the profits of Indian commerce: the king, through the
monopolies which reserved to the government the exclusive
control of certain products, and obliged the merchants to
hire state vessels for the transport of merchandise; state
functionaries, by bribery; private individuals, by smuggling.
This explains the rapid decline, then the ruin, of these estab-
lishments, where, besides, never more than a small number
of Portuguese established themelves, and which were always
factories rather than colonies. Moreover, the commodities
of India being generally not bulky, such as spices, cotton
and silk stuffs, pearls, gold dust, ivory and precious stones,
did not necessitate the creation of a considerable marine;
since Portugal received those commodities, but did not
distribute them to Europe, others, and especially the Dutch,
enjoyed the surest profits of this commerce. Now the world
came to Lisbon after Indian commodities; in less than a
century they will be sought in India itself, and then the
fortunes of Portugal will fall.

The chief object of the Spanish colonies was at first the
working of mines; as this needed many arms, and as men be-
lieved it was necessary to only shake the ground a little in
the West Indies in order to pick up gold, Spain depopulated
herself to populate the New World. She had therefore in
America, instead of the long and brittle chain of Portuguese



130 REVOLUTION IN INTERESTS. [BOOK III.

factories, a dominion compact if not homogeneous, not
difficult to preserve, because the populations there were in-
offensive, because large cities permitted her to hold all the
country with a few troops, and because Spain was strong
enough in herself to cause her power to be long respected
by states which could grow only slowly like all those which
give themselves up to mining. Spain first took skillful meas-
ures to prevent a separation. In virtue of the bull of Pope
Alexander VI. the king was declared absolute master of the
soil of the regions discovered. Every possession there was
then only a concession on his part, and all authority there was
a temporary and limited delegation of his own. The whole
of the countries conquered were divided into two govern-
ments, that of Mexico, or New Spain, and that of Lima, or
Peru. Each government had a viceroy, commander of the
military forces and chief of the civil administration, with a
so-called audience, a tribunal independent of the viceroy in
judicial affairs, although presided over by him, serving him
as council in non-judicial affairs, and able to make remon-
strances, which he, however, was not obliged to take into
consideration. Later a third viceroy was established at
Santa Fe de Bogota, a fourth in 1778 at Buenos Ayres, and
the number of audiences was raised to eleven. These vari-
ous colonial authorities depended upon the Council of the
Indies, created in 1511 by Ferdinand, and organized in 1524
by Charles V. From this council emanated all laws relative
to the government and to the police of the colonies; every
person employed in America, from the viceroy to the low-
est official, was subordinated to it. As the king was sup-
posed always present at the council, the sessions took place
only in the spot where the court remained. For commer-
cial affairs and judicial cases, civil as well as criminal, which
resulted from the traffic between Spain and the colonies, a
special court had been established at Seville in 1501.

The cities had their town councils, but every position in the
government was forbidden to the Spaniards born in the
country; thus the metropolis held the Creoles apart, just as
they kept themselves aloof from the Indians. So the popu-
lation presented, as it were, a superposition of castes: Span-
iards from Europe, public functionaries or merchants,
soldiers or adventurers, Creoles, half breeds of various
degrees, Indians, and, still lower, mulattoes and negroes,
all separated by antipathies, which reassured the home



CHAP. XL] THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION. 131

government against a coalition, but which, however, one
day were effaced before the common desire for indepen-
dence.

Spain, considering that her colonies were to be only an
immense workshop for the production of precious metals,
forbade the colonists to cultivate European products, flax,
hemp, the vine, to produce manufactures or to construct
ships. She wished that they should be able to buy nothing
except of her, so that the monopoly should give life to her
industry and commerce. Foreigners received no license to
establish themselves in the colonies. It was only later that
America exported in large quantity its natural products:
cochineal, indigo, logwood for dyeing, mahogany for cabi-
net work, cocao, tobacco, quinine. All this commerce, cen-
tered in the hands, not of companies, but of a few opulent
houses, was carried on exclusively by Seville. Every year
there set out from that city twelve great ships, or galleons,
for Puerto Bello in New Granada, and fifteen for Vera Cruz
in Mexico, which carried to the colonies the products of
Spanish industry and brought back colonial commodities,
and especially piastres coined from the silver of the mines.

Portugal also reserved for herself the monopoly of Brazil-
ian commerce. Every year the fleet departed in the month
of March from Lisbon for Pernambuco, San Salvador, and
Rio Janeiro. The result was the same. Industry and com-
merce, fettered in the colonies by senseless prohibitions,
could not develop, and smitten with torpor in the capital by
the restriction which removed from them competition, soon
began to decrease. Evil economic measures, combined
with the disastrous policy of Charles V., pressed Spain to
her ruin and the colonies to revolt. The war of Mexican
independence in 1810 commenced at the village of Dolores,
whose vines the government ordered should be pulled up.

During the first days of conquest they had troubled them-
selves little about the Indians; they had either employed
them in the labor of the mines without consideration for their
feebleness or divided them among the proprietors for culti-
vation of the soil. Hence slavery in America commenced.
Its effects were quickly seen. The island of Hispaniola had
1,000,000 inhabitants in 1492; nineteen years after there
remained 14,000!

A good man, Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, pro-
tested against this atrocious abuse of force. During fifty



132 REVOLUTION IN INTERESTS. [BOOK III.

years he did not cease to plead the cause of the Indians.
In his book, entitled "Miscellany Concerning the Destruction
of the Indians," one may read of the atrocities committed
by the Spaniards, of the murderous labors and tortures, and
the chase after Indians with dogs nourished with human flesh
that they might better discover the scent. His Christian
complaints did not resound in vain. Charles V. promulgated
numerous laws in the interest of the natives, whose personal
liberty was guaranteed, and who had only to render the con-
queror certain duties of feudal service and to pay certain
tributes. But these advantages cost dear to another race.
Las Casas himself advised the transportation into America
of negroes bought on the African coast, as they were more
robust and more capable of supporting the fatigues of colo-
nial labor. In 1517 Charles V. gave the monopoly of
annually transporting 4000 slaves to one of his favorites,
who sold this right to the Genoese. The latter bought slaves
from the Portuguese, masters of the factories of Africa;
and the horrible traffic of which our century will see the end
began.

The natives of Brazil were treated by the Portuguese with
no less cruelty. Even here all those who did not protect
their liberty in the recesses of the woods were reduced to
slavery, and cultivation, having been greatly developed,
especially that of the sugar cane, which was brought from
Madeira, the number of hands was increased by the pur-
chase of negroes.

The imposition of laws and the condemnation of one race
to labor in place of another did not suffice to rescue from
barbarism these innumerable hordes of wandering hunters.
How attach them to the soil without civilizing them, and
how civilize them without converting them? The power of
Spain was therefore essentially linked with the success of
its missions. The progress of the Cross was slower than that
of the sword. The first missionaries belonging to the men-
dicant orders shared, or did not dare openly to brave, the
prejudices of the coarse and barbarous adventurers who had
begun the discovery and colonization of the country. The
Gospel must be for these poor natives a protection before it
was a light. Could they see brothers in their executioners?
"Let thyself be baptized," said a Franciscan to one of them,
"and thou shalt go to heaven." "Do the Spaniards go
there?" "Yes, but only those who are wise and good."



CHAP. XL] THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION. . 133

"Then I do not wish to go to heaven." But the zeal of the
missionaries increased with the difficulties of their task; by
their courage, and especially by the superiority of their views,
the Jesuits placed themselves in the first rank in these glorious
enterprises. In the Portuguese colonies one of the three
founders of the fraternity, St. Francis Xavier, the friend and
compatriot of Ignatius Loyola, gave an example of devotion
and success. In less than ten years he covered with
churches, colleges, and seminaries all Portuguese India, and
attacked Japan, where he made 3000 conversions. In his
tireless ardor this pacific conqueror, who had gone farther
than Alexander, wished to carry the Gospel into China, when
he died in the island of Sancian (1552).

Xavier was renowned without desiring it; the glory of his
disciples and imitators was not less great, though it has been
nameless. In 1556 the Society of Jesus counted all the
Spanish and Portuguese colonies as in the number of its
provinces. The Indians were converted in crowds, some
touched by the beautiful stories or struck by the great truths
of the Gospel; others yielding to the influence of pompous
splendors in the Catholic Church. For many the spectacle of
a superior civilization and of the material advantages which
it brought was a motive of conversion ; for all the instinctive
ascendancy of virtue, and principally the heroic sweetness of
the missionaries. Thus there arose, creation of the Christian
word, thousands of villages which, ordinarily built upon the
banks of the principal streams, served as a bond between
the cities and assured their necessary provisioning.

The missionaries were the active militia of the Church ;
they toiled in the desert. In ancient villages, in the boroughs
and cities, they were the instructors, the cures; above there
were the bishops with their chapters; at the summit of the
hierarchy, the archbishops of Mexico and Lima; later, those
of Caraccas, of Santa Fe de Bogota, and of Guatemala. All
this clergy, in virtue of the privileges conceded by Alexander
VI. and^Julius II. was entirely dependent, not upon the
Pope, wKb had only the confirmation of the pastors chosen,
but upon the king, who appointed to all the benefices. So the
religious bond fortified the political bond which attached the
colonies to the parent state. To recruit this rich and powerful
Church of Spanish America a multitude of cloisters, of semi-
naries and colleges, was founded, and public instruction had
its center in the two great universities of Lima and Mexico.



134 REVOLUTION IN INTERESTS. [BOOK III.

It is thus that the Catholic Church consolidated in America
the dominion of Spain at the same time that it mitigated the
evils of conquest ; thus it consoled the conquered by per-
paring them through a better civilization for their future
enfranchisement. Unhappily it did not arm itself for this
great labor with the spirit of charity alone. It accepted the
succor of the Inquisition, which Philip II. established in the
New World with its retinue of terrors and tortures as a curb
against the passions of every sort that were seething there.
It is especially in America that this horrible institution had
an essentially political end, and served as auxiliary to the
royal authority. There it could with a much greater energy
than on the other side of the ocean exercise over men's minds
its deadly power. During three centuries and a half what
has come forth from Mexico and Peru in which the civiliza-
tion of the world can glory?

These discoveries had, however, important results. They

opened to European activity the ancient Orient, asleep for

centuries, and a new world. America, re-

Consequences . , . ' _ . . j i j

of the new dis- peopled by European colonists, and placed at
coveries. equal distance between the opposite shores of

the old continent, was to become the dwelling place of
powerful societies who were to act their part in the work of
universal civilization.

They changed completely the march and the form of the
world's commerce. For land commerce, which till then had
been maintained as most conformed to the habits and needs
of the peoples, was substituted maritime commerce. The
cities in the interior of the continents declined, those on the
coasts increased, and the commercial importance attributed
to different countries by reason of their geographical posi-
tion found itself distributed in a manner entirely new. It
passed in Europe from the countries situated on the Mediter-
ranean to the countries situated on the Atlantic, from the
Italians to the Spaniards and the Portuguese, later from the
latter to the Dutch, the English, and the French. The more
commercial relations were multiplied the more the empire
of the sea seemed to usurp the empire of the land; speedily
an island, lost in the fogs of the West, became, thanks to its
trade, one of the preponderant powers of Europe.

They developed personal wealth, which is become the great
power of modern society. While in fact the Portuguese were
creating prodigious maritime commerce, the Spaniards were



CHAP. XL] THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION. 135

discovering the mines of Peru and Mexico, and were throw-
ing an enormous mass of specie into European circulation ;
122,000,000 kilograms of silver and 3 ( ooo,ooo kilograms of
gold between the years 1532 and 1848. "From 1515 to
1568, " says Bodin, "there was more gold in France than
could have been brought together in the two preceding cen-
turies." Thus the price of everything, and in particular of
labor, increased. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce,
enjoyed the capital which they need, in order to prosper, and
Protestantism gave them in the countries, where it was
established, more labor and more hands to produce through
the diminution of holidays and the shutting up of monas-
teries. "The third part of the kingdom," says a contem-
porary, " was cleared for cultivation in twelve years; and for
one great merchant, found at Paris, Lyons, or Rouen, were
found fifty under Louis XII., who made less difficulty in
going to Rome, Naples, or London than formerly to Lyons
or Geneva." Therefore as in our day the facilities of com-
munication were multiplying at the same time that produc-
tion and general well-being increased.

Then this economic phenomenon had also social conse-
quences, and that which is completed to-day began.

The Middle Ages had known only territorial wealth, placed
entirely in the hands of the lords; manufactures and com-
merce, facilitated by the abundance of capital, protected
by the good order which the kings were introducing into the
state, were about to create in modern Europe personal prop-
erty which was to be in the hands of the citizens. The first
was immovable and did not pass from the families that
held it; the second was accessible to all and remained in the
same houses only on condition that the factors which had
brought it there should continue labor, good conduct,
integrity, and intelligence. The insurmountable barrier
which formerly penned up each one in his own condition was
therefore fallen. That also was a sign of the new times.

Finally, as the system of colonization of the moderns dif-
fered greatly from that of the ancients, there was produced
a peculiar colonial policy which has reigned three centuries
and has not yet everywhere ceased.

The Greek colony completely free formed a new people,
who began by making the most of the soil and quickly en-
deavored to make the most also of the sea, for it is the for-
tune of well-situated agricultural colonies to grow sometimes



136 REVOLUTION IN INTERESTS. [BooK III.

slowly, but always sturdily. Some of these Greek colonies
are still reckoned among the great cities of the world. The
Roman colony, at once agricultural and military, but estab-
lished in a political end as a means of domination, was never
emancipated, but remained the part of a whole, prospering
or declining with all the rest.

The Portuguese, who thought only of commerce, possessed
clerks rather than colonists, factories instead of cities, a pros-
perity rapid and brilliant which was of necessity ephemeral,
because this greatness by no means reposed upon the broad
and solid basis of soil firmly occupied by cultivation. No
more did the Spaniards demand from their colonists an
agricultural improvement of the land, but a peculiar labor
which every day rendered necessary the assistance of the
mother state, and in consequence their strict dependence.

The English and the French were to develop another sort
of colonial establishments, those of the planters, where a
small number of proprietors worked the land by means of a
multitude of slaves in the midst of perpetual dangers, obliging
them also to rely upon the mother state.

We see that the modern colonies were at their origin con-
sidered as making the most of the countries discovered for
the profit only of the mother state: their exclusive commerce
was accorded either to a single city, like Lisbon and Seville,
or to privileged companies, like those of France, England,
and Holland, which most frequently did badly while at the
same time hindering the colonies from doing well.

If the sea was then furrowed by a larger number of vessels,

over the land passed more numerous travelers and a greater

amount of merchandise. The University of

Introduction _ . . . . ' . j i j . i_

of posts and Pans, imitating a very ancient idea, had estab-
o f ck s anals With lisned relays upon all the routes of the kingdom
to facilitate the correspondence of its students
with their families. Louis XI. understood how useful such
an institution would be to the government, and in 1464 created
posts for the service of the dispatches of the king and the
Pope ; later they took charge of the letters of private persons.
The institution appeared good, and it was imitated first in
Germany, shortly after in other states.

"The rivers," said Pascal, "are great highways which go on
all alone." It is true, but sometimes they go on badly either
over shallows or rapids and only in certain directions. The
canals go everywhere. The ancients had constructed only



CHAP. XL] THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION. 137

canals on ground of the same level ; they were not at all ac-
quainted with locks, by means of which the difference in the
level of rivers is overcome and boats are made to pass above
mountains. Locks with chambers and reservoirs of water
which fed them were devised in the fifteenth century by two
engineers of Viterbo whose names remain unknown. This
invention led to the idea of uniting in vast basins at the sum-
mit level of two mountain sides the waters of neighboring
heights, so as to feed the two branches of the canal descend-
ing in opposite directions. As early as 1481 Venice con-
structed a canal with locks; thirty-five years later Francis I.
invited to France Leonardo da Vinci, not less celebrated as
an engineer than as a painter. But the wars excited by the
ambition of the house of Austria and by the religious quarrels
during a century delayed the improvement of this useful dis-
covery. Henry IV. was the first to construct a summit level
canal, that of Briare between the Seine and the Loire.

By posts and by canals a more rapid means of communica-
tion for business and of general transportation was afforded.
By the aid of bills of exchange and banks of deposit and
credit, capital circulated like commodities; and insurance,
practiced first at Barcelona and Florence, and later at
Bruges, commenced the great system of guarantees which to-
day gives to commerce so much boldness and security.

By all these means as the relations between citizens mul-
tiplied the state became stronger; and as more bonds united
the peoples Europe began to form one great body of nations,
all conjointly responsible, which may perhaps later consti-
tute one single family.



CHAPTER XII.

REVOLUTION IN LETTERS, ARTS, AND SCIENCES, OR
THE RENAISSANCE.



Invention of Printing. Renaissance of Letters. Renaissance of Arts.
Renaissance of Sciences.



THIS ardor on the part of men of action, which pressed

them to issue from beaten paths in order to throw themselves

into untrodden ways, was shared by men of

printing*!*" 1 study. They also aspired after another world,

and they sought it, not before but behind.

Like Columbus they believed they were only going toward the

ancient continent and upon their route they found a new one.

Surfeited with the vain disputes of scholasticism and the
quibbles of the schools, which a barbarous Latin still envel-
oped with thick shadows, fatigued by moving in emptiness
and darkness, they hurried toward the pure light of renascent
antiquity. The discovery of a Latin manuscript or of a
Greek statue caused the joy of a victory. Men did not yet
create ; they were always imitating. The mind, too feeble
to walk alone by its own strength, shook off the yoke of
Aristotle and of the hieratic art of the Middle Ages only to
place itself under the discipline of new masters; an empire
more agreeable, because there was now a divided dominion,
which permitted freer ways and prepared for the complete
emancipation of the serfs of intelligence.

However, only a few superior men would have profited by
the new spirit without an admirable invention, thanks to
which the treasures otherwise reserved to a limited number
could become the possession of all.

In 1436 John Gutenberg of Mentz, while residing at Stras-
burg, perfected the processes of Lawrence Coster of Haar-
lem, and created the typograhic art by inventing movable
characters. Fourteen years later he formed associations with
Faust, a banker of Mentz, and with Schoeffer, a skillful cal-

138



CHAP. XII.] THE RENAISSANCE. 139

ligraphist, who added other improvements to the casting of
the characters, and probably invented the movable hand
mold, which is very similar to that employed to-day. From
that time printing was discovered; the Letters of Indulgence
and the Bible of 1454 are its most ancient monuments.
This marvelous art spread with rapidity in Germany, Italy,
France, Switzerland, England, and quickly through all
Christian Europe. The price of books suddenly fell in an
enormous degree; the printers, who were at the same time
learned men of the first rank the Aldi Manutii in Italy, the
Estiennes in France, and the Frobens in Switzerland popu-
larized by cheapness the literary masterpieces of antiquity,
of which they gave editions as remarkable for purity of text
as for typographical perfection. It is easy to appreciate the
rapid progress of printing and the sudden influence which it
exercised upon civilization by the fact that Josse Bade alone
at Paris published no less than 400 works, the larger number
in folio. In 1529, 24,000 copies of the ' 'Colloquia" of Eras-
mus were struck off, so eager were the people to learn, "for
they began to perceive," says the Catholic doctor Lingard,
"that their ancestors had lived in mental slavery as well as
in bodily servitude."

As early as 650 at Samarcand and Bokhara paper was manu-
factured from silk. In 706 Amrou at Mecca substituted
cotton for silk. This cotton, or Damascus paper, as it was
called, was known early in Europe. The Greeks imported
it into Southern Italy, where the Norman kings of Naples
used it frequently in their diplomas. The Arabs had intro-
duced it into Spain; but Spain, having much flax and hemp,
preferred linen paper, which at the thirteenth century was
employed in Castile, and thence penetrated to France and
through the rest of Europe. However, parchment for a long
time kept its pre-eminence because of its solidity. Notaries
were forbidden to use any other substance in their official