As early as 1795 the Committee of Public Safety had considered the possibility of excluding English goods from the Continent. The idea of the Berlin Decree was therefore not original with Napoleon, but the time and form of its application were; in particular, the final clause was thoroughly his own. These last words speak volumes. In reply to the principle of Great Britain that on the sea "enemy's ships make enemy's goods," he thereby retorted with "enemy's lands make enemy's goods," ordering all English wares found in countries occupied by his troops to be seized. But he went much farther in his suicidal logic, and virtually declared war to the knife by commanding that every British subject found within the same limits should be held as a prisoner of war, and that all property of individual Englishmen should be regarded as lawful prize. These drastic measures, considered together, were intended as a reply to Trafalgar, and to England's Orders in Council issued on May sixteenth, 1806, which announced a blockade of the Continent from Brest to the Elbe for the purpose of utterly destroying French commerce. The Berlin Decree was also intended to be in the nature of reprisals for the English practice of searching French ships and impressing French sailors. Napoleon had himself been guilty of that discourtesy both to warships and to merchantmen, but he had never been strong enough seriously to annoy or cripple England as England had both annoyed and crippled him by the practice. During the year 1806 three more French agents were despatched into the Orient, and Joseph declared to the (p.~448) Prussian envoy that his brother was contemplating an expedition to India. Many years later the Emperor himself confirmed this statement in a conversation with Dr. O'Meara.