The second remark, with which I shall close, lies in the moral and political rather than the economic field. It may be stated in this form, that every class of capitalists is at the beginning animated 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 Städten des Mittelalters", Vierteljahrschrift für 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 für 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.