imated by a
clearly progressive and innovating spirit but becomes conservative as
its activities become regulated. To convince one's self of this truth it
is sufficient to recall that the merchants of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries are the ancestors of the bourgeoisie and the creators of the
first urban institutions; that the business men of the Renaissance
struggled as energetically as the humanists against the social
traditions of the Middle Ages; and finally, that those of the nineteenth
century have been among the most ardent upholders of liberalism. This
would suffice to prove to us, if we did not know it otherwise, that all
these have at the beginning been nothing else than parvenus brought into
action by the transformations of society, embarrassed neither by custom
nor by routine, having nothing to lose and therefore the bolder in their
race toward profit. But soon the primitive energy relaxes. The
descendants of the new rich wish to preserve the situation which they
have acquired, provided public authority will guarantee it to them, even
at the price of a troublesome surveillance; they do not hesitate to
place their influence at its service, and wait for the moment when,
pushed aside by new men, they shall demand of the state that it
recognize officially the rank to which they have raised their families,
shall on their entrance into the nobility become a legal class and no
longer a social group, and shall consider it beneath them to carry on
that commerce which in the beginning made their fortunes.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This article represents the substance of an address delivered at the
International Congress of Historical Studies held in London, April,
1913.

[2] First edition in 1893.

[3] _Der Moderne Capitalismus_ (1902).

[4] R. Heynen, _Zur Entstehung des Capitalismus in Venedig_ (1905).

[5] H. Sieveking, "Die Capitalistische Entwickelung in den Italienischen
Staedten des Mittelalters", _Vierteljahrschrift fuer Social-und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte_ (1909).

[6] Davidsohn, _Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz_, III. 36; A.
Doren, _Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie_, p. 481.

[7] A. Schaube, "Die Wollausfuhr Englands von 1272", _Vierteljahrschrift
fuer Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte_ (1908), pp. 39 ff. _Cf._ F.
Keutgen, "Hansische Handelsgesellschaften", _ibid._ (1906), pp. 288 ff.

[8] _Cf._ H. Pirenne, _Les Anciennes Democraties des Pays-Bas_, pp. 11
ff.

[9] I. Goll, "Samo und die Karant