[Sidenote: Spanish adventurers]

Spain lost no time in exploiting her new dominions, during the next century hundreds of ships carried tens thousands of adventurers to seek their fortune in the west. For it was not as colonists that most of them went, but in a spirit compounded of that of the crusader, the knight-errant, and the pirate. If there is anything in the paradox that artists have created natural beauty, it is a truer one to say that the Spanish romances created the Spanish colonial empire. The men who sailed on the great adventure had feasted {436} on tales of paladins and hippogrifs, of enchanted palaces and fountains of youth, and miraculously fair women to be rescued and then claimed by knights. They read in books of travel purporting to tell the sober truth of satyrs and of purple unicorns and of men who spread their feet over their heads for umbrellas and of others whose heads grew between their shoulders. No wonder that when they went to a strange country they found the River of Life in the Orinoco, colonies of Amazons in the jungle, and El Dorado, the land of gold, in the riches of Mexico and Peru! It is a testimony to the imaginative mood of Europe, as well as to the power of the pen, that the whole continent came to be called, not after its discoverer, but after the man who wrote the best romances—mostly fictions—about his travels in it.

[Sidenote: Exploitation of natives]

In the Greater Antilles, where Spain made her first colonies, her rule showed at its worst. The soft native race, the Caribs, almost completely disappeared within half a century. The best modern authority estimates that whereas the native population of Espanola (Haiti) was between 200,000 and 300,000 in 1493, by 1548 hardly 5000 Indians were left. In part the extinction of the natives was due to new diseases and to the vices of civilization, but far more to the heartless exploitation of them by the conquerors. Bartholomew de las Casas, the first priest to come to this unfortunate island, tells stories of Spanish cruelty that would be incredible were they not so well supported. With his own eyes he saw 3000 inoffensive Indians slaughtered at a single time; of another batch of 300 he observed that within a few months more than half perished at hard labor. Again, he saw 6000 Indian children condemned to work in the mines, of whom few or none long survived. In vain a bull of Paul III declared the Indians capable of becoming {437} Christians and forbade their enslavement. In vain the Spanish government tried to mitigate at least some of the hardships of the natives' lot, [Sidenote: 1537] ordering that they should be well fed and paid. The temptation to exploit them was too strong; and when they perished the Spaniards supplied their place by importing negroes from Africa, a people of tougher fibre.

Spanish exploration, followed by sparse settlement, soon opened up the greater part of the Americas south of the latitude of the present city of San Francisco. Of many expeditions into the trackless wilderness, only a few were financially repaying; the majority were a drain on the resources of the mother country. In every place where the Spaniard set foot the native quailed and, after at most one desperate struggle, went down, never again to loose the conqueror's grip from his throat or to move the conqueror's knee from his chest. Even the bravest were as helpless as children before warriors armed with thunder and riding upon unknown monsters.

But in no place, save in the islands, did the native races wholly disappear as they did in the English settlements. The Spaniards came not like the Puritans, as artisans and tillers of the soil intent on founding new homes, but as military conquerors, requiring a race of helots to toil for them. For a period anarchy reigned; the captains not only plundered the Indians but fought one another fiercely for more room—more room in the endless wilderness! Eventually, however, conditions became more stable; Spain imposed her effective control, her language, religion and institutions on a vast region, doing for South America what Rome had once done for her.

The lover of adventure will find rich reward in tracing the discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto, of Florida by Ponce de Leon, and of the whole course of {438} the Amazon by Orellana who sailed down it from Peru, or in reading of Balboa, "when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific." A resolute man could hardly set out exploring without stumbling upon some mighty river, some vast continent, or some unmeasured ocean. But among all these fairly-tales [Transcriber's note: fairy-tales?] there are some that are so marvellous that they would be thought too extravagant by the most daring writers of romance. That one captain with four hundred men, and another with two hundred, should each march against an extensive and populous empire, cut down their armies at odds of a hundred to one, put their kings to the sword and their temples to the torch, and after it all reap a harvest of gold and precious stones such as for quantity had never been heard of before—all this meets us not in the tales of Ariosto or of Dumas, but in the pages of authentic history.

[Conquest of Mexico]

In the tableland of Mexico dwelt the Aztecs, the most civilized and warlike of North American aborigines. Their polity was that of a Spartan military despotism, their religion the most grewsome known to man. Before their temples were piled pyramids of human skulls; the deities were placated by human sacrifice, and at times, according to the deicidal and theophagous rites common to many primitive superstitions, themselves sacrificed in effigy or in the person of a beautiful captive and their flesh eaten in sacramental cannibalism. Though the civilization of the Aztecs, derived from the earlier and perhaps more advanced Mayans, was scarcely so high as that of the ancient Egyptians, they had cultivated the arts sufficiently to work the mines of gold and silver and to hammer the precious metals into elaborate and massive ornaments.

When rumors of their wealth reached Cuba it seemed at last as if the dream of El Dorado had come true. Hernando Cortez, a cultured, resolute, brave and {439} politic leader, gathered a force of four hundred white men, with a small outfit of artillery and cavalry, and, on Good Friday, 1519, landed at the place now called Vera Cruz and marched on the capital. The race of warriors who delighted in nothing but slaughter, was stupefied, partly by an old prophecy of the coming of a god to subdue the land, partly by the strange and terrible arms of the invaders. Moreover their neighbors and subjects were ready to rise against them and become allies of the Spaniards. In a few months of crowded battle and massacre they lay broken and helpless at the feet of the audacious conqueror, who promptly sent to Spain a glowing account of his new empire and a tribute of gold and silver. Albert Duerer in August, 1520, saw at Brussels the "things brought the king from the new golden land," and describes them in his diary as including "a whole golden sun, a fathom in breadth, and a whole silver moon of the same size, and two rooms full of the same sort of armour, and also all kinds of weapons, accoutrements and bows, wonderful shields . . . altogether valued at a hundred thousand guidon. And all my life," he adds, "I have never seen anything that so rejoiced my heart as did these things."

[Conquest of Peru]

If an artist, familiar with kings and courts and the greatest marts of Europe could write thus, what wonder that the imagination of the world took fire? The golden sun and the silver moon were, to all men who saw them, like Helen's breasts, the sun and moon of heart's desire, to lure them over the western waves. Twelve years after Cortez, came Pizarro who, with a still smaller force conquered an even wealthier and more civilized empire. The Incas, unlike the Mexicans, were a mild race, living in a sort of theocratic socialism, in which the emperor, as god, exercised absolute power over his subjects and in return cared {440} for at least their common wants. The Spaniards outdid themselves in acts of treachery and blood. In vain the emperor, Atahualpa, after voluntarily placing himself in the hands of Pizarro, filled the room used as his prison nine feet high with gold as ransom; when he could give no more he was tried on the preposterous charges of treason to Charles V and of heresy, and suffered death at the stake. Pizarro coolly pocketed the till then undreamed of sum of 4,500,000 ducats,[1] worth in our standards more than one hundred million dollars.

[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of the globe, 1519-22]

But the crowning act of the age of discovery was the circumnavigation of the globe. The leader of the great enterprise that put the seal of man's dominion on the earth, was Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in Spanish service. With a fleet of five vessels, only one of which put a ring around the world, and with a crew of about 275 men of whom only 18 returned successful, he sailed from Europe. [Sidenote: September 20, 1519] Coasting down the east of South America, [October 21, 1519] exploring the inlets and rivers, he entered the straits that bear his name and covered their 360 miles in thirty-eight days. After following the coast up some distance north, he struck across the Pacific, the breadth of which he much underestimated. For ninety-eight days he was driven by the east trade-wind without once sighting land save two desert islands, while his crew endured extremities of hunger, thirst and scurvy. At last he came to the islands he called, after the thievish propensities of their inhabitants, the Ladrones, making his first landing at Guam. Spending but three days here to refit and provision, he sailed again on March 9, [Sidenote: 1521] and a week later discovered the islands known, since 1542, as the Philippines. {441} In an expedition against a savage chief the great leader met his death on April 27, 1521. As other sailors and as he, too, had previously been as far to the east as he now found himself, he had practically completed the circumnavigation of the globe. The most splendid triumph of the age of discovery coincided almost to a day with the time that Luther was achieving the most glorious deed of the Reformation at Worms.

[Sidenote: September 1522]

Magellan's ship, the Vittoria, proceeded under Sebastian del Cano, and finally, with thirty-one men, of whom only eighteen had started out in her, came back to Portugal. The men who had burst asunder one of the bonds of the older world, were, nevertheless, deeply troubled by a strange, medieval scruple. Having mysteriously lost a day by following the sun in his westward course, they did penance for having celebrated the fasts and feasts of the church on the wrong dates.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Exploration]

While Spain was extending her dominions westward, little Portugal was building up an even greater empire in both hemispheres. In the fifteenth century, this hardy people, confined to their coast and without possibility of expanding inwards, had seen that their future lay upon the water. To the possessor of sea power the ocean makes of every land bordering on it a frontier, vulnerable to them and impervious to the enemy. The first ventures of the Portuguese were naturally in the lands near by, the North African coast and the islands known as the Madeiras and the Azores. Feeling their way southward along the African coast they reached the Cape of Good Hope but did not at once go much further. [Sidenote: 1486 or 1488] This path to India was not broken until eleven years later, when Vasco da Gama, after a voyage of great daring [Sidenote: 1497-8]—he was ninety-three days at sea on a course of 4500 miles from the Cape Verde Islands to South Africa—reached Calicut on May 20, 1498. This city, now sunken in the sea, was {442} then the most flourishing port on the Malabar Coast, exploited entirely by Mohammedan traders. Spices had long been the staple of Venetian trade with the Orient, and when he returned with rich cargo of them the immediate effect upon Europe was greater than that of the voyage of Columbus. Trade seeks to follow the line of least resistance, and the establishment of a water way between Europe and the East was like connecting two electrically charged bodies in a Leyden jar by a copper wire. The current was no longer forced through a poor medium, but ran easily through the better conductor. With more rapidity than one would think possible in that age, the commercial consequences of the discovery were appreciated. The trade of the Levant died away, and the center of gravity was transferred from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. While Venice decayed Lisbon rose with mushroom speed to the position of the great emporium of European ocean-borne trade, until she in her turn was supplanted by Antwerp.

Da Gama was soon imitated by others. [Sidenote: 1500] Cabral made commercial settlements at Calicut and the neighboring town of Cochin, and came home with unheard-of riches in spice, pearls and gems. [Sidenote: 1503] Da Gama returned and bombarded Calicut, and Francis d'Almeida was made Governor of India [Sidenote: 1505] and tried to consolidate the Portuguese power there on the correct principle that who was lord of the sea was lord of the peninsula. The rough methods of the Portuguese and their competition with the Arab traders made war inevitable between the two rivals. To the other causes of enmity that of religion was added, for, like the Spaniards, the Portuguese tried to combine the characters of merchants and missionaries, of pirates and crusaders. When the first of Da Gama's sailors to land at Calicut was asked what he sought, his laconic answer, "Christians {443} and spices," had in it as much of truth as of epigrammatic neatness.

[Sidenote: Portuguese cruelty to Indians]

Had the Portuguese but treated the Hindoos humanely they would have found in them allies against the Mohammedan traders, but all of them, not excepting their greatest statesman, Alphonso d'Albuquerque, pursued a policy of frightfulness. When Da Gama met an Arab ship, after sacking it, he blew it up with gunpowder and left it to sink in flames while the women on board held up their babies with piteous cries to touch the heart of this knight of Christ and of mammon. Without the least compunction Albuquerque tells in his commentaries how he burned the Indian villages, put part of their inhabitants to death and ordered the noses and ears of the survivors cut off.

[Sidenote: Trade]

Nevertheless, the Portuguese got what they wanted, the wealthy trade of the East. Albuquerque, failing to storm Calicut, seized Goa farther north and made it the chief emporium. But they soon felt the need of stations farther east, for, as long as the Arabs held Malacca, where spices were cheaper, the intruders did not have the monopoly they desired. Accordingly Albuquerque seized this city on the Malay Straits, [Sidenote: 1511] which, though now it has sunk into insignificance, was then the Singapore or Hong-Kong of the Far East. Sumatra, Java and the northern coast of Australia were explored, the Moluccas were bought from Spain for 350,000 ducats, and even Japan and China were reached by the daring traders. In the meantime posts were established along the whole western and eastern coasts of Africa and in Madagascar. But wherever they went the Portuguese sought commercial advantage not permanent settlement. Aptly compared by a Chinese observer to fishes who died if taken from the sea, they founded an empire of vast length out of incredible thinness.

{444} [Sidenote: Brazil]

The one exception to this rule, and an important one, was Brazil. The least showy of the colonies and the one that brought in the least quick profit eventually became a second and a greater Portugal, outstripping the mother country in population and dividing South America almost equally with the Spanish. In many ways the settlement of this colony resembled that of North America by the English more than it did the violent and superficial conquests of Spain. Settlers came to it less as adventurers than as home-seekers and some of them fled from religious persecution. The great source of wealth, the sugar-cane, was introduced from Madeira in 1548 and in the following year the mother country sent a royal governor and some troops.

[Sidenote: Decadence of Portugal]

But even more than Spain Portugal overtaxed her strength in her grasp for sudden riches. The cup that her mariners took from the gorgeous Eastern enchantress had a subtle, transforming drug mingled with its spices, whereby they were metamorphosed, if not into animals, at least into orientals, or Africans. While Lisbon grew by leaps and bounds the country-side was denuded, and the landowners, to fill the places of the peasants who had become sailors, imported quantities of negro slaves. Thus not only the Portuguese abroad, but those at home, undeterred by racial antipathy, adulterated their blood with that of the dark peoples. Add to this that the trade, immensely lucrative as it seemed, was an enormous drain on the population of the little state; and the causes of Portugal's decline, almost as sudden as its rise, are in large part explained. So rapid was it, indeed, that it was noticed not only by foreign travellers but by the natives. Camoens, though he dedicated his life to composing an epic in honor of Vasco da Gama, lamented his country's decay in these terms:

{445} O pride of empire! O vain covetise Of that vain glory that we men call fame . . . What punishment and what just penalties Thou dost inflict on those thou dost inflame . . . Thou dost depopulate our ancient state Till dissipation brings debility.

Nor were artificial causes wanting to make the colonies expensive and the home treasury insolvent. The governors as royal favorites regarded their appointments as easy roads to quick wealth, and they plundered not only the inhabitants but their royal master. The inefficient and extravagant management of trade, which was a government monopoly, furnished a lamentable example of the effects of public ownership. And when possible the church interfered to add the burden of bigotry to that of corruption. An amusing example of this occurred when a supposed tooth of Buddha was brought to Goa, to redeem which the Rajah of Pegu offered a sum equal to half a million dollars. While the government was inclined to sell, the archbishop forbade the acceptance of such tainted money and ordered the relic destroyed.

[Sidenote: 1521-80]

Within Portugal itself other factors aided the decline. From the accession of John III to the amalgamation with Spain sixty years later, the Cortes was rarely summoned. The expulsion of many Jews in 1497, the massacre and subsequent exile of the New Christians or Marranos, [Sidenote: 1506-7] most of whom went to Holland, commenced an era of destructive bigotry completed by the Inquisition. [Sidenote: The Inquisition established, 1536] Strict censorship of the press and the education of the people by the Jesuits each added their bit to the forces of spiritual decadence.

For the fury of religious zeal ill supplied the exhausted powers of a state fainting with loss of blood and from the intoxication of corruption. Gradually her grasp relaxed on North Africa until only three {446} small posts in Morocco were left her, those of Ceuta, Arzila and Tangier. A last frantic effort to recover them and to punish the infidel, undertaken by the young King Sebastian, ended in disaster and in his death in 1578. After a short reign of two years by his uncle Henry, who as a cardinal had no legitimate heirs, Portugal feebly yielded to her strongest suitor, Philip II, [Sidenote: 1580-1640] and for sixty years remained a captive of Spain.

[Sidenote: Other nations explore]

Other nations eagerly crowded in to seize the trident that was falling from the hands of the Iberian peoples. There were James Cartier of France, and Sebastian Cabot and Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir Francis Drake of England, and others. They explored the coast of North America and sought a Northwest Passage to Asia. Drake, after a voyage of two years and a half, [Sidenote: 1577-80] duplicated the feat of Magellan, though he took quite a different course, following the American western coast up to the Golden Gate. He, too, returned "very richly fraught with gold, silver, silk and precious stones," the best incentive to further endeavor. But no colonies of permanence and consequence were as yet planted by the northern nations. Until the seventeenth century their voyages were either actuated by commercial motives or were purely adventurous. The age did not lack daring explorers by land as well as by sea. Lewis di Varthema rivalled his countryman Marco Polo by an extensive journey in the first decade of the century. Like Burckhardt and Burton in the nineteenth century he visited Mecca and Medina as a Mohammedan pilgrim, and also journeyed to Cairo, Beirut, Aleppo and Damascus and then to the distant lands of India and the Malay peninsula.

[Sidenote: Russia]

It may seem strange to speak of Russia in connection with the age of discovery, and yet it was precisely in the light of a new and strange land that our English ancestors regarded it. Cabot's voyage to the {447} White Sea in the middle of the century was every whit as new an adventure as was the voyage to India. Richard Chancellor and others followed him and established a regular trade with Muscovy, [Sidenote: 1553] and through it and the Caspian with Asia. The rest of Europe, west of Poland and the Turks, hardly heard of Russia or felt its impact more than they now do of the Tartars of the Steppes.

But it was just at this time that Russia was taking the first strides on the road to become a great power. How broadly operative were some of the influences at work in Europe lies patent in the singular parallel that her development offers to that of her more civilized contemporaries. Just as despotism, consolidation, and conquest were the order of the day elsewhere, so they were in the eastern plains of Europe. Basil III [Sidenote: Basil III, 1505-33] struck down the rights of cities, nobles and princes to bring the whole country under his own autocracy. Ivan the Terrible, [Sidenote: Ivan IV, 1533-84] called Czar of all the Russias, added to this policy one of extensive territorial aggrandizement. Having humbled the Tartars he acquired much land to the south and east, and then turned his attention to the west, where, however, Poland barred his way to the Baltic. Just as in its subsequent history, so then, one of the great needs of Russia was for a good port. Another of her needs was for better technical processes. Anticipating Peter the Great, Ivan endeavored to get German workmen to initiate good methods, but he failed to accomplish much, partly because Charles V forbade his subjects to go to add strength to a rival state.

[Sidenote: Europe vs. Asia]

While Europe found most of the other continents as soft as butter to her trenchant blade, she met her match in Asia. The theory of Herodotus that the course of history is marked by alternate movements east and west has been strikingly confirmed by {449} subsequent events. In a secular grapple the two continents have heaved back and forth, neither being able to conquer the other completely. If the empires of Macedon and Rome carried the line of victory far to the orient, they were avenged by the successive inroads of the Huns, the Saracens, the Mongols and the Turks. If for the last four centuries the line has again been pushed steadily back, until Europe dominates Asia, it is far from certain that this condition will be permanent.

In spiritual matters Europe owes a balance of indebtedness to Asia, and by far the greater part of it to the Semites. The Phoenician alphabet and Arabian numerals are capital borrowed and yielding how enormous a usufruct! Above all, Asiatic religions—albeit the greatest of them was the child of Hellas as well as of Judaea—have conquered the whole world save a few savage tribes. Ever since the cry of "There is no God but Allah and Mahomet is his prophet" had aroused the Arabian nomads from their age-long slumber, it was as a religious warfare that the contest of the continents revealed itself. After the scimitar had swept the Greek Empire out of Asia Minor and had cut Spain from Christendom, the crusades and the rise of the Spanish kingdoms had gradually beaten it back. But while the Saracen was being slowly but surely driven from the western peninsula, the banner of the Crescent in the east was seized by a race with a genius for war inversely proportional to its other gifts. [Sidenote: The Turks] The Turks, who have never added to the arts of peace anything more important than the fabrication of luxurious carpets and the invention of a sensuous bath, were able to found cannon and to drill battalions that drove the armies of nobler races before them. From the sack of Constantinople in 1453 to the siege of Vienna in 1529 and even to some extent long after that, the {449} majestic and terrible advance of the janizaries threatened the whole fabric of Europe.

[Sidenote: Selim I, 1512-20]

Under Sultan Selim I the Turkish arms were turned to the east and south. Persia, Kurdistan, Syria and Egypt were crushed, while the title of Caliph, and with it the spiritual leadership of the Mahommetan world, was wrested from the last of the Abassid dynasty. But it was under his successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, [Sidenote: Suleiman 1520-6] that the banner of the prophet, "fanned by conquest's crimson wing," was borne to the heart of Europe. Belgrade and Rhodes were captured, Hungary completely overrun, and Vienna besieged. The naval exploits of Khair-ed-din, called Barbarossa, carried the terror of the Turkish arms into the whole Mediterranean, subdued Algiers and defeated the Christian fleets under Andrew Doria.

On the death of Suleiman the Crescent Moon had attained the zenith of its glory. The vast empire was not badly administered; some authorities hold that justice was better served under the Sultan than under any contemporary Christian king. A hierarchy of officials, administrative, ecclesiastical, secretarial and military, held office directly under the Sultan, being wisely granted by him sufficient liberty to allow initiative, and yet kept under control direct enough to prevent the secession of distant provinces.

The international position of the infidel power was an anomalous one. Almost every pope tried to revive the crusading spirit against the arch-enemy of Christ, and the greatest epic poet of the sixteenth century chose for his subject the Delivery of Jerusalem in a holy war. On the other hand the Most Christian King found no difficulty in making alliances with the Sublime Porte, and the same course was advocated, though not adopted, by some of the Protestant states of Germany. Finally, that champion of the church, Philip {450} II, for the first time in the history of his country, [Sidenote: 1580] made a peace with the infidel Sultan recognizing his right to exist in the society of nations.

The sixteenth century, which in so much else marked a transition from medieval to modern times, in this also saw the turning-point of events, inasmuch as the tide drawn by the Half Moon to its flood about 1529, from that time onwards has steadily, if very slowly, ebbed.

[1] Allowing $2.40 to a ducat this would be $10,800,000 intrinsically at a time when money had ten times the purchasing power that it has today.



{451}

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

SECTION 1. POPULATION

[Sidenote: Unity of civilized world]

Political history is that of the state; economic and intellectual history that of a different group. In modern times this group includes all civilized nations. Even in political history there are many striking parallels, but in social development and in culture the recent evolution of civilized peoples has been nearly identical. This fundamental unity of the nations has grown stronger with the centuries on account of improving methods of transport and communication. Formally it might seem that in the Middle Ages the white nations were more closely bound together than they are now. They had one church, a nearly identical jurisprudence, one great literature and one language for the educated classes; they even inherited from Rome the ideal of a single world-state. But if the growth of national pride, the division of the church and the rise of modern languages and literatures have been centrifugal forces, they have been outweighed by the advent of new influences tending to bind all peoples together. The place of a single church is taken by a common point of view, the scientific; the place of Latin as a medium of learning has been taken by English, French, and German, each one more widely known to those to whom it is not native now than ever was Latin in the earlier centuries. The fruits of discovery are common to all nations, who now live under similar conditions, reading the same books and (under different names) the same newspapers, doing the same {452} business and enjoying the same luxuries in the same manner. Even in matters of government we are visibly approaching the perhaps distant but apparently certain goal of a single world-state.

[Sidenote: Changes in population]

In estimating the economic and cultural conditions of the sixteenth century it is therefore desirable to treat Western Europe as a whole. One of the marked differences between all countries then and now is in population. No simple law has been discovered as to the causes of the fluctuations in the numbers of the people within a given territory. This varies with the wealth of the territory, but not in direct ratio to it; for it can be shown that the wealth of Europe in the last four hundred years has increased vastly more than its population. Nor can it be discovered to vary directly in proportion to the combined amount and distribution of wealth, for in sixteenth-century England while the number of the people was increasing wealth was being concentrated in fewer hands almost as fast as it was being created. It is obvious that sanitation and transportation have a good deal to do with the population of certain areas. The largest cities of our own times could not have existed in the Middle Ages, for they could not have been provisioned, nor have been kept endurably healthy without elaborate aqueducts and drains.

Other more obscure factors enter in to complicate the problems of population. Some nations, like Spain in the sixteenth and Ireland in the nineteenth century, have lost immensely through emigration. The cause of this was doubtless not that the nation in question was growing absolutely poorer, but that the increase of wealth or in accessibility to richer lands made it relatively poorer. It is obvious again that great visitations like pestilence or war diminish population directly, though the effect of such factors is usually {453} temporary. How much voluntary sterility operates is problematical. Aegidius Albertinus, writing in 1602, attributed the growth in population of Protestant countries since the Reformation to the abolition of sacerdotal celibacy, and this has also been mentioned as a cause by a recent writer. Probably the last named forces have a very slight influence; the primary one being, as Malthus stated, the increase of means of subsistence.

As censuses were almost unknown to sixteenth-century Europe outside of a few Italian cities, the student is forced to rely for his data on various other calculations, in some cases tolerably reliable, in others deplorably deficient. The best of these are the enumerations of hearths made for purposes of taxation in several countries. Other counts were sometimes made for fiscal or military, and occasionally for religious, purposes. Estimates by contemporary observers supplement our knowledge, which may be taken as at least approximately correct.

[Sidenote: England and Wales]

The religious census of 1603 gave the number of communicants in England and Wales as 2,275,000, to which must be added 8475 recusants. Adding 50 per cent. for non-communicants, we arrive at the figure of 3,425,000, which is doubtless too low. Another calculation based on a record of births and deaths yields the figure 4,812,000 for the year 1600. The average, 4,100,000, is probably nearly correct, of which about a tenth in Wales. England had grown considerably during the century, this increase being especially remarkable in the large towns. Whereas, in 1534, 150,000 quarters of wheat were consumed in London annually, the figure for 1605 is 500,000. The population in the same time had probably increased from 60,000 to 225,000. No figures worth anything can be given for Ireland, and for Scotland it is only safe to say {454} that in 1500 the population was about 500,000 and in 1600 about 700,000.

[Sidenote: The Netherlands]

Enumerations of hearths and of communicants give good bases for reckoning the population of the Netherlands. Holland, the largest of the Northern provinces, had about 200,000 people in 1514; Brabant the greatest of the Southern, in 1526 had 500,000. The population of the largest town, Antwerp, in 1526 was 88,000, in 1550 about 110,000. At the same time it is remarkable that in 1521 Ghent impressed Duerer as the greatest city he had seen in the Low Countries. For the whole territory of the Netherlands, including Holland and Belgium, and a little more on the borders, the population was in 1560 about 3,000,000. This is the same figure as that given for 1567 by Lewis Guicciardini. Later in the century the country suffered by war and emigration.

[Sidenote: Germany]

The lack of a unified government, and the great diversity of conditions, makes the population of Germany more difficult to estimate. Brandenburg, having in 1535 an area of 10,000 square miles, and a population between 300,000 and 400,000, has been aptly compared for size and numbers to the present state of Vermont. Bavaria had in 1554 a population of 434,000; in 1596 of 468,000. Wuerzburg had in 1538 only 12,000; Hamburg in 1521 12,000 and in 1594 19,000. Danzig had in 1550 about 21,000. The largest city in central Germany, if not in the whole country—as a chronicler stated in 1572—was Erfurt, with a population of 32,000 in 1505. It was the center of the rising Saxon industries, mining and dying, and of commerce. Luebeck, Cologne, Nuremberg and Augsburg equalled or perhaps surpassed it in size, and certainly in wealth. The total population of German Switzerland was over 200,000. The whole German-speaking population of Central Europe amounted to perhaps twenty millions {455} in 1600, though it had been reckoned by the imperial government in 1500 as twelve millions.

[Sidenote: France]

The number of Frenchmen did not greatly increase in France in the 16th century. Though the borders of the state were extended, she suffered terribly by religious wars, and somewhat by emigration. Not only did many Huguenots flee from her to Switzerland, the Netherlands and England, but economic reasons led to large movements from the south and perhaps from the north. To fill up the gap caused by emigration from Spain a considerable number of French peasants moved to that land; and it is also possible that the same class of people sought new homes in Burgundy and Savoy to escape the pressure of taxes and dues. Various estimates concur in giving France a population of 15,000,000 to 16,000,000. The Paris of Henry II was by far the largest city in the world, numbering perhaps 300,000; but when Henry IV besieged it it had been reduced by war to 220,000. After that it waxed mightily again.

[Sidenote: Italy]

Italy, leader in many ways, was the first to take accurate statistics of population, births and deaths. These begin by the middle of the fifteenth century, but are rare until the middle of the sixteenth, when they become frequent. Notwithstanding war and pestilence the numbers of inhabitants seemed to grow steadily, the apparent result in the statistics being perhaps in part due to the increasing rigor of the census. Herewith follow specimens of the extant figures: The city of Brescia had 65,000 in 1505, and 43,000 in 1548. During the same period, however, the people in her whole territory of 2200 square miles had increased from 303,000 to 342,000. The city of Verona had 27,000 in 1473 and 52,000 in 1548; her land of 1200 square miles had in the first named year 99,000, in the last 159,000. The kingdom of Sicily grew from 600,000 in 1501 to {456} 800,000 in 1548, and 1,180,000 in 1615. The kingdom of Naples, without the capital, had about 1,270,000 people in 1501; 2,110,000 in 1545; the total including the capital amounted in 1600 to 3,000,000. The republic of Venice increased from 1,650,000 in 1550 to 1,850,000 in 1620. Florence with her territory had 586,000 in 1551 and 649,000 in 1622. In the year 1600 Milan with Lombardy had 1,350,000 inhabitants; Savoy in Italy 800,000; continental Genoa 500,000; Parma, Piacenza and Modena together 500,000; Sardinia 300,000; Corsica 150,000; Malta 41,000; Lucca 110,000. The population of Rome fluctuated violently. In 1521 it is supposed to have been about 55,000, but was reduced by the sack to 32,000. After this it rapidly recovered, reaching 45,000 under Paul IV (1558), and 100,000 under Sixtus V (1590). The total population of the States of the Church when the first census was taken in 1656 was 1,880,000.

[Sidenote: Spain]

The final impression one gets after reading the extremely divergent estimates of the population of Spain is that it increased during the first half of the century and decreased during the latter half. The highest figure for the increase of population during the reign of Charles V is the untrustworthy one of Habler, who believes the number of inhabitants to have doubled. This belief is founded on the conviction that the wealth of the kingdom doubled in that time. But though population tends to increase with wealth, it certainly does not increase in the same proportion as wealth, so that, considering this fact and also that the increase in wealth as shown by the doubling of income from royal domains was in part merely apparent, due to the falling value of money, we may dismiss Habler's figure as too high. And yet there is good evidence for the belief that there was a considerable increment. The cities especially gained with the new stimulus to {457} commerce and industry. In 1525 Toledo employed 10,000 workers in silk, who had increased fivefold by 1550. Unfortunately for accuracy these figures are merely contemporary guesses, but they certainly indicate a large growth in the population of Toledo, and similar figures are given for Seville, Burgos and other manufacturing and trading centers. From such estimates, however, combined with the censuses of hearths, peculiarly unsatisfactory in Spain as they excluded the privileged classes and were, as their violent fluctuations show, carelessly made, we may arrive at the conclusion that in 1557 the population of Spain was barely 9,000,000.

More difficult, if possible, is it to measure the amount of the decline in the latter half of the century. [Sidenote: Decline] It was widely noticed and commented on by contemporaries, who attributed it in part to the increase in sheep-farming (as in England) and in part to emigration to America. There were doubtless other more important and more obscure causes, namely the increasing rivalry in both commerce and industry of the north of Europe and the consequent decay of Spain's means of livelihood. The emigration amounted on the average to perhaps 4000 per annum throughout the century. The total Spanish population of America was reckoned by Velasco in 1574 at 30,500 households, or 152,500 souls. This would, however, imply a much larger emigration, probably double the last number, to account for the many Spaniards lost by the perils of the sea or in the depths of the wilderness. It is known, for example, that whereas the Spanish population of Venezuela was reckoned at 200 households at least 2000 Spaniards had gone to settle there. An emigration of 300,000 before 1574, or say 400,000 for the whole century, would have left a considerable gap at home. Add to this the industrial decline by which {458} Altamira reckons that the cities of the center and north, which suffered most, lost from one-half to one-third of their total population, and it is evident that a very considerable shrinkage took place. The census of 1594 reported a population of 8,200,000.

[Sidenote: Portugal]

The same tendency to depopulation was noticed to a much greater degree by contemporary observers of Portugal. Unfortunately, no even approximately accurate figures can be given. Two million is almost certainly too large for 1600.

[Sidenote: General table]

The following statistical table will enable the reader to form some estimate of the movements of population. Admitting that the margin of error is fairly large in some of the earlier estimates, it is believed that they are sufficiently near the truth to be of real service.

Country 1500 1600 England and Wales . . . . . . . . 3,000,000 4,100,000

Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000 700,000

The Netherlands (Holland and Belgium) (1550) . . . . . . . . 3,000,000

Germany (including Austria, German Switzerland, Franche Comte and Savoy north of the Alps, but excluding Hungary, the Netherlands, East and West Prussia) . . . . . 12,000,000 20,000,000

France (1550) . . . . . . . . . . 16,000,000

Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,000,000 13,000,000

Spain (1557 and 1594) . . . . . . 9,000,000[1] 8,200,000

Poland with East and West Prussia 3,000,000

Denmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000

Sweden, Norway and Finland . . . . 1,400,000

[1] For a higher estimate—ten to twelve millions in 1500—see note in bibliography.



SECTION 2. WEALTH AND PRICES

[Sidenote: Gigantic increase in wealth since 16th century]

If the number of Europe's inhabitants has increased fourfold since Luther's time, the amount of her wealth has increased in a vastly greater ratio. The difference {459} between the twentieth and the sixteenth centuries is greater than anyone would at first blush believe possible. Moreover it is a difference that is, during times of peace, continually increasing. During the century from the close of the Napoleonic to the opening of the Great War, the wealth of the white races probably doubled every twenty-five years. The new factors that made this possible were the exploited resources of America, and the steam-engine. Prior to 1815 the increase of the world's wealth was much slower, but if it doubled once a century,—as would seem not improbable—we should have to allow that the world of 1914 was one hundred and twenty-eight times as rich as it was in 1514.

[Sidenote: Change from poverty to affluence emphasized]

Of course such a statement cannot pretend to anything like exactitude; the mathematical figure is a mere figure of speech; it is intended only to emphasize the fact that one of the most momentous changes during the last four centuries has been that from poverty to affluence. That the statement, surprising as it may seem, is no exaggeration, may be borne out by a few comparisons.

[Sidenote: War a test of a nation's financial strength]

One of the tests of a nation's financial strength is that of war. Francis I in time of war mustered at most an army of 100,000, and he reached this figure, or perhaps slightly exceeded it, only once during his reign, in the years 1536-7. This is only half the number of soldiers, proportionately to the population, that France maintained in time of peace at the opening of the twentieth century. And for more than four years, at a time when war was infinitely more expensive than it was when Pavia was fought, France kept in the field about an even five millions of men, more than an eighth of her population instead of about one one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Similar figures could be given for Germany and England. It is true that the power of {460} modern states is multiplied by their greater facilities for borrowing, but with all allowances the contrast suggests an enormous difference of wealth.

[Sidenote: Labor power of the world]

Take, as a standard of comparison, the labor power of the world. In 1918 the United States alone produced 685,000,000 tons of coal. Each ton burned gives almost as much power as is expended by two laborers working for a whole year. Thus the United States from its coal only had command of the equivalent of the labor of 1,370,000,000 men, or more than thrice the adult male labor power of the whole world; more than fifty times the whole labor power of sixteenth-century Europe. This does not take account of the fact that labor is far more productive now than then, even without steam. The comparison is instructive because the population of the United States in 1910 was about equal to that of the whole of Europe in 1600.

The same impression would be given by a comparison of the production of any other standard product. More gold was produced in the year 1915 than the whole stock of gold in the world in 1550, perhaps in 1600. More wheat is produced annually in Minnesota than the granaries of the cities of the world would hold four centuries ago.

[Sidenote: Poverty of the Middle Ages]

In fact, there was hardly wealth at all in the Middle Ages, only degrees of poverty, and the sixteenth century first began to see the accumulation of fortunes worthy of the name. In 1909 there were 1100 persons in France with an income of more than $40,000 per annum; among them were 150 with an income of more than $200,000. In England in 1916 seventy-nine persons paid income taxes on estates of more than $125,000,000. On the other hand the richest man in France, Jacques Coeur, whose fortune was proverbial like that of Rockefeller today, had in 1503 a capital of only {461} $5,400,000. The total wealth of the house of Fugger about 1550 has been estimated at $32,000,000, though the capital of their bank was never anything like that. The contrast was greatest among the very richest class, but it was sufficiently striking in the middle classes. Such a condition as comfort hardly existed.

The same impression will be given to the student of public finance. As more will be said in another paragraph on the revenues of the principal states, only one example need be given here for the sake of contrast. The total revenue of Francis I was $256,000 per annum, that of Henry II even less, $228,000. The revenue of France in 1905 was $750,000,000. Henry VIII often had more difficulty in raising a loan of L50,000 than the English government had recently in borrowing six billions.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

It is impossible to say which is the harder task, to compare the total wealth of the world at two given periods, or to compare the value of money at different times. Even the mechanical difficulties in the comparison of prices are enormous. When we read that wheat at Wittenberg sold at one gulden the scheffel, it is necessary to determine in the first place how much a gulden and how much a scheffel represented in terms of dollars and bushels. When we discover that there were half a dozen different guldens, and half a dozen separate measures known as scheffels, varying from province to province and from time to time, and varying widely, it is evident that great caution is necessary in ascertaining exactly which gulden and exactly which scheffel is meant.

When coin and measure have been reduced to known quantities, there remains the problem of fixing the quality. Cloth is quoted in the sixteenth century as of standard sizes and grades, but neither of these important factors is accurately known to any modern {462} economist. One would think that in quoting prices of animals an invariable standard would be secured. Quite the contrary. So much has the breed of cattle improved that a fat ox now weighs two or three times what a good ox weighed four centuries ago. Horses are larger, stronger and faster; hens lay many more eggs, cows give much more milk now than formerly. Shoes, clothes, lumber, candles, are not of the same quality in different centuries, and of course there is an ever increasing list of new articles in which no comparison can be made.

[Sidenote: Fluctuation in coinage]

Nevertheless, some allowance can be made for all factors involved, as far as they are mechanical; some comparisons can be given that bear a sufficiently close relation to exactitude to form the basis from which certain valid deductions can be drawn. Now first as to the intrinsic value, in amounts of gold and silver in the several coins. The vast fluctuation in the value of the English shilling, due to the successive debasements and final restitution of the coinage, is thus expressed:

Year Troy grains Year Troy grains 1461 . . . . . . 133 1551 . . . . . . 20 1527 . . . . . . 118 1552 . . . . . . 88 1543 . . . . . . 100 1560 . . . . . . 89 1545 . . . . . . 60 1601 . . . . . . 86 1546 . . . . . . 40 1919 . . . . . . 87.27

A similar depreciation, more gradual but never rectified, is seen in the value of French money. The standard of reckoning was the livre tournois, which varied intrinsically in value of the silver put into it as follows:

Years Intrinsic value of silver 1500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 cents 1512-40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 cents 1541-60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents 1561-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 cents {463} 1573-79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 cents 1580-1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 cents

[Sidenote: Value of Spanish coins]

The standard Spanish gold coin after 1497 was the ducat, which had 3.485 grammes of gold (value in our money $2.40). This was divided into 375 maravedis, which therefore had a value of about two-thirds of a cent each. A Castilian marc of gold had 230 grammes or a value of about $16. After 1537 a handsome silver coin, known as the peso fuerte or "piece of eight" because each contained eight reals, was minted in America. Its value was about $1.06 of our money, it being the predecessor of our dollar.

The great difficulty with the coinage of Germany and Italy is not so much in its fluctuation as in the number of mints. The name gulden [Sidenote: Gulden a general term] was given to almost any coin, originally, as its etymology signifies, a gold piece, but later also to a silver piece. Among gold guldens there was the Rhenish gulden intrinsically worth $1.34; the Philip's gulden in the Netherlands of 96 cents and the Carolus gulden coined after 1520 and worth $1.14. But the coin commonly used in reckoning was the silver gulden, worth intrinsically 56 cents. This was divided into 20 groschen. Other coins quite ordinarily met with in the literature of the times are pounds (7.5 cents), pfennigs (various values), stivers, crowns, nobles, angels ($2), and Hungarians ducats ($1.75). Since 1518 the chief silver coin was the thaler, at first considered the equal of a silver gulden. The law of 1559, however, made them two different coins, restoring the thaler to what had probably been its former value of 72 cents, and leaving the imperial gulden in law, what it had commonly become in fact, a lesser amount of silver.

The coinage of Italy was dominated by the gold gulden or florin of Florence and the ducat of Venice, {464} each worth not far from $2.25 of our money. Both these coins, partly on account of their beauty, partly because of the simple honesty with which they were kept at the nominal standard, attained just fame throughout the Middle Ages and thereafter, and became widely used in other lands.

[Sidenote: Wheat]

The standard of value determined, it is now possible to compare the prices of some staple articles. First in importance comes wheat, which fluctuated enormously within short periods at the same place and in terms of the same amounts of silver. From Luther's letters we learn that wheat sold at Wittenberg for one gulden a scheffel in 1539 and for three groschen a scheffel in 1542, the latter price being considered "so cheap as never before," the former reached in a time almost of famine and calling for intervention on the part of the government. However we interpret these figures (and I believe them to mean that wheat sold at from twelve cents to eighty cents a bushel) they certainly indicate a tremendous instability in prices, due to the poor communications and backward methods of agriculture, making years of plenty alternate with years of hunger. In the case of Wittenberg, the lower level was nearer the normal, for in 1527 wheat was there sold at twenty cents a bushel. In other parts of Germany it was dearer; at Strassburg from 1526-50 it averaged 30 cents a bushel; from 1551-75 it went up to an average of 58 cents, and from 1576-1600 the average again rose to 80 cents a bushel.

Prices also rose in England throughout the century even in terms of silver. Of course part of the rise in the middle years was due to the debasement of the coinage. Reduced to bushels and dollars, the following table shows the tendency of prices:

1530 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 cents a bushel 1537 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 cents {465} 1544 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 cents 1546 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 cents 1547 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 cents 1548 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 cents 1549 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 cents 1550 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 cents 1572 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents 1595 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1.14

Wheat in France averaged 23 cents a bushel prior to 1540, after which it rose markedly in price, touching $1.50 in 1600, under exceptional conditions. In order to compare with prices nowadays we must remember that $1 a bushel was a remarkably good price before the late war, during which it was fixed at $2.20 by the American government. Barley in England rose from 6 cents a bushel in 1530 to 10 cents in 1547 and 33 cents in 1549. It was in 1913 70 cents a bushel. Oats rose from 5 cents a bushel in England in 1530 to 18 cents in 1549; in 1913 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Animals]

Animals sold much lower in the sixteenth century than they do now, though it must be remembered that they are worth more after several centuries of careful breeding. Horses then sold at $2.50 in England and at $4 to $11 in France; the average price in 1913 was $244 for working animals. Cows were worth $2 in England in 1530; from $4 to $6.40 in France; oxen apparently came considerably higher, averaging in England $10 a head in 1547 and in France from $9 to $16 a yoke. At present they are sold by weight, averaging in 1913 9 cents per lb., or $90 for one weighing a thousand pounds. Beef then cost about 2/3 of a cent a pound instead of 40 cents as in 1914. A sheep was sold in 1585 at $1.60, a large swine at $5, and pigs at 26 cents apiece. Pork cost 2 cents a pound; hens sold in England at 12 cents a piece and geese and ducks for the same; at Wittenberg geese fetched only 6 cents in 1527. Eggs might have been bought at 2 cents a dozen.

{466} [Sidenote: Groceries]

Wholesale prices of groceries, taken mostly from an English table drawn up about 1580, were as follows: Oil was $140 the ton, or 55 cents a gallon; train-oil was just half that price; Newfoundland fish cost then $2.50 the quintal dry, as against $7.81 in 1913. Gascon wines (claret) varied according to quality, from 16 cents to 24 cents a quart. Salt fetched $7.50 a ton, which is very close to the price that it was in 1913 ($1.02 per bbl. of 280 lbs.). Soap was $13 the hundredweight. Pepper and sugar cost nearly the same, about $70 the hundredweight, or far higher than they were in 1919, when each cost $11 the hundredweight. Spices also cost more in the sixteenth century than they do now, and rose throughout the century. By 1580 the wholesale price per hundredweight was $224 for cloves, the same for nutmegs, $150 for cinnamon, $300 for mace. Ginger was $90 the hundredweight, and candles 6.6 cents the lb. as against 7.25 cents now.

[Sidenote: Drygoods]

Drygoods varied immensely in cost. Raw wool sold in England in 1510 for 4 cents per lb., as against 26 cents just four hundred years later. Fine cloth sold at $65 "the piece," the length and breadth of which it is unfortunately impossible to determine accurately. Different grades came in different sizes, averaging a yard in width, but from 18 yards to 47 yards in length, the finer coming in longer rolls. Sorting cloths were $45 the piece. Linen cost 20 cents a yard in 1580; Mary, Queen of Scots, five years later paid $6.50 the yard for purple velvet and 28 cents the yard for buckram to line the same. The coarse clothes of the poor were cheaper, a workman's suit in France costing $1.80 in 1600, a child's whole wardrobe $3.40, and a soldier's uniform $4.20. The prices of the poorest women's dresses ranged from $3 to $6 each. In 1520 Albert Duerer paid in the Netherlands 17 cents for one pair of shoes, 33 cents for another and 20 cents for a {467} pair of woman's gloves. A pair of spectacles cost him 22 cents, a pair of gloves for himself 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Metals]

Metals were dearer in the sixteenth century than they are now. Iron cost $60 a ton in 1580 against $22 a ton in 1913. Lead fetched $42 the ton and tin $15 the cwt. The ratio of gold to silver was about 1 to 11. The only fuel much used was wood, which was fairly cheap but of course not nearly as efficient as our coal.

[Sidenote: Interest]

Interest, as the price of money, varied then as it does now in inverse ratio to the security offered by the debtor, and on the whole within much the same range that it does now. The best security was believed to be that of the German Free Cities, governed as they were by the commercial class that appreciated the virtue of prompt and honest payment. Accordingly, we find that they had no trouble in borrowing at 5 per cent., their bonds taking the form of perpetual annuities, like the English consols. So eagerly were these investments sought that they were apportioned on petition as special favors to the creditors. The cities of Paris and London also enjoyed high credit. The national governments had to pay far higher, owing to their poverty and dishonesty. Francis I borrowed at 10 per cent.; Charles V paid higher in the market of Antwerp, the extreme instance being that of 50 per cent. per annum. In 1550 he regularly paid 20 per cent., a ruinous rate that foreshadowed his bankruptcy and was partly caused by its forecast. Until the recent war we were accustomed to think of the great nations borrowing at 2-4 per cent., but during the war the rate immensely rose. Anglo-French bonds, backed by the joint and several credit of the two nations, sold on the New York Stock Exchange in 1918 at a price that would yield the investor more than 12 per cent., and City of Paris bonds at a rate of more than 16 per cent.

{468} Commercial paper, or loans advanced by banks to merchants on good security, of course varied. The lowest was reached at Genoa where from time to time merchants secured accommodation at 3 per cent. The average in Germany was 6 per cent. and this was made the legal rate by Brandenburg in 1565. But usurers, able to take advantage of the necessities of poor debtors, habitually exacted more, as they do now, and loans on small mortgages or on pawned articles often ran at 30 per cent. On the whole, the rate of interest fell slightly during the century.

[Sidenote: Real estate]

The price of real estate is more difficult to compare than almost anything, owing to the individual circumstances of each purchase. Land in France sold at rates ranging from $8 to $240 the acre. Luther bought a little farm in the country for $340, and a piece of property in Wittenberg for $500. After his death, in 1564, the house he lived in, a large and handsome building formerly the Augustinian Cloister, fetched $2072. The house can be seen today[1] and would certainly, one would think, now bring fifteen times as much.

[Sidenote: Books]

Books were comparatively cheap. The Greek Testament sold for 48 cents, a Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible published in 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One might get a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greek grammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20 cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and the condemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents. One of the things that has gone down most in price since that day is postage. Duerer while in the Netherlands paid a messenger 17 cents to deliver a {469} letter (or several letters?), presumably sent to his home in Nuremberg.

[Sidenote: Wages]

In accordance with the general rule that wages follow the trend of prices sluggishly, whether upwards or downwards, there is less change to be observed in them throughout the sixteenth century than there is in the prices of commodities. Subject to government regulation, the remuneration of all kinds of labor remained nearly stationary while the cost of living was rising. Startling is the difference in the rewards of the various classes, that of the manual laborers being cruelly low, that of professional men somewhat less in proportion to the cost of living than it is today, and that of government officers being very high. No one except court officials got a salary over $5000 a year, and some of them got much more. In 1553 a French chamberlain was paid $51,000 per annum.

A French navvy received 8 cents a day in 1550, a carpenter as much as 26 cents. A male domestic was given $7 to $12 a year in addition to his keep and a woman $5 to $6. As the number of working days in Catholic countries was only about 250 a year, workmen made from $65 to as low as $20. If anything, labor was worse paid in Germany than it was in France. Agricultural labor in England was paid in two scales, one for summer and one for winter. It varied from 3 cents to 7 cents a day, the smaller sum being paid only to men who were also boarded. In summer freemasons and master carpenters got from 8 cents to 11 cents for a terribly long day, in winter 6 cents to 9 cents for a shorter day. The following scale was fixed by law in England in 1563: A hired farmer was to have $10 a year and $2 for livery; a common farm hand was allowed $8.25 and $1.25 extra for livery; a "mean servant" $6 and $1.25 respectively, a man child {470} $4 and $1; a chief woman cook $5 and $1.60, a mean or simple woman $3 and $1; a woman child $2.50 and $1. All were of course boarded and lodged.

The pay of French soldiers under Francis I was for privates $28 a year in time of war; this fell to $1 a year in time of peace; for captains $33 a month in time of peace and $66 in time of war. Captains in the English navy received $36 a month; common seamen $1.25 a month for wages and the same allowance for food.

[Sidenote: Pay of clergymen]

The church fared little better than the army. In Scotland, a poor country but one in which the clergy were respected, by the law of 1562, a parson if a single man was given $26 a year, if a married man a maximum of $78 a year; probably a parsonage was added. Doubtless many Protestant ministers eked out their subsistence by fees, as the Catholic priests certainly did. Duerer gave 44 cents to a friar who confessed his wife. Every baptism, marriage and burial was taxed a certain amount. In France one could hire a priest to say a mass at from 60 cents to $7 in 1500, and at from 30 to 40 cents in 1600. At this price it has remained since, a striking instance of religious conservatism working to the detriment of the priest, for the same money represents much less in real wages now than it did then.

[Sidenote: Physicians]

Fees for physicians ranged from 33 to 44 cents a visit in Germany about 1520. Treatment and medicine were far higher. At Antwerp Duerer paid $2.20 for a small quantity of medicine for his wife. Fees were sometimes given for a whole course of attendance. In England we hear of such "cures" paid for at from $3.30 to $5. Very little, if any, advice was given free to the poor. The physicians for the French king received a salary of $200 a year and other favors. William Butts, physician to Henry VIII, had $500 per {471} annum, in addition to a knighthood; and his salary was increased to over $600 for attending the Duke of Richmond.

[Sidenote: Teachers]

Teachers in the lower schools were regarded as lackeys and paid accordingly. Nicholas Udal, head master of Eton, received $50 per annum and various small allowances. University professors were treated more liberally. Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg got a maximum of $224 per annum, which was about the same as the stipend of leading professors in other German universities and at Oxford and Cambridge. The teacher also got a small honorarium from each student. When Paul III restored the Sapienza at Rome he paid a minimum of $17 per annum to some friars who taught theology and who were cared for by their order, but he gave high salaries to the professors of rhetoric and medicine. Ordinarily these received $476 a year, but one professor of the classics reached the highwater-mark with nearly $800.

[Sidenote: Royalties]

The rewards of literary men were more consistently small in the sixteenth century than they are now, owing to the absence of effective copyright. An author usually received a small sum from the printer to whom he first offered his manuscript, but his subsequent royalties, if any, depended solely on the goodwill of the publisher. A Wittenberg printer offered Luther $224 per annum for his manuscripts, but the Reformer declined it, wishing to make his books as cheap as possible. In 1512 Erasmus got $8.40 from Badius the Parisian printer for a new edition of his Adages. In fact, the rewards of letters, such as they were, were indirect, in the form of pensions, gifts and benefices from the great. Erasmus got so many of these favors that he lived more than comfortably. Luther died almost a rich man, so many honoraria did he collect from noble admirers. Rabelais was given a benefice, though {472} he only lived two years afterwards to enjoy its fruits. Henry VIII gave $500 to Thomas Murner for writing against Luther. But the lot of the average writer was hard. Fulsome flattery was the most lucrative production of the muse.

[Sidenote: Artists]

Artists fared better. Duerer sold one picture for $375 and another for $200, not counting the "tip" which his wife asked and received on each occasion from the patron. Probably his woodcuts brought him more from the printers than any single painting, and when he died he left the then respectable sum of $32,000. He had been offered a pension of $300 per annum and a house at Antwerp by that city if he would settle there, but he preferred to return to Nuremberg, where he was pensioned $600 a year by the emperor. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both received $129 a month for work done for a prince, and the latter was given a pension of $5200 a year by Paul III. Raphael in 1520 left an estate of $140,000.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

If a comparison of the value of money is made, the final impression that one gets is that an ounce of gold was in 1563, let us say, expected to do about ten times as much work as the same weight of precious metal performed in 1913.[2] If a few articles were then actually dearer, they were comparatively unimportant and were balanced by other articles even more than ten times as cheap. But a dollar will buy so many articles now which did not exist in former ages that a plausible case can be made out for the paradox that money is now worth more than it ever was before. If an ounce of gold would in Luther's time exchange for a much larger quantity of simple necessaries than it will purchase now, on the other hand a man with an income of $5000 a year is far better off than a man with the {473} same income, or indeed with any income, was then.

[Sidenote: Trend of prices]

Notwithstanding the great difficulties of making out any fair index number representing the cost of living and applicable to long periods, owing to the fact that articles vary from time to time, as when candles are replaced by gas and gas by electricity, yet the general trend of prices can be pretty plainly ascertained. Generally speaking, prices—measured in weight of gold and not in coin—sank slowly from 1390 till 1520 under the influence of better technical methods of production and possibly of the draining of gold and silver to the Orient. From 1520 till 1560 prices rose quite slowly on account of the increased production of gold and silver and its more rapid circulation by means of better banking. From 1560 to 1600 prices rose with enormous rapidity, partly because of the destruction of wealth and increase in the cost of production following in the wake of the French and Dutch wars of religion, and still more, perhaps, on account of the torrent of American silver suddenly poured into the lap of Europe. Taking the century as a whole, we find that wheat rose the most, as much as 150 per cent. in England, 200 per cent. in France and 300 per cent. in Germany. Other articles rose less, and in some cases remained stationary, or sank in price. Money wages rose slowly, far less than the cost of living.

[Sidenote: Increase in volume of precious metals]

Apart from special circumstances affecting the production of particular classes of goods, the main cause of the general trend of prices upwards was probably the increase in the volume of the precious metals. Just how great this was, it is impossible to determine, and yet a calculation can be made, yielding figures near enough the actual to be of service. From the middle of the fifteenth century there had been a considerable increase in the production of silver from German, Bohemian and Hungarian mines. Although this {474} increase was much more than is usually allowed for—equalling, in the opinion of one scholar, the produce of American mines until nearly the middle of the sixteenth century—it was only enough to meet the expanding demands of commerce. Before America entered the market, there was also a considerable import of gold from Asia and Africa. The tide of Mexican treasure began to flood Spain about 1520, but did not reach the other countries in large quantities until about 1560. When we consider the general impression concerning the increase of the currency immediately following the pillage of the Aztecs and Incas, the following statistics of the English mint are instructive, if they are not enigmatical. During the first fourteen years of Henry VIII (1509-23) the average amount of gold minted in England was 24,666 troy pounds per annum, and of silver 31,225 troy pounds. But in the years 1537-40, before the great debasement of the currency had taken place, the amount of gold coined fell to 3,297 Troy pounds per annum, and that of silver rose only to 52,974 troy pounds. As each pound of gold was at that time worth as much as eleven pounds of silver, this means that the actual amount of new money put into circulation each year in the latter period was less than a third of that minted in the earlier years. The figures also indicate the growing cheapness of silver, stimulating its import, while the import of gold was greatly restricted, according to Gresham's law that cheap money drives out dear.

[Sidenote: Estimates of gold and silver products]

The spoil of Mexico and Peru has frequently been over-estimated, by none more extravagantly than by the Conquistadores and their contemporaries. But the estimates of modern scholars vary enormously. Lexis believes that the total amount of gold produced by Europe and America from 1501 to 1550 (the greater part, of course, by America) amounted to $134,000,000. {475} F. de Laiglesio, on the other hand, thinks that not more than $4,320,000 was mined in America before 1555. The most careful estimate, that made by Professor Haring, arrives at the following results, [Sidenote: Haring's estimate] the amounts being given in pesos each worth very nearly the same as our dollar. Mexican production:

1521-44 1345-60 Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,348,900 343,670 Silver . . . . . . . . . . . 4,130,170 22,467,111

For Peru the proportions of gold and silver cannot be separated, but the totals taken together from 1531-1560 amounted to probably 84,350,600 pesos. Other small sums came from other parts of the New World, and the final total for production of gold and silver in America until 1560 is given at 139,720,000 pesos. This is a reduction to 70 per cent. of the estimate of Lexis. Assuming that the same correction must be made on all of the estimates given by Lexis we have the following figures for the world's production of precious metals in kilogrammes and in dollars:[3]

Gold Silver Average per annum Average per annum in pesos or dollars of 25

in kilos in dollars kilos grammes 1493-1520 . . . 4270 3,269,000 31,570 1,262,800 1521-44 . . . 4893 3,425,000 52,010 2,080,400 1545-60 . . . 4718 3,302,600 184,730 7,389,200 1561-80 . . . 4718 3,302,600 185,430 7,417,200 1581-1600 . . . 4641 3,268,700 230,480 9,219,200

{476} Combining these figures we see that the production of gold was pretty steady throughout the century, making a total output of about $330,000,000. The production of silver, however, greatly increased after 1544. From the beginning of the century to that year it amounted to $75,285,600; from 1545 to 1600 inclusive it increased to $450,955,200, making a total output for the century of $526,240,800. Of course these figures only roughly approximate the truth; nevertheless they give a correct idea of the general processes at work. Even for the first half of the century the production of the precious metals was far in excess of anything that had preceded, and this output, large as it was, was nearly tripled in the last half of the century. These figures, however, are extremely modest compared with those of recent times, when more gold is mined in a year than was then mined in a century. The total amount mined in 1915 was $470,000,000; in 1917 $428,000,000; for the period 1850 to 1916 inclusive the total amount mined was $13,678,000,000.

[1] See the photograph in my Life and Letters of Luther, p. 364.

[2] No valid comparison can be made for the years after 1913, for in most nations paper currencies have ousted gold.

[3] These figures are based on those of Sommerlad in the Handwoerter-buch der Staatswissenschaften, s.v. "Preis," taken from Wiebe, who based on Lexis. Figures quite similar to those of Sommerlad are given by C. F. Bastable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. "Money." I have incorporated Haring's corrections.

SECTION 3. INSTITUTIONS

[Sidenote: The monarchies]

For a variety of reasons the sixteenth century was as monarchical in mind as the twentieth century is democratic. Immemorial prescription then had a vigor since lost, and monarchy descended from classical and biblical antiquity when kings were hedged with a genuine divinity. The study of Roman law, with its absolutist maxims, aided in the formation of royalist sentiment. The court as the center of fashion attracted a brilliant society, while the small man satisfied his cravings for gentility by devouring the court gossip that even then clogged the presses. It is probable that one reason why the throne became so popular was that it was, next to the church, the best advertised {477} article in the world. But underlying these sentimental reasons for loyalty there was a basis of solid utility, predisposing men to support the scepter as the one power strong enough to overawe the nobles. One tyrant was better than many; one lion could do less harm than a pack of wolves and hyaenas. In the greater states men felt perfectly helpless without a king to rule the anarchical chaos into which society would have dissolved without him. When the Spanish Communes rebelled against Charles V they triumphed in the field, but their attempt simply collapsed in face of their utter inability to solve the problem of government without a royal governor. They were as helpless as bees without a queen. Indeed, so strong was their instinct to get a royal head that they tried to preserve themselves by kidnapping Charles's mother, poor, mad Joanna, to fill the political vacuum that they had made. So in the civil wars in France; notwithstanding the more promising materials for the formation of a republic in that country, all parties were, in fact, headed by claimants to the throne.

[Sidenote: Councils of State]

Next to the king came the Council of State, composed of princes of the blood, cardinals, nobles and some officers and secretaries of state, not always of noble blood but frequently, especially in the cases of the most powerful of them, scions of the middle class. What proportion of the executive power was wielded by the Council depended on the personal character of the monarch. Henry VIII was always master; Elizabeth was more guided than guiding; the Councils of the Valois and Hapsburgs profited by the preoccupation or the stupidity of their masters to usurp the royal power for themselves. In public opinion the Council occupied a great place, similar to that of an English Cabinet today. The first Anglican prayerbook {478} contains petitions for the Council, though it did not occur to the people to pray for Parliament until the next century.

The countries were governed no longer by the nobles as such but by officials appointed by the crown. It is an indication of the growing nationalization of policy that the sixteenth century saw the first establishment of permanent diplomatic agents. The first ambassadors, selected largely from a panel of bishops, magistrates, judges and scholars, were expected to function not only as envoys but also as spies. Under them was a host of secret agents expected to do underhand work and to take the responsibility for it themselves so that, if found out, they could be repudiated.

[Sidenote: Parliaments]

Very powerful was the national popular assembly: the Parliament, the Diet, the States General, or the Cortes. Its functions, prescriptive and undefined, were commonly understood to include the granting of taxes. The assent of the body was also required, to a varying degree, for the sanction of other laws. But the real power of the people's representatives lay in the fact that they were the chief organ for the expression of that public opinion which in all countries and at all times it is unsafe for governments to disregard. Sitting in two or more chambers to represent the several estates or sometimes—as in the German Diet—subdivisions of these estates, the representatives were composed of members of the privileged orders, the clergy and nobility, and of the elected representatives of the city aristocracies. The majority of the population, the poor, were unrepresented. That this class had as great a stake in the commonwealth as any other, and that they had a class consciousness capable of demanding reforms and of taking energetic measures to secure them, is shown by a number of rebellions of the proletariat, and yet it is not unfair to them, or {479} disdainful, to say that on most matters they were too uninstructed, too powerless and too mute to contribute much to that body of sentiment called public opinion, one condition of which seems to be that to exist it must find expression.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Estates General]

The Estates General, by whatever name they were called, supplemented in France by provincial bodies called Parlements partaking of the nature of high courts of justice, and in Germany by the local Diets (Landtag) of the larger states, exercised a very real and in some cases a decisive influence on public policy. The monarch of half the world dared not openly defy the Cortes of Aragon or of Castile; the imperious Tudors diligently labored to get parliamentary sanction for their tyrannical acts, and, on the few occasions when they could not do so, hastened to abandon as gracefully as possible their previous intentions. In Germany the power of the Diet was not limited by the emperor, but by the local governments, though even so it was considerable. When a Diet, under skilful manipulation or by unscrupulous trickery, was induced by the executive to pass an unpopular measure, like the Edict of Worms, the law became a dead letter. In some other instances, notably in its long campaign against monopolies, even when it expressed the popular voice the Diet failed because the emperor was supported by the wealthy capitalists. Only recently it has been revealed how the Fuggers of Augsburg and their allies endeavored to manipulate or to frustrate its work in the matter of government regulation of industry and commerce.

[Sidenote: Public finance]

The finances of most countries were managed corruptly and unwisely. The taxes were numerous and complicated and bore most heavily on the poor. From ordinary taxes in most countries the privileged orders were exempt, though they were forced to contribute {480} special sums levied by themselves. The general property tax (taille) in France yielded 2,400,000 livres tournois in 1517 and 4,600,000 in 1543. The taxes were farmed; that is, the right of collecting them was sold at auction, with the natural result that they were put into the hands of extortioners who made vast fortunes by oppressing the people. Revenues of the royal domain, excises on salt and other articles, import and export duties, and the sale of offices and monopolies, supplemented the direct taxes. The system of taxation varied in each country. Thus in Spain the 10 per cent. tax on the price of an article every time it was sold and the royalty on precious metals—20 per cent. after 1504—proved important sources of revenue. Rome drove a lucrative trade in spiritual wares. Everywhere, fines for transgressions of the law figured more largely as a source of revenue than they do nowadays.

[Sidenote: Wasteful expenditures]

Expenditures were both more wasteful and more niggardly than they are today. Though the service of the public debt was trifling compared with modern standards, and though the administration of justice was not expensive because of the fee system, the army and navy cost a good deal, partly because they were composed largely of well paid mercenaries. The personal extravagances of the court were among the heaviest burdens borne by the people. The kings built palaces: they wallowed in cloth of gold; they collected objects of art; they squandered fortunes on mistresses and minions; they made constant progresses with a retinue of thousands of servants and horses. The two greatest states, France and Spain, both went into bankruptcy in 1557.

[Sidenote: Public order]

The great task of government, that of keeping public order, protecting life and property and punishing the criminal, was approached by our forbears with more gusto than success. The laws were terrible, but they {481} were unequally executed. In England among capital crimes were the following: murder, arson, escape from prison, hunting by night with painted faces or visors, embezzling property worth more than 40 shillings, carrying horses or mares into Scotland, conjuring, practising witchcraft, removing landmarks, desertion from the army, counterfeiting or mutilating coins, cattle-lifting, house-breaking, picking of pockets. All these were punished by hanging, but crimes of special heinousness, such as poisoning, were visited with burning or boiling to death. The numerous laws against treason and heresy have already been described. Lesser punishments included flogging, pillory, branding, the stocks, clipping ears, piercing tongues, and imprisonment in dungeons made purposely as horrible as possible, dark, noisome dens without furniture or conveniences, often too small for a man to stand upright or to lie at full length.

[Sidenote: Number of executions]

With such laws it is not surprising that 72,000 men were hanged under Henry VIII, an average of nearly 2,000 a year. The number at present, when the population of England and Wales has swollen to tenfold of what it was then, is negligible. Only nine men were hanged in the United Kingdom in the years 1901-3; about 5,000 are now on the average annually convicted of felony. If anything, the punishments were harsher on the Continent than in Britain. The only refuge of the criminal was the greed of his judges. At Rome it was easy and regular to pay a price for every crime, and at other places bribery was more or less prevalent.

[Sidenote: Cruel trial methods]

The methods of trying criminals were as cruel as their punishments. On the Continent the presumption was held to be against the accused, and the rack and its ghastly retinue of instruments of pain were freely used to procure confession. Calvin's hard saying that when men felt the pain they spoke the truth merely {482} expressed the current delusion, for legislators and judges, their hearts hardened in part by the example of the church, concurred in his opinion. The exceptional protest of Montaigne deserves to be quoted for its humanity: "All that exceeds simple death is absolute cruelty, nor can our laws expect that he whom the fear of decapitation or hanging will not restrain should be awed by imagining the horrors of a slow fire, burning pincers or breaking on the wheel."

The spirit of the English law was against the use of torture, which, however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors. A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to the peine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chest until he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the laws there was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police force in the cities. That of Paris consisted of 240 archers, among them twenty-four mounted men. The inefficiency of some of the English officers is amusingly caricatured in the persons of Dogberry and Verges who, when they saw a thief, concluded that he was no honest man and the less they had to meddle or make with him the more for their honesty.

[Sidenote: Blue laws]

If, in all that has just been said, it is evident that the legislation of that period and of our own had the same conception of the function of government and only differed in method and efficiency, there was one very large class of laws spread upon the statute-books of medieval Europe that has almost vanished now. A paternal statesmanship sought to regulate the private lives of a citizen in every respect: the fashion of his clothes, the number of courses at his meals, how many guests he might have at wedding, dinner or dance, how long he should be permitted to haunt the tavern, and how much he should drink, how he {483} should spend Sunday, how he should become engaged, how dance, how part his hair and with how thick a stick he should be indulged in the luxury of beating his wife.

The "blue laws," as such regulations on their moral side came to be called, were no Protestant innovation. The Lutherans hardly made any change whatever in this respect, but Calvin did give a new and biting intensity to the medieval spirit. His followers, the Puritans, in the next century, almost succeeded in reducing the staple of a Christian man's legitimate recreation to "seasonable meditation and prayer." But the idea originated long before the evolution of "the non-conformist conscience."

The fundamental cause of all this legislation was sheer conservatism. [Sidenote: Spirit of conservatism] Primitive men and savages have so strong a feeling of the sanction of custom that they have, as Bagehot expresses it, fairly screwed themselves down by their unreasoning demands for conformity. A good deal of this spirit has survived throughout history and far more of it, naturally, was found four centuries ago than at present, when reason has proved a solvent for so many social institutions. There are a good many laws of the period under survey—such as that of Nuremberg against citizens parting their hair—for which no discoverable basis can be found save the idea that new-fangled fashions should not be allowed.

Economic reasons also played their part in the regulation of the habits of the people. Thus a law of Edward VI, after a preamble setting forth that divers kinds of food are indifferent before God, nevertheless commands all men to eat fish as heretofore on fast days, not as a religious duty but to encourage fishermen, give them a livelihood and thus train men for the navy.

A third very strong motive in the mind of the {484} sixteenth-century statesmen, was that of differentiating the classes of citizens. The blue laws, if they may be so called in this case, were secretions of the blue blood. To make the vulgar know their places it was essential to make them dress according to their rank. The intention of An Act for the Reformation of excess in Apparel, [Sidenote: Apparel according to rank] passed by the English Parliament in 1532, was stated to be,

the necessary repressing and avoiding and expelling of the excess daily more used in the sumptuous and costly apparel and array accustomably worn in this Realm, whereof hath ensued and daily do chance such sundry high and notorious detriments of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of all vices.