This Decree, however, did not pass without many Petitions from the People of France against it: and it was

then

give notice that they are to be sold; -all Signs, or advertisements, notifying an intention to sell any such articles, are to be taken down in twenty-four hours. All persons having such articles in their possession, are to give notice to the Municipal Administration, who are to make an Inventory of them, to take measures for preventing the sale of them in the interior of the Country, and for securing their re exportation.

Violations of the before-mentioned Decree are to be punished with arrest; the Criminal to be brought before the Tribunal of Correctional Police; all Goods, and the vessels, carriages, horses, and beasts of burden, concerned in transporting them, to be confiscated; and the Delinquent is, besides, to be condemned to a Fine, not less than treble the value of the object seized, and to Imprisonment for a period not less than five days, nor more than three months. In case of a repetition of the offence, the fine shall be doubled, and the Imprisonment for a space of six months. The value of the Goods confiscated shall be given to the persons who seize them, deducting onesixth, which is to be given to the Municipal Administrators. The names, surnames, ages, and places of abode, of the Violators of this Law, and their Agents, are to be stuck up in all Public Places, and inserted in the Periodical Papers, under the general title of "Brokers of England, Destroyers of French Industry."— Domiciliary visits, of the strictest kind, are authorized to be made, for the purpose of discovering any articles of the above description; —not only the Officers of the Customs, but all Public Factionaries, and the Military, are required to exert themselves, in the strict execution of this Law.

We may perhaps have tired our Readers, in giving so long an abstract of this Decree; but we thought it right to be thus particular, in order to convince the Public, that the present Measure of the Directory is not new; and that a prohibition of British Manufactures, through all the extent of the Territories of the French Republic, under the severest penalties, has been in force, at least from the 10th Brumaire, that is, the 31st of October, 1796; and yet the Morning Chronicle, who must have known of this Decree, and must have published some account of it at the time it passed, has now, with a view to impose on

VOL. I.

the

then alledged, in the Council of Five Hundred, that a host of 50,000 Civil Officers would not be able to carry it into execution.

The French Government may pass Decrees of this nature, but they have not the power of executing them, as we shall proceed now to shew. They perhaps never had even the intention to execute them.

It appeared, at the time of passing this Decree, by the Debates in the Council of Five Hundred, that several of its Members, even then, entertained suspicions of the sincerity of the Directory in this business: - In a subsequent period their suspicions increased: -They applied, by Message, to the Directory, conveying in strong terms their suspicions on this subject ;- several evasive answers were at first given, but the Council of Five Hundred forced them at last to an express avowal, that they themselves had violated this Law, and that they knew it was violated to a great extent, by their own Subjects.

By a Message from the Executive Directory to the Council of Five Hundred, of the 22d of August (or, as they call it, the 5th Fructidor) 1797, they acknowledge, that they are not ignorant of the "dreadful activity" with which Smuggling is carried on in the Departments of Mont Blanc, Aine, and the ci-devant Dutch Flanders, by armed bands of two or three hundred men, who break open and plunder the Custom-house Magazines, carry off the Goods seized and deposited there, and massacre the Officers. They acknowledge (or at least pretend) that their Generals, as well as their Officers of the Customs, are employed to en

the People of this Country, the impudence to call such a Prohibition of British Manfactures, one of the new measures of the French Directory.

force

force the execution of this Law; and that they have sent Officers to the several Departments on the Frontiers, to enforce the execution of it. But they at the same time confess (habes confitentem Reum) that in violation of this Law, there had been imported, under their authority, a great quantity of British Cloth, duty free, into Rouen, Havre, and Dunkirk; and that a farther quantity of British Cloth so imported, had been deposited in the Military Magazines at Brussels; and they apologize for this measure, by alledging the impossibility of obtaining in France, on Credit, the necessary Cloth for the most pressing Clothing of the Troops, and that they could not have paid for this Cloth, if they had purchased it in any other way; and they conclude in these words: "The "Importation of these Articles, free from Duty, has not "been attended with any loss to the National Treasury; "because, without this Condition, it would have been ne"cessary to pay a much higher Price, and the Contrac"tors, who received Bills in Payment, would never have "agreed to advance the Duty."

This Message was signed by CARNOT, then President of the Directory, who was obliged, a few weeks after, to escape from assassination, or deportation, by flight from the Territories of the Republic.

On the 4th of January following (1798), the three remaining Members of the Directory, and their two new Colleagues, were not ashamed, after all that had lately passed, to send a Message to the Council of Five Hundred, recommending another law for preventing the Importation and Sale of British Merchandize and Manufactures. They appear to have added but one new Regulation, to those contained in the Law of the 10th Brumaire, that is, the capture of Neutral Vessels at sea, laden

in whole or in part, with British Merchandize or Manufactures. On this new regulation we have sufficiently treated already.

It appears, however, that a short time previous to their sending this Message, the French Directors had given secret orders to the Commissioners of the Directory, and Custom-House Officers, to proceed, in all the chief places of the Departments, as well as in all the Ports and principal Communes of the Republic, to seize and confiscate all the English Goods and Merchandize that had been introduced into the French Territory, in contravention of the Law of the 10th Brumaire. By this very measure, unless they confess it to be nugatory, they afford themselves a proof, how unsuccessful all their efforts hitherto had been, to prevent the People from importing and using British Merchandize and Manufactures; and they thereby farther acknowledge, that there were at that time actually existing, great quantities of these Commodities, in all the Ports, Departments, and Communes, of the French Territory. It would indeed have been extraordinary, if the present Government of France should have been able to exclude from that Country, British Manufactures, at a time when, from the Destruction of their own Manufactures, they are in want of them more than at any former period.

It is proper to add, that by this violent Act of Seizure and Confiscation, the French Directors were guilty of the most outrageous injustice, by punishing their People, by Confiscation of their Property, for violating a Law, when, by their own confession, they had themselves set the example.

Such is the measure which the Writer of the Morning Chronicle holds out as an object of terror, to British Mer

8

chants

*

But these Merchants and

chants and Manufacturers. Manufacturers must want the sense and spirit, for which they have hitherto been distinguished, if they are in the least degree alarmed, by a menace so futile and so absurd. -We have said enough, to prove the impracticability of preventing the introduction and use of British Merchandize and Manufactures in the French Territories. All, in short, that can be effected by any obstructions that may be thrown in their way, is to increase the price of them to the Consumers.

Nothing now remains, but to shew, that if the Directory, by any exertion of their authority, could perfectly accomplish their object, of preventing the use of British Merchandize and Manufactures in France, what is likely to be the loss, which the Commerce of this Country would sustain by such a measure.

In the Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords, from which we made an extract in a former Paper, it appears that the year 1792, though a year of Peace, was excluded from the comparative state of the British Commerce therein given, for it was not in truth a common year of Peace. Our Commerce in that year was extraordinarily augmented by many causes which may not occur again. The dreadful consequences, which the progress of the French Revolution had occasioned, particularly in their great Commercial and Manufacturing Towns, had, at that time, annihilated a great part of the internal Commerce of France; and this circumstance certainly contributed to make our Exports in 1792, and even in 1791, greater than they ever had been before. Great, however, as our Exports were in the two years last-mentioned, we are not afraid of making them the Standard on which we shall found our reasons, to shew that the present menaces