And yet,if we regard the question from the highest point of view of philosophic history,we must pronounce the universalenthusiasm of this second modern phase for manufactures and commerce to have been essentially just,as leading the nationsinto the main avenues of general social development.If the thought of the period,instead of being impelled by contemporarycircumstances,could have been guided by sociological prevision,it must have entered with zeal upon the same path which itempirically selected.The organization of agricultural industry could not at that period make any marked progress,for thedirection of its operations was still in the hands of the feudal class,which could not in general really learn the habits ofindustrial life,or place itself in sufficient harmony with the workers on its domains.The industry of the towns had to precedethat of the country,and the latter had to be developed mainly through the indirect action of the former.And it is plain that itwas in the life of the manufacturing proletariat,whose labours are necessarily the most continuous and the most social,thata systematic discipline could at a later period be first applied,to be afterwards extended to the rural populations.
That the efforts of Governments for the furtherance of manufactures and commerce were really effective towards that end isadmitted by Adam Smith,and cannot reasonably be doubted,though free trade doctrinaires have often denied it.Technicalskill must have been promoted by their encouragements;whilst new forms of national production were fostered by attractingworkmen from other countries,and by lightening the burden of taxation on struggling industries.Communication andtransport by land and sea were more rapidly improved with a view to facilitate traffic;and,not the least important effect,thesocial dignity of the industrial professions was enhanced relatively to that of the classes before exclusively dominant.
It has often been asked to whom the foundation of the mercantile system,in the region whether of thought or of practice,isto be attributed.But the question admits of no absolute answer.That mode of conceiving economic facts arisesspontaneously in unscientific minds,and ideas suggested by it are to be found in the Greek and Latin writers.The policywhich it dictates was,as we have shown,inspired by the situation of the European nations at the opening of the modernperiod.Such a policy had been already in some degree practised in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,thus preceding anyformal exposition or defence of its speculative basis.At the commencement of the sixteenth century it began to exercise awidely extended influence.Charles V adopted it,and his example contributed much to its predominance.Henry VIII andElizabeth conformed their measures to it.The leading states soon entered on a universal competition,in which each Powerbrought into play all its political and financial resources for the purpose of securing to itself manufacturing and commercialpreponderance.Through almost the whole of the seventeenth century the prize,so far as commerce was concerned,remained in the possession of Holland,Italy having lost her former ascendency by the opening of the new maritime routes,and by her political misfortunes,and Spain and Germany being depressed by protracted wars and internal dissensions.Theadmiring envy of Holland felt by English politicians and economists appears in such writers as Raleigh,Mun,Child,andTemple;(4)and how strongly the same spectacle acted on French policy is shown by a well-known letter of Colbert to M.dePomponne,(5)ambassador to the Dutch States.Cromwell,by the Navigation Act,which destroyed the carrying trade ofHolland and founded the English empire of the sea,and Colbert,by his whole economic policy,domestic and international,were the chief practical representatives of the mercantile system.From the latter great statesman the Italian publicistMengotti gave to that system the name of Colbertismo;but it would be an error to consider the French minister as havingabsolutely accepted its dogmas.He regarded his measures as temporary only,and spoke of protective duties as crutches bythe help of which manufacturers might learn to walk and then throw them away.The policy of exclusions had beenpreviously pursued by Sully,partly with a view to the accumulation of a royal treasure,but chiefly from his specialenthusiasm for agriculture,and his dislike of the introduction of foreign luxuries as detrimental to the national character.
