Book XXI.
Of Laws in relation to Commerce, considered in the
Revolutions it has met with in the World.
21.1. 1. Some general Considerations.
Though commerce be subject to great
revolutions, yet it is possible that certain physical causes, as the
quality of the soil, or the climate, may fix its nature for ever.
We at present carry on the trade of the Indies merely by means of
the silver which we send thither. The Romans carried annually thither
about fifty millions of sesterces;
[1]
and this silver, as ours is at
present, was exchanged for merchandise, which was brought to the west.
Every nation that ever traded to the Indies has constantly carried
bullion and brought merchandise in return.
It is nature itself that produces this effect. The Indians have
their hearts adapted to their manner of living. Our luxury cannot be
theirs; nor theirs our wants. Their climate demands and permits hardly
anything which comes from ours. They go in a great measure naked; such
clothes as they have the country itself furnishes; and their religion,
which is deeply rooted, gives them an aversion for those things that
serve for our nourishment. They want, therefore, nothing but our bullion
to serve as the medium of value; and for this they give us merchandise
in return, with which the frugality of the people and the nature of the
country furnish them in great abundance. Those ancient authors who have
mentioned the Indies describe them just as we now find them, as to their
policy, customs, and manners.
[2]
The Indies have ever been the same
Indies they are at present; and in every period of time those who traded
with that country carried specie thither and brought none in return.
Footnotes
[1]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 23.
[2]
See Pliny, Book vi, chap. 19, and Strabo, Book xv.
21.2. 2. Of the People of Africa.
The greatest part of the people on the
coast of Africa are savages and barbarians. The principal reason, I
believe, of this is, because the small countries capable of being
inhabited are separated from each other by large and almost
uninhabitable tracts of land. They are without industry or arts. They
have gold in abundance, which they receive immediately from the hand of
nature. Every civilised state is therefore in a condition to traffic
with them to advantage, by raising their esteem for things of no value,
and receiving a very high price in return.
21.3. 3. That the Wants of the People in the South are different from
those of the North.
In Europe there is a kind of balance between the
southern and northern nations. The first have every convenience of life,
and few of its wants: the last have many wants, and few conveniences. To
one nature has given much, and demands but little; to the other she has
given but little, and demands a great deal. The equilibrium is
maintained by the laziness of the southern nations, and by the industry
and activity which she has given to those in the north. The latter are
obliged to undergo excessive labour, without which they would want
everything, and degenerate into barbarians. This has neutralised slavery
to the people of the south: as they can easily dispense with riches,
they can more easily dispense with liberty. But the people of the north
have need of liberty, for this can best procure them the means of
satisfying all those wants which they have received from nature. The
people of the north, then, are in a forced state, if they are not either
free or barbarians. Almost all the people of the south are, in some
measure, in a state of violence, if they are not slaves.
21.4. 4. The principal Difference between the Commerce of the Ancients and
the Moderns.
The world has found itself, from time to time, in different
situations; by which the face of commerce has been altered. The trade of
Europe is, at present, carried on principally from the north to the
south; and the difference of climate is the cause that the several
nations have great occasion for the merchandise of each other. For
example, the liquors of the south, which are carried to the north, form
a commerce little known to the ancients. Thus the burden of vessels,
which was formerly computed by measures of corn, is at present
determined by tuns of liquor.
The ancient commerce, so far as it is known to us, was carried on
from one port in the Mediterranean to another; and was almost wholly
confined to the south. Now the people of the same climate, having nearly
the same things of their own, have not the same need of trading among
themselves as with those of a different climate. The commerce of Europe
was therefore formerly less extended than at present.
This does not at all contradict what I have said of our commerce to
the Indies: for here the prodigious difference of climate destroys all
relation between their wants and ours.
21.5. 5. Other Differences.
Commerce is sometimes destroyed by conquerors,
sometimes cramped by monarchs; it traverses the earth, flies from the
places where it is oppressed, and stays where it has liberty to breath:
it reigns at present where nothing was formerly to be seen but deserts,
seas, and rocks; and where it once reigned now there are only deserts.
To see Colchis in its present situation, which is no more than a
vast forest, where the people are every day diminishing, and only defend
their liberty to sell themselves by piecemeal to the Turks and Persians,
one could never imagine that this country had ever, in the time of the
Romans, been full of cities, where commerce convened all the nations of
the world. We find no monument of these facts in the country itself;
there are no traces of them, except in Pliny
[3]
and Strabo.
[4]
The history of commerce is that of the communication of people.
Their numerous defeats, and the flux and reflux of populations and
devastations, here form the most extraordinary events.
Footnotes
21.6. 6. Of the Commerce of the Ancients.
The immense treasures of
Semiramis,
[5]
which could not be acquired in a day, give us reason to
believe that the Assyrians themselves had pillaged other rich nations,
as other nations afterwards pillaged them.
The effect of commerce is riches; the consequence of riches, luxury;
and that of luxury the perfection of arts. We find that the arts were
carried to great perfection in the time of Semiramis;
[6]
which is a
sufficient indication that a considerable commerce was then established.
In the empires of Asia there was a great commerce of luxury. The
history of luxury would make a fine part of that of commerce. The luxury
of the Persians was that of the Medes, as the luxury of the Medes was
that of the Assyrians.
Great revolutions have happened in Asia. The northeast parts of
Persia, viz., Hyrcania, Margiana, Bactria, &c., were formerly full
of flourishing cities,
[7]
which are now no more; and the north of this
empire,
[8]
that is, the isthmus which separates the Caspian and the
Euxine Seas, was covered with cities and nations, which are now
destroyed.
Eratosthenes and Aristobulus
[9]
learned from Patroclus
[10]
that the
merchandise of India passed by the Oxus into the sea of Pontus. Marcus
Varro
[11]
tells us that at the time when Pompey commanded against
Mithridates, they were informed that people went in seven days from
India to the country of the Bactrians, and to the river Icarus, which
falls into the Oxus; that by this method they were able to bring the
merchandise of India across the Caspian Sea, and to enter the mouth of
Cyrus; whence it was only five days' passage to the Phasis, a river that
discharges itself into the Euxine Sea. There is no doubt but it was by
the nations inhabiting these several countries that the great empires of
the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians had communication with the most
distant parts of the east and west.
An entire stop is now put to this communication. All these countries
have been laid waste by the Tartars,
[12]
and are still infested by this
destructive nation. The Oxus no longer runs into the Caspian Sea; the
Tartars, for some private reasons, have changed its course, and it now
loses itself in the barren sands.
[13]
The Jaxartes, which was formerly a barrier between the polite and
barbarous nations, has had its course turned in the same manner by the
Tartars, and it no longer empties itself into the sea.
[14]
Seleucus Nicator formed the project of joining the Euxine to the
Caspian Sea.
[15]
This project, which would have greatly facilitated the
commerce of those days, vanished at his death.
[16]
We are not certain it
could have been executed in the isthmus which separates the two seas.
This country is at present very little known; it is depopulated, and
full of forests; however, water is not wanting, for an infinite number
of rivers roll into it from Mount Caucasus; but as this mountain forms
the north of the isthmus, and extends like two arms
[17]
towards the
south, it would have been a grand obstacle to such an enterprise,
especially in those times, when they had not the art of making sluices.
It may be imagined that Seleucus would have joined the two seas in
the very place where Peter I has since joined them; that is, in that
neck of land where the Tanais approaches the Volga; but the north of the
Caspian Sea was not then discovered.
While the empires of Asia enjoyed the commerce of luxury, the
Tyrians had the commerce of economy, which they extended throughout the
world. Bochard has employed the first book of his Canaan in enumerating
all the colonies which they sent into all the countries bordering upon
the sea; they passed the pillars of Hercules, and made establishments on
the coasts of the ocean.
[18]
In those times their pilots were obliged to follow the coasts, which
were, if I may so express myself, their compass. Voyages were long and
painful. The laborious voyage of Ulysses has been the fruitful subject
of the finest poem in the world, next to that which alone has the
preference.
The little knowledge which the greatest part of the world had of
those who were far distant from them favoured the nations engaged in the
economical commerce. They managed trade with as much obscurity as they
pleased; they had all the advantages which the most intelligent nations
could take over the most ignorant.
The Egyptians — a people who by their religion and their manners
were averse to all communication with strangers — had scarcely at that
time any foreign trade. They enjoyed a fruitful soil and great plenty.
Their country was the Japan of those times; it possessed everything
within itself.
So little jealous were these people of commerce, that they left that
of the Red Sea to all the petty nations that had any harbours in it.
Here they suffered the Idumeans, the Syrians and the Jews to have
fleets. Solomon employed in this navigation the Tyrians, who knew those
seas.
[19]
Josephus
[20]
says that this nation, being entirely employed in
agriculture, knew little of navigation: the Jews, therefore, traded only
occasionally in the Red Sea. They took from the Idumeans Eloth and
Eziongeber, from whom they received this commerce; they lost these two
cities, and with them lost this commerce.
It was not so with the Phoenicians: theirs was not a commerce of
luxury; nor was their trade owing to conquest; their frugality, their
abilities, their industry, their perils, and the hardships they
suffered, rendered them necessary to all the nations of the world.
Before Alexander, the people bordering on the Red Sea traded only in
this sea, and in that of Africa. The astonishment which filled the globe
at the discovery of the Indian Sea, under that conqueror, is a
sufficient proof of this. I have observed
[21]
that bullion was always
carried to the Indies, and never any brought thence; now the Jewish
fleets, which brought gold and silver by the way of the Red Sea,
returned from Africa, and not from the Indies.
[22]
Besides, this navigation was made on the eastern coast of Africa;
for the state of navigation at that time is a convincing proof that they
did not sail to a very distant shore.
I am not ignorant that the fleets of Solomon and Jehoshaphat
returned only every three years; but I do not see that the time taken up
in the voyage is any proof of the greatness of the distance.
Pliny and Strabo inform us that the junks of India and the Red Sea
were twenty days in performing a voyage which a Greek or Roman vessel
would accomplish in seven.
[23]
In this proportion, a voyage of one year,
made by the fleets of Greece or Rome, would take very nearly three when
performed by those of Solomon. Two ships of unequal swiftness do not
perform their voyage in a time proportionate to their swiftness.
Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness. When it
becomes necessary to follow the coast, and to be incessantly in a
different position, when they must wait for a fair wind to get out of a
gulf, and for another to proceed, a good sailor takes the advantage of
every favourable moment, while the other still continues in a difficult
situation, and waits many days for another change.
The slowness of the Indian vessels, which in an equal time could
make but the third of the way of those of the Greeks and Romans, may be
explained by what we every day see in our modern navigation. The Indian
vessels, which were built with a kind of sea-rushes, drew less water
than those of Greece and Rome, which were of wood and joined with iron.
We may compare these Indian vessels to those at present made use of
in ports of little depth of water. Such are those of Venice, and even of
all Italy in general.
[24]
of the Baltic, and of the province of
Holland.
[25]
Their ships, which ought to be able to go in and out of
port, are built round and broad at the bottom; while those of other
nations, who have good harbours, are formed to sink deep into the water.
This mechanism renders these last-mentioned vessels able to sail much
nearer the wind; while the first can hardly sail, except the wind be
nearly in the poop. A ship that sinks deep into the water sails towards
the same side with almost every wind; this proceeds from the resistance
which the vessel, while driven by the wind, meets with from the water,
from which it receives a strong support; and from the length of the
vessel which presents its side to the wind, while, from the form of the
helm, the prow is turned to the point proposed; so that she can sail
very near the wind, or, in other words, very near the point whence the
wind blows. But when the hull is round and broad at the bottom, and
consequently draws little water, it no longer finds this steady support;
the wind drives the vessel, which is incapable of resistance, and can
run them but with a small variation from the point opposite to the wind.
Whence it follows that broad-bottomed vessels are longer in performing
voyages.
1. They lose much time in waiting for the wind, especially if they
are obliged frequently to change their course, 2. They sail much slower,
because not having a proper support from a depth of water, they cannot
carry so much sail. If this be the case at a time when the arts are
everywhere known, at a time when art corrects the defects of nature, and
even of art itself; if at this time, I say, we find this difference, how
great must that have been in the navigation of the ancients?
I cannot yet leave this subject. The Indian vessels were small, and
those of the Greeks and Romans, if we except those machines built for
ostentation, much less than ours. Now, the smaller the vessel the
greater danger it encounters from foul weather. A tempest that would
swallow up a small vessel would only make a large one roll. The more one
body surpasses another in size, the more its surface is relatively
small. Whence it follows that in a small ship there is a less
proportion, that is, a greater difference in respect to the surface of
the vessel, compared with the weight or lading she can carry, than in a
large one. We know that it is a pretty general practice to make the
weight of the lading equal to that of half the water the vessel could
contain. Suppose a vessel will contain eight hundred tons, her lading
then must be four hundred; and that of a vessel which would hold but
four hundred tons of water would be two hundred tons. Thus the largeness
of the first ship will be to the weight she carries as 8 to 4, and that
of the second as 4 to 2. Let us suppose, then, that the surface of the
greater is to the surface of the smaller as 8 to 6; the surface of the
latter will be to her weight as 6 to 2e,
[26]
while the surface of the
former will be to her weight only as 8 to 4. Therefore as the winds and
waves act only upon the surface, the large vessel will, by her weight,
resist their impetuosity much more than the small.
Footnotes
[7]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 16, and Strabo, lib. xi.
[10]
The authority of Patroclus is of great weight, as appears from a
passage in Strabo, lib. ii.
[11]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 17. See also Strabo, lib. xi, upon the passage by which
the merchandise was conveyed from the Phasis to the Cyrus.
[12]
There must have been very great changes in that country since
the time of Ptolemy, who gives us an account of so many rivers that
empty themselves into the east side of the Caspian Sea. In the Czar's
chart we find only the river of Astrabat: in that of M. Bathaisi there
is none at all.
[13]
See Jenkinson's account of this, in the "Collection of Voyages to
the North," vol. iv.
[14]
I am disposed to think that hence Lake Aral was formed.
[15]
Claudius Cæsar, in Pliny, lib. vi. 11.
[16]
He was slain by Ptolemy Ceraunus.
[17]
See Strabo, lib. xi.
[18]
They founded Tartessus, and made a settlement at Cadiz.
[19]
I Kings, 9. 26; II Chron., 8. 17.
[21]
Chapter 1 of this book.
[22]
The proportion between gold and silver, as settled in Europe,
may sometimes render it profitable to take gold instead of silver into
the East Indies; but the advantage is very trifling.
[23]
See Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 22, and Strabo, lib. xv.
[24]
They are mostly shallow; but Sicily has excellent ports.
[25]
I say the province of Holland; for the ports of Zealand are deep
enough.
[26]
That is, to compare magnitudes of the same kind, the action or
pressure of the fluid upon the ship will be to the resistance of the
same ship as, &c.
21.7. 7. Of the Commerce of the Greeks.
The first Greeks were all pirates.
Minos, who enjoyed the empire of the sea, was only more successful,
perhaps, than others in piracy; for his maritime dominion extended no
farther than round his own isle. But when the Greeks became a great
people, the Athenians obtained the real dominion of the sea; because
this trading and victorious nation gave laws to the most potent monarch
of that time,
[27]
and humbled the maritime powers of Syria, of the isle
of Cyprus, and Phoenicia.
But this Athenian lordship of the sea deserves to be more
particularly mentioned. "Athens," says Xenophon,
[28]
"rules the sea; but
as the country of Attica is joined to the continent, it is ravaged by
enemies while the Athenians are engaged in distant expeditions. Their
leaders suffer their lands to be destroyed, and secure their wealth by
sending it to some island. The populace, who are not possessed of lands,
have no uneasiness. But if the Athenians inhabited an island, and,
besides this, enjoyed the empire of the sea, they would, so long as they
were possessed of these advantages, be able to annoy others, and at the
same time to be out of all danger of being annoyed." One would imagine
that Xenophon was speaking of England.
The Athenians, a people whose heads were filled with ambitious
projects; the Athenians, who augmented their jealousy instead of
increasing their influence; who were more attentive to extend their
maritime empire than to enjoy it; whose political government was such
that the common people distributed the public revenues among themselves,
while the rich were in a state of oppression; the Athenians, I say, did
not carry on so extensive a commerce as might be expected from the
produce of their mines, from the multitude of their slaves, from the
number of their seamen, from their influence over the cities of Greece,
and, above all, from the excellent institutions of Solon. Their trade
was almost wholly confined to Greece and to the Euxine Sea, whence they
drew their subsistence.
Corinth was admirably situated; it separated two seas, and opened
and shut the Peloponnesus; it was the key of Greece, and a city of the
greatest importance, at a time when the people of Greece were a world,
and the cities of Greece nations. Its trade was more extensive than that
of Athens, having a port to receive the merchandise of Asia, and another
those of Italy; for the great difficulties which attended the doubling
Cape Malea, where the meeting of opposite winds causes shipwrecks,
[29]
induced every one to go to Corinth, and they could even convey their
vessels over land from one sea to the other. Never was there a city in
which the works of art were carried to so high a degree of perfection.
But here religion finished the corruption which their opulence began.
They erected a temple to Venus, in which more than a thousand courtesans
were consecrated to that deity; from this seminary came the greatest
part of those celebrated beauties whose history Athenus has presumed to
commit to writing.
It seems that in Homer's time the opulence of Greece centred in
Rhodes, Corinth, and Orchomenus; "Jupiter," he says, "loved the
Rhodians, and made them a very wealthy nation."
[30]
On Corinth he
bestows the epithet of rich.
[31]
In like manner, when he speaks of
cities that have plenty of gold, he mentions Orchomenus, to which he
joins Thebes in Egypt. Rhodes and Corinth preserved their power; but
Orchomenus lost hers. The situation of Orchomenus in the neighbourhood
of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Euxine Sea makes us naturally
imagine that she was indebted for her opulence to a trade along that
maritime coast, which had given rise to the fable of the golden fleece;
and, indeed, the name of Minyeios has been given to Orchomenus as well
as to the Argonauts.
[32]
But these seas becoming afterwards more
frequented, the Greeks planted along the coasts a greater number of
colonies, which traded with the barbarous nations, and at the same time
preserved an intercourse with their mother country. In consequence of
this, Orchomenus began to decline, till at length it was lost in the
crowd of the other cities of Greece.
Before Homer's time the Greeks had scarcely any trade but among
themselves, and with a few barbarous nations; in proportion, however, as
they formed new colonies, they extended their dominion. Greece was a
large peninsula, the capes of which seemed to have kept off the seas,
while its gulfs opened on all sides to receive them. if we cast an eye
on Greece, we shall find, in a pretty compact country, a considerable
extent of sea-coast. Her innumerable colonies formed an immense circle
round her; and there she beheld, in some measure, the whole civilised
world. Did she penetrate into Sicily and Italy, she formed new nations.
Did she navigate towards the sea of Pontus, the coast of Asia Minor, or
that of Africa, she acted in the same manner. Her cities increased in
prosperity in proportion as they happened to have new people in their
neighbourhood. And what was extremely beautiful, she was surrounded on
every side with a prodigious number of islands, drawn, as it were, in a
line of circumvallation.
What a source of prosperity must Greece have found in those games
with which she entertained, in some measure, the whole globe; in those
temples, to which all the kings of the earth sent their offerings; in
those festivals, at which such a concourse of people used to assemble
from all parts; in those oracles, to which the attention of all mankind
was directed; and, in short, in that exquisite taste for the polite
arts, which she carried to such a height that to expect ever to surpass
her would be only betraying our ignorance!
Footnotes
[28]
On the Athenian Republic, 2.
[29]
See Strabo, lib. viii.
[30]
"Iliad," lib. ii. 668.
[32]
Strabo, lib. ix, p. 414.
21.8. 8. Of Alexander: his Conquests.
Four great events happened in the
reign of Alexander which entirely changed the face of commerce: the
taking of Tyre, the conquest of Egypt, that likewise of the Indies, and
the discovery of the sea which lies south of that country.
The empire of Persia extended to the Indus.
[33]
Darius, long before
Alexander, had sent some vessels, which sailed down this river, and
passed even into the Red Sea.
[34]
How then were the Greeks the first who
traded with the Indies by the south? Had not the Persians done this
before? Did they make no advantage of seas which were so near them, of
the very seas that washed their coasts? Alexander, it is true, conquered
the Indies; but was it necessary for him to conquer a country in order
to trade with it? This is what I shall now examine.
Ariana,
[35]
which extended from the Persian Gulf as far as the
Indus, and from the South Sea to the mountains of Paropamisus, depended
indeed, in some measure, on the empire of Persia; but in the southern
part it was barren, scorched, rude, and uncultivated. Tradition
relates
[36]
that the armies of Semiramis and Cyrus perished in these
deserts; and Alexander, who caused his fleet to follow him, could not
avoid losing in this place a great part of his army. The Persians left
the whole coast to the Ichthyophagi,
[37]
the Orit, and other barbarous
nations. Besides, the Persians were no great sailors,
[38]
and their
very religion debarred them from entertaining any such notion as that of
a maritime commerce. The voyage undertaken by Darius's direction upon
the Indus and the Indian Sea proceeded rather from the capriciousness of
a prince vainly ambitious of showing his power than from any settled
regular project. It was attended with no consequence either to the
advantage of commerce or of navigation. They emerged from their
ignorance only to plunge into it again.
Besides, it was a received opinion
[39]
before the expedition of
Alexander that the southern parts of India were uninhabitable.
[40]
This
proceeded from a tradition that Semiramis
[41]
had brought back thence
only twenty men, and Cyrus but seven.
Alexander entered by the north. His design was to march towards the
east; but having found a part of the south full of great nations,
cities, and rivers, he attempted to conquer it, and succeeded.
He then formed a design of uniting the Indies to the western nations
by a maritime commerce, as he had already united them by the colonies he
had established by land.
He ordered a fleet to be built on the Hydaspes, then fell down that
river, entered the Indus, and sailed even to its mouth. He left his army
and his fleet at Patala, went himself with a few vessels to view the
sea, and marked the places where he would have ports to be opened and
arsenals erected. Upon his return from Patala he separated the fleet,
and took the route by land, for the mutual support of fleet and army.
The fleet followed the coast from the Indus along the banks of the
country of the Orit, of the Ichthyophagi, of Carmania and Persia. He
caused wells to be dug, built cities, and would not suffer the
Ichthyophagi to live on fish,
[42]
being desirous of having the borders
of the sea inhabited by civilised nations. Nearchus and Onesecritus
wrote a journal of this voyage, which was performed in ten months. They
arrived at Susa, where they found Alexander, who gave an entertainment
to his whole army.
This prince had founded Alexandria, with a view of securing his
conquest of Egypt; this was a key to open it, in the very place where
the kings his predecessors had a key to shut it;
[43]
and he had not the
least thought of a commerce of which the discovery of the Indian Sea
could alone give him the idea.
It even seems that after his discovery he had no new design in
regard to Alexandria. He had, indeed, a general scheme of opening a
trade between the East Indies and the western parts of his empire; but
as for the project of conducting this commerce through Egypt, his
knowledge was too imperfect to be able to form any such design. It is
true he had seen the Indus, he had seen the Nile, but he knew nothing of
the Arabian seas between the two rivers. Scarcely had he returned from
India when he fitted out new fleets, and navigated on the Euleus,
[44]
the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the ocean; he removed the cataracts, with
which the Persians had encumbered those rivers; and he discovered that
the Persian Gulf was a branch of the main sea. But as he went to view
this sea
[45]
in the same manner as he had done in respect to that of
India; as he caused a port to be opened for a thousand ships, and
arsenals to be erected at Babylon; as he sent five hundred talents into
Phoenicia and Syria, to draw mariners into this service whom he intended
to distribute in the colonies along the coast; in fine, as he caused
immense works to be erected on the Euphrates, and the other rivers of
Assyria, there could be no doubt but he designed to carry on the
commerce of India by the way of Babylon and the Persian Gulf.
There are some who pretend that Alexander wanted to subdue
Arabia,
[46]
and had formed a design to make it the seat of his empire:
but how could he have pitched upon a place with which he was entirely
unacquainted?
[47]
Besides, of all countries, this would have been the
most inconvenient to him; for it would have separated him from the rest
of his empire. The Caliphs, who made distant conquests, soon withdrew
from Arabia to reside elsewhere.
Footnotes
[34]
Herodotus, "Melpomene," iv. 44.
[37]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 33, Strabo, lib. xv.
[38]
They sailed not upon the rivers, lest they should defile the
elements — Hyde, "Religion of the Persians." Even to this day they have
no maritime commerce. Those who take to the sea are treated by them as
Atheists.
[40]
Herodotus, "Melpomene," lib. iv, cap. 44, says that Darius conquered the
Indies; this must be understood only to mean Ariana; and even this was
only an ideal conquest.
[42]
This cannot be understood of all the Ichthyophagi, who inhabited
a coast of ten thousand furlongs in extent. How was it possible for
Alexander to have maintained them? How could he command their
submission? This can be only understood of some particular tribes.
Nearchus, in his book Rerum Indicarum, says that at the extremity of
this coast, on the side of Persia, he had found some people who were
less Ichthyophagi than the others. I should think that Alexander's
prohibition related to these people, or to some other tribe still more
bordering on Persia.
[43]
Alexandria was founded on a flat shore, called Rhacotis, where,
in ancient times, the kings had kept a garrison to prevent all
strangers, and more particularly the Greeks, from entering the country.
-- Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 10; Strabo, lib. xviii.
[44]
Arrian, "De Expedit. Alex." lib. vii.
[46]
Strabo, lib. vi, towards the end.
[47]
Seeing Babylon overflowed, he looked upon the neighbouring
country of Arabia as an island. — Aristobulus, in Strabo, lib. xvi.
21.9. 9. Of the Commerce of the Grecian Kings after the Death of
Alexander.
At the time when Alexander made the conquest of Egypt, they
had but a very imperfect idea of the Red Sea, and none at all of the
ocean, which, joining this sea, on one side washes the coast of Africa,
and on the other that of Arabia; nay, they thought it impossible to sail
round the peninsula of Arabia. They who attempted it on each side had
relinquished their design. "How is it possible," said they,
[48]
"to navigate to the southern coast of Arabia, when Cambyses' army, which
traversed it on the north side, almost entirely perished; and the forces
which Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, sent to the assistance of Seleucus
Nicator at Babylon, underwent incredible hardships, and, upon account of
the heat, could march only in the night?"
The Persians were entire strangers to navigation. When they had
subdued Egypt, they introduced the same spirit into that country as
prevailed in Persia: hence, so great was the supineness of the Persians
in this respect, that the Grecian kings found them quite strangers, not
only to the commerce of the Tyrians, Idumeans, and the Jews on the
ocean, but even to the navigation of the Red Sea. I am apt to think that
the destruction of the first Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, together with the
subversion of several petty nations and towns bordering on the Red Sea,
had obliterated all their former knowledge of commerce.
Egypt, at the time of the Persian monarchy, did not front the Red
Sea; it contained only that long narrow neck of land which the Nile
covers with its inundations, and is enclosed on both sides by a chain of
mountains.
[49]
They were, therefore, under the necessity of making a
second discovery of the ocean and the Red Sea; and this discovery
engaged the curiosity of the Grecian monarchs.
They ascended the Nile, and hunted after elephants in the countries
situated between that river and the sea; by this progression they traced
the sea-coast; and as the discoveries were made by the Greeks, the names
are all Grecian, and the temples are con- secrated to Greek
divinities.
[50]
The Greeks settled in Egypt were able to command a most extensive
commerce; they were masters of all the harbours on the Red Sea; Tyre,
the rival of every trading nation, was no more; they were not
constrained by the ancient superstitions
[51]
on the country; in short,
Egypt had become the centre of the world.
The kings of Syria left the commerce of the south to those of Egypt,
and attached themselves only to the northern trade, which was carried on
by means of the Oxus and the Caspian Sea. They then imagined that this
sea was part of the northern ocean; and Alexander,
[52]
some time before
his death, had fitted out a fleet
[53]
in order to discover whether it
communicated with the ocean by the Euxine Sea, or some other eastern sea
towards India. After him, Seleucus and Antiochus applied themselves to
make discoveries in it, with particular attention; and with this view
they scoured it with their fleets.
[54]
That part which Seleucus surveyed
was called the Seleucidian Sea; that which Antiochus discovered received
the name of the Sea of Antiochus. Attentive to the projects they might
have formed on that side, they neglected the seas on the south; whether
it was that the Ptolemies, by means of their fleets on the Red Sea, had
already become the masters of it, or that they discovered an invincible
aversion in the Persians against engaging in maritime affairs. The
southern coasts of Persia supplied them with no seamen; there had been
none in those parts, except towards the latter end of Alexander's reign.
But the Egyptian kings, being masters of the Isle of Cyprus, of
Phoenicia, and of a great number of towns on the coast of Asia Minor,
were possessed of all sorts of conveniences for undertaking maritime
expeditions. They had no occasion to force; they had only to follow the
genius and bent of their subjects.
I am surprised, I confess, at the obstinacy with which the ancients
believed that the Caspian Sea was a part of the ocean. The expeditions
of Alexander, of the kings of Syria, of the Parthians and the Romans,
could not make them change their sentiments; notwithstanding these
nations described the Caspian Sea with wonderful exactness: but men are
generally tenacious of their errors. When only the south of this sea was
known, it was at first taken for the ocean; in proportion as they
advanced along the banks of the northern coast, instead of imagining it
a great lake, they still believed it to be the ocean, that here made a
sort of bay: surveying the coast, their discoveries never went eastward
beyond the Jaxartes, nor westward farther than the extremity of Albania.
The sea towards the north was shallow, and of course very unfit for
navigation.
[55]
Hence it was that they always looked upon this as the
ocean.
The land army of Alexander had been in the east only as far as the
Hypanis, which is the last of those rivers that fall into the Indus:
thus the first trade which the Greeks carried on with the Indies was
confined to a very small part of the country. Seleucus Nicator
penetrated as far as the Ganges, and thereby discovered the sea into
which this river falls, that is to say, the Bay of Bengal.
[56]
The
moderns discover countries by voyages at sea; the ancients discovered
seas by conquests at land.
Strabo,
[57]
notwithstanding the testimony of Apollodorus, seems to
doubt whether the Grecian kings of Bactria proceeded farther than
Seleucus and Alexander.
[58]
Were it even true that they went no farther
to the east than Seleucus, yet they went farther towards the south; they
discovered Siger, and the ports on the coast of Malabar, which gave rise
to the navigation I am going to mention.
[59]
Pliny informs us that the navigation of the Indies was successively
carried on in three different ways.
[60]
At first they sailed from the
Cape of Siagre to the island of Patalena, which is at the mouth of the
Indus. This we find was the course that Alexander's fleet steered to the
Indies. They took afterwards a shorter and more certain course, by
sailing from the same cape or promontory to Siger:
[61]
this can be no
other than the kingdom of Siger mentioned by Strabo,
[62]
and discovered
by the Grecian kings of Bactria. Pliny, by saying that this way was
shorter than the other, can mean only that the voyage was made in less
time: for, as Siger was discovered by the kings of Bactria, it must have
been farther than the Indus: by this passage they must therefore have
avoided the winding of certain coasts, and taken advantage of particular
winds. The merchants at last took a third way; they sailed to Canes, or
Ocelis, ports situated at the entrance of the Red Sea; whence by a west
wind they arrived at Muziris, the first staple town of the Indies, and
thence to the other ports. Here we see that instead of sailing to the
mouth of the Red Sea as far as Siagre, by coasting Arabia Felix to the
north-east, they steered directly from west to east, from one side to
the other, by means of the monsoons, whose regular course they
discovered by sailing in these latitudes. The ancients never lost sight
of the coasts, except when they took advantage of these and the
trade-winds, which were to them a kind of compass.
[63]
Pliny
[64]
says that they set sail for the Indies in the middle of
summer and returned towards the end of December, or in the beginning of
January. This is entirely conformable to our naval journals. In that
part of the Indian Ocean which is between the Peninsula of Africa, and
that on this side the Ganges, there are two monsoons; the first, during
which the winds blow from west to east, begins in the month of August or
September; and the second, during which the wind is in the east, begins
in January. Thus we set sail from Africa for Malabar at the season of
the year that Ptolemy's fleet used to put to sea thence; and we return
too at the same time as they.
Alexander's fleet was seven months in sailing from Patala to Susa.
It set out in the month of July, that is, at a season when no ship dare
now put to sea to return from the Indies. Between these two monsoons
there is an interval during which the winds vary; when a north wind,
meeting with the common winds, raises, especially near the coasts, the
most terrible tempests. These continue during the months of June, July,
and August. Alexander's fleet, therefore, setting sail from Patala in
the month of July, must have been exposed to many storms, and the voyage
must have been long, because they sailed against the monsoon.
Pliny says that they set out for the Indies at the end of summer;
thus they spent the time proper for taking advantage of the monsoon in
their passage from Alexandria to the Red Sea.
Observe here, I pray, how navigation has, little by little, arrived
at perfection. Darius's fleet was two years and a half in falling down
the Indus and going to the Red Sea.
[65]
Afterwards the fleet of
Alexander,
[66]
descending the Indus, arrived at Susa, in ten months,
having sailed three months on the Indus, and seven on the Indian Ocean;
at last the passage from the coast of Malabar to the Red Sea was made in
forty days.
[67]
Strabo,
[68]
who accounts for their ignorance of the countries
between the Hypanis and the Ganges, says there were very few of those
who sailed from Egypt to the Indies that ever proceeded so far as the
Ganges. Their fleets, in fact, never went thither: they sailed with the
western monsoons from the mouth of the Red Sea to the coast of Malabar.
They cast anchor in the ports along that coast, and never attempted to
get round the peninsula on this side the Ganges by Cape Comorin and the
coast of Coromandel. The plan of navigation laid down by the kings of
Egypt and the Romans was to set out and return the same year.
[69]
Thus it is demonstrable that the commerce of the Greeks and Romans
to the Indies was much less extensive than ours. We know immense
countries, which to them were entirely unknown; we traffic with all the
Indian nations; we even manage their trade and carry on their commerce.
But this commerce of the ancients was carried on with far greater
facility than ours. And if the moderns were to trade only with the coast
of Guzerat and Malabar, and, without seeking for the southern isles,
were satisfied with what these islanders brought them, they would
certainly prefer the way of Egypt to that of the Cape of Good Hope.
Strabo informs us
[70]
that they traded thus with the people of
Taprobane.
Footnotes
[48]
See "Rerum Indicarum."
[51]
These gave them an aversion to strangers.
[52]
Pliny, lib. ii, cap. 67, lib. vi, caps. 9 and 13; Strabo, lib. xi., p. 507; Arrian, "De
Expedit. Alex.," lib. iii, p 74, lib. v, p. 104.
[53]
Arrian, "De Expedit. Alex.," lib. vii.
[54]
Pliny, lib. ii, cap. 67.
[55]
See the Czar's Chart.
[56]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 17.
[58]
Apollonius Adrumatinus in Strabo, lib. xi.
[59]
The Macedonians of Bactria, India, and Ariana, having separated
themselves from Syria, formed a great state.
[62]
"Sigertidis regnum," lib. xi.
[63]
The monsoons blow part of the year from one quarter, and part
from another; the trade winds blow the whole year round from the same
quarter.
[65]
Herodotus, "Melpomene," lib. iv, cap. 44.
[66]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 23.
21.10. 10. Of the Circuit of Africa.
We find from history that before the
discovery of the mariner's compass four attempts were made to sail round
the coast of Africa. The Phoenicians sent by Necho
[71]
and Eudoxus,
[72]
flying from the wrath of Ptolemy Lathyrus, set out from the Red Sea, and
succeeded. Sataspes
[73]
sent by Xerxes, and Hanno by the Carthaginians,
set out from the Pillars of Hercules, and failed in the attempt.
The capital point in surrounding Africa was to discover and double
the Cape of Good Hope. Those who set out from the Red Sea found this
cape nearer by half than it would have been in setting out from the
Mediterranean. The shore from the Red Sea is not so shallow as that from
the cape to Hercules' Pillars.
[74]
The discovery of the cape by
Hercules' Pillars was owing to the invention of the compass, which
permitted them to leave the coast of Africa, and to launch out into the
vast ocean, in order to sail towards the island of St. Helena, or
towards the coast of Brazil.
[75]
It was, therefore, possible for them to
sail from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, but not to set out from
the Mediterranean to return by the Red Sea.
Thus, without making this grand circuit, after which they could
hardly hope to return, it was most natural to trade to the east of
Africa by the Red Sea, and to the western coast by Hercules' Pillars.
The Grecian kings of Egypt discovered at first, in the Red Sea, that
part of the coast of Africa which extends from the bottom of the gulf,
where stands the town of Heroum, as far as Dira, that is, to the strait
now known by the name of Babelmandel. Thence to the promontory of
Aromatia, situate at the entrance of the Red Sea,
[76]
the coast had
never been surveyed by navigators: and this is evident from what
Artemidorus tells us,
[77]
that they were acquainted with the places on
that coast, but knew not their distances: the reason of which is, they
successively gained a knowledge of those ports by land, without sailing
from one to the other.
Beyond this promontory, at which the coast along the ocean
commenced, they knew nothing, as we learn from Eratosthenes and
Artemidorus.
[78]
Such was the knowledge they had of the coasts of Africa in Strabo's
time, that is, in the reign of Augustus. But after the prince's decease,
the Romans found out the two capes Raptum and Prassum, of which Strabo
makes no mention, because they had not as yet been discovered. It is
plain that both those names are of Roman origin.
Ptolemy, the geographer, flourished under Adrian and Antoninus Pius;
and the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea, whoever he was, lived a
little after. Yet the former limits known Africa to Cape Prassum,
[79]
which is in about the 14th degree of south latitude; while the author of
the Periplus
[80]
confines it to Cape Raptum, which is nearly in the
tenth degree of the same latitude. In all likelihood the latter took his
limit from a place then frequented, and Ptolemy his from a place with
which there was no longer any communication.
What confirms me in this notion is that the people about Cape
Prassum were Anthropophagi.
[81]
Ptolemy takes notice
[82]
of a great
number of places between the port or emporium Aromatum and Cape Raptum,
but leaves an entire blank between Capes Raptum and Prassum. The great
profits of the East India trade must have occasioned a neglect of that
of Africa. In fine, the Romans never had any settled navigation; they
had discovered these several ports by land expeditions, and by means of
ships driven on that coast; and as at present we are well acquainted
with the maritime parts of Africa, but know very little of the inland
country, the ancients, on the contrary, had a very good knowledge of the
inland parts, but were almost strangers to the coasts.
[83]
I said that the Phoenicians sent by Necho and Eudoxus under Ptolemy
Lathyrus had made the circuit of Africa; but at the time of Ptolemy, the
geographer, those two voyages must have been looked upon as fabulous,
since he places after
[84]
the Sinus Magnus, which I apprehend to be the
Gulf of Siam, an unknown country, extending from Asia to Africa, and
terminating at Cape Prassum, so that the Indian Ocean would have been no
more than a lake. The ancients who discovered the Indies towards the
north, advancing eastward, placed this unknown country to the south.
Footnotes
[71]
He was desirous of conquering it. — Herodotus, lib. iv. 42.
[72]
Pliny, lib. ii, cap. 67; Pomponius Mela, lib. iii, cap. 9.
[73]
Herodotus, Melpomene, iv. 43.
[74]
Add to this what I shall say in chapter 11 of this book on the
navigation of Hanno.
[75]
In the months of October, November, December, and January the
wind in the Atlantic Ocean is found to blow north-east; our ships
therefore either cross the line, and to avoid the wind, which is there
generally east, they direct their course to the south: or else they
enter into the torrid zone, in those places where the wind is west.
[76]
The sea to which we give this name was called by the ancients
the Gulf of Arabia; the name of Red Sea they gave to that part of the
ocean which borders on this gulf.
[78]
Ibid. Artemidorus settled the borders of the known coast at the
place called Austricornu; and Eratosthenes, Cinnamomiferam.
[79]
Strabo, lib. i, cap. 7; lib. iv, cap. 9; table 4 of Africa.
[80]
This Periplus is attributed to Arrian.
[81]
Ptolemy, lib. iv, cap. 9.
[82]
Book iv, caps. 7 and 8.
[83]
See what exact descriptions Strabo and Ptolemy have given us of
the different parts of Africa. Their knowledge was owing to the several
wars which the two most powerful nations in the world had waged with the
people of Africa, to the alliances they had contracted, and to the trade
they had carried on with those countries.
21.11. 11. Of Carthage and Marseilles.
The law of nations which prevailed
at Carthage was very extraordinary: all strangers who traded to Sardinia
and towards Hercules' Pillars this haughty republic sentenced to be
drowned. Her civil polity was equally surprising; she forbade the
Sardinians to cultivate their lands, upon pain of death. She increased
her power by her riches, and afterwards her riches by her power. Being
mistress of the coasts of Africa, which are washed by the Mediterranean,
she extended herself along the ocean. Hanno, by order of the senate of
Carthage, distributed thirty thousand Carthaginians from Hercules'
Pillars as far as Cerne. This place, he says, is as distant from
Hercules' Pillars as the latter from Carthage. This situation is
extremely remarkable. It lets us see that Hanno limited his settlements
to the 25th degree of north latitude; that is, to two or three degrees
south of the Canaries.
Hanno being at Cerne undertook another voyage, with a view of making
further discoveries towards the south. He took but little notice of the
continent. He followed the coast for twenty-six days, when he was
obliged to return for want of provisions. The Carthaginians, it seems,
made no use of this second enterprise. Scylax says
[85]
that the sea is
not navigable beyond Cerne, because it is shallow, full of mud and
sea-weeds:
[86]
and, in fact, there are many of these in those
latitudes.
[87]
The Carthaginian merchants mentioned by Scylax might find
obstacles which Hanno, who had sixty vessels of fifty oars each, had
surmounted. Difficulties are at most but relative; besides, we ought not
to confound an enterprise in which bravery and resolution must be
exerted with things that require no extraordinary conduct.
The relation of Hanno's voyage is a fine fragment of antiquity. It
was written by the very man that performed it.
His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great commanders write
their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from
facts than from words.
The style is agreeable to the subject; he deals not in the
marvellous. All he says of the climate, of the soil, the behaviour, the
manners of the inhabitants, correspond with what is every day seen on
this coast of Africa; one would imagine it the journal of a modern
sailor.
He observed from his fleet that in the day-time there was a
prodigious silence on the continent, that in the night he heard the
sound of various musical instruments, and that fires might then be
everywhere seen, some larger than others.
[88]
Our relations are
conformable to this; it has been discovered that in the day the savages
retire into the forests to avoid the heat of the sun, that they light up
great fires in the night to disperse the beasts of prey, and that they
are passionately fond of music and dancing.
The same writer describes a volcano with all the phenomena of
Vesuvius; and relates that he captured two hairy women, who chose to die
rather than follow the Carthaginians, and whose skins he carried to
Carthage. This has been found not void of probability.
This narration is so much the more valuable as it is a monument of
Punic antiquity; and hence alone it has been regarded as fabulous. For
the Romans retained their hatred of the Carthaginians, even after they
had destroyed them. But it was victory alone that decided whether we
ought to say the Punic or the Roman faith.
Some moderns
[89]
have imbibed these prejudices. What has become, say
they, of the cities described by Hanno, of which even in Pliny's time
there remained no vestiges? But it would have been a wonder indeed if
any such vestiges had remained. Was it a Corinth or Athens that Hanno
built on those coasts? He left Carthaginian families in such places as
were most commodious for trade, and secured them as well as his hurry
would permit against savages and wild beasts. The calamities of the
Carthaginians put a period to the navigation of Africa; these families
must necessarily then either perish or become savages. Besides, were the
ruins of these cities even still in being, who is it that would venture
into the woods and marshes to make the discovery? We find, however, in
Scylax and Polybius that the Carthaginians had considerable settlements
on those coasts. These are the vestiges of the cities of Hanno; there
are no others, for the same reason that there are no others of Carthage
itself.
The Carthaginians were in the high road to wealth; and had they gone
so far as four degrees of north latitude, and fifteen of longitude, they
would have discovered the Gold Coast. They would then have had a trade
of much greater importance than that which is carried on at present on
that coast, at a time when America seems to have degraded the riches of
all other countries. They would there have found treasures of which they
could never have been deprived by the Romans.
Very surprising things have been said of the riches of Spain. If we
may believe Aristotle,
[90]
the Phoenicians who arrived at Tartessus
found so much silver there that their ships could not hold it all; and
they made of this metal their meanest utensils. The Carthaginians,
according to Diodorus,
[91]
found so much gold and silver in the Pyrenean
mountains, that they adorned the anchors of their ships with it. But no
foundation can be built on such popular reports. Let us therefore
examine the facts themselves.
We find in a fragment of Polybius, cited by Strabo,
[92]
that the
silver mines at the source of the river Bætis, in which forty thousand
men were employed, produced to the Romans twenty-five thousand drachmas
a day, that is, about five million livres a year, at fifty livres to the
mark. The mountains that contained these mines were called the Silver
Mountains:
[93]
which shows they were the Potosi of those times. At
present, the mines of Hanover do not employ a fourth part of the
workmen, and yet they yield more. But as the Romans had not many copper
mines, and but few of silver; and as the Greeks knew none but the Attic
mines, which were of little value, they might well be astonished at
their abundance.
In the war that broke out for the succession of Spain, a man called
the Marquis of Rhodes, of whom it was said that he was ruined in gold
mines and enriched in hospitals,
[94]
proposed to the court of France to
open the Pyrenean mines. He alleged the example of the Tyrians, the
Carthaginians, and the Romans. He was permitted to search, but sought in
vain; he still alleged, and found nothing.
The Carthaginians, being masters of the gold and silver trade, were
willing to be so of the lead and pewter. These metals were carried by
land from the ports of Gaul upon the ocean to those of the
Mediterranean. The Carthaginians were desirous of receiving them at the
first hand; they sent Himilco to make a settlement in the isles called
Cassiterides,
[95]
which are imagined to be those of Scilly.
These voyages from Bætica into England have made some persons imagine
that the Carthaginians knew the compass: but it is very certain that
they followed the coasts. There needs no other proof than Himilco's
being four months in sailing from the mouth of the Bætis to England;
besides, the famous piece of history of the Carthaginian
[96]
pilot who,
being followed by a Roman vessel, ran aground, that he might not show
her the way to England,
[97]
plainly intimates that those vessels were
very near the shore when they fell in with each other.
The ancients might have performed voyages that would make one
imagine they had the compass, though they had not. If a pilot was far
from land, and during his voyage had such serene weather that in the
night he could always see a polar star and in the day the rising and
setting of the sun, it is certain he might regulate his course as well
as we do now by the compass: but this must be a fortuitous case, and not
a regular method of navigation.
We see in the treaty which put an end to the first Punic war that
Carthage was principally attentive to preserve the empire of the sea,
and Rome that of the land. Hanno,
[98]
in his negotiation with the
Romans, declared that they should not be suffered even to wash their
hands in the sea of Sicily; they were not permitted to sail beyond the
promontorium pulchrum; they were forbidden to trade in Sicily, Sardinia,
and Africa, except at Carthage:
[99]
an exception that proves there was
no design to favour them in their trade with that city.
In early times there had been very great wars between Carthage and
Marseilles
[100]
on the subject of fishing. After the peace they entered
jointly into economical commerce. Marseilles at length grew jealous,
especially as, being equal to her rival in industry, she had become
inferior to her in power. This is the motive of her great fidelity to
the Romans. The war between the latter and the Carthaginians in Spain
was a source of riches to Marseilles, which had now become their
magazine. The ruin of Carthage and Corinth still increased the glory of
Marseilles, and had it not been for the civil wars, in which this
republic ought on no account to have engaged, she would have been happy
under the protection of the Romans, who were not the least jealous of
her commerce.
Footnotes
[85]
See his "Periplus," under the article on Carthage.
[86]
See Herodotus, "Melpomene," lib. iv, cap. 43, on the obstacles which
Sataspes encountered.
[87]
See the charts and relations in the first volume of Collection
of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India
Company, part i, p. 201. This weed covers the surface of the water in
such a manner as to be scarcely perceived, and ships can only pass
through it with a stiff gale.
[88]
Pliny tells us the same thing, speaking of Mount Atlas:
"Noctibus micare crebris ignibus, tibiarum cantu timpanorumque sonitu
strepere, neminem interdiu cerni."
[89]
Mr. Dodwell. See his Dissertation on Hanno's "Periplus."
[90]
"Of Wonderful Things."
[94]
He had some share in their management.
[96]
Strabo, lib. iii, towards the end.
[97]
He was rewarded by the senate of Carthage.
[98]
Freinshemius, "Supplement to Livy," dec. 2, vi.
[99]
In the parts subject to the Carthaginians.
[100]
Justin, lib. xliii, cap. 5.
21.12. 12. The Isle of Delos.
Mithridates. Upon the destruction of Corinth
by the Romans, the merchants retired to Delos, an island which from
religious considerations was looked upon as a place of safety:
[101]
besides, it was extremely well situated for the commerce of Italy and
Asia, which, since the reduction of Africa and the weakening of Greece,
had grown more important.
From the earliest times the Greeks, as we have already observed,
sent colonies to Propontis and to the Euxine Sea — colonies which
retained their laws and liberties under the Persians. Alexander, having
undertaken his expedition against the barbarians only, did not molest
these people.
[102]
Neither does it appear that the kings of Pontus, who
were masters of many of those colonies, ever deprived them of their own
civil government.
[103]
The power of those kings increased as soon as they subdued those
cities.
[104]
Mithridates found himself able to hire troops on every
side; to repair his frequent losses; to have a multitude of workmen,
ships, and military machines; to procure himself allies; to bribe those
of the Romans, and even the Romans themselves; to keep the barbarians of
Asia and Europe in his pay;
[105]
to continue the war for many years, and
of course to discipline his troops, he found himself able to train them
to arms, to instruct them in the military art of the Romans,
[106]
and to
form considerable bodies out of their deserters; in a word, he found
himself able to sustain great losses, and to be frequently defeated,
without being ruined;
[107]
neither would he have been ruined if the
voluptuous and barbarous king had not destroyed, in his prosperous days,
what had been done by the great prince in times of adversity.
Thus it was that when the Romans had arrived at their highest pitch
of grandeur, and seemed to have nothing to apprehend but from the
ambition of their own subjects, Mithridates once more ventured to
contest the mighty point, which the overthrow of Philip, of Antiochus,
and of Perseus had already decided. Never was there a more destructive
war: the two contending parties, being possessed of great power, and
receiving alternate advantages, the inhabitants of Greece and of Asia
fell a sacrifice in the quarrel, either as foes, or as friends of
Mithridates. Delos was involved in the general fatality, and commerce
failed on every side: which was a necessary consequence, the people
themselves being destroyed.
The Romans, in pursuance of a system of which I have spoken
elsewhere,
[108]
acting as destroyers, that they might not appear as
conquerors, demolished Carthage and Corinth; a practice by which they
would have ruined themselves had they not subdued the world. When the
kings of Pontus became masters of the Greek colonies on the Euxine Sea,
they took care not to destroy what was to be the foundation of their own
grandeur.
Footnotes
[101]
See Strabo, lib. x.
[102]
He confirmed the liberty of the city of Amisus, an Athenian
colony which had enjoyed a popular government, even under the kings of
Persia. Lucullus having taken Sinone and Amisus, restored them to their
liberty, and recalled the inhabitants, who had fled on board their
ships.
[103]
See what Appian writes concerning the Phanagoreans, the
Amisians, and the Synopians, in his treatise Of the War against
Mithridates.
[104]
See Appian, in regard to the immense treasures which
Mithridates employed in his wars, those which he had buried, those which
he frequently lost by the treachery of his own people, and those which
were found after his death.
[105]
See Appian Of the War against Mithridates.
[107]
He lost at one time 170,000 men, yet he soon recruited his
armies.
[108]
In the "Considerations on the Causes of the Rise and Declension
of the Roman Grandeur."
21.13. 13. Of the Genius of the Romans as to Maritime Affairs.
The Romans laid no stress on anything but their land forces, who were disciplined
to stand firm, to fight on one spot, and there bravely to die. They
could not like the practice of seamen, who first offer to fight, then
fly, then return, constantly avoid danger, often make use of stratagem,
and seldom of force. This was not suitable to the genius of the
Greeks
[109]
much less to that of the Romans.
They destined therefore to the sea only those citizens who were not
considerable enough to have a place in their legions.
[110]
Their marines
were commonly freedmen.
At this time we have neither the same esteem for land forces nor the
same contempt for those of the sea. In the former, art has
decreased;
[111]
in the latter, it has augmented:
[112]
now things are
generally esteemed in proportion to the degree of ability requisite to
discharge them.
Footnotes
[109]
As Plato has observed. "Laws," lib. iv.
[111]
See the "Considerations on the Causes of the Rise and Declension
of the Roman Grandeur."
21.14. 14. Of the Genius of the Romans with respect to Commerce.
The Romans were never distinguished by a jealousy for trade. They attacked Carthage
as a rival, not as a commercial nation. They favoured trading cities
that were not subject to them. Thus they increased the power of
Marseilles by the cession of a large territory. They were vastly afraid
of barbarians, but had not the least apprehension from a trading people.
Their genius, their glory, their military education, and the very form
of their government estranged them from commerce.
In the city, they were employed only about war, elections, factions,
and law-suits; in the country, about agriculture; and as for the
provinces, a severe and tyrannical government was incompatible with
commerce.
But their political constitution was not more opposed to trade than
their law of nations. "The people," says Pomponius, the civilian,
[113]
"with whom we have neither friendship, nor hospitality nor alliance, are
not our enemies; however, if anything belonging to us falls into their
hands, they are the proprietors of it; freemen become their slaves; and
they are upon the same terms with respect to us."
Their civil law was not less oppressive. The law of
Constantine,
[114]
after having stigmatised as bastards the children of a
mean rank who had been married to those of a superior station, confounds
women who retail merchandise with slaves, with the mistresses of
taverns, with actresses, with the daughters of those who keep public
stews, or who had been condemned to fight in the amphitheatre; this had
its origin in the ancient institutions of the Romans.
I am not ignorant that men prepossessed with these two ideas (that
commerce is of the greatest service to a state, and that the Romans had
the best-regulated government in the world) have believed that these
people greatly honoured and encouraged commerce; but the truth is, they
seldom troubled their heads about it.
Footnotes
[113]
Leg. 5, 2, ff. De Captivis.
[114]
Quæ mercimoniis publice præfuit — Leg. 1, Cod. de natural. liberis.
21.15. 15. Of the Commerce of the Romans with the Barbarians.
The Romans having erected a vast empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the weakness
of the people and the tyranny of their laws united all the parts of this
immense body. The Roman policy was then to avoid all communication with
those nations whom they had not subdued: the fear of carrying to them
the art of conquering made them neglect the art of enriching themselves.
They made laws to hinder all commerce with barbarians. "Let nobody,"
said Valens and Gratian,
[115]
"send wine, oil, or other liquors to the
barbarians, though it be only for them to taste." "Let no one carry gold
to them," add Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius;
[116]
"rather, if
they have any, let our subjects deprive them of it by stratagem." The
exportation of iron was prohibited on pain of death.
Domitian, a prince of great timidity, ordered the vines in Gaul to
be pulled up,
[117]
from fear, no doubt, lest their wines should draw
thither the barbarians. Probus and Julian, who had no such fears, gave
orders for their being planted again.
I am sensible that upon the declension of the Roman empire the
barbarians obliged the Romans to establish staple towns, and to trade
with them. But even this is a proof that the minds of the Romans were
averse to commerce.
[118]
Footnotes
[115]
Leg. ad barbaricum. Cod. quæ res exportari non debeant.
[116]
Leg. 2, Cod. de commerc. et mercator.
[117]
Procopius, "War of the Persians," Book i.
[118]
See the "Considerations on the Causes of the Rise and Declension
of the Roman Grandeur."
21.16. 16. Of the Commerce of the Romans with Arabia and the Indies.
The trade to Arabia Felix, and that to the Indies, were the two branches,
and almost the only ones, of their foreign commerce. The Arabians were
possessed of immense riches, which they found in their seas and forests;
and as they sold much and purchased little, they drew to themselves the
gold and silver of the Romans.
[119]
Augustus,
[120]
being well apprised
of that opulence, resolved they should be either his friends or his
enemies. With this view he sent lius Gallus from Egypt into Arabia.
This commander found the people indolent, peaceable, and unskilled in
war. He fought battles, laid sieges to towns, and lost but seven of his
men by the sword; but the perfidy of his guides, long marches, the
climate, want of provisions, distempers, and ill-conduct, caused the
ruin of his army.
He was therefore obliged to be content with trading to Arabia, in
the same manner as other nations; that is, with giving them gold and
silver in exchange for their commodities. The Europeans trade with them
still in the same manner; the caravans of Aleppo and the royal vessel of
Suez carry thither immense sums.
[121]
Nature had formed the Arabs for commerce, not for war; but when
those quiet people came to be near neighbours to the Parthians and the
Romans, they acted as auxiliaries to both nations. lius Gallus found
them a trading people; Mahomet happened to find them trained to war; he
inspired them with enthusiasm, which led them to glory and conquest.
The commerce of the Romans to the Indies was very considerable.
Strabo
[122]
had been informed in Egypt that they employed in this
navigation one hundred and twenty vessels; this commerce was carried on
entirely with bullion. They sent thither annually fifty millions of
sesterces. Pliny
[123]
says that the merchandise brought thence was sold
at Rome at cent per cent profit. He speaks, I believe, too generally;
if this trade had been so vastly profitable, everybody would have been
willing to engage in it, and then it would have been at an end.
It will admit of a question, whether the trade to Arabia and the
Indies was of any advantage to the Romans. They were obliged to export
their bullion thither, though they had not, like us, the resource of
America, which supplies what we send away. I am persuaded that one of
the reasons of their increasing the value of their specie by
establishing base coin was the scarcity of silver, owing to the
continual exportation of it to the Indies: and though the commodities of
this country were sold at Rome at the rate of cent per cent, this
profit of the Romans, being obtained from the Romans themselves, could
not enrich the empire.
It may be alleged, on the other hand, that this commerce increased
the Roman navigation, and of course their power; that new merchandise
augmented their inland trade, gave encouragement to the arts, and
employment to the industrious; that the number of subjects multiplied in
proportion to the new means of support; that this new commerce was
productive of luxury, which I have proved to be as favourable to a
monarchical government as fatal to a commonwealth; that this
establishment was of the same date as the fall of their republic; that
the luxury of Rome had become necessary; and that it was extremely
proper that a city which had accumulated all the wealth of the universe
should refund it by its luxury.
Strabo says
[124]
that the Romans carried on a far more extensive
commerce with the Indies than the kings of Egypt; but it is very
extraordinary that those people who were so little acquainted with
commerce should have paid more attention to that of India than the
Egyptian kings, whose dominions lay so conveniently for it. The reason
of this must be explained.
After the death of Alexander, the kings of Egypt established a
maritime commerce with the Indies; while the kings of Syria, who were
possessed of the more eastern provinces, and consequently of the Indies,
maintained that commerce of which we have taken notice in the sixth
chapter, which was carried on partly by land, and partly by rivers, and
had been further facilitated by means of the Macedonian colonies;
insomuch that Europe had communication with the Indies both by Egypt and
by Syria. The dismembering of the latter kingdom, whence was formed that
of Bactriana, did not prove in any way prejudicial to this commerce.
Marinus the Tyrian, quoted by Ptolemy,
[125]
mentions the discoveries
made in India by means of some Macedonian merchants, who found out new
roads, which had been unknown to kings in their military expeditions. We
find in Ptolemy
[126]
that they went from Peter's tower
[127]
as far as
Sera; and the discovery made by mercantile people of so distant a mart,
situated in the north-east part of China, was a kind of prodigy. Hence,
under the kings of Syria and Bactriana, merchandise was conveyed to the
west from the southern parts of India, by the river Indus, the Oxus, and
the Caspian Sea; while those of the more eastern and northern parts were
transported from Sera, Peter's tower, and other staples, as far as the
Euphrates. Those merchants directed their route nearly by the fortieth
degree of north latitude, through countries situated to the west of
China, more civilised at that time than at present, because they had not
as yet been infested by the Tartars.
Now while the Syrian empire was extending its trade to such a
distance by land, Egypt did not greatly enlarge its maritime commerce.
The Parthians soon after appeared, and founded their empire; and
when Egypt fell under the power of the Romans, this empire was at its
height, and had received its whole extension.
The Romans and Parthians were two rival nations, that fought not for
dominion but for their very existence. Between the two empires deserts
were formed and armies were always stationed on the frontiers; so that
instead of there being any commerce, there was not so much as
communication between them. Ambition, jealousy, religion, national
antipathy, and difference of manners completed the separation. Thus the
trade from east to west, which had formerly so many channels, was
reduced to one; and Alexandria becoming the only staple, the trade to
this city was immensely enlarged.
We shall say but one word of their inland trade. Its principal
branch was the corn brought to Rome for the subsistence of the people;
but this was rather a political affair than a point of commerce. On this
account the sailors were favoured with some privileges, because the
safety of the empire depended on their vigilance.
[128]
Footnotes
[119]
Pliny, lib. vi, cap. 28, and Strabo, lib. xvi.
[121]
The caravans of Aleppo and Suez carry thither annually to the
value of about two millions of livres, and as much more clandestinely;
the royal vessel of Suez carries thither also two millions.
[122]
Book ii, p. 181, ed. 1587.
[124]
He says, in his twelfth book, that the Romans employed a hundred and twenty
ships in that trade; and, in book xvii, that the Grecian kings scarcely
employed twenty.
[127]
Our best maps place Peter's tower in the hundredth degree of
longitude, and about the fortieth of latitude.
[128]
Suetonius, "Life of Claudius," 18; Leg. 8 Cod. Theodos. de naviculariis.
21.17. 17. Of Commerce after the Destruction of the Western Empire.
After the invasion of the Roman empire one effect of the general calamity was
the destruction of commerce. The barbarous nations at first regarded it
only as an opportunity for robbery; and when they had subdued the
Romans, they honoured it no more than agriculture, and the other
professions of a conquered people.
Soon was the commerce of Europe almost entirely lost. The nobility,
who had everywhere the direction of affairs, were in no pain about it.
The laws of the Visigoths
[129]
permitted private people to occupy
half the beds of great rivers, provided the other half remained free for
nets and boats. There must have been very little trade in countries
conquered by these barbarians.
In those times were established the ridiculous rights of escheatage
and shipwrecks. These men thought that, as strangers were not united to
them by any civil law, they owed them on the one hand no kind of
justice, and on the other no sort of pity.
In the narrow bounds which nature had originally prescribed to the
people of the north, all were strangers to them: and in their poverty
they regarded all only as contributing to their riches. Being
established, before their conquest, on the coasts of a sea of very
little breadth, and full of rocks, from these very rocks they drew their
subsistence.
But the Romans, who made laws for all the world, had established the
most humane ones with regard to shipwrecks.
[130]
They suppressed the
rapine of those who inhabited the coasts, and what was more still, the
rapacity of their treasuries.
[131]
Footnotes
[129]
Book viii, tit. 4, section 9.
[130]
Toto titulo, ff. de incend, ruin. et naufrag.; Cod. de naufragiis; Leg. 3, ff. ad leg. Cornel, de sicariis.
[131]
Leg. 1, Cod. de naufragiis.
21.18. 18. A particular Regulation.
The law of the Visigoths made, however,
one regulation in favour of commerce.
[132]
It ordained that foreign
merchants should be judged, in the differences that arose among
themselves, by the laws and by judges of their own nation. This was
founded on an established custom among all mixed people, that every man
should live under his own law — a custom of which I shall speak more at
large in another place.
Footnotes
[132]
Book xi, tit. 3, section 2.
21.19. 19. Of Commerce after the Decay of the Roman Power in the East.
The Mahomedans appeared, conquered, extended, and dispersed themselves.
Egypt had particular sovereigns; these carried on the commerce of India,
and being possessed of the merchandise of this country, drew to
themselves the riches of all other nations. The sultans of Egypt were
the most powerful princes of those times. History informs us with what a
constant and well-regulated force they stopped the ardour, the fire, and
the impetuosity of the crusades.
21.20. 20. How Commerce broke through the Barbarism of Europe.
Aristotle's philosophy being carried to the west, pleased the subtle geniuses who
were the virtuosi of those times of ignorance. The schoolmen were
infatuated with it, and borrowed from that philosopher
[133]
a great many
notions on lending upon interest, whereas its source might have been
easily traced in the gospel; in short, they condemned it absolutely and
in all cases. Hence commerce, which was the profession only of mean
persons, became that of knaves; for whenever a thing is forbidden, which
nature permits or necessity requires, those who do it are looked upon as
dishonest.
Commerce was transferred to a nation covered with infamy, and soon
ranked with the most shameful usury, with monopolies, with the levying
of subsidies, and with all the dishonest means of acquiring wealth.
The Jews, enriched by their exactions, were pillaged by the tyranny
of princes; which pleased indeed, but did not ease, the people.
[134]
What passed in England may serve to give us an idea of what was done
in other countries. King John
[135]
having imprisoned the Jews, in order
to obtain their wealth, there were few who had not at least one of their
eyes plucked out. Thus did that king administer justice. A certain Jew,
who had a tooth pulled out every day for seven days successively, gave
ten thousand marks of silver for the eighth. Henry III extorted from
Aaron, a Jew at York, fourteen thousand marks of silver, and ten
thousand for the queen, in those times they did by violence what is now
done in Poland with some semblance of moderation. As princes could not
dive into the purses of their subjects because of their privileges, they
put the Jews to the torture, who were not considered as citizens.
At last a custom was introduced of confiscating the effects of those
Jews who embraced Christianity. This ridiculous custom is known only by
the law which suppressed it.
[136]
The most vain and trifling reasons
were given in justification of that proceeding; it was alleged that it
was proper to try them, in order to be certain that they had entirely
shaken off the slavery of the devil. But it is evident that this
confiscation was a species of the right of amortisation, to recompense
the prince, or the lords, for the taxes levied on the Jews, which ceased
on their embracing Christianity.
[137]
In those times, men, like lands,
were regarded as property. I cannot help remarking, by the way, how this
nation has been sported with from one age to another: at one time, their
effects were confiscated when they were willing to become Christians;
and at another, if they refused to turn Christians, they were ordered to
be burned.
In the meantime, commerce was seen to arise from the bosom of
vexation and despair. The Jews, proscribed by turns from every country,
found out the way of saving their effects. Thus they rendered their
retreats for ever fixed; for though princes might have been willing to
get rid of their persons, yet they did not choose to get rid of their
money.
The Jews invented letters of exchange;
[138]
commerce, by this
method, became capable of eluding violence, and of maintaining
everywhere its ground; the richest merchant having none but invisible
effects, which he could convey imperceptibly wherever he pleased.
The Theologians were obliged to limit their principles; and
commerce, which they had before connected by main force with knavery,
reentered, if I may so express myself, the bosom of probity.
Thus we owe to the speculations of the schoolmen all the misfortunes
which accompanied the destruction of commerce;
[139]
and to the avarice
of princes, the establishment of a practice which puts it in some
measure out of their power.
From this time it became necessary that princes should govern with
more prudence than they themselves could ever have imagined; for great
exertions of authority were, in the event, found to be impolitic; and
from experience it is manifest that nothing but the goodness and lenity
of a government can make it flourish.
We begin to be cured of Machiavelism, and recover from it every day.
More moderation has become necessary in the councils of princes. What
would formerly have been called a master-stroke in politics would be
now, independent of the horror it might occasion, the greatest
imprudence.
Happy is it for men that they are in a situation in which, though
their passions prompt them to be wicked, it is, nevertheless, to their
interest to be humane and virtuous.
Footnotes
[133]
See Aristotle, "Politics," lib. i, cap. 9 and 10.
[134]
See in "Marca Hispanica," the constitutions of Aragon, in the
years 1228 and 1231; and in Brussel, the agreement, in the year 1206,
between the King, the Countess of Champagne, and Guy of Dampierre.
[135]
Stow, "Survey of London," Book iii, p. 54.
[136]
The edict passed at Baville, 4th of April, 1392.
[137]
In France the Jews were slaves in mortmain, and the lords their
successors. Mr. Brussel mentions an agreement made in the year 1206,
between the King and Thibaut, Count of Champagne, by which it was agreed
that the Jews of the one should not lend in the lands of the other.
[138]
It is known that under Philip Augustus and Philip the Long, the
Jews who were chased from France took refuge in Lombardy, and that there
they gave to foreign merchants and travellers secret letters, drawn upon
those to whom they had entrusted their effects in France, which were
accepted.
[139]
See Nov. 83 of the Emperor Leo, which revokes the law of Basil
his father. This law of Basil is in Hermenopulus, under the name of Leo, lib.
iii, tit. 7, section 27.
21.21. 21. The Discovery of two new Worlds, and in what Manner Europe is
affected by it.
The compass opened, if I may so express myself, the
universe. Asia and Africa were found, of which only some borders were
known; and America, of which we knew nothing.
The Portuguese, sailing on the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the most
southern point of Africa; they saw a vast sea, which carried them to the
East Indies. Their danger upon this sea, the discovery of Mozambique,
Melinda, and Calicut, have been sung by Camoens, whose poems make us
feel something of the charms of the Odyssey and the magnificence of the
Æneid.
The Venetians had hitherto carried on the trade of the Indies
through the Turkish dominions, and pursued it in the midst of
oppressions and discouragements. By the discovery of the Cape of Good
Hope, and those which were made some time after, Italy was no longer the
centre of the trading world; it was, if I may be permitted the
expression, only a corner of the universe, and is so still. The commerce
even of the Levant depending now on that of the great trading nations to
both the Indies, Italy even in that branch can no longer be considered
as a principal.
The Portuguese traded to the Indies in right of conquest. The
constraining laws which the Dutch at present impose on the commerce of
the little Indian princes had been established before by the
Portuguese.
[140]
The fortune of the house of Austria was prodigious. Charles V
succeeded to the possession of Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon; he arrived
afterwards at the imperial dignity; and to procure him a new kind of
grandeur, the globe extended itself, and there was seen a new world
paying him obeisance.
Christopher Columbus discovered America; and though Spain sent
thither only a force so small that the least prince in Europe could have
sent the same, yet it subdued two vast empires, and other great states.
While the Spaniards discovered and conquered the west, the
Portuguese pushed their conquests and discoveries in the east. These two
nations met each other; they had recourse to Pope Alexander VI, who made
the celebrated line of partition, and determined the great suit.
But the other nations of Europe would not suffer them quietly to
enjoy their shares. The Dutch chased the Portuguese from almost all
their settlements in the East Indies; and several other nations planted
colonies in America.
The Spaniards considered these newly-discovered countries as the
subject of conquest; while others, more refined in their views, found
them to be the proper subjects of commerce, and upon this principle
directed their proceedings. Hence several nations have conducted
themselves with so much wisdom that they have given a kind of
sovereignty to companies of merchants, who, governing these far-distant
countries only with a view to trade, have made a great accessory power
without embarrassing the principal state.
The colonies they have formed are under a kind of dependence, of
which there are but very few instances in all the colonies of the
ancients; whether we consider them as holdings of the state itself, or
of some trading company established in the state.
The design of these colonies is to trade on more advantageous
conditions than could otherwise be done with the neighbouring people,
with whom all advantages are reciprocal. It has been established that
the metropolis,
[141]
or mother country, alone shall trade in the
colonies, and that from very good reason; because the design of the
settlement was the extension of commerce, not the foundation of a city
or of a new empire.
Thus it is still a fundamental law of Europe that all commerce with
a foreign colony shall be regarded as a mere monopoly, punishable by the
laws of the country; and in this case we are not to be directed by the
laws and precedents of the ancients, which are not at all
applicable.
[142]
It is likewise acknowledged that a commerce established between the
mother countries does not include a permission to trade in the colonies;
for these always continue in a state of prohibition.
The disadvantage of a colony that loses the liberty of commerce is
visibly compensated by the protection of the mother country, who defends
it by her arms, or supports it by her laws.
Hence follows a third law of Europe, that when a foreign commerce
with a colony is prohibited, it is not lawful to trade in those seas,
except in such cases as are excepted by treaty. Nations who are, with
respect to the whole globe, what individuals are in a state, are
governed like the latter by the laws of nature, and by particular laws
of their own making. One nation may resign to another the sea, as well
as the land. The Carthaginians forbade the Romans to sail beyond
certain limits,
[143]
as the Greeks had obliged the King of Persia to
keep as far distant from the sea-coast as a horse could gallop.
[144]
The great distance of our colonies is not an inconvenience that
affects their safety; for if the mother country, on whom they depend for
their defence, is remote, no less remote are those nations who rival the
mother country, and by whom they may be afraid of being conquered.
Besides, this distance is the cause that those who are established
there cannot conform to the manner of living in a climate so different
from their own; they are obliged therefore to draw from the mother
country all the conveniences of life. The Carthaginians,
[145]
to render
the Sardinians and Corsicans more dependent, forbade their planting,
sowing, or doing anything of the kind, under pain of death; so that they
supplied them with necessaries from Africa.
The Europeans have compassed the same thing, without having recourse
to such severe laws. Our colonies in the Caribbean islands are under an
admirable regulation in this respect; the subject of their commerce is
what we neither have nor can produce; and they want what is the subject
of ours.
A consequence of the discovery of America was the connecting Asia
and Africa with Europe; it furnished materials for a trade with that
vast part of Asia known by the name of the East Indies. Silver, that
metal so useful as the medium of commerce, became now as merchandise the
basis of the greatest commerce in the world. In fine, the navigation to
Africa became necessary in order to furnish us with men to labour in the
mines, and to cultivate the lands of America.
Europe has arrived at so high a degree of power that nothing in
history can be compared with it, whether we consider the immensity of
its expenses, the grandeur of its engagements, the number of its troops,
and the regular payments even of those that are least serviceable, and
which are kept only for ostentation.
Father Du Halde says
[146]
that the interior trade of China is much
greater than that of all Europe. That might be, if our foreign trade did
not augment our inland commerce. Europe carries on the trade and
navigation of the other three parts of the world; as France, England,
and Holland do nearly that of Europe.
Footnotes
[140]
See the account of Pirard, part II, chap. 15.
[141]
This, in the language of the ancients, is the state which
founded the colony.
[142]
Except the Carthaginians, as we see by the treaty which put an
end to the first Punic war.
[143]
Polybius, lib. iii.
[144]
The King of Persia obliged himself by treaty not to sail with
any vessel of war beyond the Cyanean rocks and the Chelidonean isles. --
Plutarch, "Cimon."
[145]
Aristotle, "Of Wonderful Things"; Livy, dec. 2, lib. vii.
21.22. 22. Of the Riches which Spain drew from America.
If Europe has
derived so many advantages from the American trade, it seems natural to
imagine that Spain must have derived much greater.
[147]
She drew from
the newly- discovered world so prodigious a quantity of gold and silver,
that all we had before could not be compared with it.
But (what one could never have expected) this great kingdom was
everywhere baffled by its misfortunes. Philip II, who succeeded Charles
V, was obliged to make the celebrated bankruptcy known to all the world.
There never was a prince who suffered more from the murmurs, the
insolence, and the revolt of troops constantly ill-paid.
From that time the monarchy of Spain has been incessantly declining.
This has been owing to an interior and physical defect in the nature of
those riches, which renders them vain — a defect which increases every
day.
Gold and silver are either a fictitious or a representative wealth.
The representative signs of wealth are extremely durable, and, in their
own nature, but little subject to decay. But the more they are
multiplied, the more they lose their value, because the fewer are the
things which they represent.
The Spaniards, after the conquest of Mexico and Peru, abandoned
their natural riches, in pursuit of a representative wealth which daily
degraded itself. Gold and silver were extremely scarce in Europe, and
Spain becoming all of a sudden mistress of a prodigious quantity of
these metals, conceived hopes to which she had never before aspired. The
wealth she found in the conquered countries, great as it was, did not,
however, equal that of their mines. The Indians concealed part of it;
and besides, these people, who made no other use of gold and silver than
to give magnificence to the temples of their gods and to the palaces of
their kings, sought not for it with an avarice like ours. In short, they
had not the secret of drawing these metals from every mine; but only
from those in which the separation might be made with fire: they were
strangers to the manner of making use of mercury, and perhaps to mercury
itself.
However, it was not long before the specie of Europe was doubled;
this appeared from the price of commodities, which everywhere was
doubled.
The Spaniards raked into the mines, scooped out mountains, invented
machines to draw out water, to break the ore, and separate it; and as
they sported with the lives of the Indians, they forced them to labour
without mercy. The specie of Europe soon doubled, and the profit of
Spain diminished in the same proportion; they had every year the same
quantity of metal, which had become by one-half less precious.
In double the time the specie still doubled, and the profit still
diminished another half.
It diminished even more than half: let us see in what manner.
To extract the gold from the mines, to give it the requisite
preparations, and to import it into Europe, must be attended with some
certain expense. I will suppose this to be as 1 to 64. When the specie
was once doubled, and consequently became by one-half less precious, the
expense was as 2 to 64. Thus the galoons which brought to Spain the same
quantity of gold, brought a thing which really was of less value by
one-half, though the expenses attending it had been twice as high.
If we proceed doubling and doubling, we shall find in this
progression the cause of the impotency of the wealth of Spain.
It is about two hundred years since they have worked their Indian
mines. I suppose the quantity of specie at present in the trading world
is to that before the discovery of the Indies as 32 is to 1; that is, it
has been doubled five times: in two hundred years more the same quantity
will be to that before the discovery as 64 is to 1; that is, it will be
doubled once more. Now, at present, fifty quintals of ore yield four,
five, and six ounces of gold;
[148]
and when it yields only two, the
miner receives no more from it than his expenses. In two hundred years,
when the miner will extract only four, this too will only defray his
charges. There will then be but little profit to be drawn from the gold
mines. The same reasoning will hold good of silver, except that the
working of the silver mines is a little more advantageous than those of
gold.
But, if mines should be discovered so fruitful as to give a much
greater profit, the more fruitful they may be, the sooner the profit
will cease.
The Portuguese in Brazil have found mines of gold so rich
[149]
that
they must necessarily very soon make a considerable diminution in the
profits of those of Spain, as well as in their
I have frequently heard people deplore the blindness of the court of
France, who repulsed Christopher Columbus, when he made the proposal of
discovering the Indies. Indeed they did, though perhaps without design,
an act of the greatest wisdom. Spain has behaved like the foolish king
who desired that everything he touched might be converted into gold, and
who was obliged to beg of the gods to put an end to his misery.
The companies and banks established in many nations have put a
finishing stroke to the lowering of gold and silver as a sign of
representation of riches; for by new fictions they have multiplied in
such a manner the signs of wealth, that gold and silver having this
office only in part have become less precious.
Thus public credit serves instead of mines, and diminishes the
profit which the Spaniards drew from theirs.
True it is that the Dutch trade to the East Indies has increased, in
some measure, the value of the Spanish merchandise: for as they carry
bullion, and give it in exchange for the merchandise of the East, they
ease the Spaniards of part of a commodity which in Europe abounds too
much.
And this trade, in which Spain seems to be only indirectly
concerned, is as advantageous to that nation as to those who are
directly employed in carrying it on.
From what has been said we may form a judgment of the last order of
the council of Spain, which prohibits the making use of gold and silver
in gildings, and other superfluities; a decree as ridiculous as it would
be for the states of Holland to prohibit the consumption of spices.
My reasoning does not hold good against all mines; those of Germany
and Hungary, which produce little more than the expense of working them,
are extremely useful. They are found in the principal state; they employ
many thousand men, who there consume their superfluous commodities, and
they are properly a manufacture of the country.
The mines of Germany and Hungary promote the culture of land; the
working of those of Mexico and Peru destroys it.
The Indies and Spain are two powers under the same master; but the
Indies are the principal, while Spain is only an accessory, it is in
vain for politics to attempt to bring back the principal to the
accessory; the Indies will always draw Spain to themselves.
Of the merchandise, to the value of about fifty millions of livres,
annually sent to the Indies, Spain furnishes only two millions and a
half: the Indies trade for fifty millions, the Spaniards for two and a
half.
That must be a bad kind of riches which depends on accident, and not
on the industry of a nation, on the number of its inhabitants, and on
the cultivation of its lands. The king of Spain, who receives great sums
from his custom-house at Cadiz, is in this respect only a rich
individual in a state extremely poor. Everything passes between
strangers and himself, while his subjects have scarcely any share in it;
this commerce is independent both of the good and bad fortune of his
kingdom.
Were some provinces of Castile able to give him a sum equal to that
of the custom-house of Cadiz, his power would be much greater; his
riches would be the effect of the wealth of the country; these provinces
would animate all the others, and they would be altogether more capable
of supporting their respective charges; instead of a great treasury he
would have a great people.
Footnotes
[147]
This has been already shown in a small treatise written by the
author about twenty years ago; which has been almost entirely
incorporated in the present work.
[148]
See Frezier, "Voyages."
[149]
According to Lord Anson, Europe receives every year from Brazil
two millions sterling in gold, which is found in sand at the foot of the
mountains, or in the beds of rivers. When I wrote the little treatise
mentioned in the first note of this chapter, the returns from Brazil
were far from being so considerable an item as they are at present.
21.23. 23. A Problem, it is not for me to decide the question whether, if
Spain be not herself able to carry on the trade of the Indies, it would
not be better to leave it open to strangers.
I will only say that it is
for their advantage to load this commerce with as few obstacles as
politics will permit. When the merchandise which several nations send to
the Indies is very dear, the inhabitants of that country give a great
deal of their commodities, which are gold and silver, for very little of
those of foreigners; the contrary to this happens when they are at a low
price, it would perhaps be of use that these nations should undersell
each other, to the end that the merchandise carried to the Indies might
be always cheap. These are principles which deserve to be examined,
without separating them, however, from other considerations: the safety
of the Indies, the advantages of only one custom-house, the danger of
making great alterations, and the foreseen inconveniences, which are
often less dangerous than those which cannot be foreseen.
