material prosperity upon morals, or upon a principle far higher than morals, is that afforded by the Seven United Provinces. Their territory was made up of marshy and sandy wastes, exposed to constant overflow from the great rivers which traversed them, and the still more terrible invasion of the sea. Before the beginning of our era, Julius Cæsar describes its inhabitants, the Batavians, as addicted to a seafaring life, and as relying upon their fisheries for the greater part of their subsistence. Their country itself, before it could be made to contribute in any considerable degree to their support, had first to be reclaimed by mounds and dykes, .only to be reared at vast expense and labor. The territory was almost wholly wanting in forests, so that all the material for their ships, even, had to be brought from other lands. After the reclamation of their country, their food had always, in great measure, to be imported. The sea was both their element and their resource. This swarmed with fish, particularly herring; the mode of curing and preserving which was fortunately discovered by an inhabitant named Beukels or Beukelzoon, about the middle of the fourteenth century. At that time, the eating of butcher's meat during two days each week, and forty days before Easter, was forbidden by a dogma of the church. As its place had to be supplied by some other kind of animal food, this prohibition opened a market, at highly remunerative rates, for all the fish that could be taken. From the time of the discovery of Beukels, therefore, the Hollanders had open before them the richest mine as it were, the greatest opportunity that ever presented itself to an adventurous, painstaking people. Their position, their nautical skill, together with their art of preserving fish, gave them, for centuries, the monopoly of supplying the Christian world. The result equalled the opportunity. They became the richest and most commercial people in the world. Their wealth was soon turned to political account by the power possessed by the Hanseatic League, of which several of their cities were important members. In 1477, Philip of Burgundy wrote to the Pope that, "Holland and Zealand are rich islands inhabited by a brave and warlike people, who have never been conquered by their neighbors, and who prosecute their commerce in every sea. "These people," said Sir Walter Raleigh," are never without 700,000 quarters of corn, none of it the growth of the

country; and a dearth of only one year in any other part of Europe enriches Holland for seven years. In the course of a year and a half, during a scarcity in England, there were carried away, from the ports of Southampton, Bristol, and Exeter alone, nearly £200,000; and, if London and the rest of England be included, there must have been £2,000,000 more." The celebrated John de Witt estimated that every fifth person in Holland, at the middle of the seventeenth century, derived his subsistence from the herring fishery; which employed, at that time, 3,000 vessels in the bays and inlets of their own coast, 800 in the seas around the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and 1,600 upon the coast of England. Including the vessels employed in the carriage of salt to be used in preserving the fish, and those employed in its distribution to consumers, the whole number of ships to which their fisheries gave employment equalled 6,400, manned by 112,000 seamen. The whole number of persons employed in the fisheries and dependent upon them for support, including those employed in building, rigging and fitting out ships, with provisions, nets, casks, salt, &c., numbered 450,000. “At that time," says De Witt, "Holland could boast of 10,000 sail of shipping, and 168,000 seamen;""although," he adds, " the country itself affords them neither materials, victual, nor merchandise." In 1690, Sir William Petty estimated the shipping of Europe at about 2,000,000 tons: namely, England, 500,000; France, 100,000; Hamburg, Sweden, Denmark, and Dantzic, 250,000; Spain, Portugal, and Italy, 250,000; and Holland (the Seven United Provinces), 900,000, or nearly one-half of the whole. "Holland," said Sir William Temple, "did not grow rich by any native commodities, but by the force of industry; by the improvement and manufacture of all foreign growths; by being the general magazine of Europe, and furnishing all parts with whatever the market wants or invites; and by their seamen being, as they have been properly called, the common carriers of the world." Each city was distinguished by some special trade it carried on, or country with which it dealt. Middleburgh was chiefly concerned in the wine trade; Flushing, in that of the West Indies; Swaardam, in ship-building; Sluys, in the herring fishery; and Amsterdam, in the East India, Spanish, and Mediterranean trades.. The prosperity of all, however, was based upon the fisheries: it became a com

mon saying with them, that the foundation of their chief city, Amsterdam, was laid on herring bones.

It is unnecessary to remark that, during all this period, Holland was eminently a free State. The supreme government was vested in the "Assembly of the States," which met whenever occasion required; and without whose consent no taxes could be imposed, nor wars entered upon, nor treaties nor alliances concluded. That country was almost the only part of Western Europe never subdued by the Roman empire, and never affected by its corruptions and superstitions; or the still grosser ones of the empire which succeeded. She opposed as dauntless a front to the second as to the first, and contributed, in her long and desperate struggle with Spain, more than any other people to break that power; for in that struggle Spain was but an instrument in the hands of a will higher than her own. In that struggle, a people not two millions in number, proved more than a match for the greatest monarchy in Europe, and reduced it from the highest to the lowest rank among the nations. With the progress of other countries, however, particularly that of England, — it was inevitable that Holland should lose the monopoly she once enjoyed, and should decline relatively in the scale. The wars in which she was exposed imposed upon her a large debt, which weighed upon her industries, and all the more so as she was compelled to divide with others the monopoly which she had so long enjoyed. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, the attention of the nation was directed to the decline of its shipping, and of its foreign commerce; and a circular was addressed to the leading merchants of the republic, by the Stadtholder, William IV., desiring answers to the following questions:

"1. What is the actual state of trade? And, if the same should be found to be diminished and fallen to decay, then,

2. To inquire by what methods the same may be supported and advanced, or, if possible, restored to its former lustre, repute, and dignity?"

To these inquiries, numerous answers were received, which, by the direction of the Stadtholder, were embodied in a report or memoir, in which the former prosperity of the country was referred to three causes: 1. Physical or natural; 2. Moral; 3. Adventitious or external. Their operation and result were set out in detail as follows:

"I. The natural and physical causes are the advantages of the situation of the country, on the sea, and at the mouth of considerable rivers; its situation between the northern and southern parts, which, by being in a manner the centre of all Europe, made the Republic become the general market where the merchants on both sides used to bring their superfluous commodities, in order to barter and exchange the same for other goods they wanted.

"Nor have the barrenness of the country, and the necessities of the natives arising from that cause, less contributed to set them upon exerting all their application, industry, and utmost stretch of genius, to fetch from foreign countries what they stand in need of in their own, and to support themselves by trade.

"The abundance of fish in the neighboring seas put them in a condition not only to supply their own occasions, but with the overplus to carry on a trade with foreigners, and out of the produce of the fishery to find an equivalent for what they wanted through the sterility and narrow boundaries and extent of their own country.

"II. Among the moral and political causes are to be placed the unalterable maxim and fundamental law relating to the free exercise of different religions; and always to consider this toleration and connivance as the most effectual means to draw foreigners from adjacent countries to settle and reside here, and so become instrumental to the peopling of these provinces.

"The constant policy of the Republic to make this country a perpetual safe and secure asylum for all persecuted and oppressed strangers; no alliance, no treaty, no regard for, or solicitation of any potentate whatever, has at any time been able to weaken or destroy this law, or make the State recede from protecting those who have fled to it for their own security and self-preservation.

"Throughout the whole course of the persecutions_and_oppressions that have occurred in other countries, the steady adherence of the Republic to this fundamental law has been the cause that many people have not only fled hither for refuge, with their whole stock in ready cash and their most valuable effects, but have also settled, and established many trades, fabrics, manufactories, arts, and sciences in this country, notwithstanding the first materials for the said fabrics and manufactories were wholly wanting in it, and not to be procured but at great expense from foreign parts.

"The constitution of our form of government, and the liberty thus accruing to the citizen, are further reasons to which the growth of trade and its establishment in the Republic may fairly be ascribed; and all her policy and laws are put upon such an equitable footing that neither life, estates, nor dignities depend on the caprice or arbitrary power of any single individual; nor is there any room for any person, who by care, frugality, and diligence has once acquired an affluent fortune or estate, to fear a deprivation of them by any act of violence, oppression, or injustice.

"The administration of justice in the country has, in like manner, always been clear and impartial, and without distinction of superior or inferior rank, — whether the parties have been rich or

poor, or were this a foreigner and that a native; and it were greatly to be wished we could at this day boast of such impartial quickness and despatch in all our legal processes, seeing how great an influence it has on trade.

"To sum up all: amongst the moral and political causes of the former flourishing state of trade may be likewise placed the wisdom and prudence of the administration; the intrepid firmness of the councils; the faithfulness with which treaties and engagements were wont to be fulfilled and ratified; and, particularly, the care and caution practised to preserve tranquillity and peace, and to decline, instead of entering on a scene of war, merely to gratify the ambitious views of gaining fruitless or imaginary conquests.

"By these moral and political maxims was the glory and reputation of the Republic so far spread, and foreigners animated to place so great a confidence in the steady determinations of a State so wisely and prudently conducted, that a concourse of them stocked this country with an augmentation of inhabitants and useful hands, whereby its trade and opulence were from time to time increased.

"III. Amongst the adventitious and external causes of the rise and flourishing state of our trade may be reckoned:

"That at the time when the best and wisest maxims were adopted in the Republic as the means of making trade flourish, they were neglected in almost all other countries; and any one reading the history of those times may easily discover that the persecutions on account of religion throughout Spain, Brabant, Flanders, and many other States and kingdoms, have powerfully promoted the establishment of commerce in the Republic.

"To this happy result, and the settling of manufacturers in our country, the long continuance of the civil wars in France, which were afterwards carried on in Germany, England, and divers other parts, have also very much contributed.

"It must be added, in the last place, that, during our most burdensome and heavy wars with Spain and Portugal (however ruinous that period was for commerce otherwise), these powers had both neglected their navy, whilst the navy of the Republic, by a conduct directly the reverse, was at the same time formidable, and in a capacity not only to protect the trade of its own subjects, but to annoy and crush that of their enemies in all quarters."

The preceding extracts contain more wisdom, and present more accurately the laws that govern the acquisition and preservation of wealth, than all the books on Political Economy ever written. They contain, in fact, all that is necessary to be known to reach the highest pitch of material greatness. Patient industry, religious toleration, the acknowledgment and sense of a law higher than any of man's provision, and exact justice and good faith in dealing with others, are certain to receive the highest benediction and reward that Providence