1912] 0,1 the Efects of the Thirty Yearn'' War. :i81 



spared the infliction of the presence of tlie War — Bohemia, ^Moravia 

 and Silesia— had suffered from a depopulation, to the causes of which 

 was here added the ruthlessness of relisjcious intolerance. I therefore 

 conclude this part of my remarks by reminding you once more of the 

 hopelessness in which the War left the economical condition of the 

 Empire at large— not always bringing new evils, but always, or almost 

 always, intensifying those already in operation. There are, I for one 

 have no scruple in allowing, two sides to the ({uestion whether the 

 established disunion of Germany — which affected its social and eco- 

 nomic interests as well as its political life — was not an enduring evil 

 mitigated in some measure by the variety of interests and ideas 

 engendered by a large number of territorial centres ; but of the cala- 

 mitous effects of this division, which the War confirmed upon the 

 economic, the commercial and industrial condition of the country 

 there can be no doubt ; and one illustration of this truth may suffice. 

 How the evils which beset the economic condition of the country 

 were aggravated by the AVar, even when their origin lies beyond 

 the date of its outbreak one instance may show, in lieu of many, 

 because it touched the very nerve of those relations of which I speak. 

 It is quite true that the financial condition of many German 

 principalities was extremely bad in the period immediately preceding 

 that of the War, and that this fact should not be overlooked in 

 judging of its general effects upon German finance ; it is true, for 

 instance, that the extravagance of many of the princes in the early 

 years of the century had reached an unprecedented height, and that 

 the Emperor Rudolf II. had set an evil example of an expenditure, 

 equally reckless in peace and in war, w^hich some of the petty princes 

 did their best to imitate ; while the towns kept pace with the Courts, 

 and ran up municipal debts by a profuse expenditure upon building 

 and, in accordance with the taste of the times, upon the ornamental 

 arts which decorate an opulence that not uufrequently means decay. 

 But the particular evil of which I am about to speak after all had 

 its root in the political divisions of the Empire themselves. They 

 caused an abuse from which other countries besides Germany — Eng- 

 land and the Netherlands, for instance — w^ere to suffer in the days 

 of the great monetary crisis of 1621 — to disturb the economic and 

 social life of Germany with unequalled violence. For, as was pointed 

 out by my friend Dr. Shaw in a valuable paper read by him before 

 the Royal Historical Society some years ago, in Germany there was 

 no central authority which could command general respect and 

 obedience enough to warrant its intervening in the matter of the 

 coinage. Thus,"while in other countries the secret traffic in coins 

 was perpetually putting in circulation those of smaller value — de- 

 based money, in a word — in place of the better, they could authori- 

 tatively fix from time to time monetary standards, and thus again 

 produce order out of disorder. But in Germany this was impossible ; 

 and the only substitute was a fluid system (if system it can bo called) 



