568 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
tobacco from Virginia, sugar and afterwards coffee and cotton from the West 
Indies, were by far the most prominent imports. It was the tobacco trade of 
Virginia that first enabled Glasgow, which at the time of the union of the 
English and Scottish Parliaments was an insignificant town with less than 
13,000 inhabitants, to convert itself into a seaport, and thus lay the foundations 
of its subsequent prosperity. Now tobacco makes up less than one per cent. of the 
value of the goods imported at Glasgow, and, though that may be partly due to 
a diminution in the actual quantity of tobacco imported at Glasgow, this result 
has chiefly been brought about by changes in relative values. A hundred years 
ago the value of the imports into Great Britain and Ireland from the British 
West Indies was about one-fourth of the total value of the imports from all 
parts; now it is less than one per cent. of that value. 
What has brought about such changes, what makes the essential difference 
between recent and all previous commerce, is the series of enormous improvements 
in the means of communication which followed so closely on the invention of 
textile machinery and the improvement of the steam-engine in this country. 
These improvements have had two important effects on commerce. First, they 
have facilitated the maintenance of order and security both by land and sea, and 
thus enormously reduced the risks of commerce. Secondly, they have directly 
lowered the cost of transport for different goods in different degrees. Bulky 
goods of little value could now for the first time be profitably conveyed many 
hundreds of miles by land to a seaport, and there load ever larger ships for 
distant shores, thus opening up markets with vast undeveloped resources in the 
heart of great continents. Along with these bulkier goods the more valuable 
goods are carried at a cost far below that of former times, so that for such com- 
modities as pepper the mere freight is almost a negligible item. 
At the present day there can be no doubt that in point of quantity the spice 
trade is much larger than it ever was. If Venice could get the whole of that 
trade into her hands, a thing which she never had, notwithstanding the patriotic 
boast of Doge Mocenigo, the trade would not now bring her a tithe of the wealth 
which it brought in the days of her grandeur. Much has been said of the sudden 
‘fall’ of the Portuguese and Dutch in turn, and that fall has often been ex- 
plained by mistakes in method. ‘The fall of the Dutch colonial empire resulted,’ 
says Sir William Hunter, ‘from its short-sighted commercial policy. It was 
deliberately based upon a monopoly of the trade in spices, and remained from 
first to last destitute of sound economical principles.’! But one may well ask, 
Did the Dutch ever fail in a manner for which they were in any way respon- 
sible ? It is true that the Dutch East India Company did not supply as many 
people as they could with the spices of which they held the monopoly. But that 
was not theiraim. It is true that they did not build up a great empire like that 
of the English East India Company. But neither was that their aim. Their 
aim was to declare dividends, and dividends they declared. The profits of the 
company down to 1720 averaged 20 per cent. per annum, never sinking below 
15 per cent., and sometimes rising to 50 per cent. If spices ceased to enable 
them to declare such dividends that was not their fault. It was James Watt, 
George Stephenson, William Symington, and Robert Fulton, who, without in- 
tending it, and without being able to foresee what in this respect they were 
destined to do, sucked the value out of pepper, and that in a manner which 
neither the strength of armies nor the subtlety of statesmen could have done 
anything to prevent. 
Now the countries that offer the most attractive markets for the greatest 
quantities of goods of all kinds are no longer those which look to the spice trade 
or to trade in any specially valuable commodities for their enrichment, but those 
which abound in coal so placed as to develop a great amount of manufacturing 
industry, an industry engaged for the most part in working for the million, not 
merely in producing the luxuries of the rich. The commodities of very small 
bulk in proportion to their value now have a comparatively insignificant place 
1 Imperial Gazetteer of India, 2nd ed. vol. vi. p: 362. 
