275. I have named Edward III. as our heroic type of Franchise. And yet I have but a minute ago spoken of him as 'failing' in quite your modern manner. I must correct my expression:—he had no intent of failing when he borrowed; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I gave him as an example of frankness; but by no means of honesty. He is simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders; the campaign of Crecy is, throughout, a mere pillaging foray. And the first point I wish you to notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by robbery, like Edward III., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the town of Florence. That Florence can lend five millions to the King of England, and loose them with little care, is the result of her olive gardens and her honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending military exploits, and a life of pillage.
276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of England failed to the Florentines.
"He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the
{Illustration: PLATE X.—THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO. }
shires, one half of their wool for this year—a very valuable and extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin "(above-ground, you mean Mr. Henry!)" in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, corn, oats, and bacon, from each county; borrowed their silver plate from many abbeys, as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home; and pawned his crown for fifty thousand florins." {1}
{Footnote 1: Henry's "History of England," book iv., chap. i.}
He pawns his queen's jewels next year; and finally summons all the gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive the honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused!
277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have done Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The idea that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had yet an apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in the wealth of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its day, led to pure chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had fostered. But all wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented, in the Christian mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race of Christ. In the end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against the madness, suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a Jew: the Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before the lust of Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the worship of the Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence of Money, is the Protestant form of Madonna worship.
278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of Cain to Abel—but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos; Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these; let him at least assume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his country, there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister's ruin.
279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed enemies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church's virtue, or insolent in declamation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good.