Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/558

 of direct journeys to Baghdad and India, to obtain thence the productions of the East instead of from Alexandria. But abstract philosophy, however supported by fanaticism and hatred, will not prevail against material profit; and Lully failed to make converts of merchants and ship-owners to doctrines which would have impoverished them quite as much as the enemies of their faith.

Nor did the efforts of other enthusiasts, with the view of stopping the slave trade and of cutting off the supply of Mamluks for the Sultan's army, prove more successful; nor did even the project of maintaining a Christian fleet in the Mediterranean to prevent all intercourse with Egypt answer the plan of its proposers. Where one country produces articles which cannot be obtained elsewhere, nothing but an absolute blockade of the ports of trans-shipment can prevent their exportation; and, even then, though the price may be greatly enhanced, such articles will find their way by circuitous routes to those who are willing to purchase them regardless of the cost. The consumer invariably suffers by all such attempts at prohibition; but the producer is rarely injured. As the trade in Indian goods was the most profitable of all, neither spiritual authority nor philosophical reasoning availed to restrain the merchants of Europe from joining in it; moreover, the religious prejudices of the age did not demand a total abstinence from Eastern luxuries. The Venetians, indeed, on more than one occasion, boldly defied the terrors of the Inquisition, and maintained that the offence of trafficking in distant seas was only cognizable by the civil tribunals.