An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations Part 12

{55} Amongst the pa.s.sions 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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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 acc.u.mulated and brought into few hands; the one by compulsion and levying taxes, the other by producing or procuring objects of desire; for a small quant.i.ty of which, people give up a great portion of their labour.

Sovereigns have ama.s.sed 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 ama.s.sed 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 G.o.ds and the funeral ceremonies consumed vast quant.i.ties 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. .h.i.therto 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}

{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 pa.s.sage 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.

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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 rivals.h.i.+p 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!!

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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.