I  have  never  yet  heard  that  any  of  the  numerously  laborious
and  learned  Germans  have  been  at  the  pains  to  give  us  an  account
of  the  economic  condition  of  Germany,  from  the  Ehine  to  the  Elbe,
and  from  the  German  Ocean  to  the  Alps,  when  the  horrible  Thirty
Years  War  broke  out.    We  are  told  what  were  the  causes  of  that


TEE  BUIN  OF  CONTINENTAL  INDUSTBIES.         28r

war — the  bigotry  of  Ferdinand,  the    ambition  of  the  House  of
Austria,  the  sudden  outburst  and  the  sudden    collapse  of  ^he
Bohemian  revolt,  and  the  folly  which,  instead  of  uniting  Lutheran  i
and  Calvinist  against  a  common  foe,  led  them  to  quarrel  and  be
destroyed  in  detail.   We  know  also  what  were  the  insidious  purposes-
of  France,  matured  by  Henry  IV,,  put  into  practice  by  Eichelieu,.:
and  persisted  in  till  the  collapse  of  France  in  the  war  of  1870,
But  what  I  have  always  desired  to  know  is,  what  Germany  was
before  1619.     We  know  only  too  well  what  it  was  after,  1648,  and»
how,  when  weariness  had  brought  peace,  after  every  one  of  those-
who  had  taken  part  in  the  beginning  of  the  war  was  in  his  grave,.,
Germany  was  wholly  ruined,  thrown  back  in  the  progress  of  nations
for  two  centuries,  and  reduced  to  being  little  better  than,  a  gep-
graphical  expression.
England  was  in  the  midst  of  her  own  troubles,  and  the  laws  of
Political  Economy,  or  at  any  rate  those  of  economical  progress,  are
as  silent  during  warfare  as  those  of  the  constitution  are.     The  first.
