tion before Holland and England had acquired any considerable financial importance.

In the decisive struggle between royalty and nobility we see industry taking different sides in different places, but always on the same principle,-that of supporting the feebler party, in expectation of reciprocal service, and in the intention of victory. There

Political was no concert in this, but merely natural policy; alliances. and we see, accordingly, that the industrial power formed a political alliance with royalty in France, and with the feudal aristocracy in England, notwithstanding the natural sympathy which, as I have explained, would have decided the English case the other way. Here we find the origin of the characteristic differences between French and English industry,-the first tending to centralization, and the second to partial combinations,according to the feudal principles on which each set out. The first is the most natural and favourable to industry, and spread over the greater part of Western Europe; the second was an exceptional case, though shared by some few Continental populations. The first encouraged a greater generality, and prepared the working class for an earlier conception of a genuine organization, such as is even yet however too little dreamed of by anybody; whereas, the second encouraged a greater speciality, and thus aggravated the besetting vice of the industrial movement. As an exemplification of the two methods, Louis XI. established the post, -a truly royal intervention in European industry; while the English carried their distrust of centralization so far as to refuse as long as possible the institution of a police sufficient to protect their great cities.

I mentioned before that the condition of slavery was unfavourable Mechanical to mechanical inventions; and we may look to this inventions. period for confirmation of the converse truth. We must refer to the latter part of the period for the majority of such inventions; but I must point out here that the earlier portion gave us the compass, firearms, and the invention of printThe Compass. ing. It is true, the compass was invented two centuries before; but it was not till the fourteenth century that it was improved and adapted for use; that is, it lay useless till the extension and improvement of navigation converted it into a practical need. Whether gunpowder was now invented, or revived from disuse, the sudden employment of firearms is a sign Firearms. of the times. Military methods were improved, that the industrial population might defend itself against the military caste, without undergoing the long and irksome apprenticeship formerly necessary; and the art was particularly suitable to the paid soldiery, whom kings and cities might thus enable to conquer a powerful feudal coalition. I have before pointed out that this new facility did not protract the warlike period; and we must be very

well aware that the prevalence of war does not depend on the excellence of its apparatus; for the warfare of our own time is immeasurably less than our knowledge and resources would enable it to be, if the spirit were not wanting. And again, I think it a mistake to suppose that the increased expense of modern warfare is owing to the introduction of new apparatus. I believe, on the contrary, that if we could compare the accounts of ancient and modern warfare, we should find that the new methods are decidedly economical, and that the increased expense arises from the substitution of mercenaries for volunteer armies,-a change which must have produced the same result, if the weapons had remained the same as of old. Again, I must point out the services rendered to natural philosophy by the scientific pursuit of war, by means at once of the common interest in those departments of knowledge, and of the special establishments which seem to make the military spirit an instrument, as it were, of modern civilization, through the rational positivity which it has thus acquired.

The commonest error in regard to the third of these inventions is to connect the whole progressive movement with Art of Printing. the art of printing, which was only the most powerful material means of its propagation, and therefore of its indirect consolidation. Like its predecessors, and even more than they, this great innovation was a result of the state of contemporary society, which had been preparing for three centuries. In the vaunted days of antiquity, when slavery and war left only a very small number of readers, the ordinary method of propagating writings sufficed, even for occasional extraordinary demands: but the case was far otherwise in the Middle Ages, when the vast clergy of Europe constituted a reading class to whom it was of the utmost importance to render transcription cheap and rapid. During the scholastic period, when the universities became thronged, the matter became one of serious anxiety; and in the twelfth century, the multiplication of copies far exceeded anything that the ancients could have known. And when universal personal emancipation succeeded, and industrial activity spread, and increased ease multiplied the number of readers, and more and more written instruction was required to supply to the lowest classes the want of the oral teaching which was now insufficient, the concurrence of demands, under the æsthetic, scientific, and philosophical pressure of the times is quite enough to account for the invention of printing. No such preparation had ever before been made for the rise of any art as now for that of printing, while yet modern industry had afforded some strong proofs of its aptitude to employ mechanical methods, in the place of human agents. Paper had been invented centuries before, no doubt because it was wanted for transcriptions; and it would be more reasonable to inquire why the art of printing was so long in coming, than to wonder at its appearance. It was in

Germany especially that the need of a better method of multiplying books was felt, during the great controversies about the nationalization of the clergies of Europe. And when the method had been found, there ensued a most important connection between intellectual progress and the spread of a new art, of such industrial value that the guardian powers of industry could not but respect it more and more, and the most obscure policy was compelled to tolerate the free circulation of books, and to favour their production, as a source of public wealth. This was first the case in Holland, and then everywhere else, contributing to restrain the retrograde aspirations of the governments, instigated by abuses of the press, such as are mixed up with the noblest services, while the press remains under the liabilities of our spiritual anarchy. Thus then it appears that while all the conditions were long preparing for these three great inventions, there were no technological difficulties about them which prevented their appearance when they were sought with a persevering intention. If it be true that they had long existed among Asiatic nations, we have only another proof that they did not originate the great social changes of which they were the instruments and the propagators; for they have produced no such effects in the East. In noticing them, I have for once quitted my principle of generality, in consideration of their importance, and of the erroneous judgment usually pronounced upon them. I need not say that I shall pass over all other discoveries, whatever may be their merit and importance, because these are enough for the purposes for which I diverged from my abstract dynamical analysis. The two great geographical discoveries of Maritime that age belong by their results to the next period; discovery. but they must be noticed here on account of their derivation from the earlier part of the movement. The expeditions of Columbus and of Vasco de Gama were certainly owing to the disposition of modern industry to explore the surface of the globe, after the school of Alexandria had proved its form, and now that the compass permitted bolder enterprises at sea, at the same time that new fields for commercial activity were wanted. The growing concentration of the temporal power now permitted the necessary accumulation of resources; which was not the case earlier, nor would have been later among powers like the Italian, for instance, which, however eminent in naval force, were occupied with struggles at home. If, as is probable, hardy Scandinavian pirates really visited North America some centuries before, the fruitlessness of their enterprise proves that there was nothing fortuitous in the achievement when it did take place, and that the social value of such deeds depends on their connection with contemporary civilization. In this case, the discovery of Columbus was prepared for during the fifteenth century by Atlantic excursions of increasing boldness, gradually followed by European settlements.

SECOND PERIOD.

321

During the second of our three periods, the Protestant, we shall find the positive and the negative progression still Second period. coinciding, as before. The industrial movement was obtaining something like regulation, while the revolutionary movement was becoming subject to a directly critical philosophy. The working classes were no longer regarded merely as an auxiliary force which the temporal power would be wise to propitiate by concessions. The advanced concentration of the political power, favourable as it was to enlargement of views, revealed to the modern governments, whether royal or aristocratic, the relation that industry now bore to the rest of the political system. I do not mean that the time was come for rulers to take philosophical views of the necessary preponderance of industry. War was still regarded as the chief end of government; but it was perceived that industry must be favoured as the basis of military power. And thus we see that it is no fancy of the historian, but necessary fact, that the two kinds of progress became systematic at the same time and in the same degree.

Again, we find in the positive as in the negative case a great difference in the mode of progression, according as it related to the central or to the local forces of the system; whether the temporal dictatorship in the one case resided in the sovereign or in the aristocracy; and whether, in the other case, the chief industrial cities should preserve their independence, or should give way before wide national organization. In the first instance, indeed, both the monarchical and the aristocratic polity required the sacrifice of the great commercial cities, whose independence had once been necessary, but was now become obstructive, through their mutual rivalry. They were humbled therefore without opposition from any quarter. But they left stronger traces of their original industrial constitution under the rule of the aristocracy than under that of royalty. The old urban privileges were more completely effaced by the systematic action of royalty than by the more desultory action of aristocratic rule. The difference was felt, beyond the period, in the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods, and in the attachment of their respective advocates. The French, or monarchical system, issued in the works which distinguished Colbert's administration, and which exhibited a regulation of industry which, considering the age, I believe to be the finest type of administration that is upon record. But the tendency of monarchy to fall back upon aristocracy prevented the method from being durable; so that it merely yielded a temporary impulse, and indicated what might be done under a future and better grounded organization. The other method, which originated in Holland, but was best exemplified in England, began to show its true tendencies in the time of Cromwell, though it had been prepared for in the reign of Elizabeth. Its chief advantage was the union between the industrial and the feudal

VOL. II.

X

elements, through the active or passive participation of the nobility in industrial operations, which were thus ennobled in the popular view. It was in this way that the prosperity of Venice had been founded three centuries before; and we see in it something that contrasts finely with the stupid contempt of the French aristocracy for the working classes. But the example of Venice shows that this method is not favourable to the prosperity of industry, nor, in the long-run, to its organization. It aggravates the tendency to detail, and to national exclusiveness; and it preserves the influence of that element of the feudal system which clings the most pertinaciously to the old régime. As for the area occupied by each method, -with the exception of Prussia, which offered an anomalous spectacle of the union of legal Protestantism with genuine monarchy, for reasons which it is not possible for me to go into here,-the connection of industry with the royal power took place in Catholic countries, and with aristocratic power in Protestant countries. The theological spirit is equally adverse to industry in the Catholic and in the Protestant form; but the Protestant had the temporary advantage of encouraging personal activity. The effect was seen in Holland being first, and England afterwards, the centre of European industry but the Protestant nations are probably destined to pay the price of their transient superiority by their comparative inaptitude for a genuine and extensive reorganization.

system.

One evidence that the industrial movement was becoming organColonial ized at this period is the rise of the Colonial system. It is an interesting question whether colonization on the whole advanced or retarded the evolution of modern society. On the one hand, it opened a new career to the military spirit by land and sea, and there was a revival of the religious spirit, from its suitability to the less civilized populations abroad; and thus the theological and military régime was protracted, and the time of reorganization was set further off. But again, the new extension of human relations improved the existing idea of the final regeneration, by showing how it was destined to include the whole human race, and thus condemning the policy, then very common, of systematically destroying the races of men, in despair of incorporating them. Again, by the stimulus which colonization imparted to industry, its social and political importance was so much enhanced that, on the whole, I have no doubt that the general progress was accelerated by this great new European event,-though by no means to the extent commonly supposed. It is a true remark of some of the most eminent of the Scotch philosophers, that some countries, which by their geographical position, or from other causes, have had least share in colonization, have benefited quite as much by it as the rest, and some even more. The main diversity in modes of colonization results from its being effected under Catholic and monarchical, or Protestant and aristocratic rule. Dutch