=156. Agriculture.=—The next important subject to be discussed in considering the great changes in commerce in the modern period is the development of the economic organization. The influence of the discovery of new lands, new routes, and new wares is so obvious that the discoveries are often represented as the chief cause of the growth of commerce in the modern period. They were unquestionably very important factors in this growth, but European commerce was developing without them, and would have felt their influence much less if it had not been changing in its internal structure. Men were applying new methods of cooperation, which enabled them to make more of their resources at home and to utilize with greatest effect the opportunities for gain abroad. Even at the end of the period the commerce of England with Europe was larger than with all the other continents together. We shall review briefly in the following sections the main changes in the different branches of production. The topic of agriculture must be dismissed with but a few words. There was a general movement toward freedom of the agricultural classes of western Europe at the beginning of the period. Wars and other political interruptions checked the movement in France, and brought about an actual decline of the cultivators in Germany; England was the only important country in which the country classes became perfectly free. In Europe as a whole, however, the conditions of production in agriculture were decidedly better than they had been in the Middle Ages, and the increased product supported a larger population and furnished a basis for a more extended trade.