more than necessary subsistence, was established
in cities long before it was commonly
practised by the occupiers of land in the country.
If, in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed
with the servitude of villanage, some
little stock should accumulate, he would naturally
conceal it with great care from his
master, to whom it would otherwise have belonged,
and take the first opportunity of running
away to a town. The law was at that
time so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns,
and so desirous of diminishing the authority
of the lords over those of the country, that if
he could conceal himself there from the pursuit
of his lord for a year, he was free for
ever. Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated
in the hands of the industrious part of the
inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge
in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which
it could be secure to the person that acquired
it.
The inhabitants of a city, it is true, must
always ultimately derive their subsistence, and
the whole materials and means of their industry,
from the country. But those of a city,
situated near either the sea-coast or the banks
of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined
to derive them from the country in their
neighbourhood. They have a much wider
range, and may draw them from the most remote
corners of the world, either in exchange
for the manufactured produce of their own industry,
or by performing the office of carriers
between distant countries, and exchanging the
produce of one for that of another. A city
might, in this manner, grow up to great wealth
and splendour, while not only the country in
its neighbourhood, but all those to which it
traded, were in poverty and wretchedness.
Each of those countries, perhaps, taken singly,
could afford it but a small part, either of its
subsistence or of its employment; but all of
them taken together, could afford it both a
great subsistence and a great employment.
There were, however, within the narrow circle
of the commerce of those times, some countries
that were opulent and industrious. Such
was the Greek empire as long as it subsisted,
and that of the Saracens during the reigns of
the Abassides. Such, too, was Egypt till it
was conquered by the Turks, some part of the
coast of Barbary, and all those provinces of
Spain which were under the government of
the Moors.
The cities of Italy seem to have been the
first in Europe which were raised by commerce
to any considerable degree of opulence.
Italy lay in the centre of what was at that
time the improved and civilized part of the
world. The crusades, too, though, by the
great waste of stock and destruction of inhabitants
which they occasioned, they must necessarily
have retarded the progress of the
greater part of Europe, were extremely favourable
to that of some Italian cities. The
great armies which marched from all parts to
the conquest of the Holy Land, gave extraordinary
encouragement to the shipping of Venice,
Genoa, and Pisa, sometimes in transporting
them thither, and always in supplying
them with provisions. They were the commissaries,
if one may say so, of those armies;
and the most destructive frenzy that ever befel
the European nations, was a source of opulence
to those republics.
The inhabitants of trading cities, by importing
the improved manufactures and expensive
luxuries of richer countries, afforded some food
to the vanity of the great proprietors, who eagerly
purchased them with great quantities of
the rude produce of their own lands. The
commerce of a great part of Europe in those
times, accordingly, consisted chiefly in the exchange
of their own rude, for the manufactured
produce of more civilized nations. Thus
the wool of England used to be exchanged for
the wines of France, and the fine cloths of
Flanders, in the same manner as the corn in
Poland is at this day, exchanged for the wines
and brandies of France, and for the silks and
velvets of France and Italy.
A taste for the finer and more improved
manufactures was, in this manner, introduced
by foreign commerce into countries where no
such works were carried on. But when this
taste became so general as to occasion a considerable
demand, the merchants, in order to
save the expense of carriage, naturally endeavoured
to establish some manufactures of the
same kind in their own country. Hence the
origin of the first manufactures for distant
sale, that seem to have been established in the
western provinces of Europe, after the fall of
the Roman empire.
No large country, it must be observed, ever
did or could subsist without some sort of manufactures
being carried on in it; and when it
is said of any such country that it has no manufactures,
it must always be understood of
the finer and more improved, or of such as are
fit for distant sale. In every large country,
both the clothing and household furniture of
the far greater part of the people, are the produce
of their own industry. This is even
more universally the case in those poor countries
which are commonly said to have no manufactures,
than in those rich ones that are
said to abound in them. In the latter you will
generally find, both in the clothes and household
furniture of the lowest rank of people, a
much greater proportion of foreign productions
than in the former.
Those manufactures which are fit for distant
sale, seem to have been introduced into
different countries in two different ways.
Sometimes they have been introduced in the
manner above mentioned, by the violent operation,
if one may say so, of the stocks of particular
merchants and undertakers, who established
them in imitation of some foreign manufactures