Such an anomaly, I believe, never existed. Whatever may be
the usefulness of trade, I fancy few will contend that it is very
graceful."
"Florence of old?" said Eve.
"Florence and her commerce were peculiar, and the relations of things
change with circumstances. When Florence was great, trade was a monopoly,
in a few hands, and so conducted as to remove the principals from
immediate contact with its affairs. The Medici traded in spices and silks,
as men traded in politics, through agents. They probably never saw their
ships, or had any farther connexion with their commerce, than to direct
its spirit. They were more like the legislator who enacts laws to regulate
trade, than the dealer who fingers a sample, smells at a wine, or nibbles
a grain. The Medici were merchants, a class of men altogether different
from the mere factors, who buy of one to sell to another, at a stated
advance in price, and all of whose enterprise consists in extending the
list of safe customers, and of doing what is called a 'regular business.'
Monopolies do harm on the whole, but they certainly elevate the favoured
few. The Medici and the Strozzi were both princes and merchants, while
those around them were principally dependants. Competition, in our day,
has let in thousands to share in the benefits; and the pursuit, while it
is enlarged as a whole, has suffered in its parts by division.
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