Note A2-6-9 — Chapter III

Seldom in antiquity. Compare, however, Inscr. Gr., II, No. 256, and the reciprocal granting of the rights of citizenship of Athens and Rhodes. (Livy, XXXI, 15.) Among the moderns, Flanders followed free-trade principles similar to those followed later by Holland, at the beginning of the fourteenth century; for instance, it refused to gratify France by breaking off its trade with Scotland. (Rymer, Foedera, II, 388.) Florence, in 1490, promised the English, that in all treaties to be entered into with others, it would permit it to enter. In the French-Florentine commercial treaty of 1494, it is stipulated with the Florentines that their ships Gallica esse intelligantur and their merchants tanquam veri et naturales Galli etc. (Decima, II, 308.) Swedish treaty with Stralsund, 1574, that every privilege granted to a Baltic city should also be, of itself, to the advantage of Stralsund. Mutual equal treatment of subjects promised between Portugal and England, 1642; Portugal and Holland, 1661; mutual treatment on the basis of the most favored nation: between England and Portugal, 1642; Holland and Spain, in the peace of Utrecht; Spain and Portugal, 1713; Spain and Tuscany, 1731; England and Russia, 1734. But how far such principles were removed from the beginning of the eighteenth century is shown by the speech from the throne of the 28th of January, 1727, of George I., in which the Austro-Spanish treaty of 1725, that placed the subjects of Austria in the colonial empire of Spain on an equal footing with the English and Dutch, is described as a violation of the dearest interests of England, and in which it is said that England must defend its own unquestionable right against the covenant entered into to violate public faith and the most solemn treaties; that it might be that Spain thought of subjecting England once more to the popish pretender. Even in 1713, it was one of the principal points in controversy between the Tories and Whigs, whether, in a commercial treaty with France, the latter should be accorded the rights of the most favored nations. Compare Daniel Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce, and per contra, The British Merchant.