pockets of those who voted the tax. All classes had soon perceived that there could be no peace and no justice unless somebody paid for its maintenance and administration, and with one voice they began to excuse themselves from the honour of providing the funds. It was necessary, however, to select a victim, and the choice of the mercantile interest was received with acclamation by every other class in Germany.
The commercial revolution which marked the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century had led, as such revolutions always do, to the rapid and disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few who knew how to exploit it; and the consequent growth of luxury and increase of the power of mercantile magnates were a constant theme of denunciation in the mouths of less fortunate men. The canonist doctrine of usury, based on the Scriptural prohibition, still held sway in all but commercial circles, and the forestalling and regrating, against which the English statute-book is so eloquent, excited no less odium in Germany. Theologians united with lawyers in denouncing the Fuggerei of the great trading companies; Luther and Zwingli, Hütten and Erasmus were of one mind on the question. Erasmus described the merchants as the basest of all mankind, and it was partly due to this feeling that the lawless robbery of traders at the hands of roving knights went on openly without an attempt to check it; the humanist, Heinrich Bebel, even declared that the victims owed their captors a debt of gratitude because the seizure of their ill-gotten goods smoothed their path to heaven.
This moral antipathy to the evil effects of wealth, as exhibited in other people, was reinforced by the prevalent idea that money and riches were synonymous terms, and that the German nation was being steadily impoverished by the export of precious metals to pay for the imports it received from other countries, and especially English cloth and Portuguese spices. It was felt that some check must be put upon the process, and a national tax on imports and exports would, it was thought, cure this evil, satisfy at once the moral indignation of people and Princes against capitalists and their selfish desire for fiscal immunity, and provide a stable financial basis for the national executive and judicial system, for the defence of the realm against foreign foes, and for the maintenance of peace within its borders. The measure as passed by the Diet of Nürnberg in 153, 2 exempted all the necessaries of life, but imposed a duty of four per cent, on all other merchandise, to be paid on exports as well as on imports. Custom-houses were to be erected along the whole frontier of the Empire, which was defined for the purpose. Switzerland refused its consent and was excluded, and so^were Bohemia and Prussia, the latter as being a fief of Poland, but the Netherlands were reckoned as an integral part of the Empire; and, had the project been carried out, it would have provided not only the revenues which were its immediate object, but an invaluable lever for the unification of Germany. Not
