gave a stimulus
to the human mind, and thus enlarged its capacities, desires, and views, in
such a manner, that the character of the human race assumed a loftier port.

From all these causes commerce benefited, and, as was natural to expect, it
benefited most in those countries where most of these causes operated, and
where they operated most powerfully. In Holland we see a memorable and
gratifying instance of this: a comparatively small population, inhabiting a
narrow district, won and kept from the overwhelming of the ocean, by most
arduous, incessant, and expensive labour,--and the territory thus acquired
and preserved not naturally fertile, and where fertile only calculated to
produce few articles,--a people thus disadvantageously situated, in respect
to territory and soil, and moreover engaged in a most perilous, doubtful,
and protracted contest for their religion and liberty, with by far the most
potent monarch of Europe,--this people, blessed with knowledge and freedom,
forced to become industrious and enterprizing by the very adverse
circumstances in which they were placed, gradually wrested from their
opponents--the discoverers of the treasures of the East and of the new
world, and who were moreover blessed with a fertile soil and a luxurious
climate at home,--their possessions in Asia, and part of their possessions
in America. Nor did the enterprising spirit of the Dutch confine itself to
the obtaining of these sources of wealth: they became, as we have already
seen, the carriers for nearly the whole of Europe; by their means the
productions of the East were distributed among the European nations, and
the bulky and mostly raw produce of the shores of the Baltic was exchanged
for the productions and manufactures of France, England, Germany, and the
Italian states.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the commerce of the Dutch began
to decline; partly in consequence of political disputes among themselves,
but principally because other nations of Europe now put forth their
industry with effect and perseverance. The English and the French,
especially, became their great rivals; first, by conducting themselves each
their own trade, which had been previously carried on by the Dutch, and,
subsequently, by the possessions they acquired in the East. The American
war, and soon afterwards the possession of Holland by the French during the
revolutionary war, gave a fatal blow to the remnant of their commerce, from