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with Great Britain: when British manufactures and produce were declared contraband; when letters to and from the shores of Great Britain were to be kept and opened at the post offices, the traditions of France, if not the traditions of human nature, asserted themselves; and notwithstanding these decrees, White, in his history of France, says: "Artillery, horse, and infantry were always defeated when opposed to Napoleon's battalions, but printed ginghams were irresistible, There were conspiracies beyond the reach of his spies, in every parlour, where the daughters were dressed in coloured muslins; and cloths, cutlery, and earthenware were smuggled wherever a British vessel could float". The traditions of France responded to the pre-eminent place in commerce that their exiles, the Huguenots, had given Great Britain, their adopted country, and the decrees of Napoleon, being without the pale of economic science, were frustrated by one, whom Max O'Rell calls "Her Royal Highness, Woman". But the success of such commerce with France and Europe was due to the never-sleeping vigilance of the British fleet. Lord Cornwallis, in the blockade of the English Channel, between Brest and Portsmouth, for two years never saw a green leaf or a tree. The sailors of the British Fleet were said to be web-footed, inasmuch as they had never been ashore for years. The great Nelson himself, though he was seasick nearly every day of his life, at one time never landed, and that for only an hour at a time, more than thrice in eighteen months. This indeed was a struggle for supremacy in commerce, if not for very existence, during the Napoleonic wars. Never was a struggle maintained with such determination and with such courage as was the fight for supremacy during the wars of 1789 to 1815.
Often as a boy in Scotland I have asked, when looking at a house with several blind windows, "Why are those windows walled up?" The reply was: "There was in those days even a tax on windows to prosecute the war; and the people in Scotland being too poor to pay a tax on the four windows in that house, two were bricked up, and the tax paid on the two remaining. If the tax on these two had proved too much we should have
