hey sold at Amsterdam Baltic
produce cheaper than it could be bought in the Baltic. One objection to a
direct trade between France and the Baltic affords a curious and
instructive proof of the imperfect state of navigation at this time, that
is, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The deputy from Marseilles
urged that the voyage from Dantzic, or even from Copenhagen to Marseilles,
was too long for a ship to go and come with certainty in one season,
considering the ice and the long nights; and that therefore, there is no
avoiding the use of entrepots for the trade of Marseilles. Mr. Anderson, in
his History of Commerce, very justly observes, "that the dread of a long
voyage from the north to the south parts of Europe, contributed, in a great
measure, to make Antwerp, in former times, the general magazine of Europe."

The decline of the commerce of the Italian states, in consequence of the
discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, has been already mentioned; their
efforts however to preserve it were vigorous, and we can trace, even in the
middle of the sixteenth century, some Indian commerce passing through
Venice. Indeed in the year 1518, Guicciardini informs us that there arrived
at Antwerp, five Venetian ships laden with the spices and drugs of the
East: and 1565, when the English Russia Company sent their agents into
Persia, they found that the Venetians carried on a considerable trade
there; they seem to have travelled from Aleppo, and to have brought with
them woollen cloths, &c. which they exchanged for raw silks, spices, drugs,
&c. The agents remarked, that much Venetian cloth was worn in Persia: in
1581, Sir William Monson complains that the Venetians engrossed the trade
between Turkey and Persia, for Persian and Indian merchandize. In 1591,
when the English Levant Company endeavoured to establish a trade over land
to India, and for that purpose carried some of their goods from Aleppo to
Bagdat, and thence down the Tigris to Ormus and to Goa, they found that the
Venetians had factories in all these places, and carried on an extensive
and lucrative trade. It is difficult to perceive how Indian commodities
brought by land to Europe, could compete with those which the Portuguese
brought by sea. The larger capital, more numerous connexions, greater
credit, and skill of the Venetians, must however have been much in their
favour in this competition.

We have noticed that, even so late as the beginning of the eighteent