, at the period of that marvellous change, had become sterile; the rich luxuriance which once overspread its surface, had gradually declined into thin and scattered productions of feeble growth and transient duration. The fearful convulsion which agitated the world of politics and of morals, tore up this shallow and exhausted surface-disclosed vast treasures which had been concealed for centuries-burst open the secret springs of imagination and of thought and left, instead of the smooth and weary plain, a region of deep valleys and of shapeless hills, of new cataracts and of awful abysses, of spots blasted into everlasting barrenness, and regions of deepest and richest soil. Our author partook in the first enthusiasm of the spirit-stirring season-in" its pleasant exercise of hope and joy "-in much of its speculative extravagance, but in none of its practical excesses. He was roused not into action but into thought; and the high and undying energies of his soul, unwasted on vain efforts for the actual regeneration of man, gathered strength in those pure fields of meditation to which they were limited. The power which might have ruled the disturbed nations with the wildest, direct ed only to the creation of high theories and of marvellous tales, imparted to its works a stern reality, and a moveless grandeur which never could spring from mere fantasy. His works are not like those which a man, who is

endued with a deep sense of beauty, or a rare faculty of observation, or a spor tive wit, or a breathing eloquence, may fabricate as the "idle business" of his life, as the means of profit or of fame. They have more in them of acts than of writings. They are the living and the immortal deeds of a man who must have been a great political adventurer had he not been an author. There is in "Caleb Williams" alone the material

the real burning energy which might have animated a hundred schemes for the weal or woe of the species.

No writer of fictions has ever succeeded so strikingly as Mr. Godwin, with so little adventitious aid. His works are neither gay creatures of the element, nor pictures of external life-they derive not their charm from the delusions of fancy, or the familiarities of daily habitude

and are as destitute of the fascinations of light satire and felicitous delineation of society, as they are of the magic of the Arabian Tales. His style has "no figures and no fantasies," but is simple and austere. Yet his novels have a power which so enthralls us, that we half doubt, when we read them in youth, whether all our experience is not a dream, and these the only realities. He lays bare to us the innate might and majesty of man. He takes the simplest and most ordinary emotions of our nature, and makes us feel the springs of delight or of agony which they contain, the stupendous force which lies hid within them, and the sublime mysteries with which they are connected. He exhibits the naked wrestle of the pas sions in a vast solitude, where no object of material beauty disturbs our attention from the august spectacle, and where the least beating of the heart is audible in the depth of the stillness. His works endow the abstractions of life with more of real presence, and make us more intensely conscious of existence, than any others with which we are acquainted.

[ocr errors]

They give us a new feeling of the capacity of our nature for action or for suffering, make the currents of our blood mantle within us, and our bosoms heave with indistinct desires for the keenest excitements and the strangest perils. We feel as though we could live years in moments of energetic life, while we sympathize with his breathing cha racters. In things which before appeared indifferent, we discern sources of the fullest delight or of the most intense anguish. The healthful breathings of the common stinet with an unspeakable rapture. air seem inThe most ordinary habits which link one season of life to another become the awakeners of thoughts and of remembrances "which do often lie too deep for tears." The nicest disturbances of the imagination make the inmost fibres of the being quiver with the most penetrating agonies. Passions which have not usually been thought worthy to agitate the soul, now first seem to have their own ardent beatings, and their swelling and tumultuous joys. We seem capable of a more vivid life than we have ever before felt or dreamed of, and scarcely wonder that he who could thus give us a new sense of our own vitality, should have imagined that mind might become omnipotent over matter, and that he was able, by an effort of the will, to become corporeally immortal!

The intensity of passion which is manifested in the novels of Godwin is of a very different kind from that which burns in the poems of a noble bard, whom he has been sometimes erroneously supposed to resemble. The former sets before us mightiest realities in clear vision; the latter embodies the phantoms of a feverish dream. The strength of Godwin is the pure energy of unsophisticated nature; that of Lord Byron is the fury of disease. The grandeur of the last is derived from its transitoriness; that of the first from its eternal essence. The emotion in the poet receives no inconsiderable part of its force from its rebound from the dark rocks and giant barriers which seem to confine its rage within narrow boundaries; the feeling in the novelist is in its own natural current deep and resistless. The persons of the bard feel intensely, because they soon shall feel no more; those of the novelist glow, and kindle, and agonize, because they shall never perish. In the works of both, guilt is often associated with sublime energy;

55

Lord

but how dissimilar are the impressions which they leave on the spirit! Byron strangely blends the moral degradation with the intellectual majesty; so that goodness appears tame, and crime only is honoured and exalted. Godwin, on the other hand, only teaches been cast on a noble nature, and to us bitterly to mourn the evil which has regard the energy of the character not destined ultimately to subdue it. He as inseparably linked with vice, but as makes us everywhere feel that crime dent, of the species of which we are is not the native heritage, but the accimembers. He impresses us with the immortality of virtue; and while he leaves us painfully to regret the stains which the most gifted and energetic characters contract amidst the pollutions of time, he inspires us with hope that these shall pass away drink in unshaken confidence in the for ever. We good and the true, which is ever of the evil! more value than hatred or contempt for

the most popular of our author's ro"Caleb Williams," the earliest, is also mances, not because his latter works have been less rich in sentiment and passion, but because they are, for the most part, confined to the developement of single characters; while in this of two beings, each endowed with there is the opposition and death-grapple energy. There is no work of fiction poignant sensibilities and quenchless which more rivets the soul-no tragedy which exhibits a struggle more sublime, or sufferings more intense, than this; yet to produce the effect, no complicated machinery is employed, but the springs of action are few and simple. The motives are at once common and elevated, and are purely intellectual, without appearing for an instant inadequate to their mighty issues. Curiosity, for instance, which generally seems a low and ignoble motive for scrutinizing the secrets of a man's life, here seizes with genuous spirit, and supplies it with exstrange fascination on a gentle and incitement as fervid, and snatches of delight as precious and as fearful, as those feelings create which we are accustomed to regard as alone worthy to enrapture rence by Williams to the string of or to agitate. The involuntary recurfrenzy in the soul of one whom he would die to serve the workings of they wring confidence from him-and his tortures on the heart of Falkland till the net thenceforth spread over the path

« ZurückWeiter »