The Germans
In the chapter on the Hanseatic League we saw how; next inorder to Italy, Germany had flourished, through extensive commerce,long before the other European states.We have now to continue theindustrial history of that nation, after first taking a rapidsurvey of its earliest industrial circumstances and theirdevelopment.
In ancient Germania, the greater part of the land was devotedto pasturage and parks for game.The insignificant and primitiveagriculture was abandoned to serfs and to women.The soleoccupation of the freemen was warfare and the chase; and that isthe origin of all the German nobility.
The German nobles firmly adhered to this system throughout theMiddle Ages, oppressing agriculturists and opposing manufacturingindustry, while quite blind to the benefits which must accrued tothem, as the lords of the soil, from the prosperity of both.
Indeed, so deeply rooted has the passion for their hereditaryfavourite occupation ever continued with the German nobles, thateven in the our days, long after they have been enriched by theploughshare and shuttle, they still dream in legislative the aboutthe preservation of game and the game laws, as though the wolf andthe sheep, the bear and the bee, could dwell in peace side by side;as though landed property could be devoted at one and the same timeto gardening, timber growing, and scientific farming, and to thepreservation of wild boars, deer, and hares.
German husbandry long remained in a barbarous condition,notwithstanding that the influence of towns and monasteries on thedistricts in their immediate vicinity could not be ignored.
Towns sprang up in the ancient Roman colonies, at the seats ofthe temporal and ecclesiastical princes and lords, nearmonasteries, and, where favoured by the Emperor, to a certainextent within their domains and inclosures, also on sites where thefisheries, combined with facilities for land and water transport,offered inducements to them.They flourished in most cases only bysupplying the local requirements, and by the foreign transporttrade.An extensive system of native industry capable Of supplyingan export trade could only have grown up by means of extensivesheep farming and extensive cultivation of flax.But flaxcultivation implies a high standard of agriculture, while extensivesheep farming needs protection against wolves and robbers.Suchprotection could not be maintained amid the perpetual feuds of thenobles and princes between themselves and against the towns.Cattlepastures served always as the principal field for robbery; whilethe total extermination of beasts of prey was out of the questionwith those vast tracts of forest which the nobility so carefullypreserved for their indulgence in the chase.The scanty number ofcattle, the insecurity of life and property, the entire lack ofcapital and of freedom on the part of the cultivators of the soil,or of any interest in agriculture on the part of those who ownedit, necessarily tended to keep agriculture, and with it theprosperity of the towns, in a very low state.
If these circumstances are duly considered, it is easy tounderstand the reason why Flanders and Brabant under totallyopposite conditions attained at so early a period to a high degreeof liberty and prosperity.
Notwithstanding these impediments, the German cities on theBaltic and the German Ocean flourished, owing to the fisheries, tonavigation, and the foreign trade at sea; in Southern Germany andat the foot of the Alps, owing to the influence of Italy, Greece,and the transport trade by land; on the Rhine, the Elbe, and theDanube, by means of viticulture and the wine trade, owing to theexceptional fertility of the soil and the facilities of watercommunication, which in the Middle Ages was of still greaterimportance than even in our days, because of the wretched conditionof the roads and the general state of insecurity.
This diversity of origin will explain the diversitycharacterising the several confederations of German cities, such asthe Hanseatic, the Rhenish, the Swabian, the Dutch, and theHelvetic.
Though they continued powerful for a time owing to the spiritof youthful freedom which pervaded them, yet these leagues lackedthe internal guarantee of stability, the principle of unity, thecement.Separated from each other by the estates of the nobility,by the serfdom of the population of the country, their union wasdoomed sooner or later to break down, owing to the gradual increaseand enrichment of the agricultural population, among whom, throughthe power of the princes, the principle of unity was maintained.
The cities, inasmuch as they tended to promote the prosperity ofagriculture, by so doing necessarily were working at their owneffacement, unless they contrived to incorporate the agriculturalclasses or the nobility as members of their unions.For theaccomplishment of that object, however, they lacked the requisitehigher political instincts and knowledge.Their political visionseldom extended beyond their own city walls.
Two only of these confederations, Switzerland and the SevenUnited Provinces, actually carried out this incorporation, and thatnot as the result of reflection, but because they were compelled toit, and favoured by circumstances, and for that reason thoseconfederations still exist.The Swiss Confederation is nothing buta conglomerate of German imperial cities, established and cementedtogether by the free populations occupying the intervening tractsof country.
The remaining leagues of German cities were ruined owing totheir contempt for the rural population, and from their absurdburgher arrogance, which delighted in keeping that population insubjection, rather than in raising them to their own level.
