Note A3-5-4 — Chapter III

"Shall the forester wait until the wind in the course of centuries carries the seed from one place to another, and the barren heath is converted into a dense wood?" (List, Gesammelte Schriften, III, 123 seq.) When the Romans had conquered an industrial country, its industries began generally to flourish better, because of the greater market opened to them; whereas, those which had no industries before, continued, for the most part, to remain producers of the raw material after the conquest, also. Related to this is the phenomenon, that the provinces not favored by nature, were much less backward in the middle ages than they are to-day. Compare the description of the misery of Mitchelstown, after the Earl of Kingston had ceased to consume £40,000 there: Inglis, Journey through Ireland, 1835, I, 142. The royal commission appointed to investigate the misery of Spessart in 1852, show that the home-made clothing had gone out of use there, and that the wooden shoes, so well adapted to wooded countries, had been changed for leather ones. This becoming acquainted with foreign wants in a region not adapted to industries, without a large market, greatly increased the distress. As soon as such a region becomes an independent state, a productive system would suggest itself.