ART. II.—THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF TRADE,

AND THE DANGERS AND DUTIES OF THE MERCANTILE CLASSES.*

I HAVE selected for the subject of our consideration this evening, the Social Influence of Trade, and the Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Classes. The subject, though lying somewhat apart from the studies of my profession, has always to me been peculiarly attractive. The influences of trade are so interwoven with the history of mankind, with the progression, civilization, physical comfort, and moral condition of the race, that they meet the student and the philanthropist at every turn, and solicit from him, if he have any philosophical curiosity, a thorough investigation into the science of the production, the distribution, and consumption of wealth. The history of trade and of war is in substance the history of mankind. They have constituted almost the only intercourse of nations, and the lust of gain and of conquest, have both been made use of by an overruling Providence to subdue and civilize mankind, and to spread Art, Science, and Plenty into all lands. The merchant, while planning the distant voyage to some barbarous coast, with no higher purpose than to increase his wealth, and the general leading his forces into the wilderness where no civilized foot has trod, are equally the instruments in the hands of a higher Power of ministering to the gradual improvement of the world.

Trade has been the great means of civilizing and improving mankind, because it is the first thing which rouses them from the indolence and apathy of savage life. Show to man some comfort or luxury which he can obtain by the exchange of the fruits of his toil, and he will no longer be all day dozing in the shade, while his wife provides for him a miserable subsistence. He is up with the dawn, and the hope of gain stimulates his activity to latest eve. In short, he is a savage no longer. Trade touches him with her magic wand, and transforms him into a new creature. She cleanses him from his filth and negligence, she clothes him in seemly and decent apparel, she spreads out his little garden into a wide plantation, and in the end, transforms his hut into a palace. And it is no less indispensable to the support of a high civilization than it is in its production. In short, it is to the welfare of mankind what the circulation is to the body, its life and health. Any obstruction of it is disease—a total cessation of it, paralysis and death.

Trade has ministered to the good of mankind in ways innumerable, by being the chief instrument in the accumulation of wealth. Wealth is not that private and exclusive good which some suppose. It is a common fund, even when in private hands, for the benefit of all. Trade contributes to its accumulation in two ways, in stimulating industry and production to the greatest extent, by keeping all who are able to labor employed; and then by drawing even a moderate profit from each, it swells the income of the factor beyond all reasonable demands of expenditure. If the merchant did not become rich, half his social utility would be destroyed. That

* A lecture delivered before the Mercantile Library Association of Baltimore, by the Rev. G. W. BURNAP, and now first published in the Merchants' Magazine, by request of the Association.

excess of the merchant's gains over his expenditures, though not perhaps saved by him from pleasure or ostentation with any such designs, has been the precious seed-grain of the greatest achievements of mankind. It was that which built Thebes and Palmyra. It was that which gave birth to the wonders of architecture and sculpture which are still the admiration of the world. It was that which gave the priests of Egypt the leisure to elaborate, by slow degrees, that most wonderful contrivance of the human mind and great instrument of human progress, alphabetic writing. It was this accumulation of the merchant's gains, which first gave birth to navigation, and sent the ships of Tyre and Sidon to explore the shores of the Mediterranean, and summon innumerable barbarous tribes to the blessings of civilization and physical comfort. Conquest and commerce, with reverence be it spoken, prepared the world for the advent of the Son of God, and laid down those great highways of the nations, along which the everlasting Gospel went to be proclaimed to every tongue and people. The very Apostles were carried to their distant missions by the enterprises of commerce, and the very vessel in which Paul suffered shipwreck was laden with Egyptian wheat by some Alexandrian merchant for the markets of Italy. In modern times the achievements of trade have been no less beneficial to mankind. After the relapse of the western world into barbarism, trade was the first and principal instrument in the restoration of civilization. Commercial wealth was the first antagonist power to feudal tyranny. Cities created by commerce, afforded the first rallying point against the overshadowing power of the great landed proprietors. The vassal fled from slavery, where he could get no fair equivalent for his labor, to sell his industry to the merchant and the manufacturer, who gave him employment under a fair and voluntary stipulation.

It was the growth of cities and mercantile wealth, which regenerated the governments of modern Europe, which tamed down the fierce despotisms of the middle ages into limited and constitutional monarchies, and infused into them all of that republican spirit which they now possess. The kings of these rude ages imagined that all their glory consisted in war and conquest. But wars could not be carried on without money, and money could be had only from those who possessed it, and they were usually the mercantile classes. The haughty monarch was willing, from time to time, to barter away portions of his prerogative for the gratification of his ambition. Thus he gradually disarmed himself of the power of doing mischief, and the will and interest of the many being felt in the government, public measures began to be taken with reference to the good of the mass instead of the interest of the few. Thus the influence of the mercantile classes continued to increase, till the discovery of the magnet and the consequent revelation of a new continent and a new passage to the Indies threw open the whole world to the enterprises of commerce. Since that, the mercantile power has been constantly advancing, till wealth has created to herself a throne higher than the kings of the earth. She has become the guardian of the peace of the world; so dependent have nations become upon each other for employment and bread, that the very rumor of a war sends the cry of famine and distress into the halls of legislation from so many millions of voices, and in such piercing tones, that the warlike spirit quails before the apprehension of greater ills. Thus the spirit of commerce is everywhere supplanting the spirit of war, and now constitutes the great league of amity among all mankind. That it is the ruling

spirit of modern times, is proved by the fact that England by the means of it, though but a little island, is the most powerful nation on earth. The truth is that England is everywhere, where there is a shore to colonize, or an article of merchandise to be bought or sold.

The daughter of England, our country, inherits her commercial propensities in exaggerated intensity. The American character is strongly commercial. Habits of trading are here formed almost from the cradle, and scarcely a man, woman, or child can be found among us who is not ready to buy and sell. Nothing so stimulates the growth of a nation as this very spirit of trade, and the ready transfer of property from one to another. It develops industry in the highest possible degree, and places all property in the hands of those who can make the most of it.

It is in fact the spirit of trade which rolls the tide of population so rapidly into the western wilds, a tide whose waves must soon break at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The spirit of traffic was the pioneer which first explored those vast regions, and drew thither the hardy sons of toil and adventure. It was the indomitable spirit of trade which gave the new communities of the west a comfortable home, by furnishing, through the means of an easy intercommunication, a ready market for all they can produce. It is nothing else than the commercial spirit, acting by the power of steam, which is now filling the valley of the Mississippi with its growing millions. It is this vast development of trade and population which is so rapidly building up our principal cities, and has added more than half a million to their population within the last ten years. And perhaps there never was since the beginning of the world such a field presented for commercial enterprise as is promised in the United States for the next fifty years. Such, young gentlemen, are the achievements of trade in the history of the world. Such are some of the influences it has exerted upon the condition of mankind, and such are the prospects of the profession which you have embraced in the country where your lot is cast. shall now say something of the general principles, or rather, as it may be called, the philosophy of trade. This is a science of itself, and every young man destined to mercantile pursuits, ought to make himself familiar with it. Aside from its practical utility, it is one of the most curious and entertaining of all studies.

Trade is the exchange of the products of human labor. The merchant is merely the factor of the producer and consumer. His profession has grown up out of the general principle of the division of labor, which has appropriated all the different employments of life to distinct classes of individuals. The producer and consumer might if they chose do all the business of trading themselves, and exchange their commodities at first hands. But they employ the merchant, because he can do it cheaper than they. He has more skill and knowledge, and therefore can do it better. Not only so, he can do the business of a great many, and therefore greatly lighten the expense of each. Take for instance the trader of a country village. He is in fact, though he may be growing rich all the time, a labor-saving and money-saving machine to the whole neighborhood. When he sets out for the city to make his purchases, he imagines that he is going to seek his own individual interest alone. But he is mistaken. He is the cheapest and most able agent which the village could send to make their purchases for the next six months. He is the cheapest, because he saves them all the trouble of going themselves, he makes a better selec

tion than they could, and he gives them their articles of consumption at a lower cost than they could get them in any other way.

And

Just so it is with their products. It is for their advantage to dispose of them at the nearest market. Any attempt to carry them to a distant one would often nearly consume the product in the time and expense of transportation. The merchant, who devotes himself to the business, may do these things more cheaply and to greater advantage. He himself may make advances on them..in anticipation of a better price, which the producer cannot wait to realize. Thus it is, that commercial wealth is not a merely selfish affair. It does not benefit the possessor alone, but may be advantageous to all to whom he sells, or of whom he buys. It is always better for the producer to sell to a rich man than to a poor man. this fact alone ought to annihilate all those insane and unfounded feelings of hostility, which of late years have been attempted to be excited in the poor against the rich. The riches of a merchant, when accumulated by fair means, are a monument, not only to his own industry, talents, and severance, but of extended benefactions to countless individuals. They are the evidence of innumerable transactions, generally advantageous to both parties, or they would not have been continued. They are generally the evidence of a fair and faithful agency between the producer and consumer, or it would long since have come to an end.

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I cannot pass over this part of the subject without adverting, in still stronger terms of reprobation, to that incendiary cry which has been attempted to be raised within a few years, of the poor against the rich. The assumptions upon which this outery is founded, are as false as its motives are mean and contemptible. It is based upon a false apprehension of the position of the rich man in society. It is said in the Scriptures, that the rich man is, with regard to God, the mere steward of his bounty. And so he is with regard to man. Wealth cannot exist in any part of the social system, without sooner or later benefiting the whole. It is, to quote a figure I have already used, to society what blood is to the system; though there may be some reservoirs where it is stored, and, for a while, detained, it flows through all, sustains and refreshes all; and no one man, not even its possessor, can appropriate to himself more than his share. Grant that he hoards it up; then it is to him as useless as it is to others. It is no longer his; it belongs to his heirs. Instead of being more self-indulgent, and more to be envied for the profusion of his pleasures, he is the most disinterested and abstemious man in the community. Does he use it, and endeavor to increase his store ?—he cannot do so without benefiting others more than himself. He must lend it to others, or he must employ others. He must give others the use of his wealth, which is all that he has himself. It benefits them more than it does himself; for to them it is vital—their whole living. To him the use of a considerable part of it is unimportant, for we have supposed him to have a superabundance. Shall the poor hate the rich? They must hate them for the possession of the very thing which makes their own labor available, which fills this world with comforts and luxuries, and makes it a comfortable habitation for rich and poor.

But is the poor man sent into the world without any inheritance in it? By no means. He has the richest inheritance of all, in the power to labor; for which God has so constituted things, that there shall ever be a more constant, a more certain, and unfailing demand, than for any thing else. Thus there is formed an inevitable partnership between labor and capital—

the rich and the poor-which nothing but death can dissolve, in all the labors and enterprises of this life. Death itself does not dissolve it, but it descends from generation to generation. In this perpetual partnership, labor, so far from being oppressed, usually has the advantage. It is sure of its share, for it receives it as it goes along. The other is altogether uncertain and problematical. No enterprise is ever undertaken without this partnership, nor any business carried on. Labor receives its share without risk and responsibility, which all fall upon the other side. How have those great improvements been achieved, which have changed the face of the globe, and filled it with those comforts and luxuries which are now brought to the door of the humblest cottage? By the accumulation of wealth in a few hands. Had the agrarian principle prevailed, such accumulation could never have taken place, and those extensive blessings would have been forever precluded. It is only by large revenues falling into few hands, that those treasures can be amassed, which react upon society with such benignant power. Were those revenues equally divided, they would be spent from year to year. But by falling into the hands of a few, they so far exceed all reasonable expenditure, that they necessarily accumulate, and form those rich resources by which the most stupendous works are undertaken and accomplished; which give employment and bread to thousands, who otherwise would have been idle; and finally, by developing the capacities of our earth, give existence to millions who otherwise would never have enjoyed that inestimable boon. Nothing, then, can be more unreasonable or unwise than the wish, that there were no rich men, even when cherished by the poor. Every accession of wealth to any individual, is a benefit to every other individual, let him be never so poor, for it renders the great partnership of mankind more profitable to all and to each. Away, then, with the senseless clamor of the poor against the rich! In such a country as ours, where there is no hereditary aristocracy, no primogeniture, or entailed estates, this outcry is utterly unfounded. It is a political cheat, which has sapped the very foundations of our national prosperity.

I shall now say something of the nature and uses of money, the great instrument of trade; a subject which is at the present moment intensely interesting, and ought to be thoroughly studied by every man at all connected with mercantile pursuits. Such is the difference of value of the different products of labor which one man wishes to exchange with another, that it has been found convenient to keep the account of differences in some third article by which both are valued. That third article is sometimes one thing, and sometimes another, in different ages and different nations. In ruder ages, it was often cows and oxen. This seems to have been the case with our ancestors, as would be indicated by the very name of metallic money, which was in time made to take their place— coin, from kine, the Saxon plural of cow. The armor of Diomed, according to Homer, cost nine oxen. If it had cost only half as much, four oxen and a half, it would have been difficult for him to make the change. As civilization advanced, and exchanges became more frequent, it was found necessary to have a currency which could be transported with greater facility, and more easily subdivided. This medium of exchange was found in the precious metals. They afforded for many ages the best, and almost the only, medium of exchange. They exist in small quantities, and are obtained by such slow and laborious processes, as not to be so