Even the most attached of Napoleon's own functionaries connived at the universal spirit of evasion--his brothers themselves, in their respective dominions, could not help sympathising with their subjects, and winking at the methods of relief to which they were led by necessity, the mother of invention.

The severe police, however, which was formed everywhere as a necessary part of the machinery for carrying these edicts into execution--the insolence of the innumerable spies and informers whom they set in motion--and the actual deprivation of usual comforts, in so far as it existed--all these circumstances conspired to render the name of the Berlin decrees odious throughout Europe and in France itself.

It may be added that the original conception of Napoleon was grounded on a mistaken opinion, to which, however, he always clung--namely, that England derives all her strength from her foreign commerce.

Great as that commerce was, and great as, in spite of him, it continued to be, it never was anything but a trifle when compared with the internal traffic and resources of Great Britain--a country not less distinguished above other nations for its agricultural industry, than for its commercial.
Napoleon received at Berlin a deputation of his Senate, sent from Paris to congratulate him on the successes of his campaign.

To them he announced these celebrated decrees: he made them the bearers of the trophies of his recent victories, and, moreover, of a demand for the immediate levying of 80,000 men, being the _first_ conscription for the year 1808--that for the year 1807 having been already anticipated.