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HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

JULY, 1840.

ART. I.-MERCANTILE CHARACTER.

THE germination and growth of mercantile library companies in the principal cities of this country, furnish the philanthropist with hopes for the perpetuity of our government, which nothing else so reasonably could excite. Indeed, we are loth to limit the favorable influence which these institutions must have upon the progress of our young yet flourishing confederacy. In a work so closely allied in its spirit as is this to all that renders these companies beneficial and useful-one whose object and duty it is to keep pace with their progress-it will seem like repetition here to discourse fully upon the subject. To one point, however, it is interesting to glance, since the subject is more than ordinarily pleasing to those who are anxious for the elevation of the character of merchants—a class of men, which, from the nature and newness of the American government, for an exceedingly long period must rank, through its numbers, influence, and dominant concentration in cities, higher than any other. We allude to the employment, at stated periods, of the ablest logicians, scholars, and moralists, through discourses upon the multifarious topics which the position of our mercantile citizens suggests. Already has it been our pleasure, in these pages, to record the names of many of these, while, occasionally, we have been instrumental in diffusing from one end of the country to the other, the thoughts at first presented by their originators only to a limited circle

Of the many lectures which have been delivered during the last season, the subject of no one has been more important than that which has been treated by the Hon. JOHN SERGEANT, and which was pronounced before the Mercantile Library Company of Philadelphia, in that city, on the first of November last; subsequently, by request, before the Mercantile Library

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Association of New York; and which we now publish. The topics em. braced in it will commend themselves to the intelligence of the community, as surely as the favor of the author in allowing us to give publicity to his production is appreciated. The suggestions to which a perusal of the lecture will give rise, also, may be used advantageously by those who are secking to form a character for usefulness and goodness, for it is impossible for any one to read it without perceiving the importance of thought upon many themes which are therein but incidentally touched. "Inordinate self-gratification," for instance, is one of the phrases which will be inet with. What a text does it furnish! It is the whirlpool in which many a proud vessel is sucked and lost. A desire to be fashionable is the offspring of it. The young merchant who is ambitious to be brave in household display and equipage-to ape his wealthier and elder neighbor-may see his folly when it is too late to repent. His seat in the country may cause his bankruptcy, when that fashion, if unfollowed, might have eminently contributed to his solvency. On this point, however, we may introduce the remarks of a celebrated essayist: "I would advise the merchant who would live with real dignity, to make the city respectable, if he does not find it so, by displaying his wealth in it. Worthy conduct, with a noble fortune, will aggrandize any place. Adorn that place in which it is your lot to be fixed. Where, indeed, ought men to expend their opulence more readily than where it was amassed, where their characters are well known, and their virtues valued? Many evils result from this general emigration. The influence of good example is lost among the numerous tribe of clerks and journeymen who are the rising generation of merchants, but whose morals are early tainted with the foulest infection, by running after those pleasures which their superintendent appears to pursue. They are led to despise that city and those manners which their master avoids. When the rich and respectable leave it, who are to fill its magistracies and its councils? The lower orders, destitute of education and of liberal views, are thrust forward into office by nothing but their own pragmatical activity. No wonder a corporation has lost its influence and sullied its honors, when those who stand forth as its leaders are the meanest of its members. The opulent and most consequential have packed up their effects as soon as they have acquired all they wanted, and have left the pillaged city to stand or fall, as it may happen. A time has been when merchants only retired to their villas when they had accumulated their fortunes; they now begin with a villa, as if it were as necessary as a warehouse; and end with bankruptcy as naturally, as unreluctantly, and as unblushingly, as if it had Deen the object of their pursuit. Distress and difficulty excite meanness and artifice; fraud and injustice soon follow; and the dignity of the merchant is soon sunk in the scandalous appellation of a swindler. The fall of the eminent trader involves many in the misfortune. His wife and

children are reduced from a life of splendor and luxury to indigence and obscurity; to a state which they bear less patiently, because they have been accustomed to indulge their vanity and pride without control. Vice and every species of misery are increased by this imprudent conduct in his own family, and poverty brought into the houses of his inferior assistants, or dependants, who have either intrusted him with their money or labor unrepaid."

This is a picture drawn from life-what it represents daily occurs, and the whole of it is occasioned by the merchant's departure from his natural and his most becoming character. In order to resume that character, let him consider what virtues his way of life particularly requires. He will find them to be industry, honesty, and frugality. "Dare to be what you are," is a rule which, if observed, would secure to men that happiness of which the greater part never see any thing but the phantom,-the cloud in the place of the goddess! The great source of mercantile miscarriage is, that the merchant usually begins in a mode of life which should naturally adorn a successful conclusion. He begins with a rural retreat, and with expensive relaxations; with those pleasures which should, in the regular course, be reserved as the reward of his toils and the comfort of his age. He spends his active days in superfluous and unsatisfactory indulgence, and dooms the winter of life to want, to neglect, to a prison, or to an almshouse.

With these remarks we introduce the lecture to which we have already referred, having curtailed it only of a few introductory observations intended chiefly for those before whom it was pronounced.

"Commercial character is a theme of vast importance. The commercial class, without attempting a more precise description, may be said to include all those who stand between the producer and the consumer, and in any way aid in the circulation and exchanges of mankind. What a large class it is! How great a space it occupies! What an influence it has upon our social condition, and upon the moral tone of the community! From the smallest establishment in the interior, where an assortment is kept of every kind of wares, seemingly the most incongruous-foreign and domestic, for health and for sickness, for the animal and for the intellec tual nature-food, raiment, books, medicine, and all other commodities likely to be wanted at this the last stage of distribution, and where, too, commerce is still in its elementary state, being carried on in part by barter; from this little country bazaar, up to the storehouses of the great ship. ping merchant, and the offices of the money operators, where the large concerns of trade are managed, through all the intermediate stages, what a quantity there is of machinery, and what an amount of human agency, incessantly at work! It pervades all society; it is the overpowering employment; it meets you every where on the land and on the water. The lofty spar and the white sail, soliciting the impulsive power of the wind, the slow-moving boat, the rapid steamer, with its column of dark smoke spangled with stars of fire, the lumbering wagon and the flying car-these,

and thousands besides, are the implements of commerce, perpetually in motion, and making the civilized world vocal with their mighty din. And who, and what, are the human agents engaged in this pervading employ. ment? They are our countrymen, our fellow-citizens, our fathers, brothers, sons-nay, our sisters and our daughters, too; for females, whom Christian civilization every where exalts, find becoming and fit occupation in many of its multifarious departments. Merchants are spread over the land. They stand especially on the margin of the ocean, and reaching out their hands to distant regions, form the chief connecting link with other nations and people; so that, while by their weight, their numbers, and the wealth they manage, they powerfully influence society at home, they in a great measure stamp the impression of its character abroad. Are they just, faithful, true to their engagements, obedient to the principles of sound morality, prudent, industrious, in a word, wise in true wisdom, which teaches to seek lawful ends by lawful and honorable means, and to spurn all others, however tempting; are they such, they give a good name to their country and to their city, and impart the fragrance of their wellearned reputation to all around them. The very air seems perfumed by their virtue. Should they, unhappily, be the reverse of all this-faithless, heedless, rash, eager in the pursuit of gain, and regardless of the methods of reaching it, they dishonor and disgrace their neighborhood, and shed upon it the odium of their own misconduct. Nor will such misconduct fail to poison and corrupt the community they live in. Dishonesty and trick in the commercial class must lead to dishonesty and trick in those who deal with them. If the seller employ stratagem and art to deceive the buyer, the buyer will resort to stratagem and art in self-defence, until at length the point of honor will be who can most successfully deceive and cheat his neighbor. And such will be found to be the state of things wherever a relaxed commercial morality is allowed to exist. Indeed, in the best-regulated community, if there be any one branch of dealing, in which there is, or is supposed to be, dishonesty on the part of the sellers, you will soon discern that buyers begin to fortify their wits for an encounter of cunning, not to say knavery, and so far suffer themselves to be demoralized. Exactly as this spirit extends himself, does the business. affected by it approach to gambling, and assume the features of that ghastly and consuming vice. When it prevails intensely and extensively, we call it a mania; and so it certainly is. We may call it folly; but remember there is this difference between madness and idiocy, that while the madman is an idiot, or worse, in choosing the end he labors for, he is a serpent in devising the means for its attainment. Madness, too, has another characteristic, which I believe belongs to it in all its forms, but certainly never fails to be its associate in some degree when we bring it upon ourselves by vicious indulgence of any kind whatever, it disorders and perverts the affections. The love of kindred and near and dear connections, is turned first to indifference and then to hate. Even the instinctive love of life yields to its destroying power; and if disease be not swift enough in its sure approaches, the work is hastened by self-murder. For, in this form of what we call madness, there is not a total eclipse, as in that unhappy condition into which we are liable to fall in the course of Providence. There is darkness; but there is light, too, to make the darkness manifestan accusing and avenging light, which forces itself, in spite of all resistance, upon the aching vision, and compels it to behold the hideous ruin

which vice has made. The habitual drunkard knows, and keenly feels, his own degradation. The habitual gambler, in his heart, does homage to the righteous judgment which pronounces him a leper, and makes him an outcast. And so, too, (in a less degree let it be admitted-for we must not omit even here to make a just discrimination,) he who falls into the delirium of any other intoxication, of any inordinate excitement, by the indulgence of passion and appetite, will find his head overcharged with consuming heat, while his heart is robbed of its due warmth, and become cold to the noble promptings of justice, mercy, and charity. His faculties are devoted to self, but with a sinister and treacherous wisdom. He surrenders his peace of mind, sacrifices his contentment and self-approbation, is blind to the beauties, and deaf to the harmony of this wonderful creation, and even insensible to the tranquil comforts of the appointed day of restrestless, joyless, feverish, and as if an incubus were upon his breast, only to be relieved by a rude shock, compelling his overladen nature to become conscious of life. And if he stumble in his headlong course, (as he probably will,) who pities his fall? who cheers his attempts to rise? "Wisdom for a man's self," says Lord Bacon, "is in many branches thereof a depraved thing. * * But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which, as Cicero says of Pompey, sui amantes sine rivali, are many times unfortunate. And, whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned."

*

But let us proceed more directly to the subject we have proposed to consider that is, Commercial Character. The first element in this character, the most important, the indispensable one, is integrity,-stern, steadfast, unvarying integrity,—a universal conscientiousness, which never fails, and never falters, and never yields, but is actively and watchfully predominant in the whole conduct-which asserts and maintains its empire in every transaction of life, and will not submit to any invasion of its rightful authority. Admitted, some one will perhaps say; all this is true, and beyond dispute; but is not integrity essential to good character in every individual, and if it be, why insist upon it especially in commercial character? It is certainly quite clear, as the question seems to import, that every man should be honest. Nor is there any merit in being so, but a deep and dark reproach in being otherwise. Shakspeare, who understood our nature well, has said, that "to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man among ten thousand;" and it may be that a lantern in the day. light is as necessary now to find an honest man as it was some thousands of years ago. Still we have higher authority than Shakspeare's, and a better light than that of the philosopher's lantern, for the deeply interesting truth, that for our own happiness, and for the happiness of others,-for our well-being here, and our hopes hereafter, for its influence upon the relations of life, domestic and social,-moral worth is of far greater price than all the gifts of intellect or fortune. It is the very salt of human character, without which talents and accomplishments become offensive and noxious precisely in proportion to their strength and power. They may blaze and shine, but so does the eruption of the volcano when it vomits fire and destruction. They may agitate and make us wonder, but not more than the trembling of the earthquake. Their track may be strikingly marked, but so is the march of the pestilence. It is when great talents and accom

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