other countries and sends out cloth, among other manufactures, in exchange. Now, of course, it depends very largely upon the physical characteristics of a country-such as the nature of its soil, its fertility, the presence of rivers to water the land, of mountains, of metals, and so forth- -as to whether it can produce certain necessaries of life, and one country generally has in abundance what some other country lacks, while this latter country has a great deal of what the former needs. So if these two countries are at all civilised they will freely exchange what they have in abundance for what they chiefly lack. Thus commerce arises between them.

2. National Skill.-Again, the people of one country may be cleverer than those of another, and may be able, for instance, to make up into cloth the wool or cotton which the second country grows in large quantities but does not know how to manufacture, or at least not to manufacture well. Thus, in the Middle Ages England grew large quantities of wool (§ 88) but did not know how to make it into good cloth. At the same time Flanders had not much wool, but the Flemish were very skilful weavers, and so for a long time a considerable commerce took place between our island and Flanders, England sending out wool and receiving in exchange well-made cloth. So we see that, besides the physical characteristics of a country, we must take account in commercial history of the characteristics and talents of its people.

3. International Carriers.-But sometimes a country has neither a good supply of raw material or metals, nor are its people clever at manufactures. Nevertheless, they

can take a considerable place in commerce, and they do so by acting as carriers between one nation and another. Thus the Venetians and Genoese in medieval times had hardly any natural products wherewith to trade, but they grew very rich by acting as carriers between the north of Europe and the south, and also Asia, exchanging among other things the wool and linen fabrics of Flanders for the silk of the East. Afterwards these carrier nations became manufacturers also, but their wealth originally came

from their acting as exchangers between var peoples (§ 53).

4. The Sources of National Wealth.-We see the that commerce depends upon the products of a country, upon the skill of its inhabitants, or upon a carrying trade. To-day England affords a good example of how a country may grow rich by practising all three kinds of commerce, for she has abundance of raw material in metals, and manufactures them too; she has no raw material in cotton or silk and comparatively little in wool, but she imports these and works them up into textile fabrics; and thirdly, she has many ships and steamers, and does a great trade in carrying various products and manufactures from one country, including herself, to others. In the course of this book we shall speak of various commercial nations, and it will be useful for you to try and discover from which of these sources they derived their commercial wealth. And in doing so you must remember that a nation's wealth is very often the source of its greatness in politics. When Spain and Portugal were great commercial nations they were also the greatest political powers in Europe, and their wealth, derived from the New World (§ 111), gave them an unequalled political position. On the other hand, England in the Middle Ages was not a very great commercial country, and consequently did not count for much in European politics. But from the reign of Elizabeth onward, when her merchants began to grow enterprising and wealthy, she came to the front rapidly, and after many conflicts with her commercial rivals, established herself in her present position.

5. Commerce and War.-Again, you must always take account of the commercial elements in war. Many wars arise almost solely from commercial or economic causes, as did the Peasants' War in Germany (§ 140) and the eighteenth century wars between England and France (§ 134). And no war can be carried on without a good deal of wealth to pay for it, unless indeed it be purely a war of plunder, such as were the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire. So, whenever you come to any war in general history, not merely in the history of commerce, you will do well to ask

other count se questions: what was its real cause? and how tures, paid for? For it must continually be remembered up a war arises from a cause, is pursued for an object, and terminates in a result, though very often not the result that the combatants expected. And remember, too, that somebody always has to pay for it. The great Continental War of 1793-1815, in which England fought, originated partly in commercial and partly in political causes; was pursued with the object of crushing England's great commercial rival France; and resulted in the exhaustion of every country in Europe except England, which gained tremendous wealth from the demand for her manufactures that arose immediately after it (§ 164). But it was paid for by generations of poverty and misery among the working classes, and by heavy and oppressive taxation wrung from their underpaid labour. The French Revolution, again, was almost entirely due to economic causes, and was, to a large extent, the price paid by France for the military glories of Louis XIV. (§ 143) Those glories were purchased by the misery of French peasants, who took their revenge in the horrors of the Revolution. The crusades of olden times were paid for largely by the rising burghers of English and European towns, who gave their lords money to spend in Palestine in return for municipal and commercial freedom. The exploits of knights like Du Guesclin and other ornaments of chivalry were paid for by cruel extortion from their serfs and retainers; for the heroes of chivalry could not go about wasting their time in tournaments and battles without spending a great deal of wealth; and as they never did anything to obtain that wealth, their miserable dependants had to support them and pay for their extravagances. Thus, all through the ages you will find that the history of commerce or the exchange of wealth, and the history of industry or the making of wealth, will show you, if you care to look, how great historical events were paid for. Nothing in history is gratis.

CHAPTER II

ANCIENT COMMERCE

6. The Chief Nations of the Ancient World.-The most commercial nation of ancient times was undoubtedly the Phenicians, together with their great descendants the Carthaginians. After them we may place the Greeks, though they hardly ever showed the enterprise of the Phenicians. But the Greeks did many other greater things in art and literature, and we owe them far more than we do to the Phenician traders, mighty men though these were. We owe a great deal, too, to the Romans, who have taught us the art of statesmanship, and have left many brilliant examples and warnings in politics. Like the Greeks, the Romans were not an essentially commercial people, but they had the good sense to encourage trade; and though they at first gained their wealth chiefly by conquest, they always tried to preserve peace and develop the resources of a country when they had subjugated it. The Egyptians were rather an industrial and agricultural than a commercial nation, but their position, as being on the highway from the East to Europe, forced them into commerce, and several of their towns, especially Alexandria, became great commercial centres, though the Egyptians themselves did not go much to sea or travel by land for commercial purposes, but left that in the hands of the Phenicians and Greeks.

7. The Phenicians. Their Discovery of Spain. These Phenicians were the smallest and yet the richest nation in antiquity. They inhabited only a narrow strip of coast-line along the north of Palestine and Syria, between Mount

Lebanon and the sea, but in the dim ages before Greeks and Romans arose upon the world's stage they were the masters of the Mediterranean. Their two great cities, Sidon and Tyre, were flourishing centres of commerce and manufactures when the Israelites came out of Egypt, and their ships and sailors were the finest in the ancient world. Indeed, from their position the Phenicians had every opportunity of making good ships, for the mountains of Lebanon immediately behind them afforded an abundant supply of valuable timber, especially cedar and fir, and in the ships thus built their sailors made their way along the coast first to Cyprus, then to the islands of the Ægean Sea and Greece in the north, and to Egypt and Africa in the south, and so along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea till they came at last to Spain, which in those early times was the richest known country in minerals, especially in silver. The discovery of Spain and its silver was to the Phenicians what the discovery of the mines of Peru was to the Spaniards in more modern times. It gave them at once immense wealth, and they proceeded to develop the country assiduously. They had discovered it apparently about 1050 B.C., the first point touched being the mouth of the Baetis or Guadalquivir, and here they founded Gades (or Cadiz) and Tartessus, which is probably the same as the Hebrew Tarshish. Besides silver they got from Spain tin, lead, iron, and even gold, as well as abundance of corn, wine, oil, wax, fruit, and fine wool.

8. The Phenicians in North-West Europe and in Asia. -Moreover, they used it as a kind of basis for trading operations in the north-west of Europe, for, starting from Gades, their ships now went up the west coast of Spain till they came to the Cassiterides, whence they got large quantities of tin. Proceeding still farther into what then seemed very distant regions, they seem to have visited the lands on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Thence they got corn, wool, hides, furs, and amber (then very highly prized), large quantities of fish, copper and other metals, and timber; in exchange for which the Phenician cities exported their own manufactures, such as purple-dyed robes, carpets and fine