After this review of the characteristics of commercial policy the reader will naturally inquire what were its effects. On one point an answer can be given with considerable assurance; the policy had no important effect on the distribution of the precious metals. Gold and silver were brought from America, the chief source of supply, to Spain, and flowed from Spain to the countries where they were needed in business; it seemed as though all the people of the world were in an unconscious conspiracy to defeat the plans of statesmen for checking or directing the flow. It is noteworthy that Spain, the country which had the best chance apparently to accumulate treasure and which pursued a policy of exaggerated mercantilism, was always complaining of the dearth of gold and silver, while Oriental states, which had never heard of mercantilism, accumulated large stores of bullion. The attempts of European countries to rob other countries of their treasure by legislation present, from one point of view, an absurd spectacle, for they were all applying the same principles in much the same way, action and reaction were equal, and no amount of political straining affected the distribution due to economic demand. =195. Important effects of the mercantile system in other ways.=—The commercial policy of the mercantilist period had effects in other directions, if it did miss the mark at which it aimed. It was important, considered merely as a policy of restriction, in checking the exchange of commodities between states. Just as manors and the districts centering around a city had aimed at self-sufficiency in an earlier period, so the states of this period were led by their dislike of imports to attempt the production of everything possible within their borders; and an international organization, in which each state would specialize in the products for which it was best fitted, and would depend on commerce with others for supplying deficiencies, was hindered from developing. The mercantile system furnished a natural basis for the system of national protection, which grew up from it, and which has not entirely outgrown even yet its mercantilist origins. One of the most obvious effects of mercantilist commercial policy can be traced in its influence on the foreign relations of states. It was not, as is often said, the chief cause of the many wars which vexed Europe at this period; their cause lay deeper than any theory of favorable or unfavorable balances of trade. The balance of trade theory did, however, affect the political grouping of countries to a considerable extent, and inclined statesmen to look for friends or foes in the countries with which the balance was favorable or unfavorable. England, for example, made herself the ally of Portugal through a large part of the modern period, because Portugal bought her manufactures, and sold in return wines and other commodities which could not be produced at