The Discovery Of The Cape Of Good Hope Gave A Different Direction To The
Commerce Of The East, While At
The same time it very greatly extended it;
but as it is obvious that a greater quantity of the commodities
Supplied by
this part of the world could not be purchased, except by an increase in the
produce and manufactures of the purchasing nations, they also pushed
forward in industry, experience, skill, and capital. The Portuguese and
Spaniards first reaped the fruits of the discovery of the Cape of Good
Hope; subsequently the Dutch; and at the period at which this part of our
sketch of commerce commences, the English were beginning to assume that
hold and superiority in the East, by which they are now so greatly
distinguished. The industry of Europe, especially of the middle and
northern states, was further stimulated by the discovery of America, and,
indirectly, by all those causes which in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries tended to increase information, and to secure the liberty of the
mass of the people. The invention of printing; the reformation; the
destruction of the feudal system, at least in its most objectionable,
degrading, and paralizing features; the contentions between the nobility
and the sovereigns, and between the latter and the people; gave a stimulus
to the human mind, and thus enlarged its capacities, desires, and views, in
such a manner, that the character of the human race assumed a loftier port.
From all these causes commerce benefited, and, as was natural to expect, it
benefited most in those countries where most of these causes operated, and
where they operated most powerfully.
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