HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE,

19

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

. Of Commerce , and its tendency to promote Marine Architecture.

T UXURY and Avarice, the parents of Commerce, had scarcely made theirappearance in the world, and sullied that original purity of mind, thatprimaeval ‘simplicity of manners, which are supposed to have existed in theperiod which the heathen poets describe in their -beautiful allegory of thegolden age, ere their offspring suddenly started into existence; and though it hasdisdained to own those between whom it was engendered, has, we fear too fre*quently, proved itself their truly legitimate child.

Remote colonization spreading into all the different climates and countries ofthat part of the world then known, soon introduced to the acquaintance ofmankind an extensive catalogue of commodities, the production of those climatesand countries which, though extremely limited in point of extent, speaking com-paratively with our present knowlege of the globe, reached through a sufficientnumber of degrees of latitude, to furnish man with the means of heighteningthe comforts, and advancing what are called the elegancies of life, providedhe could collect, within his own sphere, those extraneous articles which werenot produced by nature in their highest perfection, except under climatesmaterially differing, in point of heat or cold, from that inhabited by himself.From hence originated that species of intercourse between nations far distantfrom each other, which has since grown, by long use, almost into necessity,and has acquired the name of trade.

This powerful remedy to the supposed necessities of human nature soon acquir-ed a political consequence in the world, and in so great a degree, as to become graft-ed, in its very infancy, on the principal state-stem of every nation that fostered it;imperiously demanding to be first succoured, even though its support shoulddrain those material juices from the parent, which might soon impoverish, and,in the end, destroy it. For the truth of this assertion we need only to refer tothe history of every country which has been rash, and hardy enough to cherishthose specious advantages which it has promised, without being sufficiently

D 2 cautious,