all the attempts which we have seen made to oppose the Portuguese, they inade a last effort to retain still somewhat of its benefits, by making a proposal to the court of Lisbon to become the sole purchasers of all the spice annually imported thither, over and above what Portugal itself could consume; but this proposal was contemptuously rejected. Some writers have expressed their admiration that a state, so powerful as Venice certainly was at this time, did not fit out her own fleets from the Mediterranean, and, pursuing the same route to the Eastern coast, attempt to colonize and to conquer, as well as the Portuguese, and thus indemnify themselves, in some measure, for what they had lost. But, in the first place, they were obliged, in those times, to be constantly watchful of the growing power of the Turks, who were making daily encroachments on their possessions in the Levant. At this very time, too, the formidable league of Cambray, as we have seen, seemed to threaten them at home with total destruction; but even when in a state of peace they were in no capacity to vie with the Portuguese in this trade by the Cape of Good Hope. The situation of the latter gave them every advantage. The Venetians, besides a much longer navigation, must have been perpetually exposed to the corsairs of Barbary, who then infested the mouth of the Mediterranean. But though one state suffered remarkably by this great revolution in the trade of India, the effect was, in general, beneficial to the European kingdoms. Commercial industry was roused in every quarter, and not only foreign trade, but domestic manufactures, made a most rapid progress. In the course of the fifteenth century, France, which hitherto had manifested very little of the spirit of commerce, began to be remarkably distinguished for its trade and manufactures. The towns of Lyons, Tours, and Abbeville, and the ports of Marseilles and Bordeaux, now rivalled the most eminent commercial cities of Europe; and Antwerp and Amsterdam became the great marts of the north. Bruges, which we have seen hitherto the entrepôt between the Hanseatic merchants and those of Italy, began now to be on the decline. It revolted against its prince in the year 1480, and the disorders occasioned by civil commotions were extremely hurtful to its trade. The declension of Bruges was the commencement of the splendor of Antwerp and Amsterdam; but Antwerp had the superiority. The immunities and liberty of conscience enjoyed there induced, at the era of the Reformation, a number of French and German protestants to establish themselves in it. The city was computed at this time to contain above 100,000 inhabitants. The merchants of Bruges, too, resorted thither on the decline of its trade. The sovereigns of the Netherlands likewise had established there fairs for commerce, free of all tolls or customs. These fairs, of which there were two in the year, lasted for six weeks at a time, and were frequented by merchants 11- from every quarter of Europe. After the establishment of this general commercial intercourse, the Portuguese found Antwerp a most convenient entrepôt for transmitting the spices and productions of India, for the supply of the northern kingdoms; and this became an additional and very considerable source of its wealth. Thus the trade of Antwerp exceeded, for some time, that of all the north of Europe, till Philip II., king of Spain, as we shall afterwards see, by the impolitic restrictions and taxes he imposed -and, above all, by restraints on religion, and the establishment of the tribunal of the Inquisition-excited the revolt of the Netherlands, and lost seven provinces, which, uniting into a republic, maintained a respectable independence from that time till the convulsions caused by the French Revolution; and by the most vigorous and unremitting industry carried commerce to its utmost height. The Spaniards took Antwerp in the year 1584, and blocked up and destroyed the navigation of the river Scheldt, imagining that they would thus transfer the commerce of that city to some of the other towns of Austrian Flanders, which had continued in their allegiance; but this policy hurt themselves, and turned entirely to the advantage of their enemies, for the trade of Holland, and particularly that of Amsterdam, rose upon the ruins of that of Antwerp. Amsterdam was, even before this time, a commercial town of considerable importance. The decline of the Hanse Towns had transferred thither a great part of the trade of the north. The Hanseatic confederacy had begun to decline from the year 1428. Jealousy had pervaded the different states, and many of them withdrew themselves from the league. Amsterdam profited by this decline of commerce on the Baltic; and upon the demolition of Antwerp became, as we have already said, the greatest commercial city of the North. Inhabiting a country gained almost entirely from the sea, and extremely unfruitful, the Dutch, urged by necessity, by the means of trade alone, and domestic manufactures, attained to a very high degree of wealth and splendor. The country of Holland does not produce what is sufficient to maintain the hundredth part of its inhabitants. The Dutch have no timber nor maritime stores, no coals, no metal, yet their commerce furnished them with every thing. Their granaries were full of corn, even when the harvest failed in the most fertile countries; their naval stores were most abundant, and the populousness of this country, which, in reality, is but a bank of barren sand, exceeded prodigiously that of the most fruitful and most cultivated of the European kingdoms. The effects of the Portuguese discoveries in diffusing the spirit of commercial industry being thus extensively felt over Europe, it is not to be doubted that the commerce of Britain was likewise sensibly affected; though it is not, perhaps, possible to trace distinctly to that source the increase of the British trade, which was very conspicuous at that period in the growth and enlarge ment of our domestic manufactures. It is easier to perceive the effect of another cause, which operated at this time most powerfully in several of the European countries, and particularly in Britain. This was the Reformation. The suppression of the convents in Britain, in the reign of Henry VIII., restoring to society many thousands who were formerly dead to every purpose of public utility, and the cutting off all papal exactions, which were a very great drain to the wealth of the kingdom, were obvious consequences of this great revolution of opinions. Henry VIII. encouraged domestic manufactures by many excellent laws, and the woollen trade, in particular, arose during his reign to a very great height.* It is worthy of notice, that in this reign, likewise, the interest of money was first fixed by law in England. While this continued an arbitrary matter that is to say, while the prohibitions of the canon law were in full force, which, as we formerly remarked, condemned all interest as illegal and contrary to the express command of scripture-its exaction, being kept secret, was beyond measure exorbitant. Twenty and thirty per cent. were, in the fourteenth century, accounted a moderate rate of usance. Henry VIII., by a statute passed in the year 1546, for the punishment of usury, limitid the legal interest to ten per cent., at which rate it continued till after the reign of queen Elizabeth. The prodigious increase of the commerce of England since the days of Henry VIII. may be estimated from this particular. The whole rental of Engiand in lands and houses did not then exceed five millions per annum; it was assessed to the property tax, in 1815, at £49,744,622 sterling. It is not to be denied, that it is to our commerce we owe our domestic manufactures, the increase and variety of our produce, the improvement of our lands, the rise of their value, and consequently the increase of the real wealth of the nation. It is commercial industry that not only doubles the produce of our country, but doubles, trebles, and quadruples the value of that produce. As for example :the unmanufactured wool of England, of one year's growth, has been computed to be worth six millions sterling; when manufac tured, it is supposed to be worth eighteen millions. In former times we have seen that this wool was exported to be manufactured, and, consequently, that foreigners reaped the greatest part In *Henry VIII. confined the woollen manufactures to particular towns. the infancy of manufactures, monopolies act beneficially, by drawing capital and skill to a particular focus, and thus concentrating their operation. That nursing is useful, nay necessary, in childhood, which becomes useless and injurious in maturity. ↑ Annual value of real property as assessed to the property tax, 1815: England £49,744,622 6,653,000 £58,551,622 of the profit of this prodigious increase on its value, while our own people remained inactive and unemployed. Every other manufacture, as well as that of wool, has within these two last centuries greatly increased in Britain; and, in fact, this island may now be said to be the workshop of the world. In the reign of Henry VIII., and even in the golden reign of Elizabeth, our manufactures were chiefly managed by foreigners, among whom alone the necessary skill was to be found. They now give employment to more millions of British subjects than constituted the whole population of these islands even so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. To the advancement of our manufactures is to be ascribed the rapid growth of our population since the commencement of that century-for, although, in the agricultural districts of the kingdom, we observe also a steady and progressive increase of the number of inhabitants-it is in those districts which have become the seat of manufactures, that we find that prodigious increase to have taken place which has swelled the population of England and Wales to the present enormous amount.* *This may be well illustrated by a comparison of the increase of population in the two counties of Norfolk and Lancashire-the former, that in which the greatest progress has been made in agriculture-the latter, that in which the advancement of manufactures has been the most remarkable. In point of superficial extent these counties are nearly equal, each being about one thirtieth part of all England. In the year 1700, the population of Norfolk considerably exceeded that of Lancashire, the former being about 210,000, the latter about 166,000. In 1831, the population of Norfolk was 390,000— thus less than double; while the population of Lancashire had risen to 1,335,800, or multiplied somewhat more than eight-fold. This enormous increase of the population of this county may be dated from a much later period, viz., the year 1767, the date of the invention of the spinning jenny-or perhaps, more properly, from the year 1781; for, previous to this time, the cotton manufacture of Lancashire was of a domestic nature; those overgrown masses of moral corruption, the crowded manufactories, were unknown; and that noble race of men, the yeomanry of England, still flourished in that county, where now scarcely a trace of them is to be found. How far this enormous growth of one member is consistent with the wholesome state of the body politic-and to what it will ultimately tend-are, perhaps, the gravest questions in the whole circle of political inquiry. The reciprocal dependence, which exists between the agricultural and manufacturing prosperity of a kingdom, is a subject of too deep importance to be safely left by the statesman either to the speculations of the political theorist, or to the narrow and short-sighted views engendered by peculiar interests. The tendency of the political economists of the present day is to deny the importance of agriculture to a state; and to maintain, that any inadequacy in the food of the people can be best and most cheaply supplied by commerce;-that the application of capital and industry to increase the productiveness of the soil is altogether unphilosophical; their proper application being to the extension of manufactures, with which the food of the people can be obtained at less expense from foreigners. So says Mr. Macculloch now, and so said Sir Walter Raleigh in the days of Elizabeth. The political sophist of the present day preaches the abandoninent of all the inferior lands of England. His illustrious predecessor argued in like manner: "Do not waste money in draining Romney marsh and the, fens of Lincolnshire; they produce more value in reeds and sedges than they will ever do in corn; and you can buy corn cheaper than you can raise it." If the argument be good for any thing now, it was equally true in the days of Elizabeth, and the modern political economist must in consistency lament, that in those CHAPTER XIX. Charles V. succeeds to the Throne of Spain-Elected Emperor of GermanyContest with Francis I.-Alliance with Henry VIII-The Constable of Bourbon takes Francis I. Prisoner-Treaty of Madrid-Henry VIII. takes part with Francis-Charles defeats the Turks in Hungary-Defeats Barbarossa in Africa-Francis allies himself with the Turks-War carried on in Italy and France-Death of Francis I.-Rise and History of the Order of Jesuits-Ferdinand of Saxony Head of the Protestant League-Resignation of Charles V.-The Constitution of the German Empire. WE are now arrived at an era which is distinguished by some of the most remarkable events in the history of mankind : the aggrandizement of the house of Austria, by the elevation of Charles V. to the imperial throne-a display of the greatest schemes of policy and ambition the reformation of the Christian religion from the errors of the church of Rome - and the discovery of the Western World. But these interesting subjects demand a separate and an attentive consideration. We begin with a brief delineation of the most remarkable events of the reign of the emperor Charles V. From the time of the emperor Sigismund, and the memorable transactions that attended the Council of the Church which was early days Lord Bacon should have lent his powerful mind to arrest the pros perity of his country. But how would the case stand now, had the counsels of Sir Walter Raleigh become the fashionable political economy of the succeeding reigns? The marsh lands of Kent, which he would have condemned to the production of reeds and sedges, amount to 82,000 acres of the finest land in England-those of Lincolnshire, equal, or, perhaps, superior in productiveness, to 473,000 acres. Stating their produce at three quarters of wheat per acre, (thus, on such land, allowing for the inferior value of intermediate crops,) they would yield 1,665,000 quarters, being three times the average amount of all the wheat imported annually into Great Britain for the last thirty years. The wealds of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex contain nearly 1000 square miles, described in the Saxon Chronicles as a wild, unprofitable waste, covered with heath and rushes, which the application of capital and industry has now converted into one of the most beautiful and fertile districts of England. The whole county of Norfolk, in like manner, is the most artificial soil in England. It is little more than one hundred years since half the county was a rabbit warren, and the greater part of the remainder a poor, thin clay. It is now the most uniform in productiveness of any county in England, exporting grain to the value of £1,000,000 sterling; yet is it essentially a very poor soil, which any suspension of the culture bestowed on it would, in a very few years, cast back to its original sterility. And to this the political economists of the present day would consign it; for it corresponds precisely to No. 6, of Mr. Macculloch's scale. Had this theory been acted on for the last three centuries, where would have been the home market for British manufactures? or rather what would British manufactures have been?-EDITOR, 1834.] |