The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [15]
or war. To the century, next, from 1470 to 1570, belongs the attempt (for which there is evidence everywhere) to create a system of indirect taxes for the territory; and this necessarily led to a conflict with the indirect taxes of the towns and the trade policy based upon it. The prince's monopoly of salt, involving as it did a shutting-up of the country against the outside world, together with the beer tax, the excise on wine, and the various tolls occupied the foreground. Of the changes in the system of tolls, particularly in Brandenburg, I have given an account in another place, and I have tried to shew how the older system, which had become municipal and feudal, gave way entirely before the new territorial system during the period from 1470 to 1600.(30*) This latter did, indeed, become more and more purely fiscal in its character, especially in the gloomy years 1600-1640; yet it continued in some measure to be affected by economic considerations. Of equal importance for Brandenburg was the introduction of the beer tax, which from 1549 constituted the centre round which revolved the whole administration by the Estates of the territorial debt. The application in all places of the same rules in levying it, tended to bring about everywhere a uniform organisation of the business, - then among the most flourishing and important of town industries. As there was a large sale of Brandenburg beer in foreign parts, the heavy taxation imposed upon it rendered a gentle treatment necessary of the exporting towns on the frontier: as early as the years 1580-1620 there was some serious discussion as to the consequences of the beer tax here and in neighbouring states, and, indeed, of the effect of such territorial taxes in general upon commercial and industrial prosperity. The administration of the beer tax fund (Biergeldkasse) by the Estates grew into a credit system enclosing the whole land, and especially the funds of the several towns, within its network. Whoever happened to have any idle cash brought it to the district authorities, who used it to meet the never-ending deficit; thousands and thousands of gulden were every year withdrawn and paid in again. The debt office acted as a bank for the whole country, just as the town-chest had been for the town in earlier times. The men of means throughout the land were so closely associated with this central institution, that the insufficiency of its income prepared the way for a frightful bankruptcy.(31*) With the financial and economic crisis of the Thirty Years' War began a new epoch in the history of territorial taxation, upon which we need not here enter. In Brandenburg and some other states, it is marked by a complete cessation of attempts to increase the beer tax, and by a sustained effort for some fifty or sixty years to develop the direct taxes, the subsidies, and the assessment on which they rested. During the period 1670 to 1700, however, as prosperity once more began to return, the tendency to develop the indirect taxes, especially the excise, again became predominant.
Here let us pause. Our purpose was to shew by a particular example, that of Brandenburg, that, during the course of the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the creation of the German territorial state was not merely a political but also an economic necessity. But the same results were brought about elsewhere. The several states of Holland, the French provinces, the Italian city-states, are all analogous phenomena. We have to do with a great historical process, by which local sentiment and tradition were strengthened, the social and economic forces of the whole territory consolidated, important legal and economic institutions created; by which, further, the forces and institutions thus united were led to a battle of competition with other territories, involving numerous shiftings of toll, confiscations of goods and ships, embargoes and staple-fights, prohibitions of importation and exportation and the like; while, within the country itself, old antagonisms softened and trade became
Here let us pause. Our purpose was to shew by a particular example, that of Brandenburg, that, during the course of the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the creation of the German territorial state was not merely a political but also an economic necessity. But the same results were brought about elsewhere. The several states of Holland, the French provinces, the Italian city-states, are all analogous phenomena. We have to do with a great historical process, by which local sentiment and tradition were strengthened, the social and economic forces of the whole territory consolidated, important legal and economic institutions created; by which, further, the forces and institutions thus united were led to a battle of competition with other territories, involving numerous shiftings of toll, confiscations of goods and ships, embargoes and staple-fights, prohibitions of importation and exportation and the like; while, within the country itself, old antagonisms softened and trade became