The League of Cambrai was an event of the
same character, in so far as it was clearly opposed to the interests of
the two chief members, Louis XII and Julius II. The hatred of all Italy
against t}e victorious city seemed to be concentrated in the mind of
the Pope, and to have blinded him to the evils of foreign intervention;
and as to the policy of Cardinal d'Amboise and his king, Venice ought
long before to have recognized it as a piece of malicious imbecility,
and to have been thoroughly on its guard. The other members of the
League took part in it from that envy which may be a salutary
corrective to great wealth and power, but which in itself is a beggarly
sentiment. Venice came out of the conflict with honour, but not without
lasting damage.
A power whose foundations were so complicated, whose activity and
interests filled so wide a stage, cannot be imagined without a
systematic oversight of the whole, without a regular estimate of means
and burdens, of profits and losses. Venice can fairly make good its
claim to be the birthplace of statistical science, together, perhaps,
with Florence, and followed by the more enlightened despotisms. The
feudal state of the Middle Ages knew of nothing more than catalogues of
seignorial rights and possessions (urbaria); it looked on production as
a fixed quantity, which it approximately is, so long as we have to do
with landed property only.
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