Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/167

Rh historian Chalcondyles has recorded some particulars respecting the commerce of Venice, in relating the visit of the Emperor John Palæologus to that city in 1438. It is described as excelling all the other cities of Italy in the magnificence of its buildings and the opulence of the inhabitants. According to this account, twenty-two of their largest vessels, under the command of the sons of the nobles, were employed in trading to Alexandria, Syria, Tanais, the British Islands, and Africa. A few years before this time, it was asserted, in a speech addressed by the Doge Tommas Mocenigo to the senate, that the total value of the annual exports from Venice to all parts of the world was not less than ten millions of ducats. The shipping belonging to the citizens of the republic consisted of 3000 vessels, manned by 17,000 seamen; 300 ships, carrying 8000 seamen; and 45 galleys, of different sizes, but carrying, in the whole, 11,000 men, or, on an average, nearly 250 each. In the trade with England the balance was what is called against the republic; the money-payments made to England amounted annually to 100,000 ducats—which was one-fifth of the sum sent every year into Syria and Egypt, the latter being probably very nearly the whole cost price of the oriental productions imported by the republic.

Henry V. also began his reign by giving evidence of his disposition to favour and encourage commerce. One of his first acts was to confirm the privileges that had been granted by his father and preceding kings to the Venetians, and to other foreign merchants. The splendid illusion of the conquest of France, however, soon drew off his attention from this as well as from all other subjects of domestic interest; and the history of his reign furnishes scarcely a fact worth referring to for our present purpose. It is to be feared, indeed, that the prosperity which had been springing up during several years of peace was now struck with a blight from which it did not