18 FRENCH COMMERCE. CHAP. XVI. 



From the little attention which had been paid 

 to the general principles which regulate the com- 

 merce of nations, it is not wonderful that some 

 impolitic or impracticable enactments should have 

 been framed in that age. 



France at the period we are surveying had been 

 released from the rule of Louis XL, whose reign 

 had been marked by cruelty, craft, and avarice, 

 and whose objects had been much more directed 

 to extend his power than to enrich his subjects. 

 The sceptre was in the hands of a minor, who 

 exhausted the treasure accumulated by his father. 

 Among other acts of his reign he paid to our 

 Henry VII. a kind of ransom of seven hundred 

 and forty-five thousand crowns to withdraw from 

 his invasion of France, and agreed to pay twenty- 

 five thousand crowns annually to England for 

 ever. By this and an unfortunate invasion of 

 Italy he dissipated his treasure and oppressed 

 his subjects. Though Louis had laid the founda- 

 tion of a union of all the provinces of France 

 under one head, his projects had not yet fully 

 succeeded, and the territory was still divided into 

 small and hostile sovereignties. It had few ma- 

 nufactures and little surplus produce. What 

 foreign commodities were needed were supplied 

 either from the Low Countries ; from the cities 

 of Italy, which dispensed the luxuries of the east ; 

 from Upper Italy, which furnished their raw silk ; 

 or from England, which supplied a portion of the 



