more than 12,000,000 of crowns, or 24,000,000 of guilders (about 2,400,000l. sterling), to the great benefit of both countries, neither of which could possibly, or not without the greatest damage, dispense with this their vast mutual commerce; of which the merchants on both sides are so sensible, that they have fallen into a way of insuring their merchandise from losses at sea by a joint contribution."[1] These last words are said to be the earliest notice of marine insurance, which they would seem to imply was first adopted in the trade between the Netherlands and England. The magnitude of that trade, as here described, greatly surpasses any conjectural estimate of its extent which could reasonably have been hazarded from the common notions entertained of the general state of commerce at this date. In fact, if we take into account the difference in the value of money, there is probably no single country, not even the United States of America, with which England in the present day carries on a larger commerce than she appears, from this statement, to have done with the Netherlands nearly three hundred years ago.
Of all the great commercial towns of the Netherlands, Antwerp, as we have already stated, was at this time the most eminent. Exclusive of the French, who, next to the native merchants, were the most numerous class of resident traders, it contained, according to Guicciardini, above a thousand foreigners engaged in commerce, consisting of Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Danes and other Easterlings, and English. His account of the commerce carried on by Antwerp with the British Islands is as follows:—"To England Antwerp sends jewels and precious stones, silver bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks, cloth of gold and silver, gold and silver thread, camblets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton, cummin, galls, linens fine and coarse, serges, demiostades, tapestry, madder, hops in great quantities, glass, salt-fish, metallic and other merceries of all sorts to a
- ↑ Translation in Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, ii. 127.
