354} EFFECT OF THE CRUSADES CHAP. XIII. 



We are not, however, disposed to think that 

 during the middle ages much more gold was 

 brought into Europe from Asia and Africa than 

 the amount of silver which was sent from Europe 

 to those divisions of the globe. The propor- 

 tionate value of gold to silver was less in Asia 

 than in Europe. At all times a profit might be 

 gained by exchanging one for the other : when 

 gold in Asia and Africa was worth no more than 

 eight or nine times its weight in silver, it was 

 worth in Europe, and especially in western 

 Europe, from ten to thirteen times its weight. 



The goods which Asia furnished were neither 

 heavy nor bulky in proportion to their value ; 

 and it must have required many ship loads of 

 iron, wool, and timber to pay for a single cargo 

 of the rich commodities of the east. It is not, 

 therefore, probable that any great balance in 

 favour of Europe, to be paid in the precious me- 

 tals, could arise from the commerce that was 

 then carried on. The plunder of Constantinople 

 by the Venetians and other of the Crusaders 

 probably transferred more metallic wealth to 

 western Europe than all the commerce of the 

 centuries that preceded it : if the statements 

 of Gibbon be correct, that the emperor Alexius 

 paid to the Marquis of Montserrat the enor- 

 mous sum of sixteen hundred pounds of gold, 

 and that on the second capture, when the 

 city was delivered over to the allied armies, 



