ve lessened the
consumption of some, and others have been supplied by the progress
that we have ourselves made in manufactures. {56}

While this diminution of consumption took place, the western world
was advancing in civilization, and the progress of wealth became
vastly more extended; so that if the consumers of eastern luxuries
were less profuse in the use of them, they were, at the same time,
greatly increased in number.

The taste for tea, alone, which was introduced not much above a
century ago, has alone, overbalanced all the others, and it is still
augmenting in Europe; besides the discovery of a new quarter of the
world rapidly increasing in population, into which the custom of
drinking tea, as in Britain, has been introduced also.

The reasonable price at which an article can be afforded, always
augments the consumption: and though we have no criterion to go by
in judging of the prices in former times, yet it is certain they must
have been very great. At the time when silk was sold for its weight in
gold, that metal was compared with common labour of six times the
value that it is now; silk was, then, at least three hundred times as dear
as it is now; indeed, even that extravagant price scarcely accounts for
the parsimony of the Roman emperor, who refused his wife a robe of
that rich material. {57}

Though new discoveries have robbed Egypt and Syria for ever of the
commerce of the East; and though the loss of trade was the proximate
cause of the degradation, yet both countries had long been desolate
and

---
{56} Wrought silks, muslins, and porcelains. Cotton stuffs are now no
longer bought as formerly, so that, except in porcelain, the raw
material is the only object of commerce. The silk worm was
introduced into Italy during the time that the intercourse with the East
was very difficult, and therefore had not the increase of wealth, and a
taste for new articles extended the demand and brought a new one, the
trade would at last have been nearly done away.

{57} The carriage is 24 L. a ton backwards and forwards, or out and
home, which is only equal to what is paid in England by land for 500
miles. Indeed, none but articles of a very great value and high price
could pay for the carriage by any of the channels hitherto discovered
but that of the Cape.
-=-

[end of page #60]

degraded before this change happened; for though the commerce came
through their countries, the riches it produced centred in