Principles of western civilisation

380 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the time, that the process was one in which the fiercest conflict was maintained at all points by the particular and present interests which these represented as against the larger tendency which was overruling them.’ In obedience to the cause at work, the territorial governments, only step by step, and in the face of the most strenuous opposition, broke down the exclusive economic life of the towns.2. Then followed for centuries a similar economic struggle between the territory and the State. In short, says Schmoller, ‘the whole internal history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not only in Germany, but everywhere else, is summed up in the opposition of the economic policy of the State to that of the town, the district, and the several estates.” °

Of the essential nature of the two leading features of this development there can be no doubt. It represented, over and above everything else, the growing intensity of the economic process as the barriers which protected against outside competition were one by one broken down, and the area of economic freedom was extended in larger and larger communities. This is the first principle represented. The second principle is equally clear. The steps which led to this development of intenser conditions and higher efficiency within the ever-growing areas of freedom were, nevertheless, certainly not considered by the economic interests concerned to represent their benefit. It involved the principle of the subordination of their present and particular interests to the larger future which the whole process represented.

1 The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance, by Gustav Schmoller (ed. W. J. Ashley), p. 22. 2 Jbid., p. 36. $ Jbid., p. 50.

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