Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/26

 metals was poured into Europe from America giving in many ways increased power to the trading and profit-making class, and increasing the accumulation of capital. The spoils of Mexico and Peru, the wealth of all kinds gained by commerce, forced on the development at headlong speed. Spain was ruined by the very circumstances which gave her strength. The Italian cities lost their commercial supremacy from this time forward, owing in part to the decay of Asia Minor and the breakdown of the overland connection with the East, following upon the Turkish rule, and partly to the change in the relative importance of the trade to America and the West Indies. In consequence England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries became the chief competitors for the commerce of the world, Venice lending her spare capital to the Dutch at good rates of interest, thus encouraging the very competition that must eventually ruin her. Hence arose the commercial wars and commercial rivalries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which Spain at the first had every apparent advantage.

Meanwhile in England feudalism had been completely destroyed as a system, and commercialism was being substituted. Keeping pace with the change in the forms of production, progress in all directions helped on the new development. The spread of printing destroyed the monopoly of letters which had been enjoyed by the clergy and the learned of high rank; the application of gunpowder to war rendered the common man-at-arms the superior of the most gorgeously equipped knight. Thus the increase of