But Our Work Embraces Another Topic; The Progress Of Commercial Enterprise
From The Earliest Period To The Present Time.
That an extensive and
interesting field is thus opened to us will be evident, when we contrast
the state of the wants and habits of the people of Britain, as they are
depicted by Caesar, with the wants and habits even of our lowest and poorest
classes.
In Caesar's time, a very few of the comforts of life, - scarcely one
of its meanest luxuries, - derived from the neighbouring shore of Gaul, were
occasionally enjoyed by British Princes: in our time, the daily meal of the
pauper who obtains his precarious and scanty pittance by begging, is
supplied by a navigation of some thousand miles, from countries in opposite
parts of the globe; of whose existence Caesar had not even the remotest
idea. In the time of Caesar, there was perhaps no country, the commerce of
which was so confined: - in our time, the commerce of Britain lays the whole
world under contribution, and surpasses in extent and magnitude the
commerce of any other nation.
The progress of discovery and of commercial intercourse are intimately and
almost necessarily connected; where commerce does not in the first instance
prompt man to discover new countries, it is sure, if these countries are
not totally worthless, to lead him thoroughly to explore them. The
arrangement of this work, in carrying on, at the same time, a view of the
progress of discovery, and of commercial enterprise, is, therefore, that
very arrangement which the nature of the subject suggests.
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