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was left to individual discretion, or to be adjusted by the mutual interests of the contracting parties. If provisions were dear, they were enjoined by law to be sold cheap; just as if the mischief arose, not from the scarcity of the articles in demand, but their prices; and that a compulsory cheapness, which facilitated consumption, was equivalent to an augmented power of production in creating abundance.

The general character of our domestic and foreign policy up to the end of the fourteenth century bore a resembance to that of the East in our own time. In China and Turkey we might recently, if not now, have found a corresponding spirit, distinguished by a similar minute, intrusive, and futile effort to regulate the interchanges of capital and industry, with a bitter and pitiful jealousy of strangers. Foreigners had the misfortune to be our superiors in manufacturing skill, in mercantile enterprise and navigation; in opulence and pecuniary credit and resources they exceeded us; and we were too proud-too ignorantly proud-to bow to their supremacy. We hated and we envied them, and resorting to the vengeful and spiteful course suggested by these discreditable feelings, we certainly injured them, but in a greater degree injured ourselves. Our aim was to get rich by beggaring our neighbours-to rise by their downfall-a most egregious blunder. But the universal and solid truth, of the community of happiness and prosperity, was then very far from the perception of nations. We cannot be isolated in our enjoyments; we can have them in fullness and perfection only by sharing them with others. It is an admirable arrangement of Providence; the basis and guarantee of all individual morality and sound national policy, constituting the universal tie of concord and goodwill among mankind. When it is appreciated, as it deserves, and it is hoped will be, then we may flatter ourselves that the millennium has begun, and that the height and depth of that perfectibility which philosophers have dreamt of has become a tangible reality.'

'Love one another' is a Gospel precept, and not less imperatively the dictate of true philosophy. That men are identified in misery or bliss is an indissoluble condition of human existence, and the chief truth which science and religion enjoin us to inculcate. We cannot be selfish, churlish, or cruel with impunity; our happiness comports only with generosity, justice, and humanity. Certainly, then, we ought to cultivate a cosmopolitan feeling; live and let live-help and be helped-are the laws of God and of an enlightened social philosophy.

It was by subsequently pursuing this course England reached her existing pinnacle, and from being a poor, despised, and -relative to many European states-a backward community,

became the most rich, enviable, and flourishing nation in the world. Her triumphs have mainly had only one sourceLIBERALITY. In lieu of persecuting foreigners, she encouraged them; in lieu of driving them from her shores, she afforded them shelter; in lieu of meanly envying their superiority, she tried to learn and improve by their example. It was by steadily acting on this plan that she at last excelled her masters; changed places with them, and in her turn became the object of imitation and jealous rivalry. How this has been done our limits will only permit us briefly to indicate.

As just remarked, England was not the first of European states to reach mercantile preeminence. She had illustrious precursors in the thirteenth century in the line of commercial and manufacturing distinction, in the Italian cities of Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Leghorn. These cities were unknown to the ancients; they are all of modern foundation, and their greatness the result of commercial industry. About the year 1450 Florence had 200 factories and 30,000 work people employed in the woollen manufacture alone. At a period a little later, but nearly contemporary with the prosperity of the republican marts of Italy, had risen into power the great confederation of the Hanse Towns, comprising in its defensive league Hamburgh and Lubeck, with eighty of the more considerable cities on the Rhine and Baltic. The enterprising merchants of these cities and of Italy used to form companies, and settle in England, to advance and manage their trading interests-much in the same manner, and for the like purposes, as those for which the London, Liverpool, or Glasgow merchant despatches his agents to India, China, or the Levant. The Lombards became especially noted as the bankers of the metropolis; and the industrious Germans exercised also in this country all the functions of the English merchant. German vessels were almost solely employed in the transit of goods; Germans were the brokers, buyers, and sellers-bringing here silks, linens, and cloth of gold, tapestry, wines, books, household furniture, and drugs, in exchange for our wool, coarse cloth, lead, tin, sheep, beer, and cheese.

The prosperity of Holland was about a century subsequently. In the middle of the sixteenth century Antwerp was famous for industrious enterprise and the extent of her navigation. The number of ships that every day entered and left her port averaged 500; the carts and other vehicles employed in the conveyance of merchandize amounted to 10,000, and she contained 100,000 inhabitants. The opulence of some of the Dutch merchants may be conjectured from what is related of one named Fugger. He gave a public entertainment to the

Emperor Charles V., on which occasion he made a fire in the hall of cinnamon, and lighted it with the bonds that prince had given him in security for a public loan. It would be gratifying, doubtless, if our own national creditors would try to emulate the munificence of this wealthy Hollander, by laying on one blazing pile our public obligations. Fugger, despite of his splendid liberality, died worth six millions of crowns-an enormous accumulation for the period.

The causes of the decline of these glorious cities and states were chiefly political. Antwerp was ruined by its siege and capture by the Spaniards in 1585, and its mercantile industry transferred to Amsterdam. But the causes of the general decline of Holland were the oppressive weight of taxation and the natural growth of other countries. Her exhausting fiscal system was, however, a principal cause of her paralysis. On fish, for instance, the price paid to the fishermen was six times over paid to the state in imposts. On one particular sauce thirty different duties were levied. Excess of opulence, and the debilitating vices it engenders, appear to have been a leading cause of the decline of the Italian cities. They became rich, effeminate, luxurious; lost their military energies, and became successively the prey of the brutality of Switzerland, the insolence of France, and the rapacity of Spain. The progress of navigation, and the discovery of a new passage to the East round the Cape of Good Hope, also contributed to divert the commercial stream from the Mediterranean ports.

The fate of Spain forms a singular example of vicissitudes. Her empire in Europe once equalled that of Charlemagne, and exceeded that of Napoleon; for the French emperor was never master at sea, while the Spaniards ruled over both elements. They are memorable instances of the mischief that may be wrought by bad government, since this was the very cause of the decline of their commercial and political greatness. The Protestant Reformation, so salutary to other European nations, was ruinous to Spain-only made her people more bigoted, her Inquisition more vigilant, and her rulers more imbecile.

This, however, is a digression from our proper inquiry-the industrial progress of England. We had been remarking on the revolution in mercantile policy; in lieu of a jealousy of foreign merchants we encouraged them to settle, and that almost the entire trade of the country was carried on by them, especially Italians and Germans. In the dearth of capital and of native commercial ability and enterprise this arrangement was beneficial, and the legislature had sense enough to promote it. Laws were passed incorporating merchant-strangers, giving them exclusive privileges in London and the chief towns.

The German merchants of the Steelyard formed one of the oldest and most flourishing of these associations. The merchants of the Staple formed another mercantile union of great importance, from the number of its members and the extent of its transactions. The objects of the last company were twofold-to buy and collect the staple commodities of the kingdom into what were called the staple towns, that the king's duties might be securely collected, and that foreigners might know where to find our chief products in abundance; and, secondly, to export our staple wares. Natives as well as aliens might be employed in the first object, but foreigners only in the export of commodities. Merchants of the Staple were mostly exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary magistrate, and only amenable to their own by-laws.

The marked favour shewn to merchant-strangers, and the engrossment by them of almost the entire domestic and external trade of the kingdom, form a singular incident in our commercial history. It continued almost through the middle age, and at first produced a beneficial result in teaching by example. The English merchants, observing the advantages derived by foreigners from having corresponding firms in England, imitated them by establishing factories in several places on the continent. These factories were often chartered bodies, exercising immunities granted for the protection of their trading interests and the settlement of disputes, similar to those now discharged by consuls. The next result, however, of foreign rivalry was not so laudable. Foreigners became a second time objects of jealousy, and lastly, perhaps, of calumny. This was the fate of the Lombards. They were made odious by imputations of usury, and compelled to leave the kingdom. The Hanseatic merchants kept their ground longer, but, under Edward VI., their privileges were declared to be forfeited, and a duty of twenty per cent., before only one per cent., was laid on their exports and imports. These blows they tried to parry by retaliatory proceedings, exerting their influence with the diet to exclude the English from the German markets; but the English, having obtained Hamburgh as an entrepôt, and being seconded by the unrivalled fabric of their woollens, obtained firm footing on the continent. The formation of the Baltic Company in 1580, and the shutting up of the Steelyard in 1597, completed the triumph of British industry, and its emancipation from Hanseatic thraldom.

England by this time had made great advances in wealth and industry. Her foreign teachers and auxiliaries had become less necessary. She was strong enough to walk alone and to kick down the ladder on which she had mounted. This, no doubt,

formed the main cause of the revival of the former hostility to foreign competition, and on this occasion perhaps was favourable to national strength and independence. The withdrawal of foreigners left an opening for native associations. One of the most celebrated was the Company of Merchant Adventurers. In renewing the charter of this company, James I. confirmed their former exclusive privilege of exporting the woollen manufactures of England to the Netherlands and Germany. Towards the close of the king's reign the members of this society amounted to four thousand individuals, comprehending the whole body of English merchants trading to the Low Countries and Germany. There were also local companies of merchant adventurers in Bristol and other great towns, enjoying exclusive privileges of trade to particular countries. Thus, an act of parliament of the year 1606 confirms a charter granted half a century before, giving to a company of that name, of the city of Exeter, the exclusive privilege of trading with France. In 1605, James granted a perpetual charter to the merchants of England trading to the Levant seas,' and which still subsists under the name of the Levant or Turkey Company. A little earlier the East India Company had been incorporated; and, on the 11th of September 1603, appeared in the Downs their first return cargoes from the East, consisting of pepper, cloves, cinnamon, calicoes, and other Indian manufactures.

All at this period, it may be observed, was monopoly. Hardly a foreign state existed, the exclusive right of trading with which was not allotted to some mercantile association. Internal trade was managed in the same way, the merchants of the Staple enjoying exclusively the right of traffic in the chief home commodities. The manufacturing arts were also tied up. Scarcely an article could be named, the sale or manufacture of which was not in the grasp of a patentee. The numerous grants of patents had been bitterly complained of under Elizabeth, and were abolished; but they were too gainful a source of royal income to be hastily relinquished, and they were renewed and again abolished under her successor. Even the exercise of industry, if skilled, was fettered. London, Bristol, Norwich, Coventry, and other places, swarmed with guilds and incorporated trades, governed with by-laws, which were vigilantly and rigorously enforced against alien intruders, in the exercise of their several crafts and mysteries. The picture is curious, and forms a remarkable epoch in the history of industry. The monopoly of foreigners was succeeded by a more universal and searching monopoly of natives.

Although England was behind most continental countries in commercial and manufacturing industry, in the sixteenth and

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