Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/218

216 a few years after the commencement of the sixteenth century, the gold brought home by the Spaniards from Hispaniola amounted annually to about 460,000 pieces of eight, or above 100,000l. sterling. This, however, was an influx of wealth which did not tend to invigorate the nation that received it, or to give life to its industry, like that gathered by the busy hand of commerce. But the import of the cotton, sugar, ginger, and other productions of her West Indian possessions, also created a new branch of trade which Spain monopolised, and which gave employment to a considerable quantity of shipping.

In the benefit of all these new channels, along which the productions of distant parts of the earth were made to flow towards Europe, the English, though they had not yet embarked in the trade either to the cast or to the west, could not fail indirectly to share. Accordingly, we find our historians testifying to the decided augmentation of the wealth of the country, and the more general diffusion of luxuries among all classes, in the course of the reign of Henry VII. Some of them, indeed, ascribe the improvement chiefly, or in great part, to the active encouragement given by that king to commercial enterprise. "This good prince," says Hall, the chronicler, "by his high policy, marvellously enriched his realm and himself, and left his subjects in high wealth and prosperity, as is apparent by the great abundance of gold and silver yearly brought into the realm, in plate, money, and bullion, by merchants passing and repassing, to whom the king, of his own goods, lent money largely, without any gain or profit, to the intent that merchandise, being of all crafts the chief art, and to all men both most profitable and necessary, might be the more plentifuller used, haunted, and employed in his realms and dominions." The latter part of this statement (which is translated from Polydore Virgil) may warrant some scepticism; but it is possible that, seeing the taking of interest was forbidden by the law, Henry may have sometimes advanced money, on good security, to assist in adventures, of which he was merely to have his corresponding share in the profits.