LOCOMOTION AND TKANSPOKT. 



'dead letter, no adequate power in the state being able to carry 

 them into practical effect. 



Under the successors of Charlemagne, this abuse, which it 

 was found impossible to repress, was, in some measure, recog- 

 nised and regularised. Tolls of limited amount were allowed 

 to be exacted by the local proprietors from those who passed 

 through the provinces for purposes of trade, on the condition 

 that such travellers or merchants should be otherwise unmo- 

 lested. 



The prevalence of all these vexatious impediments soon rendered 

 intercommunication by land almost impracticable. The roads, 

 such as they were, became accordingly deserted, and were suffered 

 to fall into utter disrepair. During a series of ages, internal com- 

 munication and internal commerce became almost suspended ; a 

 journey even of a few leagues being regarded as a most serious 

 and dangerous undertaking. 



9. The Crusades had a favourable influence on the art of trans- 

 port. The population of Western and Northern Europe became 

 by them acquainted with the productions and arts of the East. 

 New desires were excited and new wants created. Commerce was 

 thus stimulated, and greater facility of intercourse becoming 

 necessary, governments were forced to adopt expedients for the 

 security of the traveller. 



The same difficulties and dangers did not, however, affect 

 navigation. We find this art developed in a much higher 

 degree than that of internal commerce. Hence arose the dis- 

 proportionate commercial opulence of maritime people. The 

 British, the Dutch, and the Portuguese rose into immense com- 

 mercial importance, as well as the Genoese, the Tuscans, and the 

 Yenetians. 



10. Even so late as the middle of the seventeenth century, the 

 roads throughout the Continent continued in a condition which 

 rendered travelling almost impracticable. 



They are described by writers of this epoch as being absolute 

 sloughs. Madame de Sevigny, writing in 1672, says, that a 

 journey from Paris to Marseilles, which by the common roads of 

 the present day is effected in less than sixty hours, required a 

 whole month, 



Besides the material obstacles opposed to the growth of internal 

 commerce on the Continent by the want of roads in sufficient 

 number, and the miserable state of those which did exist, other 

 impediments were created and difficulties interposed by innumer- 

 able fiscal exactions, to which the trader was exposed, not only in 

 passing the confines of different states, but even in going from 

 province to province in the same state, and in passing through 

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