ESSAY XIV.

THE COMMERCIAL EMPIRE.

"MYSTERY! BABYLON THE GREAT: THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."-REV. xvii. 5.

ARISTOTLE'S OPINION OF COMMERCE AND TRADE-OPINIONS OF OTHER WRITERS, SACRED AND PROFANE, MODERN AND ANCIENT, RESPECTING TRADE AND RICHES-GREAT RICHES AN EVIL TO INDIVIDUALS AND TO STATES-HISTORY OF THE DOMINION OF THE SEA-COMMERCIAL EMPIRES ALWAYS TYRANNICAL-MARITIME WARFARE MORE CRUEL THAN CONTINENTAL WARFARE-THE LAST WAR A WAR BETWEEN

THE EMPIRES OF COMMERCE AND ARMS-THE ORDERS IN COUNCILTHE COLONIAL SYSTEM-MANUFACTURING MONOPOLY-MACHINERY -POLITICAL ECONOMY-MONEY-WORSHIP, ITS PERPETUAL SACRIFICE.

TRADE and commerce have been spoken against by the wise men of all ages, as tending to corrupt the morals of nations and individuals; and as the worst foundation upon which a nation can rest its strength. It has been always looked upon as tending, not to strength, but weakness. It was never considered either to produce good order or happiness; but, on the contrary, destruction and misery. It has been left to this last age to uphold, for the first time, the opposite doctrine; and there never has been a time in which, to depreciate the use of wealth, and its accumulation by traffic, has been so opposed to the general sense, and so thought to be absurd; and so little has been spoken against it. This

is an age of national, not only individual avariciousness. The existence of the British empire is based upon its commercial riches; and other nations are desirous to be its imitators, and to follow in the same steps,-seeing it in appearance so successful in its results. We and they are resolved to put in proof again, and upon the widest scale, this great experiment; though contrary to all experience, and the precepts of wisdom in all ages, divine and human.

We might have found in our own Aristotle,-the author of our modern wisdom: the real founder of our political economy, of our theories of government, of our philosophy respecting the origin and nature of society, and the laws of nature and nations,-we might have found in him, among others, a caution against the course which we are pursuing, in direct defiance, as is wont, of our own master, and of the essential limits to the effects of his own teaching, which for its credit and safety he would have imposed. For the scholar is ever unequal to the master;—and he betrays the weak points of his master's plans and defences, by prosecuting his operations in the neighbourhood of the errors and fallible parts, disregarding those which gave the entire support to them.

The following passages from Aristotle's Politics, convey his sentiments with regard to commerce.

"Commerce indeed produces nothing; but it exchanges and distributes, as conveniency requires, the objects and commodities already produced and accumulated."

"To real and natural riches bounds have always

been assigned; since, like all other instruments, they are limited, both in magnitude and number, by the ends for which they serve, and the effects which they are intended to produce. But that factitious wealth, which is often confounded with them, is indeed boundless, and will appear necessarily to be so, when we have investigated its nature.*

"To get money is the business of the merchant; with him wealth and money are synonymous; and to heap up money is in his mind to acquire all worldly advantages. By several economical writers, this opinion of the merchant is treated with contempt, and considered as mere dotage. They deride, and rightly," he adds, "the notion of that being the most substantial or only wealth which, to him who should accumulate it in the greatest quantity, would only realize the fable of Midas, and thereby expose him to the danger of perishing with hunger."

"Of such factitious riches, the desire, as Solon said, must necessarily be boundless."

"The merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself. Yet political writers, deceived by an agreement in accidental pursuit and occasional application, confound the endless drudgery of commerce with the salutary duties of economy, and regard the accumulation of wealth as the main business of both. At the name of money, they recall all those deceitful enjoyments of pride and voluptuousness which

*Aristot. Polit. lib. i. c. 5.

money is fitted to procure, and in which wishing for ever immoderately to indulge, they cannot fail inordinately to desire that which promises to gratify their inordinate passions. If money is not to be obtained by (read, 'honest') traffic, the purpose for which it was first instituted, men thus minded will have recourse, for obtaining it, to other arts and other contrivances; prostituting even skill and courage, in this mean and mercenary service."

"But of all modes of accumulation, the worst and most unnatural is usury. This is the utmost corruption of artificial degeneracy, standing in the same relation to commerce, that commerce does to economy. By commerce, money is perverted from the purpose of exchange to that of gain; still, however, this gain is obtained by the mutual transfer of different objects; but usury, by transferring merely the same object from one hand to another, generates money from money; and the interest thus generated, is called “ offspring," (Toxos), as being precisely of the same nature, and of the same specific substance, with that from which it proceeds."*

Lycurgus, we well know, expelled gold and silver out of the kingdom of Sparta, considering them to be the occasion and instruments of all crimes.† He required also that brides should bring no dowries to their husbands, in order that the men might seek for wives,

* Aristot. Polit. lib. i. cc. 6, 7. I have used Taylor's translation, which is free, but gives the spirit of the author; and also his division of chapters. + "Omnium scelerum materiam." Justin. lib. iii. ap. Horat. Delph. Car. lib. iii. Od. 24.

*

not money. And he drove all merchants, as well as sophists, poets, and pedlars, out of the country, as worthless fellows.†

Cicero says, "those who buy up goods from the merchant that they may immediately sell them again, are base and despicable men; for they can only make a profit by practising some deception.” ‡

Horace, in like manner, says, that "nothing deters the merchant. The crafty seamen make themselves masters of the seas. The fear of poverty, which is a reproach in their eyes, impels them to do and to endure everything imaginable, and tempts them away from the inconvenient path of virtue."

To come to more recent authorities ;-this is another description of commerce and trade, by an author of eminence and learning. "In the contest of buying and selling, it naturally becomes the habit for one party to overreach the other." And again," in buying and selling, it is conceded, that we must buy things for less than they are worth, and sell them for more than they are worth, and in so doing circumvent one another; and so it is allowed to be in letting and hiring." ||

Milner says of the Waldenses, in the 13th century, "They avoided commerce, that they might be free from falsehood and deceit."¶ And again, in the 15th cen

"Ut uxores eligerentur, non pecuniæ.” Ib. ib.

+ Plut. in Laco. ap. Lycosthen. Apophthegmata, tit. De Avaritia. Cic. de Off. lib. i.

§ Horat. Car. lib. iii. Od. 24.

|| Domat. Civ. L. 1. 16, § Ff. de nim.; 1. 22, ult. Ff. locat. v. ; 1. 8, De resc. vend.; Domat. Civ. L. i. 45.

¶ Milner's Ch. Hist. 13th cent. c. 3, quoted from Allix, p. 235.