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Accession No. &—-
MEMORY COLLEGE LIBRARY^
OXFORD, GEORGIA.
REGULATIONS.
1. Two books may be taken at a time by any student 01* member of the Faculty,
or any other person in the village paying Library fees, and no volume shall be re¬
tained more than two weeks without a renewal, and no second renewal will be
allowed without special permission of the Faculty.
2. A line of ten cents per week will be assessed for each book detained over time,
payable on its return.
3. Any person taking books from the Library will be held responsible tor their
loss or injurv. No pen or pencil marks shall be made in the books, and no books
shall be lent out of the household of the person responsible for the same.
4. No general reference work shall at any time be taken from the Library Duilding.
5. Any person willfully violating an" of the foregoing rules shall thereby forfeit
all right to tire use of the Library.
LECTURES TO BUSINESS MEN;
DELIVERED IN
ST. PETER'S CHURCH,
CHARLESTON, SO. CA.
By REV. HENRY MANDEVILLE DENISON.
f utlisijclJ at tt)e Acquest of fEtrmbcrs of ti)e (Songfcgation.
CHARLESTON;
STEAM POWER PRESS OF WALKER, EVANS & CO',
no. 3 broad street*
1858.
TO
35. W. DUNHAM, ESQ., OP BROOKLYN, NEW YORK,
THESE LECTURES
Are respectfully and affectionately
DEDICATED,
as to one who can be confidently pointed out
to young men as an example of a Christian Merchant,
whose unobtrusive life may be studied in the light of the Counting
House, of the Exchange, of public spirited fostering of all Public
Interests, of the retirement of the Family Circle, and of Loyal Service to the Church
of Jesus Christ; whose lab'ors Commerce has crowned with Success,
and whose Descent into the Valley of Years is cheered by indica¬
tions on every hand from the God of Providence fulfilling
his promise, "Them that honor me I will honor,
but he that despiseth me shall be
lightly esteemed."
LECTURE I.
COMMERCE-THE HARBINGER AND TEST OF CIVILIZATION.
"There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely: riches kept
for the owners thereof, to their hurt."—Prov. v., 13th.
In the course of six thousand years in which man, under
the province of God, has been working out his destiny, few
propositions have been more fully illustrated than that of the
text.
The direst evils—luxury, sloth, intemperance—have ever
followed the retention of wealth by its owners, for selfish
uses; and the greatest temporal blessings which the present
condition of man fits him to receive, have always accompa¬
nied the diffusion of riches according to the requirements of
charity, liberality, and commerce. To the praise of the latter,
it must be confessed, that up to a certain stage of their progress,
those nations most famous for the extent of their trade, have
also been noted for a liberal public spirit, and for general eleva¬
tion of the masses of the people.
So close is the alliance between commerce and civilization,
that it is difficult to say whether she bears to the latter the
relation of a patient and attentive handmaid, or a loving and
inseparable bride.
" A Tartar," (says that polished writer, Dr. Ferguson—Essay
on History of Civil Society,) " A Tartar, mounted on his horse,
is an animal of prey, who only enquires where cattle are to be
found, and how far he must go to possess them." The monk,
"who had fallen under the displeasure of Mangu Khan, made
his peace by promising that the Pope and the Christian Princes
should make a surrender of all their herds." This "animal
of prey" derived his diary, his tent, his defence, his food, and
6
his clothing, from the animal he rode; and he presents to us
a striking contrast with the merchant of Venice, dwelling in
palaces, and celebrating every year with gala-day and wed¬
ding-ring his nuptials with the sea, a bountiful bride, who
had brought him a dower of inexhaustible wealth. The
poetry and romance once associated with commerce were still
green in the halcyon days of Venetian glory, and we can
trace back the gallant devotion to the element that filled the
coffers of the merchant princes of that great republic, to the
memories of still older days, when the sea was worshipped
as a god whose trident shook the earth; when voyages that
conferred immortality upon the mariners were made to fabu¬
lous shores, and galleys sailed from their haven with their
beaks covered with garlands and convoyed by glittering dol¬
phins, and mermaids with pearls in their hair, and after pious
sacrifices to Nuptune and JEoius, that they might return laden
with fabulous spoils.
A comprehensive view of civilization will consider it as
embracing high attainments in government, arts, and refine¬
ment of manners, and while these have existed separately, or
in very rare instances combined in countries which have made
no very great progress in commerce, they have generally been
proportioned nearly to the state of the external and internal
trade of the nations of the earth. For what is the chief sub¬
ject of laws but the rights of trade and property, (money, static
and dynamic) and who shall engage in arts, if their products
be not diffused ? and how can refinement be secured, but by
intercourse, even interested intercourse—growing out of mu¬
tual want and dependence—of man with his fellows ? Man,
wholly independent, is but a selfish savage, a Tartar wander¬
ing in search of cattle, a Chinaman or Japanese with absolute
tyranny in government, and with fossilized "institutions. If
he attain to power not softened by the amenities of commer¬
cial life, he is a madman like Alexander, a splendid despot
like the ancient Persian, or a universal butcher like Rome.
We might, indeed, reason from cause to effect, to show that
the highfest civilization is attainable only with the aid of com¬
merce; for the qualifications of the thorough man of business,
7
his energy, his integrity, his habit of generalization—acquired
from looking at the markets of the world, his financial skill,
i by which the revenues of nations are collected and disbursed,
his taste in the fine arts—which are the substance of his traf¬
fic, his very security: all tend to the enlightenment and eleva¬
tion of the race. His employment is the diffusion of wealth,
that it may not be " kept by the owners thereof, for their hurt."
The building and freighting of a single ship gives work and
money to the ironmonger, the carpenter, the spinner, the
weaver, the machinist, the farmer, the manufacturer, the artist,
and sometimes, unfortunately, to the lawyer and the doctor,
together with the day-laborer, and all in their employ, down
to the most servile but indispensable occupations. But per¬
haps a sketch of the history of commercial influence upon
man will best illustrate my position; and to begin with an
example most interesting to us, the connection between trade
and government can hardly be better exhibited than by the
condition of our own country after the Revolution, and before
the adoption of the present Constitution.
The old articles of confederation had barely sufficed for
collecting the Continental troops into one army, under one
illustrious head, and when the pressure of a foreign war,
which was the sole power of cohesion or rather of aggrega¬
tion, was taken off", the elements of civil discord at once ap¬
peared, and the country passed through a darker time than
when in the infancy of her existence she was at war with
England. Even the great heart of Washington, which had
never failed in the hour of his country's need, almost lost
its hope for the future, and its trust in the providence of
God.
The injury done to our trade by the weakness of the
articles of confederation was incalculable, and exhibits in the
strongest light the acute sympathy existing between govern¬
ment and commerce. Says Judge Story, commenting upon
the gloomy history of that disastrous period, "Our foreign
commerce was not only crippled, but almost destroyed by the
want of uniform laws to regulate it. Foreign nations im¬
posed upon our navigation and trade just such restrictions as
8
they deemed best to their own interest and policy. Our nav¬
igation was ruined; our mechanics were in a state of inex¬
tricable poverty ; our agriculture was withered, and the little
money still found in the country was gradually finding its
way abroad to supply our immediate wants. In the rear of
all this there was a heavy public debt, which there was no
means to pay, and a state of alarming embarrassment in that
most difficult and delicate of all relations, the relation of pri¬
vate debtors and creditors, threatened daily an overthrow
even of the ordinary administration of justice. Severe as
were the calamities of the war, the pressure of them was far
less mischievous than this slow but progressive destruction of
all our resources, all our industry and all our credit."—Story
on Con. p. 32.
Still more significant, if possible, is the fact that our Amer¬
ican Constitution itself, a miracle of human wisdom, grew out
of the exigencies of commerce. The following brief history of
this transaction is taken from Judge Upshur's masterly review
of Story, and is quoted by Tucker.—Constitutional Law,
page 168.
"In the year 1786 the difficulties and embarrassments
under which our trade suffered in consequence of the conflict¬
ing and often hostile commercial regulations of the several
States, suggested to the Legislature of Virginia the necessity
of forming among all the States, a general system calculated
to advance and protect the trade of all of them.
" They accordingly appointed commissioners, to meet at
Annapolis, commissioners from such of the other States as
should approve of the proceeding, for the purpose of prepar¬
ing a uniform plan of commercial regulations, which was to
be submitted to all the States, and if by then ratified and
adopted, to be executed by Congress. Such of the commis¬
sioners as met, however, soon discovered that the execution
of the particular trust with which they were clothed, involved
other subjects not within their commission, and which could
not be properly adjusted without a great enlargement of their
powers. They, therefore, simply reported this fact, and rec¬
ommended the appointment of delegates to meet in Conven-
9
tion in Philadelphia, in 1787, for the purpose not merely of
forming a uniform system of commercial regulations, but of
reforming the government in any and every particular in
which the interests of the States \night require it." Such
was the origin of the Convention to whose wisdom and
prescience we are indebted, under God, for our power and
glory, and happiness, as a nation. In the history of the
world it has also been found that political power, no less than
the stability of governments, is the Siamese twin of com¬
merce, and the great conquerors of antiquity in various ways
testified their clear apprehension of this fact. Csesar and his
fortunes were landed upon the shore of the Ptolemies in
Rhodian galleys, and Antoninus said when asked for the inter¬
position of imperial authority in a maritime question, " I am
indeed sovereign of the world, but the Rhodian law is sov¬
ereign of the sea."
Cyrus having destroyed the great kingdom of Babylon
greatly promoted the inland trade of his extensive dominions
by a system of posts for the speedy transmission of news, and
by establishing taverns at the distance of about every fifteen
miles. Alexander took Tyre with more difficulty than he
subdued Persia and India, and wiser from the lesson, gave
great encouragement to commerce, founded Alexandria for the
port of Egypt, and provided in his will for the construction of
numerous harbors. Antigonus succeeded in placing a garri¬
son in Tyre renowned for her commerce, but in vain besieged
Rhodes, no less commercial, and ended by making a present
of^his tremendous war engines to its inhabitants from the
proceeds of which they made their famous Colossus under
which ships could sail. But in order to show the intimate
consanguinity existing between trade and an elevated condi¬
tion of the human race in other respects, we are not driven to
rely upon the opinions of individuals however great or saga¬
cious. The history of the world is luminous upon this point.
A class of men must stand between the producer and the
consumer, the manufacturer and the customer, to make pro¬
ducts merchantable and to transport them at whatever dis-
10
tance, to the market where they are to be sold and used, or
else every individual or small community is deprived of all
stimulus to produce or to manufacture more than is necessary
for its own immediate wahts.
The question is idle as to the relative importance of manu¬
factures or commerce to a city or nation. Both are essential
to national or civic prosperity. There can be no manufactures
without a market, and no market except that created by the
limited demand at home without commerce. " In a country
destitute of commerce," remarks McPherson, an author who
had studied his subject well, "superior talents are of little
value, and industry and toil in rearing a redundance of pro¬
duce is useless, a deficiency is death. But wherever com¬
merce extends its beneficial influence, every country which is
accessible is in some degree placed on a level with respect to
a supply of provisions, the necessaries, the comforts and the
elegancies of life."
In looking over the history of the past, as in looking round
upon the present countries of the earth, wherever we find a
nation looming above the obscurity in which time lives and
moves and has his being, we may be almost certain that
could that nation or city be re-produced in this century, we
should find the thoroughfares thronged with busy merchants,
the houses crowded Avith tradesmen, and the harbors filled
with ships.
That portion of the earth to which all science and all his¬
tory seem to point as the cradle of the human race is not more
famous for the mighty empires that lived upon its soil in Jhe
spring-tide of humanity, than for its having furnished the first
illustrious examples that commerce is both the cause and the
effect, the test and the harbinger of civilization. Western
Asia bore upon her honored soil, where man in his infancy
walked and talked with his Maker, great Babylon, vast Nine¬
veh into which the prophet went three days journey, mighty
Tyre the mother of Kings, Jerusalem under Solomon and David
the home of God, Sidon with her jeweled palaces by the sea,
and other cities scarcely less renowned, to exhibit man spring-
11
ing into life like Minerva from the head of Jove, full armed
and standing by his cradle with the capacities and civiliza¬
tions and luxuries which are the guerdon of his powers, and
the condition of his happiness.
"Blest,
Is he whose heart is the home of the great dead,
And their great thoughts."
Let us withdraw for a while from the heat and turmoil of
the present, and indulge ourselves with the coolness and still¬
ness which dwell and refresh in the past.
It humbles and enlightens us to hear the story of those who
have possessed the earth before us, especially if they have
trod our paths and followed our pursuits. We may be encour¬
aged by their success, and learn lessons from their failure, and
be warned by the precursors of their destruction.
The earliest accounts of commerce we find detailed in the
Bible, the oldest and most authentic history in the world. For
a series of ages the records of heathen nations are so obscure,
so doubtful, or so false, that they scarcely serve for a comment
upon that great book, while the volume of truth tells us what
it can be useful or desirable for us to know of the earliest
condition and progress of the race.
Job commemorated the righteousness and the majesty of
Jehovah a thousand years before Homer immortalized the
exploits of his hero gods. The great ancestor of the Jewish
race was powerful and enlightened upon the plains of Syria
while the history of Egypt is still enshrouded with the mists
of fable and superstition. The harp of the royal Psalmist
was swept to the melodies of Zion while Corydon and Phillis
piped to each other upon the tuneful reed of Pan amongst the
pastures of Arcadia, and Memnon sounded his hollow note
at the dawn of the morning to the winds that swept down
from the sources of the Nile. In the 23d chapter of Genesis
we find in the purchase by Abraham of a burying place for
his family, the first account of a commercial transaction in the
history of the world.
The patriarch bought for a cemetery from the children of
Heth the field of Ephron containing the cave of Machpelah,
12
with the trees that were upon it, for four hundred shekels of
silver.
The money was weighed, not counted, in the presence of
witnesses, and was declared to be "current money with the
merchant." The transfer of property was made at the city
gates, the usual place for important business, " and the field
and the cave that was therein were made sure unto Abraham
for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Heth."
Here, then, occurs nearly two thousand years before the
Christian era, an instance of the legal transfer of real estate,
for the consideration of the payment of money or the circu¬
lating medium, which money received its ■ market value, ac¬
cording to the requirements of trade,from the circumstance that
it was currently received as of known value by a class of men al¬
ready existing and infiuential, denominated merchants. Com¬
merce then, at that early period, was carried on by a particular
class of men acting under well defined laws, and was already
found indispensable to the comfort even of a nomadic people.
At this period both manufactures and commerce seem to
have been further advanced in Syria, where this purchase was
made, than even in Egypt. Three centuries later we find
the Arabians already in possession of the carrying trade be¬
tween Egypt and India, and transporting in large quantities
upon camels such commodities as spices, balm and myrrh,
for preserving the dead and slaves. It was to these that
Joseph was sold, his price being estimated at £2 lis. 8d., or
about eleven dollars of our currency ! About the same time
we find inns established in Egypt and northern Arabia for the
accommodation of travelers, the guests furnishing their own
provisions and provender.
During the residence of the Israelites in Egypt, manufac¬
tures and foreign commerce (the latter chiefly in the hands of
strangers,) were in a state of high perfection, and show great
progress in luxury. The Pyramids, whose vastness and
grandeur still astonish the world, were erected a bout this time,
to manifest to the future the progress of the past, at a cost of
centuries of time and millions of money, and doubtless with
the sacrifice of thousands of lives.
13
A stable political government, the founding of splendid
cities, and the highest attainments in science, literature and
civilization known to the ancient world, and existing side by
side with the most extensive trade, illustrate the energy of
human achievements, while yet the piratical ancestors of the
polished Greeks infested the seas, to the terror of the mer¬
chants, and long before the mud walls of Rome were cemented
by the blood of fratricide.
It would seem as if the watchful providence of God, which
rules over all the nations, had other ends in view in the bond¬
age and release and subsequent re-settlement of the Israelites,
than the mere religious discipline of that ungrateful and re¬
bellious people. The great Proprietor of all countries gave
to the only nation that retained the knowledge and worship
of Him, a land upon the other side of the flood that divides
Africa from Asia; and their captains, Moses and Joshua, were
instructed to treat with extreme severity the wretched idola-
tors whom they found in possession of the territory. These
were the Ganaanites, better known to profane history as the
Phoenicians; and they fled at first from the face of the chosen
people, for whom God fought, to Sidon and other towns upon
their coast But finding those great emporiums of commerce
already populous, the refugees embarked for distant regions?
and established colonies all along the shores of the Mediterra¬
nean. Thence keeping up their intercourse and trade with their
mother cities, they soon absorbed the commerce of the West¬
ern world. They took with them letters and the arts, and
civilization was one of the commodities with which their ves¬
sels were freighted to every sea. Cyprus, Rhodes, the islands
of the Aegean, the coasts of the Black Sea—lately the battle¬
field for struggling nations, the shores of Sicily, of Sardinia,
of France, Spain, Portugal, Africa, and England, were dotted
with their trading posts, and received their first impulse to
wealth and renown from the swell of Phoenician ships that
lashed their ocean boundaries. Thus the rigorous expulsion
of the Canaanites not only vacated a home for the chosen
people of God, but it sent forth pioneers of commerce and
refinement, and bound together the most distant countries by
14
the strong chain of a mutual interest, and a common speech,
and a universal law. May we not suppose that they bore
with them also throughout the known world fearful rumors
of the God whom the Hebrews worshipped, who had divided
the Red Sea for his people, after vindicating his majesty
in Egypt; who was Lord of the hills as well as the valleys,
and before whom their divinities were not able to stand? It
was under Sesostris, King of Egypt, (about 1300, A. C.) that
geography began to be understood, that maps were engraved,
that canals were constructed, and that inland navigation origi¬
nated in Egypt. Then, too, Colchis was founded, which in
after times was made famous by the expedition of Jason and
his Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, a fable perhaps
disguising an effort to establish trade with some distant region.
And about the same time flourished Midas, who, according to
the poets, turned all that he touched to gold, i. e., probably
he gave especial attention to commerce, and was successful
in his speculations.
It cannot be expected that within the compass of an hour
I should dwell at length upon each of those great cities estab¬
lished by the Phoenicians, which, as they rose in succession
above the horizon, illuminated, if they did not rule the world.
But a brief notice of some of them is necessary to a faithful
treatment of my theme. Sidon appears to have been founded
some 2200 A. C. Seated upon a rocky coast between Libanus
and the Mediterranean, it soon acquired the unrivaled trade
of that sea, whose cities have been for so many ages the cen¬
tre of civilization.
It was the capital port of the Phoenicians, and its inhab¬
itants were the carriers for the world. They excelled in the
manufacture of fine linen, embroidery, tapestry, metals and
glass, in which they were as expert as the moderns, blowing,
turning, cutting and carving it, and even making it into mir¬
rors. All these were supplied to other nations in Phoeni¬
cian ships, and that people were considered by the Greeks as
the inventors of ship building and navigation, of the applica¬
tion of astronomy to sailing, as the discoverers of important
stars, naval war, the inventors of letters, arithmetic, book-
15
Keeping, weights and measures, (which as we have seen were
known to Abraham as in common use,) and perhaps of money.
They monopolized the trade of the British Islands centuries
before their existence were known to the Greeks, and perhaps
we may still find traces of their intercourse with our ancestors
in the oriental words with which our language is known to
abound.
It is needless to add that they excelled most nations of the
age in the comforts and luxuries of life, that the standard of
education was high among them, or that their political insti¬
tutions were elaborated and secure.
When we say that commerce flourished, and the rights of
property were respected, this other is already said. After Sidon
had finished the course marked out by the finger of God, and,
when her glory had set like the waning moon on account of
her sins, her most ancient colony Tyre emerged from the
dark canopy of time, and for generations shed a brilliant light
down the vista of coming ages, a light that would have ob¬
scured that of the parent city in the zenith of its splendor,
and which still shines faintly like a spent beacon-fire to indi¬
cate to the student of history the unerring road to prosperity
and wealth. In the 27th chapter of Ezekiel we find an ac¬
count of the articles of her merchandize, which is exceedingly
valuable as a transcript of the attainments made at that time
in the arts of civilized life. There were sold in her markets
the metals, ivory, ebony, horses, slaves, emeralds, embroidery,
linen, coral, agates, precious stones, wine, wool, sheep and
mules, honey and oil, balm, apparel and gold, in short every
provision for comfort that necessity could ask for or luxury
could wish. The products of the world enriched her mer¬
chants and adorned her marts, until corrupted by wealth and
luxury, she fell under the ban of God, joined her sister-parent
in her doom, and when Jesus would paint the horrible de¬
struction that awaited the Jews, he could find no stronger lan¬
guage than that their conduct and their end should be worse
than those of Sidon and Tyre. Her desolation, foreshadowed
in the mirror of their sin was pronounced by the prophet, and
Alexander was the divine instrument for her subversion.
16
Eleven hundred years before the Christian era, while Jesse,
the father of David, was still an obsure herdsman upon the
plains of Judea, and two centuries before Horner struck his
immortal lyre, the Phoenicians had the sagacity to fix upon
Cadiz as the chief seat of their commerce in Spain, which
twenty-eight hundred years afterwards was the great entrepot
of the Spanish trade with the newly discovered western world.
Solomon's ships manned by the enterprising navigators of
Tyre, sailed in company with Tyrian vessels to Ophir and
Tarshish, and returned laden with precious metals and lux¬
uries of other climes, to support the magnificence of the
Israelitish throne. An hundred years later, Rhodes, a Tyrian
colony, became mistress of the sea, and again exhibiting com¬
merce and civilization side by side, cleared the seas of pirates,
and gave to mankind a code of maratime laws which were
generally adopted by other nations, were held in the highest
respect for many ages, and contributed their share to the great
fabric of laws that now protect the commerce and the prop¬
erty of the earth.
Carthage the greatest of the Tyrian colonies, deserves and
shall receive a lecture devoted to itself.
In later times the Corinthians and the Athenians became in
turn masters of the contiguous seas, and attained great exceb
lence in commerce, sending their merchantmen to every port
at the same period that Greek writers and orators were enrich¬
ing the world. The laws of Solon—next to Moses the wisest
law-giver of antiquity—protected trade, and provided a fixed
rate of interest upon money at twelve per cent.
Rome engaged in establishing military despotisms every¬
where with the temple of Janus never shut, had but little leis¬
ure and less inclination for the peaceful pursuits of commer¬
cial life. The resources which commerce might have furnished
were levied by her armies, who made the world tributary to
her greatness. When she destroyed Carthage she had nearly
destroyed commerce too; learning was confined to the privi¬
leged classes, mechanic arts were discouraged by being con¬
sidered plebeian and servile, ships rotted at the docks, artizans
languished, and the world was a desert, showing no signs of
17
life but the^orgon head of war. Even her iron empire was
at last shivered by the arm of the Almighty when its destiny
was fulfilled and its work was done, and by degrees commerce
arose once more from the ashes of despotism and the chaos of
ignorance, and successively Venice and Genoa, and Spain and
Portugal, and Holland and England, built and freighted ships
to traverse every sea, and make mankind respect the mechanic
and the merchant.
From this hasty sketch it will appear that that Divine Prov¬
idence in whose government of the world there is no room
for chance or accident, has inseparably linked together the
aspirations of the individual and the improvement of the
race.
The man of business is engaged in a perpetual struggle to
'raise himself and his family above the regions of want and
need, and every lawful acquisition that he makes not only
benefits himself and them, but it adds something to the com¬
mon stock of comfort and happiness that belongs to all
mankind.
He may indeed obey only the dictates of selfishness, but
whether he will or no, the world comes in for a share of the
benefit. The physical profit inures to him and the world
alike, but to the selfish man of business, the moral gain be¬
longs to the world alone. The toil is his, but whatever his
character, he must take his whole race into partnership in the
proceeds. His ships may have borne the arts from sea to sea,
and his railroads may have diffused intelligence and common
charity, and his gains may have enriched his family, and his
dwelling and storehouses adorned the city, but if his motive
have been mere self-aggrandizement, if he had no thought in
all his labors for the common weal, if his liberality has begun,
continued and ended at home, his moral nature will be found
to have gained nothing by the exertions of a long life. Rather
it will have lost all.
It will appear dwarfed and narrowed in its dimensions in
inverse ratio to the extent of his business operations. His
selfishness will grow with the provision he makes for himself
2
18
and his love of money—"the root of all evil''—will keep even
pace with his acquisition of wealth.
If that Providence which made us the beings that we are,
has thus joined together commerce and civilization, what
God has joined, let no man put asunder. If the two have
always existed together and aided each other, so that light has
followed in the track of commerce, and barbarism has reigned
where she was not, and if on the other hand, all the arts of
civilized life, all security by law of person and property, and
all moral elevation, which is the only true refinement, tend to
the advancement of commerce, if these invariably promote
and imply one another, and if the absence of one is the other's
extinction, then is it the duty as well as the interest of the
man of commerce to extend civilization, i. e., as I have al¬
ready defined the term, the highest attainments in govern--
ment, arts and refinement of manners. He should aim per¬
petually that the government of the State should be, so far as
human imperfection will admit, a copy of that recorded in
the Bible, by which the Almighty rules his universe.
To this end he should always go to the polls; he should
bring to bear his powerful political influence in the formation
and amendment of laws, and he should take care that none
but the wisest and most virtuous citizens are elevated to
offices of trust and profit in the commonwealth. He should
frown down as the greatest enemy to our political, and there¬
fore our commercial existence, the ruinous and dishonorable
practice of baying votes, which is growing to the absolute
destruction of the elective franchise, among us. He should
also be the liberal patron of the arts, not only those which
minister to the comforts, but those also which supply the
elegancies of life, for just as commerce puts nations upon a
level with respect to discoveries and improvements, so do the
arts tend to that best and only practicable equalization of so¬
ciety in which comfort is not one of the distinctions between
the rich and the poor. Architecture, horticulture, streets,
roads, internal improvements, sanitary regulations, reading-
rooms, lyceums, the comfort of tenants, to these things and
19
many more of like nature, the public spirited man of business
will not fail to devote much thoughtful attention, both with a
view to the welfare of his fellow men, and to the advancement
of commerce itself, as well as to prevent his own moral and
immortal nature from being hound up in a bundle and thrown
behind his counter with his only political propensities shown
in the government of his estate, its only patronage of the arts
in the architectuie of his own fortunes, and its only music
the chink of the dollars for which he has bartered his soul.
Finally, the true man of business will also do all that he can
for the promotion of general refinement of manners, a refine¬
ment based upon religious principle, where alone it is secure,
healthy and virtuous in its growth, manly and elevated in its
standard. He may not care much for the foppery of the ball¬
room, but he will frown upon and denounce the brutalizing
coarseness of the tavern and the obscene exhibitions of the
theatre. He may not excel in external polish and an artificial
behavior, but he will be aware that the true seat of gentility is
within, that manners are as much a symptom of disposition
as you may learn from the sign over a shop door what is sold
there. Acting upon this impression, he will give much care
and labor and money for the advancement of education among
all classes of society. He will ensure that the minds of the
future citizens and proprietors of his country are well in¬
formed, that the chief polish is placed there, that the youth of
the land be trained upon the principles of God's word, the
only eternal foundation, with kind, loving hearts, shedding
upon all around the blessed influences of that charity which
never faileth. He should bear ever in mind that "account of
his stewardship" which God will one day require of him, and
if as a wicked and slothful servant he has buried in the earth
the talents of gold, of labor, and of power that were committed
to his trust to trade with for the Master's glory, he will be
hound hand and foot and cast to the outer darkness.
LECTURE II.
RELATION OF COMMERCE TO CHRISTIANITY.
" For wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense ; but the excellency of knowl¬
edge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it."—Ecclesiastes, vii., 12th.
This is an excellence which wisdom possesses, and which
money does not—that true wisdom the " beginning of which
is the fear of the Lord."
For, however riches may promote the propagation and
acceptance of this wisdom which is religion, the one cannot
• and must not be substituted for the other. They are allied in
so far that where money is rightly used^ it resembles true
wisdom in affording a defense or safeguard against some of
the ills of life, but we must not mistake this for life itself.
While religion is the best friend of commerce, it is the glory
of the latter that in the hands of God it has frequently been
made the honored instrument for advancing his cause and
kingdom among men.
Commerce, like the early navigators, coasts timidly along the
shore of this world, and makes some discoveries and brings
home some treasure, but wisdom launches boldly into the
great deep of the future, and reveals as the bourne of hope
and the haven of rest, eternal life.
Commerce may aid in the spread of Christianity, but it is
the prerogative of Christianity to regulate, to elevate, and to
sanctify commerce. Christianity without commerce may lack
funds for its enterprises, and may more slowly find its way
from one part to another of the earth. Commerce without
Christianity will soon learn to build its houses with fraud, and
its chambers with violence, and will end its days in luxury
and corruption. It will clothe itself in purple and fine linen,
and fare sumptuously every day, until it shall lift up its eyes
in hell being in torments.
For while " money is a defense," the excellency, the crown-
22
ing glory of religion is that "it giveth life to him that hath it"
It gives indestructibleness even to commerce itself, prolonging
its existence by making it worthy to exist as the fountain of
rich blessings to man. And when the keen eye has ceased to
scan its ledger, and the busy hand to grasp its accumulations,
and the sagacious brain to ponder its outgoings and incom¬
ings, the man of business, who " with all his gettings has got
wisdom," will have made friends of the mammon of unright¬
eousness, and bear with him through the redemption of a mer¬
ciful Savior, the eternal life to everlasting habitations. Take
commerce away from Christianity and it will belike the clog¬
ging of Pharaoh's chariot wheels, so that it will "drive
heavily." Take Christianity away from commerce, and the
Red Sea of perdition will drive over the merchant and his
ships.
Commerce adds to the comfort of this life, but " Godliness
is profitable both for the life that now is, and for that which
is to come."
In showing therefore the mutual relations existing between
the two, it will be proper first to show the indebtedness of
Christianity to trade, and then see what religion has done to
pay the debt, together with that superiority of nature which
entitles her to the service of all human institutions.
The most obvious aid rendered by commerce to the cause
of religion has been in providing means for the transportation
of missionaries, for the circulation of Bibles, and for the gen¬
eral promotion of civilization. It is rather singular that the
first two missionaries of whom we read that they traveled
by sea, should have encountered the most serious difficulties
upon the voyage to the great detriment of the ships and their
owners.
Jonah, 862 A. C.,had been ordered by God to announce the
destruction of Nineveh, and fleeing from the unwelcome duty
he fled to the coast, took a merchantman at Joppa bound with
her cargo to Tarshish, paid his fare, and embarked upon his
voyage.
But in vain was the attempt to flee from the service of God,
and such a storm arose upon the sea, that the mariners after
casting their cargo overboard, and making the most desperate
23
efforts to weather the gale, were obliged to take the guilty
prophet's own counsel and throw him forth into the raging
waters to save themselves from a common doom. "So they
took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea
ceased from her raging."
But the mariners gained more than they lost by the sacri¬
fice of their freight, for "they feared the Lord exceedingly,
and (idolators as they were,) offered a sacrifice unto the Lord
and made vows."
The cargo was lost but the men and the treasure of Nine¬
veh were saved.
Paul's famous voyage from Jerusalem to Rome resulted
still more unfortunately for the vessel in which he sailed.
The Centurion Julius embarked with Paul and other priso¬
ners in his charge, in an Alexandrian ship loaded with wheat
and bound for Italy. In vain the captive but missionary
apostle warned the officers of the danger, of the voyage at that
season of the year. They persisted in spite of the wind and
tempest, until being vanquished in the strife with the ele¬
ments, they also were obliged to throw overboard their cargo
to lighten their sinking vessel, and at last as the only safety
for their lives, ran her upon the rocks, and as soon as they
had disembarked, she was broken to pieces by the waves.
But their great passenger had not been idle. He had made
the Centurion his friend, and became before long the most
honored and useful man of their company, and it were worth
to commerce alone the wreck of a navy, fairly to establish
Paul as a missionary in the heart of imperial and bloody
Rome. The ship indeed was wrecked, but Christianity es¬
caped the tempest and floated with the Roman eagles to the
boundaries of Europe. This apostle had, however, many
times before this, availed himself of the aids of commerce in
bearing to the Gentiles the great truths with which he was
charged. The important commercial places, Tyre and Sidon,
and Ephesus and Rhodes, and Corinth, though most of them
had declined from their meridian splendor, still afforded him
an audience for the story of the Cross, composed as well of
their citizens as of the merchants and mariners of the civilized
world ; and the very nation—the Phoenicians, who had been
24
the first to bear the arts and refinements of civilization to the
Ultima Thule of ancient longitude, were also permitted the
distinguished honor of bearing to all the distant countries
where their trading posts had been for centuries established,
the earliest teachers and missionaries of our holy religion.
The early teachers of Christianity followed the great tracks
of commerce across the earth without being confined to them.
The deserts and the mountains, the wilds of Bactria and of
Thrace, where small temptation to cupidity existed, still were
peopled by those whom the Son of Man came to seek and to
save, and they were sought and many were found and saved.
Yet as a general rule, even in that early time, where Christ¬
ianity would convert a nation, commerce marked out the road,
provided the vehicle, and assembled the audience. Apostles
and Evangelists proclaimed a truth new to the world's ear
upon the shores of inland seas, or in the great markets of the
earth, or took ships for the distant ports of the Euxine, the
.ZEgean or the Mediterranean, to meet the heathen of every
name and every form of idolatry assembled there, or joined
the great caravans of merchants with their rich freight of gold,
spices and slaves, performing their annual pilgrimage down
through Egypt deep into the unknown recesses of the Sahara,
or through the great desert, and Arabia the Blest, to where the
Ganges rolls his consecrated waves.
As long as the Church was pure and missionary in its
character, it continued to avail itself of the means of transport¬
ation, the discoveries and the civilization to which the love of
adventure or gain had prompted mankind ; and when the
Church became corrupt and departed widely from the integrity
of the faith, the same great channels and resources of which
she had by that time gained the control were opened to her for
the propagation of a mutilated Gospel, better still a thousand
fold than the heathenism which it supplanted.
Still, however, as the evening of the dark ages drew down
upon Europe, the visible church gradually became subject to
the dominion of the pope; yet, rent by frequent schism, and
very far gone from original righteousness, both in faith and
practice, it lost to a great degree its missionary spirit, and like
any other kingdom of this world, propagated its tenets chiefly
25
by the sword. Whether against the Saracens or the Wal-
denses, or subsequently the Protestants, implements of war or
torture for some centuries made more converts, or extin¬
guished more heretics than the preaching of the Cross.
Civilization was smothered under the folios of stupid monks,
and shrieked from the crucible of the alchemist in monaste¬
ries, or took refuge in the splendid kingdom of the Moors, in
Spain and Portugal, while Christianity disported her garments
of dazzling white amongst the persecuted fugitives of the
Pyrrhenees,or found a refuge beyond the grasp of the Papacy,
along the frozen shores of the extreme north.
In 828, ten Venetian ships went to Alexandria, which port,
at that time was closed to most of Europe, and bore back
with them the supposed body of St. Mark! In the year 1121,
Greenland sent to the shores of North America a live Mis¬
sionary Bishop—a cargo which, tested by the weights and
measures of commerce alone, is worth a whole college of dead
apostles.
There had been for a century an Iceland colony near the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, and perhaps upon the Island of
Newfoundland, discovered A. D. 1000, by Biorn, the son of
Heliof. It was named Winland or Wineland, because grapes
grew there spontaneously, and the enterprising Northmen
traded with the native Esquimaux for fine furs in exchange
for their goods. It was to this colony that a missionary bishop
was sent from Greenland, and though we have no record of
his labors or his success, yet we find in this most interesting
circumstance another illustration of the true missionary spirit
following in, the wake of commerce. As early as the fifth
century, before Rome had sunk in hopeless ignorance and
apathy, Gregory the Great sent Augustine with forty monks
to England to convert the Saxons from Druidism, and they
found that the Britons, the original inhabitants of the island
now driven to the North, had been Christianized centuries
before, even by the apostles themselves or their immediate
companions, and they had all this time preserved their litur¬
gies and their episcopacy. Certain peculiarities in their ritual
proved that they could not have been converted thiough the
26
agency of Rome, but that they had received their first knowl¬
edge of the truth from Gaul, or more probably from teachers
taken thither directly from Asia Minor along the great chan¬
nels of Phoenician trade.
England, during the long and proud period of her com¬
mercial supremacy, has planted with one hand the seeds of
civilization and commerce, and with the other has sunk deep
into the earth the flag-staff of the standard of the Cross, and
floated its ample folds to the astonished winds. Her colonies in
North America brought with them either as Puritans or Pre-
latists the religion of their fathers, and their descendants re¬
ceive, as their best birthright,an undefiled Christianity. And
while Spain, after expulsion of the Moors and the discovery
of America by the great Genoese, continued to monopolize
the trade of the southern continent, and tortured the wretched
natives for their gold, she also was careful to supply them
with the priests of such religion as she knew herself, and to
bring into subjection her converts, made by force or fraud or
persuasion, to that church which claimed and claims the
world.
In the sixteenth century Francis Xa'vier, a Roman Catholic,
actuated by a true missionary spirit, earned for himself the
title of the Apostle of India by his labors and great success in
bringing the Hindoos and the Japanese to a knowledge of his
faith.
But here again he pursued the track of commerce and
found that Portuguese traders had already a long established
and lucrative intercourse with our antipodes. As we draw
near to our own times, the history of which I am speaking
becomes a history of the civilized world, and is too well
known and too vast for me to attempt a condensation of it.
God in his providence so often opens a way for his gospel by
first sending out civilized men on mercantile errands, that it
has almost ceased to attract observation. Two instances, how¬
ever, are worthy of record, in which the great Head of the
Church and most merciful Savior of lost men has overruled in
an especial manner, the covetousness of mankind for the
spread of His blessed gospel.
27
The one occurred but a few years ago in the history of this
same England in her persevering and successful attempt to
introduce opium into China. Baffled in her private efforts at
smuggling, she sent out a fleet and an army to kill the miser¬
able inhabitants, as a great wit has declared, like a cruel boy
killing flies upon a summer's day. But by her oppressive
adherence to this most despicable commercial interest, she
compelled the opening of five ports of that great empire for the
missionaries and their holy religion, which is destined to cast
down every lofty imagination, every temple of idolatry, and
everything that opposeth or exalteth itself or makelh a lie,
throughout the whole earth.
Another instance occurs in which the wonderful providence
of the Lord of Hosts has overruled the enterprise of commer¬
cial nations for good when they meant it not so, neither did
their heart think so, but they only meditated enriching them¬
selves by a traffic that should supply labor for the cultivation
of the earth. The coasts of Africa having almost no great
rivers, no islands, gulfs, or peninsulas, were closed in great
measure alike to civilization and the gospel, and there seemed
no way of evangelizing the natives but by transporting them,
if possible, to better and lighter lands. This the slave trade,
with all the indifference to human life and suffering that
marked its earlier conduct, has actually done, and now it is
computed that there are more negroes in this country, mem¬
bers of churches, than heathen converts at all the missionary
stations of the world besides. Nor does the benefit end here.
A most philanthropic and benevolent society is sending them
back to their uative land again, and already powerful colonies
are seated upon the iron bound coast of that dark continent,
and from them civilization and Christianity are said to be
eating their way gradually into the interior. This does not of
course justify the horrors of the " middle passage," but when
we are taunted with the evils of slavery, we may say with
truth and with triumph that its good consequences are a fair
offset to its evils, and that it has been fraught with inesti¬
mable benefits to millions of human beings who, without
it, would have lived and died under the shade of their palm-
28
trees and by the golden sand of their rivers, worshippers of
the devil and bondmen, perhaps, to heathen lords.
The advantage of commerce to Christianity has not, how¬
ever, been confined to the mere transportation of the gospel
and the missionaries, indispensable as that service is. Com¬
merce has printed our Bibles and built many of our churches
for us. Without it the very invention of printing were of little
use to mankind. The first edition even of the Bible could
never have been struck off and sold but through the instru¬
mentality of long established laws of trade. The market
which commerce created could alone have justified the ex¬
pense." The men engaged in those great societies which are
scattering at this day the Word of Life among the nations, are
mostly men trained in the walks of trade and carrying on
their beneficent work upon strictly commercial principles.
They must count the cost before they can either sell or give,
and though agriculture and the professions contribute their
share, yet the " sinews" of this "war" in which the church
militant is engaged with the kingdom of darkness, are chiefly
furnished in our great commercial towns where money circu¬
lates abundantly, and fortunes are easily made. There agents
most frequently visit; there audiences are most readily as¬
sembled ; and there the influence of fashion, sympathy and
imitation most predominates.
The splendid churches also that adorn our cities, and very
often those in the rural districts, constantly present to the eye
the pleasing indication as the fruits of commerce well applied.
The building of a church is as much subject to the rules of
commerce as the building of a private residence or a school
house, and not to mention whole communities of liberal con¬
tributors, individual merchants have often testified their grati¬
tude to God for the success they have met with by building
or endowing some house of prayer consecrated to His service
and the glory of His great name.
And there, in the lapse of time, multitudes of the ignorant
and such as are out of the way, whom Jesus came to save,
have been gathered into the ark of safety, and generations have
learned to worship the God of their fathers, with blessings
29
upon the head of him but for whose bounty they might have
continued to dwell in ignorance of God and eternity.
Commerce also provides, where it most prevails, for the
support of those whose duty it is to minister in holy things.
In short, were you to withdraw from the church the money
supplied by business men, merchants and tradesmen, the cause
would languish everywhere, and the church would have to
cast herself directly upon the right arm of the omnipotent God
for support, for enlargement, and for life.
But while we cheerfully acknowledge the great obligation
which Christianity owes to business men for her extension and
upholding, yet commerce owes more to the gospel than the
gospel to her.
The case of Zaccheus affords a happy illustration of the
benefit of conducting business upon those principles which
the church exists, and the gospel is preached to enforce. He
had been a publican, or a tax gatherer appointed by the Roman
government over the Jews.
His great object had been the amassing of his own fortune,
regardless of the wants of the poor, and by participating in the
exactions of his detested class and calling.
But when the grace of God entered his heart, he publicly
avowed his determination henceforth to conduct his business
upon the most rigid rules of justice, and subject to the behests
of the most comprehensive Christian charity. " Behold Lord
the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have wronged
any man I restore him fourfold."
And that day salvation came to his house. The merchant
or tradesman who receives the gospel into his own heart at
once renounces that " cheating which never prospers," if he
have ever been guilty of it, makes reparation where he has
defrauded, bestows out of the fullness of a tender heart, his
goods to feed the poor, their bodies and their souls, and salva¬
tion comes to his house. He lays up treasure for himself in
Heaven.
If commerce has built hospitals and churches, it was Christ¬
ianity that put it into her heart and opened her purse-strings.
The world had commerce for centuries while her only temples
30
were erected to idols,and hospitals were unknown, Christianity
by elevating and teaching the poor has cleared them out of the
way of trade, and made them producers of something and
not consumers merely, or drones in the hive, or mendicants
in the poor house, or criminals in the prisons, or felons on
the gallows.
If commerce has often transported Christianity from shore
to shore, the latter has converted the mariners, and brought
the most savage nations to submit themselves to the just and
equal laws upon which the very existence of commerce de¬
pends. If commerce has oftentimes opened an avenue to the
heart of a savage nation for the herald of the truth, so has she
in her turn been obliged to come as a suppliant to the meek
missionary for an influence almost omnipotent over the sav¬
ages who trusted and loved him, or been shamed into perse¬
verance by his inflexibility, charged as he was with a high
commission of eternal life to immortal souls, or called upon
him to be the mediator and interpreter in her most delicate
and difficult negotiations. The noble Dane, Egede, held on
like the grasp of death to his forlorn mission in Greenland
when the Danish ships were ordered home by the government
from a. hopeless commerce, leaving him ignorant of the lan¬
guage to freeze or to starve, until the gracious providence of
God opened a new channel of trade, in which the Danish
King was willing to embark, and which the tenacity of the"'
missionary had rendered practicable.
The British, in their most unjust war upon China, gladly
availed themselves of the mediation of Parker and Boone to
secure by treaty what they had achieved by arms, the opening
of that mighty empire to the trade and civilization of the
west.
And when Hyder Ali had desolated the Carnatic, and in
the impassioned language of Burke, had " put perpetual deso¬
lation as a barrier between him and those incorrigible and
predestinated criminals whom no treaty and no signature
could bind," and he was willing to sheath his sated sword and
lie down in his lair like a lion that has lapped his fill of blood,
he asked "where is Schwarz? Send me the missionary, I
31
have faith in his word, and will treat with him." The great
continent of Africa is now being opened to the commercial
world by the explorations of a missionary, and the heralds of
the Cross are the interpreters to the merchant of most of the
languages spoken by uncivilized nations. And such is the
happy influence of the virtues enjoined in the New Testa¬
ment upon all sorts and conditions of men, that the most
successful and prosperous commercial nation will forever be
the most Christian, where justice holds the scales, and in¬
dustry acquires, and frugality expends, and liberality embel¬
lishes, and charity gives as God gives mercy to every one that
asketh. While thus Christianity, under her Divine Founder,
has availed herself of the energy of the merchant, in propa¬
gating her tenets, she has complied with her own rule to
" owe no man anything," and has returned more than she has
ever received.
But the relations of the two cannot be determined by the
settlement of a question of profit and loss. The Christian
religion deigns no alliance upon a footing of equality with
anything human. She comes to mankind clothed with the
authority of God.
Commerce, and education, and government, are not her
masters, nor her allies, but her servants. They are of right
subject to the laws of the Bible, and just in proportion as they
depart from those laws, are they a curse, not a blessing to
men. There is not one law for merchants and another for
Christians. What is wrong in the Church is wrong in the
counting house and the workshop. Christianity claims equally
the control of both. She demands that her principles of truth,
. of justice and of honesty, laid down in her statute book, prin¬
ciples as pure and immutable as the character of God, shall
regulate every commercial transaction between man and man.
It is as much the duty of her ministry to apply the rules of
her morality to the merchant, as to urge the reading of the
Bible, and private and family prayers upon the communi¬
cant. She says to the merchant, you must do as I direct,
and you depart from my rules at your peril. She furnishes
him a law by which he must buy and sell, must determine
32
his debts and credits, must regulate his hazard and speculations,
his advertising, his transportation, and his contracts.
She claims supremacy as well over corporations as private
traders. She will investigate the books of the East India
Company and review the entry that you made last night in
your ledger, and audit the accounts of the huckster that sells
bananas at the street corner. She asserts her right to adjust
the balance and the yard stick, to affix the value of coin and
bank notes, to guage the barrel and measure the cotton bale,
according to standards kept in heaven, forever under the
sleepless aud unbribed eye of God. " A false balance is abom¬
ination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight." She
will inspect every account that is settled, and re-open every
contract that has been adjudicated. She will find all the lost
papers, and recall all the forgotten promises, and subpoena all
the dead witnesses. Her inflexible morality will borrow no¬
thing from the maxims of trade, and will yield nothing to
them. If the merchant have before him the alternative of
failure or dishonesty she says to him, " Fail then ! Better fail
here than hereafter. Pay your debts to the last farthing like
an honest man, and begin life again with my blessing upon
you—'a blessing that maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.'"
The great Author of Christianity receives no benefit from com¬
merce as an independent party.
Rather he exacts from the merchant the building of churches,
the forwarding of missionaries, and the printing of Bibles, as
the cost of his license to enrich himself by trade, and as a trib¬
ute for protecting and prospering his enterprises.
Ail that commerce contributes to the spread of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, is but the payment of rent to the Creator for the
use of his mines and forests, his winds and rivers, and oceans.
It is the premium for the insurance of goods, against light¬
ning and tempest, " hurricanes and oak-cleaving thunder¬
bolts."
Let not commerce plume herself upon what she has done
for the gospel. Let her rather be humble and penitent that she
done so little—that she has shown so little gratitude to the Prov¬
idence that has permitted and prospered her—that she has lost
33
sight of her own interest by ministering to selfishness and
luxury, while she ought to have been civilizing and Christian¬
izing the nations, for the multiplication of her harvests and
the repletion of her treasuries—that she has sought the tempo¬
ral, rather than the eternal good of man. These are her
sins of omission; but if in any case commercial power
has been prostituted to destroy that it should construct, we
would fain hope that such an instance would be the excep¬
tion and not the rule—that the true merchant is recognized
as the true man—faithful to his promise, conscientious in his
representations, honest in his dealings," not slothful in busi¬
ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lordand it is indeed suffi¬
ciently obvious that the very existence of commerce implies a
certain degree of confident reliance upon mercantile integrity.
Bad men have perverted the religion of Jesus Christ itself,
and the knave behind the counter would be a knave at the
bar, or in the pulpit. Let it be the aim of every honorable
merchant to maintain the very highest standard of public
opinion in his profession, and thus in time will the blots and
stains that have disfigured commercial annals be removed, and
the legitimate tendencies of commerce to promote truth and
honesty will have scope to become effect.
8
LECTURE III.
COMMERCIAL ETHICS.
"Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so
much."—Acts, v., 8th. *
If there is any one branch of morals upon which, more
than others, Christianity sheds increasing light and more
stringent obligation, it is in the department of truthfulness.
Many of the best men of the Jewish nation were at times
liable to the charge of equivocating, and pious frauds are still
authorized where a corrupt Christianity prevails, and even
Archdeacon Paley attempts to justify a harmless lie.
Cicero's sentiments upon this subject are notoriously de¬
moralizing; and most heathen nations, according to the testi¬
mony of travelers, exclude veracity from their list of virtues.
The Bible, however, is no less emphatic in its condemnation
of falsehood, than of any other vice, and from the great law
of the Decalogue—"Thou shalt not bear false witness against
thy neighbor," comprehending all the duty of veracity, accord¬
ing to our Savior's commentary in the Sermon on the Mount,
down to the case of Ananias and Sapphira, from which the
text is taken, the God who cannot lie requires of his creatures
the veracity which is one of the pillars that uphold his throne.
In the instance of the guilty pair to whom I have alluded, the
lie was not intended to do harm to any one, but merely to
save a portion of their property, at the same time that they
hoped to attain credit for a liberality that had sold the whole
of it for the benefit of the poor. The act was strictly volun¬
tary, and its performance might have been lawfully withheld.
Sapphira, in particular, might have pleaded that she was over¬
ruled by her husband's influence, (according to a pleasing
and gallant fiction of the courts,) as a wife or an agent would
often now be glad to plead; but she is treated as full partner
36
in the transaction. Both had "lied, not unto men, but unto
God," and they were stricken dead in a moment for their
crime. If this falsehood had been uttered to injure the charac¬
ter of another, or to defraud him of his just rights, its guilt would
have been greatly enhanced; but it stands on record as an
adjudged case in the decisions of God's court, to show the
value of truth in and for itself, and that it is a great crime to
depart from it, even to preserve our own property, or to en¬
hance our reputation without reference to the interests of
other parties. It is therefore a much stronger case than many
transactions that are winked at in the commercial world,
where the buyer or seller not only promotes his own interest
by the deception, but proportionately injures his neighbor at
the same time. If Ananias and Sapphira were punished with
death, for lying for their own benefit, what punishment shall
be deemed adequate for that man who habitually takes advan¬
tage of his neighbor by deliberate and systematic deception?
He surely lies, not unto men, but unto God.
In considering the important subject of the morals of com¬
merce, I do not, of course, intend to examine questions that are
provided for by the law of the land, but those which seldom or
never are brought before our criminal courts. The great duty
of veracity may be made to cover the whole ground, for misrep¬
resentation and falsehood are the verbal lie; dishonesty and
cheating, the acted lie. It were easy to lay down a few gen¬
eral rules for the determination of all cases, and wherever we
are in doubt, those rules will furnish the safest guide; but it
is sometimes exceedingly difficult to determine the-exact moral
position of a given transaction, and thus to ascertain pre¬
cisely the rule that applies. We should certainly see a great
improvement, however, in the business relations of mankind,
if all men had constantly before their minds such precepts of
Holy Writ as, "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor," "Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods,'' and above all, the golden
rule, which the great Lawgiver of Christian men pronounces
the "Law and the Prophets," "whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye so even to them." Let any
man measure his obligations by these laws, and he may rest
37
assured that his business character will be irreproachable and
his conscience undefiled. They will extricate him from a
thousand temptations to sin, and a thousand labyrinths of
error. In order to apply such precepts to the every day trans¬
actions of mercantile life, it will be necessary to define more
accurately, than I have yet done, the exact position of the
merchant as a member of a class.
Strictly speaking, a merchant is one who makes his living
by buying and selling. He may himself manufacture the
things which he sells, or raise them from the earth, as a man
who sells fruit-trees in the town may procure them from his
own nursery in the country, or he may transport his goods a
longer or a shorter distance; but all these are accidental and
not essential to his profession. His true position is some¬
where between the producer and the consumer, and by this
his profits, his liabilities and his responsibilities are determined.
The profits to which he is entitled are a fair remuneration
for "his time, his interest, his skill, and capital," (Wayland,)
and this his customer is bound in all cases to render him. As
he loses from a fall in the market-price of his goods, so he is
entitled to the full benefit of a rise, that the hazard may be
equalized.
He is bound to sell at the market-price which is regulated
by the great law of supply and demand, and he is bound also
by the necessity of his calling and the confidence reposed in
him, that his goods shall be what he represents them to be,
and what he would himself take at the price he asks if he were
in the place of his customer. The buyer may not depreciate
goods below their proper market value, nor the seller raise them
above it. This is what God requires, and what community has
a right to expect, of both parties; and this is a sufficient state¬
ment of the true position of the business man to enable us to
determine with accuracy most of the cases of morals arising
from his position. When we look around upon the mercan¬
tile world, however, we are forced to the conclusion that a very
considerable proportion of merchants satisfy themselves with
confining their honesty to the limits prescribed by the law of
the land, and many do not scruple to evade even its require-
38
ments wherever it is safe to do so. And it must be confessed
that mercantile pursuits of themselves offer great temptations
and present great facilities for the disregard of at least the
minor morals of the Christian code.
The undue estimation of wealth that pervades all classes of
society, the great danger consequent upon " making haste to
be rich," which of itself is denounced in the Bible as a sin;
the necessity, in all bank transactions at least, of raising a cer¬
tain sum of money by a certain day or losing caste as a man
of business, and, perhaps, above all, the want of careful atten¬
tion to the morals of clerks, except so far as will promote the
interest of the employer,—these render it exceedingly difficult
for the merchant to be an honest man.
While therefore there are many, the more honorable for
having resisted these combined influences for evil, who are
among our best citizens and furnish noble examples of prin¬
ciple, integrity and honor, there are also many who have lost
their principles, while their reputation for honesty still exists,
and who need only a screen between them and the public
eye to be guilty of constant infractions of the very civil law
which protects and should control them.
Among men of this class, no species of deception is more
common than the procuring of false information to create a
panic and form a monopoly, or get rid of unsalable goods.
The press or the telegraph is made to utter lies either as
rumors or facts through connivance with unprincipled men or
from false information, and their surplus stock is sold at once,
or else the price of a commodity falls, until they have bought
up the supply, and then as suddenly rises to enable them to
sell at a great advance.
We even hear rumors probably but little exaggerated, of
the bread for a kingdom's consumption vibrating to the false
news thus obtained, that these selfish and cruel men may
quickly get rich at the expense of the suffering poor.
Nearly akin to this, though upon a smaller scale, are the
unblushing falsehoods which represent to country dealers,
domestic and obsolete goods, as imported and fashionable,
which are sold to the purchaser " dirt cheap," that he may go
39
away and boast what a gentlemanly friend he has found in
the merchant, when perh&ps he has paid twice its value for
his purchase.
It is needless to say that such practices are purely con¬
temptible in the eyes of any honorable man, and are very
likely to disgust customers in the end. " Selling at cost" is a
trick so common that country customers all profess to under¬
stand it, while yet the great majority allow themselves to be
deceived by it, and find that the bargain is indeed greatly to
their "cost." Even an honest man now renders himself
liable to suspicion if he posts a bill to that effect upon his
store, and the quiet and contemptuous sneer of the knowing
ones means its ridicule for the dupe and its contempt for the
false salesman.
Another species of deception so common as to be a charac¬
teristic of the age is the "puffing" of goods, as it is termed, by
means of advertisements. It is lawful to represent goods as
they are and no better. I have indeed known a man who
honestly believed that what he sold was better than what any
body else sold, and where one does believe this, it is only absurd
for him to say so; but the extravagant laudations which we
constantly see in our newspapers or in private handbills, or
on flaring signs, are but little removed from sheer falsehood.
Says Carlyle upon seeing an immense hat upon wheels drawn
by four horses through the streets of London as a hatter's
sign: "the universe (meaning, it is presumed, the God of the
universe,) has placed you there to make the best hats, not to
make others believe that you make them." It is also of doubt¬
ful propriety to make use of any other influence with purcha¬
sers than such as arises from the business transaction itself,
and it is unquestionably wrong if the influence be of an im¬
moral character, or if the object be to sell goods above their
proper value. Clerks often allow themselves to be made the
base tools of avaricious men, to initiate buyers into the mys¬
tery of iniquity of city life, in order to secure their custom,
the young man sordidly laying aside his manliness and self-
respect, and the employer forgetting that when the morals of
his clerk are ruined he can be of little use to him.
40
Doubtless the great majority of the defalcations, swindlings,
and forgeries of which clerks are guilty have proceeded directly
from the disregard of truth allowed or inculcated in the store
where their first lessons in business were received. It is "the
vaulting ambition/' or rather the vaulting covetousness "which
overleaps itself" for an employer to teach his clerk how to
cheat him. When his moral sense is once blunted by decep¬
tion, he is no longer trustworthy; and the money drawer should
be locked up and the bank book given to a partner so soon as
a merchant has fairly taught his clerks to lie.
In the prosecution of my inquiries upon these subjects I
have received two letters from New York merchants, which
throw additional light upon such transactions, and portions of
which are well worth transcribing. The first is from a young
man not yet in business for himself, and the other from an
experienced and judicious Christian merchant whom I have
considered a model for his class, and who has nearly retired
from active business.
The former writes, " To let you into the tricks of the trade
might not be judicious; for to make them public would be to
put country merchants on their guard, and city merchants
will have to lie worse than ever. The first trick consists in
marking up goods as follows. Each salesman has his own
customers. He "drums" them, and pretends to sell to them
cheaply. Of course any other salesman who drums the same
sections of country offers the same inducement. In order not
to disappoint the buyer they have therefore to sell at less than
the marked selling price and sometimes sell below the marked
cost price. It is necessary therefore in order for the merchant
to make his profit, that the marks should be far above the
true value and cost." Sometimes also, I may observe here,
the marks are made to represent more yards than the piece
contains, and as the retailer seldom or never measures the
goods which he purchases by the piece, an excessive profit
is made in this way. "Another trick," continues my corres¬
pondent, " is to buy second quality goods, and to sell them for
first; linen and woolen fabrics are frequently sold as pure when
in reality they are two-thirds cotton. Selling goods by sam-
41
pie, and changing them for those of inferior quality, is quite
common. Brown sheeting houses keep samples of goods
numbered to sell by; and when sold, they substitute the same
number of an inferior quality.'' And then he adds what I hope
is an exaggeration: "It is indispensable for a salesman to
blow—in other words,to lie; and the better one is at that,the
more goods he sells, and, of course, the greater is his conse¬
quence.''
This adulteration of goods is not by any means confined
to-a single branch of the business. Groceries of every kind,
where deception is possible, particularly liquors, bread and
breadstuff's, drugs and medicines, cutlery and jewelry, in short,
every direction which the industry and enterprise of com¬
merce has assumed, has afforded scope for the talents of knaves,
quacks and swindlers. Nor is the business man at all excusa¬
ble for his dishonesty or want of candor, from the fact that
we have also in abundance quack doctor^, quack farmers,
quack lawyers, and quack preachers.
. If all the professions on earth were one great sham and
falsehood, it is still- the duty of every business man, just as if
he stood alone, to "tell the truth and shame the devil;" and
whatever the result of his falsehood in increasing his capital,
he will one day find that he has lied, not unto men, but unto
God.
My other correspondent writes as follows: "You ask 'how
New York merchants discharge or neglect their duties to their
families, clerks and neighbors?' I am not particularly posted
as to the matter, but from what I have been able to learn, very
much as many other classes in society: some conscientious,
some lukewarm, and many, probably the majority, neglectful:
too much so, altogether. Again, (you ask,) 'What practices,
if any, do they wink at, which cannot be justified by strict
principles of morality? It is said that the morals of trade are
low; is this so?' I am afraid it is. They lie, they cheat,
they make false representations in business matters, they tell
the truth in such a way as to make the hearer believe what
he hears is not true; and yet it is a common remark, that
from the mercantile education men get in the cities, (large
42
cities,) the word of merchants there is much more reliable
than that of farmers, traders, &c., in the country. Millions of
property are sold weekly in this city without a stroke-of the
pen, and every agreement punctually fulfilled to the letter,
when by law no agreement of the value of more than twenty-
five dollars can be legally enforced. What does all this ex¬
hibit," he continues, "but that 'The heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?'"
I suppose that my friend could not have intended these
strictures to apply universally to the merchants of New York,
nor to those of any other city. He is himself one of a thou¬
sand instances in that great metropolis, that would be an honor
to any profession; and I rejoice to believe there are many,
here as elsewhere, men who would be as far above such
contemptible devices to ensure custom, as they are free from
flagrant violations of the civil law.
But there is a class of practices common among merchants
of a higher grade of integrity than those I have alluded to,
and who still fall short of the highest rank. 1 refer first to
concealments or false impressions made in the course of busi¬
ness, by want of candor between the parties. The volunteer¬
ing of all information that the buyer is presumed already to
possess, is perhaps hardly desirable, provided false impressions
are not made, and if such simplicity should be exhibited, it
would excite no less surprise than the unsophisticated anxiety
of Rasselas, after his first escape from his valley, to reform all
the ills that flesh is heir to.
Yet it is to be feared, that had the degree of candor been
observed in many reputable transactions that strict truth re¬
quires, far other bargains would have been made. Suppose,
for example, that a thousand barrels of flour had been offered
by a manufacturer to a dealer for a week, at six dollars per
barrel, and the dealer then learns, by a private telegraphic
despatch, that flour had risen half a dollar in the market.
May he avail himself of this information to purchase at six
dollars ?
The great majority of merchants probably would say "yes !
The skill, sagacity and enterprise of the dealer are a part of
43
his capital, and he may rightly use them to the best advan¬
tage." But the question is a nice one, and not so easily set¬
tled. There must be a limit somewhere to the lawful availa¬
bility of skill and enterprise, or the grossest dishonesty would
come to be sanctioned by the plea, for what is dishonesty
without skill arid enterprise? We may avail ourselves of them
so far as is right, and thus the question recurs again, is it
right in the present instance?
The rise in the value of property is also part of the capital
of the man in whose hands the property is at the time the
rise occurred, and 1 have no right (the merchant it would
seem has no right) by skill and enterprise, to deprive him of
property without rendering an equivalent.
Thus to take advantage of ignorance would be to create
perpetual distrust between the buyer and seller, for the latter
could never know that his property was sold at its true value
until it was too late to retract. Dr. Wayland in his valuable
work on moral science is very decided in this opinion. "If"
says he "the buyer know that the value of the article has risen
without the possibility of the owner's knowledge, he is bound
to inform him of this change in its value.
The sale is otherwise fraudulent. Hence, all purchases and
sales affected in consequence of secret information procured
in advance of our neighbor, are dishonest. If property rise in
value by the providence of God while in my neighbor's pos¬
session, that rise of value is as much his as the property itself;
and I may as honestly deprive him of the one without an
equivalent, as of the other.'' Page 243.
Such is the opinion of a moral philosopher upon this delicate
subject. Even the civil law only winks at but does not ap¬
plaud this method of purchasing upon secret information. If
indeed the dealer is acting as factor or trustee for the seller,
the civil law as well as the moral law, pronounces the transac¬
tion fraudulent and annuls it accordingly. Says Lord Chan¬
cellor Thurlow," I do not agree with those who say that where
an advantage has been taken in a contract which a man of
delicacy would not have taken it must be set aside. Suppose
that A knows there is a mine on the estate of B, of which B
44
is ignorant, and buys the estate. The court will not correct
the contract merely because a man of nice honor would not
have entered into it." And Judge Tucker speaking of the
same transaction under another head, uses similar language,
describing the purchase as " in conflict with nice principles of
honor," though not a legal fraud unless the dealer acted as
"trustee, agent or servant" for the seller. (Tucker's Com.,
vol. ii., pages"405, 422.) I therefore dismiss this case as to say
the least of very doubtful propriety, and, in the language of
the lawyers, as what a man of " nice honor" would not do,
nor can it be a profitable mode of dealing in the end. The
manufacturer will sell the next time to some one whom he has
not found quite so " sharp" in a bargain as to deprive him of
the increase in value of his own property. He will bethink
him of an old saying, " if a man plays such a trick upon me
once, it is his fault, if he do it a second time, it is my own." A
character for fair dealing is worth more to a merchant than
many such acts of successful shrewdness, to call thern by no
worse name.
One other custom prevalent, it is to be feared, even among
merchants of the better class, remains to be noticed.
Dymond in his essays on morality remarks that "it is very
possible for a man to act dishonestly every day, and yet never
to defraud another of a shilling." (Page 117.)
The instances that he adduces are these : A man who does
not ensure his goods, and yet whose capital is so small that
their loss would disable him from paying his debts. This
man is placing the property of others in constant jeopardy,
and cannot prefer a claim to the character of an honest man.
Or, as another case, a man who has capital of his own,
$1,000.00, and borrows the same sum to commence business,
should he invest in stocks or any other speculation so as to
endanger the loss of $1,200.00, he is periling another's property,
and is not an honest man. And indeed merchants generally
should be extremely wary of the seductive allurements of
stock speculations.
It is difficult here as in other cases to say where morality
ends, and dishonest cupidity begins. Many a merchant has
45
ventured beyond his depth until the waters of crime gathered
about his head, and he sank to infamy with all his bright
hopes about him.
From this rapid review of some of the more glaring delin¬
quencies of mercantile life, it is pleasing to turn to the side of
the picture presented in previous lectures, where commerce
was seen to be the harbinger of civilization and the handmaid
of religion; where she sat upon the throne of the world as a
queen, dispensing light and knowledge and wealth among the
nations, and barbarism retired to remote haunts at her ap¬
proach, and even grim visaged war doffed his mailed casque
to her serene supremacy, and again when a brighter light than
her own had dawned in Palestine, to behold her yielding pre¬
cedence, and not idly, but with glad alacrity aiding to give the
world this new radiance, that shall shine on when the nations
that received it are dead, and the sun shall burn out like a
watchfire untended, and God shall make new heavens and
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
I rejoice to believe that commerce has not served Christ¬
ianity in vain, that religion is rewarding her care, that the
standard of commercial integrity is growing higher and
higher, that it is coming to be well understood that the man
who makes his customer's interest his interest, acquires the
unshaken confidence of that customer*, that, in a word," hon¬
esty is the best policy." If it were not so, if commercial suc¬
cess demanded the disgusting frauds and peculations and
falsehoods that too often disgrace the honored name of com¬
merce, if the honest and truthful man, contented with small
gains, if they be certain, and working his way quietly to the
summit of wealth and honor, must forever be unable to com¬
pete with the mean and lying mercantile pettifogger, if hon¬
esty could not beat dishonor and shame, and legalized swind¬
ling in a fair race when the day's long course was fully over,
and all the losses and gains counted, the gain not merely of
money, but of character, of reputation, of self-respect, of
peace of mind, and the favor of God; if it were more profit¬
able in the long run to lie like Ananias and Sapphira, when
you are not struck dead for it, than to tell the truth like honest
46
men, and if it could be proven that this, rather than its oppo¬
site, is the general opinion and practice of the mercantile
world, then I would say, undo all that commerce is doing all
over the earth, pull down her warehouses, drive the plough¬
share over her cities, destroy the churches she has built, close
up the missionary avenues that she has opened, stop the
plough in the furrow, and the loom in the warping, and the
anvil in the workshop when they would do more than supply
their owners, let the tide of civilization be rolled back to the
shores of ancient Tyre and Sidon, and Christianity blindfolded
and guided only from above, grope her tedious way through
the nations. Commerce cannot afford to trade thus in men's
souls. No merchant can afford to gain the whole world by
chicanery and fraud, and lose his own soul. He can never
balance his ledger with such a loss. No young man can
afford to "enter business" with such a hazard. Better he
should fail a thousand times over, or that his fine powers arid
deep pantings after the rewards of life, and generous impulses
and noble daring, better they should all rust in sloth, and his
spirit should fret itself to death, like a caged eagle, than that
he should lose himself or be cast away. For consider, I pray
you, how ghastly and horrible a commerce that would be that
traded with the father of lies for immortal souls! Where
every cask, and box, and bundle that is delivered, carries
away with it some shred of principle, some remnant of truth,
some portion of immortality, while Satan stands by at every
bargain like a butcher's dog in a market house, watching with
greedy eyes for the bloody fragment that is tossed to him, and
drags it off growling, to the hell-brood of his kennel as a
sample and a foretaste of the whole.
Should one walk through the business streets of a large
city and inspect the shops with their rich merchandize, thrown
open to the day, and see how commerce rears those huge
piles and fills them, and gives employment alike to the poor
and the rich, and furnishes bread to millions, and erects
churches, and prints and scatters Holy Bibles, and then
should he be told that there in those same counting houses
and store houses, and workshops, it was the established and
47
defended custom that young men were required by un¬
principled employers to cheat their fellows, to lie unto men
and unto God, and that so after all, the true medium of ex¬
change, that which makes goods sell and builds up fortunes,
was the sacrifice, year after year, of hundreds of these young
souls, that falsehood and cheating were necessary to success,
he would say let those dens of iniquity be rotted down and
salt sprinkled upon their ruins. And if this he everywhere
the rule and the custom of commerce, then let the world once
more stagnate and the dark ages come again, for they never
saw a prospect darker than this traffic in Godlike spirits which
this world cannot give, but oh! it is too powerful to take
away and destroy forever.
In vain will the gains of this horrid barter be laid at the
Apostle's feet, and churches and alms-houses be erected for the
poor, and asylums 'for the orphan, and temples for the Lord
of Hosts, the feet shall be at the door to carry out the false
merchant, his body to the grave and his soul to that " lake of
fire" which God has appointed as the home of "liars"
forever.
LECTURE IV.
ON CORPORATIONS AND INSOLVENCIES.
"Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."—Prov. xi.,
21st.
There is a justice that is impartial and omnipotent. No
sophistries can elude it, and no force can balk it.
If an individual sin, it will find him out in any crowd as
the keen scented dog can track his master; and if a nation be
the guilty party, it will be held as accountable as if each per¬
son composing it were alone; and if the human race in the
unnumbered millions of its successive generations shall be
found at the last day to have been faithless to its mighty
trust and renegade to its high destiny, still it will be true
that " the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people
that forget God." If we could suppose that every human
transgressor of the divine law that has ever lived to reject
the atonement, could be assembled on sonie planet large
enough to contain them, and to these should be added the
multitude of those lost spirits who were once the bright in¬
habitants of glory, but sinned and fell down to perdition, and
that all these wicked angels and wicked men were banded
together as one person, hand to hand, and shoulder to shoulder,
with every face hardened by the countenance of its neighbor,
and the misery of all pleading like tears of blood for the par¬
don of each, or the power of all demanding like a war trum¬
pet the impunity of each, the infinite justice would still proceed
without faltering, relenting, or fear, to assign to each criminal
his just and endless doom.
" Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be un¬
punished."
We are apt, in many respects, while associated in civil so¬
ciety, to lose or ignore our sense of individual accountability,
4
50
and to he indifferent to wrong, provided there be many to
share the burthen with us. When a nation engages in an
unjust war, the members of that nation are not exonerated
from blame because the war was declared by their rulers, es¬
pecially when, as in this country, those rulers are appointed
by the people. Every citizen shares the guilt of the injustice,
unless he has done whatever he lawfully might do to prevent
the war, and this principle has been fully developed in the Old
Testament, both by precept and example. This sense of irre¬
sponsibility is in direct proportion to the number of persons com¬
bined, so that where it would be greatest as applied to a citizen
of a country, should the country sin, or an inhabitant of a large
city, should the city commit a wrong, it would be less in a
smaller incorporated body, and where the act was shared by
but two persons, each one would consider himself nearly as
responsible as when alone.
In the progress of commerce, it has been found necessary
and highly advantageous for fewer persons than those who
compose the whole State to combine together for the accom¬
plishment of various important ends. Combined capital, credit,
energy, skill and political and civil influence, are every where
extending the progress of science, wealth and religion, and so
changing the surface of the earth, that one who had looked
at it from some great eminence a century ago, would now
hardly recognize it as the same planet.
The origin of these combinations or corporations was sev¬
eral centuries before the Christian era in the reign of Numa.
That wise prince, according to Plutarch, first introduced
corporations in order to break the force of the two rival fac¬
tions of Romans and Sabines, by instituting societies of every
manual trade and profession. Hence probably took its rise
the guild or bund so prevalent in Europe among mechanics
and salesmen, and which still exists in some countries. After
the fall of the Roman Empire, these communities were emi¬
nently useful in checking the oppressions of the feudal gov¬
ernments that gradually grew out of its ruins, like green and
living shoots from the mould of a graveyard. Cities having
51
acquired charters, and grown more populous as civilization
advanced, frequently resisted, singly or combined, the usurpa¬
tion or tyranny of the feudal lords; the masses of the people
emerged from serfdom, labor became honorable and commerce
powerful. In process of time, however, this institution, like
all others that man has established, grew to be in a measure
perverted, and itself an instrument of fraud and oppression.
Monopolies in the cities of different branches of trade greatly
enhanced the price of manufactured articles for the rural pop¬
ulation, and nothing but competition between the cities, and
necessity, kept commerce herself from languishing. These
monopolies (a thing almost unknown in this country as a char¬
tered right, except in the form of patents to encourage inven¬
tion,) have been the source of immense evils to Europe and
the world. It is still common on that continent for the gov¬
ernment, or some great noble, to possess the exclusive right of
dealing in some essential commodity, and thus taking it en¬
tirely out of the sphere of that golden rule of trade, the law
of supply and demand. The great British East India Com¬
pany has for many years ruled Hindostan with a rod of iron,
or rather of bloody steel, and powerful armies are always
maintained in that country to subdue the wretched natives to
obedience to the exactions of this gigantic commercial mo¬
nopoly. It was not till 1813, when the company had existed
for more than 150 years, that private British subjects or other
corporations were allowed to compete with it in bartering for
the diamonds of Golconda, or rice from the low lands of the
Ganges, or silk and cotton from the loom of India. We have
even now before the world's eye a specimen of the efforts of
this chartered tyranny in a " perpetual desolation " greater than
that which Burke deplored upon the plains of the Carnatic.
In this country corporations seldom are permitted to enjoy
this power for evil. The spirit of the American people which
watches with a jealous eye over our liberties, will not wil¬
lingly disturb the equality of citizens, nor encourage an aris¬
tocracy in trade, any more than an aristocracy of titles. Char¬
ters are indeed allowed, in some cases too easily, but fair
52
competition is not often interfered with. The very privilege
and money-power which corporations possess, make them a
dangerous instrument in the hands of designing men. If in
the exercise of their prerogative they trample upon the rights
of private individuals, their resources are such that the best
legal talent, and if necessary, suborned jurors, and perjured
witnesses can be enlisted in their defence. The very confi¬
dence too, which a list of reputable names inspires, gives them
a fearful power to disturb the business relations of the commer¬
cial world. Charters can be obtained for swindlingbanks and
wild speculations, perhaps before long,in the manifest destiny of
the American people, for fillibustering expeditions to the Ama¬
zon, or Mexico, or Ireland; and numbers deceiving the unwary
with the appearance not only of safety but of right, capital, and
credit, and character may all be sacrificed. The explosion of
such concerns in not a few instances has caused reason to
totter on her throne, and driven the miserable dupe to suicide.
But we are not so much engaged to-night with the finan¬
cial, as with the moral aspects of corporations, and in the
progress of the subject, the only way is to lay down the rule of
moral obligation, and to show how it may be violated, and
then to examine the reasons, if any, upon which the rule is
based. The application of the text to the subject is almost
self-evident, for it teaches in the most emphatic manner that
individual responsibility cannot be merged and lost in a crowd.
We will take the case of a corporation established, as some¬
times happens, as an engine of fraud to enrich the directors
at the expense of the stockholders, and our proposition is that
every member of such company is guilty of the crime of the
whole. It will follow of course that in cases less flagrant,
where losses to other parties ensue from an act of oppression,
or deception, or even negligence not contemplated in the first
formation of the company, but practiced by their agents, and
connived at, (as the speculations in cotton of the old United
States Bank,) here also the guilt of the whole belongs to every
member of the body, and God will hold him to account as if
he had committed the wrong alone.
53
The very constitution of such a body shows that individual
responsibility cannot be averted. The reason for the existence
of a corporation is that an incorporate assembly would have
no way of transmitting its rights and obligations but by end¬
less conveyances from one to another as often as the hands
are changed. It is to avoid these endless conveyances from a
father to his son, or from a neighbor to his surviving neigh¬
bor, among other reasons, that the law with something more
than fiction considers the associated body perpetual for the
transmission of these rights. The rights therefore of the cor¬
poration are only the combined rights of individual members
which would follow the law of individual succession, but for
the diversion themselves have agreed to in their charter. Now
who will pretend that the rights are individual, but that the ob¬
ligations, the duties, the responsibility, the wrong and the pun¬
ishment are general or rather are nullified, for that is the
meaning of the proverb that corporations have no souls? We
draw the same inference from the possession of the great seal
of the corporation, which is one of the legal privileges granted
to this company that I have supposed associated for fraudu¬
lent ends, or which rather is a kind of conscience established
by the law itself to remind the members of their duty. Their
common seal unites and stands in the stead of the several as¬
sents of the individuals who compose the community, and
makes one joint assent of the whole.
It is as if every member had signed his own name and
sealed with his own seal. Factum est. It is his deed.
Every act of that body to which that seal is affixed, goes out
to the world, and goes up to the Lord of Sabaoth, as being
the deliberate will and deed of each man, singly, for himself;
and when every man among them dies alone, and shall be
judged alone, then every such act will be tried, whether it be
good or evil, as if he alone had performed it.
We infer the responsibility of the members of this corporation
also from the fact that a corporation cannot, as such, commit
treason, felony or breach of peace, or other personal crime; nei¬
ther is it capable of suffering a traitor's or a felon's punishment.
The personality of the members is not lost to the exactions
54
and penalties of the civil law. For all other purposes than
those just objects for which they were ostensibly incorporated,
the individual members are as much persons as they were
before the date of their charter.
A corporation cannot do the duty of a private citizen; it
cannot vote, at least under our laws, for offices of Federal or
State Government; it cannot provide for a family, or educate
children,unless it is chartered for that express purpose; it can¬
not hunger nor thirst, nor eat and drink; it cannot seek the
shade in the summer solstice, nor warm itself by the winter's
fireside; and it cannot sin, nor can it answer and be punished
as a sinner. All these things must be done by the members who
compose it, acting each one for himself as a person, known as
such, to God and man, and treated as such by both. As well
say that the sailors of a pirate ship should not be made to
walk the plank or be hung at the yard-arm because they are
many, as that the members of this fraudulent community are
not amenable to justice, human and divine. Deception and
swindling cannot be diminished by sharing them with others.
Any number of men may have common property in a lie—
they may divide and subdivide it indefinitely, but each man's
portion is a whole lie, still. Just as the polypus may be cut into
many parts, but each one forms a whole and complete polypus.
If a million of men should unite in the utterance of a lie,
they could never make it the truth. It would always be that
same mean and false thing, the invention of the devil, cling¬
ing like the garment of Nessus, entire in all its deformity and
with all its meanness to the soul of every man of the million.
And, as I remarked in the last lecture, cheating is only a lie
reduced to practice. It is to injure your neighbor by deceiv¬
ing him—the art, of which lying is the science. " All liars
shail have their part in the lake that burnetii with fire."
While these fictitious banking companies have become so
common that they seem about to give a new word to the lan¬
guage, the word " bogus" which an Editor already recom¬
mends should be inserted with the word "telegram" in our
next dictionaries, and while circulars have even been issued
proposing to individuals to establish them and have them
55
chartered with a given paper capital for a proportionate com¬
pensation, and while brokers and private banking institutions
are multiplying far beyond the wants of the mercantile world,
and while defalcations of bank officers seem to multiply with
the resources of the country and the facilities for obtaining
charters, there is still danger that our condemnation of banks
may be far too sweeping.
Among the uneducated classes, nearly all stringency in the
money market is attributed directly to the banks, as if banks
were anything more than creatures of the people themselves,
made only to facilitate their business with each other, and
ceasing to exist so soon as that purpose is no longer subserved
by them.
Created by and for the people, conducted generally by the
best and most reliable men among the people in order to gain
the confidence which is their vital breath, they must and do
reflect the economy or extravagance, the speculation or the
caution, the honesty or dishonesty of the popular mind and
habits.
They measure and exhibit like a barometer the atmosphere
that parches or dampens everything around them. More than
this, their stated influence is that of the balance wheel to regu¬
late the machinery of the public business. Their very life,
where properly conducted, consists in uniformity and conserv¬
atism.
If crops fail, if people are extravagant, if California or Aus¬
tralia lure the masses to the embrace of their jeweled bosoms,
if the western forests or the prairie flowers attract in unusual
numbers the forefathers of future nations, the sensitive banks
first feel the disturbance of established order, and exert them
to avert from themselves and from community the evils of an
irregular and defective circulation. When we take into con¬
sideration the physical vicissitudes to which mankind is liable,
the plague, pestilence and famine, fire, war and tempest, we
can never hope for a perfect banking system that shall neu¬
tralize all monetary changes. All that we can reasonably
demand is that the affairs of banks should be administered
upon principles of integrity, and according to the present state
56
of financial science, if indeed that can be called a science of
which every nation has as yet its own system, and every in¬
dividual his own opinion.
If bank defalcations are numerous, we should remember
how seldom they occur in proportion to the opportunities
where millions of money are passing through the hands of
bank officers in various parts of the country every hour.
Nor, while serious mistakes may have been committed by
these institutions, during the late crisis in monetary affairs, or
the laws themselves which regulate them may be wanting in
minuteness or in stringency, can we withhold our tribute of
applause to men who, as officers or directors of banks in the
United States, have conscientiously used every effort to turn
aside the flood of calamity, and to maintain the credit both of
themselves and those who trusted them; who have toiled day
and night and far into the early morning hours, expending
eyesight and nerves and health amidst long columns of figures
and intricate accounts, in spite of popular clamor, and to com¬
pensate to the people the evils which by "making haste to be
rich" they had brought upon themselves. Let us take care to
commend the good while we condemn the evil, lest we be guilty
of that injustice which we reprobate in others.
I now proceed to a subject intimately connected with that
of corporations. Moral accountability, whether of a corpora¬
tion or of an individual, does not cease with the conclusion
of the business in which the party may have been engaged.
Where, indeed, the private property of those concerned is
not liable, and this is distinctly made known beforehand, the
hazard comes fairly under the rule, caveat emptor. But
where, as is usually the case with individuals, and much too
seldom with corporations, there is no such indemnity of pri¬
vate estate, the responsibility for the payment of debts does
not end with the granting of the certificate of bankruptcy.
And the reason is obvious ; for as it is not the civil law which
creates for me the obligation to pay my debts, so the action of
the civil law cannot release me from that obligation, and I
am as much bound to meet the just demands of my creditors
after as before compounding for their claims, or obtaining the
57
certificate of my discharge. Although that certificate or com¬
position acts as a legal release from my creditors, it cannot be
pretended that it is given, except on compulsion—that any
man \yould accept fifty cents on the dollar, if he could obtain
the whole.
"It might as reasonably be said," observes a moralist,
"that a man parts with a limb voluntarily, because having in¬
curably lacerated it, he submits to an amputation." (Dymond.)
The principles of morality which govern this case are nearly
the same with those applying to debts discharged by the statute
of limitations, so nearly that substantially the same rules deter¬
mine both. It is said that the frauds practiced under the
cover of insolvent laws are greater in amount than any other
kind of private robbery, and it becomes therefore a subject of
sufficient importance to demand a separate consideration. The
acts of deception and cheating noticed in my last lecture
were of small amount separately, and only important in the
aggregate, but in the case of fraudulent bankruptcies, very
large sums are frequently involved, and the current estimation
of a business house is often determined by the amount for
which it has failed. It is unnecessary here, as in other cases,
to examine crimes known as such to the civil law, such as a
fraudulent conveyance on the part of the bankrupt, or a false
return of assets. The moral sense of this community at least
is sufficiently awake to the enormity of such transactions,
and it is devoutly to be hoped that the time is coming when
a man who is declared insolvent to day, and in a few months
from this time, is again apparently in the enjoyment of wealth
without having paid every dollar that he owes, will be shunned
and despised by all honest men as they would avoid a com¬
mon thief.
The origin of the term bankrupt is well known. In Italy
and Spain in early times, the bankers or brokers, chiefly
Jews, were wont to transact their business upon a bench
in the market place, and upon occasion of the insolvency
of one of them, his bench, banco, was broken, to indicate
that his business was at an end. The first laws were all
in favor of the creditor as the injured party, and this still
58
prevails in many countries. The unfortunate debtor under
different governments has been imprisoned, disfranchised, and
even tortured, and it is believed that, in modern Europe, the
laws of England first interfered for his protection.
So important was this subject deemed by the framers of our
Constitution, that that instrument provides for the passage by
Congress upon sufficient occasion of a uniform bankrupt law
for all the States and Territories. The general course of en¬
lightened legislation now is that the insolvent after surrendering
his goods, with the exception of certain specified articles for
himself and his family, for the benefit of his creditors, to be
equitably divided among them, receives a certificate or release
which discharges him from'farther penalty, and places him upon
a legal footing with the man who pays the whole of his debts.
Such a law is humane in its intention, and beneficial in its
action.
The insolvent no longer imprisoned can go to his work
again without fear of arrest at the hands of an exacting and
unfeeling creditor, and his subsequent gains are very properly
placed at his own disposal.
Then comes the question, what is he to do with them ? Are
they really his? Can he honestly appropriate to his own use
more than shall be necessary for the support of his family,
when he is conscious that he has paid a man fifty dollars to
whom, if words, or bonds, or deeds are to be considered as
evidence, he honestly owed one hundred ?
If it be said that it would be a hard rule of morality that
would require that man to pay his debts, I grant it. Many of
the rules of morality are hard, very hard. It was said espe¬
cially of those who love and trust in riches, " How hardly
shall they enter into the kingdom of Heaven."
It is hard for a man to be frugal and honest, but not so
hard as for a drunkard or a gambler to reform, for the profli¬
gate to amend his life, for the passionate to become gentle, or
the proud man lowly, sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and
in his right mind, yet all of these hard things must be done
before we can be saved. There are many things not less hard
than this payment of honest debts, which the bankrupt law,
59
humane as it is, requires to be done. It not unfrequently de¬
mands of the poor and industrious mechanic with a large
family depending upon him for support, that he should accept
his just dues with seventy-five per cent deducted because his
debtor has lived too fast, been imprudent, dishonest or unfor¬
tunate. It may demand of him that he also shall suspend
payment to those who are still lower down in the scale of
wealth and subsistence, until insolvency shall reach those lower
depths where want, like a gaunt wolf of the evening, looks in at
the window, and howls about the destitute and hungry home.
If it be said that in the known uncertainty of business
transactions, the debt was incurred with the hazard of insol¬
vency, I reply that it was incurred also with the hazard of the
debtor's running away, and yet this would not justify his doing
so. The promise to pay was unconditional, and the obliga¬
tion to pay can depend upon no contingencies but the ability
to comply with it
To prevent frauds, the English statute and also the Act of
Congress of 1842 ordained that no man should be exonerated
by law from payment the second time unless he paid full
seventy-five per cent of the whole amount that he owed. A
man might fail as honestly the second time as the first, but in
that case the property he acquired subsequently was not ex¬
empt. Yet surely it would have been, if there had been no
moral obligation resting upon him after the payment of the
half or fourth of his debts. Nor would the exemption of
one-fourth be the verdict of the law to that extent against his
moral duty to pay the whole. The law owes something to
humanity, and so indeed does the creditor, but the debtor owes
more to justice.
Another important indication of the opinion of the civil law
upon this subject is, that except in certain specified cases, the
certificate of bankruptcy does not discharge the securities of
the insolvent, nor a partner or joint contractor in the same
debt. The debt is still due, though the principal at the time
is unable to pay it.
His innocent and obliging surety must answer for the fault
or the misfortune of the principal. At all hazards, the confi¬
dence and credit upon which so many transactions of the
60
mercantile world are based, the vindication of private truth
and public honor, the establishment upon grounds that will
commend themselves to every man's acceptances of notes,
bonds, or other acknowledgments of indebtedness, all of these
demand that without acting inhumanly towards the bankrupt,
the creditor should receive his just dues. A story is told of a
woman who kept a little shop in London and failed. She
toiled for years and at last accumulated enough to pay the re¬
mainder of her debts, but in the increasing infirmities of age,
her annual income was barely enough for her support, and to
have devoted the principal as she wished would have been to
subject her to new obligations to others which she could never
meet. She accordingly provided in her will that her hard earn¬
ings should be devoted to satisfying her creditors from whose
claims the law had long since released her, and it was done
as she directed. The world would be disposed to praise this
conduct—the Bible would pronounce it only right. A case
not less honorable to the parties once occurred in which a
wife heroically devoted her dower to defray her husband's
obligations, a surrender which was met by an equal generosity
on the part of the creditors. I concur with Dymond in the
opinion that the best preventive of cases of insolvency and
the immense losses to commerce thereby accruing, will be the
recognition on the part of society, under all circumstances
where it shall be possible, of a strict moral obligation to pay
debts. It was the custom in ancient Etruria to subject bank¬
rupts to the scorn of boys who ran after them with empty
purses in their hands. If such a course were adopted towards
those who become richer by failure, or some equally decided
but less offensive expression of public opinion against those
who have the means, but taking refuge in the provisions of
an equitable law, and in the necessity of the creditor to re¬
ceive a portion of his dues when he would gladly take the
whole, spend the money upon themselves which they have
solemnly and unconditionally promised to him, no doubt, fail¬
ures would be less common than they are. If men would cease
" making haste to be rich" such failures would seldom occur.
To retain his reputation and character in such a state of pub¬
lic opinion as I have mentioned, a business man would not
61
only be obliged to lose his money honestly, but to fail honestly,
and to pay when he should be able.
Few circumstances of life can be more trying to principle,
than those which surround the conscientious merchant upon the
brink of an insolvency which he can only avert by the com¬
mission of an act which he suspects or fears may be fraudu¬
lent. He has worked industriously and in the fear of God for
years to accumulate an independence for his family.
His probity has gathered around him a circle of attached
and admiring friends. He is looked up to by those of his
class as a prudent and successful man.
His signature will transfer thousands, and his paper is every¬
where at par.
The poor have committed to him their little hoards, and
they have ever found in him a just and unfailing friend. His
family has gradually attained a position of affluence and high
consideration, and while the education of his children is still
incomplete, this misfortune lowers upon him. Who is to
pay for their schooling or even their bread next year ? Where
is his wife to find society ? Who shall take care of his repu¬
tation or defend his honor, dear to him as life itself, from the
unjust aspersions of those whom he has innocently wronged?
How shall he bear to be shunned and unknown in the
streets by even the sycophants, and fashionables, who yester¬
day were proud of his notice, but to-morrow may not be
aware of his presence? And then for him to begin life again
at the bottom of the hill, when the restless energy of youth
has subsided within him, and to feel when he shall have
panted a little way up the steep ascent that the progress he has
so wearily made is not his, but belongs to those who to¬
morrow may be clamorous for his imprisonment and be shout¬
ing in the ears of the world his ruin and disgrace. There are
dark clouds upon his fortunes, but darker still come over his
soul. The fear of poverty and shame is gathering like a
green mould from the church yard upon his principles, his
sentiments and impulses of justice and honor are sensibly
weakened, his faith in an overruling Providence is shaken, and
reason herself is benumbed by the howling of that icy tempest
62
which threatens to sweep from him friends, and wealth and
honors and home. One bold venture upon his credit when
his solvency is already at an end; the "joining of hand to hand
of the wicked," uniting with unprincipled men in one reck¬
less speculation that desperation prompts, and dishonor alone
could make successful; the conveyance by fraud of that which
is no longer Aw property to his wife or some other near enough
to conceal the transaction, and loyal enough to restore the
money when the storm has blown over; swindling and forg¬
ery ; these and the like expedients to balance his giddy foot¬
ing, the tempter does not fail to suggest to him in that hour of
fearful trial, and there are thousands of men in our large cities
walking the streets and smiling blandly upon their acquaint¬
ances, giving splendid parties, and driving elegant carriages,
who have white washed their sepulchres with one or other of
these daubs. If you have a friend on the verge of insolvency
pray for him. Let him pray for himself. His principles have
never been so shaken before. Let him bethink him of the
promise " commit thy ways unto the Lord; trust also to him
and he shall bring it to pass."
Out of the bosom of that storm-cloud, his good angel calls
to him :
"Awake O soul, thy hours are fleeting,
Thy life is rapidly completing,
Time with eternity is meeting.
Soon comes the night,
Thy retribution too will come,
According to thy deeds thy doom,
Do right! Do right!
Though clouds thy firmament o'erspread,
And tempests burst around thy head,
Though life its greenest foliage shed,
In sorrow's blight,
And though thy holy hopes and fears,
Lie buried 'neath the gathering years,
Do right! Do right!
The warring elements woist wrath,*
The earthquake and the whirlwind's breath
Need not affright,
For duty's calm commanding form,
With rainbow arms shall clasp the storm,
Do right' Do right 1
LECTURE V.
THE BUSINESS MAN AT HOME.
'•If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he
hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."—I. Timothy, v., 8th.
In bestowing natural endowments upon his creatures, God
has reference not only to the individual, but to his position in
a world of beings like himself. He gives to one the brawny
arm, to another the busy brain, and to a third the trusting
heart; and without something to labor on and to labor for,
and something to trust and cling to, these gifts would be as
useless as the eye without light, or the ear in a world of
silence.
And as God creates man for his position, so he is very apt
to find the position for the man. Presumptuous self-confi¬
dence may force in " fools where angels fear to tread," or rash
timidity or sloth may deter from plucking the opportunity of
the passing hour, and thus one may be as much out of his
place as extravasated blood or misplaced gout; but Provi¬
dence nevertheless has a place for him to occupy, and a work
for him to do, if he would but exert himself to find the place
and do the work. We as little expect to see the young and
the dependent put in the van of the battle of life, as to see the
trained and disciplined veteran clinging for protection to those
he should protect—aye, if need be, with his life's blood. The
work of life must be done by men, not by women and boys.
The latter have their temptations and trials, but they must be
proportioned to their strength, rather than their courage; and
the cowering from the storm that is graceful and lovely in the
woman, would be pusillanimous in the man. Few men work
with the right arm free to rest or labor as it will. There is
usually one or more leaning upon it, whose comfort and weal
64
vibrate to every throb of its pulse and every exertion of its
muscle :
"For man is made to toil and strive,
And only those who labor live."
The great engines employed in the cotton factories of Man¬
chester give employment and a livelihood to thousands, and
should the engines grow weary or idle, and rest for a week,
want, bordering upon starvation, would ensue. But not more
do the operatives depend upon the regularity of these subdued
and tame giants, than do the family and clerks of the man of
business upon his wisdom, energy and moral rectitude. His
arm cannot labor for itself, or rest when it will, for he has
many depending upon it, and he must provide for his own,
or he is worse than an infidel.
Trade is not the sole business of the business man, any
more than is every person he beholds a customer. The most
prominent consideration, indeed, which suggests itself to his
mind when strangers enter his store, is—how large a bill of
goods can he sell them? but he is surrounded every day and
hour by those in reference to whom such a question never
crosses his mind, who stand to him in a wholly different rela¬
tion, to which the laws that regulate buying and selling can¬
not apply: a relation out of which grow other duties, for the
faithful performance of which God will hold him just as ac¬
countable as for honesty in his business transactions.
Let us determine, first, his attitude towards the young
people whom he employs in the prosecution of his calling.
Most merchants consider but one portion of their position in
reference to their clerks, which may all be comprised in the
question, "How can I best avail myself of the faculties of
this youth, so that he shall be most profitable to me?" The
directions given a new clerk (besides those referring to the
details of business,) are, that he must be punctual, neat, indus¬
trious, sober, polite to customers, and sell as. many goods as
he can: all very good in their place. Do not most business
men cease here ? Does the merchant remember that he stands
in loco parentis to that innocent boy, whose father and
mother have consigned him, with many misgivings and
65
prayers to the tender mercies of a city life? Does he reflect
that he has received into the closest of relations, next to those
of kindred, a future citizen of his country, upon whose should¬
ers, in conjunction with the rest of his generation, the weal or
woe of America will rest, and whose place of business may
spring up out of the ruins and dust of his own? Does it occur
to the employer that he assumed, when the engagement was
made and the articles of agreement signed, the direction of
one whcse mother and sisters at a distance, with a solicitude
and affection not second to those of his own family, for each
other or for himself, are watching every mail for a letter, and
scanning every city newspaper that strays to their home, assured,
if they can see nothing but the standing advertisement of the
house, that the son and the brother is safe? Above all, does
he consider that the solemn responsibility now rests upon him
for guiding another soul towards heaven or towards hell—the
one or the other of which, after its business hours are over,
it must inhabit for ever? No! Buying and selling are not
all for which the merchant must train his clerk. A voice will
one day ask him, Where is thy brother? and if that brother's
blood, his' soul's blood, should cry from the ground to God, it
rrtay call for vengeance against him.
His gains, thus acquired, would profit him little, and he
would find that he had made not friends, but enemies, of "the
mammon of unrighteousness," and they will plead so loudly
against him at the last account day, that he will wish every
dollar of his gold had been sunk in the river or the ocean,
before it proved an indestructible witness of his neglect
There is no one who has the same control over the young
and inexperienced clerk, as the merchant who employs him.
His authority is scarcely less absolute than that of the
parent, generally much more so than that of the guardian.
The young man is prompted by many considerations to yield
deference to his principal. Self interest, fespect for seniority,
admiration for superior skill in the employment to which he
has devoted his life, and habits of obedience which he has
learned from his parents, all prompt him at the outset of his
career to put himself at the disposal of his employer, and he
5
66
will seek his favor and confidence by striving to do exactly as
he is bid. If he is warned that the merchant does not value
money-making so much as honesty and truth and candor, he
will transact his business for him fairly and honorably. If
he is warned against evil associates and habits, he will avoid
the society of the one and the contraction of the other.
If he is told that the theatre is a fruitful source of moral
pollution and that more young men in cities are mined by it
than by gambling and drinking both, and that it is a laiv of
that store that a clerk known to frequent it must lose his
place, he will not go there. If the merchant's house be thrown
open to him and he be invited to visit there in his leisure
hours as a friend, and pains are taken to introduce him into
cultivated and refining society, it will prove to him not only
an important means of advancement, but also a noble safe¬
guard against vice. If a taste for reading be recommended
and encouraged, and if to that end your valuable public libra¬
ries be thrown open to him, and he will use them, this will
ensure that his imagination will not be bounded by the counter,
nor his soul dwarfed to the dimensions of the entries in the
ledger and day book, nor his hours of leisure be given up to
the recreations of doubtful pleasure, the allurements of vice,
or the tyranny of crime.
If he be eucouraged by precept and example to remember
the Sabbath day and keep it holy as a day of sacred rest,
wherein neither the man-servant, nor the maid-servant, nor
the stranger within the gates may do any manner of work, if
comfortable sittings are provided for him in the house of God
which he may regard as his own, and he be encouraged to
fill them, then he will find that the best security not only of
virtue but of the favor of that Providence who can make or
mar all the plans of his future life is the sacred observance of
the Sabbath day.
Most of the neglect that we see exhibited by employers of
the spare time, and moral and intellectual habits of those
under their control, arises from an undue pressure of society
into the ranks of mercantile life. The supply of clerks is
greater than the demand. If a young man behave badly or
67
prove inefficient, it is too much trouble to reform or train
him while numbers are already applying for his place. Such
is the estimation, the false and ruinous estimation of the
necessity and excellence of wealth, that all classes seek it, and
as the broadest and plainest avenue to affluence is by the
mercantile life, this avenue in our time is thronged by aspi¬
rants and beaten hard like the pavement beneath the tread of
their many feet. What matters it to me that my clerk is im¬
moral, without mental cultivation, a Sabbath breaker or irre¬
ligious so long as he does not bring his faults with him into
the store, and when if he does, I can discharge him and get a
better one to-morrow? This is the course of reasoning indi¬
cated by the indifferent and selfish conduct of many who have
had to fight their own way through all these troubles, starting
from home perhaps with constitutions made of "sterner stuff"
or with a better basis of moral principle than those whom
they first neglect and then discharge.
It is deeply to be regretted that among the improvements of
the age are not to be found and sustained agricultural and
trade schools, where labor might be made more respectable
by becoming intelligent, and the rich would think it no deg¬
radation (forsooth!) for their children to soil their white
hands by work, as the common ancestors of all did many
times before they were pronounced unworthy to dwell in
Paradise,
'•And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God."
I do not advocate those manual labor schools, as they are
termed, where work is regarded as a recreation merely for
gentlemen's sons, who never make a table, or hoe in a garden
after they leave them, but schools where manual labor is
taught upon scientific principles as the future business of life
and other branches of study are made secondary and collateral
to' it This would give manufacturers and artizans from
among her own people to the South. And it would relieve the
plethoric mercantile world, and reduce the congestion that
appears in the professions, greatly to the advantage of both.
68
Clerks might be hard to find, and their market value would
rise accordingly. Their engagements with their employers
would be more permanent, and nearer akin to those which
exist in the family. We all know how this principle operates
between masters and servants. Where servants are scarce
they are longer lived. Their masters value them more, feed
and clothe them better, treat them better in every respect, and
it is where they abound, if anywhere, that they are likely to
meet with neglect and ill usage. And if more young men
had independence and manliness enough to work at some
manual trade, those who should remain in stores and count¬
ing-rooms would become, in many important respects, a better
class, and the prospect of success for all greatly enhanced.
Probably not one mechanic fails to every four bankrupt
merchants, because mechanics are less given to specula¬
tion and making haste to be rich. A merchant is frequently
ruined in the course of trade as a mere business matter.
Where the mechanic fails it is more likely to have resulted
from his own indolence, or intemperance, or the extravagance
of his family.
He then occupies the safer position—a position out of which
many have risen to wealth and influence.
Not a few of the best of our public men received their first
lessons in patient industry and sturdy self-dependence in the
workshop, and pursued the study of letters in their leisure
hours. It matters little where or how the man is reared so
he is educated, that is, according to the literal meaning of the
word, that what is in him be brought out or developed.
When we look through the shell of society and see the hol-
lowness and ashes within; when the world is perpetually
asking, not what a man is, but what he has; when stupidity,
or indolence, or moral turpitude is received and caressed if it
be covered with silk or fine broadcloth, and dwell in a splendid
house, or drive an elegant carriage and horses, and the true
man, patiently abiding his time, trusting in God and his good
right arm, putting shows and shams in their place as outside
things, building his house in taste indeed, but having chief
69
reference to his means and his comfort in it, daring to recog¬
nize merit in homespun or in rags, scorning that society where
a professed gambler might be entertained, but an honest me¬
chanic, whatever his breeding and education, could not come,
where such a man is laughed at as eccentric and old fashioned,
because he is sensible and just, and places a higher value upon
things than names, or trinkets, or shadows, there must be
something radically wrong in the education upon which the
social framework of such a community is based. Clerks
growing up to form their own habits, in sheer neglect of their
more experienced employers, and taught to consider wealth
and appearance as the chief good, do much upon their settle¬
ment in life to cause and perpetuate this state of things.
But most of the evil lies nearer the basis of society than
this. Business men are frequently as much wanting in their
duty to their families as to those in their employ. A habit of
gross neglect is not probably very prevalent in this city, but it
is a source of immense evil in cities farther north, that sooner
or later "set the fashion,'' as the phrase is, to this. Commerce
is absorbing, as a pursuit, in proportion to its success. Not¬
withstanding the warning of inspiration to the contrary, as
riches increase, men set their hearts upon them, and duties
that are faithfully discharged at the commencement of a busi¬
ness life are too often omitted in its progress, and in time come
to be forgotten altogether.
No man on earth has a right to be so busy as habitually
and permanently to neglect his own family. The text says
that " he that provideth not for his own house is worse than
an infidel." It is every father's duty by family culture, family
religion, family prayers, and personal supervision to train
up his children both for this world and the next
The business man is indeed laboring for them, and it is his
first duty that they shall not want, but it is not his duty that
they shall live in luxury, and when their physical comfort is
secured, they have other and higher claims upon him than
the mere amassing of wealth for their expenditure—claims
which cannot be discharged at his desk if even he should re¬
main there day and night without rest or sleeping.
70
They are not his customers, nor does he buy of them. He
may buy and sell most successfully and on principles of per¬
fect rectitude, but outside of all this are their claims which
the God of nature has given them still to be satisfied. He
niay pay the last farthing of his debts, but he owes them a
greater debt still.
Nor are they merely tax gatherers to whom he must sur¬
render as a tribute a certain proportion of all his gains.
The revenue to which they, are entitled cannot be counted
by dollars and cents, nor can his duties to them be performed
by deputy, nor power of attorney given to any one, however
competent. It will not do for him to superintend the minutest
money transactions of his employees in business as sedulously
as if that were the great work of his life, and leave the health
of his children to the family physician, their manners to the
dancing master, their education to the teacher or their religion
to the minister. The eye of the father must be in every de¬
partment among "those of his own house,'' or a righteous
heaven will hold him answerable for the omission. If help¬
less children are tortured in school by confinement to their
books in hot rooms for ten hours a day, to the utter ruin of
their constitutions, and the cramming of their minds with
mere facts that they can never digest or use, when eight hours
of study is the limit for the matured- man, if they grow up
with weak lungs, or crooked spines or shattered nerves as so
many of our American women do from excessive confinement
at school, and the habits of inaction and remaining in doors
thereby necessarily formed and kept up during life, the father
when he weeps over the premature grave of those who should
have closed his eyes in death, can never console himself by
the reflection that he was so busy in his store that he had no
time to superintend the education of his children. And if he
does not inform himself where his sons spend their evenings,
and how they spend their Sabbaths, what books they read
and what companions they associate with, he need not be
surprised that even in this life a portion of his retribution may
come in the opportunity to learn from experience that it is
"sharper than a serpent's tooth, to have a thankless child,"
71
and that more dreadful than the tomb is that living death of
vice and dissipation, terminating perhaps with the end of the
career of the inebriate, the suicide, or the duelist. The young
man whose associates and employments need to be hidden
from a father's eye, is already an object of anxiety and com¬
passion. He is surrounded with foes and has thrown away
his shield. He has made a truce with death, and is holding
a parley with ruin.
His pleasures, you may rest assured, are the pleasures of
sin, and they lie within hazardous and forbidden ground.
The apples of Sodom hang over the yawning abyss, and if
he is permitted with glowing hand outstretched to pluck the
fruits, they indeed become ashes and rottenness in his grasp?
but the giddy footing fails him, and a deathless soul perishes
in the pursuit of that for which ye should not barter a worth¬
less weed away; but his blood God may one day require at
the father's hand. Nor have his children alone such claims
upon his time and personal attention as cannot be vicariously
met, nor bought off with money as the French Kings bribed
the Danes not to invade their territory. There is one at home
whom the business man has promised solemnly at the altar
to love, honor, and cherish, who is nearer to him than any other
in the world, and is flattered by his attentions which she has
a right to demand. If his days are spent in trade and his
nights at the club-room, what security has he that she is happy,
whose happiness he has sworn to promote and minister unto,
and who has resigned all other sources of earthly happiness
for him ?
A fruitful cause of the evils complained of in our social
state, is the great inroad that this fast age makes upon do¬
mestic life. The true greatness of a country depends upon
the manner in which its homes are administered. There are
the nursery, the school, and the church of the rising genera¬
tion. All the institutions of Young America, or Young Enland,
are there. The home is the mould into which the nascent
state is poured and formed. The mature and developed com¬
monwealth can never differ from the character that is im¬
printed at home upon its plastic youth.
72
If they are taught simplicity, obedience, domestic habits,
and morality, even before they are sent to school; in the course
of twenty years, when they shall have all things in their
hands, the State, in the flower of its prosperity, will expe¬
rience at the same time its iron and its golden age. If, on
the other hand, they are masters at home, masters even of
themselves, at adult age, nothing hut their passions will be
matured, and yon will have a nation of people with the reason
of children and the passions of men.
While the eyes of the fathers of our commonwealth have
been too intently fixed in their counting-house upon their
gains, luxury is gradually creeping into the land. The father
seeks, by an unlimited supply of money to his family, to com¬
pound for his absence from the helm, and they in turn solace
themselves with balls, operas, theatres and dresses, equipage
and establishments rivaling the golden fleece of Jason in mag¬
nificence, which widen and deepen the growing hostility be¬
tween the rich and the poor, which incite the middle classes to
imitate, upon ruinous terms, an extravagance with which they
cannot vie without ruin, and which minister to the selfishness,
worldliness and vanity of their possessors, when many poor
are begging their daily bread, and many heathen are perishing
for lack of knowledge of the word of life.
French fashions, French customs, French dinners—cooked
and bottled up in Paris, French dances and dramas, novels
and Sabbaths, find their way to this country with every
steamer, and our progressive population, disgusted with the
plainness and republican simplicity of their hard-handed
forefathers, estimate gentility as they do wine, to be purer and
better for having crossed the sea. But luxury never yet en¬
tered a nation that was not ripe for its admission. There is
already in this country a demand for these importations, by
means of which we omit most of the good and get most of
the evil of France. And this demand can have no source so
prolific as the destruction that is going on in many of our
great cities of American homes. Young men cannot afford
to marry, from want of means to support the luxury that they
see around them, and they herd together in hotels and board-
73
ing houses, destitute of all the restraints of family, and a prey
to all the allurements of vice. And it is said, that in New
York,families of rich men, congregated under a lofty roof, with
every room of the great mansion splendidly furnished, bidding
defiance alike to sunshine and tempest, are often as destitute of
a home as the French language, which is more necessary than
the catechism or the Bible to the education of their children.
Nay, that language can, by circumlocution, express the idea,
but no ingenuity can construe that stately house, which serves
for a shelter from the weather, for a convenient place to give
parties in, for adding to the consequence of its owner, and to
his available assets if he should fail, and for a last resort to a
worldling overcome with ennui, into that dearest place on
earth, known to the simple-hearted and the loving as a home.
I knew a man once whom I have been in the habit of regard¬
ing as a model merchant. He entered the city of his choice
in early life, with fifteen dollars in his pocket, and with a
young wife, a child and his mother depending upon him for
support. He deposited them in some place of security, and
then walked up and down the streets of the great metropolis,
enquiring at every store till he found a situation as a clerk. He
soon rose in his employer's estimation by his good conduct,
and it was not long till he was in business for himself. He
continued for many years industriously pursuing his calling,
content with moderate gains, (never speculating but once, and
then he lost his ship,) and prospered by the God he served,
until he could gradually leave the store in the hands of his
sons, giving them the benefits of his experience and judgment,
and retire upon an ample fortune. In his daily course of
life, his habit was to spend the morning till one o'clock at the
store; then to visit the exchange for an hour; then to go
home to his daily bath, and dinner at three; and though I
have spent weeks under his roof, I have never known him to
bring home with him a care from his counting-room, or even
from the exchange. The evening was devoted to the cheerful
and blessed labor of making his home happy and inspiring
his children with the great principles that have been his guide
and his stay. Though he has consigned his most active
74
business duties to his sons, who are well able to represent
him, he is not idle. Public business of every kind—of the
city, the school, or the church—finds in him one of its most
diligent and public-spirited friends; and he is ever ready to
labor for the community as faithfully as he has labored for
himself. In the enjoyment of a green old age, he will go
down to his sepulchre full of years, and those priceless honors
which grow out of the discharge of duty in that state of life
to which it pleased God to call him, beloved of God, and
esteemed by all men. The effect upon the world of a com¬
munity of such merchants would be incalculable, and no
power on earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ, could
compete with commerce, in such hands, in promoting the
good of universal man.
LECTURE VI.
CARTHAGE.
" The love of money is the root of all evil."—I Tim. vi. 10th.
While the possession of wealth is not unfrequently a bless¬
ing, the desire to be rich exposes men to great temptations,
and the love of money is the root of all evil. " Some," says
the apostle, "have erred from the faith" in following the daz¬
zling and blinding gleam of gold ; all their strength of princi¬
ple, backed by religious faith and upheld by prayer, has been
unable to resist the tyranny of mammon admitted in some un¬
guarded hour too near the citadel of their affections, until
they were sunk in "foolish and hurtful lusts," and drowned
"in destruction and perdition." If man aided by Divine
grace may be thus overcome, still less can nature alone main¬
tain a successful struggle against this encroaching demon
where the opportunity is favorable and the stimulus strong.
As we have seen in our past consideration of the subject,
there is imminent danger of covetousness supplanting honesty,
and luxury and selfishness taking possession of a heart that they
find swept and garnished after the expulsion of charity from
its innermost apartments.
It has sometimes happened in the world's history, that a
nation has laid in commerce the foundation of its prosperity,
and has found itself not more certainly in the road to wealth
than in the road to corruption.
The nation, like the individual, absorbed by the love of
money, errs from its faith, in those great principles of right
which bind the universe together, and pierces itself through
with many sorrows. Whether those elements (entirely new
to the old world,) which enter into our national system, will not
serve to postpone, it maybe, for centuries, or to avert the ruin
which others have sunk in, remains to be seen. At present
76
we can find no more instructive subject for our meditations,
than the character and fate of an ancient republic that stood at
the head of the nations in the splendor of her commerce, the
extent of her resources, and ultimately in the renown of her
arms and the entireness of her destruction.
Like the Roman Ca?sar, Carthage had "joy for her fortune
reverence for her honor, and death for her ambition."
Her history comes to us in great measure through Roman
authors, who naturally aimed in almost every narrative to
exalt the name of Rome at the expense of her most formida¬
ble rival, and so successful have been Livy, Polybius, and
the rest in this attempt that " Punic faith" has become a prov¬
erb and a bye-word wherever the Latin tongue has gone. It
is even said that her remorseless conquerors busied them¬
selves in destroying every vestige of the literature of their vic¬
tims, and only the Periplus of Hanno (a short account of his
voyage as far south perhaps as Guinea) has come down to us.
Yet Carthage was once the mistress of the seas. Her do¬
minions extended from Egypt to Gibraltar, and northward she
anticipated the conquest of the Moors almost to the base of
the Pyramids. Tyre in the height of her glory was her in¬
ferior, and Alexandria and Syracuse, and Corinth, paled before
the lustre of her renown. Her'people were a prosperous com¬
mercial race for centuries before the Roman historians knew
of their greatness, and were enjoying and communicating the
arts of civilized life while Italy was still struggling against bar¬
barism, and educating her sinews for the horrid trade of war.
The commencement of the commercial prosperity of this
mighty people is assigned by some writers to the arrival of
Elyssa, the Dido of Virgil, 868, A. C., but Carthage is probably
the Tarshish to which the ships of Solomon and Tyre traded
one hundred and fifty years before, bringing back from her
markets the treasures of the western world. A Carthaginian
colony was, in all probability, established about 500 A. C., in
the British Islands, which were already long peopled by a
high spirited and commercial race, and these same restless
mariners are even said to have settled a portion of our Ameri¬
can coast.
77
Carthage was the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, and
owes her exaltation to the enteprise of her people, to her ad¬
mirable situation, and to her safe distance from the effete mon¬
archies over which the sceptre of oriental despotism had
rusted from inaction, till Alexander, with his invincible Mace¬
donians, like a whirlwind, swept down their thrones and
palaces, and portioned their satrapies amongst his generals as
a father divides among his children his land and slaves.
The first inhabitants of Carthage were those same Canaanites
or Phoenicians whom, after their expulsion from the promised
land, by Moses and Joshua, we have seen scattered in flight
along all the shores of the known world, a race whom neces¬
sity and experience made a commercial people, as persevering,
as daring, and as nautical as our .New England whalemen,
and who had circumnavigated Africa twenty centuries before
Vasco de Gama discovered that it was not a perpetually ex¬
tended continent. They founded their great colony upon a
peninusala which itself, from the changes that centuries have
made in the coast, cannot now be distinguished from the un¬
varying shore.
It was placed midway between Gibraltar and Smyrna at
the east and west end of the Mediterranean, accessible to all
the commercial States of antiquity, with a fine harbor, and
a fertile back country in the rear, upon which the great
Sahara has encroached faster than the opposite sea has retired.
Thus the Romans, the desert and the sea have conspired
together to efface the name and memory of a people who did
more than any other race for the subjugation of them all.
It is reasonable to believe that the manufactures and arts of
Tyre and Sidon were early transplanted to the new colony,
and even her enemies acknowledge her subsequent pre-erpi-
nence in works of taste and eloquence. Her coins equalled
those of the Greek and Roman mints when in the highest
stage of their perfection.
The greatest commercial splendor of Carthage was attained
about 400 years A. C., and two centuries later we find her
without a rival in the Mediterranean. Appian compares her
wealth and prosperity to the empire of the Macedonians for
78
power, and to that of the Persians for opulence. The Cartha¬
ginians probably used bank notes two thousand years before
their invention by the Jews and Moors of Spain, and they
constructed wet docks for their shipping, dug out from the
soil, and secured by walls and quays, such as are claimed to
be the invention of modern times. It is supposed that they
manufactured sugar from the cane 500 years before the Christ¬
ian Era. Their mode of trading with the inhabitants of the
western coast of Africa as given by Herodotus was peculiar,
and speaks much more favorably for the " Punic faith" than
the Roman rhetoricians were in the habit of doing. The
mariners were accustomed to put their merchandize upon the
sand and then retire to their ships. The natives, the ancestral
tribes perhaps of those whom twenty-five hundred years later
we are endeavoring to civilize and convert through our
colonies and missionaries at Cape Palmas and Sierra Leone,
would then come down to the beach, attracted by signal fires,
and place beside each parcel a quantity of gold dust and retire.
If this, were satisfactory,the Carthaginians would take it away
and leave the goods. If not, they would withdraw again for
the natives to add to the gold till the price should be paid. It
is obvious that nothing but the most scrupulous honesty on
both sides could induce the parties to engage in such traffic a
second time. On other parts of the same coast they exchanged
wine, the ointments of Egypt, the earthen-ware and tiles of
Athens and other manufactures for hides of cattle, deer, ele¬
phants, lions, and for ivory. Strabo informs us that they had
before his day not less than three hundred trading posts for
the prosecution of this traffic.
The enterprise that bore these hardy and industrious mer¬
chants with their goods north to the British islands has been
already referred to. McPherson, the author of that mass of
historical lore,the Annals of Commerce,sums up his description
by saying, " such is the poor account which I have been able
to collect from ancient authors of the greatest commerce that
ever was carried on by any nation of the western world, from
the dawn of history till times comparatively modern ; a com¬
merce, which by its unrivaled extent and judicious management,
79
relieved all nations of their superfluities, supplied all their
wants, and everywhere dispensed plenty and comfort; whereby
through the good offices of those universal agents and carriers,
the Indian, the Ethiopian, the Negro, the Briton, and the
Scythian, living at the extremities of the world, and ignorant
of each other's existence, contributed to each other's felicity by
increasing their own.''—Mac. An. Com., vol. 1., p. 56.
The government and institutions of the Carthaginians are
little known, a single fragment of one of their histories, and
another of their language, being all that have come down to
us. They had, however, two chief magistrates, and a senate
who were elected by the people, notwithstanding that the outer
wall of their city is said to have been forty-five miles in ex¬
tent, enclosing 700,000 inhabitants. Aristotle approves of their
government, as one of the best in the world, and says that in his
own times, though Carthage was then several centuries old,
" its tranquility had never been disturbed, either by domestic
sedition, or the tyranny of its government."
We have now traced this people to the summit of their
wealth and power, and have beheld the beneficial results of
the peaceful pursuits of commerce and navigation, in enhanc¬
ing their own prosperity at the same time that they served as
a band to unite the most distant nations in one common alli¬
ance, imparting to the savage letters and the arts, and furnish¬
ing to the cultivated the materials of their most important
manufactures. We find them at the same time in the en¬
joyment of a government perhaps as free as our own, and
which commanded the admiration of the greatest master of
politics, next to Moses,that antiquity has produced,and which,
for at least 500 years, had completely answered its end. Nothing
but that respect for the rights of person and property, which it is
always the tendency of commerce to engender, could so long
have preserved it. We find them excelling all nations in nav¬
igation, and pushing their discoveries beyond the pillars of
Hercules out into the vast ocean, north and south, along the
coasts of Europe and Africa, levying the righteous tributes of
commerce upon every people and clime, and scattering bless¬
ings like a beneficient providence with one hand upon the
80
fiery tropics and the other stretched out towards the frozen
sea.
The Roman historians quoted from their literature before it
perished, and Ptolemy's most accurate maps were those of the
western coast of Africa, which the seamen of Carthage had
explored. Had this ancient people been content with con¬
ferring blessings upon mankind, we should not now be obliged
to resort to their enemies for our knowledge of their history,
nor should we now, in groping for the faint glimmer through
the ages of the light they once shed upon the world, find them
more completely blotted out from the records of men than
perhaps any one of the mighty empires, which in turn have
stood forth like promontories from the shore of time. Com¬
merce made Carthage what she was, and the fruits of com¬
merce, unsanctified, destroyed her forever. First, wealth made
her merchant princes luxurious and effeminate. Instead of
passing on the luxuries of1 other climes from nation to nation
as they had done before, they expended them at home, build¬
ing and adorning splendid palaces, and gratifying the volup¬
tuous taste and the hot passions that an orient ancestry and
a southern sun had entailed upon them, at the expense of the
duties they owed to gods and men.
The trade of arms in obedience to the traditions of Tyre
had long since been given up to mercenaries, and their hire¬
ling ranks were recruited from Africa, Spain, Italy and Greece.
An effeminacy scarcely less than that which disgraced and
enervated Persia, indisposed the citizens for those long and
perilous voyages which had brought the treasures of the earth
to their feet, while mammon and ambition still aspired to a su¬
premacy among the nations. The thirst for conquest parched
the lips and throat of these once peaceful merchants like a
blast from the hot desert behind them, and they sent forth sor¬
did armies to wrest by violence what had never been denied to
them in trade. They converted their trading posts along the
shores of continents into a military occupancy to oppress and
enslave the people who before were their customers and
friends. Ambition, partially gratified, together with the in¬
creasing power and dangerous neighborhood of Rome, disposed
81
them for farther conquests, until, at the beginning of the Second
Punic War, the Carthaginians had nearly abandoned commerce
for military life. About the time that Xerxes and his millions
were defeated in Greece, they lost, in Sicily, an army of 300,000
men, without doubt the largest collection of mercenary troops
ever assembled by the power of gold. An historian tells us that
" the gradual acquisition of wealth by patient industry seemed
contemptible, when compared with the seizure of it by war
and plunder. The people became intoxicated by conquest;
their judgment was perverted, and their avarice excited, by
the example of the Romans, whom they saw prospering by a
perpetual violation of justice. The national virtue was re¬
laxed; and the military successes, which filled the city with
exultation, laid the foundation of its ruin."
Rome had long been jealous of the power of her only rival
among the nations of the earth, and finding the dominion of
Carthage extended over Sicily and Sardinia, a part of Spain and
Africa, she availed herself of an opportunity for a collision in
Sicily, from which, if her historians are to be believed, Car¬
thage came out crippled in her power and narrowed in her
boundaries. Hamilcar then invaded and conquered Spain,
intending, from her rich mines, to defray the expenses of an
expedition against Rome. Arrested, however, by the hand of
death, he bequeathed to his son, the great Hannibal, his hatred
of that grasping power that even then assumed to be the arbiter
of the nations. It is even said that the father dedicated the
boy to the work of vengeance upon the altar, and exacted an
oath of undying hostility to the people who would brook no
prosperity on the earth beyond the flight of their own eagles.
Ill fated oath! The youthful general, instead of exhausting
his resources in preparations for the defence of the altar-fires
of his native city, collected a force for the invasion of Italy,
defeated army after army of the Roman soldiers, scaled the
Alps in the face of savage foes, and descended with twenty
thousand men upon the plains.
Here, if he had been sustained by his countrymen, the
history of the world would have been changed, by the de
struction of Rome; but factions sprung up at home, and cor-
6
82
rapt politicians missing the bribes from Hannibal with which
his predecessor Hasdrubal had plied them, persuaded the
people to leave him to his fate. For sixteen years he main¬
tained his footing almost within sight of the eternal city, and
retreated at last only because Scipio had invaded Carthage,
(an exploit embalmed in the proverb it originated " to carry
the war into Africa,") and its great general, second to none
of antiquity, was recalled by an ungrateful senate and people
for the defence of their homes. The rest is soon told. The
military genius of Rome triumphed over the base hirelings
and undisciplined masses and factions of Carthage, and not
many years afterwards the city was captured and pillaged,
and the very materials of which it was built, so far as they
were perishable, were destroyed.
As if the " God to whom vengeance belongeth " would
punish in kind the avarice and ambition of this once peace¬
ful and mercantile race, the miserable remnant of the people
were compelled to remove their dwellings ten miles from the
sea, while Rome went on in her career of butchery and wrong
until she, too, had filled out the measure of her iniquity; and
heathens, still more savage, were let loose upon the vineyards
and palaces of Italy.
The ancient state sprung like Venus from the foam of the
sea, and great with her maritime renown, thus banished
inland from her native element, could no more live than the
lily that bends gracefully over to kiss its own shadow in the
waters of the Nile, if transplanted to the Nubian Desert with
its bright leaves exposed to the Sirocco and the sand-storm.
Her inexorable foe left her but the effigy of an independent
power, and bereft of every vestige of her former glory.
" What seemed her head the likeness, of a kingly crown had on,"
a reed was given to her withered hand for a sceptre, and
a purple robe thrown in mockery about her shrunken form.
History can trace her no farther.
As one by one the lights that she had kindled along the
coasts of the world were extinguished, the wail of her miserere
rose up through the vaulted galleries and still cloisters of the
83
past, and then, dumb with inarticulate woe, she lay like the
transient mist of the morning along the borders of the desert
till it is drunk up by the sunbeams and dissipated forever.
Thus arose and thus perished Carthage.
" Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms nor mercy in her woe,
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career."
Her trading posts have vanished; her ships have left no
track upon the sparkling waters, her dock-yards and her
wharves have submitted to the ancient sands of the sea vvh'ich
they had displaced; no historian of her blood has notched
her glory and her wrongs in the temple of fame, and no native
bard has swept his lyre to the lament of her desolation. So
utter was her extinction, that while in their ruins we may
read the grandeur of the still older Nineveh and Babylon, her
temples and palaces have furnished no memorial or record of
the past, and even their fragments are undistinguishable upon
the plain. She serves only as a monument which the God
of Hosts has erected for the nations to read and ponder its
inscription, " The love of money is the root of all evil."
Let us study it and be wise. Of all the people upon earth
perhaps the American people need most at this time the light
of this history for their guidance. We are so deeply involved
in a lucrative and fast growing commerce, that it bids fair
soon to form our institutions and manners for us in a mould
that shall be permanent whilst the nation endures. The in¬
creasing wealth of our great cities, while politically their influ¬
ence is highly conservative, is changing the habits of our
people by the importation of foreign fashions, luxuries, crimes,
and criminals. This is inevitable to our situation, and we
must do the best we can with them.
The commerce of the United States will perpetually extend
itself, perpetually create wealth and introduce luxury. It is our
destiny as much as it was that of Carthage—no legislation can
effectually check it that will not also check our speed in the
race of nations. It is impossible that we can be otherwise
than a great commercial people. Everything in our charac-
84
ter and condition conspires to this end. Egypt could not
engage largely in commerce notwithstanding its fertility from
want of timber for ship-building, but our forests are so great
as to furnish the chief obstacle in the way of agriculture.
Rome despised trade, enacted that no Senator should own a
ship, placed a bounty upon war by giving the soldier far higher
wages than the seaman ; with more territory than the Ceb-
sars ruled, trade is honorable among us, merchants are
among our first citizens, and wealth is already a road to civil
and social honors. Russia will probably never excel in com¬
merce from want of suitable coasts and harbors, but we have
coasts nearly five thousand miles in extent, abounding in the
finest harbors in the world. England has been for many
years queen of the seas, but it is estimated that sixty thou¬
sand tons of American shipping were in her employ in the
Crimea transporting provisions and munitions of war, and
this is only a fraction of a marine that is probably the largest
among the nations. We have open to us now the carrying
trade of the earth, and may well claim the title of the Phoeni¬
cians or Carthaginians of the nineteenth century. With a
relative eminence inferior to that of Carthage, the great activ¬
ity of the American mind, caused by a perpetual contest with
nature in our boundless possessions, and by the conflicting
tides of strange civilizations which have met here and boil
and foam like a whirlpool, are hurrying us on faster than
Carthage in the career of wealth, luxury and aggrandizement.
Are we not progressing with equal strides in corruption and
effeminacy ?
Since the organization of our government, we have bought
Mississippi, Florida, Louisana, and Indian Territories ; we have
annexed Texas, we have conquered New Mexico and Cali¬
fornia, and we are continually reaching after farther acquisi¬
tions. Where shall the end be ?
Some of our demagogues do not scruple to aim at the pos¬
session of North America—forgetting that in time, annexation
by a republic must weaken the central government to disso¬
lution or strengthen it to despotism ; and that the control of
funds necessary to the government of so vast an empire, must
85
needs make bribery and corruption common among us. The
executive of a republic containing within its borders the torrid
and the frigid zones must govern either by the purse or the
sword, or by both. The administration of Carthage was sup¬
ported by bribery at the very time that her resources and her
warlike spirit enabled Hannibal to invade and almost to con¬
quer Italy.
Of the corrupt man urged on by covetousness, Socrates says,
"that every master should pray that he may not meet with such
a slave, and every such person being unfit for liberty should
implore that he may meet with a merciful master."—(Fer¬
guson.)
We are in the path which no nation has ever trodden with¬
out finding ruin at the end of it. If luxury shall, undisturbed,
be permitted to do the work it has been wont to do in all time
and all over the earth, we shall be fit only for a race of slaves,
and should adopt the wise man's advice and pray heaven to
send us merciful masters.
Carthage lasted many centuries, but while her exaltation
was relative, her enervation was absolute, and her doom was
deserved long before it was consummated. We are gaining
faster than ever did Carthage in population, territory, resources,
and splendor, and our career may be shorter than hers.
In the ordering of Providence, death seems as much the her¬
itage of nations as of individual men, and we may almost say
that they die by kindred diseases. Fever burns in their veins,
or consumption wastes the nutriment of their strength, or par¬
alysis shocks, and destroys their vitality till they dry up to ex¬
siccation, or the body politic grows pampered and bloated from
indulgence and excess, till corruption circulates through every
artery where the life blood should flow, and the gross and cor¬
pulent mass becomes purescent from its very richness. Some
are benumbed into stupor by oppression, which alike deadens
patriotism and private virtue, till political death steals like the
sleep of freezing men over the frame.
'• Wearily every bosom pinetb,
There the warrior's dart has no fleetness,
There.the maiden's heart has no sweetness."
86
Some stand stripped and shivering upon the brink of the
icy flood before they make the final plunge, and some " get
drunk with blood to vomit crime," and in the phrenzy ot
delirium inscribe destruction upon their banners, and then
murder their standard-bearers, and blot out their insignia from
the signal book of nations.
Now in deciding the question of our national perpetuity, if we
can find tendencies and ingredients in our Republic similar to
those which brought to a bloody end Carthage and Rome, Greece
and Assyria, we should view them with a dread proportioned to
the love we bear our country; and if on the other hand we find
conservative elements which those great empires wanted, we
should cherish them as our only hope of temporal salvation.
Of the former class, we see rife and growing among us much
commercial and political dishonesty, hunger and thirst after
luxury, the importation of foreign vices as the effeminacy of
Greece was borne to Rome, and the ambition of Rome to Car¬
thage, and an alarming covetousness of adjacent territory.
This last is generated by the restless enterprise of our pop¬
ulation, and fearfully increased by the efforts of sectional in¬
terest to maintain the balance of power. History in vain
calls out to us from the chambers of the past that the destruc¬
tion of all great nations has arisen chiefly from this one cause,
the lust of dominion sapping, when it is sated, the founda¬
tions both of public and private virtue.
It is but a warning of Cassandra which Americans will not
heed, and it is manifestly our destiny to go on, growing as
we have done in wealth, in territory and in civil corruption.
If we exist as a nation for twenty years longer, the bribery
of public men which is only a symptom, a fatal and unerring
symptom, which every statesman recognizes as the death-rattle
in the throat, will be more common even than it is now, and
the moral sense of the people will be less shocked at its re¬
currence. This must in time destroy our national life even if
we escape division from diversity of sectional interests. What
then is our hope ? Is it in the power of our armies ? Rome
subdued the world, and Carthage well nigh conquered Rome.
Is it in the magnitude of our resources ? It is from them that
87
our chief danger is to be apprehended. Is it in the education
of our people ? The education of a bad man but sharpens
the edge of villainy. Is it the freedom of the press ? An un-
sanctified press like an unsanctified commerce may destroy
that it should support. Is it in our form of government?
Excessive license of the popular will gave the death blow to
the freedom of Carthage. Is it our division into separate
States ? This, while it is an outlet to political excitement,
also dilutes our national loyalty. Is it finally that agriculture
and not commerce must always furnish employment for the
bulk of our people ? The conservative influence of agricul¬
ture were indeed incalculable, but with us it is greatly quali¬
fied and weakened by disturbing forces. Even now perhaps
one-sixth of our population are herded together in towns and
cities, who send by every railroad their opinions, fashions,
habits, maimers and morals, to rural districts already peopled
in part by immigrants from lands that hold in abhorrence
our institutions and our nationality.
What then is our hope ? I answer that our hope is that
something exists among us which shall so leaven the popular
rnind even while it is assimilating its foreign element, as to
perpetuate the life of our people in separate and smaller com¬
monwealths. Those old nations which lorded it over God's
heritage, and then perished like Midas when all they touched
was gold had not the Christian religion. That with its insti¬
tutions and its moral system, and the enlightening of its great
teacher are the only element which we possess and they did not.
It will not indeed arrest our growth, and therefore will form
no effectual barrier to the overthrow of our existing gov¬
ernment, but it will break our fall, and though the American
nation will be destroyed, the American people will survive.
The salt of the earth which an Almighty hand has sown
among us will preserve us. The Christian religion will last for¬
ever—the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and all
human institutions in proportion as they are linked and bound
to it, must partake of its immortality. The elements of our
endurance are an open Bible, a free pulpit, and a Christ¬
ian Sabbath. Rome had a forum, but no pulpit. Cicero thun
88
dered in the Roman Senate the vengeance of the gods against
treason, but Paul proclaimed the message of his master in a
Roman prison. The Christian's God was an unknown God
in Athens. The mother of the Gracchi never sent her sons to
Sunday School. The laws of Carthage were good, but when
her citizens were found wanting in virtue, there was no Bible
and no Sabbath among them to bring them back to repentance
and life. Hannibal was dedicated on the altar of Nemesis—
our youth are consecrated upon the altar of Jesus. They
sowed, and reaped, and fought and traded and sailed to the
oracles of Apollo—we to the oracles of the Holy Ghost. It
was a Roman Governor that crucified Jesus Christ—we
worship him in every town and hamlet and homestead. In
concluding, therefore, this course of lectures, I would urge
upon you the upholding of the Bible and the Sabbath as
the two factors upon which our life as a people depends. Let
the rules of the Bible never be wanting from your place of busi¬
ness—let the Sabbath never find you there. Learn from the
one how to observe the other, and the week days also. Read
and circulate the Bible and remember the Sabbath Day to keep
it holy, and while you are working out your own salvation, you
are also lashing to the perpetuity of God's throne, the exist¬
ence and welfare of your country.