Thus commerce, which had loudly called for peace, was almost totally annihilated by it: and the manufacturers, the mechanics, the merchants (those of the sea-ports excepted), greatly regretted those _happy_ times, when we were at war.
In fact, it must be admitted, that our industry was indebted to the war, and to our conquests, for its progress, and its prodigious increase. The war, by depriving us of the products of the English manufactories, had taught us, to manufacture for ourselves. The continual prohibition of these articles protected our rising manufactures from the danger of competition; and allowed them to engage with safety in the trials and expenses necessary for equalling or surpassing in perfection foreign manufactures. In all parts of the empire were seen manufactories for spinning and weaving cotton; and this branch of trade, almost unknown before, employed three hundred thousand work people, and produced goods to the value of more than two hundred and fifty millions.
The other products of our industry equally received improvements and extension; and France, in spite of the conscription, reckoned in its numerous workshops nearly twelve hundred thousand workpeople.
If this flourishing state of our continental trade were the effect of the enlargement of our territory, and the scope the war had given to our industry, we must say, that it was also the result of the succour, encouragement, and honorary distinctions, which Napoleon knew how to bestow appropriately on our manufacturers; and the return for those enormous sacrifices he made, to create, repair, and keep in order, those superb roads, and those numerous canals, which rendered the communications between France, and the countries subjected to its empire, equally easy, safe, and pleasant.]
The Emperor received a great number of petitions during his excursions. Unable to read them all, he ordered me, to examine them carefully, and give him an account of them. He loved to repay the confidence that the people reposed in him; and frequently granted to the request of an obscure and unknown citizen, what he would perhaps have refused to the entreaties of a marshal or a minister. The utility of these familiar communications between the nation and the sovereign was not confined, in his eyes, to the solitary interests of the petitioner. He considered them as efficacious means of coming at the knowledge of abuses and acts of injustice, and of keeping the depositaries of authority within the limits of their duty. He was fond of encouraging them, that the phrase, If the Emperor knew it, or The Emperor shall know it, might solace the heart of the oppressed, and make the oppressor tremble.