Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/226

198 The abundance of, , and other precious gathered from distant parts, of which we read in the days of greatest  prosperity, has more the character of  of  and es of dependent s than the conquest by  of their domestic produce and. The varied of  and  must have passed over the  of, and helped to enrich the. , built by in the, where there were  of , can only be supposed to have been designed as a post for the service of this ; and it became not only a resting-place for  and their , but a great centre of commerce and , under the later name of. But it was not until the were scattered by foreign invasions, and finally cast into the world by the destruction of, that they began to develop those commercial qualities for which they have since been so famous. A similar remark may be made of the more ancient of, of whom there is scarce a trace to be found as  of foreign. When visited adjacent tracts of country  was usually to be obtained on the, but those in want had to go for it, and the ns at one period, and the  at another, became the   of , while  for some centuries drew large supplies to order of. One can readily believe the great, , and resources of s of which such as  and  were the capitals; but the habit of Eastern potentates to drain to their central  the riches of the most distant s, and the boundless power by which millions of  were doomed to , are calculated to weaken the impression that such emblems of grandeur as may still remain in ruins are to be ascribed to anything which in the present age could be dignified with the name of commerce. Such being the general spirit and of the ancient of the East of which we have, it may be more easily conceived how dense s might grow up on the  of  and the  of ; have their own s, s, and social changes; develop much  and varied riches, much  and, much  and  refinement; have much internal , with little or no commerce beyond their own widely-extended and impassable ; and yet be so unknown to the rest of the world that the ns, even in the s of , appear to have had scarce a conjecture that there was such an  as  in existence; that , on conquering  and watering his s in the , should  that he was master of all —&ldquo;weep,&rdquo; as the  version runs, that there was no more world to conquer;&rdquo; and that, in short, over the growth of these ancient s of , surviving to the present  and embracing about a half of the , the curtain of  should drop as blankly as if they belonged to another , or could be seen only through a haze of  and  tradition.

There are three conditions as essential to extensive international as diversity of,, , or any other primal element—(1) means of , (2) of and , and (3) security; and in all these conditions the ancient world was signally deficient. The great s, which became the first seats of and, must have been of much utility as channels of, and hence the course of power of which they are the  delineation, and probably the  with which they were sometimes honoured. Nor were the ancient insensible of the importance of opening  through their dominions, and establishing s and lines of, which, though primarily for  and  purposes, must have been useful to  and to the general. But the free area of great s is limited, and when diversion of  had to be made to  and, there remained the slow and costly carriage of , by which only articles of small bulk and the rarest value could be conveyed with any hope of. , though of the first necessity, could only be thus transported in s, when beyond price to those who were in want, and under this extreme pressure could only be drawn from within a narrow sphere, and in quantity sufficient to the sustenance of but a small number of people. The were thus interrupted and cut asunder by barriers of, and the farther they were extended became the more impassable to any considerable quantity or weight of. As long as was confined to s and the  of inland s and s, the s were a terra incognita, contributing nothing to the facility or security of  from one part of the  to another, and leaving even one populous part of  as unapproachable from another as if they had been in different s. The various  from  and North-Western  to, which have been often referred to, are to be regarded more as speculations of future development than as realities of ancient. It is not improbable that the ancient of the  may have been extended along the s of the  to some parts of, but that s braved the  and passed round  into the , 2000 or even 1000 s before  had learned to double the , is scarcely to be believed. The by the  and the  has probably never in any age reached. That by the and the  is shorter, and was besides the more likely from passing through tracts of country which in the most remote times were seats of great. There may have been many, who d on all these various, but that  were passed in bulk over great distances is inconceivable. It may be doubted whether in the ante- ages there was any heavy over even 500 s, save for like or other purposes, which engaged the public resources of, and in which the idea of commerce, as now understood, is in a great measure lost. The advantage which absolute power gave to ancient s in their, and in the execution of of more or less utility, or of mere ostentation and al magnificence, was dearly purchased by the sacrifice of individual , the right to , , and  under the steady operation of natural  principles, which more than any other cause vitalizes the individual and  energies, and multiplies the commercial resource of communities. Commerce in all periods and has obtained a certain  and  from the fact that the foreign  has something desirable to offer; but the action of  is reciprocal, and requires multitudes of producers and, as free s, on both sides, searching out by patient  wants more advantageously supplied by  than by direct production, before it can attain either permanence or magnitude, or can become a vital element of al life. The ancient offered much resistance to this development, and in their absolute power over the, , and  of the masses of their s raised barriers to the extension of commerce scarcely less formidable than the want of means of  itself. The conditions of security under which foreign can alone flourish equally exceeded the 