The history of free trade in Tuscany, with Remarks on its progress in the rest of Italy

Preface

The Committee of the Cobden Club publishes this interesting History of Free Trade in Tuscany " because it proves clearly how great is the benefit arising from the practical application of Free Trade principles. But the Committee, while adhering entirely to them as enunciated by Sallustio Bandini, Adam Smith, Cavour, and Richard Cobderi, does not feel itself called upon to decide who among present Italian Statesmen have remained faithful to those principles, and who may have, in a greater or less degree, infringed them.

J. W. PROBYN.

London^ April ^ 1876.

THE HISTORY OF FREE TRADE IN TUSCANY.

By James Montgomery Stuart.

The historian who would narrate the progress of pohtical economy, and fix the attention of his readers on its most luminous points, will soon discover that the States most remarkable for their historical importance and territorial extension are not those which offer the most productive field for his labours. He will find that there is here presented another example of what elsewhere meets his eye — that the course of civilisation has been most powerfully helped on by peoples dwelling within a narrow zone of land : now Palestine ; again, Attica ; many centuries later, Provence ; — by the free efforts of small communities like Geneva or Holland ; by the learning, the taste, the varied forms of genius that were concentrated at the commencement of the present century in the little duchy of Weimar. But of all the States thus territorially small, but intellectually and morally great, Tuscany, next to Athens, is the greatest. The All-Etruscan Three " suffice of themselves to usher in the greatest names of mediaeval and modern letters. So conspicuous were the Florentines for their genius in the highest State affairs and the most complicated international relations, that the fact has often been illustrated by the anecdote of Pope Boniface VHL, who, one day, after a State reception, in which twelve separate countries were represented by twelve envoys, all Florentines, exclaimed, " Really, these Florentines form a fifth element in creation ! " Nor were the habits of profound speculation and many-sided action which mark the stirring time of the republic lost under the absolute princes of the grand duchy. Rulers who could rank Galileo amongst their personal friends, and to whom the earliest ethical writings of Bacon, in their Italian form, were dedicated, showed that they came of the old stock. Unhappily, the princes of the house of Medici, though individually men of much ability, allowed their entire system of policy to be coloured by their belief that their absolute rule could only be secured through a complete paralysis of all the energies of their subjects ; through the working of a system of feudalism and court intrigue intended to crush out all the old republican traditions ; and through the concentration in their own hands of that commercial enterprise which had once given wealth and power to an entire people. Still, much of the old spirit remained unbroken ; and when, after the death of John Gaston, the last prince of the house of Medici, the dominions of that house passed to rulers of German origin, this intellectual primacy only assumed another form, and in the writings of Sallustio Bandini and his school, and the legislative measures that were their direct consequence, the little State of Tuscany led the way in that grand campaign of economical reform, marked by so many alternations of victory and defeat, of which the longest-lived man of the present generation will assuredly not witness the final issue.

The history of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany during a period of more than a hundred and twenty years is emphatically and pre-eminently the history of Free Trade. It is the history of its announcement by private individuals of truly pure and patriotic character ; of its acceptance, not without contending against many difficulties, by the government ; of the legislation in which its maxims were fully embodied ; of the beneficent results which it

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produced ; of its necessary alliance with peace and non-intervention ; of the extraneous influences by which its course was repeatedly arrested ; of the political and domestic re-actions that from time to time sought to stifle it ; and, finally, of its influence on the general, commercial, and political history of the Italian peninsula. Should the treatment of this subject prove dry and unattractive, the fault will be that of the writer — not, assuredly, of the subject itself — for it is not wanting in episodes of its own quite as interesting as those by which the annals of great wars and far-reaching policy are interspersed, and it deals, though in humble proportions, with questions that have in our own day stirred to its very depths the national heart of England, and which lie at the foundation of the material and moral progress of every country in the world.

The central figure in this history is that of the second sovereign of the House of Hapsburgh-Lorraine, the Grand Duke Peter Leopold. And if economists may be allowed equally with lawyers or soldiers to indulge in their own hero-worship, the figure of Peter Leopold may be placed in a niche beside the figures of Justinian and Alexander. Machiavelli has for the uses of practical politics given us a somewhat rough but very convenient division of mankind into three classes — the men who are capable of originating great truths ; the men who, without that capacity, have the power to recognise and the will to apply them ; and the men who have neither original thoughts nor the power of appreciating the thoughts of others. If we cannot assign " Peter Leopold to the first of these three classes, it would perhaps be difficult to find another prince in history who more deserves to stand first in the first rank of the second category. Nor will the estimate of his merits be lessened by a calm and impartial review of the task which he undertook, or of the helps, facilities, and preparations by which the work was lightened. Whether among such helps and preparations must be lO classed the fact of his being an absolute sovereign, is a question which may be answered in quite opposite ways, according as we reproduce to our minds the resources attached to such a position, or the trials and temptations by which its holders are beset.

We shall frequently have occasion to observe that in the growth of Free Trade in Tuscany the traditions of the ancient manufacturing and commercial glory of Florence were much more a hindrance than a help. Florence, the Italian Manchester of the Middle Ages, owed its wealth and power to its great cloth and silk manufactures, and to the trade with all parts of the civilised world consequent on the same. But the cloth manufacture passed by degrees from the hands of the Florentines to those of the Flemish and the English ; . and this transference, if we may believe Florentine writers of eminence, was owing not a little to the shortsightedness of the Florentines themselves, who, in order to diminish the cost of the raw material, saved the expense of transport by establishing branch manufactories in Flanders and England, thereby affording greater opportunities for the Flemish and English to learn their processes, and even exposing themselves to the risk of having their best v/orkmen lured away from their employment to promote the prosperity of their foreign rivals. The cloth manufacturers of Florence would not have found themselves so entirely dependent on foreign wool if they had held the pursuits of agriculture in a little more regard. But amongst the most deeply-rooted prejudices of the manufacturing and mercantile commonwealth was the contempt for rural pursuits, if we ^ except the slight degree of market and ornamental gardening required for household wants and holiday recreation. It has been affirmed on high authority that these Italian manufacturers and merchants of the Middle Ages carried on a commerce free at least from the evils of protectionism ; and the same affirmation has been made respecting the States of antiquity. The affirmation

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II must, however, be received with great reserve. It is at variance with the spirit of intense jealousy and bitter rivalry shown towards each other by the mediaeval republics, and it is equally at variance with the numberless restrictions by which, in the commercial legislation of ancient Rome, the most important of all trades, that in corn, was surrounded. In a modified form, however, the statement may be accepted, in so far as it reflects not the origin, the immense increase of prohibitions and monopolies in the vast empire of Charles V., and more especially in the Italian States directly or indirectly subject to Spanish rule. But, without discussing how far, after the final overthrow of the Florentine Republic, in 1537, the first princes of the house of Medici contributed to introduce altogether a Protectionist policy, or only to extend and strengthen one which they already found established, it may suffice to state that their relation as rulers to their subjects in a great part of their dominions was that of oppressive masters over a conquered and down-trodden people. Such had already been the relation between the victorious commonwealth of Florence and its vanquished rival, Pisa, which it subjugated and annexed, carrying its hatred of the vanquished foes to the suicidal point of laying a great portion of the territory under water, and, by the complete destruction of the naval resources, destroying a mercantile marine which had furnished the chief appliances and means for its own carrying trade.

What the republic had thus done for Pisa the first Grand Duke Cosimo and his immediate successors did for Siena. Ireland, at the worst period of English misgovernment ; Poland, when Russia pressed most heavily on the unhappy Poles, may suggest some idea of the spirit in which Siena was ruled by the grand dukes of the house of Medici, after the final destruction, by the Grand Duke Cosimo L, of the Sienese Republic. In one respect the grand dukes strictly maintained in their system of administration the traditions of the Florentine Republic. That republic entrusted the government of the different communes which it successively annexed only to Florentine citizens. All posts of importance, whether administrative, judicial, or military, were in Florentine hands. The same system was rigorously carried out by the grand dukes — nowhere with greater rigour than in the territory of Siena. This province, which, from its physical, commercial, and social conditions, was destined to play so important a part in the economic history of Tuscany, had especial reason to lament its subjection to the Florentine rule. It was eminently an agricultural district ; the inhabitants were devoted to agricultural pursuits ; the Sienese aristocracy, far from sharing the Florentine prejudices respecting agricultural pursuits, had always prosecuted them with hearty zeal ; and, as a necessary consequence, the tone imparted by their new masters to the treatment of the whole country clashed both with their interests and habits.

The evils arising from the systematic disregard shown by the Medicean Princes of the special interests and wants of the province of Siena were not counterbalanced by the benefits which they rendered to the manufacturing and commercial interests of Florence. The first grand dukes, indeed, professed to be merchants as well as princes ; they carried on business in several great European cities, but their mercantile character did far more harm than good to the general mercantile interests of the country. When a despotic prince goes into the market, whether home or foreign, as the competitor in trade with his own subjects, he has certain " Protectionist " influences at his command which are but too likely at any moment to bring all competition to a standstill. Tuscany, indeed, derived great benefits from one feature of the Medicean policy — the creation of the city of Leghorn, and the exceptional privileges — especially in reference to the free exercise of religion — accorded to foreign settlers in that port. But even the usefulness of Leghorn was much hampered

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by two facts. Amongst the modes by which the first Grand Duke Cosimo had tried to gain the support of the Court of Rome for the estabHshment of his dynasty, was the institution of an order of maritime knights, bound by their vows to wage continual war against the Barbary powers. This, of course, provoked retahation from Constantinople, as well as from Algiers and Tunis. The galleys of the Knights of St. Stephen were, all through the Levant, regarded as the symbols of injury and insult to the Crescent ; the commercial result being that the Levant trade, productive of so much wealth to the Florentine Republic, was hermetically sealed against the grand duchy of Tuscany. But Leghorn suffered in another way. All the favours and privileges of a free port enjoyed by its inhabitants were practically useless for the exchange of Tuscan produce ; for beyond the gates of Leghorn commenced the operation of the complicated and most hurtful system of inland tolls and custom-houses — of all that machinery of wretched legislation by which the exchange of foreign, and, indeed, of native commodities, was rendered difficult in every corner of the grand-ducal territory. Foremost amongst the causes of these difficulties were the conditions of land tenure and the privileges accorded to the Church ; but the old system, as it was found in full force when the Medicean dynasty came to a close, will, perhaps, be better understood if I quote the following passage from the historian who has thus furnished me with its leading features : —

The twenty-three volumes of the Medicean legislation, collected and annotated by the advocate Lorenzo Cantini, are full of decrees and notifications containing new obstacles, all invented to complicate the machinery of government, already far too much clogged. That machine was composed of elements so numerous, so heterogeneous, and so discordant, that they were constantly clashing with each other, to the very serious injury of public affairs. Some had their origin in republican times, others came from a monarchical and despotic source, so that they had not and could not have the same character, nor any unity in their tendencies. But let us deal with precise facts. The fairest and most widely-extended tracts of land were owned and held in mortmain by the regular and secular clergy. There were not a few other castes possessing high rank, with the privilege of creating entails, special rights of primogeniture, and inalienable pensions. All Tuscany was split up into so many fiefs, some established at a distant period, under the German emperors, but most of them the creation of the Medici. The State of Siena was a fief of Spain. From this state of matters there arose insurmountable legal barriers to the development of agriculture. The privileges secured by the game laws and by the fishery rights were such that the fruits of the soil were often more use to wild animals than to man, and that hydraulic science was prevented from dealing with the streams of water and the stagnant pools in order to render the land healthy and to drain and make available for agriculture excellent and wide-stretching tracts of land. The property of the communes was burdened with the baronial rights of grazing and felling timber. The communes, in their turn, could command the labour of the peasants, and of their animals of draught and burden, for the maintenance of the highways, and for the carriage of materials, for the services known by the name comandati. Then the vassals were bound to render personal service to their feudal lords. Special taxes in every little district, all of them most burdensome, clogging and hampering the contracts in the disposal of the few rural and urban properties which were left disposable. Custom duties, so high, and at the same time so much divided that the expense of collection swallowed up two-thirds and more of the entire amount, not to speak of the loss of time, of the worry, and the vexation endured by those who had to pay them. It was made obligatory to declare the getting-in of all crops, and

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even the birth of the cattle. It was prohibited to bring either crops or cattle to market until the permission had first been given by the grascieri, or officers specially charged with the direction of the food-market. Custom-houses at the frontier, preventing the entrance of the commodities most wanted for internal consumption, and impeding the exit from the grand duchy of the articles and provisions of which the country had a surplus. Intermediate custom-houses between one district and another, arresting at every step the circulation of goods and of provisions in the interior of the country. Then there were whole classes of privileged persons specially exempted from all these odious finance and fiscal annoyances. All the property of the regular and secular clergy, and all the crown lands, were exempted from every species of tax, direct or indirect, ordinary or extraordinary. Monks and nuns of certain privileged orders and convents had the right to be first served in all the public markets, and to take their choice of all the victuals there exposed. No layman had the right to make his day's market until the cooks of these favoured convents had first left the market-place. There were laws favouring the privileged castes, with special tribunals fortheir execution. Many public employments, judicial and administrative, were hereditary in the classes of the nobility, and of the Florentine and Sienese citizens. Personal merit, talent, and knowledge were in no account if the names of the parents were not to be found inscribed in the Libri d'Ors. All these public functionaries were poorly paid — in some cases not paid at all ; the result being that they were venal, and often extortionate. The public expenditure w^as constantly in excess of the public income, and, of course, the treasury always drained. This state of matters provoked, under specious pretexts, extraordinary taxes and voluntary loans with promises of high interest and repayment which were never kept ; redeemable and unredeemable forced loans, when the allurements and the promises of the i6 voluntary loans had been held out in vain ; an oppressive salt monopoly, a bread monopoly, an iron monopoly, and countless other monopolies ; exclusive licenses granted for the retail trade of raw and manufactured materials — for the trade in the necessaries of human life, of domestic cattle. Nearly all the different sources of the public revenue not pledged for the payment of the interest of the public debt, farmed out to persons who grew rich by grinding down the wretched taxpayers to their last farthing."

This miserable condition of affairs, deplorable as it was in the whole extent of the grand duchy, was marked by features of peculiar wretchedness in the province of Siena. And it was precisely in the province of Siena that, at the time when in France, the influence of Louis XIV/s great protectionist Minister, Colbert, was allparamount, and when in England financiers were out- Colberting Colbert in their insane protectionist rivalry, in the year 1677 — three years after the death of Milton, and one year before the passing of the habeas corpus Act — there was born the economic sage, Sallustio Bandini, whose work, small in dimensions, but truly great by its wise thoughts and far-reaching influence, was destined to form so beneficent an epoch in the history of commercial liberty. This writer, in whose character and career one is at a loss what most to admire — whether his acuteness or his practical common sense, his philanthropy, his patriotism, his rare modesty, or his singular tenacity of will — was born of a noble family in Siena. Destined originally for the army, but showing a marked aversion to that career, he spent the first year of his manhood in the management of the family estates. Whilst thus employed, he acquired that intimate practical knowledge of the condition of the Sienese Maremma, and of the numerous and complicated causes of its misery, to which we owe his deep sympathy with the unhappy population, and the proposals of reformation

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^7 embodied in his far-famed Discorso Economico. It was after a period of several years thus spent in the management of the Bandini estates that he resolved to enter the Church. He repaired to the university of Siena, after the requisite time took his degree as doctor of civil and canon law, and received holy orders: but, before settling down in his new profession in his native city of Siena, he determined to visit all the chief cities of Italy, and make the personal acquaintance of their most distinguished men. He repaired to and dwelt for some time, successively, in Naples, Rome, Bologna, Mantua, and Milan, bringing his course of travel to a close at the capital of his own state, Florence, in which last city he remained a considerable time. On his return to Siena, he was soon appointed one of the canons of the cathedral, then arch-priest, and finally archdeacon. A born reformer, he commenced his reforming efforts by proposing that the scholarships of the Siena university should be placed on a better footing, and awarded solely for merit — not merely through interest and favour. With the view of raising the standard of knowledge and education, then very low amongst the aspirants to holy orders — and, indeed, among the clergy themselves— he devoted the large income of his archdeaconry to the formation of a library, which was soon made by him to include the best works in profane as well as in sacred literature. This he presented, during his lifetime, to the university of Siena, appointing as curators the municipal council, and formally placing it under the protection of the grand duke. We are told of this extremely Broad Churchman that in the selection of the volumes he avoided as much as possible works tending to favour clerical encroachments on the rights of the State, and that no maxim was niore frequently on his lips than the necessity for the clergy to enlarge and liberalise their ideas by a thorough acquaintance with the various branches of secular knowledge. .

B i8

Such was the enlightened and philanthropic ecclesiastic who, towards the close of the Medicean dynasty, conceived the idea of relieving the suffering of the Sienese Maremma by repairing to Florence and submitting to the Grand Duke John Gaston his views respecting the extent of a truly national calamity, and his proposals for the mitigation of the same. He told the sovereign that foremost among the causes by which the Sienese Maremma was sinking down every day into a state of greater misery were the improvident laws by which the Sienese landed proprietors were prevented in years of abundance from exporting their surplus produce. From the inability to dispose of the same in foreign markets, they purposely let their fields grow waste rather than incur the risk of adding new stores of grain to harvests already superabundant, and thus still more lowering the price of their produce in the market. As kindred obstacles were thrown in the way of importing grain, when such imports were most required, and as the very processes of reaping and storing and selling were hampered by absurd regulations — as a huge machinery of obstacles and difficulties clogged in like manner the commercial action of the most common trades — the entire economic and commercial system of the Sienese body politic had become vitiated, and called for radical treatment and effectual cure. What should be the first condition of that treatment, and the first guarantee of that cure ? The very easy and simple method— such was Archdeacon Bandini's reply — of leaving nature to itself ; of allowing men to buy and sell, according as the varying wants and conditions of the market indicated. Grant complete freedom to the corn trade ; strike off the thousand fetters by which the movements of home commerce were impeded ; instead of a cumbrous and costly system of conveyances, by which the transfer of property was rendered difficult and almost impossible, let contracts be regulated by short, plain, and most clearly-expressed

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laws — so clearly expressed as to be intelligible to all ordinary capacities. On the true character and operation of a circulating medium the archdeacon's views were not less precise. If you will only allow trade, he said, to rest on a sounder and more natural footing, so that money must constantly be changing hands, you will have much less trouble about your currency. It is with the circulation of a crown-piece as with the rapid revolving of a lighted torch, which a boy keeps w^hirling round and round. As he whirls it round rapidly, the one point of light assumes the proportions of a large unbroken circle of fire ; and so the crown-piece that in a single month passes through a hundred hands possesses the value and does the work of a hundred crowns. Such were the truths which Archdeacon Bandini sought to impress on the decrepit Grand Duke John Gaston Medici and his councillors, John Antonio Tornaquinci and Jacopo Giraldi. How were these truths received ? As the dreams of a visionary — of one living in some ideal Utopia, instead of that work-a-day Tuscan world which these practical and practised statesmen were called upon to govern ; or rather as the ravings of a lunatic escaped from Bedlam, whom, in the best interests of society, it was imperative to seize and consign again to his straightwaistcoat and his cell. Tornaquinci and Giraldi actually proposed that the mad priest should be shut up in a lunatic asylum ; and if he escaped that fate, his escape was owing partly to his age — for he was already about sixty — partly to his character as a Churchman, and partly to the fact of his belonging to a noble family^ and having very influential connections.

Bandini did not lose heart or hope. After his return to Siena he passed his time in committing to writing the proposals for the improvement of the Maremma which, with so little success, and at such personal risk, he had laid before the Grand Duke John Gaston. He composed the celebrated Economical Discourse ;" and though his lessons always remained in manuscript until several years after the writer s death, he had the satisfaction of knowing that they were appreciated by another and truly enlightened sovereign, the first grand duke of the new dynasty of Hapsburgh-Lorraine — the husband of *-he Empress Maria Theresa — Francis II. For this early jidoption of his views Bandini was indebted to the sincere friendship and enlightened patriotism of a comparatively young statesman, Pompeo Neri. Although the two Ministers of John Gaston, Tornaquinci and Giraldi, had treated him with such contempt, he had won the entire confidence of Neri, whose precocious talents, and, for his years, truly surprising erudition, had led to his appointment, at the age of twenty-one, as Professor of Public Law in the university of Pisa. Thence he had been called by the Grand Duke John Gaston to Florence, to share with his father, Neri Badia, the duties of auditor of the crown property. Whilst discharging the duties of this last office, Pompeo Neri, not yet thirty years of age, had the opportunity of learning, during Bandini's memorable visit to the court of Florence, all the wise proposals made by the philosophic archdeacon for the regeneration of the Sienese Maremma. In the mind of Pompeo Neri these truths, equally practical and philanthropic, found a congenial soil. They never ceased to colour his own long career of energetic and beneficent statesmanship ; for he was destined to hold, at a later period, the first place in the councils of the Grand Duke Peter Leopold. But the first step in the realisation of Bandini's views followed on the presentation to the new Grand Duke Francis of the archdeacon by Pompeo Neri. Reserving to a later place in the narrative the detailed account of the manner in which, through Neri's initiative, these beneficent reforms were commenced, continued, and completed, it may suffice for the present to say that, in the story of the economic reform of Tuscany, under Peter Leopold, the two names of Sallustio Bandini and

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Pompeo Neri hold, next to the name of the prince himself, the most conspicuous place. Had the nobleminded author of the Economical Discourse " never pondered so deeply upon, and felt so keenly for, the desolate condition of the Sienese Maremma ; had he never urged his reforms so strongly on an ignorant, prejudiced, and scornful court ; the great work of economic progress in Tuscany, though sooner or later it might certainly have been effected, would, beyond all question, neither have begun so soon nor been carried out so thoroughly. Had the economic sage of Siena not found in Pompeo Neri so true a friend and so stout a backer, the march of reform, even though accepted in principle, would have sorely lagged in practice. Pompeo Neri was in truth one of the greatest statesmen of the eighteenth century, and he has left the impress of his genius not on Tuscany alone^ but on all Italy. He had even stamped the impress of that genius during his lifetime on the Prussia of Frederick the Great. When, through the jealousy of rival ministers at Florence, he was transferred for some years, by the wish of the Empress Maria Theresa, to the government of Milan, he succeeded in completely remodelling the whole municipal system of Lombardy; and his plans for the valuation of all the landed property in the Lombard province excited at once the admiration and imitation of Frederick the Great, who made them the groundwork of a similar operation in Prussia, and, half a century later, commanded the unqualified assent of Napoleon L, who caused them to be extended from Lombardy to the other parts of his kingdom of Italy. The annals of Tuscan economies offer to our view a group, numerous and varied, of far-seeing and patriotic statesmen, by whom the princes of Hapsburgh-Lorraine were aided in the prosecution of their generous task, and along with them, as their fellow-labourers, may be seen writers of no ordinary power. There is Richcourt, and Ginori, and