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of opening a trade with the neighboring towns, and those on the opposite coasts of Norway and Sweden, were obliged to enter into a league of mutual defence for the protection of their ships against these pirates. So great were found to be the advantages of this confederacy, that in a short time it was acceded to by all the towns upon the coast, from the eastern extremity of the Baltic to the mouth of the Rhine. This association was termed the League of the Hanse Towns; and it became soon so formidable in the eyes of the princes and states of Europe, that many of them courted its alliance. It was one of the regulations of the Hanseatic League to admit no city into their confederacy which was not either free and independent, and exercised civil jurisdiction within itself, or, being dependent on any sovereign or prince, should procure from him an oath to preserve their privileges entire a fine example how much, even in those days, the enjoyment of civil liberty was considered as essential to the prosperity of commerce.

The regulations made in the general council of the Hanseatic Towns, contributed greatly to the advancement of commercial industry over all the north of Europe. As in the trade of the Hanseatic merchants with the southern kingdoms of Europe, it was found necessary to have an intermediate station on the coast, or entrepôt, where the merchants of the different kingdoms might have a general resort, the city of Bruges, on the coast of Flanders, was pitched on for that purpose, and there the northern merchants met with those of Lombardy and the South. The commodities of India, and of the East, were exchanged with the produce and manufactures of the north; and every variety of useful merchandise was, by means of the Baltic and the great continental rivers, easily conveyed through most of the kingdoms of Europe.

After the establishment of the great mart of Bruges, the Flemings began to apply their whole industry to the establishment of manufactures, and Baldwin, the young count of Flanders, encouraged this spirit by bestowing privileges and immunities on the merchants and manufacturers. His successors, however, possessed a very different spirit; they recalled these immunities; and the consequence was, that the manufacturers left Flanders and settled in Brabant, where the dukes of that province showed them for some time all manner of favor. This, however, did not long continue. The revocation of their immunities, by some impolitic sovereigns of that province, banished trade and manufactures from Brabant, as it had done from Flanders; and England now began to give them encouragement. But let us look back a little, and shortly mark the progress of the commercial spirit in this island.

We have remarked that the Romans carried on a trade to the coast of Britain. Tacitus mentions Londinium, copia negotia

torum et commeatu maximè celeberrimum. In the year 614, the venerable Bede mentions London as greatly frequented by foreigners, who repaired thither for the purposes of trade. In the time of Canute, the Dane, the Londoners built a wooden bridge across the Thames, a work of prodigious labor, and no small expense. William of Malmesbury, who wrote in the reign of William the Conqueror, mentions London in or about the year 1041, as a noble, populous, and opulent city. In this reign, the Cinque Ports of England, often mentioned in history, obtained their privileges. Camden in his Britannia informs us, that William the Conqueror, regarding the county of Kent as the key of England, appointed the governor of the castle of Dover to be warden of five principal ports on that coast. These were Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney, and Sandwich. To these some other ports were afterwards added, and they are now eight in number. They were obliged each to furnish five ships. of war, which were to be at all times at the king's command, and in consideration of this service, they enjoyed several valuable privileges and immunities. They were free from the payment of all subsidies. Their inhabitants could not be sued in any courts but those of their own towns. The warden of these ports exercised, within his jurisdiction, the authority of High Admiral. All the eight towns had their members of parliament, and they enjoyed very considerable immunities.

About what time the woollen manufacture began to be cultivated in England, there is no absolute certainty. But we know that so early as the middle of the twelfth century, it was an object of considerable attention. Howell mentions a charter granted in the middle of the twelfth century by Henry II. of England to the weavers of London, incorporating them into a society, and conferring on them various privileges and immunities. It would appear that there was at this time a considerable spirit of manufacture and trade, both in England and in Scotland. Stowe, in his Chronicles, quotes a charter of the same Henry II., in which, for the encouragement of the woollen manufacture, he enacts, that if any cloth shall be made of Spanish or foreign wool, the mayor of London shall see it burnt.

Anderson, in his Chronological History of Commerce, has remarked, that there must at this time have been some considerable trade or source of wealth in Scotland, since we find that country was able to raise so large a sum as 100,000 marks (equal to £300,000 sterling at present) for redeeming William, surnamed the Lion, who, having a dispute with Henry II. of England, concerning the property of a part of Northumberland, was taken prisoner by a stratagem. The one half of this sum was paid down immediately in coin, the other half was to be paid upon time; and the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Huntingdon, which then belonged to the kings of Scotland, were

given in pledge for it. The disproportion of wealth between the two kingdoms must not have been so great at that time as in after periods, since we find how difficult it was for England, a few years after the time of which we now speak, to raise but twice as much for the ransom of Richard I., and towards this ransom, William, king of Scotland, generously contributed a considerable sum. Campbell, in his Political Survey, tells us that part of the ransom of Richard I. was raised by a loan of wool; from whence he rightly infers, that before that time it must have been a staple commodity in England, and the statute we have mentioned of Henry II. shows this to have been the fact.

Even in those early periods the woollen manufacture was an object of considerable importance to government. The kings of England drew a very large revenue from the custom upon wool exported, a great part of which was carried to be manufactured in the low countries. By and by, however, the English monarchs became sensible of the superior benefits of encouraging a home manufacture. Some of the foreign merchants and manufacturers were invited to reside in England. Henry III., in the year 1266, granted to the merchants of the Steelyard (who were a set of Hanseatic traders residing in London) several special immunities, particularly that of importing and exporting all merchandise whatever for the payment of only one per cent. Edward III., a prince of great spirit and abilities, amidst all the splendor of his military enterprises, bestowed particular attention on every thing that could contribute to the promotion of the substantial interest of his people. He endeavored to entice the Flemish artisans to settle in his dominions; he enacted a variety of excellent laws for the encouragement of trade, and strenuously promoted the woollen manufacture, which has since become the chief source of wealth of the nation.

From the death of this monarch, the commercial spirit of the English was for many years on the decline. His successor, Richard II., a weak and impolitic prince, was prevailed on by some of the London merchants to revoke those privileges granted by Edward III. to the foreign merchants; and the consequence was, that even the merchants of Britain soon began to perceive the pernicious effects of this revocation to their own trade, and thought it their wisest policy again to petition the king for a restoration of the privileges of foreigners. In the succeeding reigns, the nation being engaged in a war of many years with France, and afterwards embroiled at home by the disorders arising from the hostile contentions of the houses of York and Lancaster, it was a necessary consequence that the spirit of trade must have languished and decayed; nor was it till these latter disorders were appeased by the accession of Henry VII. to the throne, that commerce again began to occupy the national industry, and engage the attention of the legislature, or rather of the sovereign.

We must, however, observe, that in this intermediate space of time, when the commerce of England seems to have been at a stand, or rather to retrograde, the spirit of trade was vigorously promoted among the Scots by that excellent, wise, and politic prince, James I., as fully appears by the acts of the Scottish parliament passed in his reign. James prevented, by statute, the exportation of gold and silver from his kingdom. He obliged foreign merchants to lay out the money they had received for the merchandise they had imported, in the purchase of the commodities of the country. We find, likewise, in his acts of parliament, mention made of the custom on the exportation of herrings, which, even in those early ages, formed a very capital article of trade, and of a duty on the exportation of woollen cloth, which manufacture it would appear the Scots had at this time borrowed from their neighbors of England. It was in the reign of James I. that the city of Glasgow began to show the first indication of that commercial spirit for which she has since been so remarkably distinguished. Glasgow, at this time, was a small village, consisting of little else than the houses of the clergy belonging to the metropolitan church. A merchant, of the name of Elphinston, engaging in the fisheries upon the coast, and accumulating considerable wealth, inspired his fellow citizens with a similar ambition. But the progress of the trade of Glasgow was not rapid. Her situation upon the western coast of the island was extremely disadvantageous, in times when all the trade, as we have seen, lay with the Hanseatic merchants, and the Italians resorting to Oleron, or Bruges. In fact, it was not till after the trade with America and the West Indies was open to Europe, that Glasgow became at all considerable as a commercial town. It was then that she found her situation equally commodious for the western trade, as it had formerly been disadvantageous for the eastern.

Henry VII. of England, attentive to every thing that could conduce to the welfare and prosperity of his kingdom, revived that spirit of commerce, which had languished from the time of Edward III.; he enacted many excellent laws, and particularly those navigation acts, which prohibited the importation of French wines into the kingdom, unless in British or Irish ships. He likewise encouraged the woollen manufacture, by inducing many Flemish workmen to settle in the kingdom, and giving them establishments in Yorkshire, which was the first rise of those great manufacturing towns of Leeds, Wakefield, and Halifax. He concluded likewise commercial treaties with the principal European powers, for the protection of the merchant-shipping; and through the whole of his reign made the advancement of trade a principal concern of his parliaments.

Such was the state of the commerce of the European nations at the time when the Portuguese made those valuable discoveries in navigation, which gave to Europe the trade of the East Indies.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

Discoveries of the PORTUGUESE in the Fifteenth Century, and their Effect on the Commerce of Europe-Madeira discovered-Pope's Bull, granting to the Portuguese the Countries explored by them-They double the Cape of Good Hope-De Gama reaches India-Goa taken — Their Objects opposed by the Venetians-Portuguese sail to China-Establish Macao-Effects on European Commerce-Rise of Antwerp and Amsterdam-Progress of Commerce and Manufactures in England.

As many of the most useful inventions in the arts have been the result of accident, it is not surprising that some even of the most remarkable of these should have been for ages known to mankind before they were called forth, or applied to any purposes of utility. The property of the magnetic needle, in turning constantly to the northern pole, was known in Europe as early as the thirteenth century; but it was not till above a century after that any one attempted to apply it to the purposes of navigation. That most ancient nation, the Chinese, are, indeed, said to have known the property of the magnet for a thousand years before us; yet it is believed that till our seventeenth century, when European example had reached them, they had never thought of using it in sailing. The English, in the reign of Edward III., are said to have first employed the compass in their ships, but the world owed to the Portuguese the first great experiments of the value of this invention in the advancement of navigation. Till the middle of the fifteenth century, none of the nations of Europe had ventured to sail out of the sight of their coasts. Their vessels were flatbottomed, and extremely shallow; and, as they followed in their navigation every turning of the coast, which exposed them continually to shifting and contrary winds, it was not unusual that a voyage, which would now be performed in a few months, lasted at that time four or five years. We have already remarked the very limited knowledge which the Greeks and Romans possessed of the habitable globe. The Eastern Ocean was known only by name, and the Atlantic scarcely attempted out of the sight of the coast of Europe. It was supposed that all to the west was an immense extent of ocean. The famous island of Atlantis, which Plato supposed to be situated in this sea, was a chimera of his own, and was generally treated as such. The torrid zone, as we have formerly remarked, was generally believed by the ancients to be uninhabitable from its heat; and this persuasion had pre

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