W. S. Lindsay

“ After all their trials and dangers, they had at last reached, they thought, the fabled land of Cathay. We well know how pleasing are our sensations when we again see green fields and luxuriant trees after a long sea voyage, and therefore we can conceive the exquisite sense of enjoyment and delight of Columbus and his crew, when they cast anchor in the roadstead and surveyed the island they had, at length, reached. It was thickly inhabited. The natives knew not what to make of the strangers who had come among them, richly attired, while they were in a state of perfect nudity. ”

“ See how many persons gain a livelihood by this business—brokers, artificers, sailors, thousands of [Pg 482] families, and at last the merchants, whose profits amount, at least, to six hundred thousand ducats.... This is the produce of your garden; do you wish to destroy it? Surely not; but we must defend it against all attacks; seeing that you are the only people to whom the land and the sea are equally open; you are the channel through which all riches flow; the whole universe is interested in your prosperity; all the gold and silver in the world come into your hands. ”

“ Value of the trade with India.
From the earliest historic period, the productions of India have, indeed, been in almost incessant demand by the nations of the West, and from even the mysterious reign of Semiramis, the queen of Assyria, to our own time, the possession of India has been in turn the envy of them all. To Great Britain, India has perhaps been of less special value since the differential duties were abolished and its ports thrown open to the shipping and commerce of the world; but still that empire is a prize she would not readily relinquish. ”

“ By means of her caravans, canals, and rivers, Babylon became also the chief entrepôt for Western Asia, where the merchants of many countries assembled to exchange their merchandise; and such it remained for ages. Neither the heavy yoke of Asiatic despotism, nor the devastating sword of conquering nations, could destroy, though they might for a time overshadow, its splendour. It was only when the Persians, feeling no interest in sea-borne commerce, and dreading the incursions of the maritime powers, blocked up the Tigris, that its commercial greatness began to decline. ”

“ In no age or country have the extremes of wealth and poverty been so great; even the provincial merchants came not to the capital to increase its wealth, but rather to waste their own substance. They sought to rival, in display, the ancient noblesse; they rented their palaces to enjoy their society, and were ready to spend fortunes derived from commerce to win a ready entrance into their salons.
So early as the Augustan age, Livy and Pliny have alluded to the then enormous accumulation of wealth in Rome ”

“ They had advanced farther West than ever man had done before; still they continued leaving home far away, and pressing onwards into an apparently boundless abyss of ocean, through which they felt they should never be able to retrace their course, till at last the fair wind became in itself a source of the greatest alarm, from a notion that it always blew from east to west, and that if they attempted to return, they would never be able to reach the coast of Spain. ”

“ No commercial nation of either ancient or modern times presents a history, so far as we can trace it, more worthy of imitation than that of Phœnicia. Liberal, by comparison, in its policy, and enlightened in its intercourse with other peoples, it offered, in the plenitude of its power, an example to the ancient world of what industry and a sound policy could effect—a course worthy of imitation, even now. ”

“ Only a few years before Vasco de Gama started on his voyage of discovery in the East, a greater and better man had set sail to the West, in the hopes of thus reaching the fabled land of “Cathay.” Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, who had been trained from boyhood to the sea, had long cherished the idea that if he could only penetrate the mysterious waters of the Atlantic, he would find beyond them and at less distance than was then supposed, the shores of India, whence Europe had been so long supplied with its spices and numerous luxuries. ”

“ The letter announcing his discovery had produced an extraordinary sensation, not merely at the Spanish court, but in every part of Europe whither the news had spread. To Spain, then approaching the plenitude of her power, this discovery, following so closely on the conquest of Granada, was considered to be a special mark of Divine favour to the nation which had subdued the Moors and extended the Christian faith. Throughout the whole country it was hailed with the most enthusiastic delight, and the journey of Columbus from Seville to Barcelona was one continued triumph. ”

“ The most exaggerated accounts spread of the fabulous wealth of the territories, and adventurers of every kind, from the highest to the very lowest, were equally eager to join in the expedition. Some were doubtless inflamed with the mere hope and lust of wealth, while others less selfish in their motives pictured to themselves a wide field for the display of their military genius and skill, in what did not seem impossible to them, the actual conquest of the grand Khan and the capture of the fabled land of Cathay. ”

“ In cases of emergency, it would seem that men of substance in Greece, besides paying the whole of this special tax, fitted out at their own expense numerous vessels for the service of the state, and that a patriotic and generous rivalry prevailed among them, inducing them to do their utmost for the good of their country. From this laudable public spirit arose, in a great measure, that enlarged and enlightened system of commerce with foreign nations, for which the Greeks have been in all times conspicuous, and which still largely prevails among the leading Greek merchants resident in England. ”

“ Neglect and decline of commerce, and sufferings of the people.
But while a new life was being gradually infused into the empire by the creation of Constantinople, overgrown wealth and luxury, with the evils following in their train, indolence, waste, and extravagance, were only too surely working out the downfall of old Rome. Capital, which ought to have been used as a provision for fresh channels of employment for an increasing population, was devoted to pleasure and folly; while no middle class arose to create fresh capital by its industry and to supply the place of the annual waste. ”

“ Sailors have ever been a cosmopolitan race. As citizens of the world, they have had almost a common language as well as a common religion. The song which they still sing in lifting the anchor or in hoisting the sails, of “Ye-ho, cheerily, men!” or some such words, for we have never seen them in print, is the song, or at least the same tune sung a thousand years ago by the Venetian sailors, and resembling, we dare say, that lively and invigorating air re-echoed along the shores of Syria from the ships of the ancient Phœnicians as they manned their oars or spread their sails for sea. ”

“ Even the power of despotism cannot at once change the ideas and manners of a nation, especially when they have been confirmed by long habit, and rendered sacred by the sanction of religion. That Sesostris, in the course of a few years, should have so entirely overcome the prejudices of a superstitious people, as to be able to fit out four hundred ships of war in the Arabian Gulf, besides another fleet which he had in the Mediterranean, appears to be extremely improbable. Armaments of such magnitude would require the utmost efforts of a great and long established maritime power. ”

“ It is sufficient to state that the Romans only gained their footing in Britain by slow degrees, and that the legions which had conquered other countries almost as soon as they marched into them, had to encounter many a sturdy foe, and to achieve many a hard-earned victory, ere they obtained full control over a people, who, though fully alive to the advantages of a commercial intercourse with Rome, cherished a love of independence unsurpassed by any other nation of antiquity. Indeed, it was not until the governorship of Agricola that Britain could in any sense be called a Roman province ”

“ The Doge, with the dazzling pageantry of his court and council; hundreds of gay gondolas covering the placid waters, which flowed from the Adriatic among the numerous islets upon which the proud city had been erected; senators in their scarlet robes, and the élite of the Venetian dames, famed for their grace and beauty, and arrayed in the gorgeous dress of the period, constituted a display of wealth and grandeur never since surpassed. ”

“ The historian who attempts to trace the operations of men in their commercial pursuits during very remote ages, and to mark the various steps of their progress, will soon have the mortification of finding that the period of authentic history is limited to the time assigned to it in Holy Writ; and that all the speculations about the high civilization of the Hindus before the period usually assigned to the Deluge are mere dreams of antiquarian enthusiasm. ”

“ Thus he brought into contact with his own refined and civilized Greeks, not merely Oriental nations that were highly gifted in their own way, but also the semi-barbarous tribes of many lands, teaching them the advantages of commercial intercourse, and extending by its influence the comforts which habits of industry can alone bestow, together with the many blessings civilization confers. His conquests, like the discoveries of Columbus, made known the existence of rich regions before unsuspected, and countries where millions of the human race could find remunerative occupation. ”

“ Learning was almost at as low an ebb as it had been at the commencement of the reign of Alfred; while the middle classes, with some, though few, exceptions, were, in many respects, no better than the nobles, and trade and commerce languished and declined. Such was the state of things in England when the Norman conqueror landed on its shores. ”

“ The course of commerce with Rome.
When the course of events is considered, it is not surprising that the ancient Britons should have made less opposition to Claudius than they had done ninety-seven years before to Julius Cæsar. They had learned in the interval the advantages to be derived by intercourse with a much more wealthy and more polished people than themselves. They saw that not only the enlightenment of the mind accompanies civilization in its progress, but that, as civilization increases, it creates wants which require to be supplied, and luxuries which crave to be satisfied. ”

“ These places of repose naturally became entrepôts of commerce, where merchants from all parts exchanged their commodities; and, hence, some of them, as Palmyra and Petra, became wealthy and magnificent cities, and the sites of temples and sanctuaries, to which the pilgrim and the merchant alike resorted. From these and other great centres, the leading caravans took their departure on their distant and dangerous journeys by routes as untraceable to the eye as the track of a ship on the ocean. ”

“ Long before the compass was known, the seamen of Norway, like the ancient mariners of the Island of Ceylon, regulated their track through the ocean by the flight of birds set free from on board their vessels; a proof that, in regions of the world far removed from each other, the same primitive practices prevailed. ”

“ Egypt was an easy and rich prey to them. But Alexandria, still a great and flourishing city, offered the most strenuous resistance to the invaders. Abundantly supplied, and easily replenished with the means of subsistence and defence, her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human rights, religion and property; and if the Emperor Heraclius had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies might have been poured into the harbour before the fleet of the Saracens had taken up their position before it. ”