This it appears to me is the philosophical view of the matter, which is not modified materially by the remarks of Bœckh. No doubt the interests of the state were regarded as paramount, comprehending, as in just states they do, the interests of all individuals; but for this very reason they would, to the best of their knowledge, beware of interfering capriciously or unnecessarily with private interests, since a prosperous community cannot be constituted of unprosperous members. Mr. Bœckh seems, with all his learning and acuteness, to misapprehend the political theory of the ancients, and to imagine that, because the right of governments to regulate the actions of individuals was recognized, they might safely do so on all occasions without rhyme or reason. But in this he is certainly in error. The object of government was understood then as well as it is now; so that I am apt to think that the erudite professor advances, in the following passage, a doctrine which would have met with but a cold reception among the Athenians, though adopted literally by the historians of the Doric race: “Not in Crete and Lacedæmon alone, two states completely closed up, and from their position unsusceptible of free trade, but generally throughout the whole of Greece, and even under the free and republican government of Athens, the poorest as well as the richest citizen was convinced that the state had the right of claiming the whole property of every individual; any restriction in the transfer of this property, regulated according to circumstances, was looked upon as just, nor could it properly be considered an infringement of justice before the security of person and property was held to be the sole object of government; a light under which it never was viewed by any of the ancients.”[[1607]]

It would be difficult to select from any writer, ancient or modern, a passage more abounding than this with erroneous conclusions. Neither Lacedæmon nor Crete was excluded by its position from the advantages of free trade; and at Athens there was no citizen, however poor or ignorant, who acknowledged in the state any such right as Mr. Bœckh speaks of, except for the purpose of providing for the general safety, in which case it would be as cheerfully acknowledged in every modern community. While penning the concluding sentence, Mr. Bœckh must have been thinking of the despotic governments of Germany. An Englishman considers the preservation of his political rights as much an object of government as the protection of his person or his property, and would as strenuously contend for it, in which feeling he resembles the Athenian. But I will not permit even this theme to tempt me from the matter in hand.

There can be no difficulty in admitting that, as the very existence of commerce, properly so called, depends on the existence of political communities, the state has a right to interfere, under certain circumstances, with the movements of commerce. For example, merchants may justly be prevented by the laws from furnishing their country’s enemy with arms, with ammunition, with provisions, in short, with any article whatsoever, which, by strengthening the hands of the foe, may tend to the detriment of their own community. Again, in famines and scarcities, the law of self-preservation authorizes states to restrain the exportation of articles absolutely required for home consumption; because distress produces discontent and tumult and insurrection, and may thus endanger the very existence of the government itself. Prohibitions to export, originating in such motives, are perfectly defensible. But so much can scarcely be said for monopolies, which were not unknown to the Greeks, though it is not denied that they were of short duration.[[1608]] “It can, however, be safely asserted,” says Mr. Bœckh, “that no republic ever demanded of its citizens that they should furnish commodities to the state in specific quantities, and at prices arbitrarily fixed at a low rate, with a view to secure to itself a monopoly: such a demand could only have been enforced in countries under the government of a tyrant.”[[1609]] The folly, as well as the wickedness, of such despotic interference, I witnessed in the depopulation and misery of Egypt, which at length proceeded so far as to alarm the Pasha himself, and produce some amelioration of his vicious system.

It is, no doubt, possible, that many monopolies of which we know nothing may have existed in antiquity;[[1610]] but it will be quite evident that, upon such possibility, it would be useless to reason. The monopolies which we know to have existed were few, and of short duration. Aristotle, while observing what advantages both individuals and states sometimes derived from them, attributes a better policy to Athens. He gives two or three examples of private monopolies, the well-known story of Thales and the oil-presses, and that of a man who bought up all the iron[[1611]] at Syracuse, and adds, that, in great pecuniary straits, governments were sometimes found to imitate them.[[1612]] Thus, at a late period of their history, the Athenians are supposed to have monopolised the lead obtained from the silver mines of Laureion, which they did, we are told, at the instigation of Pythoclos; that is, they bought it up at the usual price of two drachmas the commercial talent, and sold it at six drachmas.[[1613]] At Rome the price was higher. As there can be little doubt that the lead was for exportation, no injury was inflicted on individuals. With respect to the monopoly granted by the Byzantines to a banker, it may be observed, that it was only one of the many shifts to which the nakedness of their treasury compelled them to have recourse. The list is given in the second book of the Economics, and is not without interest. I would not affirm that their contrivances were innocent.[[1614]] Again, the Selymbrians, in a period of public difficulty, constituted themselves monopolists in a manner which Mr. Bœckh might fearlessly have pronounced “less defensible.” By law they were not permitted to export in times of scarcity; but being in want of money, they decreed that the state should purchase all the old stock at a fixed price, leaving individuals sufficient for their yearly consumption, after which they sold the surplus at a higher price, with permission to export.[[1615]]

It is difficult to say what men will agree to consider “perfect freedom of trade;” but it appears to me, that commerce was as unshackled at Athens as it could have been consistently with the welfare of the community. Mr. Bœckh says, “There are abundant proofs that exportation and importation were regulated according to the exigencies and interests of the community, which is by no means consistent with the perfect freedom of trade.”[[1616]] There appears to lurk a fallacy in this. Such freedom as this writer would call perfect is inconsistent with the very existence of civil society, whose fundamental laws require that no man’s freedom shall trench upon the freedom, and still less upon the life, of another. But if in commerce the exigencies and interests of the community could have been set at nought, there would have been an end of such community, since frequently its well-being, if not its being, depended on its commercial relations with foreign states.

So far, therefore, it must, doubtless, be admitted, that commerce was not free. To this extent, and no further, does Aristotle counsel or contemplate interferences with trade: “With regard to importation and exportation,” he says, “it is necessary to know how large a supply of provisions the state requires, and what proportion of them can be produced in the country and what imported, and what imports and exports are necessary for the state, in order that commercial treaties and agreements may be concluded with those of whom the state must make use for this purpose.”[[1617]]

With regard to the prohibition to export attributed to Solon, it is necessary either to abandon the subject altogether, or to understand it in the contrary sense to that usually given. Plutarch, as his text now stands, tells a very strange story, observing, that the exportation of every thing but oil was prohibited by Solon, and therefore he adds, it is not wholly improbable that figs also were prohibited.[[1618]] I understand the matter differently. Solon, probably observing that Attica, at that time, produced barely sufficient oil for its own consumption, prohibited its exportation, though as agriculture improved, the law fell into desuetude, and oil became a principal export. From this example, Plutarch thinks it not improbable, that figs also may at some time or another have been prohibited. The matter is thus clear and natural. Besides, the Scholiast on Pindar, alluding no doubt to some particular period, observes, that the exportation of oil was not permitted.[[1619]] It is therefore surprising that Bœckh should have laid any stress at all on so contradictory a passage, without endeavouring to restore it, particularly as Solon was himself a merchant and a transgressor of his supposed law. That the exportation of corn should not have been allowed is both intelligible and reasonable, as Attica never produced sufficient for its own consumption; and they were not disposed to adopt the system of the modern Tuscans, who would sell their own corn to the English, and subsist on an inferior sort from the Black Sea, if indeed it be inferior.[[1620]]

Certain commodities were, however, undoubtedly not allowed to be exported, as for example, timber, tar, wax, rigging, and “leathern bottles, articles which,” as Bœckh observes, “were particularly important for the building and equipment of the fleet.”[[1621]] But the word which this distinguished scholar conceives to mean “leathern bottles,” had a very different signification, and meant that leathern defence through which the oars passed, and which was designed to keep the sea from rushing in at the row-port. This we gather as well from the scholiast on Aristophanes,[[1622]] as from several passages of Pollux overlooked by Bœckh. This writer observes, that the leathern defence of the row-port was called ἄσκωμα,[[1623]] and elsewhere he says that a woman’s breast, when full of milk, was also so called;[[1624]] from which we may conjecture what form the askoma assumed, when the oar forced it outwards during the act of rowing. Nor do I suppose that such prohibition existed only during time of war, for it would have been equally imprudent to furnish such articles to men preparing for war, as men always are in peace, as to such as were actually engaged in it. From a passage in Theophrastus, it has been inferred that permission to export timber for ship-building was sometimes granted free of duty to individuals; but as it is the Boaster who makes the assertion, adding that, to avoid envy, he never made use of it,[[1625]] it may be regarded as no less a joke than the reason for prohibiting lamp-wicks from Bœotia, viz., that they might set the fleet on fire![[1626]]

The prohibition to export arms during war to the country of the enemy, and that under pain of death,[[1627]] was an obvious measure of self-defence. In time of peace, however, the trade in arms was as free as any other trade; and the Athenians imported from their neighbours, the Bœotians, helmets,[[1628]] in the manufacture of which this people excelled. No doubt, as states derive the sinews of war, in part at least, from commerce, the Athenians had the sagacity to attack their enemies in the vulnerable point of their pride, for the purpose of bringing them the sooner to reason. They thus, too, taught the inferior states, such as Megara and Bœotia, that Athens was independent of them in all respects, while it was for them to consider whether they were equally independent of her.[[1629]] Thus the Ocean Queen of antiquity was said to exercise (as Great Britain formerly) a despotic sway over trade; as when, for example, she exacted a tenth from all ships sailing to or from the Black Sea;[[1630]] though in this, as in all human affairs, the despotism[[1631]] arose naturally from the possession of superior power, and could scarcely have been guarded against. To weaken the enemy by every possible means was the object of a wise policy; so that in contemplating every coast belonging to a power not in alliance with Athens as in a state of blockade,[[1632]]—in seizing, capturing, or detaining, all vessels of every description by which her interests could be infringed, Athens only acted in self-defence. That she was hated for her superiority we need not be surprised, who know with what heart-burnings and secret aversion our own maritime supremacy has ever been beheld by the nations of the Continent, who repeat against us all the accusations anciently muttered by the surrounding states against Athens.

Utopian speculators, reading history in their easy chairs, find it facile to condemn the measures of ancient statesmen. But allowing them to have been reprehensible, it remains to be seen whether, in the same circumstances, we could have carried any better into execution; for the ability to imagine better is nothing, unless we suppose that events always allow men to act up to their knowledge. However this may be, the Athenian government found itself compelled by its position sometimes to interfere with the course of trade; but it may well be doubted whether any other freedom of trade than there existed be either possible or desirable. For, both commerce, and every other mode in which the energies of a nation can develope themselves, should no otherwise exist than as they are beneficial to the nation at large; and of this the managers of public business ought always to be better judges than merchants or speculators, who only consider their own interests, which may not always be identical with those of the state. I am far, however, from designing to maintain that the commercial regulations of Athens were in no case oppressive. Perhaps in the matter of the corn-trade they were so; and yet much may be said for a populous city surrounded by a barren country, and therefore solicitous about its own subsistence. Let us examine those regulations. According to the letter of the law, which was often transgressed, no inhabitant of Athens could land a cargo of corn anywhere but on the Peiræeus; but, arrived there, and the necessities of the state provided for, the remainder could be disposed of elsewhere. This was the full amount of the grievance, if it ought to be so called.