blockaded, although a place ought not to be considered blockaded excepting when it is so closely invested that no approach can be made to it without imminent hazard, and that she even declared places blockaded which her united forces would be incapable of blockading, such as entire coasts and a whole empire. It further stated that this unequalled abuse of the right of blockade had no other object than to interrupt the communication of different nations, and to extend the commerce and industry of England upon the ruin of those of the continent; that, this being evidently the design of England, "whoever deals on the continent in English merchandise favours that design and becomes an accomplice; that this conduct of England (worthy of the first ages of barbarism) has benefited her to the detriment of other nations; that it being right to oppose to an enemy the same arms she makes use of, when all ideas of justice, and every liberal sentiment (the result of civilisation among men) are disregarded, we have resolved to enforce against England the usages which she has adopted in her maritime code."[1] Of course every reader of history knows that many of these charges have no foundation in fact. Nevertheless, Napoleon, then in the plenitude of his power, decreed:—
- ↑ We cannot read with patience such denouncements of barbarism, and such professions of liberty and justice from one who about this period ordered a poor bookseller of Nuremburg, by name of Palm, to be arbitrarily arrested, and brought before a military tribunal at Bremen, where he was condemned to be unceremoniously shot, because he had published and distributed a pamphlet, which questioned the "justice" of Napoleon's acts, as the conqueror of Germany. If ever there was a martyr in the cause of "liberty" it was this poor man, whose most unjustifiable execution in August 1806, was regarded with horror throughout Europe.
