The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the Roman empire,
not more favoured than those of the country. They consisted, indeed, of a very
different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republics
of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of
lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found
it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and
to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence. After the fall
of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally
to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of
their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen
and mechanics, who seem in those days to have been of servile, or very nearly
of servile condition. The privileges which we find granted by ancient charters
to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in Europe sufficiently show
what they were before those grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege
that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent
of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord,
should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects
by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether or very nearly
in the same state of villanage with the
occupiers of land in the country.
They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who used
to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair,
like the hawkers and pedlars of the present times. In all the different countries
of Europe then, in the same manner as in several of the Tartar governments
of Asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and goods of
travellers when they passed through certain manors, when they went over certain
bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to place in a fair,
when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in. These different
taxes were known in England by the names of passage, pontage, lastage, and
stallage. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, who had, it seems,
upon some occasions, authority to do this, would grant to particular traders,
to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption
from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of servile, or very
nearly of servile condition, were upon this account called free-traders.
They in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll-tax.
In those days protection was seldom granted without a valuable consideration,
and this tax might, perhaps, be considered as compensation for what their
patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. At first, both those
poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have been altogether personal, and
to have affected only particular individuals during either their lives or
the pleasure of their protectors. In the very imperfect accounts which have
been published from Domesday Book of several of the towns of England, mention
is frequently made sometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each
of them, either to the king or to some other great lord for this sort of
protection; and sometimes of the general amount only of all those taxes.
But how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the inhabitants
of the towns, it appears evidently that they arrived at liberty and independency
much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country. That part of the
king's revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any particular town used
commonly to be let in farm during a term of years for a rent certain, sometimes
to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to other persons. The burghers
themselves frequently got credit enough to be admitted to farm the revenues
of this sort which arose out of their own town, they becoming jointly and
severally answerable for the whole rent. To let a farm in this manner was
quite agreeable to the usual economy of, I believe, the sovereigns of all
the different countries of Europe, who used frequently to let whole manors
to all the tenants of those manors, they becoming jointly and severally answerable
for the whole rent; but in return being allowed to collect it in their own
way, and to pay it into the king's exchequer by the hands of their own bailiff,
and being thus altogether freed from the insolence of the king's officers-
a circumstance in those days regarded as of the greatest importance.
At first the farm of the town was probably let to the burghers, in the same
manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process
of time, however, it seems to have become the general practice to grant it
to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain never afterwards
to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions,
in return for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those exemptions,
therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be considered
as belonging to individuals as individuals, but as burghers of a particular
burgh, which, upon this account, was called a free burgh, for the same reason
that they had been called free burghers or free traders.
Along with this grant, the important privileges above mentioned, that they
might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should
succeed to them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will,
were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given.
Whether such privileges had before been usually granted along with the freedom
of trade to particular burghers, as individuals, I know not. I reckon it
not improbable that they were, though I cannot produce any direct evidence
of it. But however this may have been, the principal attributes of villanage
and slavery being thus taken away from them, they now, at least, became really
free in our present sense of the word Freedom.
Nor was this all. They were generally at the same time erected into a commonalty
or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town council
of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of building walls
for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort
of military discipline by obliging them to watch and ward, that is, as anciently
understood, to guard and defend those walls against all attacks and surprises
by night as well as by day. In England they were generally exempted from
suit to the hundred and county courts; and all such pleas as should arise
among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left to the decision of
their own magistrates. In other countries much greater and more extensive
jurisdictions were frequently granted to them.
It might, probably, be necessary to grant to such towns as were admitted
to farm their own revenues some sort of compulsive jurisdiction to oblige
their own citizens to make payment. In those disorderly times it might have
been extremely inconvenient to have left them to seek this sort of justice
from any other tribunal. But it must seem extraordinary that the sovereigns
of all the different countries of Europe should have exchanged in this manner
for a rent certain, never more to be augmented, that branch of the revenue
which was, perhaps, of all others the most likely to be improved by the natural
course of things, without either expense or attention of their own: and that
they should, besides, have in this manner voluntarily erected a sort of independent
republics in the heart of their own dominions.
In order to understand this, it must be remembered that in those days the
sovereign of perhaps no country in Europe was able to protect, through the
whole extent of his dominions, the weaker part of his subjects from the oppression
of the great lords. Those whom the law could not protect, and who were not
strong enough to defend themselves, were obliged either to have recourse
to the protection of some great lord, and in order to obtain it to become
either his slaves or vassals; or to enter into a league of mutual defence
for the common protection of one another. The inhabitants of cities and burghs,
considered as single individuals, had no power to defend themselves; but
by entering into a league of mutual defence with their neighbours, they were
capable of making no contemptible resistance. The lords despised the burghers,
whom they considered not only as of a different order, but as a parcel of
emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves. The wealth
of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they
plundered them upon every occasion without mercy or remorse. The burghers
naturally hated and feared the lords. The king hated and feared them too;
but though perhaps he might despise, he had no reason either to hate or fear
the burghers. Mutual interest, therefore, disposed them to support the king,
and the king to support them against the lords. They were the enemies of
his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent
of those enemies as he could. By granting them magistrates of their own,
the privilege of making bye-laws for their own government, that of building
walls for their own defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under
a sort of military discipline, he gave them all the means of security and
independency of the barons which it was in his power to bestow. Without the
establishment of some regular government of this kind, without some authority
to compel their inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system,
no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them any
permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any considerable
support. By granting them the farm of their town in fee, he took away from
those whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for
his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion that he was ever afterwards
to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town or by granting
it to some other farmer.
The princes who lived upon the worst terms with their barons seem accordingly
to have been the most liberal in grants of this kind to their burghs. King
John of England, for example, appears to have been a most munificent benefactor
to his towns. Philip the First of France lost all authority over his barons.
Towards the end of his reign, his son Lewis, known afterwards by the name
of Lewis the Fat, consulted, according to Father Daniel, with the bishops
of the royal demesnes concerning the most proper means of restraining the
violence of the great lords. Their advice consisted of two different proposals.
One was to erect a new order of jurisdiction, by establishing magistrates
and a town council in every considerable town of his demesnes. The other
was to form a new militia, by making the inhabitants of those towns, under
the command of their own magistrates, march out upon proper occasions to
the assistance of the king. It is from this period, according to the French
antiquarians, that we are to date the institution of the magistrates and
councils of cities in France. It was during the unprosperous reigns of the
princes of the house of Suabia that the greater part of the free towns of
Germany received the first grants of their privileges, and that the famous
Hanseatic league first became formidable.
The militia of the cities seems, in those times, not to have been inferior
to that of the country, and as they could be more readily assembled upon
any sudden occasion, they frequently had the advantage in their disputes
with the neighbouring lords. In countries, such as Italy and Switzerland,
in which, on account either of their distance from the principal seat of
government, of the natural strength of the country itself, or of some other
reason, the sovereign came to lose the whole of his authority, the cities
generally became independent republics, and conquered all the nobility in
their neighbourhood, obliging them to pull down their castles in the country
and to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the city. This is the short
history of the republic of Berne as well as of several other cities in Switzerland.
If you except Venice, for of that city the history is somewhat different,
it is the history of all the considerable Italian republics, of which so
great a number arose and perished between the end of the twelfth and the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
In countries such as France or England, where the authority of the sovereign,
though frequently very low, never was destroyed altogether, the cities had
no opportunity of becoming entirely independent. They became, however, so
considerable that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, besides the
stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. They were, therefore,
called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the states of the
kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons in granting,
upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king. Being generally,
too, more favourable to his power, their deputies seem, sometimes, to have
been employed by him as a counterbalance in those assemblies to the authority
of the great lords. Hence the origin of the representation of burghs in the
states-general of all the great monarchies in Europe.
Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security
of individuals, were, in this manner, established in cities at a time when
the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every sort of violence.
But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their
necessary subsistence, because to acquire more might only tempt the injustice
of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the
fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition,
and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniences and elegancies
of life. That industry, therefore, which aims at something more than necessary
subsistence, was established in cities long before it was commonly practised
by the occupiers of land in the country. If in the hands of a poor cultivator,
oppressed with the servitude of villanage, some little stock should accumulate,
he would naturally conceal it with great care from his master, to whom it
would otherwise have belonged, and take the first opportunity of running
away to a town. The law was at that time so indulgent to the inhabitants
of towns, and so desirous of diminishing the authority of the lords over
those of the country, that if he could conceal himself there from the pursuit
of his lord for a year, he was free for ever. Whatever stock, therefore,
accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the
country naturally took refuge in cities as the only sanctuaries in which
it could be secure to the person that acquired it.
The inhabitants of a city, it is true, must always ultimately derive their
subsistence, and the whole materials and means of their industry, from the
country. But those of a city, situated near either the sea coast or the banks
of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined to derive them from the
country in their neighbourhood. They have a much wider range, and may draw
them from the most remote corners of the world, either in exchange for the
manufactured produce of their own industry, or by performing the office of
carriers between distant countries and exchanging the produce of one for
that of another. A city might in this manner grow up to great wealth and
splendour, while not only the country in its neighbourhood, but all those
to which it traded, were in poverty and wretchedness. Each of those countries,
perhaps, taken singly, could afford it but a small part either of its subsistence
or of its employment, but all of them taken together could afford it both
a great subsistence and a great employment. There were, however, within the
narrow circle of the commerce of those times, some countries that were opulent
and industrious. Such was the Greek empire as long as it subsisted, and that
of the Saracens during the reigns of the Abassides. Such too was Egypt till
it was conquered by the Turks, some part of the coast of Barbary, and all
those provinces of Spain which were under the government of the Moors.
The cities of Italy seem to have been the first in Europe which were raised
by commerce to any considerable degree of opulence. Italy lay in the centre
of what was at that time the improved and civilised part of the world. The
Crusades too, though by the great waste of stock and destruction of inhabitants
which they occasioned they must necessarily have retarded the progress of
the greater part of Europe, were extremely favourable to that of some Italian
cities. The great armies which marched from all parts to the conquest of
the Holy Land gave extraordinary encouragement to the shipping of Venice,
Genoa, and Pisa, sometimes in transporting them thither, and always in supplying
them with provisions. They were the commissaries, if one may say so, of those
armies; and the most destructive frenzy that ever befell the European nations
was a source of opulence to those republics.
The inhabitants of trading cities, by importing the improved manufactures
and expensive luxuries of richer countries, afforded some food to the vanity
of the great proprietors, who eagerly purchased them with great quantities
of the rude produce of their own lands. The commerce of a great part of Europe
in those times, accordingly, consisted chiefly in the exchange of their own
rude for the, manufactured produce of more civilised nations. Thus the wool
of England used to be exchanged for the wines of France and the fine cloths
of Flanders, in the same manner as the corn in Poland is at this day exchanged
for the wines and brandies of France and for the silks and velvets of France
and Italy.
A taste for the finer and more improved manufactures was in this manner
introduced by foreign commerce into countries where no such works were carried
on. But when this taste became so general as to occasion a considerable demand,
the merchants, in order to save the expense of carriage, naturally endeavoured
to establish some manufactures of the same kind in their own country. Hence
the origin of the first manufactures for distant sale that seem to have been
established in the western provinces of Europe after the fall of the Roman
empire. No large country, it must be observed, ever did or could subsist
without some sort of manufactures being carried on in it; and when it is
said of any such country that it has no manufactures, it must always be understood
of the finer and more improved or of such as are fit for distant sale. In
every large country both the clothing and household furniture of the far
greater part of the people are the produce of their own industry. This is
even more universally the case in those poor countries which are commonly
said to have no manufactures than in those rich ones that are said to abound
in them. In the latter, you will generally find, both in the clothes and
household furniture of the lowest rank of people, a much greater proportion
of foreign productions than in the former.
Those manufactures which are fit for distant sale seem to have been introduced
into different countries in two different ways.
Sometimes they have been introduced, in the manner above mentioned, by the
violent operation, if one may say so, of the stocks of particular merchants
and undertakers, who established them in imitation of some foreign manufactures
of the same kind. Such manufactures, therefore, are the offspring of foreign
commerce, and such seem to have been the ancient manufactures of silks, velvets,
and brocades, which flourished in Lucca during the thirteenth century. They
were banished from thence by the tyranny of one of Machiavel's heroes, Castruccio
Castracani. In 1310, nine hundred families were driven out of Lucca, of whom
thirty-one retired to Venice and offered to introduce there the silk manufacture.
Their offer was accepted; many privileges were conferred upon them, and they
began the manufacture with three hundred workmen. Such, too, seem to have
been the manufactures of fine cloths that anciently flourished in Flanders,
and which were introduced into England in the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth;
and such are the present silk manufactures of Lyons and Spitalfields. Manufactures
introduced in this manner are generally employed upon foreign materials,
being imitations of foreign manufactures. When the Venetian manufacture was
first established, the materials were all brought from Sicily and the Levant.
The more ancient manufacture of Lucca was likewise carried on with foreign
materials. The cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silk-worms
seem not to have been common in the northern parts of Italy before the sixteenth
century. Those arts were not introduced into France till the reign of Charles
IX. The manufactures of Flanders were carried on chiefly with Spanish and
English wool. Spanish wool was the material, not of the first woollen manufacture
of England, but of the first that was fit for distant sale. More than one
half the materials of the Lyons manufacture is at this day, foreign silk;
when it was first established, the whole or very nearly the whole was so.
No part of the materials of the Spitalfields manufacture is ever likely be
the produce of England. The seat of such manufactures, as they are generally
introduced by the scheme and project of a few individuals, is sometimes established
in a maritime city, and sometimes in an inland town, according as their interest,
judgment, or caprice happen to determine.
At other times, manufactures for distant sale group up naturally, and as
it were of their own accord, by the gradual refinement of those household
and coarser manufactures which must at all times be carried on even in the
poorest and rudest countries. Such manufactures are generally employed upon
the materials which the country produces, and they seem frequently to have
been first refined and improved in such inland countries as were, not indeed
at a very great, but at a considerable distance from the sea coast, and sometimes
even from all water carriage. An inland country, naturally fertile and easily
cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary
for maintaining the cultivators, and on account of the expense of land carriage,
and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to
send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap,
and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood,
who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries
and conveniencies of life than in other places. They work up the materials
of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work,
or what is the same thing the price of it, for more materials and provisions.
They give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce by saving the
expense of carrying it to the water side or to some distant market; and they
furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it that is either
useful or agreeable to them upon easier terms than they could have obtained
it before. The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce,
and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for.
They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce
by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as t frequently
contains the price of a great quantity of rude produce. A piece of fine cloth,
for example, which weighs only eighty pounds, contains in it, the price,
not only of eighty pounds' weight of wool, but sometimes of several thousand
weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people and of their
immediate employers. The corn, which could with difficulty have been carried
abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of
the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners
of the world. In this manner have grown up naturally, and as it were of their
own accord, the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and
Wolverhampton. Such manufactures are the offspring of agriculture. In the
modern history of Europe, their extension and improvement have generally
been posterior to those which were the offspring of foreign commerce. England
was noted for the manufacture of fine cloths made of Spanish wool more than
a century before any of those which now flourish in the places above mentioned
were fit for foreign sale. The extension and improvement of these last could
not take place but in consequence of the extension and improvement of agriculture
the last and greatest effect of foreign commerce, and of the manufactures
immediately introduced by it, and which I shall now proceed to explain.
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