The license system was a relaxation of the continental blockade, of which England had set the example by giving protections to such neutral vessels, as, clearing out from a British port, had a certain proportion of their cargo made up of British goods or colonial produce. This was what, in mercantile language, is termed a real transaction--the British merchandise was purchased by such as designed to make a profit, by selling it again upon any part of the continent to which they might be able to introduce it. Buonaparte, in like manner, granted Imperial licenses, purchased for large sums of money, by which trading vessels were permitted to import a certain quantity of colonial produce, on condition of exporting an equal proportion of French manufactures. This system differed from that of England, in this important respect, that the demand for articles of the French manufactures was entirely simulated. The goods were not wanted in Britain, could not be re-sold there without payment of heavy duties, and were often thrown into the sea in preference to discharging the English duties upon them. Editions of books, a commodity thus exported, and thus disposed of, were wittily said to be _ad usum Delphini_. The prime cost at which these French goods had been purchased, in compliance with Buonaparte's regulations, was of course laid upon the colonial goods, which were the only actual subject of trade. Thus, if the French manufacturers derived any profit from the transaction, it was raised, not by their goods being exported and sold in foreign countries, in the usual course of trade, but by the prime cost being imposed as a tax upon the colonial produce imported; and the price was paid, of course, not by the foreign market, which the goods seldom reached, but by the French consumers of sugar, rum, and coffee. The real temptation for continuing this attempt to force a trade, was, as we have seen, the impossibility of dispensing with colonial produce entirely, and the large revenue accruing to the French government from these licenses, who, in this manner, exercising a complete monopoly in a trade which they interdicted to all others, made immense additions to the treasure which almost choked the vaults of the pavilion Marsan, in the Tuileries. The language held by the minister of Napoleon to the powers thus affected, amounted therefore to the following proposition:--"You shall shut your ports against British commodities; for without your doing so, it will be impossible for the Emperor Napoleon to humble the Mistress of the Seas. But while you are thus deprived of all commerce, whether passive or active, Napoleon reserves to himself, by the system of license, the privilege of purchasing and dealing in the commodities of Britain and her colonies, which, reaching your country by any other mode than through his permission, will be subject to confiscation, nay, to destruction."