German Huguenots that the puritanical
character of the Genevan and Flemish Separatists found many adherents,
their staid demeanour had exercised an influence on other great houses
both in Frankfort and along the Rhine. But German commerce had now
acquired new vigour, and healthy labour raised the tone of its
character. The impoverished country again took an honourable share in
the commerce of the world. Already did the Germans export their iron
and steel wares from Mark, Solingen and Suhl, cloth from all the
provinces, fine cloth also of Portuguese and Spanish wool from
Aix-la-Chapelle, damask from Westphalia, linen and lawn from Silesia;
to England, Spain, Portugal, and the colonies, whose products in return
had a great market in Germany; while the whole of the east of Europe,
up to the frontiers of Turkey and the steppes of Asia, were supplied by
German merchants. The poverty of the people, that is to say, the low
rate of wages, made the outlay of many manufactures light and
remunerative. In Hamburg and the cities of the Rhine, from Frankfort to
Aix-la-Chapelle, the wholesale trade throve, and equally so in the
frontier lands towards Poland, though in a ruder form, as it was one of
barter. Goods and travellers were still conveyed down the Danube in
rough wooden boats, which were built for a single voyage, and taken to
pieces at the end of it, and sold as planks. And at Breslau the bearded
traders from Warsaw and Novogorod sold the carts and horses of the
steppes, on which they had brought their wares in long caravans to
barter them for the costly products of western civilisation.

Already do the Silesian merchants begin to complain that the caravans
come less often, and foreigners are dissatisfied on account of the new
Prussian red-tapism and customhouse regulations of a strict government.
At the same time travelling traders, with their sample cases of
knife-blades, and needles, began to find their way from Lennep and
Bartscheid to the Seine and the Thames, and the younger sons of great
manufacturers met together with Hamburghers in London, Lisbon, Cadiz,
and Oporto, and there, as bold and expert speculators, founded numerous
firms. As early as 1750, cosmopolitanism had developed itself in the
families of great merchants, who looked down with contempt on the
limited connections of home. And something of the enterprising and
confident character of these men has been communicated to their
business friends in the interi