es. As,
however, the price of all Indian commodities was necessarily high, so long
as they were obliged to be brought to Europe by a circuitous route, and
loaded with accumulated profits, it was impossible that they could be
purchased, except by the more wealthy classes. The Portuguese, enabled to
sell them in greater abundance, and at a much cheaper rate, introduced them
into much more general use; and, as they every year extended their
knowledge of the East, and their commerce with it, the number of ships
fitted out at Lisbon every year, for India, became necessarily more
numerous, in order to supply the increased demand.

Commerce in this case, as in every other, while it is acted upon by an
extension of geographical knowledge, in its turn has an obvious tendency to
extend that knowledge; this was the case with respect to India. The
ancients had indeed made but small advances in their acquaintance with this
country, notwithstanding they were stimulated by the large profits they
derived from their eastern commerce; but this was owing to their
comparative ignorance of navigation and the sciences on which it depends.
As soon as the moderns had improved this art, especially by the use of the
compass, and the Cape of Good Hope was discovered, commerce gave the
stimulus, which in a very few years led the Portuguese from Calicut to the
furthest extremity of Asia.

It is remarkable that the Portuguese were allowed to monopolize Indian
commerce for so long a time as they did; this, however, as Dr. Robertson
observes, may be accounted for, "from the political circumstances in the
state of all those nations in Europe, whose intrusion as rivals the
Portuguese had any reason to dread. From the accession of Charles V. to the
throne, Spain was either so much occupied in a multiplicity of operations
in which it was engaged by the ambition of that monarch, and of his son
Philip II., or so intent on prosecuting its own discoveries and conquests
in the New World, that although by the successful enterprize of Magellan,
its fleets were unexpectedly conducted by a new course to that remote
region of Asia, which was the seat of the most gainful and alluring branch
of trade carried on by the Portuguese, it could make no considerable effect
to avail itself of the commercial advantages which it might have derived
from that event. By the acquisition of the crown of Portugal, in the year
1580, the kings of Spain, instead of the rivals, became t