It laid so much stress
upon the importance of owning wealth that ``being rich'' came
to be regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Economic
systems come and go like the fashions in surgery and
in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth century the
Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of free
and open competition. At least, so I have been told.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF
SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN
THE WILDERNESS; OF THE NORTH AMERICAN
CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS
OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING
CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS
``DIVINE RIGHTS'' ADDED A NEW CHAPTER
TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE
FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
FOR the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a
few centuries and repeat the early history of the great
struggle for colonial possessions.
As soon as a number of European nations had been
created upon the new basis of national or dynastic interests,
that is to say, during and immediately after the Thirty
Years War, their rulers, backed up by the capital of
their merchants and the ships of their trading companies,
continued the fight for more territory in Asia, Africa and America.
The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the
Indian Sea and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere
Holland and England appeared upon the stage.
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