“This situation will have no influence on the customs legislation, which will always regulate arbitrarily duties and prohibitions. The Americans will be able to bring sugar and coffee into our ports,--the privateers will not stop them because the flag covers the goods; but when they come into a port of France or a country under the influence of France, they will find the customs legislation, by which we shall be able to say that we do not want the sugar and coffee brought by the Americans because they are English merchandise; that we do not want tobacco, etc.; that we do not want such or such goods, which we can as we please class among prohibited goods. Thus it is evident that we should commit ourselves to nothing.” Again and again, orally and in writing, in the presence of the whole Council and in private to each minister, the Emperor had asserted positively and even angrily that “all the measures I have taken, as I have said several times, are only measures of reprisal;” yet after assuming that his reprisals had succeeded, and that England had withdrawn her orders as France should have withdrawn her decrees, he told Montalivet, as though it were a matter of course, that he should carry out the same system by different means. This method of fighting for the rights of neutrals differed but little, and not to advantage, from the British method of fighting against them. The Emperor put his new plan in shape. He proposed to recognize neutral rights by issuing licenses under the name of permits for a score of American vessels, and for the introduction of Georgia cotton, the article for which Montalivet made his long struggle. This measure was to be so organized that the shipments could take place only in a single designated port of America, only with certificates of origin delivered by a single French consul also to be designated; that the ship could enter only at one or two designated ports of France; that independently of the certificates of origin a cipher-letter should be written to the Minister of Foreign Relations by the consul who should have given them; finally, that the ships should be required to take in return wines, cognac, silks, and other French goods for the value of the cargo.