ABSTRACT
D IFF ICULTY of communication was not the onlyimpediment to commercial expansion in the eighteenthcentury. Another and no less formidable obstacle was the restrictive commercial policy pursued by the majority of European states. Artificial restraints were imposed by most governments on both internal and external trade. The domestic markets of the chief continental countries were cut up by internal customs barriers, the visible reminders of earlier periods of political disunion. France was divided into four customs areas, each with a distinctive tariff. The numerous states of which the Prussian monarchy was composed retained their fiscal independence till the beginning of the nineteenth century, while Germany as a whole was divided into 350 independent states, each divided from its neighbours by a tariff wall. A multitude of local tolls and octroi duties imposed further obstacles to commercial intercourse. It was estimated that a hogshead of wine travelling from Roanne to Paris (260 miles) paid no less than twenty tolls, in addition to two internal customs duties at Valence and Lyons. Britain alone among European states in the eighteenth century enjoyed the blessings of internal free trade. The political unity of England had been attained before the machinery of commercial tariffs was elaborated, and her constituent provinces had no traditions of fiscal autonomy to safeguard, while the Unions with Scotland and Ireland abolished the customs barriers which formerly existed between the separate kingdoms. The United Kingdom formed the largest area in Europe over which trading could be carried on without artificial restraint. In her undivided domestic market, Britain possessed an important advantage over her continental rivals, which contributed in no small degree to her superior economic progress during the later eighteenth century.
