No More Learning

In the dark, monkish ages, the intercourse of
the learned was as much impeded and confined as that of the merchant. A
few unwieldy vessels coasted the shores of Europe, and mendicant friars
and ignorant pilgrims carried a miserable account of what was passing in
the world from monastery to monastery. What doctor had last disputed on
the peripatetic philosophy at some university, or what new heresy had
last appeared, not only comprised the whole of their literary
intelligence, but was delivered with little accuracy, and received with
as little attention. While this thick cloud of mental darkness
overspread the western world, was Don Henry, prince of Portugal, born;
born to set mankind free from the feudal system, and to give to the
whole world every advantage, every light that may possibly be diffused
by the intercourse of unlimited commerce:--

"For then from ancient gloom emerg'd
The rising world of trade: the genius, then,
Of navigation, that in hopeless sloth
Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep
For idle ages, starting heard at last
The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspir'd,
To love of useful glory rous'd mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mix'd the world. "

THOMSON.

In contrast to this melancholy view of human nature, sunk in barbarism
and benighted with ignorance, let the present state of Europe be
impartially estimated. Yet, though the great increase of opulence and
learning cannot be denied, there are some who assert that virtue and
happiness have as greatly declined. And the immense overflow of riches,
from the East in particular, has been pronounced big with destruction to
the British empire. Everything human, it is true, has its dark as well
as its bright side; but let these popular complaints be examined, and it
will be found that modern Europe, and the British empire in a very
particular manner, have received the greatest and most solid advantages
from the modern, enlarged system of commerce. The magic of the old
romances, which could make the most withered, deformed hag, appear as
the most beautiful virgin, is every day verified in popular declamation.
Ancient days are there painted in the most amiable simplicity, and the
modern in the most odious colours. Yet, what man of fortune in England
lives in that stupendous gross luxury which every day was exhibited in
the Gothic castles of the old chieftains! Four or five hundred knights
and squires in the domestic retinue of a warlike earl was not uncommon,
nor was the pomp of embroidery inferior to the profuse waste of their
tables; in both instances unequalled by all the mad excesses of the
present age.

While the baron thus lived in all the wild glare of Gothic luxury,
agriculture was almost totally neglected, and his meaner vassals fared
harder, infinitely less comfortably, than the meanest industrious
labourers of England do now; where the lands are uncultivated, the
peasants, ill-clothed, ill-lodged, and poorly fed, pass their miserable
days in sloth and filth, totally ignorant of every advantage, of every
comfort which nature lays at their feet. He who passes from the trading
towns and cultured fields of England to those remote villages of
Scotland or Ireland which claim this description, is astonished at the
comparative wretchedness of their destitute inhabitants; but few
consider that these villages only exhibit a view of what Europe was ere
the spirit of commerce diffused the blessings which naturally flow from
her improvements.
In the Hebrides the failure of a harvest almost
depopulates an island. Having little or no traffic to purchase grain,
numbers of the young and hale betake themselves to the continent in
quest of employment and food, leaving a few, less adventurous, behind,
to beget a new race, the heir of the same fortune. Yet from the same
cause, from the want of traffic, the kingdom of England has often felt
more dreadful effects than these. Even in the days when her Henries and
Edwards plumed themselves with the trophies of France, how often has
famine spread all her horrors over city and village? Our modern
histories neglect this characteristic feature of ancient days; but the
rude chronicles of these ages inform us, that three or four times in
almost every reign was England thus visited. The failure of the crop was
then severely felt, and two bad harvests in succession were almost
insupportable. But commerce has now opened another scene, has armed
government with the happiest power that can be exerted by the rulers of
a nation--the power to prevent every extremity[29] which may possibly
arise from bad harvests; extremities, which, in former ages, were
esteemed more dreadful visitations of the wrath of Heaven than the
pestilence itself. Yet modern London is not so certainly defended
against the latter, its ancient visitor, than the commonwealth by the
means of commerce, under a just and humane government, is secured
against the ravages of the former. If, from these great outlines of the
happiness enjoyed by a commercial over an uncommercial nation, we turn
our eyes to the manners, the advantages will be found no less in favour
of the civilized.

Whoever is inclined to declaim at the vices of the present age, let him
read, and be convinced, that the Gothic ages were less virtuous. If the
spirit of chivalry prevented effeminacy, it was the foster-father of a
ferocity of manners now happily unknown. Rapacity, avarice, and
effeminacy are the vices ascribed to the increase of commerce; and in
some degree, it must be confessed, they follow her steps. Yet infinitely
more dreadful, as every palatinate in Europe often felt, were the
effects of the two first under the feudal lords than can possibly be
experienced under any system of trade. The virtues and vices of human
nature are the same in every age: they only receive different
modifications, and are dormant, or awakened into action, under different
circumstances. The feudal lord had it infinitely more in his power to be
rapacious than the merchant. And whatever avarice may attend the trader,
his intercourse with the rest of mankind lifts him greatly above that
brutish ferocity which actuates the savage, often the rustic, and in
general characterizes the ignorant part of mankind.