eteenth-century
England have their counterpart in the Elizabethan policy of encouraging
the export of grain that was needed at home. As soon as the land and
the Parliament both fell into the hands of the new {548} capitalistic
landlords, they used the one to enhance to profits of the other. Nor
was England alone in this. France favored the towns, that is the
industrial centers, by forcing the rural population to sell at very low
rates, and by encouraging export of grain. Perhaps this same policy
was most glaring of all in Sixtine Rome, where the Papal States were
taxed, as the provinces of the Empire had been before, to keep bread
cheap in the city.

[1] From the Latin _ministerium_, French _metier_, not connected with
"mystery."

[2] For the substance of this paragraph, as well as for numerous
suggestions on the rest of the chapter, I am indebted to Professor N.
S. B. Gras, of Minneapolis.

[3] Although some of the inclosed land was tilled; see below.

SECTION 2. THE RISE OF THE MONEY POWER

[Sidenote: Money crowned king]

In modern times, Money has been king. Perhaps at a certain period in
the ancient world wealth had as much power as it has now, but in the
Middle Ages it was not so. Money was then ignored by the tenant or
serf who paid his dues in feudal service or in kind; it was despised by
the noble as the vulgar possession of Jews or of men without gentle
breeding, and it was hated by the church as filthy lucre, the root of
all evil and, together with sex, as one of the chief instruments of
Satan. The "religious" man would vow poverty as well as celibacy.

But money now became too powerful to be neglected or despised, and too
desirable to be hated. In the age of transition the medieval and
modern conceptions of riches are found side by side. When Holbein came
to London the Hanse merchants there employed him to design a pageant
for the coronation of Anne Boleyn. In their hall he painted two
allegorical pictures, The Triumph of Poverty and The Triumph of Wealth.
The choice of subjects was representative of the time of transition.

[Sidenote: Revolution]

The economic innovation sketched in the last few pages was followed by
a social readjustment sufficiently violent and sufficiently rapid to
merit the name of revolution. The wave struck different countries at
{549} different times, but when it did come in each, it came with a
rush, chiefly in the twenties in Germany and Spain, in the