I. The British isles were declared in a state of blockade. II. All commerce and correspondence with England was forbidden. All English letters were to be seized in the post-houses. III. Every Englishman, of whatever rank or quality, found in France, or the countries allied with her, was declared a prisoner of war. IV. All merchandise, or property of any kind, belonging to English subjects, was declared lawful prize. V. All articles of English manufacture, and articles produced in her colonies, were in like manner declared contraband and lawful prize. VI. Half of the produce of the above confiscations was to be employed in the relief of those merchants whose vessels had been captured by the English cruizers. VII. All vessels coming from England, or the English colonies, were to be refused admission into any harbour. Four additional articles provided the mode of promulgating and enforcing the decree, and directed that it should be communicated to the allies of France. This was the first link of a long chain of arbitrary decrees and ordinances, by which Napoleon, aiming at the destruction of British finance, interrupted the whole commerce of Europe, and destroyed for a season, and as far as lay in his power, that connexion between distant nations which unites them to each other by the most natural and advantageous means, the supply of the wants of the one country by the superfluous produce of the other. The extent of public inconvenience and distress, which was occasioned by the sudden suppression of commercial communication with England, may be judged of by reflecting, how many of the most ordinary articles of consumption are brought from foreign countries--in how many instances the use of these articles have brought them into the list of necessaries--and how, before an ordinary mechanic or peasant sits down to breakfast, distant climes must be taxed to raise the coffee and sugar which he consumes.[255] The painful embarrassment of those deprived of their habitual comforts, was yet exceeded by the clamour and despair of the whole commercial world on the continent, who were thus, under pretext of relieving them from the vexation of the English cruizers, threatened with a total abrogation of their profession. Hamburgh, Bourdeaux, Nantes, and other continental towns, solicited, by petitions and deputations, some relaxation of decrees which inferred their general ruin. They pleaded the prospect of universal bankruptcy, which this prohibitory system must occasion. "Let it be so," answered the Emperor; "the more insolvency on the continent, the greater will be the distress of the merchants in London. The fewer traders in Hamburgh, the less will be the temptation to carry on commerce with England. Britain must be humbled, were it at the expense of throwing civilisation back for centuries, and returning to the original mode of trading by barter."