The towns, on the other hand, throughout the
West must from very early times have treated production, which with
them depended on industry and commerce, as exceedingly variable; but
even in the most flourishing times of the Hanseatic League, they never
got beyond a simple commercial balance-sheet. Fleets, armies, political
power and influence fall under the debit and credit of a trader's
ledger. In the Italian States a clear political consciousness, the
pattern of Mohammedan administration, and the long and active exercise
of trade and commerce, combined to produce for the first time a true
science of statistics. The absolute monarchy of Frederick II in Lower
Italy was organized with the sole object of securing a concentrated
power for the death struggle in which he was engaged. In Venice, on the
contrary, the supreme objects were the enjoyment of life and power, the
increase of inherited advantages, the creation of the most lucrative
forms of industry. and the opening of new channels for commerce.
The writers of the time speak of these things with the greatest
freedom. We learn that the population of the city amounted in the year
1422 to 190,000 souls; the Italians were, perhaps, the first to reckon,
not according to hearths, or men able to bear arms, or people able to
walk, and so forth, but according to 'animae,' and thus to get the most
neutral basis for further calculation.
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