To improve the arts of weaving, to make woollen and linen cloths of a finer texture, was very natural, after having seen the silks and muslins that came from India; particularly to people living in a cold climate, where a more substantial covering was wanted, and where the materials were in abundance.

It was, accordingly, in Flanders, and the adjacent country, that the modern spirit of manufactures rose up, nourished by the wealth which the ancient commerce of India had produced.

In the early ages, when the Tyrians had this trade, they amassed great wealth, though they had not any large countries to supply; for, probably, neither Egypt nor the eastern part of Syria would receive the produce by so circuitous a road.  But, during the first ages, sacrifices to the gods and the funeral ceremonies consumed vast quantities of aromatics of every sort, as well as the enjoyments of the living.  The two former causes of request for aromatics have long been at an end, owing to the changes in religion.  They are now neither burned on the altar nor at the grave; and custom and taste, which are to a certain [end of page #59] degree variable and arbitrary, have lessened the consumption of some, and others have been supplied by the progress that we have ourselves made in manufactures. {56}

While this diminution of consumption took place, the western world was advancing in civilization, and the progress of wealth became vastly more extended; so that if the consumers of eastern luxuries were less profuse in the use of them, they were, at the same time, greatly increased in number.

The taste for tea, alone, which was introduced not much above a century ago, has alone, overbalanced all the others, and it is still augmenting in Europe; besides the discovery of a new quarter of the world rapidly increasing in population, into which the custom of drinking tea, as in Britain, has been introduced also.

The reasonable price at which an article can be afforded, always augments the consumption:  and though we have no criterion to go by in judging of the prices in former times, yet it is certain they must have been very great.  At the time when silk was sold for its weight in gold, that metal was compared with common labour of six times the value that it is now; silk was, then, at least three hundred times as dear as it is now; indeed, even that extravagant price scarcely accounts for the parsimony of the Roman emperor, who refused his wife a robe of that rich material. {57}

Though new discoveries have robbed Egypt and Syria for ever of the commerce of the East; and though the loss of trade was the proximate cause of the degradation, yet both countries had long been desolate and

—–­ {56} Wrought silks, muslins, and porcelains.  Cotton stuffs are now no longer bought as formerly, so that, except in porcelain, the raw material is the only object of commerce.  The silk worm was introduced into Italy during the time that the intercourse with the East was very difficult, and therefore had not the increase of wealth, and a taste for new articles extended the demand and brought a new one, the trade would at last have been nearly done away.