=408. Failure of the Continental System.=—England scarcely needed political allies in a contest in which the material interests of most of the people of Europe were allied with her own. The obstacles to commerce with the Continent caused the prices of articles like the colonial wares to rise to double, triple, even tenfold, what they were in England. The reader will remember that the practical beginnings of beet sugar manufacture can be dated from this period of dearth. Commercial forces were too strong for any political restrictions, and smugglers brought goods to the people who wanted and would pay for them, despite all penalties. At a time (1809-10) when all the great ports from Riga to Triest were closed, goods reached the interior still, through the Greek islands, Malta, parts of Spain, the Channel Islands, and Heligoland. Napoleon himself had to recognize the impossibility of making the Continental System effective. He clad his own armies in English cloth, sold constantly licenses to evade his own decrees, and sought to win the profits away from smugglers by allowing the introduction of colonial products on payment of duties equivalent to the smugglers’ gain. Certain branches of production and manufacture were furthered on the Continent by the restrictions on trade, but the Continental System, on the whole, resulted only in loss to the people and in the defeat of Napoleon’s own plans. It furnishes a signal example of the futility of attempting to crush a sea power like England, without meeting it on its own element.