Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/251

Rh more. . . . The bourgeois of the cities, both men and women, insist upon dressing like noblemen and ladies, noblemen as sumptuously as princes, and the inhabitants of the village like the bourgeois of the city." To prevent the political catastrophe involved in such a dangerous "confusion of ranks," very stringent sumptuary laws were enacted. But they were all in vain. The progress of peace and industry has wiped them out. In democratic countries like the United States, character and ability are the test of social worth, and the establishment of this test has abolished those distinctions of dress so important to the feudal mind.

If war makes ethical every act of destruction, peace makes ethical only acts in conservation of life and property. When men stop killing one another and undertake to supply one another's wants, a new code of morality begins to influence their conduct. As commerce brings people in contact with foreign nations, especially those known as heathen, a relaxation of religious and national prejudice occurs. Opposition to war against them springs up. Friendly relations are advocated. A grave charge brought against the Venetians, whose intercourse with other nations had made them enlightened and humane, was that they tolerated the Jews, obstructed one of the Crusades, and deprecated attacks upon the Mohammedans. A further step toward civilization is the advent of international agreements to prevent disputes and thus forestall conflicts. Here the pacific nations were the pioneers. The earliest commercial treaties extant are those of industrial Carthage with Rome. The first codifications of trade regulations were those of industrial Rhodes and Barcelona. The study of international law itself received its greatest impulse in industrial Holland. With the diminution of aggressions abroad and the growth of international jurisprudence occurred a diminution of aggressions at home and the growth of domestic jurisprudence. Courts were organized for the settlement of disputes and the punishment of crime. Here, again, the pacific nations were the pioneers. Hallam cites the significant fact that judicial combat never prevailed in England to the extent it did on the Continent. After saying that the moment a man entered the gates of one of the Italian republics of the twelfth century "he might reckon with a certainty on finding good faith in treaties and negotiations," Sismondi adds that he might also reckon upon "an energy in the people to resist by common exertion every act of injustice and violence." The militant nations were the last to abolish slavery and serfdom, and also judicial torture and the burning of witches and heretics. They were the last to cultivate commercial honor, personal purity, and the other virtues of a pacific life. Although the Dutch were often obliged during their terrific struggle with the Spaniards to raise large sums of money at a