the Dutch; and at the period at which this part of our sketch of commerce commences, the English were beginning to assume that hold and superiority in the East, by which they are now so greatly distinguished.  The industry of Europe, especially of the middle and northern states, was further stimulated by the discovery of America, and, indirectly, by all those causes which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tended to increase information, and to secure the liberty of the mass of the people.  The invention of printing; the reformation; the destruction of the feudal system, at least in its most objectionable, degrading, and paralizing features; the contentions between the nobility and the sovereigns, and between the latter and the people; gave a stimulus to the human mind, and thus enlarged its capacities, desires, and views, in such a manner, that the character of the human race assumed a loftier port.

From all these causes commerce benefited, and, as was natural to expect, it benefited most in those countries where most of these causes operated, and where they operated most powerfully.  In Holland we see a memorable and gratifying instance of this:  a comparatively small population, inhabiting a narrow district, won and kept from the overwhelming of the ocean, by most arduous, incessant, and expensive labour,—­and the territory thus acquired and preserved not naturally fertile, and where fertile only calculated to produce few articles,—­a people thus disadvantageously situated, in respect to territory and soil, and moreover engaged in a most perilous, doubtful, and protracted contest for their religion and liberty, with by far the most potent monarch of Europe,—­this people, blessed with knowledge and freedom, forced to become industrious and enterprizing by the very adverse circumstances in which they were placed, gradually wrested from their opponents—­the discoverers of the treasures of the East and of the new world, and who were moreover blessed with a fertile soil and a luxurious climate at home,—­their possessions in Asia, and part of their possessions in America.  Nor did the enterprising spirit of the Dutch confine itself to the obtaining of these sources of wealth:  they became, as we have already seen, the carriers for nearly the whole of Europe; by their means the productions of the East were distributed among the European nations, and the bulky and mostly raw produce of the shores of the Baltic was exchanged for the productions and manufactures of France, England, Germany, and the Italian states.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the commerce of the Dutch began to decline; partly in consequence of political disputes among themselves, but principally because other nations of Europe now put forth their industry with effect and perseverance.  The English and the French, especially, became their great rivals; first, by conducting themselves each their own trade, which had been previously carried on by the Dutch,