solutely 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.*

What passed in England may serve to give us an idea of what was done in other countries. King John† 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. 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.§ In those times, men, like lands, were regarded as property. I cannot help remarking by the way, how this nation has been sported

* See in Marca Hispanica, the constitutions of Aragon, in the years 1228, and 1233; and in Brussel, the agreement, in the year 1206, be tween the king, the countess of Champagne, and Guy of Dampierre. + Stowe's Survey of London, book 3, p. 54.

The edict passed at Baville, April 4, 1392.

§ 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.

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 burnt.

In the mean time, 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 chuse to get rid of their money.

The Jews invented letters of exchange; * commerce, by this method, became capable of eluding violence, and of maintaining every where 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, re-entered, 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; † 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 is 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 however their interest to be humane and virtuous.

* 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.

See the 83rd novel of the emperor Leo, which revokes the law of Basil bis father. This law of Basil is in Hermenopulus, under the name of Leo, lib. 3, tit. 7. § 27.

CHAP. XXI.

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 uniAsia and Africa were found, of which only some borders were known; and America, of which we knew nothing.

verse.

The Portuguese, sailing on the Atlantic occean, 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 center 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.*

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

* See the Relation of Fr. Pirard, part 2, chap. 15.

to pope Alexander VI. who made the celebrated line of partition, and adjudged the great process.

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 new 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 accessary 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 holding 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, 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.+

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.

From hence follows a third law of Europe, that when a

*This, in the language of the ancients, is the state which founded the colony.

+ Except the Carthaginians, as we see by the treaty which put an end to the first Punic war.

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, like these are governed 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 forbad the Romans to sail beyond certain limits,* as the Greeks had obliged the king of Persia to keep as far distant from the sea-coast as a horse could gallop.+

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 conveniencies of life. The Carthaginians, to render the Sardinians and Corsicans more dependent, forbad their planting, sowing, or doing any thing of the like 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 Caribbee 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 a merchandize, 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 is arrived to so high a degree of power, that nothing in history can be compared to it. Whether we consider the immensity of its expenses, the grandeur of its engagements, the

* Polyb. lib. 3.

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, in the life of Cimon.

Aristotle on Wonderful Things. Livy, lib. 7, Dec. 2.