Mediterranean. In the flourishing periods of the Constantinopolitan empire, the merchandise of India was imported from Alexandria; but, after the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, it was carried up the Indus, and thence by land to the Oxus, which then ran into the Caspian Sea; thence it was brought up the Wolga, and again carried over land to the Don, whence it descended into the Euxine.

3. After the fall of the Western empire, commerce was long at a stand in Europe.-When Attila was ravaging Italy, the Veneti took refuge in the small islands at the northern extremity of the Adriatic, and there founded Venice in 452, which began very early to equip small fleets, and trade to the coasts of Egypt and the Levant, for spices and other merchandise of Arabia and India. Genoa, Florence, and Pisa, imitated this example, and began to acquire considerable wealth; but Venice retained her superiority over these rival states, and gained considerable territories on the opposite coast of Illyricum and Dalmatia.

4. The maritime cities of Italy profited by the Crusades, in furnishing the armies with supplies, and bringing home the produce of the East. The Italian merchants established manufactures similar to those of Constantinople. Roger, king of Sicily, brought artisans from Athens, and established a silk manufacture at Palermo in 1130. The sugar cane was brought from China and planted in Sicily in the twelfth century, and thence carried to Madeira, and finally made its way to the West Indies in 1506.

5. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Italians were the only commercial people of Europe. Venice set the first example of a national bank in 1157, which has maintained its credit to the present times. The only trade of France, Spain, and Germany, at this time, was carried on at stated fairs and markets, to which traders resorted from all quarters, paying a tax to the sovereigns or the lords of the territory. The more enterprising bought a privilege of exemption, by paying at once a large sum, and were thence called free traders.

6. In the middle ages, the Italian merchants, usually called Lombards, were the factors of all the European nations, and were enticed, by privileges granted by the sovereigns, to settle in France, Spain, Germany, and England. They were not only traders in commodities, but bankers, or money-dealers; but they found in this last business a severe restraint from the canon law prohibiting the taking of interest; and hence, from the necessary privacy of their bargains, there were no bounds to exorbitant usury. The Jews, too, who were the chief dealers in money, brought disrepute on the trade of banking, and frequently suffered, on that account, the most intolerable persecution and confiscation of their fortunes. To guard against these injuries, they invented Bills of Exchange.

7. The Lombard merchants awakened a spirit of commerce,

and gave birth to manufactures, which were generally encouraged by the sovereigns in the different kingdoms of Europe. Among the chief encouragements was the institution of corporations or monopolies, the earliest of which are traced up to the eleventh century; a policy perhaps necessary where the spirit of industry is low, and manufactures are in their infancy, but of hurtful consequence where trade and manufactures are flourishing.

8. Commerce began to spread towards the north of Europe about the end of the twelfth century. The sea-ports on the Baltic traded with France and Britain, and with the Mediterranean by the staple of the isle of Oleron, near the mouth of the Garonne, then possessed by the English. The commercial laws of Oleron and Wisbury (a town on the island of Gothland in the Baltic) regulated for many ages the trade of Europe. To protect their trade from piracy, Lubec, Hamburgh, and most of the northern sea-ports, joined in a confederacy, under certain general regulations, termed the League of the Hanse Towns, in 1243; ---a union so beneficial in its nature, and so formidable in point of strength, as to have its alliance courted by the predominant powers of Europe. [The most flourishing period of this League was about the end of the fourteenth century. At that time, the deputies of upwards of eighty cities appeared at its triennial general assemblies, held at Lubec. The League had the whole trade of the Baltic, and fitted out powerful fleets to protect it, and to maintain their monopoly when interfered with by the sovereigns of the north. As the League was formed to protect commerce against feudal tyranny and rapacity, the natural result was, that as order was established, its influence and power declined.]

9. For the trade of the Hanse towns with the southern kingdoms, Bruges, on the coast of Flanders, was found a convenient entrepôt; and thither the Mediterranean merchants brought the commodities of India and the Levant, to exchange with the produce and manufactures of the North. The Flemings now began to encourage trade and manufactures, which thence spread to the Brabanters; but their growth being checked by the impolitic sovereigns of those provinces, they found a more favourable field in England, which was destined thence to derive the great source of its national opulence.

10. The Britons had very early seen the importance of commerce. Bede relates that London, in 614, was frequented by foreigners for the purpose of trade; and William of Malmesbury speaks of it, in 1041, as a most populous and wealthy city. The cinque ports, Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney, and Sandwich, [to which were afterwards added Folkeston, Winchelsea, and Rye,] obtained in that age their privileges and immunities, on condition of furnishing each five ships of war.

11. The woollen manufacture of England was considerable in the twelfth century. Henry II. incorporated the weavers of London, and gave them various privileges. By a law passed in

his reign, all cloth made of foreign wool was condemned to be burned. Scotland at this time seems to have possessed a considerable source of wealth, as is evident from the payment of the ransom of William the Lion, which was 10,000 marks, equal to £100,000 sterling of present money. The English found it difficult to raise double that sum for the ransom of Richard I., and the Scots contributed a proportion of it. The English sovereigns at first drew a considerable revenue from the custom on wool exported to be manufactured abroad; but becoming soon sensible of the benefit of encouraging its home manufacture, they invited, for that purpose, the foreign artisans and merchants to reside in England, and gave them valuable immunities. Edward III. was peculiarly attentive to trade and manufactures, as appears by the laws passed in his reign; and he was bountiful in the encouragement of foreign artisans. The succeeding reigns were not so favourable; and during the civil wars of York and Lancaster, the spirit of trade and manufactures greatly declined; nor was it till the accession of Henry VII. that they began once more to revive and flourish. In that interval, however, of their decay in England, commerce and the arts were encouraged in Scotland by James I. and his successors, as much as the comparatively rude and turbulent state of the kingdom would permit. The herring fishery then began to be vigorously promoted; and the duties laid on the exportation of woollen cloth, show that this manufacture was then considerable among the Scots. Glasgow began, in 1420, to acquire wealth by the fisheries, but had little or no foreign trade till after the discovery of America and the West Indies.

12. Henry VII. gave the most liberal encouragement to trade and manufactures, particularly the woollen, by inviting foreign [Flemish] artisans, and establishing them at Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax, &c. The navigation acts were passed in his reign, and commercial treaties formed with the continental kingdoms, for the protection of the merchant-shipping. Such was the state of commerce at the time when the Portuguese made those great discoveries which opened a new route to India, and gave a circulation to its wealth over most of the nations of Europe.

SECTION XXXV

DISCOVERIES OF THE PORTUGUESE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON THE COMMERCE OF EUROPE

1. THE property of the magnetic needle, in turning constantly to the north-pole had been known in Europe as early as the thirteenth century, but the mariner's compass was not used in sailing till the middle of the fourteenth; and another century had elapsed from that period, while yet. the European mariners

scarcely ventured out of the sight of their coasts. The eastern ocean was little otherwise known than by name; and the Atlantic was supposed to be a boundless expanse of sea, extending probably to the eastern shores of Asia. In the belief that the torrid zone was uninhabitable, a promontory on the African coast, in the 29th degree of north latitude, was termed Cape Non, as forming an impassable limit.

2. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, John, king of Portugal, sent a few vessels to explore the African coast; and these doubling Cape Non, proceeded to Cape Boyador, within two degrees of the northern tropic. Prince Henry, the son of John equipped a single ship, which, being driven out to sea, landed on the island of Porto Santo. This involuntary experiment imboldened the mariners to abandon their timid mode of coasting, and launch into the open sea. In 1420, the Portuguese discovered Madeira, where they established a colony, and planted the Cyprus vine and the sugar-cane.

3. The spirit of enterprise thus awakened, Prince Henry obtained from Pope Eugene IV. a bull, granting to the Portuguese the property of all the countries they might discover between Cape Non and India. Under John I. of Portugal, the Cape Verd Islands were discovered and colonized; and the fleets advancing to the coast of Guinea, brought home gold-dust, gums, and ivory. Passing the equator, the Portuguese entered a new hemisphere, and boldly proceeded to the extremity of the continent. In 1497, a fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and sailing onwards beyond the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar coast, after a voyage of 1500 leagues, performed in thirteen months.

4. De Gama entered into an alliance with the Rajah of Calicut, a tributary of the Mogul empire, and returned to Lisbon with specimens of the wealth and produce of the country. A succeeding fleet formed settlements; and, vanquishing the native princes, soon achieved the conquest of all the coast of Malabar. The city of Goa, taken by storm, became the residence of a Portuguese viceroy, and the capital of their Indian settlements.

5. The Venetians, who had hitherto engrossed the Indian trade by Alexandria, now lost it for ever. After an ineffectual project of cutting through the Isthmus of Suez, they attempted to intercept the Portuguese by their fleets stationed at the mouth of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, but were everywhere encountered by a superior force. The Portuguese made settlements in both the gulfs, and vigorously prosecuted their conquests on the Indian coast and sea. The rich island of Ceylon, the kingdoms of Pegu, Siam, and Malacca, were speedily subdued, and a settlement established in Bengal. They proceeded onward to China, hitherto scarcely known to the Europeans but by the account of a single Venetian traveller,

Marco Paolo, in the thirteenth century; and they obtained the emperor's permission to form a settlement at Macao; thus opening a commerce with that immense empire, and the neighbouring islands of Japan. In the space of fifty years, the Portuguese were masters of the whole trade of the Indian Ocean, and sovereigns of a large extent of Asiatic territory.

6. These discoveries produced a wonderful effect on the commerce of Europe. The produce of the Spice Islands was computed to be worth annually 200,000 ducats to Lisbon (about £95,000). The Venetians, after every effort to destroy the trade of the Portuguese, offered to become sole purchasers of all the spice brought to Europe, but were refused. Commercial industry was roused in every quarter, and manufactures made a rapid progress. Lyons, Tours, Abbeville, Marseilles, Bourdeaux, acquired immense wealth. Antwerp and Amsterdam became the great marts of the North. The former owed its splendour to the decline of Bruges, which was ruined by civil commotions; and the Portuguese made Antwerp their entrepôt for the supply of the northern kingdoms. It continued highly flourishing till the revolt of the Netherlands (1569), when it was taken by the Spaniards, and its port destroyed by blocking up the Scheldt.

7. The trade of Holland rose on the fall of Antwerp. Amsterdam had become considerable after the decline of the Hanseatic confederacy in 1428, but rose into splendour and high commercial opulence from the destruction of Antwerp: and the United Provinces, dependent on industry alone for their support, became a model of commercial activity to all other nations.

8. It is not to be doubted that Britain felt the effect of that general stimulus which the Portuguese discoveries gave to the trade of Europe; but other causes had a more sensible operation to that end in England. The Reformation, by suppressing the convents, and restoring many thousands to society, and the cutting off the papal exactions, which drained the kingdom of its wealth, the politic laws of Henry VIII., and the active patriotism of Elizabeth, were vigorous incentives to national industry.

9. From the time of Henry VIII. to the present, the commerce and manufactures of England have been uniformly progressive. The rental of England and Wales, in lands and houses, did not then exceed five millions per annum; it is now (1844) above eighty millions.* The unmanufactured wool of one year's growth is supposed to be worth ten millions; when manufactured as it now is, by British hands, instead of being

* The annual value of real property, as assessed to the property tax, exclusive of property in the hands of individuals whose income is less than £150 a-year, was in 1843, in