ABSTRACT
In place of the old dying feudal economy, and above the decaying urban economy, a national economy was organized and developed. Its framework was the monarchical or princely state, in which were merged the old local sovereignties. With much uncertain groping, under the influence of the maxims of Roman Law, and impelled by the pressure of necessity, the state became conscious of its rights and of its duties towards the community, especially in the West. In the Low Countries, France, Italy, Spain, England, and at times even in other parts of Europe, sovereigns showed themselves possessed of an economic policy, sometimes incoherent, but every day more active. Their power and prestige often depended upon the manner in which they carried it out. The Italian princes, the dukes of Burgundy, certain of the Valois kings, such as Charles V, owed some part of their popularity and their ascendancy to it. This policy had for its object the increase of national wealth, the expansion of all kinds of business enterprises, and the satisfaction of popular needs. It sought to maintain a due proportion between production and consumption, to stimulate the one and to supply the needs of the other. In order to accomplish this the royal power essayed to establish centralized institutions, to rely upon the support of the middle classes, and to submit Church, feudal nobles, and communes to its authority, despoiling them of their economic prerogatives or bringing them under its own control. Not only did it attempt to maintain or restore order and public peace by creating administrative machinery, law-courts, finances, and regular armies, but it also intervened more or less continuously, and with more or less happy results, in the organization of production and in the relations of the labouring classes.
