s of obtaining
them. It is not therefore necessary to rest the miserable condition of
oriental commerce upon the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of
Europe is an adequate cause; and, in fact, what little traffic remained
was carried on with no material inconvenience through the channel of
Constantinople. Venice took the lead in trading with Greece and more
eastern countries.[566] Amalfi had the second place in the commerce of
those dark ages. These cities imported, besides natural productions, the
fine clothes of Constantinople; yet as this traffic seems to have been
illicit, it was not probably extensive.[567] Their exports were gold and
silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating money of
Europe was probably less in the eleventh century than at the subversion
of the Roman empire; furs, which were obtained from the Sclavonian
countries; and arms, the sale of which to pagans or Saracens was vainly
prohibited by Charlemagne and by the Holy See.[568] A more scandalous
traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory laws, was
carried on in slaves. It is an humiliating proof of the degradation of
Christendom, that the Venetians were reduced to purchase the luxuries of
Asia by supplying the slave-market of the Saracens.[569] Their apology
would perhaps have been, that these were purchased from their heathen
neighbours; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisitive as to
the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was not peculiar to
Venice. In England it was very common, even after the Conquest, to
export slaves to Ireland, till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish
came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the
practice.[570]

From this state of degradation and poverty all the countries of Europe
have recovered, with a progression in some respects tolerably uniform,
in others more unequal; and the course of their improvement, more
gradual and less dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their
decline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which a
philosophical mind can inquire. The commencement of this restoration has
usually been dated from about the close of the eleventh century; though
it is unnecessary to observe that the subject does not admit of
anything approximating to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be
sometimes not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries
which the present work embraces under the appel