Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/531

 manufactures. This freedom was likewise extended to Flanders. Cloth imported from that country paid no duty. Ship-owners were encouraged by special laws to import iron, tin, and lead, the Senate having in view the policy of concentrating in the city of Venice as many articles of merchandise as possible, so as to attract merchants to that exclusive market, and to secure there a stock of goods for the lading of Venetian merchant ships to the Levant, as also an abundant supply of raw materials for their home manufactures.

In the midst, however, of this liberal policy, the Venetians seem always to have kept clearly before them the interests of their own shipping. In the registers of Venice may be found numerous instances of the anxiety of the merchants to monopolize in their own ships their commercial intercourse with other countries. Thus, in the year 1319 there is a record of one Tomaso Loredano, a merchant of Venice, who had despatched eleven hundred tons of sugar to London, stipulating that the amount arising from its sale should be invested in English wool, to be shipped exclusively in Venetian vessels. Laws were also in force which levied differential duties equivalent to one-half their value upon certain goods imported in foreign vessels; while in some cases the ships of foreign nations were not allowed, under any circumstances, to enter the ports of Venetia.

Again, a special law provided that neither German, Hungarian, nor Bohemian traders should have any dealings with Venetian merchants except in Venice itself: these traders were, therefore, compelled to resort thither for the purchase of whatever goods