The scope of the present work, concerned as it is solely with the difficulties and successes of Postal administration, does not demand any relation of the various measures and counter-measures taken by one or the other of the parties in the struggle for supremacy. It is enough to observe that the great system proved scarcely more successful than any other attempt to fetter the natural impulses of nations by any artificial restriction. Licenses to import English goods were granted in great numbers by Napoleon himself, as a source of revenue. His officers in many places, seeing that the chief burden of the system fell on the German merchants not on the English, evaded their instructions. “I received orders,” says Count Rapp, “to commit all articles of English merchandise to the flames. This measure would have been most disastrous. I evaded it ... and Dantzig lost no more than what amounted to 200 francs, and Koenigsberg still less.” A gigantic system of smuggling grew up, and on this contraband trade Count Rapp also looked benevolently. “I frankly confess,” he writes, “that I did not watch the coast of the Baltic with the vigilance that was prescribed to me.” And thus it happened that what with licenses, a convenient blindness of the executive, and a bold and daring trade by smuggling, the great barrier erected against England proved to be rather a trellis than a barricade, and was penetrable at many different points. Of course it was more difficult to introduce letters than goods into Germany. Mail-bags must be consigned to some responsible person. They betrayed their origin moreover, and were thus a certain source of trouble in case of discovery at any point of the route by which they travelled. All letters addressed in English or bearing English post-marks were opened and read by the French officials before being destroyed. If they contained any reference to property, that property was liable to be seized and burnt as being English or of English origin. These risks were avoided for the present by sending all letters from England to correspondents in Altona, who enclosed them in fresh covers and re-posted them to Hamburg or to places beyond. The following extract is from a letter written to the Secretary of the General Post-Office by Mr. Nicholas, British Consul at Altona, to whose judgment and knowledge of the various changes in the situation of affairs the Department was very frequently indebted.