The celebrated Decrees of Berlin appeared on the 21st November, 1806, interdicting all commerce betwixt Great Britain and the continent; which interdiction was declared a fundamental law of the French empire, until the English should consent to certain alterations in the mode of conducting hostilities by sea, which should render her naval superiority less useful to herself, and less detrimental to the enemy. This measure was justified upon the following grounds:--That England had either introduced new customs into her maritime code, or revived those of a barbarous age--that she seized on merchant vessels, and made their crews prisoners, just as if they had been found on board ships of war--declared harbours blockaded which were not so in reality--and extended the evils of war to the peaceful and unarmed citizen. This induction to the celebrated project, afterwards called the Continental System of the Emperor, was false in the original proposition, and sophistical in those by which it was supported. It was positively false that Great Britain had introduced into her maritime law, either by new enactment, or by the revival of obsolete and barbarous customs, any alteration by which the rights of neutrals were infringed, or the unarmed citizen prejudiced, more than necessarily arose out of the usual customs of war. The law respecting the blockade of ports, and the capture of vessels at sea, was the same on which every nation had acted for three centuries past, France herself not excepted. It is true, that the maritime code seemed at this period to be peculiarly that of England, because no nation save herself had the means of enforcing them; but she did not in this respect possess any greater advantage by sea than Napoleon enjoyed by land. The reasoning of the Emperor Napoleon upon the inequality and injustice of the maritime mode of exercising war, compared with the law of hostilities by land, was not more accurate than his allegation that Britain had innovated upon the former for the purpose of introducing new, or reviving old severities. This will appear plain from the following considerations:--