Also read Official Croquet Arts Of Weaving Amongst the passions that get hold of rivals in commerce, that of envy is so great, when avarice is defeated, that, to humble a successful rival, they will meet ruin themselves, without fear, and even with satisfaction. Instead of the contest being, as formerly, between cities situated on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, those maritime powers who navigated the main ocean became the contending parties. There are only two ways by which wealth is accumulated and brought into few hands; the one by compulsion and levying taxes, the other by producing or procuring objects of desire; for a small quantity of which, people give up a great portion of their labour. Sovereigns have amassed wealth and possessed revenue by the first means, and the use they have put it to has been magnificence in building, or in great or useful works, for war, or for pleasure. The wealth obtained by the other means, of which the trade to the East seems to have been the chief, produced a different effect. In Italy it occasioned the invention of bills of exchange, and gave encouragement to the fine arts, and to some manufactures. In the north of Europe it infused a general spirit for trade and manufactures; for the luxuries of the East only served to teach the people of the north the necessity of acquiring comfort by manufacturing the produce of their own country. To improve the arts of weaving, to make woollen and linen cloths of a finer texture, was very natural, after having seen the silks and muslins that came from India; particularly to people living in a cold climate, where a more substantial covering was wanted, and where the materials were in abundance. It was, accordingly, in Flanders, and the adjacent country, that the modern spirit of manufactures rose up, nourished by the wealth which the ancient commerce of India had produced. In the early ages, when the Tyrians had this trade, they amassed great wealth, though they had not any large countries to supply; for, probably, neither Egypt nor the eastern part of Syria would receive the produce by so circuitous a road. But, during the first ages, sacrifices to the gods and the funeral ceremonies consumed vast quantities of aromatics of every sort, as well as the enjoyments of the living. The two former causes of request for aromatics have long been at an end, owing to the changes in religion. They are now neither burned on the altar nor at the grave; and custom and taste, which are to a certain degree variable and arbitrary, have lessened the consumption of some, and others have been supplied by the progress that we have ourselves made in manufactures. While this diminution of consumption took place, the western world was advancing in civilization, and the progress of wealth became vastly more extended; so that if the consumers of eastern luxuries were less profuse in the use of them, they were, at the same time, greatly increased in number. The taste for tea, alone, which was introduced not much above a century ago, has alone, overbalanced all the others, and it is still augmenting in Europe; besides the discovery of a new quarter of the world rapidly increasing in population, into which the custom of drinking tea, as in Britain, has been introduced also.