When Mahomet II. mounted the throne, the Genoese were expelled from Pera, {53} and Venice regained the preponderance in eastern---{52} The depot of India commerce being in the Crimea, which is near the mouth of the Wolga, is a strong reason for believing the trade was carried on through the Caspian Sea; but it has been asserted, that the chief route was directly by land from the Tigris to the Black Sea. This seems a very good way; but, in that case, why cross the Black Sea to go to the Crimea? Any one who looks at the map will be able to judge that as being very unlikely. Doctor Robertson, however, has taken no notice of this difficulty. Two things are certain: that the depot was in the Crimea, and that merchants never go out of their road without having some cause for doing it. The reader must then determine for himself.{53} Before the Genoese were expelled, their insolence and avarice had time to display themselves in their full extent; about the year thirteen hundred and forty, says an eye-witness, [end of page #57] (Nicepho[r/i]as [illeg.] Gregoras,) they dreamed that they had acquired the dominion of the sea, and claimed an exclusive right to the trade of the Euxine, prohibiting the Greeks to sail to the Chersonesus, or any part beyond the mouth of the Danube, without a licence from them. The Venetians were not excepted, and the arrogance of the Genoese went so far as to form a scheme for imposing a toll on every vessel passing through the Bosphorous.-=-commerce, which she maintained, till the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, which opened a new channel, more certain, much less expensive, and not so liable to interruption from the revolutions that nations are liable to. It is deserving of observation, that whatever alterations took place in the channel through which the India trade was carried on, whatever were the vicissitudes or the difficulties, the trade itself never was suspended; so great was the propensity of those who were affluent in the West, to enjoy the productions of the East. {54}The vicissitudes of this eastern commerce were thus very great in former times. The wealth and arrogance which the possession of it produced, and the envy it excited, may, in general, be ascribed as the cause; indeed it is not certain whether the envy of the Genoese, at the success of the Venetians, did not make them, in an underhand manner, favour those attempts to find out a new channel which might destroy the prosperity of a haughty and successful rival. {55}Whether it was so or not, it is certain that the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope was not accidental; but that the Portuguese were induced to listen to the proposal of trading to India by that route, under the certainty of rivalling the greatest commercial city of the world, if she should succeed.Though no new channel can now be expected, and the present one is every day becoming more easy and frequented, yet the capricious shiftings of the India trade were not ended by this new discovery.Instead of the contest being, as formerly, between cities situated on---{54} The prices of Asiatic produce were exorbitant. Silk was sold for its weight in gold; and a Roman emperor refused his empress the luxury, or rather the splendour, of a silk gown.{55} Amongst the passions that get hold of rivals in commerce, that of envy is so great, when avarice is defeated, that, to humble a successful rival, they will meet ruin themselves, without fear, and even with satisfaction.-=-[end of page #58]the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, those maritime powers who navigated the main ocean became the contending parties.There are only two ways by which wealth is accumulated and brought into few hands; the one by compulsion and levying taxes, the other by producing or procuring objects of desire; for a small quantity of which, people give up a great portion of their labour.Sovereigns have amassed wealth and possessed revenue by the first means, and the use they have put it to has been magnificence in building, or in great or useful works, for war, or for pleasure.The wealth obtained by the other means, of which the trade to the East seems to have been the chief, produced a different effect. In Italy it occasioned the invention of bills of exchange, and gave encouragement to the fine arts, and to some manufactures. In the north of Europe it infused a general spirit for trade and manufactures; for the luxuries of the East only served to teach the people of the north the necessity of acquiring comfort by manufacturing the produce of their own country.To improve the arts of weaving, to make woollen and linen cloths of a finer texture, was very natural, after having seen the silks and muslins that came from India; particularly to people living in a cold climate, where a more substantial covering was wanted, and where the materials were in abundance.It was, accordingly, in Flanders, and the adjacent country, that the modern spirit of manufactures rose up, nourished by the wealth which the ancient commerce of India had produced.In the early ages, when the Tyrians had this trade, they amassed great wealth, though they had not any large countries to supply; for, probably, neither Egypt nor the eastern part of Syria would receive the produce by so circuitous a road. But, during the first ages, sacrifices to the gods and the funeral ceremonies consumed vast quantities of aromatics of every sort, as well as the enjoyments of the living. The two former causes of request for aromatics have long been at an end, owing to the changes in religion. They are now neither burned on the altar nor at the grave; and custom and taste, which are to a certain [end of page #59] degree variable and arbitrary, have lessened the consumption of some, and others have been supplied by the progress that we have ourselves made in manufactures. {56}While this diminution of consumption took place, the western world was advancing in civilization, and the progress of wealth became vastly more extended; so that if the consumers of eastern luxuries were less profuse in the use of them, they were, at the same time, greatly increased in number.The taste for tea, alone, which was introduced not much above a century ago, has alone, overbalanced all the others, and it is still augmenting in Europe; besides the discovery of a new quarter of the world rapidly increasing in population, into which the custom of drinking tea, as in Britain, has been introduced also.The reasonable price at which an article can be afforded, always augments the consumption: and though we have no criterion to go by in judging of the prices in former times, yet it is certain they must have been very great. At the time when silk was sold for its weight in gold, that metal was compared with common labour of six times the value that it is now; silk was, then, at least three hundred times as dear as it is now; indeed, even that extravagant price scarcely accounts for the parsimony of the Roman emperor, who refused his wife a robe of that rich material. {57}Though new discoveries have robbed Egypt and Syria for ever of the commerce of the East; and though the loss of trade was the proximate cause of the degradation, yet both countries had long been desolate and---{56} Wrought silks, muslins, and porcelains. Cotton stuffs are now no longer bought as formerly, so that, except in porcelain, the raw material is the only object of commerce. The silk worm was introduced into Italy during the time that the intercourse with the East was very difficult, and therefore had not the increase of wealth, and a taste for new articles extended the demand and brought a new one, the trade would at last have been nearly done away.{57} The carriage is 24 L. a ton backwards and forwards, or out and home, which is only equal to what is paid in England by land for 500 miles. Indeed, none but articles of a very great value and high price could pay for the carriage by any of the channels hitherto discovered but that of the Cape.-=-[end of page #60]degraded before this change happened; for though the commerce came through their countries, the riches it produced centred in Italy. Syria had long become a desert, and the ruined palaces were become the habitations of scorpions, reptiles, and beasts of prey, long before those discoveries which seemed to have sealed their doom. That discovery only completed what had long been begun, and rendered permanent and irrevocable what might otherwise have been altered. {58}At the rate at which this trade now goes on to increase, all the gold and silver mines in the West, will soon be insufficient to afford enough of the precious metals to pay for produce from that country: for few European manufactures are taken in return. This is laying a foundation for a great revolution, either in manners or in nations at some future day.It is extraordinary that, from the earliest ages, the inhabitants of India have been receiving gold and silver from all other countries, and yet, that those metals are not so abundant there as with European nations. As our demand for the produce of the mines increases in order to send remittances in specie to that country, the mines themselves diminish in their produce, so that whatever change this may bring on, can be at no very great distance. {59}---{58} What Dr. Robertson says of Palmyra may be applied nearly to all the cities in Asia and Africa that shared in this commerce. "Palmyra, after the conquest by Aurelian never revived." At present, a few miserable huts of beggarly Arabs are scattered in the courts of its stately temples, or deform its elegant porticoes, and exhibit a humiliating contrast to its ancient magnificence.{59} If the taste of the Anglo Americans for tea continues, allowing one pound to each person in the year, which is very little, one hundred millions of pounds weight will be annually wanted in less than half a century.-=-[end of page #61]CHAP. VII.Of the Causes that brought on the Decline of the Nations that had flourished in the middle Ages, and of Portugal, Spain, Holland, and the Hans Towns.THE trade with India, which had been almost the only one, and always an occasion for envy and contest, was sought for by the Spaniards and the Portuguese; who, as we have seen, were the first amongst modern nations that seemed to aspire at naval discovery.The manner in which Spain discovered America; and Portugal, the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, both nearly at the same period, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is too well known to require the smallest detail.Europeans, with the superior degree of knowledge they possessed, and particularly that of the use of fire-arms: incited also by the love of gold; and careless of keeping their word with the unsuspecting natives, soon triumphed wherever they went, and the consequence was, that both nations brought home immense riches. The trade of Venice, Alexandria, and Aleppo, was all transferred to Lisbon, {60} and never was so small a country so suddenly enriched; and it may be added, more quickly deprived afterwards of the chief source of its wealth.The Dutch had triumphed over the power of Spain, on their own soil, and they soon rivalled that of Portugal in the East. It was a very different thing to combat the natives, and to fight with the Dutch, who very soon deprived Portugal of the rich means of wealth she had discovered in India.The prosperity of Portugal, arising from its possession =sic= in the East, continued at its height exactly a century. Its decline is accounted for by the following causes.---{60} Lisbon had its depot for the north of Europe, at Antwerp, and the value of the consignments have been estimated at a million of crowns, annually; but this is, probably, an exaggeration.-=-[end of page #62]Its domineering principles, too great an extent of conquests, which were widely scattered, and the haughtiness of the Portuguese, both towards the natives and Europeans; the envy and rivalship which brought the Dutch into the same countries; a great want of attention and energy; and, lastly, giving a preference to the trade to the Brazils. The Brazils had been first discovered by the Portuguese, afterwards seized upon by the Dutch, whom they, however, expelled about the middle of the sixteenth century; that is, about fifty years after its first discovery, and an equal period of time previous to the decline of their trade in India.The possession of the whole of this lucrative trade, that had enriched so many great nations, and that by so easy a channel, and without almost any contest, for nearly a whole century, had so enriched the small kingdom of Portugal, that after being too eager, and grasping at too much, it was almost ready to resign the whole without a struggle, had it not been for some reasons of another sort. {61} So immense was the influx of wealth, from the united sources of India and the Brazils, that the former, which has been at every other period the object of ambition of all nations, and is so still, was considered as scarcely worth retaining.It is almost unnecessary to add, that from that moment Portugal has been on the decline. If ever the cup of prosperity ran over, in large streams, it was then; and when the possession of the trade to India was scarcely thought worth preserving, it is clear that no great efforts could be made to encourage internal industry.Spain, extensive and powerful before it discovered the Indies, did not so immediately feel the effects of the wealth imported, as the Portuguese had done; but its prosperity was of less duration, though the decline was not quite so rapid.The Dutch must have known the effects of wealth on a nation, else---{61} It was debated in council, at Lisbon, whether it would be worth while to keep India, the wealth from the Brazils was so much more easily obtained. A scruple of conscience, least =sic= the missionaries should be destroyed, turned the scale in favour of retaining the trade of India!!-=-[end of page #63]they would scarcely have tried to throw off the yoke of Spain, at the very moment when it appeared in its greatest splendour and power. {62}Insolence and pride, we have too often had occasion to remark, accompany wealth; and Philip was no more proof against its effects, than those potentates who had gone before him. -- There was a great resemblance between the project of invading England, with the invincible armada, as it was called, and the attack on Greece by the King of Persia. That monarch must have thought very meanly of England, to suppose that the island could be conquered by 30,000 men, even if they could have made good their landing. Indeed, to try such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour so well at Agincourt and Cressy, and which was not, in any respect, degenerated, manifests his being blinded by the effects of wealth and greatness.The consequence was, a gradual decline of the affairs of his kingdom; so that, in little less than a century, England placed a king on the throne of Spain.Though the effect produced on Spain was not so rapid as on Portugal, it was, in some respects, more irretrievable. The vast numbers of persons who quitted that country, in quest of gold, injured its population, already reduced by the expulsion of the Moors, who were the most industrious of its inhabitants.The wealth that came to Spain, came in a very unequal distribution, which is a considerable disadvantage, and hastens on that state of things which is the natural forerunner of the decay of a nation. Wealth, arising by commerce, however great its quantity, must be distributed with some degree of equality; but the great adventurers in the gold mines only shared with their sovereign, and the whole of their wealth came in prodigious quantities, pouring in upon the country. {63}---{62} Though the Dutch were subject to Spain, yet that had not prevented them from acting in an independent manner in their modes of following trade and commerce.{63} We see an example of this in our own trade to India. Captains of ships, merchants, and all those who get money by that trade, come home with moderate fortunes; but the governors, and civil and military officers, who have been settled in the country, come home with princely fortunes, and eclipse the old nobility of the country.-=-[end of page #64]Both Spain and Portugal, finding that wealth came with such ease from India and America, neglected industry. This, indeed, was a very natural consequence; and, when the sources of their riches began to dry up, they found, though too late, that instead of having increased in wealth, they had only been enriching more industrious nations, and ruining themselves. The gold that arrives from the West passes through the hands of its masters with almost the same rapidity as if they were only agents for the English and the Dutch; so chimerical an idea is that of wealth existing without industry.The Dutch were the only rivals of the Portuguese in the East Indies; for though other nations came afterwards in for a share, yet the transition from wealth to weakness was already made by the Portuguese, before any of them had begun to set seriously to work, in acquiring possessions, or in carrying on trade with that country.Portugal thus fell, merely from the rivalship of a more industrious and less advanced nation, after having embraced more territory than she had power to keep. Spain fell, because she had embraced a wrong object as a source of riches. {64}The Hans Towns, which owed their prosperity, partly to their own wisdom and perseverance, in the beginning, and partly to the contempt with which sovereigns, in the days of chivalry, viewed commerce, might, with very little penetration, and much less exertion of wisdom than they had displayed, have seen that the spirit of commerce was becoming general, and that moderation and prudence were necessary to preserve them in their proud situation; but the prudence which they possessed at first had given way to pride, and abandoned them; and the first great stroke they received was from Queen Elizabeth. The ruin of so widely-extended a confederacy could not be astonishing, and, indeed, was a natural consequence of the changes in the manners of the times: but it was not so with Flanders. There was nothing to have prevented the Flemish from continuing to enjoy wealth, and follow up industry, except in the rivalship of other nations,---{64} So short a time did the wealth remain in the country, that, when the famous armada was fitted out against England, a loan of money was solicited, from Genoa, for the purpose.-=-[end of page #65]particularly of Holland and England; for, though France was farther advanced, as a manufacturing and wealthy nation, than England, yet it was not in the same line of industry with the people of the Netherlands, whose prosperity was not therefore injured by it in the same degree.As for the Dutch, they continued to increase in wealth till the end of the seventeenth century, and their decline requires a more particular attention.In addition to their great industry, the fisheries, and art of curing fish, the Dutch excelled in making machines of various sorts, and became the nation that supplied others with materials, in a state ready prepared for manufacturing: this was a new branch of business, and very lucrative, for, as the machines were kept a secret, the abbreviation of labour was great, and the materials had still the advantage in their sale that a raw material has over manufactured goods; so that the advantages were almost beyond example.Add to all this, that the Dutch were the first who established the banking system, (copying in part from the Italians,) on a solid plan. The advantages that Holland enjoyed were, indeed, all of its own procuring, but they were numerous and inappretiable, without counting the trade to India, of which it enjoyed a greater share than any other nation, for a considerable period.No nation has shewn, so completely as the Dutch, how exterior enemies may be repelled, and difficulties overcome, while there is a true attention to the real welfare of the country. The exertions of the Romans, to conquer others, scarcely surpassed those of the Dutch to preserve themselves, when they were in a state of necessity; but, when they became affluent, energy and unanimity left them. The manufacturers became merchants, and the merchants became agents and carriers; so that the solid sources of riches gradually disappeared.All this time, taxation increased, and though no nation ever allowed its manners to be less corrupted by the possession of wealth, yet there was a sensible change; but the change in the way of thinking was the most pernicious. Discontent with the government, and disagreements amongst themselves, completed their misfortunes, while England was [end of page #66] all the time endeavouring to supplant them in the most beneficial sources of their wealth.The Dutch, fairly sunk by that rivalship, and natural change of things, which transfers the seat of wealth and commerce from one nation to another. There was no violent revolution, no invasion by an enemy; it was the silent operation of that cause of decline, which has been already mentioned in the Second Chapter, and will be farther and more particularly illustrated and explained.The Dutch had a superabundance of capital; the interest of money was low; and wealth had begun to leave Holland long before the symptoms of decay became visible; by which means, the trade of other countries was encouraged, and, as always will be the case, capital emigrated, the moment it could find secure employment, and greater profits than were to be obtained at home. The leading causes of the decline of Holland may be distinguished thus:The taxes were gradually increasing.Its superiority in manufactures over other countries was continually diminishing; consequently, industry was not so well rewarded, and less active.The merchants preferred safe agencies for foreigners to trading on their own bottom, thereby lending their credit.Dutch capital was employed to purchase goods in one country and sell them in another: so that the Dutch became carriers for others, instead of manufacturing and carrying for themselves.The trade to India, and the banking business, were both taken up by other nations; so that Holland then lost her superiority in these branches.Thus circumstanced, Holland was gradually sinking, when political troubles, the end of which it is not easy to foresee, put her at the feet of France: an event that would not have happened in the manner it did, when the true spirit of patriotism reigned, that distinguished her in her more prosperous days. From this, at least, there is one distinct lesson to be learnt, that however it may be natural for nations to lose a superiority, owing to arts, inventions, or foreign trade, yet, if the minds of the people and their manners remain pure, they will not be degraded, by falling a prey to an enemy. When Holland was not rich [end of page #67] it resisted Spain in all her glory, during a very hard, arduous, and continued struggle; but then the people were united as one man: there were no traitors to raise a voice for Spain against their country. When Holland was wealthy, it did not even attempt to resist France when invaded; but then Holland was divided, and there were in every city men, who wished more for the plunder than the prosperity of their country.In viewing the fall of those nations that sunk before the discovery of America, the eastern empire was the last that attracted attention. It had been reduced by the Turks, with a vigour and energy that promised a renovation, which, however, it did not effect. The Turks brought with them the Mahometan religion, which has debased the manners and degraded the minds of every people. Constantinople, by this change, lost the remains of ancient learning and of commerce, which even the weakness of the emperors, and the repeated wars, had not been able entirely to destroy. The Greeks were reduced to a state of subordination and slavery, but the Turks were not civilized. They adopted what was luxurious and effeminate of Grecian manners, yet still retained their former ignorance and ferocity. Amongst modern nations, the Turkish government is, in form, a monster, and its existence an enigma; yet it extended its sway over all that was most valuable or most splendid in the ancient world. Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, the three Arabias, and countries then but little known, are subject to a brutish people, who do not even condescend to mix with the inhabitants of the country, but who rule over them in a manner the most humiliating and disgraceful. {65}The Turkish government has never been powerful. The city of Venice was always its equal at sea; and, as it disdains to adopt the systems of other nations, it is every day becoming weaker, in comparison with them. It has formerly maintained successful struggles against---{65} In all other conquests, the conquered and the conquerors have become, at last, one people, when they have settled in the same country, whether Christians or Pagans; but the Turks and Greeks keep as distinct to this day as at the first, and this is probably owing to the nature of the Turkish religion.---[end of page #68]Germany, Poland, and Russia; but that time is now over, and it owes its present existence to the jealousy of other powers. It is possessed of a greater quantity of good territory than all the leading nations of Europe, Russia excepted; and it is not the interest of men living in less favoured climates, to endeavour to renovate the country of Alexander, and of the other great nations of antiquity.The Turkish nation is represented as greatly on the decline, but, soon after its establishment, it had every vice that could well exist in a government, and its greatest weakness now arises more from the alteration produced in other nations for the better, than in itself for the worse. The difficulty of keeping people in ignorance is becoming every day greater; and when the Ottoman throne falls the usual order of things will be reversed. For, as other governments may attribute their destruction to corruption of manners, and to ignorance, the Turkish government looks there for its security; and the day that any reasonable degree of light breaks in amongst its subjects will be its last.To endeavour tracing the causes of decline in a state that owes its existence to its defects, and is in every respect different from other nations, would be useless in the present Inquiry, it has only been noticed to shew, that, in the infinite variety of things, some may owe their existence to what is in general the cause of destruction. [end of page #69]CHAP. VII. [=sic= - error in printer's copy, should read VIII.]General View and Analysis of the Causes that operated in producing the Decline of all Nations, with a Chart, representing the Rise, Fall, and Migrations of Wealth, in all different Countries, from the Year 1500, before the Birth of Christ, to the End of the Eighteenth Century, -- a Period of 3300 Years.FROM the revolutions that have taken place amongst wealthy and powerful nations to the present time, though the origin has been owing to very different causes, and the decline and removal from one place to another has been attended with circumstances not similar; yet the same leading cause for that decline may not only be traced easily and distinctly, but is so evident that it is impossible for it to be overlooked or mistaken.Local situation, or temporary circumstances, have always afforded the first means of rising to wealth and greatness. The minds of men, in a poor state, seem never to have neglected an opportunity, presented either by the one or the other, and they have generally proved successful, till energy of mind and industry were banished, by the habits of luxury, negligence, and pride, which accompany, or at least soon follow, the acquisition of either.Where wealth has been acquired first, power has generally been sought for afterwards; and, where power came first, it has always sought the readiest road to wealth, by attacking those who were in possession of it.The nations and cities on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, where arts and commerce first began, where agriculture flourished, and population had risen to a high pitch, carried on perpetual struggles to supplant each other; and, in those struggles, the most wealthy generally sunk under; till Alexander, the first great conqueror, with whose history we are tolerably well acquainted, reduced them all to [end of page #70] his yoke; one small and brave people triumphing over the Egyptian and Assyrian empires, where wealth and luxury had already produced their effects.Though this triumph of poverty over riches was very complete, except in one single instance, it did not occasion any real change, either in the abodes of wealth, or the channels of commerce. Tyre, the richest commercial city till then, was ruined, to make way for the prosperity of Alexandria, which became the most wealthy; drawing great part of the commerce from Carthage on the west, and taking the whole from Rhinocolura on the east: but, in Egypt and Syria, Babylon and Memphis still remained great cities.The whole of this ancient world was for a moment under one chief, but was soon again divided amongst the generals who succeeded to that great conqueror; and the Egyptian and Persian empires became rivals, as Egypt and Syria had been before. The Grecian nations still remained the chief seats of civilization and the fine arts; and this continued till the Romans, originally a poorer people than the Macedonians, conquered the whole. This was the second great triumph of poverty and energy over wealth and grandeur, and, in this struggle, Greece itself fell.The effects of wealth were not less formidable to the Romans themselves, than they had been to those nations they had enabled that brave and warlike people to conquer; so that the mistress of the world, in her turn, fell before nations that were rude and barbarous, but uncorrupted by wealth and luxury.The conquerors of Rome were too rude, and too many in number, to become themselves enervated by wealth, which disappeared under their rapacious grasp, and which they neither had the art nor inclination to preserve.This invasion of the fertile and rich provinces by men rude and ignorant, but who came from northern climates, established a new order of things; and only a small remnant of former wealth and greatness was preserved in Egypt and at Constantinople.For several centuries of war and confusion commerce and the arts appear to have been undervalued and neglected; but still the taste [end of page #71] for oriental luxuries was not entirely banished, and, at the first interval of peace and safety, sprung up again. It was then that Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, and Constantinople, became the channels through which the people of Europe procured the luxuries of Asia. Babylon, Memphis, Palmyra, and all the other great cities of antiquity, were no more; even Greece had lost its arts and splendour; Alexandria and Constantinople were repeatedly assailed, taken, and conquered, by the barbarians, who envied their wealth, but who still found an interest in continuing them as channels for procuring to European nations the refinements of the East. Though Venice and Genoa were wealthy, they were but small, and of little importance; and all the nations who might have crushed them at a blow, only considering them as sea-ports of convenience and utility, allowed them to remain independent.As an intercourse had been established between the northern and southern parts, a taste for the luxuries of Asia had extended to the shores of the Baltic, soon after the victorious arms of Charlemagne had carried there some degree of civilization, and the Christian religion.Then it was that a new and more widely-extended system of commerce, but something like what had formerly existed in Tyre and Carthage, began in all the maritime towns of Europe, when Italy and Flanders became the most wealthy parts of Europe. A spirit of chivalry, and a desire of conquest, not founded on the same principles with the conquests of ancient nations, or of Rome, to obtain wealth, pervaded all Europe, and the greatest confusion prevailed. In the history of wealth and power, as connected together, this is a chasm. Those who had power despised wealth, and were seeking after what they esteemed more -- military glory; and wealth was confined to a number of insulated spots, and possessed by men who were merchants, without any share of power or authority.This extraordinary and unprecedented state of things gave rise to the Hanseatic League, which rose at last to such importance that those who had been so long seeking after glory, without finding it, began to see the importance which was derived from wealth. They began to see that, even in the pursuit of their favourite object, wealth was an ex- [end of page #72] cellent assistant, and the friendship of merchants begun =sic= to be solicited by princes, as in the days of Tyre and Sidon.This progress was greatly facilitated and accelerated by the crusades, which, at the same time that they beggared half the nobility of Europe, gave them a taste for the refinements of the East, and taught them to set some value on the means by which such refinements could be procured.In this manner were things proceeding, when three great discoveries changed the situation of mankind. {66}
When Mahomet II. mounted the throne, the Genoese were expelled from Pera, {53} and Venice regained the preponderance in eastern
---
{52} The depot of India commerce being in the Crimea, which is near the mouth of the Wolga, is a strong reason for believing the trade was carried on through the Caspian Sea; but it has been asserted, that the chief route was directly by land from the Tigris to the Black Sea. This seems a very good way; but, in that case, why cross the Black Sea to go to the Crimea? Any one who looks at the map will be able to judge that as being very unlikely. Doctor Robertson, however, has taken no notice of this difficulty. Two things are certain: that the depot was in the Crimea, and that merchants never go out of their road without having some cause for doing it. The reader must then determine for himself.
{53} Before the Genoese were expelled, their insolence and avarice had time to display themselves in their full extent; about the year thirteen hundred and forty, says an eye-witness, [end of page #57] (Nicepho[r/i]as [illeg.] Gregoras,) they dreamed that they had acquired the dominion of the sea, and claimed an exclusive right to the trade of the Euxine, prohibiting the Greeks to sail to the Chersonesus, or any part beyond the mouth of the Danube, without a licence from them. The Venetians were not excepted, and the arrogance of the Genoese went so far as to form a scheme for imposing a toll on every vessel passing through the Bosphorous.
-=-
commerce, which she maintained, till the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, which opened a new channel, more certain, much less expensive, and not so liable to interruption from the revolutions that nations are liable to. It is deserving of observation, that whatever alterations took place in the channel through which the India trade was carried on, whatever were the vicissitudes or the difficulties, the trade itself never was suspended; so great was the propensity of those who were affluent in the West, to enjoy the productions of the East. {54}
The vicissitudes of this eastern commerce were thus very great in former times. The wealth and arrogance which the possession of it produced, and the envy it excited, may, in general, be ascribed as the cause; indeed it is not certain whether the envy of the Genoese, at the success of the Venetians, did not make them, in an underhand manner, favour those attempts to find out a new channel which might destroy the prosperity of a haughty and successful rival. {55}
Whether it was so or not, it is certain that the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope was not accidental; but that the Portuguese were induced to listen to the proposal of trading to India by that route, under the certainty of rivalling the greatest commercial city of the world, if she should succeed.
Though no new channel can now be expected, and the present one is every day becoming more easy and frequented, yet the capricious shiftings of the India trade were not ended by this new discovery.
Instead of the contest being, as formerly, between cities situated on
---
{54} The prices of Asiatic produce were exorbitant. Silk was sold for its weight in gold; and a Roman emperor refused his empress the luxury, or rather the splendour, of a silk gown.
{55} Amongst the passions that get hold of rivals in commerce, that of envy is so great, when avarice is defeated, that, to humble a successful rival, they will meet ruin themselves, without fear, and even with satisfaction.
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[end of page #58]
the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, those maritime powers who navigated the main ocean became the contending parties.
There are only two ways by which wealth is accumulated and brought into few hands; the one by compulsion and levying taxes, the other by producing or procuring objects of desire; for a small quantity of which, people give up a great portion of their labour.
Sovereigns have amassed wealth and possessed revenue by the first means, and the use they have put it to has been magnificence in building, or in great or useful works, for war, or for pleasure.
The wealth obtained by the other means, of which the trade to the East seems to have been the chief, produced a different effect. In Italy it occasioned the invention of bills of exchange, and gave encouragement to the fine arts, and to some manufactures. In the north of Europe it infused a general spirit for trade and manufactures; for the luxuries of the East only served to teach the people of the north the necessity of acquiring comfort by manufacturing the produce of their own country.
To improve the arts of weaving, to make woollen and linen cloths of a finer texture, was very natural, after having seen the silks and muslins that came from India; particularly to people living in a cold climate, where a more substantial covering was wanted, and where the materials were in abundance.
It was, accordingly, in Flanders, and the adjacent country, that the modern spirit of manufactures rose up, nourished by the wealth which the ancient commerce of India had produced.
In the early ages, when the Tyrians had this trade, they amassed great wealth, though they had not any large countries to supply; for, probably, neither Egypt nor the eastern part of Syria would receive the produce by so circuitous a road. But, during the first ages, sacrifices to the gods and the funeral ceremonies consumed vast quantities of aromatics of every sort, as well as the enjoyments of the living. The two former causes of request for aromatics have long been at an end, owing to the changes in religion. They are now neither burned on the altar nor at the grave; and custom and taste, which are to a certain [end of page #59] degree variable and arbitrary, have lessened the consumption of some, and others have been supplied by the progress that we have ourselves made in manufactures. {56}
While this diminution of consumption took place, the western world was advancing in civilization, and the progress of wealth became vastly more extended; so that if the consumers of eastern luxuries were less profuse in the use of them, they were, at the same time, greatly increased in number.
The taste for tea, alone, which was introduced not much above a century ago, has alone, overbalanced all the others, and it is still augmenting in Europe; besides the discovery of a new quarter of the world rapidly increasing in population, into which the custom of drinking tea, as in Britain, has been introduced also.
The reasonable price at which an article can be afforded, always augments the consumption: and though we have no criterion to go by in judging of the prices in former times, yet it is certain they must have been very great. At the time when silk was sold for its weight in gold, that metal was compared with common labour of six times the value that it is now; silk was, then, at least three hundred times as dear as it is now; indeed, even that extravagant price scarcely accounts for the parsimony of the Roman emperor, who refused his wife a robe of that rich material. {57}
Though new discoveries have robbed Egypt and Syria for ever of the commerce of the East; and though the loss of trade was the proximate cause of the degradation, yet both countries had long been desolate and
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{56} Wrought silks, muslins, and porcelains. Cotton stuffs are now no longer bought as formerly, so that, except in porcelain, the raw material is the only object of commerce. The silk worm was introduced into Italy during the time that the intercourse with the East was very difficult, and therefore had not the increase of wealth, and a taste for new articles extended the demand and brought a new one, the trade would at last have been nearly done away.
{57} The carriage is 24 L. a ton backwards and forwards, or out and home, which is only equal to what is paid in England by land for 500 miles. Indeed, none but articles of a very great value and high price could pay for the carriage by any of the channels hitherto discovered but that of the Cape.
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degraded before this change happened; for though the commerce came through their countries, the riches it produced centred in Italy. Syria had long become a desert, and the ruined palaces were become the habitations of scorpions, reptiles, and beasts of prey, long before those discoveries which seemed to have sealed their doom. That discovery only completed what had long been begun, and rendered permanent and irrevocable what might otherwise have been altered. {58}
At the rate at which this trade now goes on to increase, all the gold and silver mines in the West, will soon be insufficient to afford enough of the precious metals to pay for produce from that country: for few European manufactures are taken in return. This is laying a foundation for a great revolution, either in manners or in nations at some future day.
It is extraordinary that, from the earliest ages, the inhabitants of India have been receiving gold and silver from all other countries, and yet, that those metals are not so abundant there as with European nations. As our demand for the produce of the mines increases in order to send remittances in specie to that country, the mines themselves diminish in their produce, so that whatever change this may bring on, can be at no very great distance. {59}
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{58} What Dr. Robertson says of Palmyra may be applied nearly to all the cities in Asia and Africa that shared in this commerce. "Palmyra, after the conquest by Aurelian never revived." At present, a few miserable huts of beggarly Arabs are scattered in the courts of its stately temples, or deform its elegant porticoes, and exhibit a humiliating contrast to its ancient magnificence.
{59} If the taste of the Anglo Americans for tea continues, allowing one pound to each person in the year, which is very little, one hundred millions of pounds weight will be annually wanted in less than half a century.
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CHAP. VII.
Of the Causes that brought on the Decline of the Nations that had flourished in the middle Ages, and of Portugal, Spain, Holland, and the Hans Towns.
THE trade with India, which had been almost the only one, and always an occasion for envy and contest, was sought for by the Spaniards and the Portuguese; who, as we have seen, were the first amongst modern nations that seemed to aspire at naval discovery.
The manner in which Spain discovered America; and Portugal, the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, both nearly at the same period, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is too well known to require the smallest detail.
Europeans, with the superior degree of knowledge they possessed, and particularly that of the use of fire-arms: incited also by the love of gold; and careless of keeping their word with the unsuspecting natives, soon triumphed wherever they went, and the consequence was, that both nations brought home immense riches. The trade of Venice, Alexandria, and Aleppo, was all transferred to Lisbon, {60} and never was so small a country so suddenly enriched; and it may be added, more quickly deprived afterwards of the chief source of its wealth.
The Dutch had triumphed over the power of Spain, on their own soil, and they soon rivalled that of Portugal in the East. It was a very different thing to combat the natives, and to fight with the Dutch, who very soon deprived Portugal of the rich means of wealth she had discovered in India.
The prosperity of Portugal, arising from its possession =sic= in the East, continued at its height exactly a century. Its decline is accounted for by the following causes.
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{60} Lisbon had its depot for the north of Europe, at Antwerp, and the value of the consignments have been estimated at a million of crowns, annually; but this is, probably, an exaggeration.
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Its domineering principles, too great an extent of conquests, which were widely scattered, and the haughtiness of the Portuguese, both towards the natives and Europeans; the envy and rivalship which brought the Dutch into the same countries; a great want of attention and energy; and, lastly, giving a preference to the trade to the Brazils. The Brazils had been first discovered by the Portuguese, afterwards seized upon by the Dutch, whom they, however, expelled about the middle of the sixteenth century; that is, about fifty years after its first discovery, and an equal period of time previous to the decline of their trade in India.
The possession of the whole of this lucrative trade, that had enriched so many great nations, and that by so easy a channel, and without almost any contest, for nearly a whole century, had so enriched the small kingdom of Portugal, that after being too eager, and grasping at too much, it was almost ready to resign the whole without a struggle, had it not been for some reasons of another sort. {61} So immense was the influx of wealth, from the united sources of India and the Brazils, that the former, which has been at every other period the object of ambition of all nations, and is so still, was considered as scarcely worth retaining.
It is almost unnecessary to add, that from that moment Portugal has been on the decline. If ever the cup of prosperity ran over, in large streams, it was then; and when the possession of the trade to India was scarcely thought worth preserving, it is clear that no great efforts could be made to encourage internal industry.
Spain, extensive and powerful before it discovered the Indies, did not so immediately feel the effects of the wealth imported, as the Portuguese had done; but its prosperity was of less duration, though the decline was not quite so rapid.
The Dutch must have known the effects of wealth on a nation, else
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{61} It was debated in council, at Lisbon, whether it would be worth while to keep India, the wealth from the Brazils was so much more easily obtained. A scruple of conscience, least =sic= the missionaries should be destroyed, turned the scale in favour of retaining the trade of India!!
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they would scarcely have tried to throw off the yoke of Spain, at the very moment when it appeared in its greatest splendour and power. {62}
Insolence and pride, we have too often had occasion to remark, accompany wealth; and Philip was no more proof against its effects, than those potentates who had gone before him. -- There was a great resemblance between the project of invading England, with the invincible armada, as it was called, and the attack on Greece by the King of Persia. That monarch must have thought very meanly of England, to suppose that the island could be conquered by 30,000 men, even if they could have made good their landing. Indeed, to try such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour so well at Agincourt and Cressy, and which was not, in any respect, degenerated, manifests his being blinded by the effects of wealth and greatness.
The consequence was, a gradual decline of the affairs of his kingdom; so that, in little less than a century, England placed a king on the throne of Spain.
Though the effect produced on Spain was not so rapid as on Portugal, it was, in some respects, more irretrievable. The vast numbers of persons who quitted that country, in quest of gold, injured its population, already reduced by the expulsion of the Moors, who were the most industrious of its inhabitants.
The wealth that came to Spain, came in a very unequal distribution, which is a considerable disadvantage, and hastens on that state of things which is the natural forerunner of the decay of a nation. Wealth, arising by commerce, however great its quantity, must be distributed with some degree of equality; but the great adventurers in the gold mines only shared with their sovereign, and the whole of their wealth came in prodigious quantities, pouring in upon the country. {63}
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{62} Though the Dutch were subject to Spain, yet that had not prevented them from acting in an independent manner in their modes of following trade and commerce.
{63} We see an example of this in our own trade to India. Captains of ships, merchants, and all those who get money by that trade, come home with moderate fortunes; but the governors, and civil and military officers, who have been settled in the country, come home with princely fortunes, and eclipse the old nobility of the country.
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Both Spain and Portugal, finding that wealth came with such ease from India and America, neglected industry. This, indeed, was a very natural consequence; and, when the sources of their riches began to dry up, they found, though too late, that instead of having increased in wealth, they had only been enriching more industrious nations, and ruining themselves. The gold that arrives from the West passes through the hands of its masters with almost the same rapidity as if they were only agents for the English and the Dutch; so chimerical an idea is that of wealth existing without industry.
The Dutch were the only rivals of the Portuguese in the East Indies; for though other nations came afterwards in for a share, yet the transition from wealth to weakness was already made by the Portuguese, before any of them had begun to set seriously to work, in acquiring possessions, or in carrying on trade with that country.
Portugal thus fell, merely from the rivalship of a more industrious and less advanced nation, after having embraced more territory than she had power to keep. Spain fell, because she had embraced a wrong object as a source of riches. {64}
The Hans Towns, which owed their prosperity, partly to their own wisdom and perseverance, in the beginning, and partly to the contempt with which sovereigns, in the days of chivalry, viewed commerce, might, with very little penetration, and much less exertion of wisdom than they had displayed, have seen that the spirit of commerce was becoming general, and that moderation and prudence were necessary to preserve them in their proud situation; but the prudence which they possessed at first had given way to pride, and abandoned them; and the first great stroke they received was from Queen Elizabeth. The ruin of so widely-extended a confederacy could not be astonishing, and, indeed, was a natural consequence of the changes in the manners of the times: but it was not so with Flanders. There was nothing to have prevented the Flemish from continuing to enjoy wealth, and follow up industry, except in the rivalship of other nations,
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{64} So short a time did the wealth remain in the country, that, when the famous armada was fitted out against England, a loan of money was solicited, from Genoa, for the purpose.
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particularly of Holland and England; for, though France was farther advanced, as a manufacturing and wealthy nation, than England, yet it was not in the same line of industry with the people of the Netherlands, whose prosperity was not therefore injured by it in the same degree.
As for the Dutch, they continued to increase in wealth till the end of the seventeenth century, and their decline requires a more particular attention.
In addition to their great industry, the fisheries, and art of curing fish, the Dutch excelled in making machines of various sorts, and became the nation that supplied others with materials, in a state ready prepared for manufacturing: this was a new branch of business, and very lucrative, for, as the machines were kept a secret, the abbreviation of labour was great, and the materials had still the advantage in their sale that a raw material has over manufactured goods; so that the advantages were almost beyond example.
Add to all this, that the Dutch were the first who established the banking system, (copying in part from the Italians,) on a solid plan. The advantages that Holland enjoyed were, indeed, all of its own procuring, but they were numerous and inappretiable, without counting the trade to India, of which it enjoyed a greater share than any other nation, for a considerable period.
No nation has shewn, so completely as the Dutch, how exterior enemies may be repelled, and difficulties overcome, while there is a true attention to the real welfare of the country. The exertions of the Romans, to conquer others, scarcely surpassed those of the Dutch to preserve themselves, when they were in a state of necessity; but, when they became affluent, energy and unanimity left them. The manufacturers became merchants, and the merchants became agents and carriers; so that the solid sources of riches gradually disappeared.
All this time, taxation increased, and though no nation ever allowed its manners to be less corrupted by the possession of wealth, yet there was a sensible change; but the change in the way of thinking was the most pernicious. Discontent with the government, and disagreements amongst themselves, completed their misfortunes, while England was [end of page #66] all the time endeavouring to supplant them in the most beneficial sources of their wealth.
The Dutch, fairly sunk by that rivalship, and natural change of things, which transfers the seat of wealth and commerce from one nation to another. There was no violent revolution, no invasion by an enemy; it was the silent operation of that cause of decline, which has been already mentioned in the Second Chapter, and will be farther and more particularly illustrated and explained.
The Dutch had a superabundance of capital; the interest of money was low; and wealth had begun to leave Holland long before the symptoms of decay became visible; by which means, the trade of other countries was encouraged, and, as always will be the case, capital emigrated, the moment it could find secure employment, and greater profits than were to be obtained at home. The leading causes of the decline of Holland may be distinguished thus:
The taxes were gradually increasing.
Its superiority in manufactures over other countries was continually diminishing; consequently, industry was not so well rewarded, and less active.
The merchants preferred safe agencies for foreigners to trading on their own bottom, thereby lending their credit.
Dutch capital was employed to purchase goods in one country and sell them in another: so that the Dutch became carriers for others, instead of manufacturing and carrying for themselves.
The trade to India, and the banking business, were both taken up by other nations; so that Holland then lost her superiority in these branches.
Thus circumstanced, Holland was gradually sinking, when political troubles, the end of which it is not easy to foresee, put her at the feet of France: an event that would not have happened in the manner it did, when the true spirit of patriotism reigned, that distinguished her in her more prosperous days. From this, at least, there is one distinct lesson to be learnt, that however it may be natural for nations to lose a superiority, owing to arts, inventions, or foreign trade, yet, if the minds of the people and their manners remain pure, they will not be degraded, by falling a prey to an enemy. When Holland was not rich [end of page #67] it resisted Spain in all her glory, during a very hard, arduous, and continued struggle; but then the people were united as one man: there were no traitors to raise a voice for Spain against their country. When Holland was wealthy, it did not even attempt to resist France when invaded; but then Holland was divided, and there were in every city men, who wished more for the plunder than the prosperity of their country.
In viewing the fall of those nations that sunk before the discovery of America, the eastern empire was the last that attracted attention. It had been reduced by the Turks, with a vigour and energy that promised a renovation, which, however, it did not effect. The Turks brought with them the Mahometan religion, which has debased the manners and degraded the minds of every people. Constantinople, by this change, lost the remains of ancient learning and of commerce, which even the weakness of the emperors, and the repeated wars, had not been able entirely to destroy. The Greeks were reduced to a state of subordination and slavery, but the Turks were not civilized. They adopted what was luxurious and effeminate of Grecian manners, yet still retained their former ignorance and ferocity. Amongst modern nations, the Turkish government is, in form, a monster, and its existence an enigma; yet it extended its sway over all that was most valuable or most splendid in the ancient world. Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, the three Arabias, and countries then but little known, are subject to a brutish people, who do not even condescend to mix with the inhabitants of the country, but who rule over them in a manner the most humiliating and disgraceful. {65}
The Turkish government has never been powerful. The city of Venice was always its equal at sea; and, as it disdains to adopt the systems of other nations, it is every day becoming weaker, in comparison with them. It has formerly maintained successful struggles against
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{65} In all other conquests, the conquered and the conquerors have become, at last, one people, when they have settled in the same country, whether Christians or Pagans; but the Turks and Greeks keep as distinct to this day as at the first, and this is probably owing to the nature of the Turkish religion.
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Germany, Poland, and Russia; but that time is now over, and it owes its present existence to the jealousy of other powers. It is possessed of a greater quantity of good territory than all the leading nations of Europe, Russia excepted; and it is not the interest of men living in less favoured climates, to endeavour to renovate the country of Alexander, and of the other great nations of antiquity.
The Turkish nation is represented as greatly on the decline, but, soon after its establishment, it had every vice that could well exist in a government, and its greatest weakness now arises more from the alteration produced in other nations for the better, than in itself for the worse. The difficulty of keeping people in ignorance is becoming every day greater; and when the Ottoman throne falls the usual order of things will be reversed. For, as other governments may attribute their destruction to corruption of manners, and to ignorance, the Turkish government looks there for its security; and the day that any reasonable degree of light breaks in amongst its subjects will be its last.
To endeavour tracing the causes of decline in a state that owes its existence to its defects, and is in every respect different from other nations, would be useless in the present Inquiry, it has only been noticed to shew, that, in the infinite variety of things, some may owe their existence to what is in general the cause of destruction. [end of page #69]
CHAP. VII. [=sic= - error in printer's copy, should read VIII.]
General View and Analysis of the Causes that operated in producing the Decline of all Nations, with a Chart, representing the Rise, Fall, and Migrations of Wealth, in all different Countries, from the Year 1500, before the Birth of Christ, to the End of the Eighteenth Century, -- a Period of 3300 Years.
FROM the revolutions that have taken place amongst wealthy and powerful nations to the present time, though the origin has been owing to very different causes, and the decline and removal from one place to another has been attended with circumstances not similar; yet the same leading cause for that decline may not only be traced easily and distinctly, but is so evident that it is impossible for it to be overlooked or mistaken.
Local situation, or temporary circumstances, have always afforded the first means of rising to wealth and greatness. The minds of men, in a poor state, seem never to have neglected an opportunity, presented either by the one or the other, and they have generally proved successful, till energy of mind and industry were banished, by the habits of luxury, negligence, and pride, which accompany, or at least soon follow, the acquisition of either.
Where wealth has been acquired first, power has generally been sought for afterwards; and, where power came first, it has always sought the readiest road to wealth, by attacking those who were in possession of it.
The nations and cities on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, where arts and commerce first began, where agriculture flourished, and population had risen to a high pitch, carried on perpetual struggles to supplant each other; and, in those struggles, the most wealthy generally sunk under; till Alexander, the first great conqueror, with whose history we are tolerably well acquainted, reduced them all to [end of page #70] his yoke; one small and brave people triumphing over the Egyptian and Assyrian empires, where wealth and luxury had already produced their effects.
Though this triumph of poverty over riches was very complete, except in one single instance, it did not occasion any real change, either in the abodes of wealth, or the channels of commerce. Tyre, the richest commercial city till then, was ruined, to make way for the prosperity of Alexandria, which became the most wealthy; drawing great part of the commerce from Carthage on the west, and taking the whole from Rhinocolura on the east: but, in Egypt and Syria, Babylon and Memphis still remained great cities.
The whole of this ancient world was for a moment under one chief, but was soon again divided amongst the generals who succeeded to that great conqueror; and the Egyptian and Persian empires became rivals, as Egypt and Syria had been before. The Grecian nations still remained the chief seats of civilization and the fine arts; and this continued till the Romans, originally a poorer people than the Macedonians, conquered the whole. This was the second great triumph of poverty and energy over wealth and grandeur, and, in this struggle, Greece itself fell.
The effects of wealth were not less formidable to the Romans themselves, than they had been to those nations they had enabled that brave and warlike people to conquer; so that the mistress of the world, in her turn, fell before nations that were rude and barbarous, but uncorrupted by wealth and luxury.
The conquerors of Rome were too rude, and too many in number, to become themselves enervated by wealth, which disappeared under their rapacious grasp, and which they neither had the art nor inclination to preserve.
This invasion of the fertile and rich provinces by men rude and ignorant, but who came from northern climates, established a new order of things; and only a small remnant of former wealth and greatness was preserved in Egypt and at Constantinople.
For several centuries of war and confusion commerce and the arts appear to have been undervalued and neglected; but still the taste [end of page #71] for oriental luxuries was not entirely banished, and, at the first interval of peace and safety, sprung up again. It was then that Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, and Constantinople, became the channels through which the people of Europe procured the luxuries of Asia. Babylon, Memphis, Palmyra, and all the other great cities of antiquity, were no more; even Greece had lost its arts and splendour; Alexandria and Constantinople were repeatedly assailed, taken, and conquered, by the barbarians, who envied their wealth, but who still found an interest in continuing them as channels for procuring to European nations the refinements of the East. Though Venice and Genoa were wealthy, they were but small, and of little importance; and all the nations who might have crushed them at a blow, only considering them as sea-ports of convenience and utility, allowed them to remain independent.
As an intercourse had been established between the northern and southern parts, a taste for the luxuries of Asia had extended to the shores of the Baltic, soon after the victorious arms of Charlemagne had carried there some degree of civilization, and the Christian religion.
Then it was that a new and more widely-extended system of commerce, but something like what had formerly existed in Tyre and Carthage, began in all the maritime towns of Europe, when Italy and Flanders became the most wealthy parts of Europe. A spirit of chivalry, and a desire of conquest, not founded on the same principles with the conquests of ancient nations, or of Rome, to obtain wealth, pervaded all Europe, and the greatest confusion prevailed. In the history of wealth and power, as connected together, this is a chasm. Those who had power despised wealth, and were seeking after what they esteemed more -- military glory; and wealth was confined to a number of insulated spots, and possessed by men who were merchants, without any share of power or authority.
This extraordinary and unprecedented state of things gave rise to the Hanseatic League, which rose at last to such importance that those who had been so long seeking after glory, without finding it, began to see the importance which was derived from wealth. They began to see that, even in the pursuit of their favourite object, wealth was an ex- [end of page #72] cellent assistant, and the friendship of merchants begun =sic= to be solicited by princes, as in the days of Tyre and Sidon.
This progress was greatly facilitated and accelerated by the crusades, which, at the same time that they beggared half the nobility of Europe, gave them a taste for the refinements of the East, and taught them to set some value on the means by which such refinements could be procured.
In this manner were things proceeding, when three great discoveries changed the situation of mankind. {66}