In reporting the interview to Monroe, Barlow added that the ambiguity of the Emperor’s reply made it unfit for publication.[195] Ambiguity was not the quality that a more sensitive man would have ascribed to a rebuff so sharp; but whatever the President may have thought, he took Barlow’s advice. The interview was never made known to Congress. During the month of November Napoleon busied himself in commercial questions only in order to show liberality to England at the expense of America. He extended his system of licenses to the exchange of French wines for sugar in large quantities, and even to the importation of coffee, indigo, tea, wool, dyewoods, and other articles, all to be obtained from England by license.[196] He discovered that his exchanges would benefit France more than England in the proportion of three to one. “It is therefore the perfected system that has produced this result, which had not been expected for several years. Evidently the system thus established is a permanent system, which can be made perpetual.”[197] The motive for this discovery might be traced throughout all his economical experiments. He needed money. Never had Napoleon’s ministers a harder task to give his acts a color of consistency. During the months of November and December Barlow held many interviews with Bassano, and made earnest efforts to obtain some written pledge in favor of American interests, but without success. December 19 he wrote that he was almost discouraged by the unexpected and unreasonable delay.[198] Napoleon made no more seizures, and released such American vessels as were held for violation of the decrees; but he conceded nothing in principle, and was far from abandoning his fiscal system against the United States. In order to meet Barlow’s complaints, Bassano gathered together every token of evidence that the decrees were not in force; but while he was asking the American minister how these facts could be doubted, a French squadron, Jan. 8, 1812, sailed from Nantes with orders to destroy all neutral ships bound to or from an enemy’s port. For several months American commerce was ravaged by these ships under the Emperor’s order, in pursuance of his decrees. January 19 Napoleon issued another order of the gravest character. His quarrel with Bernadotte the new king of Sweden had reached a rupture, and he carried out his threat of seizing the Swedish provinces south of the Baltic; but his orders to Marshal Davoust were almost as hostile to the United States as to Sweden:[199] “As soon as you shall be sure of seizing a great quantity of colonial merchandise in Swedish Pomerania, you will take possession of that province; and you will cause to be seized both at Stralsund and Anklam, in short at all points in Pomerania, whatever colonial merchandise may be found.” January 28 he wrote again:[200] “I wait with impatience your report on the colonial merchandise you shall have found in Pomerania.”