THE ROMANCE OF TRADE,
 
 THE 
 
 ROMANCE OF TRADE. 
 
 BV 
 
 H. R. FOX. BOURNE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH MERCHANTS;" "MEMOIRS IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE 
 
 PROGRESS OF BRITISH COMMERCE;" "ENGLISH SEA^IEN UNDER THE 
 
 TUDORS ;" "a MEMOIR OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY," ETC. ETC. 
 
 _u- J u-.^ ? t vj; / 
 
 CASSELL FETTER & GALPIN: 
 
 LONDON, PARIS &- NEW YORK.
 
 353 
 3 
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume aims to be a useful as well as an 
 entertaining- gossip-book about commerce. In the 
 annals of trade are to be found incidents and episodes 
 quite as striking and memorable as any in those 
 fields of history which are commonly supposed to 
 have a monopoly of romantic facts ; and these episodes 
 and incidents, when traced back to their causes or 
 followed out through their effects, furnish trains of 
 circumstances that are full of romance. Some of 
 them are here set forth in groups and series designed 
 to illustrate certain notable phases of commercial 
 progress. The whole history of commerce, if read 
 aright, is as interesting as it is instructive. I have 
 only selected pages from that history ; but I have en- 
 deavoured so to select and so to arrange as that 
 the reader may obtain broad and comprehensive 
 views of the great subjects handled. I trust that 
 the work will not be less amusing than its title would 
 lead the reader to expect, because it attempts to show 
 that, if there is a romance, there is also a philosophy 
 of trade. 
 
 42^2 J « 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Wandering Jew i 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 Wandering Wares . • 23 
 
 CHAPTER 1:1. 
 
 i'AIRS 60 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Sinews of Trade 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Politics in Trade 96 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Monopolies 138 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Science in Trade 165
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fashion in Trade 197 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Great Factories 213 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Gkeat Marts ^ . . 254. 
 
 CHAPTER XT. 
 Manias and Panics 292 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Notable Traders 33^
 
 THE ROMANCE OF TRADE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WANDERING JEW. 
 
 The Connection of Jews with Commerce — The earhest Trading Nations — 
 Joseph as a Merchant-prince — Old World Commerce — The Trade of 
 the PhcEnicians — The Commercial Alliance between Solomon and 
 Hiram— Jewish Trade before and after the Babylonian Captivity — 
 Nehemiah and the Money-lenders — The Wanderings of the Jews in 
 Christian Times — Their Employments in Alexandria and Venice — 
 Shylock and yi«/c«/c— The Jews in Northern Europe— Their Wealth 
 and Sufferings in Mediaeval France — Their History in England — Their 
 Royal Patrons — Their Persecution in the Time of Richard I. — Their 
 Troubles under later Monarchs — Their Ways of Money-lending — 
 Popular Hatred of them — " Hugh of Lincoln" — Their Banishment by 
 Edward I. — Their Return in the Time of Oliver Cromwell — Their 
 Trading Exploits— Sampson Gideon — The Goldsmids — The Roths- 
 childs — The Extension of the Jews at the Present Time. 
 
 More than one famous work of fiction has been suggested 
 by the fable of the " Wandering Jew ;" but the real story of 
 his adventures and experiences contains episodes as strange 
 as any that novelists have invented, and some of the strangest 
 and most memorable grow out of his connection with trade. 
 'Jlaough no single man has been released from the doom of 
 death, the race has been endowed with a remarkable vitality, 
 and an individuality no less remarkable, and its history 
 forms the completest link we have between past times and 
 the present, the Old World and the New. 
 
 The Jew was a wanderer long before he had a land of 
 his own, and from the first he had much to do with com-
 
 ■2 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 merce. Abraham's purchase, for four hundred sliekels of 
 silver, 'current money with the merchant," of the field and 
 cave of Machpelah as a burial-place for Sarah, is almost the 
 earliest instance on record of a money transaction ; though 
 it is probable that trade, as we now understand the term, 
 was even then — -nearly two thousand years before the time 
 of Christ— an old institution. Mere barter of one com- 
 modity for another, which marks the transition of each 
 nation or group of men from barbarism and theft to civilisa- 
 tion and commerce, had been superseded in those earliest 
 communities that arose in the garden-land of the world. 
 While Abraham's ancestors were leading a pastoral Hfe in 
 Ur of the Chaldees, their neighbours of the Aryan stock 
 were building cities and developing commerce in Persia and 
 India, and the patient settlers on the banks of the Nile were 
 making Egypt a granary for all the nations. Abraham, 
 " very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold," going down to 
 sojourn in Egypt, with his flocks and herds and tents, 
 because there was a grievous famine in Canaan, only did 
 what other fathers of nations often had to do in times when 
 it was easier for men to travel hundreds of miles in search 
 of food than to wait until the food was brought to them. 
 It was so, two centuries later, when Jacob and his family 
 went to settle in the land of Goshen ; and the history of 
 Jacob's son, Joseph — first a slave, then Potiphar's clerk, 
 then Pharaoh's prime minister — is the earliest biogra]:)hy 
 extant of a great merchant-prince. The industry and 
 shrewdness, the skill in turning all things to his profir, and 
 the fidelity to his own race which Joseph displayed, have 
 been the inheritance of the Jews and the main source of 
 their commercial success during the past five-and-thirty 
 centuries. 
 
 The Jews, insignificant in numbers, hedged in by rival 
 nations stronger than themselves, and generally forced to 
 find their chief employment in other ways, were connected
 
 The Wandering Jew. 3 
 
 with, but played no important part in, the great commercial 
 movements that occurred during their residence in Palestine. 
 But the movements were great indeed. Egypt made itself 
 powerful by fighting, but derived its main strength from its 
 corn-producing wealth. Persia and India, and the many 
 nations that existed on both sides of the Himalayas, paid 
 most attention to the manufacture of clothing, the cultivation 
 of spices and other luxuries, and the utilising of the pre- 
 cious stones and precious metals that abounded in their 
 lands. Babylon and Nineveh, Bokhara and Oude, and half 
 a hundred other great cities arose, to become the busy 
 haunts of merchants and to extend their trading associations 
 through every part of the then known world. Caravans 
 travelled from the valley of the Euphrates to the walls of 
 China, and down to the shores facing Ceylon ; and wealth 
 of every sort was exchanged, to the vast profit, not only of 
 the traders, but also of the nations to which they belonged 
 and to which they proved more useful servants than the 
 warriors who had greater honour. The traditions of this 
 Old World commerce, and often its exact methods, have 
 been retained down to the present time, in spite of changes 
 of empire, which have caused the ancient nations to crumble 
 to pieces, and new ways of trade, that have helped to transfer 
 the centres of civilisation from the East to the West. 
 
 The pioneers of these new ways were the hardy little 
 race of Phoenicians, who had humble followers and comrades 
 in their Jewish neighbours. The Phoenicians went east- 
 ward with the caravans that used Bokhara as tlieir head- 
 quarters, and they brought to the shores of the Mediterranean 
 abundant treasures, collected in the countries that they visited. 
 But their enterprise led them to do far more than that. A 
 hardy tribe of merchants and fishermen, they soon built 
 trading-ships on the model of their fishing-boats, and, earliest 
 of all nations known to us, went out upon the sea on com- 
 mercial expeditions. Content at first with short voyages to 
 
 B 2
 
 4 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the Egyptian coast in quest of corn and other commodities, 
 they quickly gained in skill and boldness, and went to more 
 distant shores, planting trading-stations, of which some 
 became famous colonies. Carthage arose thus. Gades, 
 now Cadiz, was a smaller settlement that grew out of the 
 Phoenician visits to Spain in search of silver ; and like visits 
 are supposed to have been made, in very ancient times, to 
 Britain for tin and to Prussia for amber. The treasures 
 brought from the far East were given in payment for the 
 produce of the West, and so the seeds of civilisation were 
 planted in new places, while Phoenicia was enriched by her 
 enterprise. Sidon, " the haven of fishermen," gave place to 
 Tyre, greatest among a score of great trading-ports and busy 
 factories. The raw material of other lands was here worked 
 up for foreign commerce, as well as for home use. When 
 Creece was in its infancy, the Phoenician marts were re- 
 nowned for their linen and woollen manufactures — including 
 the Sidonian garments of Homer, dyed with a purple which 
 no other clothmakers could imitate — for their glass wares, 
 and potteries, and trinkets of all sorts. The England of 
 the Old World was at the height of its prosperity when 
 David made a commercial treaty with Hiram, King of Tyre, 
 and when Hiram assisted Solomon in building the Temple 
 at Jerusalem, and in extending the trading occupations of 
 the Jews. 
 
 That was about a thousand years before the Christian 
 era. Very curious are the records of the commercial rela- 
 tions between the Phoenician and the Jewish kings, Solomon 
 at first recompensing Hiram for his services by an annual 
 payment of twenty thousand measures of wheat and of 
 twenty measures of pure oil, and afterwards by a surrender 
 of twenty cities in the land of Galilee.- "And Hiram came 
 out from Tyre to see the cities which Solrmon had given 
 him, and they pleased him not. And he said, What cities 
 are these which thou hast given me, my brother ? And he
 
 The Wanderixg Jew. 5 
 
 called them the Land of Dirt." The friendship between 
 the two monarchs lasted, however ; and during a brief period 
 the Jews vied with the Phoenicians in commercial enterprise. 
 Solomon established a colony at Ezion-geber, on the Red 
 Sea, and thence dispatched expeditions, guided by pilots 
 lent to him by Hiram, to the land of Ophir. He also 
 organised a trading-fleet to visit Tarshish — supposed to be 
 Spain — in company with his neighbour's merchant ships. 
 " Once in three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing 
 gold, and silver, and ivor}-, and apes, and peacocks." Jewish 
 caravans, moreover, went regularly to Egypt and Arabia, 
 and there was busy trade, in Solomon's days and after- 
 wards, between Judoea and other parts, until the prosperity 
 inaugurated by David and his son was overthrown by 
 Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jews were taken into captivity. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre as well ; but a new 
 Tyre w-as quickly built, and Phoenician commerce lived yet 
 more vigorously in Carthage. Much of the greatness, too, 
 of the younger cities of Asia Minor and oi the islands in 
 the direction of Greece, now at the summit of its renown, 
 was due to Phoenician teaching and example. Carthage, 
 however, was the chief commercial successor of Tyre until 
 its destruction by the Romans, and then other ports became 
 in turn the great centres of trade between Europe and Asia. 
 Alexandria, Miletus, and Ephesus were successively the prin- 
 cipal resorts of merchants during the centuries of Roman 
 supremacy ; though, in spite of the growth of its younger 
 rivals, the special advantages possessed by Alexandria fo; 
 traffic with the East caused it to be an important mart, until, 
 falling under the curse of Mahometan rule, it was finall) 
 superseded by Venice and Genoa, chief of the trading cities 
 throughout the Middle Ages. 
 
 The history of the Wandering Jew dates from Nebu 
 chadnezzar's conquest in the sixth century before Christ. 
 \Vhiiher the ten tribes of Israel wandered, and what became
 
 6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of them, we know not. Those of Judah, who were taken 
 captive to Babylon, appear to have found their chief em- 
 ployment in usury, and the la\vful and unla\vful ways of 
 banking which ever since have been their favourite pursuits. 
 When the fragment of the nation returned to Palestine, the 
 fortunate few retained these callings, and the luckless many 
 were reduced to a sort of bondage to them. Nehemiah 
 records the complaints made in his day. " We have mort- 
 gaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy 
 corn, because of the dearth. Lo, we bring into bondage 
 our sons and our daughters to be servants ; neither is it in 
 our power to redeem them ; for other' men have our lands 
 and vineyards." Nehemiah did something to remedy this 
 evil state of affairs. " I pray you, let us leave off this usury," 
 he said to his wealthy neighbours ; " restore to them, even 
 this day, their lands, their vineyards, their oliveyards, and 
 their houses " — certainly a moderate restitution — " also the 
 hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, 
 and the oil, that ye exact of them," and his counsel was 
 followed. The Jews, whatever their offences against others, 
 have generally dealt generously with their own people, and 
 there does not seem to have been very much ground of 
 complaint against the usurers in the ensuing times ; but 
 banking of a primitive sort continued the chief source ot 
 profit to the merchants, while the mass of the people applied 
 themselves to agricultural pursuits, and to humble trade 
 with the Phoenicians and others, who procured for them 
 such foreign commodities as they were rich enough to 
 purchase. But it is probable that the most enterprising 
 Jews never returned to Palestine, and that during the four 
 or five centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem there 
 was a constant emigration of Jews, most eager and most 
 fit to make money, to the more prosperous cities in the 
 neighliourhood, especially to Tyre and Alexandria. Here 
 the ancient Rothschilds and Goldsmids found congenial
 
 1^ 
 
 The Wandering Jew. 
 
 occupation, profitable to themselves and beneficial to the 
 world. Generally the worst that could be said of them, 
 whether in their own country or in other lands, was that 
 thev pursued their business with a zeal that hindered them 
 from fulfilling their other duties to society. 
 
 After Titus's great exploit, the Jews wandered perforce 
 in very much larger numbers, sometimes of their own accord, 
 sometimes by compulsion. In the year 130 the Emperor 
 Adrian planted a colony of them in Spain, where they 
 helped to develop the linen manufacture that was there 
 extensively carried on during the later period of the Roman 
 empire. Alexandria and its neighbourhood, however, were 
 the favourite resort of the shrewdest money-makers, as 
 they had been in previous centuries. All through the 
 time of Alexandria's greatness, Jews thronged its streets, 
 r.nd, according to the old historian, were famous "for 
 tlieir egregious cunning in trade, and in the practice of 
 brokerage." As soon as modern commerce began to take 
 frm root in Venice and the other Italian trading towns, 
 tlie Jews began to be sharers in it, and as it spread through- 
 out Europe, they went with its pioneers. Wherever there 
 A'as money to be made, the Wandering Jew was to be found. 
 
 Shakespeare's '^' Merchant of Venice " gives us a lively 
 picture of a mediDeval Jew-trader, coloured by the hatred 
 with which, till long after Shakespeare's day, the Jews were 
 regarded by nearly all Christians. Shylock grows rich by 
 lending money to the adventurous Italian merchant-princes, 
 and has all his evil passions stirred by the contempt that is 
 poured upon him even by the men whom he helps greatly 
 in their speculations — ■ 
 
 ' ' Signor Antonio, many a time and oft 
 In the Rialto you have rated me 
 About my moneys and my usuries : 
 Still have I borne it with a patient shruj, 
 For sufferance is the badge of all o'vr tribe.
 
 8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, 
 And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
 And all for use of that which is mine own. 
 Well then, it now appears you need my help : 
 Go to, then. You come to me, and you say, 
 ' Shylock, we would have money :' you say so. 
 What should I say to you ? should I not say, 
 ' Hath a dog money? Is it possible 
 A cur can lend three thousand ducats ?' or 
 Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key. 
 With bated breath, and whispering humbleness, 
 Say this : 
 
 ' Fair sir, you spat ca me on Wednesday last ; 
 You spurned me such a day ; another time- 
 You called me dog ; and for these courtesies 
 I'll lend you thus much moneys?' " 
 
 The revenge which Shakespeare makes Shylock attempt 
 to take upon Antonio, for the indignities offered by him and 
 his brother merchants, is unnatural ; but it is true that muck 
 bitter feeUng was engendered by the harsh treatment to 
 which the Jews were subjected in all their adopted lands 
 throughout the Middle Ages. If they resented this treat- 
 ment, and retaliated by driving hard bargains with their 
 allies in trade but enemies in religion, there was considerable 
 excuse for them. Whatever their private dispositions, how- 
 ever, whatever greed and spite they displayed or cherished 
 in secret, they were great public benefictors. In every 
 rising mart of Europe, from Venice up to York, and from 
 Barcelona to Hamburg, there were plenty of Shylocks to be 
 spit upon and sponged upon, and to make great wealth for 
 themselves, notwithstanding their hard usage all through 
 these bygone centuries. Settling wherever a trade was 
 growing, they were the chief providers of the money neces- 
 sary to promote its growth. In times when usury was pro- 
 hibited among Christians, their usurious ways were tolerated 
 and even encouraged, because they were indispensable ; and 
 kings and parliaments, as well as merchants and com- 
 mercial guilds, experienced their value. Everywhere they 
 
 t
 
 % 
 
 The Wandering Jew. 
 
 acquired wealth, and the power that comes of wealth. In 
 the twelfth century they were owners of half Paris, and held 
 the reins of nearly all the commerce possessed by France. 
 In spite of laws to the contrary, they served as judges, 
 governors, and ministers of state both in France and in 
 Spain, and that at a period when it was considered a re- 
 ligious duty for all Christians to strike them in the face and 
 stone their houses at Easter. Often their ill-treatment was 
 attended by circumstances showing that their persecutors 
 were adepts in the guile supposed to be peculiar to the per- 
 secuted. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Philip 
 Augustus of France exonerated his subjects from all their 
 debts to the Jews, on condition that a fifth part of the 
 money owing was paid into his own coffers ; and his grand- 
 son, St. Louis, in order to conciliate his subjects, issued an 
 ordinance, in which it was said, "for the salvation of his 
 own soul and those of his ancestors, he returns to all 
 Christians a third part of what is owing by them to Jews." 
 There were many like instances of eccentric Christian 
 morality and spiritual logic. 
 
 The history of the Jews in mediaeval England illustrates 
 their history throughout Europe. They came hither more 
 than eleven hundred years ago, and were successful traders 
 among the i\nglo-Saxons when our country's trade was in 
 its infancy. About the year 750, the Christians of North- 
 umbria were prohibited from imitating the manners or par- 
 taking the feasts of the Jews — a circumstance that shows 
 they must even then have had an influential position in one 
 of the rudest districts of the rude England of that time ; 
 and, oddly enough, we find Jews named among the donors 
 of land to the old Abbey of Croyland in 833. Perhaps, 
 however, they were not very numerous until the time of the 
 Norman conquest, when William brought over many of the 
 Hebrew natron from Rouen, and placed both the old and 
 the new settlers under his especial protection. Most Anglo-
 
 JO The RoiMANCE of Trade. 
 
 Saxons fell under vassalage to the Norman barons ; but, 
 says the old law, " the Jews and all that are theirs are the 
 king's." The purpose of this reservation is clear. The 
 shrewd, money-making ways of the race made them very 
 serviceable adherents of the monarch. The royal " pro- 
 tection " meant chiefly the exclusive power of fining them ; 
 but even that was to their advantage, as they were saved 
 from the extortions of greedy barons and jealous burghers, 
 under which groaned many of their kinsmen on the Con- 
 tinent. For two centuries and more they were enterprising 
 traders, settled in all parts of England, and useful as money- 
 lenders, or money-givers under compulsion, to the Anglo- 
 Norman and the early Plantagenet kings. 
 
 There were many noteworthy episodes in their progress 
 during these two centuries ; the progress being one of great 
 commercial value to the nation, and generally of great profit 
 to the Jews themselves. Alternately favoured and perse- 
 cuted, they helped mightily to promote the trade by which 
 the little island of Britain was destined to make itself a great 
 nation. The favours, grudgingly accorded, were usually 
 only such, and of such sort, as would encourage them to 
 pursue their money-making avocations, and so render their 
 persecutions profitable. William Rufus is almost the only 
 monarch who was really friendly to them. London being 
 their chief place of resort in his day, he assigned to them a 
 burial-ground, in which they could observe their own rites, 
 in Cripplegate, just outside the old London wall, and near 
 to the locality in which they resided, still marked by the 
 name of Old Jewry ; and this was their only place of 
 sepulchre, until Henry IL allowed them to have a cemetery 
 in the outskirts of every town iii which they dwelt. By that 
 time they had established considerable colonies in nearly 
 every English mart, especially in Norwich, Lynn, Lincoln, 
 Stamford, St. Edmondsbury, and York — towns conveniently 
 near to the eastern coast, from which was carried on most of
 
 I - The Wandering Jew. ii 
 
 i 
 
 the traffic with the Continent, whereby EngUsh wool was 
 ' exchanged for French and German wine. Their importance 
 may be gathered from the fact that when, in i iS8, Henry II. 
 proposed to fit out a crusading expedition, he arranged to 
 collect ;2^6o,ooo from the Jews, and only ^70,000 from all 
 his Christian subjects. The crusade and the tax were both 
 prevented by Henry's death, but a far greater hardship soon 
 fell upon the Jews. 
 
 On the accession of Richard Cceur de Lion, in Septem- 
 ber, 1 189, the wealthiest Jews crowded up to London from all 
 parts of the country with rich presents, intended to win the 
 favour of the new king. Their quaint garb rendered them 
 conspicuous among the multitude who made merry on the 
 coronation-day. They were forbidden to enter Westminster 
 Abbey and be actual spectators of the ceremony ; but many 
 showed themselves near the doors, and one, driven either by 
 his own curiosity or the mob behind him, passed the thresh- 
 old. No sooner was this discovered, than he was pushed 
 back and struck by the soldiers keeping guard. A scuffle 
 ensued, in which others of his race were roughly handled, 
 and one or two were killed. The news of this catastrophe, 
 exaggerated as it passed from mouth to mouth, ran like wild- 
 fire through the crowd at Westminster and along all the 
 streets of London. A report arose that the king had ordered 
 that all the Jews should be massacred, and the long-suppressed 
 hatred of the Christians made them very willing to obey the 
 mandate. Every Jew found in the streets was slaughtered. 
 An angry mob rushed in the direction of Old Jewry, and 
 every house in which a Jew was known or thought to be was 
 entered, plundered, and burnt, after its inmates had been 
 butchered. No heed was given to the messengers sent by 
 King Richard to forbid the massacre and threaten the cul- 
 prits with severe punishment. The murderous work lasted 
 through the night, and in the morning hardly a Jew was left 
 alive in London.
 
 12 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 The tragedy was repeated at Lynn, at Lincoln, at Stanv 
 ford, at Norwich, and elsewhere, as soon as intelligence 
 arrived of the new crusade started in London ; but at York, 
 where rich Jews were especially numerous, the atrocities were 
 greatest. There the first account of the doings in London 
 was brought by a few of the hated race who had managed to 
 save their lives, and at the same time the king's disai)proval 
 of the massacre was made known. But the good people of the 
 northern capital were not to be deterred from the pious task 
 tlius suggested to them. The wealthiest Jew of the town 
 had been murdered in London, but his family and his trea- 
 sures remained ; and on the night of the i6th of March, 
 1 190, a gang burst into his house, seized the property, and 
 slaughtered the women and children within it. A general 
 massacre was planned for the following evening ; but, in the 
 meanwhile, the Jews sought the protection of the governor, 
 and were admitted, with as much of their property as they 
 could bring, into the castle. There, however, they were be- 
 sieged by the people, headed by the governor, who had 
 changed his mind, and by the sheriff of the county. The 
 siege lasted for several days, until at last — a great ransom 
 having been offered in vain — the fugitives, who numbered 
 some five hundred men, besides women and children, found 
 they could hold out no longer. Then a desperate course 
 was resorted to. " Men of Israel," said the Rabbi, " God 
 bids us die for the Law, and our glorious ancestors have so 
 died in all ages. If we fall into the hands of these our 
 enemies, not merely death but cruel torture awaits us. Let 
 us, then, return to our Almighty Creator that life which he 
 gave. Let us die, willingly and devoutly, by our own hands." 
 A few shrank back, but nearly all agreed. They buried their 
 gold and silver, and then Joacliim, the patriarch of the com- 
 pany, set the example by plunging a sword into his wife's 
 breast. In a sliort time all the women and children were 
 killed, and after that the men stabbed one another — the layi
 
 The Wanderikg Jew. 13 
 
 of all being the Rabbi, who, after slaying Joachim, killed 
 himself. Thereupon the two or three dozen who had refused 
 to join in this ghastly enterprise told the tale to their 
 assailants, and offered to become Christians if their lives 
 were spared. The bargain was agreed to ; but directly the 
 gates were opened it was broken, and the residue of the 
 Jews were put to death. A great bonfire was made of all 
 the mortgages and other deeds wliich the Jews had received 
 from the Christians for money lent to them, and the ring- 
 leaders of the exploit were punished by being bound over to 
 keep the peace in future. 
 
 Richard I. was not responsible for these crimes. While 
 they were being perpetrated he was proceeding on his famous 
 Crusade against the Saracens in occupation of the Holy 
 Land — an outburst of religious zeal which contrasts strangely 
 with the persecutions heaped upon the people who claimed 
 Palestine as their rightful possession. 
 
 Great, however, as were the hardships of the Jews in 
 England, they suffered less than their brethren in France, 
 and new immigrants very soon made the Jewish quarters as 
 crowded and as busy as they had been. John, both as 
 governor of England on his brother's behalf and as king in 
 his own right, encouraged the Jews ; and, while frequently 
 exacting money from them, treated them with tolerable 
 leniency in other respects. Henry IH. was a yet more 
 lenient master. The Chief Rabbi was presented to him on 
 election, and confirmed in his office. While thus counte- 
 nancing their own religion, however, Henry sought by 
 peaceable ways to convert the Jews to Christianity. The Rolls 
 Chapel in Chancery Lane was built in this reign for the use 
 of Hebrew Christians, and other conciliatory acts were 
 adopted by this monarch. He extorted money from them, 
 as his predecessors had done, but not with ruinous violen*";-;. 
 Indeed, the marvel is, that the Jews should have been able 
 to bear, and to bear lightly, such heavy burdens as were put
 
 14 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 upon them. In 1230 a tax, amounting in value to a third of 
 all their movable goods, was levied upon them, in order to 
 prosecute the war with France ; in 1232 another tax, yielding 
 18,000 marks, was levied ; in 1236 they were forced to con- 
 tribute 10,000 marks; and there were several other imposi- 
 tions put upon them. Yet they were able to prosper and 
 grow rich. The daughter of Hamon, a Jew of Hereford, 
 paid as a relief to the king the enormous sum of 5,000 
 marks ; and one Aaron, of York, asserted that, in the course 
 of seven years, Henry had borrowed from him as much as 
 30,000 marks. When Henry was at war with his barons, he 
 summoned his Jewish subjects to a special Parliament, six 
 coming from each of the towns in which they were most nu- 
 merous, and two from each of the other towns — the number 
 of the whole being upwards of a hundred ; and the demand 
 made to this curious assembly was like that made to other 
 and more regular Parliaments. The Jews were called upon 
 to raise 20,000 marks for the sovereign's use in his time of 
 trouble, and they collected it without difficulty. 
 
 They had good reason, however, to help the king in his 
 civil war. It was a war which, very helpful in its issues to 
 the English nation, was ruinous to the Jews in England. 
 Having been under the special protection of the Crown 
 since the time of William the Conqueror, they had been 
 able to hold their ground, except during the massacres of 
 1 1 89 and 1 190, against the Church and the people. The 
 struggle for civil liberty, by which Henry IH. was sorely 
 harassed, led to their overthrow. Langton and the eccle- 
 siastical authorities, who fought for the people against John 
 and Henry, shared all the popular hatred of the Jews, and 
 even quickened it on religious grounds. Early in Henry's 
 reign Archbishop Langton issued an edict forbidding 
 Christians to furnish Jews with even the necessaries of life ; 
 and the king had to make a counter-edict, enjoining his 
 subjects to disregard the spiritual interdict. All through 
 
 I
 
 The Wanderixg Jew. 15- 
 
 this reign every kind of outcry was raised against the hated 
 race, and all sorts of persecutions were resorted to. The 
 civic authorities of London, classing together "Jews, lepers, 
 and swine," made it penal for any one to let a house to a 
 Jew out of Jewry, and appointed a frivolous and vexatious 
 tax of threepence-halfpenny on every burial in the cemetery 
 outside of Cripplegate. In 1244 the students of Oxford 
 broke into all the Jewish houses in that city, and did se- 
 rious damage, alleging that they were being ruined by the 
 exorbitant interest — twopence a week for every pound — 
 charged by the Hebrew money-lenders to whom they re- 
 sorted ; and at another time they publicly alleged, as a 
 ground for their inability to continue their studies, that all 
 their books were in pawn to these same money-lenders. No 
 one saw that all the fault lay with the students who adopted 
 these wasteful ways of procuring cash for their amusements. 
 It is clear, however, that many Jews took an unfair advan- 
 tage of these Christian follies. When, during the Barons' 
 War, one Abraham, of Berkhampstead, being sent to prison 
 because his wife had ill-treated an image of the Virgin 
 Mary, offered to pay 700 marks for his release, his brethren 
 proposed to pay 1,000 marks that he might be kept in 
 gaol, alleging that his evil practices rendered him a disgrace 
 to the whole community. He was released, however, and 
 rendered efficient service to his liberators by indicating 
 the secret treasures of his rivals of his own faith. 
 
 A terrible persecution fell upon the Jews during the last 
 years of Henry's reign. Its immediate cause was a report, 
 true or false, that the Jews of Lincoln had, in 1255, murdered 
 — some said, crucified — a Christian child; and for this offence 
 ninety-two were apprehended, and eighteen were hanged — 
 not after trial, but because they refused to be tried by a 
 jury of Christians. What became of the other seventy-four 
 is not stated. This occurrence, if it had any real founda- 
 tion, serv^ed to stir up the hatred of Christians all through
 
 1 6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the kingdom, and, besides suggesting Chaucer's " Prioress's 
 Tale," gave origin to many popular ballads. One begins 
 by telling how a lad was playing with his mates in " Merry 
 Lincoln " : — 
 
 "Then out and came the Jew's daughter, 
 Said, ' Will ye come in and dine ?' 
 •I will not come in, I cannot come in. 
 Without my playmates nine. ' 
 
 "She pulled an apple red and white, 
 To entice the young thing in ; 
 She pulled an apple white and red, 
 And that the sweet bairn did win. 
 
 "And she has ta'en out a little penknife, 
 And, low down by her ga.ir [dress], 
 She has parted the young thing and his life ; 
 A word he never spake mair. 
 
 •'And out and came the thick, thick blood. 
 And out and came the thin ; 
 And out and came the bonny heart's blood ; 
 There was no life left in. 
 
 "She laid him on a dressing-board, 
 And dressed him like a swine ; 
 And, laughing, said, ' Go now and play 
 With your sweet playmates nine." 
 
 "She wrapt him in a cake of lead, 
 Bade him lie still and sleep ; 
 She cast him in a deep draw-well. 
 Was fifty fathoms deep. 
 
 " When bells were rung and mass was sung. 
 And every lady went home ; 
 Then ilka lady had her young son, 
 But Lady Helen had none. 
 
 "She wrapt her mantle her about, 
 And sore, sore 'g.an she weep ; 
 And she ran into the Jews' castel. 
 When they were all asleep.
 
 The Wandering Jew. 17 
 
 " ' My bonny Sir Hugh, my pretty Sir Hugh, 
 I pray thee to me speak ! ' 
 ' O lady, run to the deep draw-well, 
 If you your son would seek ! ' 
 
 *' Lady Helen ran to the deep draw-well, 
 And knelt upon her knee ; 
 ' My bonny Sir Hugh, an ye lie here, 
 I pray thee speak to me !' 
 
 " ' The lead is wondrous heavy, mother. 
 The well is wondrous deep ; 
 A keen penknife sticks in my heart, _.^.> 
 
 A word I cannot speak. 
 
 " ' Go home, go home, my mother dear, 
 Fetch me my winding-sheet ; 
 And at the back of merry Lincoln, 
 It's there we two shall meet.'" 
 
 By ballads like these the evil passions of the Christians 
 were quickened against the Jews, and many murders were 
 committed in various parts of the country, which the 
 authorities did not care to punish. Legalised murders were 
 also frequent, the chief ground of which was the alleged 
 offence of the Jews in clipping the coin. It is likely enough 
 that Jews as well as Christians often offended in this way, 
 but very unequal punishment fell upon them. In 1279 — 
 seven years after the accession of Edward I. — all the Jews in 
 the kingdom were arrested on one day, on the plea that 
 they were all implicated in the prevalent falsifying of 
 money; and, three days afterwards, 293 of those in London, 
 with three Christians, were drawn and hanged. A great 
 many executions also occurred in the provinces. 
 
 That, however, was only a warning of the vengeance 
 that was shortly to fall upon the Jews. Edward I. shared 
 in the hatred with which they were regarded by the people, 
 and on the ist of August, 1290, at the request of Pope 
 Honorius, he issued an edict expelling the whole race from 
 England. Three months were allowed them for settling 
 
 c
 
 i8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 their affairs and gathering together their property ; but they 
 were warned that if any one was found in the kingdom after 
 the I St of November his head would be cut off, Ucense 
 being given to every Christian to play the part of execu- 
 tioner. More moderation was shown by the king, at any 
 rate, than in some other Christian states. The Jews were 
 permitted to carry off all their available property, although 
 outstanding mortgages, and the like, were to be forfeited to 
 the Crown, and ships were to be provided for their con- 
 veyance to any destination — not very remote — that they 
 chose. But the promise was badly kept by the people. 
 About 16,000 Jews made ready to depart, and collected in the 
 various eastern ports towards the end of October. Some were 
 properly conveyed to the Continent. Others were taken on 
 board, and then robbed and murdered by the sailors. The 
 captain of one ship, off Queenborough, allowed the Jews to 
 place in his care all their packages — a rich cargo of gold 
 and precious stones — and then, before they had time to 
 accompany their goods, put to sea, mockingly advising 
 them, as he sailed off, to call upon Moses, who had cut a 
 passage for their forefathers through the Red Sea, and who, 
 if they were true children of Israel, would do as much for 
 them. Men, women and children, thus prevented from 
 quitting England within the prescribed time, were left to 
 starve on the shore, or to be leisurely slaughtered by their 
 Christian enemies. 
 
 Thus England was rid of the Jews, who, doubtless, often 
 offending, had set its people the best example of money- 
 making, and had rendered many and great services to its 
 commerce. Before that, they had been exiled from France 
 and other states. Two centuries later, their brethren, lodged 
 in Spain for thirteen centuries, were driven out in like 
 manner, and with greater sufferings, by Ferdinand the 
 Catholic. The Jew was again a wanderer, but it is not 
 necessary here to follow his wanderings. Many of the
 
 The Wander ixg Jew. 19 
 
 persecuted race went to Egypt and other parts of the 
 Levant, and so worked their ways to new homes in Asia and 
 Africa. Others went to Russia and the still barbarous 
 countries north, east, and south of Poland. They settled 
 in great numbers in the remote parts of Europe, until, under 
 the protection of a revived and better toleration, they were 
 allowed to turn westward again. 
 
 England was the first home opened to them. Some of 
 the Spanish Jews are supposed to have found a refuge in 
 England after the banishment of 1492. There is evidence 
 that a few, at any rate, were settled in the country, and 
 sharing in its new ways of commerce under the Tudors ; 
 but their presence was first publicly sanctioned by Oliver 
 Cromwell, though even he could not grant them the liberty 
 that he and some other enlightened republicans desired. 
 Harrington, in his " Oceana," gravely proposed that Ireland, 
 then, as since, a great trouble to England, should be sold 
 to the Jews, and used by them as a new Canaan. Many of 
 tliem settled in the country during the Commonwealth, and 
 tliey came yet more abundantly during the reign of 
 Charles II., and afterwards. In the reign of William III. 
 it was proposed to revive the old spirit of persecution, and 
 to raise ^100,000 by a poll-tax on the Jews. That project 
 was abandoned, but their subsequent offer to buy the town 
 of Brentwood for ^500,000, with full liberty of trading 
 and worshipping there as they liked, was not accepted. 
 During the last iSo years, however, the Jews have 
 had liberty of residence in England, and the recent full 
 concessions of civil and religious liberty that have been 
 made to them are well known. 
 
 A long history might be written concerning their con- 
 nection with English trade during this later period. True 
 to their old traditions, they have continued to find in 
 banking, money-lending, and brokerage their favourite 
 pursuits. There is no branch of commerce in which they 
 
 c 2
 
 20 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 have not profitably engaged, but the Stock Exchange has 
 always been the great resort of the most enterprising of 
 their number. "The whole people," Avrote Addison, in 
 the Spectator, "is now a race of such merchants as are 
 wanderers by profession. They are, indeed, so disseminated 
 through all the trading parts of the world, that they are 
 become the instruments by which the most distant nations 
 converse with one another, and by which mankind are knit 
 together in a general correspondence. They are like the 
 pegs and nails in a great building, which, though they are 
 but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary 
 to keep the whole frame together." They became far more 
 influential in England shortly after Addison's day. The 
 greatest London Jew of the middle of the last century was 
 Sampson Gideon, son of a West India merchant, and a friend 
 of Robert Walpole. He made a fortune by stock-buying, 
 during the panic caused by the Pretender's Rebellion in 
 1745, and increased it by shrewd speculations during the 
 next seventeen years. " Gideon is dead," said a letter- 
 writer in 1762, "worth more than the whole land of 
 Canaan." His son, brought up in the Christian faith, be- 
 came Sir Sampson Gideon Eardley, and his grandson was 
 Baron Eardley. Worthier, if not wealthier Jews, of the 
 next generation, were Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid. 
 Their father, Aaron, came from Hamburg and settled in 
 London as a merchant about the year 1750. They carried 
 on the business till 1792, and then started as stockbrokers, 
 with Sir Francis Baring for their only rival. They amassed 
 vast fortunes and used them well. By a strange fatality, 
 they both committed suicide, Abraham in 1808, and Ben- 
 jamin in 1810; but the house that they founded still retains 
 its name for honesty and enterprise. 
 
 The house of Rothschild, however, best illustrates the 
 prosperous ways pursued by the Wandering Jew in these 
 more fortunate times. Meyer Anselm, surnamed Roths- 
 
 1
 
 The Wandering Jew. 21 
 
 child because of the sign of the " red shield " by which his 
 house was marked, was a shrewd broker and money-lender, 
 afterwards a banker, in Frankfort, during some forty years 
 previous to 181 2, when he died, leaving twelve thousand 
 florins to his five sons, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan Meyer, 
 Charles, and James, on the condition that they should 
 continue in partnership and spread the ramifications of their 
 house all over Europe. Anselm remained in Frankfort. 
 Solomon established branches in Berlin and Vienna. Charles 
 went to Naples, and James to Paris. Nathan Meyer, the 
 cleverest of the five, chose England for his home. Born in 
 1776, he settled in Manchester when he was about twenty- 
 two. In 1803 he removed to London, and he spent the 
 next three-and-thirty years in developing the largest branch 
 of the largest private banking-house in the world. " I hope 
 that your children are not too fond of money and business, 
 to the exclusion of more important things," said Thomas 
 Fowell Buxton to him on one occasion ; " I am sure you 
 would not wish that." " I am sure I should wish that," 
 answered Nathan Rothschild ; " I wish them to give mind, 
 and soul, and heart, and body — everything — to business. 
 That is the way to be happy. It requires a great deal of 
 boldness, and a great deal of caution, to make a great 
 lortune; and, when you have got it, it requires ten times as 
 much wit to keep it." Younger members of the house have 
 not quite adhered to the old man's wish ; but they have 
 fared none the worse in commerce by failing to make money- 
 getting the sole purpose of their life. 
 
 The Wandering Jew — nearly always a trader, and gene- 
 rally a successful trader — is now to be found in every 
 part of the world in which money is to be made. Of the 
 \\\<i millions or so that at the present time make up the 
 race, it is supposed that nearly two millions are in Asia and 
 Africa ; tlieir settlements extending from China to their own 
 ancient home, and from Alexandria, their first great halting-
 
 2 2 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 place, to the Cape of Good Hope. About a million and a 
 quarter are in Russia ; and a million, or but little less, in 
 Austria. It is estimated that there are six hundred thousand 
 in Poland, a hundred thousand in France, thirty thousand 
 in Great Britain, seventy-five thousand in the United States, 
 and a goodly number in other parts of America and in the 
 English colonies.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 WANDERING WARES. 
 
 The Work of "the Good Merchant "—Increase of Wares in Britain — 
 Staple Articles of Food — The Potato — Garden Stuffs — Rice — Sagar — 
 Hops and Beer — Tea — Coffee— Tobacco — Quinine — Staple Articles of 
 Clothing— Wool — Its Introduction to Australia — Alpaca — Linen — 
 Cotton — Its early Source — The Supply from America— Silk — The 
 Progress of its Manufacture — The Lombes' Silk-machine — Dyes : 
 Indigo and Cochineal— Other Wandering Wares— Slaves — The Story 
 of the Slave-trade. 
 
 " The good merchant," says Fuller, " is one who by his 
 trading claspeth the islands to the continent, and one 
 country to another : an excellent gardener, who makes 
 England bear wine, and oil, and spices ; yea, herein he goes 
 beyond Nature, in causing that omnis fcrt omnia tellus'' If 
 the Wandering Jew — driven from land to land — has carried 
 with him special skill in one important branch of trade, and 
 everywhere found ready pupils in his banking art — merchants 
 of every other race, by force or choice, have also wandered 
 to and fro, bearing to each district the produce of other 
 districts, and offering to each a hundred foreign commodities 
 in exchange for every article of native produce. Nearly 
 the whole history of commerce, indeed, is a history of the 
 ways in which wares have wandered from place to place, to 
 satisfy the growing needs and varying tastes of every civi- 
 lised community; so that, as Fuller puts it, Nature is outdone, 
 and all lands bear all things. 
 
 Englishmen, now-a-days, with a thousand apparent 
 necessaries of life at hand, and a million luxuries to choose 
 from, can hardly realise the condition of their forefathers 
 when they were limited to the scanty fruits of their own
 
 24 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 home and their own labour. The " good merchant " has 
 been the prime agent in changing their primeval barbarism 
 into modern civilisation. 
 
 The change began before history, as the silent records 
 of primitive life, found under old mounds and barrows, testify. 
 If the theory is true that the ancient Britons, like the Teutons 
 and Scandinavians who overcame them, as well as the 
 Greeks and the Romans, are sprung from that old Aryan 
 race which peopled Persia and India, they must have 
 brought much rude knowledge of trade from their Eastern 
 fatherland, and must have acquired much more in the course 
 of their long wanderings westward. They had a lively 
 commerce with their kinsmen on the Gallic coast when 
 Julius Ctesar visited them ; and as soon as they were incor- 
 porated in the Roman empire they became sharers, in all 
 the wealth of traffic that Rome gave to her vassals. Trade 
 was honourable, and, within narrow limits, was abundant, 
 under the Anglo-Saxons. " I am useful," says a merchant, 
 in one of their books, " to the king and his nobles, to rich 
 men and to common folk ; I enter my ship with my mer- 
 chandise, and sail across the seas and sell my wares, and 
 buy dear things that are not produced in this land, and 
 bring them with great danger for your good ; and sometimes 
 I am shipwrecked, and lose all my wares, and hardly escape 
 myself" '• What is it you bring us ? " asks one. " I bring 
 you," he replies, " skins, silks, costly gems, and gold; 
 various garments, pigments, wine, oil, iron and brass, 
 copper and tin, silver, glass, and such like." " Will you 
 sell your wares here, as you bought them there ? " inquires 
 the other speaker. " Nay, in truth," answers the merchant, 
 "else where would be the good of all my labour? I will 
 sell them here dearer than I bought them there, that so I 
 may get some profit, to feed me and my wife and children." 
 That dialogue shows that the philosophy of trade was 
 clearly understood in England at least ten centuries ago.
 
 Wander IXG Wares. 25 
 
 The foreign wares that wandered to England in Anglo- 
 Saxon and Anglo-Norman times, however, were few indeed 
 in comparison with the supply and the variety of our own 
 day. So it is in the case of what are now the commonest 
 articles of food and clothing, as well as with regard to the 
 thousand-and-one luxuries or artificial necessities to which 
 we have grown accustomed. 
 
 Beef, mutton, and corn, have of course been of native 
 growth in England from the earliest known times, and the 
 only changes that have occurred in respect of them have 
 resulted from the necessity of going to other lands for the use 
 of the people who have increased faster than the produc- 
 tive powers of the land. More than half our meat is still 
 of native growth, but a million or more cows, sheep, and 
 pigs, are brought over, dead or alive, from the Continent ; 
 and among the latest curiosities of the commerce of food 
 are the efforts to introduce into the English market the 
 llesh of beasts still over-abundant in South America and 
 Australia. And considerably more than half the bread now 
 eaten in England is made of foreign grain. Russia, Prussia, 
 Denmark, and Central Germany alternate with the United 
 States and British North America in yielding the chief 
 supply, according to the varying richness of the harvests in 
 the Old World and the New. 
 
 Other staples of food have arisen to eke out the neces- 
 sities of our population. Among these the potato is the 
 most important. It was first brought to Europe about 1550, 
 by the Spanish conquerors of South America, who converted 
 the Indian name oi papas into battata ; but very little heed 
 was paid to it till 1586, when Thomas Hariot — one of the 
 unfortunate party with which Sir Walter Raleigh attempted 
 to found his colony of Virginia — returned to England, and 
 wrote a learned account of the botanical and other curiosities 
 of the district he had visited. Here he described the potato 
 as a plant with " round roots hanging together as if fixed on
 
 26. The Romance of Trade. 
 
 ropes, and good for food, either boiled or roasted, in which 
 way it was commonly used by the natives." A few years 
 later it was recommended by another writer, Gerarde, as an 
 excellent ingredient for " delicate conserves and restorative 
 sweetmeats." " To give them greater grace in eating," 
 Gerarde also said of potatoes, " they should be boiled with 
 prunes." Nearly a century passed before the real value of 
 potatoes was discerned. Hariot, or some of his comrades, 
 brought over a few plants, which were cultivated as rarities. 
 Raleigh, receiving from Queen Elizabeth a grant of land 
 at Youghal, in the south of Ireland, took them to his new 
 home; and by him, as Sir Robert Southwell said in 1693, 
 some were given to his grandfather, and naturalised in the 
 country to which they were to prove so important an article 
 of diet. But in 1663 the best that Boyle, discoursing to 
 the Royal Society, could say of these Youghal vegetables 
 was, that they were "very good to pickle for winter salads, 
 and also to preserve." A year before that, however, some 
 one else had suggested to the Royal Society that famine 
 might be prevented " by dispersing potatoes throughout all 
 parts of England." The idea, with or without the help of 
 learned men in London, was quickly taken up. Before the 
 end of the seventeenth century the potato had become a 
 cheap luxury all over Ireland, and its cultivation had ex- 
 tended to Scotland and the north of England. Once 
 established as a popular favourite, it quickly became a 
 great staple of food. 
 
 Other garden stuffs, some of them hardly less useful, 
 were introduced among us rather earlier. Garden economy, 
 still insufficiently practised in England, was a thing almost 
 unknown in these islands until the Flemish colonists — who 
 came in frequent tides under the Plantagenets, and most 
 abundantly in Queen Elizabeth's reign — set our forefathers a 
 good example of thrift and tact. During the Middle Ages, 
 even a common cabbage was a present fit for a king, only
 
 Wa.xdering Wares. 27 
 
 to be obtained through the intervention of some friend 
 trading with the Low Countries. The Flemish and Dutch 
 refugees, however, who fled to England from Philip II. 's 
 persecutions, brought their habits wdth them ; and carrots, 
 celery, and a dozen other vegetables, as well as cabbages, 
 first grown in the neat little gardens that they planted in 
 Kent, Norfolk, and various parts of the country, were by 
 them established as common articles of food. 
 
 Of other substitutes for bread imported into England, 
 but not fit for native growth, rice is the chief — a staple 
 food to a greater number of people than any other grain, 
 and grown extensively in India from the most ancient 
 period. It was in early times occasionally brought to 
 Europe as a curiosity, and as soon as the East India Com- 
 pany became influential, regular trade in it began. But the 
 Indian merchantmen had better cargoes at command, and 
 rice was chiefly shipped by them for the use of their sailors 
 during the passage. About two hundred years ago, how- 
 ever, a vessel coming to England from Madagascar, being 
 driven by winds upon the coast of Carolina, its captain gave 
 a Httle bag of rice-seed to a colonist named Woodward, who 
 had befriended him. Woodward sowed the seed in some 
 marsh land, and a good crop resulted ; but the colonists 
 knew not how to clean and prepare the grain for use, and 
 the rice was neglected. Finding the soil congenial, it con- 
 tinued to grow and spread, so that it covered a wide area 
 before the residents took any trouble to learn what use they 
 could make ot it. That they at length did ; and then they 
 found themselves possessed of a commodity of great value 
 in itself, and of greater value in that it grew, almost without 
 cultivation, in districts too swampy to be made much use of 
 in any other way. It was principally by help of its rice, 
 used at home and sent in large quantities to Europe, that 
 Carolina throve during more than a hundred years, and it 
 still vies with cotton as a profitable article of trade.
 
 23 The Romance of. Trade. 
 
 Sugar is another commodity that has wandered from the 
 far East to the far West. Honey was the only sweetening 
 ingredient known in Europe till the last days of the Roman 
 empire, when sugar was introduced as a sweetmeat and a 
 medicinal adjunct, and described as " the Indian salt, in 
 colour and form like common salt ; but in taste and sweet- 
 ness like honey." It came from India Avith the spices and 
 other rarities brought by the Oriental traders, but nothing 
 appears to have been known of its production till the 
 eleventh or twelfth century. The Crusaders learnt to like 
 it, and the taste which they encouraged was soon partly 
 gratified by the Arabs and Moors, who planted the sugar- 
 cane in Rhodes, Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily, and afterwards 
 in Spain and Portugal. In 1420 the Portuguese introduced 
 it to more congenial soil in Madeira (discovered and 
 colonised by them in the previous year), and in 1503 it 
 was taken by the Spaniards to the Canaries. Thence it was 
 quickly carried to the Spanish and Portuguese settlements 
 in the New World. Hispaniola and Brazil furnished most 
 of the sugar conveyed to European markets until 1641, 
 when its cultivation was established in the English colony 
 of Barbadoes. There it flourished so well, and by that time 
 Its value was so well understood, that in 1676 Barbadoes 
 sugar furnished employment to four hundred vessels, with an 
 average burthen of 150 tons a-piece. It soon spread to the 
 other West Indian colonies, and to the Dutch settlement 
 in Guiana. But sugar was a tolerably rare commodity in 
 England till shortly before the year 1700, when some 
 20,000,000 lbs. were consumed in the country. By 1782 
 that quantity was multiplied eight times, and it was again 
 doubled by 1840. More than 1,000,000,000 lbs. are now 
 annually consumed in Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 This increase is mainly due to the introduction of new 
 beverages — tea, coffee, and cocoa — into the country. In 
 ancient times the only drink common in the country, besides
 
 Wandering IVares. 29 
 
 water, was a poor sort of wine produced from grapes, grown 
 in Gloucestershire and the neighbouring counties. The vine 
 throve better in France, and during the Middle Ages Bur- 
 gundian wine was almost the principal commodity imported 
 into the country. Beer, now the national beverage, was 
 known to the Anglo-Saxons and occasionally drunk, and even 
 made at home, with wormwood instead of hops, throughout 
 the subsequent centuries. But its use has only been general 
 during the last four hundred years or less. The Flemings 
 were the first hop-growers and the first beer-drinkers, and 
 great was the abuse heaped upon them by the medieval 
 English for their gross tastes in this respect. According to 
 the old couplet — 
 
 "Hops, Reformation, baize, and beer 
 Came into England all in one year ;" 
 
 the year being 1524, when Flemish immigrants, settling in 
 Kent, began to cultivate hops in their gardens. Kentish 
 hops, however, soon became famous, and beer quickly grew 
 into favour with the people. There were many, in Queen 
 Elizabeth's day, ready to join in the chorus of the famous 
 old drinking-song attributed to Bishop Still — 
 
 " I cannot eat but little meat, 
 
 My stomach is not good ; 
 But sure I think that I can drink 
 
 With him that wears a hood. 
 Though I go bare, yet take no care, 
 
 I nothing am a-cold ; 
 I stuff my skin so full within 
 
 Of jolly good ale and old. 
 
 " Back and side, go bare, go bare, 
 Both foot and hand, go cold ; 
 But, belly, God send thee good ale enough, 
 Whether 't be new or old." 
 
 And the liking for beer has hardly lessened, in spile of the 
 wondciful extension in England, during the last two centu-
 
 30 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 lies, of a taste for less stimulating drinks. Tea, used from 
 the earliest known times by the Chinese, is mentioned occa- 
 sionally by mediieval travellers in the East ; but only became 
 an article of European trade in the seventeenth century. It 
 first came overland to Russia. We are told of a Russian 
 embassy to Mongolia, which received a present of tea in ex- 
 change for its costly gifts of sable furs. The Russians pro- 
 tested against such useless wares, but they took the parcel 
 back to Moscow, where it was so well liked that more was 
 sent for, and thus a trade began. About the year 1610 the 
 Dutch began to trade with China by sea, and small quan- 
 tities of tea were brought over by them ; but it was not 
 known in England long before 1660, when a law was passed 
 by Charles II. 's first Parliament, levying a duty of eight- 
 pence on every gallon of tea, chocolate, or sherbet made for 
 sale. In i66i Pepys wrote in his Diary : "I did send for 
 a cup of tea, a China drink, of which I never had drunk 
 before;" and in 1667 : "Home, and there find my wife 
 making of tea, a drink which Mr. Pulling, the potticary, tells 
 her is good for her cold and the defluxions." But Mrs. 
 Pepys was lucky in being able to enjoy her new medicine. 
 In 1664 the East India Company had difficulty in buying 
 thirty-four ounces for a present to the king; and in 1669 
 we find the Company writing out to its servants in India 
 to "send home 100 lbs. of the best tey they could find." 
 In 1678 it imported 4,713 lbs. ; but thereby the market 
 was greatly overstocked, and during the following six years 
 only 410 pounds more were brought into the country. 
 Soon after that, however, a regular and steadily-growing 
 trade began. In 1711 the consumption in Great Britain 
 amounted to 142,000 lbs., and in 1781 to 3.500,000 lbs. 
 In 1785 the duty was reduced from 119 to \2\ per 
 cent, on the value, and the conseciucnt reduction of 
 I)rice led to a much greater demand. In that year 
 about 13,000,000 lbs. were consumed; in 1828 about
 
 Wandering Wares. 31 
 
 36.000,000 lbs. ; in i860 about 80,000,000 lbs. ; and in 
 1866 about 140,000,000 lbs. 
 
 Coffee-drinking, though a much more modern custom than 
 tea-drinking, began in England a little earlier. It was first 
 practised in Arabia about the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, when the story goes that the chief of a company ot 
 dervishes noticed that his goats frisked and played all night 
 long whenever in the previous day they had eaten of a shrub 
 growing wild in the neighbourhood. Finding it difficult to 
 keep his disciples awake during their evening devotions, he 
 prepared a beverage of the leaves or berries of the shrub, and 
 it proved so helpful to the midnight piety of the dervishes, 
 that from that time coffee came into use. The coffee-plant 
 being abundant and easily cultivated, the new beverage soon 
 became a favourite all over Arabia. Great opposition was 
 offered to it by many good Moslems, who urged that it was 
 an intoxicating drink quite as bad as the wine forbidden in 
 the Koran, and numerous raids were made upon the coffee- 
 houses ; but the very fact of its serving as, in some sort, 
 a substitute for the juice of the vine tended to make it 
 popular. It reached Constantinople about 1554, and was 
 of universal use in all Mahometan countries before the close 
 of the sixteenth century. So essential was it deemed to 
 domestic happiness that a Turkish law recognised a man's 
 refusal to supply his wife with coffee as sufficient ground for 
 her claiming a divorce. About the year 1600 it began to be 
 talked of in Christendom as a rare and precious medicine. 
 In 1615 it was brought to Venice, and in 162 1 Burton spoke 
 of it, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," as a valuable article 
 which he had heard of but not seen. In 1652, Sir Nicholas 
 Crispe, a Levant merchant, opened in London the first 
 coffee-house known in England, the beverage being prepared 
 by a Greek girl brought over for the work. Other coffee- 
 houses in abundance were soon opened. In William UJ.'s 
 and Queei^ Anne's days they were the great places of resort
 
 \i The Romance of 'Irade. 
 
 for wits, beaux, fops, gallants, wise men, and fools, and as 
 such are amply described in the Spectator and other works 
 of the time. And coffee was not merely an excuse for social 
 intercourse : its first drinkers in England knew how to 
 drink it. Pope says : — 
 
 " For, lo ! the board with cups nnd spoons is crowned, 
 The berries crackle and the mill goes round ; 
 On shining altars of Japan they raise 
 The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ; 
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
 While China's earth receives the smoking tide. 
 At once they gratify their scent and taste. 
 And frequent cups prolong the rich repast." 
 
 The growing demand for coffee, of which more than 
 30,000,000 lbs. are now annually consumed in Great Britain, 
 caused the plant to be cultivated in other districts as well 
 as Arabia, where it is indigenous and thrives best. At a 
 very early date the Dutch began to grow it in Java and 
 their other East Indian possessions, and they were uninten- 
 tionally the causers of its introduction to the New World. 
 In 1690 some seeds were brought from Mocha to the Botanic 
 Garden at Amsterdam, and from the produce of these seeds 
 a single plant was, in 17 14, sent as a present to Louis XIV., 
 and by him treasured up in Paris. In 17 17 a Frenchman 
 named Declieux obtained a plant raised from one of its 
 seeds, and carried it to Martinique. The ship was weather- 
 bound, and before the Atlantic was crossed the crew were 
 in grievous trouble for want of water. There was water on 
 board, but the captain, anxious above all things to preserve 
 his treasure, doled it out in meagre quantities to the men, 
 while he nourished the coffee-plant without stint. And the 
 plant made a good return for the care bestowed upon it. 
 From its seeds, we are told, have descended all the coffee- 
 trees now abounding in the West Indies and Brazil. 
 
 Few wandering wares have a more curious history than 
 tobacco, one of the many commodities that the New World
 
 JVa.vd£r/xg Wares, 33 
 
 has given to the Old in exchange for the many that have 
 been sent to it from this side of the Atlantic. The Spanish 
 conquerors of San Domingo were not long in learning from 
 their native subjects the use made by them of the prolific 
 weed, which they styled tobako, and which all the world now 
 knows by the same name. The conquerors of other districts 
 found the same weed, under different titles, in favour with 
 the Indians, and it soon came to be equally in favour with 
 Europeans. In 1559 it began to be cultivated in Lisbon, and 
 about that time the French ambassador in Portugal — from 
 whose name, Nicot, has come its scientific name oiNicotiana 
 — sent some seeds to Catl-terine de' Medici. Its cultivation 
 spread rapidly over the southern and central parts of Europe, 
 and across the whole breadth of Asia. Before 1600 it was 
 known in Java, China, and even in Japan, and everywhere 
 known as tobacco ; though it is probable that in many parts 
 the plant had previously existed as a useless weed, and that 
 only its cultivation and employment as a narcotic had been 
 learnt from the Red men of the West Indies and their con- 
 (juerors. We hear nothing of it in England till 1586, when, 
 along with the potato, it was introduced by Raleigh's would- 
 be colonists of Virginia. It was described by Hariot, whose 
 allusion to the potato has been already quoted : — " There is 
 an herb," he says, " which is sowed apart by itself, and is 
 called by the inhabitants uppowoc. In the West Indies it hath 
 divers names, according to the several places and countries 
 where it groweth and is used. The Spaniards generally call 
 it tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried and brought into 
 powder, they are wont to take the fume or smoke thereof, by 
 sucking it through pipes made of clay into their stomach and 
 head, from whence it purgeth superfluous phlegm and other 
 gross humours, and openeth all the pores and passages of 
 the body. This uppowoc is of so precious estimation among 
 them, that they think their gods are marvellously delighted 
 therewith ; whereupon sometime they make hallowed fires, 
 
 D
 
 34 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 and cast some of the powder therein for sacrifice. We our- 
 selves, during the time we were there, used to suck it after 
 their manner, as also since our return, and have found many 
 rare and wonderful experiments of the virtues thereof, of 
 which the relation would require a volume by itself. The 
 use of it by so many of late, men and women of great 
 calling, and some learned physicians also, is sufficient 
 witness." 
 
 The use of it certainly became rapidly prevalent in 
 England. Many stories are told of Sir Walter Raleigh's 
 own exploits with his pipe, and of the pleasure taken by 
 great courtiers, as well as common folk, in the new luxury 
 provided for them. Before many years were out, Edmund 
 Spenser, in his "Faerie Queene," spoke in praise of the 
 "divine tobacco," and other champions were not want- 
 ing. Ben Jonson, on the other hand, was one of its first 
 public opponents. Nearly every one of his early plays 
 has in it a smoker or two — always a fop, a knave, or a fool. 
 King James I.'s aversion to it is well known. In his famous 
 "Counterblast," written in 1619, he denounced smoking 
 as "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to 
 the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and, in the black stinking 
 fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke 
 of the pit that is bottomless." One of the arguments against 
 it, to which he attached most weight, was that it was wicked 
 and disgraceful for civilised Christians to borrow anything 
 from barbarous heathens — an argiunent that would apply 
 equally well to the potato and half-a-thousand other useful 
 commodities brought into the country. "Have you not, then 
 reason," he asked, " to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely 
 grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly mistaken 
 in the right use thereof — sinning against God, harming 
 yourselves both in your ])erson and in your goods, creating 
 thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you ?" That 
 was on a par with Pope Urban VIII.'s order excommuni-
 
 Wandering Wares. 35 
 
 eating every one who took snuff in church. But the 
 smokers smoked on, and became every year more 
 numerous. 
 
 At first the demand for tobacco in England was met 
 by sujDphes of the article brought from America by way 
 of Spain and Portugal, or of the coarser produce of the 
 European tobacco-fields. It even began to be cultivated 
 in England, and yet more in Ireland. As soon as Virginia 
 was really colonised, however, in James I.'s reign, a direct 
 trade was started. For a long time tobacco was the only im- 
 portant produce of Virginia, and large quantities of it were 
 annually shipped to the mother country. In the colony it- 
 self it served as money. The fine for absence from church 
 was a pound of tobacco, and slander of a clergyman had 
 to be atoned for by a payment of 800 lbs. Innkeepers 
 were forbidden to charge more than 10 lbs. for a dinner, or 
 more than 8 lbs. for a gallon of strong ale. In vain King 
 James, in 1622, ordered the Virginians to breed silkwonns, 
 and set up silk works, as "a rich and solid commodity 
 preferable to tobacco." In vain his son, Charles I., in 1631, 
 bade them send home " some better fruit than tobacco and 
 smoke," and so avoid " the speedy ruin likely to befall the 
 colonies, and the danger to the bodies and manners of the 
 English people, through the excessive growth of tobacco." 
 The trade was too profitable and too much patronised by 
 the English to be given up. In 1628 the annual produce 
 of Virginia, containing 3,000 inhabitants, Avas reckoned at 
 412,500 lbs. Other American colonies, Maryland especially, 
 soon followed the same traffic. In 1740 at least 200 
 British ships were constantly engaged in the collection of 
 tobacco, and the annual total of their cargoes exceeded 
 18,000,000 lbs. Liverpool and Glasgow owed much of 
 their progress as great commercial towns — cotton being 
 then hardly known in America — to the tobacco trade, and 
 the trade still thrives, in spite of other and more important 
 
 D 2
 
 36 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 rivals. The United States now send to England about 
 40,000,000 lbs. of tobacco, and some 20,000,000 lbs. come 
 from other parts of the world. Of this quantity, however, 
 hardly more than two-thirds is for home consumption. The 
 national revenue derived from the heavy duties levied on 
 tobacco amounts to nearly ;^6, 000,000 a year. 
 
 Tobacco, looked upon as a sort of food by many, and 
 as a poison by others, is by some regarded as a medicine. 
 The history of the introduction of some other and more 
 legitimate medicines into England is very curious. Let 
 quinine serve as an instance. 
 
 The cinchona plant, called kina or kinken by the In- 
 dians, had grown wild in some elevated parts of Peru long 
 before the valuable properties of its bark were known. An 
 old fable says that they were first discovered by some 
 natives, who perceived a sick lion gnawing at the stem and 
 chewing the bark, and that this curious phenomenon caused 
 them to use it in like manner when attacked by fever. A 
 more probable story is that the Jesuits of Loxa, anxious 
 to understand the botanical and medicinal properties of the 
 various plants in their new home, tasted this plant along 
 with the rest, and that the accident of its being first given 
 to an invalid, and helping to cure him, led to its employ- 
 ment in cases of fever and ague. A third story is that the 
 Countess Chinchon, whose husband was Viceroy of Peru 
 early in the seventeenth century, was the first to test it ; 
 and that, being cured by it, she brouglit some to Europe 
 and dispensed it to her friends. Nothing is certain, how- 
 ever, except that it began to find favour in Sjxiin about the 
 year 1640, and that ever since that time it has been re- 
 garded as one of the most valuable of medicines. It was 
 procured and exported by the Jesuit missionaries, and 
 largely used by the Catholics, although for many years 
 opposed by the Protestants on religious grounds. In 1726 
 La Fontaine made it the subject of an epic poem; but not
 
 Wandering Wares. 37 
 
 till a later day was it known by Europeans that the bark 
 bought from the Indians, who gathered it in forests rarely 
 visited by white men, came from a tree almost unrivalled in 
 the exquisite beauty of its leaves and the delicious fragrance 
 of its Howers. In the course of his long and famous voyage 
 of scientific research in the equatorial regions, lasting from 
 1735 to 1743, La Condamine visited Loxa and collected some 
 plants to transfer to Paris, but they were washed overboard 
 on the passage; and in 177 1 Jussieu took a similar disaster 
 so much to heart that he is said to have thereby lost his 
 reason. Quite recently some specimens have been reared 
 at Kew ; but the plant can only grow naturally within pre- 
 cise limits of latitude, and varies in size, according to the 
 locality, from a high tree to a diminutive shrub. Even in 
 Peru, since the increased demand for the bark for use on 
 this side of the Atlantic, it has been gathered so recklessly, 
 from trees young as well as old, that there was good ground 
 for fearing, not only that the augmented price would put it 
 out of reach of ordinary patients, but that before long it 
 would be altogether extinct. 
 
 This serious danger has been fortunately removed. In 
 1839 Dr. Forbes Royle urged the importance of transplant- 
 ing the Peruvian bark to India, as being necessary for the 
 adequate supply of a drug indispensable in the treatment ot 
 Indian fevers. In 1852 this was attempted under the 
 direction of the East India Company, but the experiment 
 failed as signally as all earlier efforts to introduce it into 
 Europe. In 1859, however, a new attempt was made by 
 Mr. Clements Markham, with the assistance of Lord Stanley, 
 then Secretary of State for India, and this time with success. 
 Mr. Markham had to overcome many obstacles incident to 
 the labour of exploring a large and not easily-accessible 
 district in search of the best varieties, and of collecting a 
 sufficient quantity of seeds and plants in opposition to the 
 jealousy of the residents, who, though reckless in tiieir
 
 38 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 treatment of the cinchona, were loth to assist in the forma- 
 tion of a trade which they deemed detrimental to their in- 
 terests. Once, with no food but some parched maize, he was 
 for eleven hours in the saddle, riding quickly over a rugged 
 country, and in intense cold, which he dreaded less for 
 himself than for the young plants that were in his keeping. 
 Many difficulties had to be undergone before the various 
 pots and parcels could be brought in good condition to the 
 Peruvian coast, and thence taken across the Pacific to India, 
 where another series of difficulties had to be contended with 
 before suitable soil and climate could be found. Nearly 
 three years were spent in the whole business. In the 
 northern highlands of India, however, and especially among 
 the Neilgherry Hills, the cinchona now flourishes ; and the 
 greatest benefits, both to rich and poor, are likely to spring 
 from Mr. Markham's energy in finding a new home for the 
 best of all known febrifuges. 
 
 Turning from food and kindred articles to clothing and 
 the commodities necessary for its improvement, we find 
 that quite as great benefits have been effected by wandering 
 wares and the traders who have transported them from one 
 country to another. Wool, of course common wherever 
 sheep are found, furnished material for the garments of our 
 forefathers from the time of the Roman conquest, and a 
 rude sort of manufacture prevailed in the country during 
 the ensuing centuries. But during the Middle Ages the best 
 clothing came from Flanders, whither England sent its wool, 
 to take back so much of it as was required in a more avail- 
 able shape. A large section of the history of commerce 
 down to the sixteenth century concerns this traffic. It was 
 not till near the period of Queen Elizabeth that woollen 
 manufacture became important, and then the change was to 
 a great extent due to the settlement of Flemish Protestants 
 in England, who brought with them their skill in weaving 
 and the other branches of cloth-making. Since then we
 
 Wandering Wares. 
 
 39 
 
 hear little of the importation of woollen goods, and still less 
 of the exportation of raw wool to be made up abroad. In 
 1739 it was reckoned that a million and a half of persons 
 — nearly a fifth of the whole population — ^were engaged 
 in woollen manufacture. From the commencement of its 
 colonies, England clothed its colonists as well as itself, and 
 even before that a small foreign trade in woollen wares had 
 begun. About a century and a half ago it was found that 
 the raw material possessed by the country was insufficient 
 for the needs of the factories, and more had to be obtained 
 from other districts ; and this trade has made wonderful 
 progress during the last hundred years. In 1771 the 
 quantity of foreign wool brought into the country, chiefly 
 from Spain, was under 2,000,000 lbs. ; in 1 801 it exceeded 
 7,000,000 lbs. ; in 1831 it was nearly 32,000,000 lbs.; 
 and in i860 it exceeded 115,000,000 lbs., besides about 
 30,000,000 lbs. which came here to be sent at once to 
 other parts. 
 
 The sources from which this vast supply — to which must 
 be added more than 100,000,000 lbs. of home-grown wool 
 — has been derived have varied strangely. In 1800 the 
 imports from Spain were fourteen times as great as those 
 from Germany; in 1840 the imports from Germany were 
 seventeen times as great as those from Spain. In 1807 
 Australia sent us its first cargo of wool, weighing 245 lbs. 
 In 1840 the quantity had risen to 10,000,000 lbs., and 
 in i860 to 60,000,000 lbs. It is now not far short of 
 100,000,000 lbs. 
 
 The history of this Australian wool trade is very note- 
 worthy. In 1793 it occurred to Captain John M'Arthur, 
 then stationed with his regiment in Sydney, that the Aus- 
 tralian climate was well adapted for the production of 
 merino sheep ; but the colony had nothing but an inferior 
 Bengal breed, useful only for food, and there was great dif- 
 ficulty in obtaining any other. At length, in 1797, Captain
 
 40 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 M'Arthur conveyed to Sydney three rams and five ewes 
 of pure merino stock, and, mixing with them seventy of the 
 native sort, apphed himself zealously to sheep-rearing. In 
 1803 he came to England, bringing with him samples of his 
 wool, which he recommended both to a committee of cloth- 
 manufacturers and to the Government as being " in softness 
 superior to many of the wools of Spain, and certainly equal 
 in every valuable property to the very best procured from 
 thence." Some fun was made about his "wool-gathering" 
 theories ; but his samples and his arguments gave satisfac- 
 tion to competent judges, especially as Europe was then 
 harassed by Napoleon's wars, and there was constant risk of 
 a stoppage of the supply derived from Spain. M'Arthur's 
 modest request of a grant of 10,000 acres of grazing land 
 to be assigned out of the unoccupied territory, with thirty 
 convicts to serve as shepherds, was acceded to ; and George 
 III., Avho took a lively interest in the matter, gave him 
 several fine merino sheep, chosen from his flock at Kew. 
 He returned to Australia, and in 1807, when the little stock 
 with which he had begun to work ten years before had 
 increased to 4,000, he sent home his first bale of wool. 
 During the next seven-and-twenty years he rode his hobby 
 steadily and with wonderful success. He died in 1834, 
 worthily honoured as " the father of the colony," and in 
 that year the shipment of Australian wool to England — a 
 great part of it drawn from his own great and well-ordered 
 sheep-runs — was nearly ten thousand times as great as that 
 which he first made. He had plenty of followers. Squatters 
 spread over vast tracts of New South AA'ales, Victoria, South 
 Australia, and Tasmania, and, mightily enriching themselves, 
 have succeeded in adding immeasurably to the wealth o 
 the huge Australian commonwealth ; while their produce 
 has been of hardly less value to the mother country — and 
 not to her alone. America now imports large supplies of 
 Australian wool, all of which, till lately, were obtained by way
 
 Waxdering Wares. 41 
 
 of England, and spanned two-thirds of the globe in its 
 transit, though now a shorter route, across the Pacific, is 
 being established. 
 
 Another sort of wool comes to England from America, 
 and has begun to be naturalised in Australia. The large 
 alpaca sheep of Peru yields longer, softer, and more lustrous 
 wool than any other animal of the tribe. Its softness and 
 lustre made shrewd manufacturers anxious to use it ; but 
 the very length of the hair, sometimes extending even to 
 forty-two inches, was an obstacle. The machinery com- 
 monly used by the woollen manufacturers was not fitted 
 for it, and it was tangled and broken in the working. The 
 few parcels brought to England were accordingly rejected, 
 and, thrown away as useless, lay idle in the Liver- 
 pool warehouses till 1834, when Mr. Titus Salt — a young 
 farmer, whose father was a woolstapler in Leeds, and who 
 himself now settled in Bradford as a spinner — began to 
 devise means for getting over the difficulty. One episode 
 in his adventures was characteristically described by Charles 
 Dickens. " A huge pile of dirty-looking sacks," he said, 
 "filled with some fibrous material which bore a strong re- 
 semblance to superannuated horsehair, or frowsy, elongated 
 wool, or anything else unpleasant and unattractive, was 
 landed in Liverpool. When these queer-looking bales had 
 first arrived, or by what vessel brought, or for what purpose 
 intended, the very oldest warehouseman in Liverpool docks 
 couldn't say. There had once been a rumour — a mere 
 warehouseman's whisper— that the bales had been shipped 
 from South America on spec, and consigned to the agency 
 of C. W, and F. Foozle and Co. But even this seems to 
 have been forgotten, and it was agreed upon by all hands, 
 that the three hundred and odd sacks of nondescript hair- 
 wool were a perfect nuisance. The rats appeared to be 
 the only parties who at all approved of the importation, 
 and to them it was the very finest investment for capital
 
 42 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 that had been known in Liverpool since their first ancestors 
 had migrated thither. Well, those bales seemed likely to 
 rot, or fall to the dust, or be bitten up for the particular 
 use of family rats. Brokers wouldn't so much as look at 
 them. Merchants would have nothing to say to them. 
 Dealers couldn't make them out. Manufacturers shook 
 their heads at the bare mention of them ; while the 
 agents of C. W. and F. Foozle and Co. looked at the bill 
 of lading, and once spake to their head clerk about 
 shipping them to South America again. One day — we 
 won't care what day it was, or even what week or month 
 it was, though things of far less consequence have been 
 chronicled to the half minute — one day, a plain, business- 
 looking young man, with an intelligent face and quiet, 
 reserved manner, was walking along through those same 
 warehouses at Liverpool, when his eyes fell upon some of 
 the superannuated horsehair projecting from one of the 
 ugly, dirty bales. Some lady rat, more delicate than her 
 neighbours, had found it rather coarser than usual, and had 
 persuaded her lord and master to eject the portion from 
 her resting-place. Our friend took it up, looked at it, felt 
 it, smelt it, rubbed it, pulled it about; in fact, he did all 
 but taste it, and he would have done that if it had suited 
 his purpose — for he was 'Yorkshire.' Having held it up 
 to the light, and held it away from the light, and held it in 
 all sorts of positions, and done all sorts of cmelties to it, 
 as though it had been his most deadly enemy and he was 
 feeling quite vindictive, he placed a handful or two in his 
 pocket, and walked calmly away, evidently intending to 
 put the stuff to some excruciating private tortures at home. 
 What particular experiments he tried with this fibious sub- 
 stance I am not exactly in a position to relate, nor does 
 it much signify ; but the sequel was, that the same quiet, 
 business-looking man was seen to enter the office of C. W. 
 and F, Foozle and Co., and ask for the head of the firm.
 
 Wandering Wakes. 43 
 
 When he asked that portion of the house if he would accept 
 eightpence per pound for the entire contents of the three 
 hundred and odd frowsy, dirty bags of nondescript wool, 
 the authority interrogated felt so confounded that he could 
 not have told if he were the head or tail of the finn. At 
 first he fancied our friend had come for the express purpose 
 of quizzing him, and then that he was an escaped lunatic, 
 and thought seriously of calling for the police ; but 
 eventually it ended in his making it over in consideration 
 of the price offered. It was quite an event in the little 
 dark office of C. VV. and F. Foozle and Co., which had its 
 supply of light (of a very inferior quality) from the grim old 
 churchyard. All the establishment stole a peep at the 
 buyer of the 'South American stuff.' The chief clerk 
 had the curiosity to speak to him and hear him reply. 
 The cashier touched his coat tails. The bookkeeper, a 
 thin man in spectacles, examined his hat and gloves. The 
 porter openly grinned at him. When the quiet purchaser 
 had departed, C. W. and F. Foozle and Co. shut themselves 
 up, and gave all their clerks a holiday." 
 
 It was in 1835 that Mr. Salt made that purchase. He 
 put it to such good use that in 1853 the imports of alpaca 
 wool, chiefly for his own use, greatly exceeded 2,000,000 lbs.; 
 and his business had become so large that in that year he 
 built the famous Saltaire Mills, near Bradford, with a town 
 around them able to hold five thousand workpeople. His 
 new commodity found favour for ladies' dresses, umbrellas, 
 and a dozen other useful articles, and the trade with Peru 
 became so extensive that the Australians began to covet a 
 share in it. In 1858 Mr. Charles Ledger carried 276 alpacas, 
 llamas, and vecunas to Sydney. The animals throve well in 
 New South Wales, and already they furnish a considerable 
 portion of the wool taken from these varieties of the sheep, 
 and collected for the English market. 
 
 The oldest rival — or, rather, the material made of it
 
 44 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 being so different, the oldest associate — of wool in English 
 manufacture of clothing is linen. The use of flax, known 
 to the ancients, was encouraged in all parts of the Roman 
 empire, and not forgotten by its sometime subjects after 
 Rome was overthrown. But linen was not made extensively 
 till late in the Middle Ages, and then the chief seat of 
 its manufacture was the same industrious little district of 
 Flanders which formerly made all the woollen clothing for 
 Europe. Diaper (cloth d'Ypres) came from Ypres, and 
 cambric from Cambray. In 1445 the price in England of 
 fine linen for altar-cloths and surplices was eightpence an 
 ell. There was not then much demand for it for commoner 
 uses ; but soon after that, the growing refinement — which 
 caused even peasants to be dissatisfied with nothing but 
 coarse woollen garments worn both day and night, and made 
 them wish for under-clothing and bed gear — led to extension 
 of the trade. More linen was brought from abroad, until 
 Flemish and Huguenot refugees in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries brought their skill with them to England, 
 and flax-spinning began to be considerable in our island. 
 An old staple of trade from .Ireland to England was flax, 
 and its manufacture was carried on to some extent in the 
 sister island from very early times. The first man who 
 made it important, however, was Louis Crommelier, a 
 Huguenot, Avho migrated to Belfast after the Revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes. Ireland had 50,000 acres of flax in 
 cultivation in 1812; 110,000 in 1826. The area, partly in 
 consequence of the potato famine, had sunk to 58,000 in 
 1847 ; but by 1853 it had risen to 170,000, and in 1864 it 
 exceeded 300,000 acres. Linen manufacture was not in- 
 troduced into Scotland till the early part of last century. 
 In 1745, 165,760 lbs. of flax were imported by Dundee j 
 fifty years later the quantity was nearly forty times as great, 
 and since then Dundee, like Leeds, has grown steadily as a 
 great centre of the trade.
 
 Wandering Wares. ^5 
 
 To feed this trade the increased production of Ireland 
 has proved quite inadequate. To the 10,000,000 lbs. or 
 more, now annually brought from Ireland, are added some 
 20,000,000 lbs. imported from foreign countries, three-fourths 
 coming from Russia, and much of the rest from Egypt. 
 
 The raw cotton now brought into the country is seven 
 or eight times as great in value as both the flax and the wool 
 imported for manufacturing purposes, and exceeds them yet 
 more in quantity. Two centuries ago, however, there was 
 hardly any cotton manufacture in England, and ninety years 
 ago it was hardly one two-hundredth part as great as now. 
 The plant has been cultivated and has yielded material for 
 clothing from the earliest kno\vn times in India, where the 
 trade is still carried on with very little change from the 
 methods that prevailed three thousand years ago ; and 
 calicoes from Calicut were occasionally conveyed to Europe 
 by the merchants of Tyre and Alexandria, and in later days 
 by those of Venice. The establishment of the East India 
 Company rendered easier the bringing of cotton goods to 
 England, and soon cotton itself began to be brought in 
 small quantities, and worked up at home. Manchester, still 
 the centre of this manufacture, has the credit of beginning 
 it. " They buy cotton wool in London, that first comes 
 from Cyprus and Smyrna," wrote Lewis Roberts in 1641, 
 " and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, 
 dimities, and other such stuffs, and then return it to London, 
 where the same is vended and sold, and not seldom sent 
 into foreign parts." Bolton and other towns soon took up 
 the trade, and prospered by it. It made the wealth which 
 Humphrey Chetham, first of the great Manchester mer- 
 chants, used so worthily in founding Chetham College. It 
 made but slight progress during a century, however; and 
 some time afterwards the chief cotton manufacturers were 
 Huguenot exiles, who in 1676 began to follow their callings 
 in London and other towns on the Thames, and that in spite
 
 46 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of opposition which in the end helped to drive nearly all 
 the trade from the south of England into the Lancashire 
 district in which it had been started. Great resistance was 
 offered to it by the manufacturers of woollen, linen, and 
 silken goods, who imagined that it would ruin their own 
 trades. They encouraged riots in the streets of London and 
 in country towns, and they procured the passing of arbitrary 
 laws in Parliament. In 1 7 1 2 an excise duty of threepence 
 was set on every square yard of calico made in England ; 
 in 17 14 the duty was raised to sixpence; and in 1721 cotton 
 goods were absolutely forbidden, a penalty of ;^5 being 
 incurred by every wearer of them, while every seller was 
 rendered liable to a fine of ;;^20 for each offence. In 1736 
 the manufacture of calicoes was permitted, with a cotton 
 woof, provided the warp was linen, and in 1774 the produc- 
 tion and selling of every kind of " painted, stained, and 
 dyed stuffs, made wholly of cotton," were made lawful ; but 
 this removal of the old restrictions benefited chiefly the 
 manufacturers of the north, who had carried on their work 
 in spite of laws to the contrary, and to whom wonderful 
 facilities for extending it were just commencing with the 
 importation of new supplies of cotton to Liverpool and 
 Glasgow. 
 
 Columbus found the cotton plant growing almost wild, 
 and ito produce used for clothing by the natives in the West 
 Indies ; and Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, sent to 
 Charles V, "cotton mantles, some all white, others mixed 
 with white and l)lack or red, green, yellow, or blue ; waist- 
 coats, handkerchiefs, counterpanes, tapestries, and carpets 
 of cotton," which, both in workmanship and in colour, were 
 declared to be superior to the European manufactures of 
 that time. But the cotton wealth of America was for a 
 long time neglected by its conquerors. The cotton goods 
 brought by the East India Company from its possessions, 
 and the raw cotton brought from Turkey and Asia Minor
 
 Wandering Wares. 47 
 
 to be worked up in England, met all the demand that was 
 made till early in the eighteenth century. Then a trade 
 began with our West Indian colonies, some of which found 
 cotton almost as profitable a production as sugar. In 1743 
 Jamaica was reported to yield the best cotton in the world, 
 and soon afterwards the Bahamas were famous for their 
 growth of the kind now known as " sea island." 
 
 The rise of the cotton trade of the United States may 
 be traced to some royalists who took shelter in the Bahamas 
 during the War of Independence, and who, in 1786 — as 
 soon as it was safe for them to return to their own country — 
 took with them some sea-island cotton to Georgia, and there 
 found that its dry and sandy coast line was excellently 
 adapted for the growth of the plant. Two years before that, 
 in 1784, when a trading vessel from the United States arrived 
 at Liverpool, eight bales of cotton included in its cargo 
 were seized by the Custom-house authorities, on the ground 
 that this could not be a native production, and therefore 
 was contraband ; but England was not much longer in igno- 
 rance of the cotton-producing powers of the United States. 
 Very soon it became the chief source of supply, although it 
 would be a mistake to suppose that the opening-up of this 
 new trade was in any direct way a cause of the new energy 
 in cotton manufacture that was at this time being developed 
 in England, In 1786, the year in which the sea-island 
 variety was first planted in Georgia, about 20,000,000 lbs. of 
 cotton were brought into the English market — a fourth from 
 Smyrna and Turkey, nearly a third from the British West 
 Indies, more than a third from the French, Spanish, and 
 Dutch colonies, and a tenth from Brazil. That was more 
 than five times as great as the quantity imported twenty 
 years before ; and cotton would have come in yet larger 
 supplies, as the demand for more arose, from the older 
 sources, if the United States had not sliown themselves 
 able to compete with them. That they did, however, and
 
 48 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 before long they acquired the Hon's share of the quickly- 
 growing trade. In 1791 they exported — nearly all to 
 England — i89,3i61bs. of cotton; in 1800, 17,789,803155.; 
 in 1810, 93,874,201 lbs. ; and in 1820, 127,860,152 lbs. Of 
 the latter quantity, 90,000,000 lbs. were sent to England, 
 which received a third as much from its West Indian colonies, 
 and a like quantity from other sources, the total import 
 being 152,829,633 lbs. Thosefigures show how vast was the 
 increase of the cotton trade in the course of five-and-thirty 
 years. It continued to grow as rapidly down to i860, when 
 the civil war in America helped to bring about a crisis from 
 which there has not yet been complete recovery. The 
 imports, nearly eight times as great in 1820 as they were in 
 1786, were nearly ten times as great in i860 as they were 
 in 1820. In i860 nearly 14,000,000,000 lbs. were brought 
 into the country — considerably more than two-thirds from 
 the United States, about a seventh from the East Indies, 
 and most of the rest from Egypt and Brazil. And the 
 cotton thus imported is nearly trebled in value by the pro- 
 cess of its conversion into marketable commodities. The 
 cotton goods manufactured in England in 1760 were worth 
 ;^2oo,ooo; those of i860 were worth ^85,000,000, and 
 that in spite of a vast reduction — in some cases to nearly a 
 twentieth — in the price charged for the articles produced. 
 Cotton is the most stupendous of all the wares that have 
 v/andered into England, and the new wares into which it is 
 converted by British industry now wander into every quarter 
 of the world. India, which taught us the trade, and 
 America, Avhich provides its staple, are alike, to a great 
 extent, clothed by us. 
 
 In comparison with cotton, silk is an insignificant com- 
 modity ; but its commercial value is great, and its history 
 is curious. Like so many other wares that have now been 
 naturalised in Europe, it came to us from Asia. Alexander 
 the Great is supposed to have first brought some garments
 
 Wandering Wares. 49 
 
 made of it from Persia into Greece ; and from that time 
 the apparel that had during a long previous period been a 
 badge of luxurious wealth among Oriental nations, came into 
 vogue, first in Greece and afterwards in Rome. It is said 
 that the Emperor Aurelian, who died in 275, had to deny 
 his wife a silk robe because of its high price ; but in latei* 
 generations its use became more frequent. In 555 some 
 monks, who had been in India, represented to the Emperor 
 Justinian "that the Romans need not any longer be obliged 
 to purchase raw silk of the Persians, nor of any others; 
 for, having lived long in a country called Lerinda, they now 
 assured him that, although the origin of raw silk was till 
 now a secret from the West, it proceeded from certain worms 
 taught by Nature to spin it out of their own bowels; and 
 that, though it was impracticable to bring those worms so 
 far alive, yet it would be easy to procure their bags, which 
 would produce the worms." Their proposal was accepted, 
 and thus the silkworm was brought westward as far as Con- 
 stantinople, and from Constantinople it was taken to Greece. 
 The trade grew slowly during the Middle Ages. In 790 
 Charlemagne sent as a present to Offa, King of Mercia, two 
 silken vests. But Constantinople, Greece, and the far East 
 were the only sources from which silk was derived till 1130, 
 when Roger II., King of Sicily, having conquered Athens, 
 Corinth, and Thebes, took home with him some Greek 
 prisoners, who not only introduced the silkworm, but also 
 taught the natives how to spin and weave its fibre. So 
 incensed at this were the Venetians, who had hitherto had a 
 monopoly of the commodity through their Oriental trade, 
 that in 1148 they made war with the Sicilians on account 
 of it. Palermo silk-working prospered, however, and the 
 trade soon extended to the south of France, to Spain, and 
 to other parts, whither the Venetians went to collect both 
 the raw material and the stuffs, for distribution in all the 
 countries with which they dealt. A company of Silk-women,
 
 50 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 devoted to the manufacture of the precious article, was 
 estabUshed in London in the fifteenth century, and by an 
 Act of Parhament passed in 1455, "upon the heavy com- 
 plaint of the women of the mystery and trade of silk and 
 thread workers in London, that divers Lombards and other 
 foreigners enriched themselves by ruining the said mystery," 
 it was directed " that no Avrought silk should be brought 
 into England by way of merchandise for five years to come." 
 In 1489 there was no silk manufacture in France; but the 
 trade began in that country a little later, and there it made 
 far more rapid progress than in England, attaining a pre- 
 eminence that has lasted to the present day. It was the 
 French Protestant refugees, settling in Spitalfields and else- 
 where after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, 
 who enabled this country to make the first important ad- 
 vance upon the slight achievements of the old mystery of 
 Silk-women. In 1553 Sir Thomas Gresham sent from 
 Antwerp to King Edward VI. what Stow, the historian, calls 
 "a great present," a pair of long Spanish silk stockings; 
 " for you shall understand," he adds, "that King Henry VIIL 
 did wear only cloth hose, or hose cut out of ell-broad taffeta, 
 unless that by great chance there came a pair of Spanish 
 stockings out of Spain." It was also a matter strange and 
 important enough to be recorded by sober historians, that a 
 pair of silk stockings was worn by Queen Elizabeth in 1561 ; 
 but these, and all the gay apparel in wliich her courtiers and 
 those of the two Jameses and the two Charleses delighted, 
 came from the Continent. 
 
 The foremost names in the history of English silk manu- 
 facture are those of Sir Thomas Lombe and his brother 
 John, of Derby. In 17 15 John Lombe went to Leghorn, 
 then the busiest city in Italy, and a great centre of the silk 
 trade, peculiar machinery being there employed, the secret 
 of which was jealously guarded from strangers. " One of 
 his first movements," says his biographer, " was to go as a
 
 Wandering Wares. 51 
 
 visitor to see the silk works ; for they were occasionaUy 
 shown under very rigid Hmitations, such as that they would 
 be seen only when in motion^the multiplicity and rapidity 
 of the machinery making it impossible then to comprehend 
 them — and the spectator was also hunied very rapidly 
 through the place. At first young Lombe thought he 
 could have accomplished his object in this way, by going 
 again and again under difterent disguises. One time he 
 was a lady, another a priest. He was as generous, too, Avith 
 his money as he could be without exciting suspicion. But 
 it was all in vain ; he could make nothing of the hurried 
 glimpses he thus obtained, and every effort to see the 
 machinery put in motion, or at rest, failed. He now tried 
 another course. He began to associate with the clergy, 
 and, being a well-educated man and of liberal tastes, he 
 succeeded in ingratiating himself with the priest who acted 
 as confessor to the proprietor of the works. And there can 
 be no doubt of the fact that the priest's assistance was 
 obtained by Lombe. Neither do we think there can be any 
 doubt of the means by which that assistance was won. 
 Hardly any bribe could be too great that enabled the young 
 adventurer to succeed in his object. A plan was now de- 
 signed, and put into execution, for young Lombe's admission 
 into the works. He disguised himself as a poor youth out 
 of employ, and went to the directors with a recommenda- 
 tion from the priest, praising his honesty and diligence, 
 and remarking that he had been inured to greater hardships 
 than might be supposed from his appearance. Lombe was 
 engaged as a boy to attend a spinning-engine called a 
 ' filatoe.' He had now evidence of the sufficiency of his dis- 
 guise, was accommodated with a sleeping-place in the mill ; 
 in a word, his success was, as it were, at once secured. But 
 even then he had an arduous and most hazardous task to 
 perform. After he had done his day's work, the secret work 
 of the night had to begin, and if discovered in that euiploy- 
 
 K 2
 
 52 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 nient ! — he must often have shuddered at the possibiHty. 
 Even the few apphances he required were an additional 
 source of danger. It appears that there was a hole under 
 the stair where he slept, and there he hid his dark lantern, 
 tinder-box, candles, and mathematical instruments. And now 
 the work went rapidly on. Drawing after drawing was made 
 from different parts of the machinery, and handed over to the 
 priest, who called occasionally to inquire how the poor boy 
 got on. The priest handed the drawings over to the agents 
 of the Messrs. Lombe, who transmitted them to England 
 piecemeal in bales of silk ; and thus at last every portion of 
 the machinery was accurately drawn, and the secret a secret 
 no longer. Lombe stayed at the mill until a ship was ready 
 to place the suspected out of reach. No sooner was he 
 on board than suspicion was aroused, and an Italian brig 
 dispatched in pursuit, but Lombe was not captured, and 
 returned safely to England. He died at the age of twenty- 
 nine, and there is a tragical story told of his death, which 
 is likely enough to be true. It is said that the Italians, 
 when they heard of the whole affair, sent over a female to 
 England to poison him. Lombe had brought over with him 
 two Italians, who were accustomed to the manufacture he 
 had risked so much for. The woman succeeded, tlirough the 
 means of one of them, in administering a deadly poison." 
 
 Sir Thomas Lombe, the elder brother, was more for- 
 tunate. In 1719, with help of the information thus dili- 
 gently acquired, he set up a great silk-throwing machine 
 on the Derwent, which was one of the wonders of the day. 
 " This amazingly grand machine," according to con- 
 temporary testmiony, "contains 26,586 wheels and 97,746 
 movements, which work 73,726 yards of organzine silk 
 thread every time the water-wheel goes round (being thrice 
 in one minute), and 318,504,960 yards in one day and night. 
 One water-wheel gives motion to all the other movements, 
 of which any one may be stopped separately, without ob-
 
 Wandering JFakcs. 53 
 
 structing the rest. One fire-engine conveys warm air to 
 every individual part of this vast machine, containing, in all 
 its buildings, half a quarter of a mile in length." Sir Thomas 
 Lombe received a patent from George I., and so highly was 
 his silk machine thought of, that in 1732, when the patent 
 had expired, Parhament voted him a sum of ^^14,000, "as 
 a consideration for the eminent services he had done, in 
 discovering, in introducing, and bringing to full perfection, 
 at his own expense, a work so useful and beneficial to this 
 kingdom." The reward was well earned. His enterprise, 
 and that of others like him, had so promoted the silk manu- 
 facture of England, that at this time it was thought to be 
 the best in Europe. " In Italy itself," wrote a traveller in 
 1730, " the silks of English manufacture are most esteemed, 
 and bear a greater price than those of Italy; so that at 
 Naples, when a tradesman would highly recommend his 
 silk stockings, he protests they are right English." From 
 that time silk manufacture became an important occupation 
 in England, and, though surpassed by that of France, it has 
 steadily progressed during the past century and a half In 
 i860 the raw silk imported and worked up in this country 
 was worth ^^6, 47 1,000, the manufactured goods imported in 
 the same year being valued at ;^3,344,ooo. 
 
 Closely connected with the materials for clothing, and 
 especially with silk and cotton, are dyes ; concerning which, 
 Irom the primitive woad, with which the ancient Britons 
 stained their bodies, down to the magenta and other colours 
 with which modern fashion is humoured, much curious in- 
 fomiation abounds. It will be sufficient here to mention 
 the two most important, indigo and cochineal. 
 
 Indigo — prepared from the juice of a shrub, of which 
 there are about one hundred and fifty varieties growing freely 
 all round the equinoctial line — was known to and valued 
 by the civilised nations ot the East ; but, though accurately 
 described by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, and
 
 54 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 soon afterwards brought westwards, it was not made much 
 use of in Europe till the seventeenth. Even in 1705 it 
 was spoken of as a mineral. Before it could find favour 
 in Christendom it had a hard battle to fight with the older 
 woad. In 1577 the German Diet denounced it as the devil's 
 dye — "pernicious, corrupt, and corrosive;" and the dyers 
 of the Nuremberg district were bound by most solemn oath 
 never to employ it in their work. In 1580 it was similarly 
 condemned by the English Parliament, and commissioners 
 were appointed to visit all places where it was likely to be 
 found, and to destroy both it and logwood. In 1598 the 
 French authorities resorted to equally severe measures for 
 keeping it out of the busy district of Languedoc. Prejudice, 
 however, was gradually overcome. In 1631 the Dutch 
 brought seven vessels full, weighing 333,545 lbs., from the 
 East Indies, and after that an extensive trade was carried 
 on by them, until they were superseded by the English. In 
 1779 the East India Company began to encourage its pro- 
 duction. Civil servants were assisted in establishing fac- 
 tories, and private adventurers were allowed to engage in 
 the trade. Though the plant grows readily, it is easily in- 
 fluenced by a change of weather, and the extraction of the 
 dye is- liable to disastrous accidents. Vast fortunes were 
 made, and vast fortunes were sometimes lost, in the business. 
 In 1795, however, the produce of the country amounted to 
 about 3,000,000 lbs. In Bengal and Bahar, to which the 
 Indian trade is now chiefly confined, some 10,000,000 lbs. 
 are now annually produced by 50,000 families, upon some 
 1,200,000 acres of land. Nearly two-thirds of this quantity 
 are brought to England, half for home use and half for ex- 
 portation. Indigo is also cultivated in Java and Manilla, 
 in Egypt and Senegal, and in Guatemala and Caraccas; 
 but the produce of all these districts together is hardly 
 more than a fourth as much as that of India, and is inferior 
 in quality.
 
 Wandering Wares. 55 
 
 Cochineal, on the other hand, though first brought from 
 India, now comes ahnost entirely from America. It was 
 highly prized by the Romans, and revived as an article of 
 trade by the Arabs and Moors. The splendid use made 
 of it by the Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish con- 
 quest, attracted the attention of Europeans ; and in recent 
 generations a vast demand for it has arisen, corresponding 
 with the increased quantity of cloth to be dyed. About 
 seventy thousand curious little insects, akin to the lady- 
 bird, have to be gathered from the cactus trees on which 
 they fix themselves, and to be baked or boiled, to make a 
 pound of cochineal ; and England imported from Mexico, 
 Central America, and Brazil 1,569,120 lbs. in 1S44, and 
 3,131,184 lbs. in 1855. It is said of Linnaeus that, in 
 1756, he obtained with great difficulty a plant covered with 
 the insects, in order to study its characteristics with care. 
 The plant arrived while he was delivering a lecture, and, 
 before he could have it safely housed, his gardener, sup- 
 posing it to be infested with a blight likely to spread to 
 other treasures, succeeded in destroying every one of its 
 parasites. 
 
 Cochineal and indigo, besides being useful in other ways, 
 help to convert the simple textile fabrics, which they colour, 
 into hundreds of new wares, designed to please the taste and 
 serve the special purposes of their buyers. In the same way 
 every other ware, brought into or produced in the country as 
 raw material, takes countless shapes ; and the result of all is 
 the manufacture of articles, a mere catalogue of which would 
 more than fill a volume, and of which even a brief description 
 would crowd a library. From pins, pens, and pans, up to 
 steam-engines, iron churches, and portable docks — like that 
 lately built in London and conveyed to Bermuda — there is a 
 wonderful array of wandering wares, useful and ornamental, 
 necessary and fantastic, each one with a curious history, 
 and all contributing to swell the glory of trade as a prime
 
 56 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 agent in the progress of civilisation. Further reference to 
 them here need not be attempted. 
 
 There is one wandering ware, however, which stands 
 apart from all the rest, and which has connected with it too 
 much strange incident and painful romance to be overlooked. 
 Trading in all else that the world produces, men have not 
 scrupled to trade in one another, and have not yet grown 
 honest enough altogether to eschew the traffic. Slavery is 
 almost as old as humanity, and it is hardly to be wondered 
 at that it should have prevailed in ancient times, when men 
 were split up into thousands of small communities, ever at 
 war with one another, and each anxious to bring its rivals 
 into bondage and to make them useful as bondmen. But 
 the worst form of it is of tolerably modern growth, and 
 through nearly three centuries had England for its chief 
 caterer. 
 
 The cruelties practised by the Spaniards upon their 
 Indian subjects in the New World, and their prompt effect 
 in exterminating the poor wretches in some districts, and in 
 greatly thinning them in all the rest, are well known. Very 
 soon it became necessary to import fresh slaves ; and even 
 Las Casas, the great champion of the Indians, saw no harm 
 in subjecting African negroes to the treatment from, which 
 he sought earnestly to save the aborigines of the New 
 World. The African slave-trade was begun by the great 
 and good Prince Heniy of Portugal, whose agent, Gonzalez 
 Baldoza, brought home, in 1442, ten negroes captured by 
 him in the course of a voyage, and they served as a curious 
 present to Pope Martin V. Immediately a Portuguese 
 association was formed for trading in negroes. In 1444 two 
 hundred were procured, and before long the annual average 
 was raised to seven or eight hundred. They were at first 
 made use of in Portugal and its near dependencies. As 
 soon as Portugal had possessions in America they were con- 
 veyed thither ; and, when these possessions were sufficiently
 
 Wandering Wares. 57 
 
 stocked, the Portuguese gladly sold their human wares to 
 the Spanish colonists. In and near the year 1539, from 
 ten to twelve thousand negroes were sold annually in the 
 slave-market of Lisbon. Thus the trade had grown very 
 considerable before the English began to supersede the 
 Portuguese in conducting it. 
 
 That beginning was made by Sir John Hawkins, an enter- 
 prising Plymouth merchant, who became famous as a sea- 
 captain, and did good service to his country in the Armada 
 fight in 1558, and in many other ways. Trading with or on 
 behalf of his father, William Hawkins, to the Canaries, he 
 was then, according to his first biographer, " amongst other 
 things, informed that negroes were very good merchandise 
 in Hispaniola, and that store of r^eproes might easily be had 
 upon the coast of Guinea." Wliile he was thinking of de- 
 voting himself to this new trade, a countryman, John Lock, 
 visited the coast of Guinea in 1554, and there bought five 
 negroes, described by him as " people of beastly living, 
 without God, law, religion, or commonwealth," whom he 
 brought to England. But this importation did not prove 
 profitable, and slave-buying seems not to have been re- 
 peated by Englishmen till 1562, when Hawkins set out on 
 his first voyage. At Sierra Leone, we are told, " partly by 
 the sword, and partly by peaceable means, he got into his 
 possession three hundred negroes at the least, besides other 
 merchandises which that country yieldeth." Crossing the 
 Atlantic, he found a ready market for his slaves, and he 
 returned to England with such good store of wealth that he 
 resolved to continue the business on a more extensive scale. 
 In that he was only hindered by the jealousy of Philip II_ 
 of Spain, who, not objecting to traffic in slaves, objected to 
 its profits falling into the hands of foreigners, and saw 
 shrewdly that, if the English once fell into the habit of visit- 
 ing the West Indies for any purpose at all, they would soon 
 attempt to make them their own. Therefore he angrily
 
 58 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 complained to Queen Elizabeth of Hawkins's proceedings ; 
 but Elizabeth, while promising that they should not be 
 repeated, so heartily approved of them — or, rather, of the 
 profit to be derived from them — that she entered into a sort 
 of partnership with Hawkins and enabled him to go clan- 
 destinely on another slave-trading expedition. That he did 
 in 1564. There was an exuberant piety about liim and his 
 associates, which contrasts very strangely with their unholy 
 work. They spent two months in slave-stealing — the Africans 
 being now unwilling to sell their kinsmen along the Guinea 
 coast — "going every day on shore to take the inhabitants, with 
 burning and spoiling of their towns." Once the negroes re- 
 taliated and attempted to surprise some of the English while 
 they were on shore; "but," says one of them, " God, who 
 worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by 
 him we escaped without danger." Again, the vessels having a 
 slow passage to the West Indies, there was scarcity of water. 
 " This pinched us all," it was said, " and that, which was 
 worst, put us in such fear, that many never thought to have 
 reached the Indies without great dearth of negroes and of 
 themselves ; but the Almighty God, which never sufifereth 
 his elect to perish, sent us the ordinary breeze." Hawkins 
 and his comrades really thought that in promoting the slave- 
 trade they were fulfilling a divinely-appointed mission. 
 They made money by it, at any rate, and were highly 
 commended on their return to England. Hawkins was 
 knighted by Queen Elizabeth, his crest, aptly chosen, being 
 a " demi-Moor, in his proper colour, bound and captive." 
 
 Hawkins's later exploits and those of his successors in 
 the trade need not be detailed. It flagged for a time, but 
 was vigorously resumed as soon as the southern portions of 
 what are now the United States began to prosper and to call 
 for slaves. A hundred years ago — and down to 1805 — about 
 100,000 negroes were annually exported from Africa to the 
 West Indies — 38,000 to the English islands, 31,000 to the
 
 Wandering Wares. 59 
 
 French, 25,000 to the Portuguese, 4,000 to the Dutch, and 
 2,000 to the Danish. Occasionally they found their way to 
 England. A newspaper advertisement of 1769 runs thus: — 
 " At the Bull and Gate, Holborn, a chestnut gelding, a tun 
 of whiskey, and a well-made, good-tempered black boy." 
 Another, of the same year, was : — "To be sold, a black girl, 
 the property of J. B., eleven years of age, who is extremely 
 handy, works at her needle tolerably well, is of an excellent 
 temper and willing disposition. Inquire of Mr. Owen, at 
 the Angel Inn, behind St. Clement's Church, in the Strand." 
 Happily, however, trade in slaves has now almost died 
 out. Bristol and Liverpool gi-ew rich by it ; but it was pro- 
 hibited by the British Parliament in 1807, Denmark and 
 the United States having previously condemned it ; though 
 the condemnation of the latter country was of small effect, 
 while slavery prevailed at home and there were English 
 ships to supply the market. A further triumph was gained 
 by the law emancipating all slaves in our colonies, in 1834; 
 and the like excellent result of the late American civil war 
 has brought the traffic verv nearlv to a close.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FAIRS. 
 
 The Place of Fairs in Commercial History — Their Origin — Early English 
 Fairs — Winchester Fair— St. Bartholomew Fair — The Fair at Beaucaire 
 — The Leipzig Fairs and their Book-trade — The Russian Fair at 
 Nijnii Novgorod — Indian and Arabian Fairs. 
 
 Wares generally wander now — when they can be said to 
 wander at all — to settled marts, ready all the year round to 
 receive them, and with permanent provisions for their re- 
 ception and exchange for other wares ; and much more 
 commonly, instead of wandering in search of buyers, they 
 are bought before they leave their starting-place, and, though 
 they travel half across the world, do so because it is known 
 that at their destination prompt use will be made of them. 
 But in the old stages of commerce, and in many nations 
 which still follow the old ways, it was, and is, quite different. 
 Before the requirements of foreign powers were understood, 
 or could be measured with any precision — when each district 
 ■ knew little more than that it had certain commodities which 
 it desired to sell somewhere, and that it needed certain 
 other commodities which must, if possible, be obtained 
 from some place or other — all trade was very much less 
 certain than it has now become. The first steps towards 
 lessening the uncertainty were made in the establishment 
 of fairs. 
 
 Fairs were held thousands of years ago, and are still 
 held in the East, of vastly greater importance than any that 
 have prevailed in our own country ; but there is no record 
 of their beginning, and we can only infer that it was sub- 
 stantially the same as that of the smaller fairs about whose
 
 Fairs. 6i 
 
 history we do possess details. It is even probable that 
 they had some sort of a reUgious origin, akin to that which 
 is clearly traceable in the fairs of Christendom. " In the 
 beginning of Holy Church," it is \vritten in an old legend, 
 " it was so, that people came at night-time to the church 
 with candles burning. They would wake and come with 
 light toward the church in 'their devotions. But after, they 
 fell to lechery and songs, dances, harping, piping, and also 
 to gluttony and sin, and so turned the holiness to cursed- 
 ness. Wherefore holy fathers ordained the people to leave 
 that waking" — a term still retained in the Irish 7vakes — 
 "and to fast at even." The evening fasts, however, were 
 nearly as unprofitable, in a religious point of view, as those 
 formerly held at night-time. The people who assembled 
 in the churchyards soon turned their meetings into op- 
 portunities for amusement, and laid the foundations of 
 those periodical fairs which, despite all the opposition of 
 the clergy and other lovers of good order, have held their 
 ground almost to the present day. 
 
 But the fairs, if in them praying soon gave way to 
 playing, were from the first put to another use. Bringing 
 together the inhabitants of different villages and parishes 
 who had itw other opportunities of meeting, they afforded 
 facilities, of which advantage was promptly taken, for inter- 
 changing local produce and manufactures ; and soon prudent 
 traders from a distance saw the benefit of bringing other 
 wares for sale, or for barter, in lieu of the native wares. In 
 this way fairs became markets, and thus acquired an im- 
 portance, which lasted long and proved very serviceable to 
 the advancement of commerce. They served also as sources 
 of revenue to the Crown, or to the Lord of the Manor in 
 which they were held. We read in " Domesday Book " of 
 one fair in. Bedfordshire that yielded ;^7o a year to Edward 
 the Confessor by way of toll, and of another at Taunton 
 which produced about fifty shillings.
 
 02 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Every important district of England soon had its annual 
 fair, to which all the neighbours brought their money, and 
 traders from all parts brought their commodities ; or to 
 which the traders brought the money, and the residents 
 brought the wool and other produce that they had been 
 storing up during the previous months. So it was, for 
 instance, in the neighbourhood of Leeds, at which during 
 many centuries the merchants of Hull and other ports 
 each year met the farmers and peasants of Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire, and large supplies of wool and sheep-skins were 
 obtained for transmission to the great manufacturing towns 
 of Flanders, where they were worked up, and in large 
 quantities sent back as clothing for sale in the localities 
 from which they had first come. 
 
 Occasional fairs were also held. Thus, in 1245, Henry 
 HI., with the avowed object of making money out of the 
 tolls, appointed a fair to be held at Westminster; and 
 ordered all the traders of London to close their shops 
 and bring their wares to it, and all other fairs throughout 
 the kingdom were to be suspended during fifteen days, that 
 there might be no hindrance to its success. Matthew 
 Paris, however, records that it failed through badness of 
 the weather. Rain fell in torrents during the whole fort- 
 night ; the dealers had to stand all day in the mud, with 
 the wind and rain beating upon them, waiting in vain for 
 customers, while their goods rotted in miserable tents. In 
 1249 there was another great fair ordained, and with 
 like failure. "In this year," says an old historian, "the 
 citizens of London, at the request of his Lordship the 
 King, not compelled and yet as though compelled, took 
 their wares to the fair at Westminster, on St. Edward's 
 Day; and also the citizens of many cities of England, 
 by precept of his Lordship the King, repaired thither 
 with their wares; all of whom made a stay at that fair 
 of full fifteen days, all the shops and warehouses of the
 
 Fairs. 63 
 
 merchants of London in the meantime being closed." Again 
 the weather was unfortunate, and the merchants suffered 
 great loss; "but the King did not mind the imprecations 
 of the people." 
 
 Winchester Fair was a great centre of trade during 
 several centuries. Winchester, now interesting for its anti- 
 quities, has lost the supremacy in commercial as well as 
 in political affairs that it once held among towns out of 
 London. In it the Roman colonists established the first 
 rude cloth manufacture of which England can boast, and 
 it continued to be for a long time the chief resort of dealers 
 in wool and woollen goods. License to hold, on St. Giles's 
 Hill, an annual fair, in which wool was the staple com- 
 modity, and in which commerce had precedence both of 
 religion and of sport, was granted to the bishop of the 
 diocese by William the Conqueror ; and its duration, at first 
 limited to one day, was gradually extended, until, by a 
 charter of Henry IL, it was allowed to last sixteen days. 
 During that period the shops of Southampton as well as 
 AVinchester were to be closed, and all wares sold within a 
 radius of seven miles outside of the fair were to be forfeited 
 to the bishop. Tolls were established on every bridge and 
 roadway, and the revenue thus levied on the goods taken 
 to the fair, and on the persons going to sell, was very con- 
 siderable. The great common was divided into temporary 
 streets— the Drapery, the Spicery, the Pottery, and so on. 
 On St. Giles's Eve — the eve of the fair — the mayor and 
 bailiffs of Winchester went out of office, and surrendered 
 the keys of the city to the bishop, who appointed his own 
 functionaries for the time being, and thus the Church had, 
 for the busiest fortnight in the year, exclusive control over 
 the commerce of the district. One object of this ecclesiastical 
 control, ostensibly at any rate, was a desire that the trade 
 might be done honestly and in a Christian spirit ; but the 
 object was not always attained. In that famous old allegory
 
 64 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of the fourteenth century, "The Vision of Piers Plough- 
 man,"" Covetousness says : — 
 
 "To Wye and to Winchester 
 
 I went to the fair, 
 With many manner merchandise, 
 
 As my master me hight ; 
 But it had been unsold 
 
 These seven years — 
 So God me help — 
 
 Had there not gone 
 The grace of guile 
 
 Among my chaffer." 
 
 The grace of guile abounded here as in other places ; 
 but Winchester Fair long had supremacy among the markets 
 of England, even after Winchester itself had lost much of 
 its commercial importance. Two circumstances led to its 
 decline. The first was the transference, near the time of 
 Edward III., of the woollen trade from Exeter, South- 
 ampton, and other southern ports, to Hull, Boston, and 
 other ports on the eastern coast. The other was the com- 
 mencement, at about the same time, of the annual visit, 
 paid by the Venetian traders' fleet to England. The fleet, 
 laden with precious wares from all lands, to be exchanged 
 for English wool, generally halted at Southampton. Thither, 
 and to the neighbourhood, flocked the merchants who had 
 hitherto gone to Winchester ; and there, during the stay of 
 the Italian visitors, a great irregular fair was held, which 
 thus came to be of far greater commercial value than old 
 Winchester Fair. 
 
 Almost the longest-lived, and certainly the most notable 
 of the English fairs, was that of St. Bartholomew, held in 
 Smithfield. Smithfield was veritably a smooth field, when 
 Rahere, the king's jester, became a monk, and obtained 
 from Henry I. permission to build thereon a priory conse- 
 crated to St. Bartholomew, and to hold an annual fair upon 
 the saint's day, the day before, and the day after. Wool was 
 irom the first the chief commodity sold here, and foreigners
 
 Fairs. 65 
 
 came from distant parts to be present at the great cloth- 
 fair of St. Bartholomew ; but very soon the sheep from 
 which the wool was taken, as well as other animals, came 
 to be sold at Smithfield, and this branch of trade survived 
 all the rest. The Smithfield cattle-market, altered from its 
 original condition, in being made a permanent instead of an 
 occasional institution, was only abolished a few years ago. 
 
 The importance of the fair in Queen Elizabeth's time 
 may be understood from a proclamation, issued in 1593, 
 ordering the suspension of its holiday-making in conse- 
 quence of the plague then raging in London, but sanctioning 
 the wholesale trade, as a thing too essential to be checked 
 even for fear of pestilence. " Whereas there was a general 
 resort of all kinds of people out of every part of her nation 
 to the said fair," the queen here says, " in the usual place 
 of Smithfield there shall be no manner of market for any 
 wares kept, nor any stalls or booths for any manner of 
 merchandise or for victuals suffered to be set up ; but the 
 open space shall be only occupied for the sale of horses 
 and cattle, and of stall wares — as butter, cheese, and such 
 like — in gross and not by retail, and for the vent of woollen 
 cloths, kerseys, and linen cloth, to be all sold in gross and 
 not by retail — the same shall be all brought within the close 
 of St. Bartholomew's ; and the sale and vent of leather 
 shall be kept in the outside of the ring of Smithfield, as 
 hath been accustomed, without erecting of any shops or 
 booths for the same or for any victualler or other occupier 
 of any wares whatsoever." 
 
 Five years after that, Paul Hentzner, a shrewd German 
 came to London, and went to the fair. "It is worthy of 
 observation," he said, "that every year, upon St. Bartho- 
 lomew's Day, when the fair is held, it is usual for the mayor, 
 attended by the twelve principal aldermen, to walk in a 
 neighbouring field, dressed in his scarlet gown, and about 
 his neck a gold chain, to which is hung a golden fleece, and, 
 
 F
 
 66 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 besides, that particular ornament which distinguishes the 
 most noble Order of the Garter. When the mayor goes out 
 of the precincts of the City, a sceptre and sword and a cap 
 are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal 
 aldermen — himself and they on horseback. Upon their 
 arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, where a tent is 
 pitched, the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a 
 time, and the conquerors receive their prizes from the magis- 
 trates. After this is over, a parcel of live rabbits are turned 
 loose among the crowd, which are pursued by a number of 
 boys, who endeavour to catch them, with all the noise they 
 can make. While we were at this show, one of our com- 
 pany had his pocket picked of his purse, which, without 
 doubt, was so cleverly taken from him by an Englishman, 
 who always kept very close to him, that he did not perceive 
 it." Paul Hentzner was struck, not by the serious com- 
 mercial value of the fair, but by its humorous and vicious 
 aspects ; and both these are shown with wonderful precision 
 in Ben Jonson's comedy of " Bartholomew Fair," written in 
 James I.'s time. Ben Jonson, always more of a moralist 
 than a comic writer, paints a lively picture of London's way 
 of holiday-making at the time of its great holiday; and 
 from that day till 1840, when the fair was put an end to, its 
 progress and its decline as a centre of popular amusement, 
 healthy and unhealthy, may be clearly traced. Some two 
 hundred years before that it had ceased to be a centre of 
 trade, though trade lasted longer here than at most other 
 English fairs. 
 
 A hundred years older than St. Bartliolomew Fair, yet 
 still full of life and importance, is the great French fair, 
 held between the 22nd and the 28th of July at Beaucaire, a 
 little town on the Rhone, and not far from its entrance into 
 the Gulf of Lyons. Founded in 1217, this fair was once 
 without an equal in Europe. Merchants from Marseilles 
 and other ports on the Mediterranean came hither with rich '
 
 Fairs. 67 
 
 stores of all the wealth brought from East, West, North, and 
 South by the trading-tleets of Venice and her rivals. To 
 meet them, came traders from all the inland towns, silk- 
 mercers from Lyons, wine-dealers from Macon and Dijon, 
 and representatives of every mart and factory that had any- 
 thing to buy or sell. A century ago the average attendance 
 was 100,000, and the wares that changed hands were worth 
 more than 150,000,000 francs. At the present day the 
 commercial value of the fair is hardly a fifth as great, but 
 still some 50,000 persons assemble to buy and sell and 
 make merry with their friends ; soldiers come from Nimes 
 and Tarascon to keep order, and fair-law, which was once 
 nearly the same all over Europe, is dispensed by the prefect 
 of the department. 
 
 More important are the great fairs of Leipzig, famous 
 resorts for trade in everything, but having books for their 
 special commodity. Leipzig furnishes a signal instance of 
 the way in which fairs help to enrich the locality in which 
 they are held, and to benefit all the world. An old Slavo- 
 nian village, which received its name from the lime-trees — 
 lipsk — that grew around it, Leipzig was made a chartered 
 town by Margrave Otho the Rich, who fortified it, and 
 granted a license for the holding of two fairs every year — one 
 at Easter and one at Michaelmas. That was in the twelfth 
 century. In 1458 a New Year's fair was also authorised, and 
 the three fairs were confirmed by the Emperor Maximilian 
 in 1507, eight days being appointed as the limit of each, 
 though they generally lasted for three weeks or more. They 
 soon became great centres of resort — the Easter fair being 
 the busiest — for traders of every land and in every ware. 
 Cloth goods, glass, and leather from Saxony and the States 
 of the Zollverein ; cottons, woollens, and hardwares from 
 England; silk, shawls, lace, and jewellery from France; 
 glass, plated goods, and broadcloths from Austria ; cloth- 
 work and the like from Switzerland; toys from Nuremberg; 
 
 F 2
 
 68 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 furs from Russia ; and articles from the distant East, from 
 America, and from Australia, here still change hands as 
 they have done for seven centuries ; and the famous city- 
 is thronged by representatives of nearly every country 
 in the world during its busy holiday-time. The fair has, 
 like all others, decayed since railways have begun to open 
 up new ways of commerce ; but some 40,000,000 lbs. of 
 goods, of all sorts not including books, are now bought and 
 sold in the three fairs of each year, and the value of the 
 trade done at Easter is said to exceed ^j^j, 000,000. 
 
 The book-trade of Leipzig stands by itself. Frankfort 
 had an ancient fair, vieing in importance with that of 
 Leipzig; and thither from 1473, if ^ot earlier, the book- 
 sellers of Antwerp, Paris, Basle, and other great printing 
 places, went to sell their wares. In i486, however, the 
 Archbishop of Mayence established a censorship of the 
 press throughout his see, and this proved so vexatious to 
 the booksellers who sought buyers in Frankfort, that they 
 transferred their market to Leipzig, and made use, especially, 
 of its great Easter fair. The fame of the Leipzig University, 
 founded in 1409, and soon a great seat of learning and free 
 thought, greatly helped their traffic. Their first coming 
 seems to have been in 1545. In 1589, 362 new works were 
 offered for sale, and in 16 16 that number was exactly 
 doubled. The special business done in fair-time naturally 
 encouraged the establishment of permanent shops and 
 printing-presses in Leipzig. In 16 16 there were fourteen 
 booksellers and printers in the town, Frankfort having eight, 
 Nuremberg seven, and Jena only four. The local traders 
 in that year produced 153 new books, while 57 were brought 
 from Venice, 47 from France, 38 from Holland, 22 from 
 Switzerland, and 4 from England. The Thirty Years' War 
 checked the trade, both in books and in all other articles, 
 for a time, but it revived and made steady progress with the 
 restoration of peace. The new books sold at the fair in
 
 Fairs. 69 
 
 1 7 16 were 558 in number. In 17S9 they had risen to 2,115, 
 more than a seventh being produced in the town. Soon 
 after that Napoleon's wars caused fresh confusion ; but the 
 taste for hterature was by that time too strong to be sup- 
 pressed, and the fair prospered in spite of the terrible three 
 days' battle at Leipzig in October, 1S13, when Napoleon 
 was totally defeated by the allied armies under Schwartzen- 
 berg. In 18 14 the number of new books brought out at 
 the fair was 2,529; in 1830 it was 5,926. It now varies 
 from 8,000 to 10,000. The trade, however, is no longer 
 limited to fair-time. All important publishers in Germany, 
 and many in other countries, have agents at Leipzig, and 
 consign to it large quantities of their new books as they 
 appear, ready for sale at any period of the year. Wholesale 
 traffic is still chiefly carried on at fair-time, when booksellers 
 from all parts meet together and take counsel concerning 
 the progress of their trade. Since 1834 Leipzig has had a 
 handsome Book Exchange, and in the town there are now 
 about 120 publishing-houses, and 260 printing-presses, 14 
 of which are worked by steam. 
 
 As we travel eastward we find fairs more numerous 
 and more antique in their character. A great Russian fair 
 is now held during six or eight weeks each autumn at 
 Nijnii Novgorod, whither it migrated from Makarieff in 1817. 
 This famous market began at Kasan, when it was the Tartar 
 capital, and, after many centuries' existence, was removed 
 to Makarieff, about fifty miles from Nijnii, in 1648. At that 
 time the fair lasted five days, and was the principal meeting- 
 place of caravans coming from the far East, and of merchants 
 from Russia, Germany, and other districts of the West. It 
 grew with the growth of trade. In 1750, for the accom- 
 modation of its visitors, the Government built a huge 
 bazaar, comprising 800 temporary shops. These being 
 soon filled to overflowing, the Emperor Alexander caused 
 a new bazaar, with 1,400 compartments, to be erected;
 
 70 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 but even this space was insufficient, and i,8oo outside 
 sheds had to be put up. All these being made of wood 
 and canvas, a spark set them all on fire in August, 1816, 
 just before the close of the fair ; and, instead of causing 
 the old site to be re-covered, the emperor transferred the 
 fair to Nijnii Novgorod, an old, but tih then an insigni- 
 ficant town, conveniently placed at the junction of the Oka 
 and the Volga, and easy of access to the White Sea, the 
 Gulf of Finland, and the Caspian. 
 
 Here a vast stone town was erected, containing twenty- 
 five hundred shops, each with a sleeping-apartment attached 
 to it, and provision was made for less securely-built sheds 
 outside. Five thousand or more shops are now used by the 
 250,000 or 300,000 persons who flock to the fair from all 
 quarters ; and during the few weeks of their attendance the 
 fair-city contrasts strangely with the bleak desolation that 
 prevails throughout the months before and after. Thirteen 
 gay covered streets furnish a promenade nearly thirty miles 
 long. "The shops, generally very handsome," says a tra- 
 veller, " extend, in some instances, from street to street, so 
 as to have two fronts. They present nothing of the con- 
 fusion of a fair. The goods of every kind are as neatly 
 arranged as in the shops of a large capital. The tea quarter 
 is one of the most interesting in the fair, not only from the 
 number of Chinese seen in it, but also on account of the 
 large demand for the article. The Russians are, after the 
 English, the most inveterate tea-drinkers in Europe, and the 
 tea sold at Nijnii is said to be the finest imported from 
 China. It is certainly the most fragrant and perfumed, and, 
 therefore, to the English palate generally, perhaps not so 
 agreeable. It is introduced into Russia by Kiatka, on the 
 frontiers of China, a very insignificant place, and separated 
 from it and the Chinese town of Mamaia by a small brook. 
 At this first depot it is exchanged for goods, and is thence 
 transported, partly by land and partly by water, to Nijnii.
 
 Fairs. 71 
 
 From 90,000 to 100,000 chests are annually imported. Half 
 of these remain in Siberia, and reach Moscow by sledges 
 during the winter, while the remainder are sold at this fair. 
 Next in importance is the quarter of the Persians, situated 
 in a suburb on the opposite side of an arm of the Oka, in 
 which are sold costly shawls, carpets, and silk pieces. Then 
 there is the quarter for the dealers in skins and furs. Here 
 the outside garment of nearly every beast that claims the 
 Arctic Circle for a home may be seen, from a sable to a bear ; 
 and a pelisse of the choicest skins of the latter will fetch as 
 much as ;!^5oo. Near this is the quarter for the sale of 
 Siberian iron — a perfect metal town. One may walk for 
 nearly half a league surrounded by every species of bar-iron, 
 palisades, pots, agricultural and other instruments." Goods 
 worth from ^7,000,000 to ^8, 000,000 — about three-fourths 
 of them being Russian — are sold annually at this monster 
 fair ; and it differs from most other fairs in being a market 
 for sober trade, in which no provision is made for the 
 amusement of the visitors, tea being the most exciting 
 beverage, and the goods offered for sale the only sight, 
 provided. 
 
 With most of the thousand and one fairs that are held in the 
 districts east and south of Nijnii Novgorod, in India and on 
 to China, in Persia and down to Arabia, it is different. Here, 
 generally, the old religious associations of the fair are strictly 
 maintained. " The Arabian Nights' Entertainments " show 
 how closely trade and religion are blended ; and the vivid 
 pictures there presented are true of earlier and of later times, 
 of Brahmin as well as of Moslem lands. At Hurdwar, " the 
 gate of the Ganges," hundreds of thousands of pilgrims 
 assemble to perform their devotions by the sacred river, and 
 use their meeting for carrying on a lively trade, apparently 
 identical in manner with that which prevailed long before 
 the Christian era ; and it is the same at Mecca. Piety and 
 profit go hand in hand, and the profit, at any rate, is great.
 
 72 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 These religious fairs mainly help to keep in vigorous con- 
 dition the primitive trade which is in vogue among millions 
 of people, and it is hardly altered in character by the large 
 admixture of Manchester and Birmingham goods with the 
 native wares, that are fashioned and disposed of in ways 
 that were old when Manchester was a bog and Birniingiiam 
 a marsli.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SINEWS OF TRADE. 
 
 Money — Primitive Banking— Athenian Money-lenders — Jews and Lom- 
 bards — Early English Bankers— Sir William de la Pole and others — 
 'The Goldsmiths as Bankers— George Heriot — The Rise of Regular 
 Banking — Origin of the Bank of England— Its Operations and History- 
 Bank-note Forgers and their Punishment — ^Joint-Stock Banks — Private 
 Bankers— The Woods of Gloucester— Smith, Payne, and Smiths — 
 Jones, Lloyd, and Company— Joseph Denison— The Scotch Banks and 
 their Specialities — Coutts; Drummond ; and Herries— Modern Trade 
 in Money. 
 
 "A SIMPLE invention it was," says Mr. Carlyle, "in the old- 
 world grazier, sick of lugging his slow ox about the country- 
 till he got it bartered for corn or oil, to take a piece of 
 leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an 
 ox, pccus, put it in his pocket, and call it pecimia, money. 
 Yet hereby did barter grow sale ; the leather money is now 
 golden and paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled ; 
 for there are Rothschilds and English national debts ; and 
 whoso has sixpence is sovereign, to the length of sixpence, 
 over all men — commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to 
 teach him, kings to mount guard over him, to the length of 
 sixpence." The first use of money marks an epoch in the 
 history of commerce — is, indeed, the beginning of commerce 
 as we now understand the term, and in all its subsequent 
 progress has served as its pivot or fulcrum. If money is 
 " the sinews of war," it is that because, in a much more real 
 sense, it is the sinews of trade. 
 
 The banker's calling is both new and old. As a distinct 
 branch of commerce, and a separate agent in the advance- 
 ment of civilisation, its history hardly extends over three
 
 74 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 hundred years ; but, in a rude and undeveloped sort of way, 
 it has existed during some dozens of centuries. It began 
 almost with the beginning of society. No sooner had men 
 learnt to adopt a portable and artificial equivalent for their 
 commodities, and thus to buy and sell and get gain more 
 easily, than the more careful of them began to gather up 
 their money in little heaps, or in great heaps, if they were 
 fortunate enough. These heaps were, by the Romans, 
 called montcs — mounds, or banks — and henceforth every 
 money-maker was a primitive banker. The prudent farmers 
 and shopkeepers in out-of-the-way villages, who now lock up 
 their savings in strong boxes, or conceal them in places 
 where they are least likely to be found by thieves, show us 
 how the richest and most enterprising men of far-off times, 
 whether in Anglo-Saxon or mediaeval Britain, ancient Greece 
 and Rome, China or Judaea, made banks for themselves 
 before the great advantages of joint-stock heaping up of 
 money were discovered. When and in what precise way 
 that discovery was made antiquarians have yet to decide. 
 It is enough for us to know that everywhere, as soon as 
 commerce and patriotism had engendered enough fellow- 
 feeling and community of interest among groups of men 
 and sections of society, banking began to pass out of its first 
 rude stage, and to advance towards the condition in which 
 we now find it. 
 
 Perhaps Jews and Greeks set the example to the modern 
 world. Every rich Athenian had his treasurer or money- 
 keeper, and whenever any particular treasurer proved him- 
 self a good accountant and safe banker, it is easy to under- 
 stand how, from having one master, he came to have several, 
 until he was able to cliange his condition of slavery for the 
 humble rank of a freedman, and then to use his freedom to 
 such good purpose that he became an influential member of 
 the community. Having many people's money entrusted to 
 his care, he received good payment for his responsible duty,
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 75 
 
 and he quickly learned to increase his wealth by lending out 
 his own savings, if not his employers' capital, at the highest 
 rate of interest that he could obtain. The Greek bankers 
 were chiefly famous as money-lenders, and interest at thirty-six 
 per cent, per annum was not considered unusually exorbitant 
 among them. For their charges they were often blamed by 
 spendthrifts, satirists, and others. " It is said," complains 
 Plutarch, " that hares bring forth and nourish their young at 
 the same time that they conceive again ; but the debts of 
 these scoundrels and savages bring forth before they con- 
 ceive, for they give and immediately demand again ; they 
 take away their money at the same time as they put it out ; 
 they place at interest what they receive as interest. The 
 Messenians have a proverb : ' There is a Pylos before Pylos, 
 and yet another Pylos still.' So of the usurers it may be 
 said, * There is a profit before profit, and yet another profit 
 still ; ' and then, forsooth, they laugh at philosophers, Avho 
 say that nothing can come out of nothing ! " 
 
 The Greek bankers and money-lenders, those of Delos 
 and Delphi especially, are reported to have used the temples 
 as treasure-houses, and to have taken the priests into part- 
 nership in their money-making. Some arrangement of that 
 sort seems to have existed among the Jews, and to have 
 aroused the anger of Jesus when he went into the Temple of 
 Jerusalem, " and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, 
 and said unto them. It is written. My house shall be called 
 the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of 
 thieves." 
 
 Bankers' or money-changers' tables were famous institu- 
 tions all over the civilised world of the ancients. Livy tells 
 how, in 308 B.C., if not before, they were to be found in the 
 Roman Forum, and later Latin authors make frequent 
 allusions to banking transactions of all sorts. They talk of 
 deposits and securities, bills of exchange and drafts to order, 
 cheques and bankers' books, as glibly as a modern mer-
 
 76 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 chant. But these things were nearly forgotten during the 
 dark ages, until the Jews, true to the money-making pro- 
 pensities that characterised them while they still had a 
 country of their own, set the fashion of money-making and 
 of banking in all the countries of Europe through which they 
 were dispersed. 
 
 Their first customers and their first disciples were the 
 Italian merchants who made Venice, Florence, and Genoa 
 great during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare's picture of the 
 relations between Shylock and Antonio — historically true, 
 in its broad outline at any rate, like everything else in the 
 writings of our great dramatist — has already been referred 
 to. The young Italian merchants, however, soon became 
 formidable rivals of the older Jewish traders. In England, 
 under the Plantagenets — and it was the same in all the 
 mediseval states of Continental Europe — Jews and Italians 
 settled themselves as traders in everything, but especially in 
 money, wherever any sort of fruitful commerce was carried 
 on. The kings of England used them as cashiers, pawn- 
 brokers, and the like, until their own subjects were suf- 
 ficiently trained in monetary arts to take their place ; and 
 the royal examples were followed by all manner of folk who 
 had need of gold, and credit enough to obtain it. Old 
 Jewry and Lombard Street still mark the districts in London 
 that were frequented by these foreigners between the twelfth 
 and the fifteenth centuries. Therein, and in the Old Jewries 
 and Lombard Streets of York, Hull, Bristol, Exeter, and 
 other trading towns, were hoarded up the treasures for which 
 monarchs often pawned their crown jewels and crown lands, 
 once or twice even their crowns themselves, and for which, 
 yet more frequently, gay courtiers and spendthrift noblemen 
 were willing to pledge their trinkets and mortgage their title- 
 deeds. 
 
 The Jews and Lombards in England, however, were 
 only bankers in the sense of money-lenders, and the Eng-
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 77 
 
 lishmen who succeeded them were of the same character 
 down to the seventeenth century. The first great Enghsh 
 banker, in this hmited acceptation of the term, was Sir 
 WilHam de la Pole, a famous merchant in Hull before he 
 was a banker, and styled mercaior noster in the charters by 
 which Edward III. made recompense for the great services 
 done by him to the Crown and the State. Needing, for the 
 prosecution of his fighting in Scotland and France, more 
 money than Parliament was willing to grant, Edward bor- 
 rowed from De la Pole, and, through him, from scores of 
 other merchants. " Know," it was written in one of 
 Edward's charters, issued in 1339, while he was in France, 
 "that our faithful and well-beloved subject, William de la 
 Pole, presently after our coming to the parts on this side 
 the sea, hearing and understanding that our affairs were, 
 for want of money, very dangerously deferred, and being 
 sensible of our wants, came in person unto us, and to us 
 and our followers made and procured to be made such a 
 supply of money that by his means our honour hath been 
 preserved. The said William undertook the payment of 
 great sums for us to divers persons, for which he engaged 
 himself by bonds and obligations, and if he had not done 
 so we could not by any means have been supplied, but 
 must necessarily, with a great deal of reproach, have aban- 
 doned our journey and designs." That is only one of many 
 documents extant, showing in what way William de la Pole 
 acted as banker to King Edward III. He lent him all his 
 own money, and all that he could borrow from other rich 
 men, and added to his rude but efficient services as banker 
 services equally rude but equally efficient, as paymaster- 
 general and chief commissariat officer to the army, collector 
 of the King's rents, and purveyor to the Court. For the 
 sums which he had advanced, and for the interest due to 
 him thereupon, he was generally repaid by a grant of 
 customs and excises, either in all England or in certain
 
 78 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 parts of it, the whole proceeds of which he was authorised to 
 appropriate until his charges were defrayed. 
 
 What Sir William de la Pole was to Edward III. Sir 
 Richard Whittington was to Henry IV. and Henry V., and 
 Sir Thomas Gresham to Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, 
 and these famous men were only representatives of an 
 irregular class of bankers, who enriched themselves and 
 added greatly to the wealth and welfare of England during 
 a dozen generations. All merchants were then to some 
 extent bankers, but the trade of banking in its primitive 
 condition was especially a part of the goldsmith's calling. 
 This was only natural when gold was money much more 
 exclusively than it is now. The Goldsmiths' guild in London 
 was started early in the twelfth century, if not sooner, 
 although its first extant charter was granted by Edward III., 
 in 1327. Its members were great money-lenders and 
 pawnbrokers, until the company, like the other old City 
 charities, gave way as an active commercial agency to other 
 associations better fitted to meet the needs of the time. 
 
 The work of the goldsmiths as bankers is well illustrated 
 in the career of George Heriot, the worthy founder of 
 Heriot's Hospital, in Edinburgh, and the "jingling Geordie" 
 of Sir Walter Scott's " Fortunes of Nigel." Heriot, born in 
 1563, rose from small beginnings to be the greatest gold- 
 smith and jeweller in Edinburgh, while James I. of England 
 was still only James VI. of Scotland. His shop, adjoining 
 St. Giles's Kirk, existed till 1809. It was only about seven 
 feet square, but large enough to hold the honest tradesman 
 and the great customers who came to it to buy trinkets, or 
 to pawn them for money to be spent in new luxuries. One 
 of his best customers was King James, famous for his love 
 of extravagant finery. The story goes that once, when 
 Heriot had gone to Holyrood House to show some new 
 treasure that he had for sale, he found the king warming 
 himself before a perfumed fire, which he praised for its
 
 The Sinews of Trade. yg 
 
 sweetness. " Ay, ay," answered the king, " and it is costly," 
 Heriot replied that if the king would go to his shop he 
 would show him one yet costlier. " Indeed, and I will," 
 exclaimed the monarch ; but when they had reached the 
 goldsmith's booth, King James found only a few poor flames 
 flickering in the forge. " Is this, then, your fine fire ? " he 
 asked. " Wait a little," answered the merchant, " till I get, 
 the fuel ;" and then, opening his strong box, he took from it 
 a bond for ;^2,ooo which he had lent to the king, and 
 threw it among the embers. " Now," he asked, "whether 
 is your Majesty's fire or mine the better?" "Yours, most 
 certainly, Master Heriot," was the answer. 
 
 If that anecdote is true, Heriot could afford thus to 
 humour his royal patron. He grew rich by selling jewellery 
 to James and his wife, Anne of Denmark ; and if the pay- 
 ment was slow, it was heightened at last by the interest 
 charged for the delay. Wealth came to him in yet greater 
 abundance when, immediately after his sovereign's acces- 
 sion to the English throne, he followed him to London and 
 set up a large shop, " foranent the New Exchange," where 
 he became the most notable of the irregular bankers then 
 to be found in London. 
 
 The next King of England unintentionally increased the 
 banking occupations of the goldsmiths. The Royal Mint, 
 then within the precincts of the Tower of London, had long 
 been used by the merchants as a place of snfe custody for 
 their surplus money, till 1640, when Charles I., sorely in 
 need of funds with which to raise an army against the rebel- 
 lious Scots, took possession of about p/^200, 000 then lodged 
 with the Master of the Mint, regardless of the indignant 
 complaints made by the owners. From that time the Mint 
 ceased to be employed as a bank of deposit, but the 
 troublous state of the country-^just entering upon civil 
 war — rendered something of the sort more necessary than 
 ever. The example of one or two who entrusted their
 
 So The Romance of Trade. 
 
 savings to the goldsmiths, accustomed to the guardianship 
 of large amounts of treasure, was quickly followed by others. 
 Country gentlemen, also, many of them far away from their 
 homes, and in constant risk of losing all the property that 
 they had about them, adopted the same course, if they did 
 not do more, and employed the goldsmiths as attorneys, to 
 collect as well as to lock up their rents. This new arrange- 
 ment found fovour the more rapidly through the willingness 
 of the goldsmiths to pay interest for the money placed in 
 their hands ; and long before the time of the Restoration 
 they found themselves placed in a position very similar to 
 that of private bankers of the present day. Some of them, 
 indeed, were actually founders of banking-houses that now 
 exist. William Wheeler, one of the number, left his shop 
 in Fleet Street, next door to Temple Bar, to his son-in-law, 
 Francis Child, known — probably because he was the first to 
 throw aside the goldsmiths' trade, and make banking his 
 only business — as " the father of the profession," and the 
 same site is still occupied by the establishment which he 
 made famous. James Hore, or Hoare, settled first in 
 Cheapside, and afterwards in Fleet Street, was, in like 
 manner, the builder up of the business that yet bears his 
 name. 
 
 That improvement upon the old arrangement was not 
 altogether beneficial. Giving paper bonds for the vast sums 
 of money that they received, just as they had been in the 
 habit of receiving paper bonds for the money that they lent, 
 the goldsmiths soon had half of the actual coin of the land 
 in their keeping, and the paper equivalents for it, issued 
 by them, came to be everpvhere used as money ; thereby 
 inordinate power was placed in their hands, and great risk 
 was incurred by those who made them their cash-keepers. 
 The money entrusted to them was often lent out by them 
 at high rates of interest, and if they foiled through their over- 
 speculation, their clients were the chief sufferers. It was
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 8i 
 
 partly to lessen this danger, and to provide merchants with 
 a safe means of investing their capital, and with a trust- 
 worthy machinery for lending and borrowing money, that 
 the Bank of England was started in 1694. 
 
 Venice had had a public bank since the latter part of 
 the twelfth century ; one had been established in Genoa in 
 1345 \ and others were opened at Amsterdam, Hamburg, 
 and Rotterdam early in the seventeenth century, in each 
 of which private speculators, in return for special services 
 rendered to the State, in lending it money and collecting 
 its revenues, received from it special privileges and pro- 
 tection in their financial relations with their fellow-citizens. 
 The Bank of Amsterdam was most prosperous when 
 William III. became King of England, and from it William 
 Paterson to a great extent derived the suggestions which 
 he offered to Parliament in 1591. In that year, Paterson — 
 a merchant whose philanthropy and political wisdom were 
 greatly in advance of his own interests, and who, accordingly, 
 became a pauper through his desire to benefit others — was 
 examined before the House of Commons as to the best way 
 of collecting and managing public loans, the National Debt 
 being then anew thing, and its amount of ^^3, 000,000 being 
 apparently an overwhelming burthen to the country. He 
 proposed that, in lieu of the occasional and unsettled mode 
 of borrowing hitherto adopted by the Government, a fixed 
 sum of ^1,000,000, at six per cent, interest, should be 
 subscribed by a corporation of merchants, and converted into 
 a permanent fund, to be employed partly in meeting the 
 pressing claims upon the State, and partly in forming a 
 public bank, " to exchange such current bills as should be 
 brought to be enlarged, the better to give credit thereunto, 
 and make the said bills the better to circulate." The sug- 
 gestion was demurred to by Parliament, and the old 
 straggling ways of public borrowing continued. " 'WTien 
 the Treasury was empty," as Macaulay says, " when the
 
 82 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 taxes came in slowly, and when the pay of soldiers and 
 sailors was in an-ear, it was necessary for the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside 
 and Cornhill, attended by the Lord Mayor and by the 
 aldermen, to make up a sum by borrowing ;2^ioo from this 
 hosier and ;^2oo from that ironmonger," and for these 
 paltry loans he had to pay such interest as spendthrifts now 
 pay to extortionate Jews upon accommodation bills. The 
 National Debt was thus raised from ^^3, 000,000 to 
 ^6,000,000 in three years; and in 1694 the Government 
 found itself in such embarrassment that it was forced to 
 adopt Paterson's project substantially, though not quite as 
 he planned it, for a Bank of England. To all who joined 
 in raising a fund of ;^i, 200,000, permission was granted to 
 form themselves into a company, with power to deal in bills 
 of exchange, bullion, and forfeited bonds ; and, contrary to 
 the expectations of its enemies, who combated the proposal 
 zealously both in Parliament and in the Cabinet, the money 
 was collected and the Bank was established in the course of 
 ten days. Thereby, and through the persistent advocacy of 
 one great man, whose greatness is now almost forgotten, 
 England, then perplexed with a costly war, was saved from 
 bankruptcy, and an entire and most beneficial revolution was 
 effected in the financial history of the country. 
 
 For two-and-thirty years the Bank of England had tem- 
 porary lodging in the old Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry. 
 There the business was conducted, in one long room, by 
 the directors and fifty-four subordinates. "In one of my late 
 rambles," wrote Addison, in 17 11, "I looked into the great 
 hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to 
 see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other 
 members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several 
 stations, according to the parts they act in that just and 
 regular economy." The "just and regular economy" has 
 grown with the rapid growth of the Bank in subsequent
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 83 
 
 years. In 1736 it had a house of its oa\ti in a modest 
 structure set up in Threadneedle Street, and the building 
 has been added to from time to time till its present pro- 
 portions have been attained. It now covers an .area of 
 124,000 square feet, and gives employment to more than a 
 thousand clerks, distributed over some two hundred offices 
 and apartments. It has ten country branches, giving occu- 
 pation to about a hundred and fifty other clerks. The 
 governor, deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, who 
 manage this great machinery, so manage it as by it to 
 regulate, to a very great extent, all the commercial affairs of 
 England, and even of every other country. The Thursday 
 meetings in the famous Bank Parlour test and register the 
 financial barometer of the whole world ; and their decisions 
 have vastly more influence upon the happiness and activity 
 of men than any resolutions of cabinet councils, or any pro- 
 clamations of kings or emperors. 
 
 Four great duties are performed by the Bank of Eng- 
 land. It has the custody of about;!^23, 000,000 in gold com 
 and bullion ; it manufactures and keeps in circulation 
 about ^38,000,000 in bank-notes ; it has the management 
 of the National Debt, now amounting to ;^74o,ooo,ooo ; 
 and it serves as the collecting-house and centre of distribu- 
 tion for the country's revenue and expenditure, being some 
 ^70,000,000 a year. Each duty involves an immensity of 
 detail, and has to be fulfilled with a nicety that can hardly 
 be conceived. 
 
 The coin and bullion are, of course, the property of 
 individual owners, who choose this as the safest resting- 
 place for their wealth. The bullion sent from Australia 
 or any other part of the world, if not required for manufac- 
 turing purposes, can, as soon as it has been purified and 
 assayed to the sovereign standard of twenty-two carats, be 
 either sent to the Mint, there to be coined into money, or 
 lodged in the Bank. The Mint returns ^3 17s. lo.Ul. for
 
 8/\. The Romance of Trade. 
 
 each ounce of gold handed to it ; but the delay that occurs 
 before the couiage is completed makes it cheaper to dispose 
 of the bullion at once to the Bank, which immediately pays 
 at the rate of ^3 17 s. gd. for each ounce deposited. The 
 bullion so received is stowed away in bars, each weighing 
 about 16 lbs., and worth about ;!^8oo, until occasion arrives 
 for turning it into current money. The relative amount of 
 coin and bullion, as well as the quantity of both sorts of 
 gold in the Bank, is of course for ever fluctuating ; but the 
 average of both is between ^22,000,000 and ^23,000,000. 
 ■Counting rapidly through ten hours every day, a man would 
 be occupied for nearly three years in counting that number 
 of sovereigns. In the Bank, however, the counting is done 
 by machine. The weight of any given number of sovereigns 
 is known, and to count a thousand or a million is as easy 
 as to count five. It is only necessary for accuracy in the 
 calculation that the coin shall be of proper weight, and as 
 this is also, on other grounds, very necessary, every sovereign 
 is periodicaUy tested by a weighing-machine, which is a 
 marvel of ingenuity and accuracy. This machine was 
 invented by Mr. Cotton, a Bank director, in 1844. It is a 
 square brass box, at the top of which is a long trough, filled 
 with sovereigns, which drop one after another upon a 
 balance, carefully guarded from currents of air and every- 
 thing that can vitiate the process. If the coin is of correct 
 weight it falls into one box, if it is faulty it is jerked into 
 another. Since 1844 not a single error has been found in 
 the working of this machine. Twelve of them are in con- 
 stant operation at the Bank, and they weigh about 50,000 
 gold pieces every day. 
 
 That is the only mechanical process to which gold money 
 is subjected at the Bank, its manufacture being carried on 
 at the Mint ; but paper money is all made in Threadneedle 
 Street. About 220,000 quires of paper, carefully prepared 
 in Hampshire, are consumed each year in the printing of
 
 The Sinews of Trade. S5 
 
 bank-notes, of which an exact equivalent for the gold bullion 
 stowed away is kept in circulation, with the addition of 
 ;^i 5,000,000 for which there is no actual gold security. 
 That sum represents an accumulation of debts due to the 
 Bank by the Government, amounting to about ;^i 1,000,000, 
 and a sum of ^4,000,000 for which the Bank holds 
 Government securities. The ^15,000,000 represent all the 
 paper currency of the country in lieu of which the Bank 
 does not issue actual coin or bullion ; and the interest upon 
 this floating money pays all the expenses of the Bank, and 
 reduces the taxation necessary to meet the national expen- 
 diture. 
 
 It was, as we have seen, mainly to relieve the State of 
 the embarrassments caused by its debt that the Bank of 
 England was established. The National Debt, amounting 
 to some ;!^6, 000,000 when the Bank was started, has grown 
 mightily since then. Every great war has added to it. The 
 ten years' strife with France and Spain, ending with 1750, 
 caused an addition of ^31,500,000; and the expenses 
 settled upon posterity by the fighting of the next seven 
 years amounted to nearly ^{^60, 000, 000. The American 
 war, prior to 1786, cost about ;^9o,ooo,ooo ; and the long 
 and ill-managed war Avith France under George III. and 
 Pitt, fruitful in domestic misery of every sort, causing star- 
 vation to the poor and poverty to the rich, increased the 
 debt by ^600,000,000. When peace was declared in 1815, 
 it amounted to .^861,000,000, and the retrenchments of 
 more than half a century have only reduced it by a quarter. 
 The bulk of this debt is known as Consolidated Stock, or 
 Consols, of which there are some 270,000 holders, for each 
 of whom a separate account has to be kept, and interest 
 reckoned up and paid every half year. All this business, 
 complicated by frequent transfers, has to be conducted by 
 the Bank of England, which receives in payment for the 
 trouble ^300 for every /^i,coo,ooo of debt. The payment
 
 86 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 covers all losses through accidents and fraud. The defal- 
 cation of Astlett cost the Bank ^340,000, and its losses by 
 the frauds of Fauntleroy were still greater. 
 
 The operations of the Bank in collecting and distributing 
 the national revenue are quite as complicated. All the 
 receipts of tax-gatherers, and all the proceeds of custom 
 and excise duties, and other sources of revenue, find their 
 way into the Bank; and, in return, it has to meet the 
 demands of all the public departments for their several 
 expenses, these demands being frequently made long before 
 the funds to meet them have been received. In 1810 the 
 nation's account with the Bank was overdrawn some 
 ;^i 6,000,000, and in 18 14 the balance on the wrong side 
 amounted to ^"30,000,000. 
 
 Being thus the banker of the nation, the Bank of England 
 is also the banker of all other bankers, each of whom keeps 
 an account with it, and draws from it each day so much 
 money as is required for the day's transactions. The mighty 
 establishment, moreover, acts for private individuals as other 
 bankers do. It keeps some 5,000 private accounts for 
 millionaires, merchants, and shopkeepers. 
 
 The stages by which this wonderful advance upon 
 William Paterson's project have been reached are curious 
 and instructive. The history of the Bank of England, which 
 has been told in lengthy volumes, and need here be only 
 very briefly referred to, includes nearly the whole financial 
 history of England during the last hundred and seventy 
 years. With every great war, with every administrative 
 change, and with every commercial crisis, it has been 
 intimately connected. Its success was not achieved without 
 many hard struggles, and its prosperity has kept even pace 
 with the prosperity of the nation. 
 
 Its first difficulties arose from the opposition of other 
 banking corporations, of which many were started while it 
 was in its infancy, some to cause serious injury by their bad
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 87 
 
 trading, and consequent loss to those who entrusted their 
 money to them. For selfish reasons, but also for the benefit 
 of society, the directors of the Bank obtained, in 1709, an 
 i\ct of Parliament forbidding the establishment in England 
 of any joint-stock banks of issue in which there were more 
 than six proprietors. With private bankers they did not 
 interfere ; but its monopoly of public banking helped their 
 corporation to make great progress in wealth and influence 
 during the eighteenth century. The wars that were then 
 plentiful also enabled it to assume immense importance as 
 agent for the National Debt, and for irregular loans that 
 were gradually absorbed in the debt. The great war with 
 France, however, involving constant drains on the Exchequer, 
 which the Bank had to meet, brought it to the verge of 
 bankruptcy ; so much gold being required by the Govern- 
 ment, that hardly any was left for the use of merchants and 
 the public. In October, 1795, the directors informed Pitt that 
 they could not hold out much longer, and other messages 
 followed, till February, 1797, when the Bank was authorised 
 by the Privy Council to refuse cash payments for its notes, 
 or the issue of any coin in sums larger than twenty shillings. 
 In the following May an Act was passed enforcing that 
 resolution, and sanctioning an almost unlimited supply of 
 notes. The arbitrary law lasted for four-and-twenty years, 
 and by it the bank-notes were depreciated in value more 
 than a fourth ; that is, all creditors of the State were com- 
 pelled to accept fourteen or fifteen shillings for every pound 
 owing to them. A better state of things began with Sir 
 Robert Peel's Act of 181 9, which still allowed the Bank to 
 issue as many notes as it chose, but compelled it to exchange 
 them for gold on demand, and thus virtually prevented it 
 from giving out more than the public were willing to take 
 at the full price of their equivalent in bullion. The Bank 
 Charter of 1 844 completed the reform, or, at any rate, brought 
 it to its present condition, by limiting the quantity of paper
 
 88 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 money issued in excess of the amount of gold held by the 
 Bank to ;^i 5,000,000, which the State is pledged to make 
 good in case of need. Opponents of the Charter, however, 
 urge with much force that this paper currency of p^i 5,000,000 
 is either too great or too small ; that either it should be 
 done away with altogether, and gold be made the only legal 
 money, or that it should be made sufficiently large to meet 
 the growing requirements of commerce, and in that case be 
 taken out of the hands of the half public and half private 
 Bank of England, and controlled only by the functionaries 
 of the State. 
 
 Many stories are told of frauds upon the Bank of Eng- 
 land. The first forger of bank-notes was Richard William 
 Vaughan, a linendraper, of Stafford ; and though his offence 
 was soon detected, in 1758, he had many imitators. During 
 the thirty years previous to 1832, when capital punishment 
 for forgery was abolished, 1,816 men were convicted of the 
 crime, and of these 628 were hanged. The horror caused 
 by these executions was found to have only the effect of 
 making forgery more common, as many victims of the fraud, 
 with clear proof against the culprits, chose to suppress it 
 rather than cause their death. There was quaint sarcasm in 
 the words with which one judge concluded his remarks in 
 passing sentence of death upon a man who had uttered a 
 spurious one-pound note : " And I pray that, through the 
 mercy and moderation of our blessed Redeemer, you may 
 there receive that mercy wliich due regard for the paper cur- 
 rency of the country forbids you to hope for here." Since 
 1832 forgery has been very much less frequent, this being 
 partly due to the cessation of one-pound notes, and the 
 greater care taken in the manufacture of those of higher value. 
 
 The Bank's losses are not all through forgery. In 1740 a 
 rich director took home a ;^3 0,000 note, with which to pay 
 for an estate he had bought. He placed it carelessly on a 
 table, and thence it mysteriously disappeared. It could no-
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 89 
 
 where be found, and, thinking it must have fallen into the 
 fire, he obtained next day a duplicate note from the Bank, 
 pledging himself to restore the original if he could find it, or 
 to supply the money should it be presented for payment by 
 any one else. Nothing was heard of it for thirty years, when, 
 to the amazement of the Bank authorities, it was handed 
 across the counter by a man who stated that he had received 
 it from abroad in a lawful way, and who thus appeared to 
 have a legal claim to the money. In the end, it was found 
 that the document had really fallen upon the fire, but, with- 
 out being burnt, had been taken up by the draught, and 
 had lodged in a comer of the chimney, where it was dis- 
 covered and stolen by a builder employed in partly pulling 
 down and repairing the house. The director to whom it 
 had been given had died long before, and the Bank was un. 
 able to make good in law its claim upon his executors for a 
 return of the value of the duplicate handed to him. 
 
 Great as it is, the Bank of England is now only the 
 greatest unit in a vast machinery of banking. Its chief rivals 
 are the joint-stock banks, of which the London and West- 
 minster Bank, founded in 1834, through the enterprise of 
 John William Gilbart, is the oldest and most important. But 
 private banking has advanced steadily since the days of Sir 
 Francis Child. There are now more than a hundred private 
 banks in London. In England there were, out of London, 
 hardly a dozen banks in 1750 ; in 1793 there were more than 
 four hundred, and now there are about eleven hundred. 
 
 The histories of some of these establishments aptly illus- 
 trate the general rise of banking. Almost the oldest was a 
 bank in Gloucester, founded in 17 16 by James Wood, a 
 chandler and grocer, who added money-holding and money- 
 lending to his trade in soap and sugar. At one counter of 
 his shop the retail business was carried on, and at another the 
 banking was attended to ; and both throve so well that his 
 grandson, the notorious miser Jemmy Wood, who died in
 
 90 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 1836, was worth more than p^i, 000,000. Most of that for- 
 tune was wasted in htigation among his kinsmen \ and the 
 bank, passing into the hands of a company, throve all the 
 better without him. 
 
 In like manner, the London house of Smith, Payne, and 
 Smiths owes its origin to the enterprise of a Nottingham 
 draper, who, early in the eighteenth century, began to serve 
 both himself and his customers by holding for them their 
 gains, to be prudently invested, and returned with interest 
 when they asked for it. " I will take care of your money," 
 the eldest Smith used to say to the farmers of the neighbour- 
 hood, " and will also keep an account of your market trans- 
 actions, and you can draw your cash, or get goods from 
 me, whenever you like." In that way he did good service to 
 his neighbours, and, in the end, closing his draper's shop, 
 amassed much wealth as a banker. His son carried on the 
 business in Nottingham, and extended it to Lincoln and 
 Hull, where the establishments still exist. His grandson 
 found a shrewd London partner in Mr. Payne, and with him 
 founded the central bank in Lombard Street, now with few 
 rivals in the skill and greatness of its operations. 
 
 Another house, that of Jones, Loyd, and Company, lately 
 merged into the London and Westminster Bank, had a kin- 
 dred origin. Old Jones was a thriving man of business in 
 Manchester, adding trade in money to his trade in cotton 
 and woollen goods. Mr. Lewis Loyd was a dissenting 
 minister, who fell in love with and secretly married the 
 daughter of the half-banker, and who afterwards, to make 
 peace with his father-in-law, left the pulpit for the counting- 
 house. The business in Manchester became great, and 
 when INIr. Loyd brought it to London it soon assumed vast 
 proportions. The son of Lewis Loyd, the dissenting minis- 
 ter, is the present Lord Overstone. 
 
 Other great banks arose in Manchester, Liverpool, and 
 the neighbouring towns, in ways akin to that followed by
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 91 
 
 Jones, Loyd, and Company, some of them ultimately plant- 
 ing themselves in London, and making it the centre of 
 a busy network of monetary trade spreading all over the 
 kingdom. Half-a-dozen rich banking-houses and two or 
 three peerages have grown out of the enterprise of the 
 brothers Heywood, who began as Liverpool merchants more 
 than a century ago, and of their family connections, the 
 Milnes and the Pembertons. One ally of some of the 
 Heywoods was Joseph Denison, born at Leeds in 1726. 
 His parents, it is said, were too poor to send him to school, 
 but he taught himself to read and write ; and, having too 
 much ambition to be satisfied with an errand-boy's work in 
 Leeds, made his way to London with a carrier's wagon, 
 sometimes riding, and sometimes trudging by the horse's 
 side. In London he obtained a subordinate place in the 
 counting-house of John Dillon, a merchant, in St. Mary Axe. 
 There he worked up to a partnership, and at length, John 
 Dillon failing, he began business for himself, taking his old 
 master as his clerk. In 1775 the Hey%voods estabhshed 
 their bank in Liverpool, and employed him as their agent in 
 London. Here, again, he steadily pushed himself into the 
 topmost place, bequeathing, in 1806, the senior partnership 
 in the house of Denison, Hej^vood, and Company, besides 
 more than ^1,000,000 in land and money, to his son, Wil- 
 liam Joseph Denison, who died worth something like 
 ^3,000,000. His daughter, also, had a sufficient dowry to 
 make her a fitting wife for a marquis; and the beggar-boy of 
 Leeds became grandfather to the first Lord Londesborough. 
 The banking of Scotland has a history in some respects 
 different from that of England. Its origin, however, was 
 the same, and George Heriot, of Edinburgh, who has been 
 already referred to, had many predecessors, contemporaries, 
 and followers, who grew rich, as he did, by money-lending 
 and a rude sort of bill-discounting. One of the most notable 
 of these, living in Heriot's day, was George Hutcheson, a
 
 92 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 notary of Glasgow, who received money on deposit, paying 
 for it a small interest, and lending it out at higher rates 
 on mortgage to landed proprietors in the west of Scot- 
 land. His floating cash he kept in a large oaken chest, 
 secured by double locks, in a vault of his strong house near 
 the Tolbooth. He died rich in 1639, and left his wealth to 
 found the hospital that bears his name. In 1695, a year 
 after William Paterson, the Scotchman, had started the Bank 
 of England, John Holland, an Englishman, succeeded in 
 establishing, on Paterson's model, the Bank of Scotland; 
 but, unlike the Bank of England, it promptly began to open 
 branches in various parts of the country, and this innovation 
 has given a special character to Scotch banking. In Scot- 
 land, moreover, there was no bar, as in England, to the 
 formation of other public banks ; and, accordingly, it had 
 formidable rivals in the Royal Bank, founded in 1727, in 
 the British Linen Company, dating from 1746, in the Dundee 
 Banking Company, begun in 1763, and in the Perth Banking 
 Company, three years younger — the first two having their 
 headquarters in Edinburgh, and numerous country branches. 
 All were empowered to issue unlimited supplies of notes, 
 generally of the value of twenty shillings, and all granted 
 interest on the balance of current accounts, however small ; 
 an arrangement which tempted fishermen, peasants, servants, 
 and other humble capitalists to make use of them. While 
 the Bank of England was almost exclusively the treasure- 
 house of the rich, the great Scotch banks did something like 
 the work of modern savings-banks and friendly societies. 
 " Half-yearly or yearly," it was said in evidence before the 
 House of Lords, in 1826, "these depositors come to the 
 bank, and add the savings of their labour, with the interest 
 that has accrued upon the deposits, to the principal; and in 
 this way it runs on accumulating at compound interest, till 
 the depositor is able either to buy or build a house, or till 
 he is able to commence business as a master in the line in
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 93 
 
 which he has hitherto been a servant. A great part of the 
 depositors in our banks are of that description, and a great 
 part of the most thriving of our farmers and manufacturers 
 have arisen from such beginnings." To that prudent and 
 most beneficent arrangement the Scotch banks added an- 
 other of equal value. " There is also," it was stated in the 
 report just quoted from, " one part of their system which 
 has had the best effects upon the people of Scotland, and 
 particularly upon the middle and poorer class of society, in 
 producing and encouraging habits of frugality and industry. 
 The practice referred to is that of ' cash credits.' Any per- 
 son who applies to a bank for a cash credit is called upon 
 to produce two or more competent sureties, who are jointly 
 bound, and, after a full inquiry into the character of the 
 applicant, the nature of his business, and the sufficiency of 
 his securities, he is allowed to open a credit, and to draw 
 upon the bank for the whole of its amount, or for such part 
 as his daily transactions may require. To the credit of the 
 account he pays in such sums as he may not have occasion 
 to use, and interest is charged or credited upon the daily 
 balance, as the case may be. From the facility which these 
 cash credits give to all the small transactions of the country, 
 and from the opportunities which they ofter to all persons 
 who begin business with little or no capital but their character 
 to employ profitably the minutest products of their industry, 
 it cannot be doubted that the most important advantages 
 are derived by the whole community." 
 
 The wise management of its public banks offered some 
 liindrance to the progress of private banking in Scotland. 
 Many great bankers, however, arose in Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
 or elsewhere, and thence have come some of the most not- 
 able now existing in London. The house of Coutts is as 
 old as the Bank of Scotland, in which Thomas Coutts was 
 one of the first shareholders. Patrick Coutts, his kinsman, 
 was a merchant who dealt in serges and bills, and his son
 
 94 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 John turned the bill-discountuig into banking proper. John 
 Coutts's four sons, Patrick, John, James, and Thomas, greatly 
 extended its operations. Two of the brothers remained in 
 Edinburgh, where their bank passed ultimately into the 
 hands of Sir William Forbes, till 1838, when it was amalga- 
 mated with the Union Bank of Scotland. The other two 
 came to London, where they entered into partnership with 
 George Campbell, a goldsmith-banker in the Strand, and 
 from 1760 Thomas Coutts, the youngest and most enter- 
 prising of the four, was the chief manager of the business. 
 His history and the history of his bank are too well known 
 to need repeating here. 
 
 Thomas Coutts soon made for himself a profitable and 
 aristocratic connection, but his clients were chiefly Whigs 
 and Radicals. George III. banked with him till his con- 
 nection with Sir Francis Burdett, his son-in-law, brought him 
 into disfavour with the Tory monarch. His near neighbour 
 and rival, Andrew Drummond, at Charing Cross, had the 
 patronage of the Tories. Another great private bank for 
 the aristocracy, that of Herries, Farquhar, and Company, in 
 St. James's Street, was started at about the same date, by 
 Sir Robert Herries, another Scotchman, and a famous 
 tobacco-merchant, who was for some time connected with 
 Sir William Forbes and the Edinburgh oft'shoot of the first 
 Coutts's bank. 
 
 Concurrent with the growth of these and other West 
 End houses, has been the progress of the chief City banks 
 during the last hundred years or more. The vastness of 
 their aggregate transactions is shown by the fact that at the 
 Clearing House, where representatives of the chief banks 
 meet every afternoon, to exchange the drafts received by 
 each one upon every one of the others during the previous 
 day, the amount thus negotiated often exceeds ;!^io,ooo,ooo. 
 
 The Bank of England, the hundred and more joint- 
 stock banks, and the thousand and more private banks in
 
 The Sinews of Trade. 95 
 
 Great Britain, v/hich act as cash-keepers for merchants and 
 capitaUsts, large and small, by no means exhaust the list of 
 traders in money. Money is now much more than gold. 
 " Credit," as Daniel Webster said, " has done more a thou- 
 sand times to enrich nations than all the mines of all the 
 world."' Every actual pound that passes from hand to 
 hand means scores or hundreds of pounds in trade and daily 
 life. Everything which has an exchangeable value — lands, 
 goods, muscles, and brains alike — can have its value stated 
 on paper, which, if not quite as safe as a bank-note, is safe 
 in honest hands, and can be, to a great extent, protected 
 from dishonesty ; and all this paper can be traded with. 
 The trade forms a wonderful development of modern com- 
 merce, and gives employment to all the stock-dealers, bill- 
 discounters, loan-contractors, and the like, who are more 
 or less of bankers, but also very much more than bankers. 
 Stupendous businesses, like those of the Rothschilds, the 
 Barings, and the Goldsmids, are of this sort, and their vast- 
 ness cannot be estimated. IMillions of pounds, on paper, 
 pass from hand to hand each hour of every day in London, 
 and Capel Court and Lombard Street are but two notable 
 limbs, out of thousands, through which the sinews of trade 
 pass to give life and vigour to the whole world.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POLITICS IN TRADE, 
 
 Political Interference with Commerce — Native and Foreign Merchants in 
 iVIediseval England — "The Emperor's Men "and the German Steelyard 
 ip LDndon — Flemish and French Traders in London — The Venetian 
 Trading Fleets— Flemish Immigrants in England under the Plan tage.nets 
 —Their Services to Trade — Edward I. 's " Charta Mercatoria " — The 
 Commercial History of Flanders— Bruges and Ghent — ^Jacob vanArte- 
 veldt — The Commercial Greatness of Antwerp — The War of the Nether- 
 lands with Philip II. — Flemish Immigrants in England in Elizabeth's 
 Reign— Their Good Work— The Huguenots as Traders— Their Settle- 
 ment in England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and its 
 Beneficial Effects on English Trade- The Puritans, and the English 
 Colonisation of America — The Origin and Growth of the East India 
 Company — The Opium Monopoly — Political Services of Merchants — 
 The Greshams— Jacques Coeur Colbert — Growth of Free-Trade Prin- 
 ciples — War and Commerce — The Commercial Results of English 
 Wars— The Sufferings caused by the Great W^ar with France — Com- 
 mercial Treaties— The Methuen Treaty and the Cobden Treaty — 
 Cobden's Services to Commerce. 
 
 Political interference, which has caused the Jews to be 
 wanderers on the face of the earth, and given them an 
 exceptional place in the history of commerce, has, during 
 the same long period, had many other noteworthy results. 
 Free-trade is only a very modern word, and intelligent 
 understanding of the thing is yet more modern. Nation 
 cannot trade with nation, even now, without hindrances or 
 stimulants that are alike at variance with the best commer- 
 cial interests of the whole world ; but the hindrances and 
 stimulants that now prevail among most civilised com- 
 munities are slight indeed in comparison with those that 
 existed in former times. Trade flourished in spite of the}i)» 
 sometimes in consequence of them ; but the successive
 
 Politics in Trade. 97 
 
 occasions of their removal are so many epoclis in the pro- 
 gress of inteUigence and of the truest wisdom. 
 
 Their history in England bears close resemblance to 
 ' their history in all other countries. In early centuries, when 
 foreign commerce was slight, the political interference was 
 chiefly local. Each town and each trade sought to benefit 
 itself, and obtained from lords of the manor, sheriffs, and 
 other authorities special privileges in the way of tolls and 
 tlie like ; but foreign trade, being only of slight importance, 
 rarely met with much opposition. Indeed, the first instances 
 we have of the dealings of kings and statesmen with foreign 
 trade show nothing but a desire to protect and encourage it. 
 Before the Norman Conquest, and for some time after it, the 
 merchants of other nations were freely admitted into the 
 country, and often special facilities of trade seem to have 
 been afforded them. They were only looked upon as 
 enemies when native merchants began to be able to do the 
 work that foreigners had hitherto done for them, and when 
 native manufacturers began to seek public assistance in their 
 efforts to produce at home the clothing and other commodi- 
 ties that had previously been made abroad. 
 
 The first foreign merchants of importance who settled 
 in England or visited it periodically came from Germany. 
 Ethelred the Unready gave them peculiar advantages in 
 London. "The men of the Emperor who come in their 
 ships," according to a law of his time, " are law-worthy, like 
 ourselves ;" traders of other nations being subject to more 
 or less heavy tolls and taxes. And their privileges lasted 
 long. " Let there," wrote Henry II. to Frederick Barbarossa, 
 in 1 157, "be between ourselves and our subjects an in- 
 divisible unity of friendship and peace, and safe traffic of 
 merchandise." German dominion then extended from the 
 shores of the Adriatic to the shores of the Baltic and 
 the German Ocean. While Venice and other Italian towns 
 were becoming great by the industry of their citizens, in 
 
 H
 
 g3 The Roma axe of Trade. 
 
 bringing into Europe the treasures of the East, and estabHsh- 
 ing a new centre of commerce, which was to surpass in 
 value and influence those of the ancient world, many of the 
 northern cities of Germany began to follow their exatfiple 
 and share its benefits. Traffic on the sea led to inland 
 commerce, and gradually and steadily trade advanced north- 
 wards, having Augsburg for some time as its headquarters, 
 and eventually turning Liibeck, on one side of Denmark, 
 and Hamburg, on the other, into enterprising ports. From 
 these and other northern towns came the " Emperor's men " 
 to England, long before the Venetian merchants established 
 any considerable trade by sea with this country, and they 
 continued their dealings after they had practically thrown 
 off the imperial yoke, and established that famous commer- 
 cial democracy known as the Hanseatic League. 
 
 The Hanse was started in the middle of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, through the necessity of co-operation among the northern 
 ports for repressing piracy, but the civil war that soon began to 
 desolate Germany, and the lack of all good government con- 
 sequent on the rival claims of two nominal emperors, made it 
 easy, if not necessary, for the trading towns, in 1241, to form 
 themselves into a sort of republic. In that way the League 
 changed its character, and grew rapidly. In 1360 sixty-six 
 cities belonged to the confederacy, and it had commercial 
 branches in every town of importance in northern Europe. 
 
 The branch in London had its home in the old Steel- 
 yard, whose site is now covered by the Cannon Street Railway 
 Station. Here the Gilhalda Teuton icor inn was established 
 in very early times, as a sort of hotel in which German 
 merchants could reside and warehouse their goods. In 
 Richard II.'s reign this first building was found too small 
 for its inmates, and a second one, adjoining it, was added. 
 A third house was found necessary in the time of Edward 
 IV., and soon afterwards the three buildings, with perhaps 
 some others, were surrounded by strong walls, which olten
 
 Politics in Trade. 99 
 
 the London 'prentices, jealous of the prosperity of the 
 foreigners within, attempted to break through, "Within 
 this structure, partitioned into separate cells," says Werden- 
 hagen, the historian of the Hanseatic League, " the resi- 
 dents lived under strict regulations. They had a common 
 table, and were probably then, as well as subsequently, 
 divided into companies, each having its master and asso- 
 ciates. All were obliged to remain single : any one who 
 married an Englishwoman lost his hanse. For the sake of 
 good order, no housekeeper, not even a bedmaker, was 
 allowed. As it v/as necessary for them to become more 
 united and able to resist the attacks of the London mob, 
 none of the residents, or, at least, none who belonged to 
 the council of commerce, were allowed to sleep out of the 
 Steelyard. No less strict was the prohibition against com- 
 municating to the English anything which passed in the 
 establishment. The direction was vested in an alderman 
 and two deputies or co-assessors, with nine councilmen, who 
 composed together the chamber of commerce. These persons 
 assembled every Wednesday, in summer at seven, in winter 
 at eight o'clock in the morning, to deliberate on general 
 atTairs, the authority of the alderman being usually undis- 
 puted. He it was who decided what ventures should be 
 undertaken, and how those under him should employ their 
 talents. All negotiations with foreigners were conducted by 
 liim, and it was for him to communicate with the similar 
 lianses in other parts of Europe, so as to bring about a 
 common course of action, and secure the interests of all." 
 
 That picture of a little colony of foreign traders in the 
 heart of London, bound together by the closest tics, and 
 intimately connected with similar and often larger associa- 
 tions in nearly every important town of Europe, is very 
 curious. The merchants of the Steelyard held their ground 
 for very nearly five hundred years. Prospering greatly 
 themselves, they did much in teaching the English how to 
 
 U 2
 
 \oo The Romance of Trade. 
 
 prosper in commerce. Welcomed at first because of the 
 Continental and Asiatic produce which they brought over in 
 little trading-fleets, they earned the enmity of their pupils as 
 soon as those pupils were able to do without them. The 
 City guilds, which still live as dinner-eating and charity- 
 dispensing corporations, were framed partly on the model of 
 the hanse in the Steelyard, and, while they were powerful 
 agents of English trade, used some of their power in 
 attempting to suppress their rival. Mobs assailed it times 
 without number, and fair means and foul of all sorts were 
 resorted to for its subversion. Its charters were rescinded 
 by Edward VI., but restored by Queen Mary, and it was 
 only finally abolished near the end of Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign. 
 
 These German merchants helped to supply England 
 with every kind of produce for which there was a market, 
 but, especially, when corn was scarce in England, with corn 
 grown in Prussia, Russia, and the adjoining countries. Wine 
 from Burgundy was brought over by Flemish and French 
 traders, and particularly by an annual fleet of Lorraine 
 boats, which, all through the Plantagenet times, made their 
 way from the Moselle to the Thames, and being allowed to 
 anchor off" Queenhithe for forty days, during which time 
 their owners were subject to heavy restrictions, they were 
 then sent back with such native produce as they could 
 obtain in exchange. These fleets, however, were far less 
 important than those which, during the fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth centuries, arrived from Venice, then at the height of 
 its greatness. 
 
 A great company of trading-vessels, known as the " Flan- 
 ders fleet " — other fleets being dispatched for other parts — 
 left Venice every year, laden Avith silks, satins, damasks, 
 cottons, and various other costly gear, as well as spices, 
 .saffron, camphor, and a hundred other articles brought from 
 ihe East. It halted and traded at the ports of Greece, Italy,
 
 Politics in Trade. ici 
 
 and Spain, as it passed through the Mediterranean, gaily and 
 proudly, even as Antonio's argosies — 
 
 " With portly sail, 
 Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood, 
 Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, 
 Did overpeer the petty traffickers. 
 That curtseyed to them reverence, 
 As they fiew by them with their woven wings ; " 
 
 and then sailed up to the English coast. The Downs being 
 reached, the fleet broke up for a time, some vessels anchoring 
 off Southampton, Sandwich, Rye, and the chief towns on 
 our southern shore ; others going to the principal Flemish 
 ports, and all making busy trade with the native merchants 
 who were eagerly awaiting their arrival. As soon as the 
 valuable cargo had been exchanged for English wools and 
 Flemish clothing, with a large supply of gold to make up 
 for the difference in the worth of the commodities given and 
 taken, the vessels met again ; and the fleet, after nearly a 
 twelvemonth's absence, returned to Venice, there to prepare 
 for the next year's voyage. 
 
 These visits of the Venetian merchants were of great 
 service to England in times when native vessels could very 
 rarely brave the perils of the long voyage to the Mediter- 
 ranean; but very soon they began to provoke opposition. 
 Over and over again we find records of quarrels upon land, 
 and sometimes we 'read of battles on the sea, caused by the 
 jealousy of English traders or the greed of English pirates. 
 Protection was accorded to these foreigners, though less 
 complete than in the case of the German merchants ; but the 
 local authorities of London and the other towns often sided 
 with the people. Many complaints of ill-usage by the law, 
 and of the perversion of law to their disadvantage, were 
 made by the Venetian voyagers and their agents settled in 
 England during the fifteenth century, and at length the 
 foreigners were forced to abandon a custom, which, if it was
 
 I02 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 very beneficial to our forefathers, was yet more beneficial to 
 themselves. The last Venetian trading-fleet that visited our 
 shores came in 1532. 
 
 Venetians and other Italians, however — Lombards espe- 
 cially — who, in the course of their dealings, had made F^ng- 
 land their home, remained after the change had taken place. 
 Coming most plentifully at about the time of the expulsion 
 of the Jews, they carried on the irregular banking and 
 money-lending work, in which the Jews had been pro- 
 ficients. Lombard Street in London succeeded Old Jewry as 
 the centre of trade in money ; and every important town had 
 its Italian quarter, the residence of men whose services were 
 welcome to war-making kings and spendthrift courtiers, as 
 well as to enterprising merchants, during the Middle Ages. 
 But they were Christians, though foreigners, and therefore 
 not regarded with such hatred as was heaped upon the 
 Jews. They, or their descendants, became naturalised, and 
 by marriage, and in other ways, gradually blended with the 
 native population. 
 
 The blending was yet more thorough in the case of 
 another race of foreigners who settled in England, and the 
 advantages resulting from their settlement were greater. 
 While trading energy was being shown in the growth of 
 great ports on the Continent, from Venice round to Liibeck, 
 special aptitude in manufactures was being acquired by the 
 hardy little family of Flemings, or Netherlanders, subject 
 sometimes to France and sometimes to Germany. This 
 aptitude began to be displayed about the middle of the 
 tenth century ; and, soon after that, Flanders commenced to 
 lie famous for its making-up of woollen clothing, the raw 
 material for which was mainly obtained from England, 
 abounding in wool, "but not then skilled in its manufacture. 
 The skill was not properly developed till the time of the 
 Tudors ; but wise efforts to promote it were made very 
 soon after the Norman Conquest, In iioo a great number
 
 Politics in Trade 103 
 
 of Flemings, driven out of their own country by disastrous 
 floods, were allowed by William Rufus to settle in Cumber- 
 land, where, in the course of the next ten years, they formed 
 so large a colony that violent complaints were made by the 
 natives. Thereupon they, or most of them, were transplanted 
 to Pembrokeshire and Herefordshire by Henry I., who 
 designed to use them as a barrier for the southern English 
 against Welsh marauders. They served that purpose, and 
 did much more. Joined by tide after tide of their country- 
 men — whom oppression at home induced to seek a home 
 elsewhere — they gradually spread over the south-western 
 parts of England, giving a new life to Bristol and the other 
 towns of that district. Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of them 
 as "a people notably skilled both in cloth-making and in 
 merchandise, ever ready with any labour to seek for gain by 
 sea or land." Both kinds of skill, but especially the former, 
 were turned to the benefit of England. Factories of a rude 
 sort were set up in various parts of the country, from Corn- 
 wall up to Cumberland, for manipulation of the native wool. 
 The Flemings settled in England instructed their new neigh- 
 bours in the arts that had hitlierto been chiefly confined to 
 Flanders ; and woollen cloths, especially of the coarser 
 sort, gradually came to be made at home instead of abroad. 
 Winchester, the centre of a primitive cloth-manufacture that 
 had been maintained since Roman times, lost some of its 
 renown, and was soon surpassed by Bristol in the west, and 
 by Norwich, Lincoln, Hull, Beverley, and York, in the east. 
 "All the nations of the world," said Matthew of West- 
 minster, " are kept warm by the wool of England, made 
 into cloth by the men of Flanders." 
 
 To bring over the men of Flanders and employ them in 
 working-up the wool of England, in England itself, was the 
 constant eff"ort of the wisest of our Plantagenet kings. 
 The commercial legislation of four centuries gives frequent 
 evidence of this, though it was often attempted in foolish
 
 I04 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 ways, and yet more often resented by the native workmen 
 in various parts of the country. A constant war was going 
 on between the statesmen in Westminster and the citizens 
 of London upon this question. The laws enacted in favour 
 of the foreign workmen were counteracted by civic regula- 
 tions to their disadvantage, and much litigation and many 
 frays were the result. It was the same in other parts. 
 Thomas Blanket, for instance, one of three Flemish brothers 
 who were the chief promoters of cloth-making in Bristol, was 
 in 1340 ordered by a local court to pay a heavy fine "for 
 having caused various machines for weaving and making 
 woollen cloths to be set up in his houses, and for having 
 hired weavers and other workmen for this purpose ; " 
 and the fine was only remitted by a special injunction 
 from Edward III. The inducements held out by that 
 monarch's agents to the Flemings whom they invited to 
 settle in England are quaintly set forth by Fuller : " Here 
 they should feed on fat beef and mutton till nothing but 
 their fulness should stint their stomachs. Their beds should 
 be good, and their bedfellows better — seeing that the richest 
 yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their 
 daughters unto them — and such the English beauties that 
 the most envious foreigners could not but commend them." 
 Edward III. was a famous patron of English manufac- 
 ture, and of the foreign commerce that was necessary to its 
 healthy growth ; but he only followed in the steps of his 
 grandfather. Edward I.'s Charta Mercatoria, granted in 
 1303, was the Magna Charta of trade, often abused and 
 violated, yet an abiding bulwark of commercial liberty, the 
 basis of a slowly-developed system of free trade. It enacted 
 that " the merchants ot Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, 
 Navarre, Lombardy, Florence, Provence, Catalonia, Aqui- 
 taine, Toulouse, Flanders, Brabant, and of all other foreign 
 parts, who shall come to traffic in England, shall and may 
 safely come with their merchandise into all cities, towns, ai:id
 
 Politics in Trade. 105 
 
 ports, and sell the same, by wholesale, as well to natives as 
 to foreigners. And," it was added, " the merchandise called 
 merceries " — miscellaneous haberdasheries of all sorts, toys, 
 trinkets, and the like — " as also spices, they may likewise 
 sell by retail. They may also, upon payment of the usual 
 customs, carry beyond sea whatever goods they buy in Eng- 
 land, excepting wines, which, being once imported, may not 
 be sent abroad again without the special license of the king. 
 Wherefore all officers in cities, towns, and fairs are com- 
 manded to do sure and speedy justice to all foreign mer- 
 chants, observing these three points especially — first, that on 
 any trial between them and Englishmen, the jury shall be 
 one-half foreigners, when such can be had ; secondly, that a 
 proper person shall be appointed in London to be judiciary 
 for foreign merchants ; thirdly, that there shall be but one 
 weight and measure throughout the land." The duties 
 levied in return for these privileges were not very exorbitant, 
 but sufficient to yield an important revenue to the Crown all 
 through the ensuing times. 
 
 It was by virtue of that charter that the Venetian and 
 other trading-fleets paid their annual visits to England. 
 But the traders who benefited most by it, after the English 
 themselves, were the Flemings. Notwithstanding the con- 
 stant emigration of this hardy little race to our own country 
 and elsewhere, there were plenty of people left at home to 
 promote the commercial welfare of the province. The story of 
 their enterprise, and of that of their neighbours the Dutch, 
 furnishes a striking episode in the romance of trade, as well 
 as some curious illustrations of the eflects of political inter- 
 ference with commerce. 
 
 Flanders entered early on its career of prosperity, whicli 
 was not a little due both to its physical and to its political 
 disadvantages. Subject to frequent inundations of the 
 German Ocean, the inhabitants were forced to use all their 
 energies in raising barriers against these encroachments ; and
 
 io6 The Romance of_ Trade. 
 
 those energies, once stirred up, found expression in other 
 ways of overcoming nature, or turning the difficuhies offered 
 by it into profitable channels. Alarmed, also, by the fre- 
 quent wars of their great neighbours, France, England, and 
 Germany, which threatened over and over again to re- 
 duce them to slavery, they developed a spirit of freedom, 
 which took effect in commercial enterprise as well as in poli- 
 tical independence. Bruges, their ancient capital, founded 
 as early as 760, was built on or near the ruins of an older 
 town — then a port — which the primitive residents had made 
 a thriving seat of trade before the Norsemen devastated it. 
 Charlemagne planted the surrounding country with a colony 
 of Saxons, under an Earl of Flanders, some forty years later, 
 and from that time it made steady progress. The forests 
 were soon partly cleared, and a portion of the wood was 
 used, with other material, to construct sea-walls ; canals 
 were cut, whereby bogs were reclaimed and the habitable 
 ground was made very much more extensive. 
 
 In the tenth century Flanders began to be famous as a 
 country of weavers carrying on a lively trade with France ; 
 and about the year 960 its Earl, Baldwin III., a wise pio- 
 neer of free trade, conferred on it great benefit, by establish- 
 ing annual fairs and weekly markets — "without any tolls 
 being demanded for goods either imported or exported," 
 says the old historian — at Bruges, Courtray, Ypres, and 
 several other towns. The result was that commodities of all 
 sorts poured into Flanders, and that merchants of every 
 nation enriched themselves and it by the traffic that ensued. 
 The policy of free trade was not always adopted. Earls 
 and countesses sought often to increase their wealth by heavy 
 taxes; and in 1252, especially, the Hanse merchants had to 
 protest against the exorbitant duties levied by the famous 
 Countess Margaret. Their complaint was listened to, and 
 in 1262 Bruges was made one of the four great staples of 
 the Hanseatic League. Thenceforth it prospered more than
 
 Politics /.v Trade. ic; 
 
 ever. English wool and Russian hemp, as well as linen 
 from the nearer region of Belgium, were brought into it in 
 vast quantities — a great part to be made into clothing in the 
 neighbouring towns ; and to be exchanged for these materials, 
 and for other produce, came large supplies of silk, spices, 
 and the manifold treasures of the East, with which the 
 Venetian galleys were laden. Bruges — though now an inland 
 town — was connected with the ocean by a broad canal, and 
 thus it became a busy mart for traders by both sea and land. 
 Its burghers grew rich, and were proud of their wealth. When 
 Philip the Fair of France went to visit it, his wife, who 
 accompanied him, exclaimed, " I thought I was the only 
 queen here ; but, judging from the apparel of those I see 
 around me, there must be many wives of kings and princes 
 present !" 
 
 Phihp the Fair, notable for his unfair efforts to wrest 
 from our Edward I. his appanage of Guienne, made like 
 attempts to bring Flanders, nominally his fief, under actual 
 subjection to him. He twice made a prisoner of its earl, 
 and he led an army into the province in 1302. But 
 the traders showed themselves better warriors than the 
 soldiers. On the field of Courtray a powerful army was so 
 utterly defeated, that the burghers carried back as trophies 
 the gilt spurs of 4,000 knights, slain or taken capf ' -e. That 
 victory led to other fighting, during the following century, 
 in which the people of Ghent were leaders. 
 
 Ghent, though not quite as old as Bruges, was prosperous 
 enough in 879 to yield rich booty to the Danes whom 
 Alfred the Great drove from the English coagts. While 
 Bruges rose to eminence as a city of merchants, Ghent 
 attained equal renown as a city of manufacturers. In it 
 chiefly congregated — though they were also abundant and 
 wealthy in Dendermonde, Oudenarde, Ypres, and Lille— 
 the clothworkers who furnished Bruges with its principal 
 staple. In the fourteenth century its walls measured nine
 
 io8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 miles round, and Froissart, writing about the year 1400, said 
 that it would require an army of 200,000 men to besiege 
 it. So, 000 men able to bear arms were inside, and these 
 hardy weavers were, during the Middle Ages, the main 
 champions of democracy, therein surpassing their neighbours 
 of Bruges, whom they rivalled in haughty bearing towards 
 both friends and foes. In 1350 the burgomasters of 
 Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres went to Paris, to render homage 
 to their nominal master, John II., on his accession. 
 Greater favours than French courtiers deemed proper were 
 shown to them, but with these they were not satisfied. 
 Entertained once at a sumptuous feast, but not provided 
 with cushions to their seats, they folded up their costly 
 cloaks, placed them on the hard benches while they ate, 
 and left them there when they retired. A messenger ran 
 after them with the garments, but they refused to receive 
 them. "We Flemings," they said, "are not in the habit of 
 carrying away our cushions after dinner ! " 
 
 Perhaps the burgomasters had only gone to Paris that 
 they might display their proud spirit of independence. A 
 little while before, they had been at open war \^•ith France. 
 Jacob van Arteveldt, the brewer of Ghent, and the most 
 powerful man in Flanders — of whom Froissart said that 
 " there never was in Flanders, nor in none other country, 
 prince, duke, or other that ruled a country so peaceably or 
 so long" — had in 1337 become a strong ally of Edward III. 
 in his designs upon France. While the Earl of Flanders 
 sided with his feudal lord, Philip VI., the burghers joined 
 with Van Arteveldt in his adhesion to Edward. They lent 
 him money, provided food and passage for his troops, and 
 welcomed him as King of France, during nine years. In 
 1346, however, Van Arteveldt proposed that the Earl, 
 whose authority none recognised, should be formally 
 deposed, and that Edward the Black Prince should be set up 
 in his stead. Bruges and Ypres assented to the proposal; but
 
 Politics in Trade. 109 
 
 it was rejected by the democrats of Ghent, who feared with 
 good reason that they would thus be taking to themselves a 
 master far more dangerous than their hereditary ruler. Jacob 
 van Arteveldt went himself to argue with them. " He saw," 
 writes Froissart, " such as were wont to make reverence to 
 him turn their backs to him. He began to doubt, and as 
 soon as he had alighted he closed fast his gates, doors, and 
 windows ; and scarcely was this done when the street was 
 full of men, especially of the smaller handicrafts. He went 
 at length to a window with great humility, saying, with fair 
 words, '■ What aileth you ? ' They cried, ' We will have an 
 account of the great treasure of Flanders, which you have 
 sent to England ? ' He wept, and promised an account if he 
 were allowed time to make it. In vain did he remind them 
 truly, ' I governed you in peace and rest. In the time of my 
 governing ye have had all things as ye could wish — com, 
 money, and all other merchandise.' He drew in his head, 
 and tried to steal through a back door into an adjoining 
 church. Four hundred men got into the house, and 
 pursuing him, slew him without mercy ere he could reach 
 the sanctuary." 
 
 It was four years after that, that the Flemings made their 
 show of homage to King John. But they continued their 
 alliance, at a safe distance, with his enemy, and rendered 
 many services to the English during the long wars that 
 ensued. The strife was in one way of advantage to them, as 
 it left them in practical independence. The independence, 
 however, was shown in much jealousy between the towns, 
 Ghent being always the most violent in its democracy. 
 The heavy taxes exacted in more submissive parts of the 
 French dominions, nominal or real, were here bluntly 
 refused, and during a long period the citizens were their 
 own masters. Their boldest and most turbulent leader was 
 Philip van Arteveldt, son of the demagogue murdered in 
 1346, and ^nder him and his successors the Flemings n^ad'J
 
 no The Romance of Trade. 
 
 war and peace, fought, and signed treaties, and (more than 
 all) advanced in trade and wealth, regardless alike of the 
 authority of the French monarchs and of their own weak 
 rulers, who were the vassals of France. A change of rulers, 
 which took place in 1369, however, produced momentous 
 results a century after its occurrence. In that year Margaret, 
 the heiress of Flanders, was married to Philip, Duke of Bur- 
 gundy ; and by this alliance the little province was brought 
 under the same government as the other states of the 
 Netherlands, and eventually became the scene of other 
 tightings, in which the citizens of Antwerp and Amsterdam 
 were sometimes rivals, and sometimes associates, with those 
 of Bruges and Ghent. 
 
 The northern provinces of the Netherlands rose to wealth 
 and importance in ways similar to those that prevailed in 
 Flanders. All were granted in early times to petty princes, 
 earls or counts, in or near the reign of Charlemagne, and 
 afterwards became great through the manufacturing and 
 trading enterprise of their inhabitants, whereby the power 
 of their hereditary lords — themselves aggrandised by it — was 
 rendered insignificant. Antwerj), a town as early as 517, 
 but of small account during many centuries, owed much of 
 its prosperity to its fortunate situation on the Scheldt, which 
 enabled it in the end to absorb much of the commerce that 
 had hitherto passed through Bruges. The English merchants 
 have the credit of being its first great patrons. It was for 
 a long time the chief resort on the Continent of the old 
 Company of Merchants of the Staple — an attempt to imitate 
 in a small way the commercial machinery of the Hanseotic 
 League — and it was afterwards the chosen port of tlic 
 Society of Merchant Adventurers, a younger and more 
 energetic English trading corijoration. 'M\'hcn lMiili[) the 
 Good, Duke of r.urgundy," says an old writer, " first 
 granted privileges to this company in the year 1446, there 
 were but four merchants in the city of Antwerp, and
 
 Politics in Trade. hi 
 
 only six vessels, merely for river navigation ; but in a few- 
 years after the company's settling there, the city had a 
 great number of ships belonging to it, whereby it Avas 
 soon much enlarged." Amsterdam, also, during the fifteenth 
 century, made great progress as a trading town. Both it 
 and Antwerp fared so well that they coveted the greater 
 wealth that still belonged to Bruges, and their desires were 
 gratified by a curious train of circumstances. 
 
 The Netherlands had formed part of the vast territory of 
 the Dukes of Burgundy for rather more than a century, when 
 the last Duke, Charles the Bold, ruined by his own ambi- 
 tion, died in 1477, leaving as heiress an only daughter, Mary. 
 This princess was married to the Archduke Maximilian, 
 who became Emperor of Germany in 1493, and thus the 
 old appanage of France was transferred to the dominion 
 of her great rival on the Continent. The Flemings, at any 
 rate, gained nothing by the change. Accustomed to manage 
 their own affairs, with little interference from earl, duke, or 
 king, they resented the sterner authority that was now forced 
 upon them. The traders of Ghent and Bruges headed a, 
 rebellion, in which nearly all the Flemish towns took part, 
 while Antwerp, Amsterdam, and the northern districts sided 
 with Maximilian. Terrible sufferings to the people en- 
 sued during the years of strife, and irreparable injury 
 was inflicted upon their commerce — one cunning device, 
 attributed to their rivals in Antwerp, being most productive 
 of damage. In 1482 Maximilian caused the canal which 
 connected Bruges with the sea to be blocked up at Sluys, 
 and thereby the trading-ships of all Europe, that had been 
 wont to visit the capital of Flanders, were compelled to 
 shape their course to Antwerp and Amsterdam. From that 
 time the prosperity of all the Flemish towns began to decline, 
 and Antwerp succeeded Bruges as the great emporium of the 
 v.-orld's commerce. 
 
 The supremacy of Antwerp hardly lasted for a hundred
 
 112 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 3-ears ; but till near the close of the sixteenth century it was 
 without a rival. Most of the Flemish merchants migrated 
 to it from Bruges, and nearly all the foreigners who had 
 hitherto made Bruges their centre of trade with every part ot 
 Europe. These foreigners were said, in 1560, to number 
 more than a thousand. Every nation had here its factory or 
 little colony of merchants. Frenchmen, Englishmen— among 
 whom were old Sir John Gresham and his famous son 
 Thomas — Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Danes, 
 and even Turks, settled in the town and crowded its bourse, 
 the first exchange set up in Europe. Two thousand loaded 
 wagons from France, Germany, and Lorraine passed each 
 (lay through its gates, and the merchant ships that 
 bartered their foreign vvares for this inland produce 
 were more than could be counted. Often 250 vessels 
 might at the same time be seen loading or unloading 
 at her quays. Ludovico Guicciardini's account of our own 
 share in this commerce is precise. "To England," he says, 
 "Antwerp sends jewels and precious stones, silver bullion, 
 quicksilver, wrought silks, gold and silver cloth and thread, 
 camlets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton, cummin, 
 galls, linens (fine and coarse), serges, tapestry, madder, hops 
 in great quantities, glass, salt, fish, metallic and other 
 merceries of all sorts, arms of all kinds, ammunition for war, 
 and household furniture. From England Antwerp receives 
 vast quantities of fine and coarse draperies, fringes, and 
 other things of that kind, to a great value, the finest wool, 
 excellent saffron in small quantities, much lead and tin, 
 sheep and rabbit skins without number, and various other 
 sorts of fine peltry and leather, beer, cheese, and other 
 ]jrovisions in great quantities, also Malmsey wines, which 
 the English import from Candia. It is marvellous to think 
 of the vast quantity of drapery imported by the English into 
 the Netherlands, being undoubtedly, one year with another, 
 abo\-e 200,000 pieces of all kinds, which, at the mos:
 
 Politics in Trade. 113 
 
 moderate rate of 25 crowns per piece, is 5,000,000 crowns ; 
 so that these and other merchandise brought by the 
 Enghsh to us, or carried from us to them, may make the 
 annual amount to be more than 12,000,000 crowns" — about 
 ;^2, 400,000 — "to the great benefit of both countries, neither 
 of which could possibly, or not without the greatest damage, 
 dispense with their vast annual commerce." 
 
 The vast annual commerce was not dispensed with, but 
 increased with the increase of wealth that it helped to pro- 
 duce. Before long, however, England had to seek other 
 marts, and Antwerp lost its pre-eminence as a centre of 
 trade. In it, as in Bruges and Ghent, a spirit of political 
 freedom had kept pace with commercial enterprise; and a 
 new power in national life, the spirit of religious freedom, 
 had lately grown out of the teachings of Luther and his 
 fellow-workers. Antwerp, able to buy with its wealth a 
 large measure of pohtical freedom for its citizens, suffered 
 less than many other parts of the Netherlands in which 
 Lutheranism was adopted, during the long persecutions by 
 which Charles V. sought to restore the country to Catholi- 
 cism; but soon after Philip 11. 's accession, and the harsher 
 measures to which he and his great agent, the Duke of Alva, 
 resorted, even Antwerp ceased to be safe. The story of 
 the great struggle that ensued, in which the brave little 
 race of Netherlanders fought single-handed — until England 
 joined in the war, and contributed its great Armada fight 
 — against Spain, and Germany, and Rome, the huge ma- 
 chinery of political and religious tyi'anny that Philip wielded, 
 is well known. Freedom, against the world's expectations, 
 triumphed, and the Netherlands entered on a new era of 
 prosperity. But Antwerp suffered by the strife. Sacked in 
 1567, and again more ruinously in 1585, its commerce was 
 forced into new channels, Amsterdam taking its place on 
 the Continent, but not a little of its greatness being trans- 
 ferred, with the men who fled from the dangers that harassed 
 
 I
 
 114 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 them at home, to London. In 1567 Sir Thomas Gresham, 
 then at the head of the EngUsh merchants in the Nether- 
 lands, was asked by the Protestants, of whom there were 
 forty thousand in Antwerp alone, whether they would find 
 welcome and peace in England. His answer induced great 
 multitudes of them to cross the Channel, and the result was 
 an immediate stimulus to English prosperity. 
 
 Many Flemings and Dutchmen, however, had crossed 
 before. The earlier immigrations from the Netherlands, that 
 have already been referred to, were insignificant in com- 
 parison with those that began very shortly after Queen 
 Elizabeth's accession. Many English Protestants had taken 
 refuge in the Low Countries from the persecutions of Mary, 
 guided by her husband Philip. As soon as Philip's rule in 
 England was over, and his fanaticism began to work upon 
 the Netherlands, the English returned, and with them came 
 great numbers of their new friends. In 1561 a goodly band 
 crossed over to Deal, whence they spread to Sandwich, Rye, 
 and other parts of Kent. Others joined them in ensuing 
 years, or went elsewhere, everywhere to be encouraged by 
 Elizabeth and her statesmen, and nearly everywhere to be 
 welcomed by those among whom they settled. One stream 
 passed westward from Deal and the Kentish coast, another 
 stream passed westward from Yarmouth and the Norfolk 
 coast. Wherever they settled they made cheerful homes, 
 and worked hard for their own and their neighbours' good. 
 In their gardens they cultivated many vegetables new to 
 England, or hitherto very scarce — carrots, celery, and 
 cabbages among the number. They were skilled car- 
 penters, and all branches of the building trade were much 
 improved by them. Cutlery, clock-making, felt hat manu- 
 facture, and other trades, were introduced by them ; and in 
 others, like pottery, they taught much better ways of working 
 than were before known in the country. More than all, 
 they were weavers, and they greatly developed every sort of
 
 Politics in Trade. 115 
 
 workmanship in wool and flax. In Maidstone they started 
 thread manufacture, still known there as " Dutch work." 
 The lacemakers of Alen9on and Valenciennes transferred 
 their calling to Cranfield, in Bedfordshire, whence it extended 
 to Buckinghamshire, Oxford, Northamptonshire, and other 
 counties. Others went to Devonshire, and Honiton lace 
 soon became famous, many of the best makers of it at the 
 present day showing their Flemish ancestry in their names. 
 Norwich and London were their chief places of resort. In 
 1570 there were about four thousand natives of the Low 
 Countries in the former city, and between seven and eight 
 thousand in the latter. In 1588 there were thirty-eight 
 Flemish merchants trading in London, and rich enough to 
 subscribe ^5,000 towards the defence of England against 
 the Spanish Armada. 
 
 They even went to Ireland, then a scene of so much 
 turmoil that few Englishmen ventured to stay in it, except 
 as soldiers. " I caused," wrote Sir Henry Sidney, the wise 
 Lord-Deputy of Ireland during many years, and the father 
 of Sir Philip Sidney, in a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, 
 " I caused to plant and inhabit about forty families of the 
 reformed churches of the Low Countries, flying thence for 
 religion's sake, in one ruinous town called Swords ; and, 
 truly, sir, it would have done any man good to have seen 
 how diligently they \\TOught, how they re-edified the quite 
 spoiled old castle of the same town, and repaired almost all 
 the same, and how goodly and cleanly they, their wives, and 
 children lived. They made diaper and ticks for beds, and 
 other good stuffs for man's use, and as excellent leather of 
 deer-skins, goat and sheep fells, as is made in Southwark." 
 It is mainly to the energy of the Flemish refugees in its 
 northern counties that Ireland owes the development of its 
 flax cultivation and linen manufacture. 
 
 Antwerp never recovered from the injuries that fell upon 
 its commerce in consequence of the strife between the 
 
 I z
 
 ii6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Netherlanders and Philip 11. ; but Amsterdam succeeded to 
 its greatness as a Continental mart. Soon becoming the 
 capital of the new Dutch Republic, it became yet sooner the 
 great storehouse of Europe for corn, wine, and a hundred 
 other commodities, and it grew with the growth of 
 enterprise by which the hardy Hollanders, holding their 
 own in the world of politics, became formidable com- 
 petitors of the English in trade and colonisation in both 
 the Indies. 
 
 Emigrants from the Netherlands continued to flock to 
 England, and they came very numerously after their 
 country had given William of Orange to ours as king. But 
 the only parallel to the settlement of Dutch and Flemish 
 Protestants in England under Queen Elizabeth is in the 
 case of the French Protestants who began to cross the 
 Channel shortly before the accession of William III. In 
 1598 Henry IV. of France had issued the celebrated Edict 
 of Nantes, conferring liberty of conscience to Piotes'ants, 
 and that wise measure, joined with other good and patrioti'^ 
 measures of Henry and his minister Sully, had borne rich 
 fruit in the rapid development of trade and manufacture 
 throughout the country. A large share of the new energy 
 had been displayed by the Huguenots, forced to find ui 
 commerce the occupation from which in politics they weix* 
 debarred by feudalism and Catholicism, and they had been 
 worthily protected herein by Richelieu and Colbert, the 
 good geniuses of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. But in 1685, 
 two years after Colbert's death, the Edict of Nantes was 
 revoked. Bigotry had for a time a semblance of triumph, 
 and Jesuits were able to boast that heresy was in a fair way 
 of being rooted out of France. The real effect was far 
 otherwise. Nothing but injury was done to the nation 
 which refused to find room for its most industrious and 
 worthiest members ; and they, only strengthened in their 
 love of liberty, were forced, amid terrible sufferings, to talve
 
 Politics in Trade. 117 
 
 refuge in countries willing to receive them and the arts that 
 they brought with them. 
 
 About a hundred thousand French outcasts — some ten 
 thousand from Rouen alone — settled in England, and 
 wonderful benefits to our commerce resulted from their 
 coming. The great numbers who found poor homes for 
 themselves in Spitalfields and elsewhere made silk manu- 
 facture for the first time an important trade in England ; 
 and a great stimulus was given by them to all sorts of work- 
 manship in linen and cotton. The making of buttons, and 
 a hundred small articles of great value in the aggregate- 
 was introduced by them. Beaver hats, which had hitherto 
 been all brought from France, were now made in Wands- 
 worth, and had to be bought there for the Continental 
 dandies who loved them as much as they hated their makers. 
 Glass manufacture, till now hardly known in England, save 
 in its simplest and coarsest branches, v>?as soon turned by 
 the Huguenot refugees into a great staple of English pro- 
 duce. It was the same with paper-making. Among others 
 who followed this trade was Henri de Portal, whose 
 ancestors had been leaders of the Albigenses, and sturdy 
 Protestants for centuries. He set up a paper manufactory 
 at Lavenstoke, on the Itchin, in Hampshire, and managed 
 it so well that he was chosen to furnish the peculiar material 
 required by the Bank of England for its bank-notes, and 
 the monopoly is still possessed by his descendants.* 
 
 No later instance of religious persecution equal to that 
 which fell on the French Protestants in 1685 has occurred; 
 but there have been cases quite as memorable of the in- 
 fluence, direct or indirect, of politics upon commerce. The 
 minor persecution which troubled the English Puritans 
 during the years previous to 1685, and which caused many 
 
 * It is hardly necessary to refer the reader for further information 
 touching these refugees to Mr. Smiles's instructive and interesting worli on 
 " The Huguenots in England."
 
 iiS The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of them to quit their country shortly before the Huguenots 
 came into it, was not designed with any reference to trade, but 
 has had commercial results unparalleled in modern history. 
 The first English colonists in America, the planters of Virginia 
 in the reign of James I., went thither only with the healthy 
 wish to improve their condition by cultivating the rich lands 
 then lying almost waste. Their success, not very great at 
 first, tempted others to follow their example ; but the real 
 beginning of prosperity to what are now the United States 
 dates from the settlement of the "Pilgrim Fathers" in 
 Massachusetts. The little group of fugitives from religious 
 tyranny who crossed the Atlantic in the Mayflmuer, in 1620, 
 were pioneers of other groups, who soon made New England 
 a worthy rival of the old England from which they were 
 outcasts for conscience' sake. " The land is weary of her 
 inhabitants," it was said, in a significant Puritan tract, 
 " General Considerations for Plantmg New England," pub- 
 lished in 1649, "so that man, which is the most precious of 
 all creatures, is here more vile and base than the earth they 
 tread on ; so as children, neighbours and friends, especially 
 of the poor, are accounted the greatest burdens, which, if 
 things were right, would be the highest blessings. Hence it 
 comes to pass that all arts and trades are carried on in that 
 deceitful manner and unrighteous course as it is almost 
 impossible for a good upright man to maintain his charge 
 and live comfortably in any of them." Therefore tide after 
 tide of Puritans, Independents, Quakers, and others — 
 among the rest, those other persecuted Christians, the 
 Catholics who founded Maryland — crossed over to America, 
 and there managed " to live comfortably," though with not 
 quite as much freedom from "deceitful manner and un- 
 righteous course " as they arrogantly professed. Zeal in 
 money-making went hand in hand with zeal in religion ; 
 but -though attended by some ugly circumstances, it mightily 
 helped on the growth of young colonies, and even ugly
 
 Politics in Trade. 
 
 119 
 
 circumstances in the religious zeal led to the same end. 
 Milton's discovery that " New Presbyter is but Old Priest 
 writ long," was as true in America as in Europe. The men 
 who, quitted their English homes to secure for themselves 
 liberty of conscience were not inclined to grant liberty of 
 conscience to one another. Despicable squabbles and 
 small tyrannies prevailed, which caused much bitterness 
 among the colonists, and threatened to ruin their prosperity. 
 But the effect was different. There was room enough for 
 all in the splendid country to which they had gone, and the 
 only issue of the religious quarrels was that each petty sect 
 branched off into a petty colony of its own, leaving vacant 
 space enough, as was supposed, to separate it for ever from 
 its rivals. Thus all the land was dotted with thriving little 
 settlements, which soon throve so well that the vacant 
 spaces were filled up ; but by that time they had learnt 
 wisdom, and were ready to enter into friendly relations, in 
 spite of their religious differences, and the result was the 
 establishment of a body of united colonies, so powerful that 
 it was able to baffle the commercial tyranny of England, 
 and, shaking off its allegiance, but very little of its sym- 
 pathy, to reshape itself as a body of United States. Other 
 causes, of course, tended to build up this mighty nation, 
 greater now in number of inhabitants and fourteen times 
 greater in extent of land than the nation that gave it birth ; 
 but not a little is the result due to that desire of truly 
 carrying on " all arts and trades " which actuated the 
 " Pilgrim Fathers," and has actuated all their descendants 
 and followers. 
 
 The relationship between politics and trade is shown yet 
 more notably, though very differently, in the history of 
 another great outgrowth of English commercial enterprise. 
 In our intercourse with India they have gone side bv 
 side, sometimes as rivals, sometimes as allies, but always 
 together, during three centuries. When Sir Francis Drake,
 
 I20 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 first of all Englishmen, visited the East Indies, in 1579, in 
 the course of his famous vo3^age round the world, his double 
 object was to make private war against Philip II., on 
 religious and political grounds, and to wrest from him some 
 of those commercial gains which his Portuguese subjects 
 had begun to derive from intercourse with Asia and its 
 southern islands, just as his Spanish subjects had for a longer 
 time been growing rich through trade and colonisation in 
 America and the West Indies. Shortly after his return, in 
 1580, from his three years' voyage, bringing with him booty 
 worth £^\i for every j[^\ spent upon the expedition — most 
 of it, it is true, obtained on the Chilian and Peruvian coasts 
 — and while every tongue was eloquent concerning the 
 prowess and the value of his exploits, it was proposed by 
 Queen Elizabeth's Government to found "a company of 
 such as should trade beyond the equinoctial line," with 
 Drake for its life-governor. That project was not entered 
 upon till after Drake's famous career was over; but it took 
 shape in the formation of the East India Company, which, 
 after nine years of deliberation, and a trial voyage made by 
 Captain Lancaster, as agent for some London merchants, 
 was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth in 1600. Captain 
 Lancaster conducted its first trading voyage, begun in the 
 spring of 1601, and, in spite of many mishaps, made a good 
 beginning of the great work to be done by it. He made 
 political alliances and commercial treaties with the kings of 
 Sumatra, and brought home substantial proof of both, in the 
 costly presents sent by the native monarchs to Queen 
 Elizabeth, and in the great stores of spices and other articles 
 bought from the people for his employers. The policy 
 initiated by him has been maintained to the present day, 
 with a result far more wonderful than the wildest enthusiast 
 could have dreamt of nine generations ago. Affording 
 political support to local potentates, in return for trading 
 privileges, the East India Company, reshaped and expanded
 
 Politics in Trade. 121 
 
 several times before its abolition in 1858, first gained a 
 footing on the southern islands, and then advanced upon the 
 mainland. The power that it gained over the natives, and 
 which was strengthened even by the efforts of French and 
 Dutch rivals to weaken it, soon turned Hindoo and Moslem 
 princes into vassals, and from vassals they became subjects ; 
 so that now a vast territory, eight times as extensive, and five 
 times as populous as Great Britain and Ireland, has been 
 made subject to the English Crown, and at the present time 
 receives from England about ;,^4o,ooo,ooo worth of goods, 
 in return for which it sends back commodities worth nearly 
 ^60,000,000. All this vast empire has grown out of Sir 
 Francis Drake's shrewd enterprise, and the enterprise which 
 it aroused in later men, using commerce as the instrument 
 of politics, and politics as the instrument of commerce. 
 
 But the result has not been altogether satisfactory. 
 Many dark pages occur in the brilliant history of English 
 aggression in India. Lust of power and lust of wealth 
 prompted many famous exploits, and the evil ^vi-ought by 
 them cannot be wiped out by the valour and perseverance 
 that brought them to a successful conclusion. The tem- 
 pering of both politics and commerce with philanthropy 
 in our management of Indian affairs is only a modem 
 institution, and it is not yet complete. Illustrations of the 
 misuse of mere political power, for which terrible retribution 
 appeared in the mutiny of 1S57, need not here be given. 
 One illustration of political interference with commerce — 
 that furnished by the history of the opium trade — will 
 suffice. 
 
 Opium is an old product of India, and, almost from 
 the commencement of British rule, officials were allowed 
 to cultivate and trade in it ; but it was not much thought 
 of till a century ago. In 1773 it was converted into a 
 Government monopoly, and the sale was encouraged in 
 various ways, in order that the profits might swell the
 
 122 The Romance of Tkade. 
 
 revenue ; the chief market being in China, whither the ob- 
 noxious drug was sent, not only to meet the existing 
 demand, but, as far as possible, to foster it. In 1797 
 poppy-growing was forbidden in any part of India, except 
 Bahar and Benares, and there only in a limited area. 
 About 100,000 acres are now appropriated to it; money, 
 at the beginning of the season, being advanced by 
 Government to the cultivators, and the balance of their 
 wages, if any is due, being paid at the close. In 1796 the 
 Emperor of China prohibited the use of opium in his 
 dominions ; but, by help of armed vessels, which conveyed 
 it to the coast, and of confidential agents on land, who 
 received and distributed it, the authorities were evaded ; 
 and in China the annual consumption rose in forty years 
 from 1,000 to 27,000 chests. About ninepence per lb. 
 is paid by Government for the production of the opium, 
 and it charges about three shillings for preparing and pack- 
 ing it for the market. It is then conveyed to Calcutta, 
 where it is sold to the merchants at prices varying from 
 seven shillings to a guinea, the average being twelve shil- 
 lings per lb. The merchants' profits, and the cost of 
 shipping it to China, raise that average to a guinea, and the 
 price is further vastly increased by the dealers who retail it 
 in that country. The profits of the Indian Government upon 
 this trade add from ;^4,ooo,ooo to ;^5, 000,000 a year to 
 the revenue ; and, to protect the traffic, more than one war 
 with China has been entered upon. That a commodity so 
 objectionable should be heavily taxed, in preference to any 
 other and more useful produce, cannot be complained of; 
 but that its consumption should be encouraged, as has been 
 and still is the case, solely for financial ends, is as wrong as 
 it is foolish. 
 
 Other instances of monopolies, and of kindred inter- 
 ferences of politics with trade in special articles, will here- 
 after be given, as well as illustrations of the way in which
 
 Politics in Trade. 123 
 
 particular traders have, wisely or unwisel}-, sought to pro- 
 mote their own callings, or commerce as a whole, by help 
 of politics. Some of these cases are very noteworthy, as 
 showing both the political importance of commerce, and the 
 bearing of commerce upon politics. 
 
 The services rendered by Sir William de la Pole to 
 Edward III. have been already referred to. Yet greater 
 were the services rendered by the Greshams to their sove- 
 reigns and their country. Sir Richard Gresham, the father, 
 residing often in Antwerp, acted as political and financial 
 agent to Henry VIII. and Edward VI. in the Netherlands, 
 besides being equally useful in London. He negotiated 
 public loans, and fulfilled many of the duties both of Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer and of stockbroker to the Crown. 
 He boldly resented many arbitrary measures proposed by 
 King Henry and Cardinal Wolsey affecting himself and his 
 brother merchants, and was the first exponent, though 
 naturally only in rude ways, of the modern principles of 
 free trade. 
 
 Therein, and in all the other wise views that he held, 
 he was followed and surpassed by his son. Sir Thomas 
 Gresham, whose public life began in Edward VI. 's reign. 
 There was need at that time of an honest man to act as 
 adviser to the sovereign. Edward's mode of borrowing 
 money, or, rather, that of the foolish statesmen who guided 
 him, may be gathered from an entry in the royal journal, 
 dated April the 25th, 1551 : "A bargain made with the 
 Fulcare," we read — these Fulcare being the famous Fuggers 
 of Augsburg— " for about ^60,000, for the deferring of it; 
 first, that the Fulcare should put it off for ten per cent. ; 
 secondly, that I should buy 12,000 marks' weight of silver, 
 at six shillings the ounce; thirdly, that I should pay 
 100,000 crowns for a very fair jewel, four rubies (marvel- 
 lous big), one orient and great diamond, and one great 
 pearl." Against that mode of borrowing money, now aban-
 
 124 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 cloned by kings, and adapted only for the most foolish 
 spendthrifts, young Gresham stoutly protested. "To be 
 plain with your Grace, according to my bounden duty," he 
 wrote to the Duke of Northumberland in August, 1552, 
 " verily, if there be not some other way taken for the pay- 
 ment of his Majesty's debts, but to force men from time 
 to time to prolong it ; I say to you, the end thereof shall 
 neither be honourable nor profitable to his Highness. In 
 consideration whereof, if there be none other ways taken 
 forthwith, I most humbly beseech that I may be discharged 
 of this office of agentship : for, otherwise, I see in the end 
 I shall receive shame and discredit thereby, to my utter 
 undoing for ever ; which is the smallest matter of all, so 
 that the King's Majesty's honour and credit be not spoiled 
 thereby, and specially in a strange country." The straight- 
 forward and patriotic young merchant was not allowed to 
 resign the office of financial agent at Antwerp, in which he 
 succeeded his father ; and, though his advice was not always 
 taken, he managed by it, and still more by his own good 
 sense and tact in doing the business entrusted to him, very 
 greatly to improve the pecuniary condition of the English 
 Crown. Three weeks before his death, King Edward re- 
 warded him with a grant of land, saying, " You shall know 
 that you have served a king ! " He also served two queens 
 as well. With Mary he had not much favour ; but to 
 Elizabeth he was an excellent and trusted adviser during 
 twenty years. Dying in 1579, he left the royal exchequer 
 in a far more prosperous condition than it had ever been 
 Ijefore ; and if his commercial services were thus important 
 to the State, his political influence was no less valuable 
 to the general well-being of trade. The Royal Exchange 
 which he built, and which helped not a little to concentrate 
 the forces by which London has become the greatest mart 
 in the world, was only one of the many benefits that he 
 conferred on commerce.
 
 Politics in Trade. ^ 125 
 
 A far more striking instance of merchants' ser\'ice to 
 their country occurs in the history of Jacques Coeur, who 
 lived more than a century before Sir Thomas Gresham. 
 Born a few years before 1400, he was the son of Pierre 
 Coeur, a goldsmith or fur-dealer, of Bourges, a quaint old 
 city right in the centre of France, just halfway between 
 Paris and Lyons. In Bourges, Jacques Cceur became a 
 great trader, and that town was, all along, the centre of 
 the commercial relations which he established \A\\\ every 
 district of France ; but the ancient port of Marseilles 
 afforded greater facilities for extending his operations to 
 foreign countries, and that was his chief place of business 
 during more than twenty years from 1429 or 1430. Mar- 
 seilles, founded by a Greek colony in the sixth century 
 B.C., had continued to be a trading town in all later times, 
 but was greatly surpassed by the younger Mediterranean 
 marts of Venice and Genoa. Jacques Coeur revived its 
 greatness. Every year he sent a trading-fleet of ten or 
 twelve ships all round the Mediterranean, to exchange the 
 wares of France for spices, silks, and all the costly articles 
 brought from the East. He was the first Frenchman who 
 established commercial dealings with Egypt, and thence he 
 obtained rich stores of articles, for which he found a good 
 and ready market in his own and other lands. At one time, 
 it was said, he had three hundred agents in various parts of 
 the world, and "As rich as Jacques Coeur" became a pro- 
 verb. He also obtained from Charles VH. a grant of the 
 mining districts around Lyons, and thence extracted so 
 much wealth that the common people believed him to be 
 an astrologer, possessed of the secret of the philosophers 
 stone. The French monarch appointed him Master of his 
 Mint, first in Bourges and afterwards at Paris. He was also 
 made Argentier, or treasurer to the CroA\Ti. 
 
 Charles VH. then had need of an argentier. He him- 
 self was so poor that, on one occasion, having nothing for
 
 126 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 dinner, he was glad to accept from Jacques Coeur a present 
 of a cooked loin of mutton and two fowls. The Duke of 
 Bedford, as regent for Henry VI., was then in possession of 
 the greater part of France, and the poor vacillating heir of 
 the house of Valois starved in Bourges, till Joan of Arc, 
 manlier than all his warriors, led the revolution by which his 
 kingdom was won back for him from the English. The 
 bold merchant was his chief agent in completing the change 
 which the bold maiden had begun. Jacques Coeur, besides 
 being merchant, shipowner, banker, miner, and coiner, 
 was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Purveyor-General, and 
 Ambassador as well. Lending inoney — it is said, without in- 
 terest — to king and nobles alike, he often had to expostulate 
 with Charles VII. for his pusillanimous conduct, to urge him 
 to shake off his unworthy courtiers, and to persuade him to 
 patriotic action. It was Jacques Coeur, indeed, who intro- 
 duced that system of taxation without permission of the 
 States-General, which — though it may have been necessary 
 and commendable in the desperate condition of France at 
 the time — was fraitful in subsequent misfortune, through the 
 arbitrary power which it vested in the Crown. The argentier 
 levied a tax of 20 livres on ev^ery one of the million belfries 
 in France, and, limiting the expenses of the royal household 
 to 1,000,000 livres, carefully apportioned the rest to the pay 
 of soldiers, the repair of fortresses, and other services of 
 State. In 1448, when the English were driven from all the 
 rest of France, and the people of Normandy waited only for 
 encouragement in throwing off the foreign tyranny that was 
 hateful to them, Jacciues Cuiur stirred up the slothful 
 monarch to the work, and lent him 200,000 crowns with 
 which to do it. " Sire," he said at that time, with more 
 loyalty than truth, " to you I am indebted for profit and 
 honour, both at home and in pagan lands ; for it is in honour 
 of you that the Soldan of Egypt has granted me a safe- 
 conduct for my galleys, and that my factors are protectcol.
 
 Politics ih Trade. 127 
 
 From all these advantages I have acquired great wealth. 
 Whatever I have is yours." 
 
 Charles VII. took him at his word. In 1452 Agnes 
 Sorel, the king's mistress, ate a poisoned apple, and died. 
 Between her and Jacques Cceur there had never been much 
 friendship, the merchant considernig that she was partly to 
 blame for the follies and vices of the king ; and ready belief 
 was given, or pretended, to a report, spread abroad by some 
 of his enemies, that the apple had come from him. He was 
 arrested, kept in prison for eleven months, subjected to a 
 sham trial, at which other false charges were brought against 
 him and accepted without proof, tortured, and at length, in 
 May, 1453, condemned as worthy of death. With a hollow 
 show of leniency, the ungrateful monarch spared his life, 
 but confiscated all his property. Others whom he had be- 
 friended were not as ungrateful. Sixty or eighty merchants, 
 \7ho owed their wealth to him, are said to have lent him each 
 1,000 crowns, with which to recover his fortunes; and this, 
 though heart-broken, he attempted to do. It is said that in 
 1456 the Pope — to whom in 1448 he had gone as ambas- 
 sador, in " so great magnificence that such a company was 
 never heard tell of" — appointed him captain-general of an 
 expedition against the infidels, and that, being off Chio with 
 his fleet, he there fell sick, and died in November of the 
 same year. But the story of his life after the disgraceful 
 trial and sentence is uncertain. 
 
 By his private trading and his public services alike 
 Jacques Coeur helped mightily to reconstruct the prosperity 
 of France. The first great French merchant, he had many 
 notable successors, but none equal in illustration of the 
 mutual benefits that can be conferred upon one another by 
 commerce and politics, until the time of Jean Baptiste 
 Colbert. Colbert, widely different from Jacques Coeur, both 
 in temperament and in the circumstances of his career, was 
 not a merchant, though the greatest friend of commerce
 
 128 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 whose name appears in the annals of France. Of Scotd^. 
 descent, and the son of a humble wine-merchant in Rheims, 
 he was born in 1619, and began life as a woollen-draper's 
 assistant. A pretty story is told of his having inadvertently 
 sold some cloth at too high a price to a Paris banker, to 
 whom he returned the overcharge in spite of his master's 
 anger, and who, pleased at his unusual honesty, took him 
 into his employ. He was not long a banker's clerk. In 
 1649 he entered the service of Cardinal Mazarin, then 
 Richelieu's w^ell-meaning successor as first minister of France. 
 His skill soon made him famous, and in 1661 Louis XIV. 
 made him Comptroller-General of Finance. Holding that 
 and other offices in succession, he was the good genius of 
 France during the next two-and-twenty years. Advancing 
 in the path marked out by Richelieu, who was himself a 
 pupil of Sully, wiser than his master — these three being the 
 greatest statesmen of France — he developed a system of 
 administration, which, if later men had been honest and 
 shrewd enough to maintain and perfect it, would have saved 
 their country from two centuries of misery, and averted the 
 French Revolution. His strictly political w^ork, and his 
 patronage of art and science, need not here be referred to ; 
 but his services to commerce were suflrcient to win for him 
 high fame. He repaired old roads, and made new ones. 
 He enabled Riquet to cut the noble canal of Languedoc, 
 which connects the Atlantic with the Mediterranean. He 
 built up the French navy and put down piracy. He ex- 
 tended French trade to the East Indies and colonised 
 Canada, Madagascar, and Cayenne. He founded a Chamber 
 of Commerce in Paris, and personally aided the merchants 
 in their deliberations for the furtherance of trade. He 
 showed how nobles could be merchants without loss of 
 their nobility; and Nantes, Bordeaux, and St. Malo still bear 
 fruit from seeds of his planting. He established glass- 
 works — the first in France — in one part of Paris, and in
 
 Politics in Trade. 129 
 
 another he founded the famous Gobelins tapestry manufac- 
 tory. Directly and indirectly he did more for the com- 
 mercial benefit of France than any other statesman has ever 
 done ; and, if much of his good work failed, it failed only 
 through the folly of his successors, blind to the truth that 
 politics and commerce, with liberty for their only law, must 
 be mutually helpful in any nation that is to advance in 
 civilisation. 
 
 It is to its growing recognition of this truth that the 
 world owes much of its progress during recent generations. 
 England, especially, has been enriched by it — enabled to 
 crowd its acres with a far greater population than the acres 
 themselves could maintain, and to take, among the larger 
 nations, a place far more influential than, even with its 
 added millions of inhabitants, it could claim on the score 
 of mere population. But the lesson has been learnt with 
 difficulty. There has been plenty of political interference 
 with commerce during the past two centuries, and the 
 doctrines of free trade are even yet but feebly understood. 
 There are still poets and preachers, as well as statesmen, 
 who vaunt the superiority of war over peace, and particularly 
 of that suppressed form of war, known as " armed neu- 
 trahty," over the mutual trust and sympathy that are most 
 encouraged by international trade. 
 
 The history of the bearing upon commerce of the great 
 wars in which England has been engaged is eminently 
 instructive. Sometimes, it must be admitted, war has been 
 a powerful agent in the promoting of commerce, of liberty, 
 and of civilisation. So it was, especially, with the famous 
 struggle waged between England and Spain, in the days of 
 Elizabeth and Philip II., the most necessary and beneficial 
 war in which our country has ever been concerned. Prompted 
 partly by patriotism, which saw the great danger with which 
 the independence of England was threatened by the bound- 
 less ambition of the sixteenth century Augustus, partly by 
 
 J
 
 130 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 religious zeal on behalf of the persecuted Protestants of the 
 Netherlands, and partly by the commercial activity that 
 claimed a share in the prosperous traffic with America and 
 the West Indies, Asia and the East Indian Islands, which 
 was then engrossed by Spain and Portugal, it was wholly 
 successful in all its objects. England's strength as a nation 
 was proved by it. It drove back the advancing tide of 
 Catholicism, which had seemed likely to overwhelm the 
 Protestants of the Continent. It opened up more and easier 
 ways of traffic and colonisation for English merchants and 
 adventurers, in both the Western and the Eastern Worlds. 
 The British Empire in India and the United States of 
 America grew out of it, and thereby the wealth and 
 prosperity of our little island were developed beyond 
 computation. 
 
 No such praise can be accorded either to the causes or to 
 the effects of England's share in the War of the Spanish 
 Succession, begun by William III., and completed by Queen 
 Anne ; barren triumphs were achieved by it, and heavy 
 liabilities were fastened upon posterity. Its only result was 
 to lay the seeds of subsequent strife, by which commerce, at 
 any rate, gained nothing. The trading privileges and the 
 trading hindrances that were stated or implied in its treaties 
 were alike pernicious, and commercial enterprise was 
 checked, as far as political interference could check it, during 
 more than a century. 
 
 The most commercial of all our wars was that which 
 ended in the independence of the United States. Begotten 
 of the mistaken policy which sought to restrain American 
 industry, in order that English manufacturers and merchants 
 might be benefited, and continued under circumstances 
 wholly discreditable to the mother country, it engendered 
 hatred and jealousy, which has not yet quite died out. 
 Perhaps the United States have thriven better for their 
 separation from England, and the violent disruption
 
 Politics in Trade. 131 
 
 of ties that might have hindered the full development 
 of the ways of seli-government and self-advancement, by 
 which the great republic has progressed with unparalleled 
 rapidity and completeness ; but it cannot be doubted that, 
 had it been possible for the severance to take place without 
 awakening the bad passions then provoked, England, 
 at any rate, would have gained mightily, and her opponent 
 would have lost nothing. The only advantage of the stniggle 
 was the lesson taught by it, as to the better method to be 
 pursued by Great Britain when her other colonies have 
 reached maturity, and claim their independence. 
 
 Yet more melancholy, however, was the long war with 
 France, which culminated in the Battle of Waterloo and the 
 Treaty of Vienna. Inexcusable in its origin, one of wanton 
 interference with the internal politics of France, it v/as cruelly 
 disastrous in its consequences. The great exploits of men 
 like Nelson and Wellington furnish but slender gleams of 
 light, that light even lurid and ghastly, beside the wretched 
 waste of life upon the battle-field and the wretchedness 
 produced in millions of households. Pitt's Avar crippled 
 commerce, and brought England to the verge of ruin. " We 
 have examined," said Brougham, in the House of Commons, 
 in 181 2, "above a hundred witnesses, from more than thirty 
 of the great manufacturing and mercantile districts ; in all 
 this mass of evidence there was not a single witness who 
 denied or doubted the dreadful amount of the present 
 distress. Take, for example, one of our great staples, the 
 hardware, and look to Warwickshire, where it used to 
 flourish. Birmingham and its neighbourhood — a district of 
 thirteen miles round that centre — was formerly but one village, 
 I might say, one continued workshop, peopled with about 
 400,000 of the most industrious and skilful of mankind. 
 In what state do you now find that once busy hive of men ? 
 Silent, still, and desolate during half the week ; during the 
 rest of it miserably toiling, at reduced wages, for a pittance 
 
 J 2
 
 132 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 scarcely sufficient to maintain animal life in the lowest state 
 of comfort; and at all times ^vanning with unhappy persons, 
 willing, anxious, to work for their Hves, but unable to find 
 employment. He must have a stout heart within him who 
 can view such a scene and not shudder." In Yorkshire and 
 the woollen district, as Brougham showed, it was as bad. 
 In Lancashire and its neighbourhood it was worse. " I 
 would draw your attention to the cotton districts, merely to 
 present one incidental circumstance which chanced to trans- 
 pire respecting the distress of the poor in those parts. The 
 food which now sustains them is of the lowest kind, and of 
 that there is not nearly a sufficient supply ; bread, or even 
 potatoes, are now out of the question; the luxuries of animal 
 food, or even milk, they have long ceased to think of. 
 Their looks, as well as their apparel, proclaim the sad 
 change in their situation. One witness tells you it is only 
 necessary to look at their haggard faces to be assured of 
 their sufferings ; another says that persons who have recently 
 returned, after an absence of some months from those parts, 
 declared themselves shocked, and unable to recognise the 
 people whom they had left. A gentleman, largely concerned 
 in the cotton trade, whose property in part consists of 
 cottages and little pieces of ground let out to workpeople, 
 told us that lately he went to look after his rents, and when 
 he entered those dwellings, and found them so miserably 
 attired, so stripped of their wonted furniture and other little 
 comforts, when he saw their inhabitants sitting down to a 
 scanty dinner of oatmeal and water, their only meal in the 
 four-and-twenty hours, he could not stand the sight, and 
 came away unable to ask for his rent. Masters came 
 forward to tell us how unhappy it made them to have no 
 more work to give their poor men, because all their money, 
 and in some cases their credit too, was already gone in 
 trying to support them. Some had involved themselves in 
 embarrassments for such pious purposes. One, again, would
 
 Politics in Trade. 133 
 
 describe his misery at turning off people whom his father had 
 employed for many years. Another would say how he 
 dreaded the coming round of Saturday, when he had to pay 
 his hands their reduced wages, how he kept out of their way 
 on that day, and made his foreman pay them. A third would 
 say that he was afraid to see his people, because he had no 
 longer the means of giving them work, and knew that they 
 would flock round him, and implore to be employed at 
 the lowest wages, for something wholly insufficient to feed 
 them." 
 
 That dismal picture of the commercial distress caused 
 by our " great and glorious " war with France, has a coun- 
 terpart in the misery by which the cotton districts were 
 afflicted in consequence of the recent civil war in America. 
 Although in that case England was not responsible for the 
 misery, the same lesson is taught by it — that war, whatever 
 else may be said in its praise, is generally and almost wholly 
 the greatest enemy of commerce. " Although the conflicts 
 in which this country has during the last hundred and fifty 
 years involved itself," Richard Cobden said, truly and elo- 
 quently, "have, in almost every instance, been undertaken 
 in behalf of our commerce, there is no instance recorded 
 in which a favourable tariff or a beneficial treaty has been 
 extorted from an unwilling enemy at the point of the sword. 
 On the contrary, every restriction that embarrasses the trade 
 of the whole world, all existing commercial jealousies 
 between nations, the debts that oppress the countries of 
 Europe, the incalculable waste owing to the misdirected 
 labour and capital of communities — these and a thousand 
 other evils are all the consequences of wars. How shall a 
 profession which withdraws from productive industry the 
 ablest of the human race, and teaches them systematically 
 the best modes of destroying mankind; which awards 
 honours only in proportion to the number of victims offered 
 at its sanguinary altar ; which overturns cities, ravages farms
 
 134 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 and vineyards, uproots forests, burns the ripened harvest ; 
 which, in a word, exists but in the absence of law, order, 
 and security — how can such a profession be favourable to 
 commerce, which increases only with the increase of human 
 life, whose parent is agriculture, and which perishes or flies 
 at the approach of lawless rapine ? They who propose to 
 influence by force the traffic of the world, forget that affairs 
 of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very 
 nature if touched by the hand of violence ; for, as faith, if 
 forced, would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so com- 
 merce becomes robbery, if covered by warlike armaments." 
 
 The name of him who wrote those sentences will live 
 long as a wise benefactor of trade, one of his many great 
 services being the procurement of the commercial treaty of 
 i860 between Great Britain and France. Notable illustra- 
 tion of the progress of political interference with trade is 
 furnished by the history of commercial treaties. Here, 
 however, it will be sufiicient to note the character and some 
 of the effects of two alone, the Methuen Treaty and the 
 Cobden Treaty. 
 
 In 1703 John Methuen, on behalf of Queen Anne, 
 contracted with the King of Portugal that British woollen 
 cloths should be admitted into Portugal, provided that at 
 all times Portuguese wines were admitted into Great Britain 
 at two-thirds of the duty, whatever that might be, levied 
 upon the wines of France. That treaty, so far as it opened 
 a new market of English manufactures, was wholly bene- 
 ficial, but its influence upon our wine-drinking was curious. 
 Before 1688, port, or Oporto wine, was a thing unknown in 
 England; whereas during many previous centuries the wine- 
 trade with France had been very great, and the light, whole- 
 some produce of the grapes of Burgundy, Bordeaux, and 
 Champagne had been the favourite drink of all classes of 
 the people, save those with whom beer was the costliest 
 beverage procurable. In William III.'s reign, however,
 
 Politics in Trade. 135 
 
 jealousy of France had caused heavy duties to be charged 
 upon it, the increase being from is. 4d. to 4s. lod. a gallon, 
 and with the great advance of price there had been pro- 
 portionate reduction of the consumption. The Portuguese 
 wine-merchants took advantage of this state of things, but 
 the English taste was not easily educated in favour of port. 
 In a "Farewell to Wine," published in 1693, this dialogue 
 occurs : — 
 
 " ' Some claret, boy !' 
 
 ' Indeed, sir, we have none, — 
 Claret, sir? lord ! there's not a drop in town ; 
 But we've the best red port." 
 
 ' Whac's that you call 
 Red port r 
 
 ' A wine, sir, comes from Portugal. 
 
 I'll fetch a pint, sir.' 
 
 ' Ah, how it smells ! Methinks a real pain 
 Is by its odour thrown upon my brain. 
 I've tasted it : 'tis spiritless and flat, 
 And has as many different tastes 
 As can be found in compound pastes.' " 
 
 The Methuen Treaty compelled Englishmen to drink port. 
 They drank it till they liked it ; and, having acquired a bad 
 taste, they passed on to a worse one — even as Dr. Johnson 
 used to say, " Claret for boys, port for men, and brandy for 
 heroes." If that dictum be true, modern adulteration has 
 made heroism easy, by causing bad brandy to be the chief 
 ingredient, after elderberries and water, of popular port- 
 wine, the adulteration being carried on in Portugal as well 
 as in England. During the seven years ending with 1858, 
 the average annual shipment of port from Oporto was 
 27,000 pipes to the United Kingdom, and 2,000 pipes to 
 all the rest of Europe. By that time claret had become only 
 a luxury of the rich, the cheaper qualities being rendered 
 unmarketable by the heavy duties laid upon them ever since 
 the time of Methuen's convention. 
 
 Whether the national taste in wine will be changed back
 
 136 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to its earlier condition remains to be seen, but the Cobden 
 Treaty has already had important results. Nearly every 
 year since 1861 there has been an increase of about an 
 eighth upon the previous year's exportation from France to 
 England, 
 
 That treaty, effected by the personal energy of Cobden, 
 who visited France for the purpose in i860, and subse- 
 quently improved upon in some of its details, besides greatly 
 reducing the duty on wine, abolished all imports on French 
 manufactured goods, and secured a large abatement on the 
 duties charged in France on English textile manufactures, 
 iron, coal, and other articles. The time has hardly come 
 for a due estimate of its advantages, but these advantages 
 cannot but be vast. " The old state of things," said Mr. 
 Gladstone in 1862, "in the commercial law between this 
 country and France savoured of the period when it was 
 almost thought a matter of duty to regard Frenchmen as 
 traditional enemies. That opinion does not, I am happy to 
 say, prevail now. The truth is that the union of England 
 and France in the bonds of special amity and harmony is, 
 of all things that can be named, the greatest benefit both to 
 these countries themselves and to the other nations of the 
 world. It is a benefit which we cannot always enjoy, be- 
 cause it is impossible that the views and the policy of 
 governments and of nations should always coincide ; but 
 when we can have it we should have it, for there is none 
 other comparable to it in magnitude, there is none other 
 which so completely offers us a guarantee for the general 
 peace and happiness of the world. The policy of govern- 
 ments, as opposed to nations, may sometimes interfere to 
 mar that harmony; therefore it is well that we should not 
 look simply to the policy of governments, but that we should 
 endeavour to unite the two nations in harmonious feelings. 
 And when was there ever at our command any means or 
 instrument so powerful and so valuable for that purpose as the
 
 Politics in Trade. 137 
 
 means and instrument employed in the treaty of commerce 
 with France, which increases and multiphes tenfold the quiet, 
 peaceful, unnoticed, and beneficial intercourse between the 
 two countries ? " 
 
 Praise of Richard Cobden, the author of that treaty, and 
 the greatest champion of free trade, fitly closes our brief review 
 of the wise and foolish relations that have prevailed between 
 politics and commerce ; and the praise uttered by Lord 
 Palmerston in the House of Commons, on April 3rd, 1865, 
 the day after Cobden's death, was no more than just. " It 
 is many years," he said, " since Adam Smith elaborately and 
 conclusively, as far as argument could go, advocated, as the 
 fundamental principal of the wealth of nations, the freedom 
 of industry and the unrestricted exchange of the objects and 
 results of industry. These doctrines were inculcated by 
 learned men, by Dugald Stewart and others, and were taken 
 up in process of time by leading statesmen, such as Hus- 
 kisson, and those who agreed with him. But the barriers 
 which long-associated prejudice had raised against these 
 doctrines for a great number of years prevented their coming 
 into use as instruments of progress to the country. To Mr. 
 Cobden it was reserved, by his untiring industry, his inde- 
 fatigable personal activity, the indomitable energy of his 
 mind, and that forcible Demosthenic eloquence with which 
 he treated all subjects he took in hand — I say it was reserved 
 to Mr. Cobden, by exertions which were never surpassed, to 
 carry into practical application those abstract principles 
 with the truth of which he was so deeply impressed, and 
 which at last gained the practical acceptance of all reason- 
 able men in the country."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MONOPOLIES. 
 
 The Origin of Monopolies in England — The Old London Guilds — The 
 Pepperers' or Grocers' Company — The Mercers' Company— The Good 
 Work of the Guilds — Guilds out of London — Trade Monopolies 
 granted by Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary— Woollen Mono- 
 polies — Ireland and its Flax — Queen Elizabeth's Private Monopolies — 
 Parliamentary Opposition to them— James I.'s and Charles I.'s Mono- 
 polies, and their Political Effects — Illustrations of their Nature— Coal 
 Monopolies — The Story of the Printing Monopoly — Almanacks and 
 Bibles — The Great Company Monopolies — The East India Company 
 and its Rivals — The Hudson's Bay Company — Existing Monopolies. 
 
 The history of monopolies is an important and curious sec- 
 tion of the history of political interference with trade. In 
 former times they were often necessary, in certain circum- 
 stances they are necessary still ; but their gradual removal 
 illustrates the gradual extension of those better principles by 
 which commerce is now for the most part regulated, or left 
 to regulate itself. 
 
 In mediaeval England, and throughout feudal Christen- 
 dom, trade itself was almost a monopoly. The privilege of 
 engaging in commerce, whether all the year round, in towns 
 and cities, or on particular occasions, at fairs and markets, 
 was in the gift of the Crown, and was recognised in charters 
 of incorporation as something which could be granted or 
 withheld, and which, if granted, must be paid for. Some 
 evidence has been already furnished of the restrictions put 
 in the way of all traders, and especially of foreigners. It is 
 true that Edward III. — among English kings the greatest 
 friend to commerce before Henry VII, — su])plemented many 
 wise measures of a like nature, by enacting, in 1350, that
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 139 
 
 "all persons, as well foreigners as natives, may buy and 
 sell, by wholesale and retail, where, when, and how they 
 please, paying the usual customs and duties, notwithstanding 
 any franchises, grants, or usages to the contrary, seeing that 
 such usages and franchises are to the common prejudice of 
 the king and his people." But the usages and franchises 
 were too strong to be put doAvn, and in this very reign 
 they took effect in ways by which monopolies were greatly 
 increased. 
 
 From Anglo-Saxon times, traders of each sort, in each 
 locality, had been in the habit of banding together for 
 mutual protection and assistance. This was a good and 
 necessary arrangement, when war was frequent and piracy and 
 fraud were constant. Single men could have no chance of 
 prospering amid the confusion and danger that prevailed. 
 Their only safety was in common action, and, that the action 
 might be united and controlled by rules conducing to the 
 general welfare, guilds and trading corporations were formed. 
 So important had these guilds become, in London especially, 
 by the middle of the fourteenth century, that Edward III. 
 found it expedient to bring about or to sanction their re- 
 organisation, and, by conferring fresh privileges and appoint- 
 ing more stringent rules, to help them to be, according to 
 their original professions, " for the greater good and profit 
 of the people." Forty-eight London guilds were incor- 
 porated by him in the course of his fifty years' reign. The 
 grocers, the mercers, the drapers, the fishmongers, the gold- 
 smiths, the vintners, the tailors, the spinners, the smiths, the 
 brewers, the saddlers, the weavers, the tapestry-makers, the 
 chandlers, the fullers, the girdlers, the stainers, the salters, 
 the masons, the ironmongers, the leather-dressers, the 
 butchers, and six-and-twenty other sorts of traders, had 
 each of them their separate association duly represented in 
 the civic councils, held responsible for the conduct of the 
 members, and bound to look after the general welfare. In
 
 140 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 nearly every charter, the malpractices of ignorant or fraudu- 
 lent intruders are stated as the grounds for assigning special 
 rights and functions to honest and qualified traders ; and, un- 
 doubtedly, they not only were meant to be beneficial to com- 
 merce and society, but, in many respects, really were so. Their 
 effect, however, was the solidifying of trade in old ways, in 
 which improvements were rendered needlessly difficult, and 
 the shutting out from it of many men who might have 
 proved very helpful to its progress. The benefits and the 
 mischiefs of modern trades' unions among working men are 
 counterparts of the action, good and bad, of the old London 
 corporations of workmen — who were both masters and ser- 
 vants — and, before long, the guilds of the metropolis were 
 imitated in every busy town in the kingdom. A few ex- 
 tracts from the history of one or two will sufficiently illus- 
 trate the working of them all. 
 
 Not the oldest, but perhaps the most important, was 
 the Grocers', originally known as the Pepperers' Guild. As 
 the old name implies, pepper was at first the chief com- 
 modity in which its members dealt ; and this being ob- 
 tained from the Italian merchants, who brought the wares 
 of the East Indies to England, the pepperers soon began 
 to buy from them, and trade in other spices, as well as 
 drugs of various sorts ; and, before long, they added whole- 
 sale to retail trade. The pepperers had formed an irregu- 
 lar but powerful association for some time before 1345, 
 when twenty-two of their number met together at a dinner 
 in St. Mary Axe, and resolved to form themselves into a 
 well-organised company, with two wardens to rule them, a 
 priest to sing and pray for them, and a room in which they 
 could meet for social intercourse and consultation upon 
 business matters. Edward III. granted them, not a charter, 
 but a license for carrying out their intentions. Rules were 
 promptly made for strengthening the society, raising con- 
 tributions for necessary expenses, defining the duties of
 
 Monopolies. 141 
 
 apprentices, and, above all, maintaining their " mysteries," 
 or trade secrets. A itw years later they changed their 
 name of pepperers to gross-spicers, which, by an intentional 
 or unintentional pun, was shortened to grossers or grocers. 
 In an Act of Edward III.'s reign, passed in 1363, it is 
 complained that "those merchants called grossers have, 
 by covin and by orders made amongst themselves in their 
 guilds, engrossed all sorts of wares, whereby they suddenly 
 raise the prices of them." Before the death of King Edward, 
 the grocers had become the most influential body of native 
 wholesale merchants in England, the London guild being 
 connected with kindred associations in other towns. " The 
 word grocery," says an old historian of the society, "became 
 so extensive that it can now be hardly restrained to certain 
 kinds of merchandises they have formerly dealt in, for they 
 have been the most universal merchants that traded abroad, 
 by which means many and various ways of dealing passed 
 under the denomination of groceries." 
 
 The guild grew rapidly in numbers. Starting with twenty- 
 two members in 1345, it had a hundred and twenty-four in 
 1373, and in 1383 sixteen of its number were aldermen. 
 It was re-organised and endowed with new privileges by 
 Henry VI., in 1429, and additional charters were granted 
 by later sovereigns, so that at length the grocers had a com- 
 plete monopoly of trade in spices, drugs, confectionaries, 
 sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco, and a hundred other commodities, 
 throughout London, and over three miles of its suburbs. 
 Curious evidence of the extent of their monopoly appears 
 in their indignant protest against the establishment of the 
 College of Physicians, in 1664, on the ground that it was 
 an unlawful interference with their medical control, and 
 "an insupportable inconvenience and prejudice." Till then 
 the apothecaries had perforce been grocers, and the guild 
 had been the chief court of appeal against unskilful and dis- 
 honest practitioners. In 1616. for instance, one Michael
 
 142 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Eason, having sold " divers sorts of defective apothecaries* 
 wares, which, on trial, were foiuid to be defective, corrupt, 
 and unwholesome for man's body ; " and being proved to 
 be "very unfit in making of compositions and confections, 
 and insufficient and unskilful to deal therein," was, by the 
 guild, committed to the Poultry Compter, " in consideration 
 of the great damage and danger which might happen to the 
 company by permitting such enormities." 
 
 A long list of notable merchants might be extracted 
 from the roll-books of the Grocers' Company. Sir John 
 Philpot, the brave merchant who, in 1378, fitted out a fleet 
 at his own expense, with which he put down Scottish 
 piracies in his days, and who, for that and other services, 
 was described by Fuller as " the scourge of the Scots, the 
 fright of the French, the delight of the Commons, the dar- 
 ling of the merchants, and the hatred of some envious 
 lords," illustrates the character and influence of a London 
 grocer in Plantagenet times ; while the achievements pos- 
 sible to a grocer under the Stuarts are indicated by the 
 work of Sir Thomas Middleton, one of the principal founders 
 of the East India Company. 
 
 Yet more illustrious than the grocers' guild was its chief 
 rival, the Mercers' Company. Merceries, originally, were 
 all sorts of articles sold by pedlars and their like, in fairs 
 and market-places, especially small haberdasheries and toys ; 
 and mercers gradually rose from wandering about the country 
 with hand-baskets or trays to the keeping of small shops 
 and stalls, and, eventually, to a more extensive line of trading. 
 As early as 1172 there was a guild of mercers in London, 
 and in 1 2 1 4 Robert Searle, a mercer, was Mayor of London ; 
 but for a long while the drapers were more important in 
 the world of commerce than the mercers and the grocers 
 than either. All through the Middle Ages merceries were, 
 theoretically, at any rate, goods weighed by the little balance, 
 and generally sold in retail, while groceries were weighed
 
 Monopolies. 143 
 
 by the great balance, and usually sold wholesale ; but great 
 merchants, who happened to be members of the mercers' 
 guild, soon broke through the barrier. Whittington enriched 
 himself and his craft by trading operations alpiost as won- 
 derful as the sale of the cat, whose traditional value still 
 lives in the story-books, and much more, the result of intel- 
 ligent enterprise and painstaking industry. The mercers' 
 guild in London, joined with a dozen kindred associations 
 in country towns, had for an offshoot the Society of Mer- 
 chant Adventurers of England, which took the lead in 
 foreign commerce during some two centuries. The 
 London guild outlived that offshoot, and had, in later times, 
 members as rich and influential as Geoffrey BuUeyn, the 
 great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth, the Greshams, and 
 Sir Baptist Hicks, afterwards Lord Camden, the greatest 
 merchant of James L's day. 
 
 That monopolies like these, in the main, worked well for 
 the development of commerce cannot be doubted. The 
 great trading-guilds have long since ceased to be anything 
 but associations for energetic feasting and the dispensing 01 
 charities that have been entrusted to them by good mer- 
 chants of former generations ; but, while they had an active 
 commercial life, the good-fellowship and unity of work that 
 they secured among their members had great and beneficial 
 results. Admission to them, moreover, was not difficult, 
 and in their best days they were only monopolies in so far 
 as they secured peculiar privileges to those who devoted 
 their lives to the worthy following of their several trades 
 and callings. No one could be admitted to a guild who 
 had not served an apprenticeship to one of its freemen, and 
 given proof of his fitness for the business. Good members 
 were encouraged to train up good members. The Lord 
 Mayor's Court had control over all the guilds, and could 
 inquire into and punish any offence charged by one society 
 against another; and, in like manner, within each guild,
 
 144 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the complaints of one member against another, of a master 
 against his apprentice, or of an apprentice against his 
 master, were properly investigated. Each had officers em- 
 powered to overlook the operations of its freemen, to see 
 that their weights and measures were correct, that they were 
 guilty of no adulterations, and that they practised no 
 fraud. 
 
 These monopolies of the great London guilds, and of the 
 kindred associations in other commercial towns, served rather 
 as necessary and useful schools of the trade than as mono- 
 polies in any evil sense. If they inflicted some hardships 
 upon unprivileged traders, the hardships were certainly not 
 greater than all traders would have had to submit to, had 
 there been no privileged societies, during the rough centuries 
 of Plantagenet rule ; and the guilds — though they did not 
 die as corporations, having a share in municipal arrange- 
 ments — for the most part quietly passed out of the way, while 
 commerce made its rapid strides in new paths of enterprise 
 under the Tudors. Some efforts were made to maintain 
 their strength by artificial stimulants, and these efforts were 
 sometimes encouraged by kings and parliaments ; but they 
 live only in histoiy as relics of mistaken statecraft. 
 
 The efforts were greatest in the case of small towns, 
 whose inhabitants, long accustomed to follow some special 
 callings, had constituted themselves into irregular guilds, 
 and sought to preserve for themselves a monopoly in the 
 pursuit of those callings. Thus, in 1530, one of Henry 
 VII I. 's Parliaments passed an Act in favour of the town of 
 Bridport, in Dorsetshire. " The people of that town," it 
 was said in the preamble, " have out of time that no man's 
 mind is to the contrary used to make most part of the 
 cables, hawsers, ropes, and all other tackling, as well for 
 royal ships as for the most part of all other ships within the 
 realm, by reason whereof the town was right well main- 
 tained ; " but now " the people of the adjacent parts of the
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 145 
 
 said town have set up rope-making, and make slight goods, 
 whereby the prices are greatly enhanced." The logic of 
 that statement, implying that competition caused increase 
 of price and deterioration of quality, is not very intelligible ; 
 but, for some reason or other, it was found that Bridport was 
 " like to be utterly decayed," and accordingly it was ordered 
 that all the hemp grown within five miles of the town was to 
 be sold in it, and that no one outside the limits of the town 
 was to make any sort of rope. Of course, tlie law was 
 inoperative, save in helping to ruin both Bridport and its 
 suburbs, and in causing the rope manufacture to be trans- 
 ferred from Dorsetshire to Yorkshire. 
 
 Another piece of foolish legislation occurred four years 
 later. In 1534 the inhabitants of Worcester, Evesham, 
 Droitwich, Kidderminster, and Bromsgrove, then the only 
 towns in Worcestershire, represented that their former pros- 
 perity was being destroyed, because " divers persons dwelling 
 in the hamlets, thorps, and villages of the county made all 
 manner of cloths, and exercised weaving, fulling, and shear- 
 ing within their own houses, to the great depopulation of 
 the city and towns." Parliament, therefore, enacted that 
 none but the inhabitants of the petitioning towns should be 
 allowed to carry on the trade, " except solely for their own 
 and their families' wearing ; and the result was another gain 
 to Yorkshire, where I-eeds, as a centre of inland manufacture, 
 and Hull, as a great seat of maritime trade, were tolerably 
 exempt from legislative interference. 
 
 Yorkshire, however, had a similar grievance. In 1544' 
 the citizens of York complained that their chief business, the 
 manufacture of coverlets and other bed-coverings, was being 
 taken out of their hands, because " sundry evil-disposed 
 persons, apprentices, had withdrawn themselves out of the 
 city into the county, and divers other persons had inter- 
 meddled with the said craft." A law was passed in their 
 favour, but York gained nothing by it. 
 
 K
 
 146 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 The short-sighted poHcy often adopted by Kenry VIII., 
 when Wolsey's wise counsels were lost to him, was pursued 
 by his son and eldest daughter, or rather by the statesmen 
 who directed their affairs. In 1552, for instance, Edward 
 VI.'s advisers ordered that the making of felt and thrummed 
 hats, of coverlets and diapers, should be limited throughout 
 Norfolk to Norwich and the other market towns of the 
 county ; and in 1554 Queen Mary appointed that linen- 
 drapers, woollen-drapers, haberdashers, grocers, and mer- 
 cers, who were not free of any corporate city and members 
 of its guilds, should not be allowed to sell their wares 
 therein, "excepting in open fairs, and by wholesale." 
 
 That is one of the latest instances of legislative inter- 
 ference on behalf of trading-guilds and the monopolies 
 of chartered towns ; but plenty of protection was in more 
 recent times attempted in the interest of special trades and 
 special traders. 
 
 A long list might be made of the foolish measures 
 adopted during half-a-dozen centuries for the fancied 
 benefit of wool-dealers and woollen manufacturers in Eng- 
 land. Over and over again the trade was limited to special 
 towns. Often the exportation of the raw article was for- 
 bidden altogether, nearly as often were prohibitions put 
 upon the importation of it in a manufactured state ; and in 
 every case, where the enactments could be enforced, the 
 result was present injury, without future benefit. Every sort 
 of meddlesome and mischievous interference was resorted to ; 
 and when the trade itself had come to have tolerable liberty, 
 measures as short-sighted and obnoxious were introduced 
 for its protection against the trades in other textile goods. 
 Allusion has already been made to the opposition offered to 
 cotton manufacture in the eighteenth century. Similar war 
 was waged during a longer period on behalf of wool against 
 silk and linen. Laws were repeatedly made even to regulate 
 the sort of stuiT of which cere-cloths were to be made ; the
 
 MOXOPOLIES. 147 
 
 dead must be buried in woollen, instead of linen, in order 
 that the serge-makers might not lose their profit. 
 
 Ireland, nearly always the sport of unwise legislation, 
 furnishes countless instances of pernicious inteiference with 
 trade. Flax being almost indigenous to its northern counties, 
 the whole history of the island might have been different 
 had free trade in linen been allowed to it. For the sake cf 
 English wool, however, Irish flax was long restrained, and 
 every sort of hindrance was put upon its cultivation and 
 manufacture. The Earl of Strafford, Charles I.'s luckless 
 supporter, spent ^30,000 of his own money in employing 
 Flemish labourers to teach the Irish how to produce and 
 manufacture linen fibre and stuffs, and in erecting factories ; 
 but that benevolent effort was made one of the grounds of 
 his impeachment. " He had obstructed the industry of the 
 country," said his enemies, "by introducing new and 
 unknown processes into the manufacture of flax." Yet, 
 after centuries of such treatment, the people of Ireland are 
 blamed for disaffection, and for backwardness in the race of 
 prosperity. 
 
 With restrictive measures of that sort, and with mono- 
 polies assigned to districts, towns, trades, and general 
 branches of industry, no fault was found in times long 
 before our own. But monopolies, strictly so called — peculiar 
 privileges granted to single individuals — have always been 
 condemned by wise thinkers. Pliny says that such monopolies 
 are ever prohibited in well-governed countries, and Bacon 
 wrote to the same effect. " Care must be taken," is his ad- 
 vice, " that monopolies, which are the canker of all trading, 
 be not admitted under specious colours of the public good." 
 Yet in Bacon's day these cankers were grievously abundant 
 and prolific of evil. Queen Elizabeth, more intelligent than 
 her tather, brother, and sister in general commercial policv, 
 vvas the first English sovereign to encourage them in any 
 notable degree.
 
 148 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Her reign furnishes a long array of private monopolies. 
 For many of the earlier ones granted by her there was some 
 justification. Thus, in 1565, she issued a charter to 
 Armigail Wade and William Horle for the sole making of 
 brimstone throughout her dominions during thirty years, as 
 well as for the sole right of extracting from certain herbs, 
 roots, and seeds an oil to be employed in cloth-manufacture, 
 " they having, with great labour and application, and not a 
 little expense, found out these useful secrets." And another 
 document of the same date avers that, licenses having 
 previously been granted to certain Dutch or Germans to 
 dig for alum and copperas, as well as for gold, silver, copper, 
 and quicksilver, she now grants to two of her own subjects, 
 Humphreys and Streete, the exclusive right to search for 
 those metals, as well as for lead and tin, and to refine the 
 same, they having brought over twenty skilled foreign work- 
 men for the purpose. The result of that monopoly was the 
 Company of Mines Royal, incorporated in 1568. These 
 foreigners introduced the process of wire-drawing by 
 machinery, none having been produced before in England, 
 save by the inefficient use of the mere hand. 
 
 The monopolies granted by Queen Elizabeth during her 
 later years, however, were very numerous, and quite inex- 
 cusable. To recompense her courtiers, or to enrich herself 
 by a share of the profits, she assigned to them exclusive 
 powers of trading in special articles, and these powers being 
 let out to merchants at high rates, vastly increased the price 
 to the public. Parliament protested against these proceed- 
 ings in 1597, and had for an unsatisfactory answer a message 
 from the Queen that, "with regard to these patents, she 
 hoped her dutiful and loving subjects would not take away 
 her prerogative, which was the chief flower in her garden, 
 and the principal head-mark of her crown and diadem, but 
 that they would leave these matters to her disposal." The 
 monopolies increasing, the Parliament of 1601 refused to
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 149 
 
 leave matters at the Queen's disposal. Lawrence Hyde 
 introduced a bill " for the explanation of the common law 
 in certain cases of letters patent," and an angry discussion 
 followed. Bacon, in spite of his objection to monopolies, 
 which has been cited, adopted a courtly tone. " The 
 Queen, as she is our sovereign, hath both an enlarging and 
 a restraining power. By her prerogative she may set at 
 liberty things restrained by statute law or otherwise ; and 
 by her prerogative she may restrain things which be at 
 liberty. With regard to monopolies and such-like, the case 
 hath ever been to humble ourselves unto her Majesty, and 
 by petition desire to have our grievances remedied. I say, 
 and say it again, we ought not to deal, to judge, or to 
 meddle with her Majesty's prerogative." Other speakers 
 took a different tone. The monopolies then in force were 
 enumerated, with vehement protestations of disapi)roval. 
 Among them were the exclusive right to deal in currants, 
 salt, iron, steel, powder, cards, calf-skins, ox-bones, oil, 
 vinegar, coal, saltpetre, glass, paper, starch, tin, sulphur, 
 dried pilchards, beer, horn, leather, Spanish wool, and Irish 
 yarn. When the list was read out, a member exclaimed, 
 " Is not bread in the number ? Yea, I assure you, if affairs 
 go on at this rate, we shall have bread reduced to a monopoly 
 before next Parliament." The evil of these monopolies may 
 be gathered from the fact that salt had been raised in value 
 from sixteen pence to fourteen shillings a bushel. " I know 
 the Queen's prerogative is a thing curiously to be dealt 
 withal," said one speaker; "yet all grievances are not 
 comparable. I cannot utter with my tongue or conceive with 
 my heart the great grievances that the town and country 
 for which I serve suffereth by some of these monopolies. It 
 bringeth the general profit into a private hand, and the end 
 of all this is beggary and bondage to the subjects. We have 
 a law for the true and faithful currying of leather. There is 
 a patent sets all at liberty, notwithstanding that statute; but
 
 150 The Ro. stance of Trade. 
 
 to wliat purpose is it. to do anything by Act of Parliament, 
 when the Queen will undo the same by her prerogative ? 
 There is no act of hers that hath been or is more derogatory 
 to her own majesty, more odious to the subject, more 
 dangerous to the commonwealth, than the granting of these 
 monopolies." " I do speak for a town that grieves and 
 pines," exclaimed another member, "for a country that 
 groaneth and languishes under the burden of monstrous and 
 unconscionable monopolies of starch, tin, fish, oil, cloth, 
 \inegar, salt, and I know not what — nay, what not? The 
 principalest commodities, both of my town and country, are 
 engrossed into the hands of these bloodsuckers of the com- 
 monwealth. The traffic is taken away, the inward and 
 private commodities are taken away, and dare not be used 
 without the license of these monopolitans. If these blood- 
 suckers be still let alone, to suck up the best commodities 
 which the earth there hath given us, what will become of us, 
 from whom the fruits of our own soil and the commodities 
 of our own labour, for which, with the sweat of our brows, 
 even up to the knees in mire and dirt, we have laboured, 
 shall be taken by warrant of supreme authority, which the 
 poor subject dare not gainsay?" 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's answer to these angry complaints 
 would have been a model of royal yielding to popular re- 
 buke, had it been quite honest and completely acted upon. 
 " Gentlemen," she said, " I owe you hearty thanks and 
 commendations for your singular goodwill towards me, not 
 only in your hearts and thoughts, but which you have openly 
 expressed and declared, whereby you have recalled me from 
 an error proceeding from my ignorance, not my will. These 
 things had undoubtedly turned to my disgrace — to whom 
 nothing is more dear than the safety alone of my people — had 
 not such harpies and horse-leeches as these been made known 
 and discovered to me by you. I had rather my heart and 
 hand should perish, than that either my heart or hand should
 
 Monopolies. 151 
 
 allow such privileges to monopolists as may be prejudicial 
 to my people." 
 
 Only some of the obnoxious monopolies, however, were 
 withdrawn, and therewith the Commons had to be content 
 during the brief remainder of Elizabeth's reign. Others were 
 annulled, on his accession, by James I., who in his opening 
 speech to Parliament made virtuous show of toleration in 
 commercial as well as other matters : but plenty of fresh 
 monopolies were soon granted by him, and others followed 
 all through the course of his reign. They formed, indeed, 
 an important section of the constitutional battle-ground on 
 which he and his son were met again and again, and ever 
 with growing force on the side of the people, by the 
 champions of national liberty. The struggle, familiar to 
 readers of political history, need not here be detailed. Its 
 two great victories were in 1624 and 1640. In the former 
 year Parliament declared, and James I. was forced to agree, 
 that no patents of monopoly were legal except those granted, 
 "for fourteen years and no more, for new-invented manu- 
 factures and arts, never practised before and not mischievous 
 to the State." That limitation — which was the beginning of 
 the present patent law, considered by most statesmen to afford 
 only reasonable recompense to inventors for their achieve- 
 ments — was crippled, however, by a load of exceptions. All 
 charters already granted, or to be granted, to towns and 
 public companies were held to be exempt from it. Printing 
 was still recognised as a monopoly of the Crown, and, with a 
 little less injustice, the right of making arms, gunpowder, 
 and other munitions of war, seeing that these were especially 
 under the control of the State. Particular exceptions were 
 also made in favour of two important patents — one granted to 
 Sir Robert Mansell for the manufacture of glass, and another 
 granted to Edward, Lord Digby, for smelting iron with coal. 
 To these legalised monopolies a crowd of illegal ones were 
 added by James I., and yet more by Charles I. At length in
 
 152 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 1639 the grievance became so great that Parhament protested 
 with more than usual vehemence. In that year Charles I. was 
 compelled to cancel twenty-seven monopolies, which were 
 reckoned to yield him an annual revenue of ;^2oo,ooo. In 
 
 1640 the Long Parliament, as one of its first acts, abolished 
 all the rest, and from that time monopolies of this sort came 
 to an end in England. 
 
 A few of the most noteworthy privileges granted by 
 James I. and Charles I. to private traders may here be 
 enumerated. They illustrate, not only one phase of royal 
 interference with trade, but also the directions that were 
 being taken by commercial activity. 
 
 In 1608, the manufacture of alum in England having 
 been for the first time successfully practised under the 
 patronage of Lord Sheffield, Sir John Bourcher, and other 
 gentlemen of Yorkshire, a patent was accorded to them, 
 and all importation of alum from foreign countries was 
 prohibited. On the strength of that monopoly. Sir Paul 
 Pinder, who succeeded to it, was able, in 1625, to lend to 
 Charles I. a sum of ^^i 30, 000 — all which he lost through the 
 civil wars. 
 
 In 1618 we find a patent granted to Sir John Gilbert 
 " for the sole making and vending of an instrument, which 
 he calls a water-plough, for the taking-up of sand and gravel 
 out of the river Thames and other rivers and havens, and 
 of an engine, also invented by him, for the raising of water 
 in greater quantity than is heretofore known, to be moved 
 and drawn either by some stream of water, or, for want of 
 that, by strengtli of horses." And in the same year David 
 Ramsay and Thomas Wildgate obtained charters for "the 
 sole use and benefit of certain inventions and discoveries 
 made by them ; first, for ploughing land without horses or 
 oxen ; second, for improving of barren grounds ; third, for 
 raising of water from any low place to the houses of noble- 
 men and gentlemen, and to ciucs and towns; and, fourth,
 
 Mono POL ies. 153 
 
 to make boats for the carriage of burthens and passengers, 
 to run upon the water, as swift in cahns and more swift in 
 storms than boats full-sailed in great winds." That last 
 seems to have been a rude anticipation, doubdess unsuccess- 
 ful, of the steam-engine. 
 
 Many of the monopolies granted by Charles I. were for 
 worthless or sham inventions, which could only have been 
 profitable to their producers in so far as they were able to 
 dupe those to whom they sold them. Thus, in 1625, we 
 find William Beale, a London goldsmith, agreeing to pay 
 forty shillings a year to the King, for " the sole making and 
 practice of certain compound stuffs, extracted out of certain 
 minerals, called by the name of cement, or dressing, for ships, 
 to prevent them from burning in fights at sea, and also from 
 the sea-worm or barnacle." In 1632, again, a physician ob- 
 tained a string of useless patents, one being for "a movable 
 hydraulic, like a cabinet, which, being placed in a room 
 or by a bedside, causeth sweet sleep to those, who, by hot 
 fevers or otherwise, cannot take rest; and it alters the dry, 
 hot air into a moistening and cooling temper, either with 
 musical sounds or without.^' 
 
 Other monopolies were the beginnings of great manu- 
 facturing improvements; instance that granted in 1627 to 
 Lord Dacre and two others, " for the sole making of steel, 
 according to the invention of Thomas Letsome." Another 
 patent of the same year was assigned to Thomas Rouse and 
 Abraham Cullen, " for the sole making of stone pots, jugs, 
 and bottles." A third was issued to Sir John Hachet and 
 Octavius Strada, " for rendering sea-coal and pit-coal as use- 
 ful as charcoal for burning in houses without offence by the 
 smell." 
 
 Two other and very different patents concerning coal 
 were granted by Charles I. The old prejudice against its 
 use as a substitute for wood-fuel — which, in Edward I.'s 
 leign, had caused a man to be hanged for burning it in
 
 T54 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 London — had been overcome, and by this time trade in it 
 was becoming important. Serious injury, therefore, threat- 
 ened to result from Charles's assignment to Sir Thomas 
 Tempest and his partners of the exclusive right of selling 
 all the coal exported from Newcastle-on-Tyne during 
 twenty-one years from 1637, and yet more from his incor- 
 poration, in 1638, of a company of coal-monopolisers, em- 
 powered to buy all the produce of Newcastle, Sunderland, 
 and Berwick, and to sell it in London for any price not exceed- 
 ing the very high rate of seventeen shillings a chaldron in 
 summer-time and nineteen shillings in winter — one shilling a 
 chaldron being the King's share of the profit. But the Long 
 Parliament put an end to that grievance, along with a thou- 
 sand others ; although coal still illustrates the vice of mono- 
 polies, by reason of the unnecessarily high price put upon 
 it in order that the Corporation of London may be enriched 
 by the duties it is empowered to levy on every ton brought 
 into the Thames. 
 
 Another illustration is furnished by the printing- 
 monopoly, happily now obsolete, which was reserved to the 
 Crown by the Parliament of 1624, and which was long 
 maintained, having begun long before. William Caxton, 
 who abandoned his trade as a mercer to set up, in 1477, 
 the first printing-press in England, did so under the patron- 
 age of the abbot of Westminster, and bore the title of 
 Regius Impressor to Richard IIL During forty years his craft, 
 and that of his successors, was encouraged by Church and 
 State, and, instead of any efforts to interfere with liberty of 
 printing, praiseworthy attempts were made to increase the 
 number of books produced in England, or brought from 
 abroad for English reading. 
 
 The Reformation disturbed this arrangement, but it 
 could not break down the theory that had fastened itself 
 in people's minds, that printing was a business specially 
 subject to the King's control and to priestly regulation.
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 155 
 
 Bold books began to be printed in Henry VIII.'s reign, 
 and immediately all the weight of authority was brought to 
 bear against the publication of everything obnoxious to the 
 men in power. Cardinal Wolsey shrewdly warned his clergy 
 in convocation that, if they did not put down printing, they 
 would themselves be put down by it; and the prophecy was 
 partly fulfilled, in his own case, at any rate. His downfall 
 must be in some measure ascribed to the popularity of a 
 fierce pamphlet, "The Supplication of Beggars," which he 
 vainly attempted to suppress. The censorship of the press 
 was a direct outcome of Papal influence, but was not abro- 
 gated in England when the authority of the Pope was 
 repudiated. In 1526 Henry VHI. condemned anti-Popery 
 books, and all who traded in them, as heretical ; and in 
 1535 all books favouring Popery were denounced by him 
 in like terms. Many lost their lives during his reign for 
 printing or importing works favouring Lutheran doctrines, 
 or any opinions of which he did not approve, and his suc- 
 cessors perfected the t}Tanny in literature which he initiated. 
 The Stationers' Company was incorporated by Queen 
 Mary, as the sole agency for the printing and publication of 
 books, and with full inquisitorial powers for maintaining its 
 prerogatives. The Company was authorised to search the 
 house of every printer, bookseller, and bookbinder, when- 
 ever it thought fit, and to seize or destroy any book which 
 it there found, either obnoxious to the State or prejudicial 
 to its own interest. It was made custodian of the national 
 mind, and every one was ordered to aid it in its functions. 
 " Whosoever finds books of heresy, sedition, and treason," 
 runs what Strype calls "a short but terrible proclamation" 
 of Queen Mary's, " and does not forthwith burn the same, 
 without showing or reading them to any other person, shall 
 be executed for a rebel." The national standard of " heresy, 
 sedition, and treason " changed greatly when Elizabeth 
 succeeded to Mary. There was not quite so much se\erity
 
 156 The Romance oe Trade. 
 
 shown towards Catholic books as had just before been 
 shown towards Protestant publications; but the functions 
 and powers of the Stationers' Company were quite as great. 
 It was held responsible for " any unruly printer who might 
 endanger the Church and State," and was to search every- 
 where for " unlawful and heretical books." And every book 
 was declared to be unlawful which had not, before printing, 
 been "licensed by her Majesty by express words in writing, 
 or by six of her Privy Council." 
 
 In that way began the thraldrom of the press, which 
 lasted through all the period of Stuart misrule, and weighed 
 heavily on England during the times of its greatest intellec- 
 tual activity — the times of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton. 
 A decree of the Star Chamber, in 1586, farther limited the 
 number of printing-presses ; it provided that none should 
 be set up out of London, save at the two Universities, and 
 that all of those sanctioned should be lodged in convenient 
 places, where they could always be readily ins^Dected by the 
 agents of the Stationers' Company. Later enactments, and 
 more or less illegal injunctions, sought constantly to stem 
 and guide the current of literature that poured forth, in spite 
 of all restraints. The only lessening of the monopoly of the 
 Stationers' Company came from the granting of special 
 monopolies to particular individuals. One establishment 
 had the exclusive right of printing Bibles, another had all 
 the law-books, another all the " almanacs and prognostica- 
 tions." One private gentleman procured a monopoly of 
 grammars and other school-books, and none could be pub- 
 lished without fees to him, whereby the price was greatly 
 increased. So it was in a hundred cases. The errors of 
 Elizabeth's reign were exaggerated in those of James I. and 
 Charles I., and they were not abolished by the Long Parlia- 
 ment, notwithstanding Milton's famous exposition, in his 
 " Areopagitica," of their futility and injustice. 
 
 Restrictions on printing, and efforts to convert the press
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 157 
 
 into a mere instrument of political and religious partisanship, 
 were yet greater after the Restoration. In 1662 was passed 
 an Act of Parliament " for preventing abuses in printing sedi- 
 tious, treasonable, and unlicensed books and pamphlets, and 
 for regulating printing and printing-presses," which confirmed 
 all the old privileges of the Stationers' Company, limited 
 the number of master printers to twenty, and assigned the 
 filling up of any vacancies in that number to the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury and the Bishop of London; and this Act 
 was several times renewed by Charles II., and left undis- 
 turbed by William III. during six years. It was abolished, 
 and freedom of the press began, in 1694, though its complete 
 attainment is only very modern. The special provisions 
 made for preventing seditious and blasphemous publications 
 have subjected printers and publishers to a supervision 
 which has often served as a handle for the persecution of 
 persons obnoxious to the men in power. It can easily be 
 understood why this vestige of tyranny has survived, chiefly 
 in connection with newspapers and political periodicals. 
 
 The Stationers' Company, made influential mainly by 
 its employment as a sort of literary police agency to the 
 Crown, quickly lost most of its importance after the with- 
 drawal of the printing-monopoly. Some special privileges 
 remained with it, however, and of these the exclusive 
 privilege of publishing almanacks, shared by it with Oxford 
 and Cambridge Universities, illustrates the mischief of 
 monopolies. For a long time Moore's Almanac and Poor 
 Richard's Alina?iac, issued uith the imprimatur of the Arch 
 bishop of Canterbury, were the best publications of this 
 sort produced in England. " It would be difficult to find," 
 it has been truly said, " in so small a compass such a quan- 
 tity of ignorance, profligacy, and imposture as was condensed 
 in these publications." A hundred years ago a bookseller 
 named Carnan issued an almanack which the Stationers' 
 Company failed to suppress, and a legal decision in 1775
 
 15S The Romaxce of Trade. 
 
 theoretically abolished the monopoly. But it was practically 
 maintained through the wealth of the Company, whereby it 
 was enabled to buy up, if it could not crush, all rival pub- 
 lications, till 1828, when the Society for the Diffusion of 
 Useful Knowledge started the British A/jiianac, and it opened 
 the gates for free trade in almanacks of all sorts. 
 
 Another monopoly, still theoretically vested in the Crown, 
 concerns the publication of the Authorised Version of the 
 Bible. That the head of the Church should take especial 
 care of the sacred volume, and see that the copies of it sup- 
 plied to his subjects were complete and trustworthy, is not 
 to be wondered at. But if this was ever thought of as a 
 justification for the Bible monopoly, its results were as un- 
 satisfactory as those of all other monopolies. The privilege 
 of printing Bibles has always been reserved to the King's 
 Printer and Oxford University ; but the privilege was very 
 soon abused, and two hundred years ago English Protes- 
 tantism seemed likely, by help of it, to be deprived of its 
 main source of strength. The University Press was idle, 
 and the office of King's Printer being retained in one care- 
 less family, the Bibles issued were so faulty that they were 
 hardly legible, and when legible could not be relied upon. 
 One important text was, in the edition of 1653, printed, 
 "Know ye not that the unrighteous" {instead of "righteous") 
 " shall inherit the kingdom of God ? " " Fie ! for shame ! " 
 exclaimed old Fuller, wich good reason. " Considering with 
 myself the causes of the growth and increase of impiety and 
 profaneness in our land, amongst others this seemeth to me 
 not the least, the late many false and erroneous impressions 
 of the Bible. Now know, what is but carelessness in other 
 books is impiety in setting forth of the Bible." The books, 
 moreover, were, in consequence of the monopoly, so expen- 
 sive that ordinary persons could not afford to buy them. 
 It was reserved for Thomas Guy, the eccentric bookseller 
 who left his wealth to found the hospital in Southwark that
 
 Mo NO POL lES. 159 
 
 bears his name, to bring about a better state of things. As 
 a good Christian and a shrewd tradesman, he resolved to 
 provide better and cheaper Bibles for his countrymen. He 
 employed an agent in Holland, who bought for him good 
 paper and fine types, and entmsted them to competent 
 Dutch printers, who had not yet lost the skill in printing 
 which Caxton had learnt from their forefathers, and in- 
 troduced into England two centuries before. In this way 
 correct Bibles were produced, and, being smuggled over to 
 England, Guy was able to sell great numbers of them at a 
 low price, and yet with good profit to himself Other book- 
 sellers took up the trade, and made money by it, before the 
 monopolists began to protect their vested rights. " This 
 trade," says the old historian, " proving not only very detri- 
 mental to the public revenue, but likewise to the King's 
 Printer, all ways and means were devised to quash the same, 
 which being vigorously put in execution, the booksellers, by 
 frequent seizures and prosecutions, became so great sufterers, 
 that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent with 
 their interest." Thomas Guy, shrewder than the rest, did 
 not so judge ; but he bethought him of a better way of 
 carrying on his well-meant enterprise. After much persua- 
 sion, he induced the University of Oxford to farm its mono- 
 poly to him ; and then, bringing over Dutch types and Dutch 
 workmen, he started a busy little printing-office in his shop 
 at the corner of Lombard Street. There he began to make 
 his fortune, and to do good service to religion and literature, 
 by issuing a large supply of cheap Bibles, in the name of 
 the Oxford University. The monopoly being thus evaded. 
 Bibles continued to be good, cheap, and plentiful; and in 
 later times it has been held in abeyance. 
 
 Other monopolies, of much greater commercial import- 
 ance, have also been suppressed. Contemporary with the 
 crowd of personal licenses of exclusive trade granted by Queen 
 Elizabeth and the early Stuarts, were the monopolies assigned
 
 i6o The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to the great trading-companies which grew out of the enter- 
 prise of sixteenth and seventeenth century merchants and 
 adventurers. The greatest of all, the East India Company, 
 started in 1600 — has been already referred to. Several like 
 associations had been founded earlier, the chief being the 
 Turkey or Levant Company, dating from 1581, and others 
 — notably those which led the way to the colonisation of the 
 United States — followed in quick succession. Each had 
 special privileges of trade with special districts, and the 
 monopolies assigned to them were necessary and, at first, 
 wholly beneficial. In the presence of hostile fleets, it would 
 have been impossible for single traders, unprotected by the 
 State, to carry on the extensive occupations upon which these 
 companies entered ; and, under the political arrangements 
 that then prevailed. State protection was not to be expected 
 without payment being made for it. Therefore these new 
 monopolies were founded, and the result has been the steady 
 growth of our vast colonial empire, and an increase, propor- 
 tionately vast, of the commercial enterprise of England. 
 
 The history of these various companies forms an import- 
 ant section of the history of English progress during the past 
 three centuries. Not always successful, not rarely dishonour- 
 able, their main issues have been wonderfully advantageous, 
 and their careers have generally been marked by fewer 
 blemishes than might have been expected. If in any case it 
 can be considered that bad means are justified by good ends, 
 the misdeeds of the East India Company, especially, have 
 been fully excused. With indomitable energy, it overcame 
 the resistance of foreign rivals — Portuguese, Dutch, and 
 French — and the hardly less formidable opposition of enemies 
 at home, and, at last, in 1858, surrendered to the English 
 Crown those charters which had enabled it to secure a 
 dominion far greater and more important than any other 
 corporation of traders has ever succeeded in obtaining. 
 
 Most of the old rivals of the East India Company died
 
 Monopolies. i 6 1 
 
 long before it. The story of the only one that outHved it 
 furnishes a singular contrast to its progress. It was by futile 
 eftbrts to discover a north-west passage to India that the 
 nortliern parts of America were first made known ; and the 
 greatest, after the Cabots and Frobisher, of the explorers 
 \vhose accidental work was so advantageous was Henry 
 Hudson. By hnn, before his death, in i6i i, were discovered 
 Hudson's Straits and Hudson's Bay, and the vast coast of 
 that great sea Others followed in his track, and in 1668 
 Prince Rupert fitted out a vessel designed to put to use the 
 extensive territories that had hitherto been only nominally 
 subject to the English Crown. The expedition succeeded, 
 and in 1670 the Hudson's Bay Company, with Prince Rupert 
 at its head, was formed, for appropriation of the Hudson's 
 Bay Territory, or Prince Rupert's Land, as it was then called. 
 The charter issued by Charles II. granted to the Company 
 " the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, 
 bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever latitude 
 they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the straits com- 
 monly called Hudson's Straits, together with all the lands, 
 countries, and territories upon the coasts and confines of the 
 seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and sounds aforesaid, 
 which are not now actually possessed by any of our subjects, 
 or by the subjects of any other Christian prince or state." 
 A monopoly of trade to all regions reached, across land or 
 water, by passing through this territory, as well as lordship 
 over all, was also assigned to the Hudson's Bay Company, 
 which thus had ownership, for nearly two centuries, of more 
 than 3,000,000 square miles of land, an area thrice as large 
 as that of India. 
 
 The use made by the Company of its monopoly has 
 been strangely disproportionate to the vastness of the 
 territory assigned to it. Much of this territory, it is true, 
 was too near to the arctic regions, barren and frozen, to be 
 of value, and a large section was quickly claimed by the 
 
 L
 
 1 62 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 French settlers in Canada as their property, by virtue of an 
 older charter ; and with that which remained it was im- 
 possible for a great trade to be rapidly developed, as was 
 the case with the East India Company's operations. But 
 much more might have been done than was ever attempted 
 by the Hudson's Bay Company. All the vice of monopoly 
 granting appeared in its working. A settlement was soon 
 formed at Rupert River, near the southern corner of Hud- 
 son's Bay, and stations and factories were founded in its 
 neighbourhood, for carrying on a trade in furs with the 
 Indian tribes there resident; and this trade proved so 
 lucrative, yielding sometimes as much as fifty per cent, 
 profit in a year, that the shareholders preferred to keep it all 
 in their own hands, rather than admit fresh capitalists, and 
 so found another great English colony. That they managed 
 their aftairs successfully, as far as their own interests were 
 concerned, cannot be doubted. Their gains continued, in 
 spite of long warfare with the French Canadians, who 
 repeatedly attacked and sometimes destroyed their forts 
 during twenty years previous to the Peace of Ryswick, and 
 their position was only made strong by the Treaty of Utrecht 
 in 17 13. Through the eighteenth century the Company 
 had a lazy course of money-making, generally sending three 
 ships every year from London to Rupert River, Avliich 
 exchanged guns, gunpowder, brandy, and coarse clothing, 
 for furs, feathers, and like native produce. Little enterprise 
 was needed to induce the neighbouring Indian tribes to 
 collect these articles and bring them to the factories, to be 
 bartered for the powder and shot with which they could kill 
 their enemies, and the spirits with wliich they found pleasure 
 in killing themselves. In 1742 four-pennyworth of brandy 
 could purchase a beaver-skin valued at about nine shillings, 
 or the same article might be procured with a pound of shot, 
 or four ounces of powder. 
 
 The immorality of this trade was not found fault with \
 
 Monopolies. 163 
 
 but repeated complaints were made that it was not opened 
 up to others who wished to join in it. "The Company's 
 four factories," it was said, in 1749, by one of its agents, 
 "contain only one hundred and thirty serwints, and two 
 small houses with only eight men in eacli. There are 
 incontestable evidences of rich copper and lead mines ; yet 
 the Company gives no encouragement for working them, 
 nor for their servants going into the inland countries. If 
 the least evidence had been suffered to transpire that the 
 climate is very habitable, the soil rich and fruitful, fit both 
 for corn and for cattle, rich in mines, and the fisheries 
 capable of great improvements, the Legislature would have 
 taken the matter into its own hands, and would have settled 
 the country, and laid the trade open for the benefit of 
 Britain. The Company, therefore, have contented them- 
 selves with dividing a large profit upon a small capital 
 amongst only about one hundred persons, and have not 
 only endeavoured to keep the true state of the trade and 
 country an impenetrable secret, but have also industriously 
 propagated the worst impressions of them." 
 
 That policy prevailed till early in the present century, 
 when the exclusive claims of the Hudson's Bay Company 
 were boldly attacked. A North-west Company was founded, 
 with powers to carry on its trade in the unused portions ot 
 Prince Rupert's Land ; and a Quebec Fur Company, claim- 
 ing to be older than even the Hudson's Bay Company, but 
 which had long confined its operations to trade with the 
 Indians bordering upon Canada, now became more acti^■e. 
 The rivalship of the three companies, sometimes issuing in 
 bloodshed, and often involving great loss of property, had 
 very beneficial results. Their agents pressed on into the 
 far West. Exploring parties were formed, and fertile districts 
 were discovered, until the whole vast belt of North America 
 was traversed, and the wealth of British Columbia and 
 Vancouver's Island began to be opened up. The feuds 
 
 L 2
 
 164 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 died out, but not the enterprise, in 182 1, when the North- 
 west Company was merged into the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany. The venerable monopoHsts had been forced to 
 discern the importance of their possessions, and more 
 adequate use was made of them. In 1837 the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, with a capital of ^400,000, and in the 
 hands of two hundred and thirty-nine proprietors, had a 
 hundred and thirty-six separate establishments, extending 
 east and west from Labrador and the Atlantic Ocean to 
 British Columbia and the Pacific, and north and south from 
 the boundaries of Canada and the United States to Baffin's 
 Bay and the Arctic Ocean. Its factors, clerks, and servants, 
 stationed at these settlements, then numbered some fourteen 
 hundred, and their business was to trade with the native 
 population scattered over the vast area, and estimated at 
 about ninety thousand. That was a wonderful advance upon 
 the earlier activity; but it was patent to all the world that 
 the advance was due solely to violations of the Company's 
 monopoly, and the abolition of that monopoly came to be 
 regarded as a necessary step in the development of British 
 North America. British Columbia and Vancouver's Island 
 were wrested from it, and established as separate and 
 flourishing colonies in 1857, and in 1868 an Act was passed 
 by the English Parliament sanctioning the transfer of all 
 its remaining territory and trading privileges to the new 
 Dominion of Canada. 
 
 Almost the only monopolies now tolerated by English- 
 men are those granted for a limited period to inventors, and 
 those guardedly assigned to railway companies, gas com- 
 panies, and the like, which need capital and enterprise 
 impossible to private traders, and hardly to be risked with- 
 out special protection by the State, but which receive that 
 protection under conditions designed to render the mono- 
 polies harmless, and to cause their withdrawal whenever 
 they cease to be beneficial to the community.
 
 CHAPTEP. VII. 
 
 SCIENCE IN TRADE. 
 
 The Services of Science to Trade — The Royal Society — The Purpose of its 
 Formation — Its Benefits to Trade— Accidental Discoveries of Scientific 
 Improvements— The Influence of Science on Pottery and Porcelain 
 Manufacture — Early Ilistory of the Trade — The First Pot-makers in 
 Staft'ordshire — The Brothers Elers and Saniuel Astbury— Josiah Wedg- 
 wood and his Achievements — Primitive Coal and Coal-mining- — Im- 
 proved Devices for its Extraction — Tlie Steam-engine — The Progress 
 of Iron Manufacture — Lord Dudley's Use of Coal in Smelting — De- 
 velopment of the Iron Trade — Abraham Darby's Furnace— Henry 
 Cort's Inventions for Puddling and Rolling— Other Improvements — 
 Scientific Changes in Textile Manufacture— Old-fashioned Spinning 
 and Weaving — Kay's Fly-shuttle— Wyatt's Drawing-frame, and Ark- 
 wright's Adaptation of it — Hargreaves' Spinning-jenny— Crompton's 
 Mule— Cartwright's Power-loom — The Value of Steam-power — Im- 
 provements in the Dyeing and Printing of Fabrics — William Flakefield's 
 Check Handkerchiefs — Progress of the Silk Manufacture — Jacquard's 
 Loom — The Gains of Commerce by Science. 
 
 The relations of politics to trade show a varied course of 
 benefits and injuries, the injuries being generally \vrought 
 by local prejudice, class tyranny, and other outcomes of 
 political temper at variance with all true principles of po- 
 litical economy, the benefits, unless accidental, being the 
 result of wise use of experience in overturning the follies 
 of the past. The relations of science to trade, on the other 
 hand, show an even course of progress. " Founders of 
 states, generals, great lawgivers," as Lord Bacon said, 
 " were, with much noise, honoured as demigods, such as 
 were Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Romulus ; but inventors antl 
 discoverers of new arts to benefit man's life were ever 
 consecrated as gods themselves, as Ceres, Mercury, Apollo. 
 One was mixed with strife and perturbation, confined to
 
 1 66 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 one nation or age \ but the latter hath the true character of 
 Divine presence, coming in aura k/ii, without noise or 
 agitation." 
 
 So noiselessly came most of the inventions and dis- 
 coveries of the old world that their authors and even the 
 time of their commencement are unknown. Ceres, Mercury, 
 and Apollo live only in mythology as heavenly patrons of 
 the agriculture, trade, and ph}'sic of the ancients. For 
 thousands of years man has been gradually advancing in 
 scientific skill, and by it commerce has gradually been 
 made easier and more extensive. All the principles of 
 scientific research and application were long ago, in a rude 
 way, at any rate, laid down, and their benefits appeared in 
 the modes pursued for cultivating and fertilising the ground, 
 for sowing crops and gathering them in, for building houses 
 and making apparel, for weaving and dyeing, for carrying 
 goods across land and sea, and the like. But the wonderful 
 growth of science that has taken place in recent genera- 
 tions has necessarily had a wonderful effect on commercial 
 activity ; and the achievements of science as a promoter of 
 trade have, during these generations, been very much more 
 notable than in former times. Science awoke from a long 
 slumber in Francis Bacon's day, and, partly at his call ; and 
 concurrent with its progress in abstract speculations has 
 been the development of commerce through wise use of 
 those speculations. 
 
 This development is in England very intimately con- 
 nected with the history of the Royal Society, in whose 
 charter of incorporation, issued in 1662, Charles II. is made 
 to utter sentiments altogether absurd as an expression of 
 his own temper, but quaintly indicative of the way in v/hich 
 science and commerce were to go hand-in-hand. " Out of 
 paternal care of our people," it was there written, " we re- 
 solve, together with those laws which tend to the well adminis- 
 tration of government and the people's allegiance to us,
 
 SciEXCE IN Trade. 167 
 
 inseparably to join the supreme law of Sahis Popitli, that 
 obedience may be manifestly, not only the public, but the 
 private felicity of every subject, and the great concern of his 
 satisfactions and enjoyments in this life. The way to so 
 happy a government Ave are sensible is in no manner more 
 facilitated than by promoting of useful arts and sciences, 
 which, upon mature inspection, are found to be the basis of 
 civil communities and free governments, and which gather 
 multitudes by an Orphean charm into cities and connect 
 them in companies ; that so, by laying in a stock, as it were,' 
 of several arts and methods of industry, the whole body may 
 be supplied by a mutual commerce of each other's peculiar 
 faculties, and, consequently, that the various miseries and 
 toils of this frail life may be, by as many various expedients 
 ready at hand, remedied or alleviated, and wealth and plenty 
 diffused in just proportion to every one's industry — that is, 
 to every one's deserts." 
 
 The annals of the Royal Society abound in evidence of 
 the ways, great and little, direct and indirect, in which it 
 helped on the growth of commerce. Thus we find it, in 
 January, 1663, recommending the adoption of measures "to 
 extend the growth of apple and pear trees, for making cider 
 all over England ;" and in the following March urging its 
 supporters " to plant potatoes, and to persuade their friends 
 to do the same, in order to alleviate the distress which would 
 accompany a scarcity of food." It was to the Royal Society 
 that, in 1687, Denis Papin, then its curator, propounded his 
 discovery of the motive power of steam, the simplest and 
 the most valuable discovery by which the world has ever 
 been enriched, but one that had to be made over and over 
 again, before and after Papin's day, before its value was appre- 
 ciated. Papin's idea of a steam-pump was crude enough, 
 but it contained the principle upon which all subsequent 
 extensions of the use of steam are based. In 1708 Papin 
 himself so far extended it as to be able to inform the Society
 
 1 68 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of a newly-invented boat, to be rowed by oars moved with 
 heat ; and, though this boat seems never to have been 
 actually made, Newton not only approved of the theory, but 
 hinted at its employment in many other ways in which the 
 steam-engine is now used. 
 
 The establishment of the Society of Arts and other off- 
 shoots of the Royal Society, more distinctly aiming at the 
 employment of science in the service of commerce, has 
 rendered it unnecessary for the parent institution now to 
 turn aside from its abstract studies and give advice about 
 cider-making and potato-growing. But every page in its 
 two centuries' history shows how even the most abstract 
 studies have a distinctly practical bearing. " You owe to 
 experimental philosophy some of the most important and 
 peculiar of > our advantages," said Sir Humphry Davy, whose 
 own safety-lamp and other inventions aptly illustrate the 
 value of science to commerce. " It is not by foreign con- 
 quests that you are become great, but by a conquest of 
 Nature in your own country. It is not so much by colonisa- 
 tion that you have attained your pre-eminence or wealth, 
 but by the cultivation of the riches of your own soil. Why 
 are you able to supply the world with a thousand articles of 
 iron and steel necessary for the purposes of life ? It is by 
 arts derived from chemistry and mechanics, and founded 
 purely upon experiments. Why is the steam-engine now 
 carrying on operations which fonnerly employed in painful 
 and humiliating labour thousands of our robust peasantry, 
 who are now more nobly or more usefully serving their 
 country? It is in consequence of experiments upon the 
 nature of heat and pure physical investigations. In every 
 part of the world manufactures made from the mere clay 
 and pebbles of your soil may be found ; and to what is 
 this owing ? To chemical arts and experiments. You have 
 excelled all other people in the products of industry, but 
 why ? Because you have assisted industry by science."
 
 Science ev Trade. 169 
 
 Some of the most important applications of science to 
 trade, however, began by accident, and were initiated by 
 men whose only science was common sense, aided by a 
 quick eye and a ready hand. There are a hundred stories 
 like that told of Samuel Astbury, the Staffordshire potter, 
 who, going to London in 1720, halted for the night either at 
 Banbury or at Dunstable. There something was found to 
 be wrong with one of his horse's eyes, and, as a rude remedy, 
 the ostler thrust a flint into the fire, and, as soon as it was 
 red-hot, flung it into a basin of water, whereby it was easily 
 reduced to a fine white powder, some of which was apjalied 
 to the injured eye. Astbury watched the process, and at 
 once shrewdly guessed that here was the solution to a riddle 
 that had long perplexed him. Strong and well-shapen 
 pottery he could produce, but its b ^auty was spoilt by its 
 dirty colour. Astbury sent home a cartload of flint stones, 
 and, after his return, had them fired and pulverised. He 
 mixed the powder with pipeclay and water, washed his dirty 
 ware with it, and was delighted, after final baking, to find it 
 come out white and shining. He afterwards improved upon 
 his invention by introducing the calcined flint into the body 
 of the ware, and his expedient soon came to be universally 
 adopted. 
 
 The value of science to commerce is well illustrated, in 
 one way at any rate, by the progress of the pottery trade 
 in England. Babylonians, Egyptians, and Etruscans excelled 
 in the manufacture of earthenware, and it was more or less 
 rudely practised by all nations as soon as they emerged from 
 their primitive barbarism. In Britain it began in times 
 unknown, and by the very favourable soil of the Staffordshire 
 district the ingenious workmen of the Celtic, Roman, Saxon, 
 and Plantagenet periods were tempted there especially to 
 cultivate the art. In the towns and villages some eight or 
 ten labourers would club together, and make such coarse 
 articles as they had skill for, and as their neighbours cared
 
 170 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to buy. " In the wilder districts of the moorlands," says the 
 l)iographer of Wedgwood, the prince of potters, "a pot-work 
 would be carried on by the joint exertions of a single man 
 and his son, or a labourer. The one dug the necessary clay, 
 the other fashioned and lined the ware, whilst the mother or 
 daughter, when the goods were ready, loaded the panniered 
 asses, and took her way to distant town and hamlet, till her 
 merchandise was sold. She then returned with shop-goods 
 to the solitary pot-work. In places of this kind were only 
 produced the very coarsest descriptions of ware, such as 
 crocks, pitchers, slab-like baking-dishes and porringers, all 
 of which were partially glazed with lead ore. Their owners 
 were a rude and lawless set, half-poachers, half-gipsies, who 
 met at fairs and markets, and occasionally held drunken 
 revels in the wilder parts of their own districts." Under the 
 Tudors and the Stuarts this state of things was gradually 
 improved upon. From common labourers, the ablest work- 
 men rose to be master potters, and they often sent their 
 sons to study in the potteries of Holland, and so bring home 
 experience to be used in improving the English art. There 
 was rude science in that long first period of pot-making ; but 
 in England no great scientific advance was made till less 
 than two centuries ago. 
 
 Long before that it had begun on the Continent. The 
 Dutch were the first great potters for Europe, and Delft- 
 ware, the name of which shows its origin, was for a long 
 time the best that could be procured. Vast improvement 
 grew out of the enterprise of the early traders to the far 
 East, who brought home the delicate porcelain of China and 
 Japan, which native traders quickly sought to imitate. Ber- 
 nard Palissy, the great Frenchman, spent sixteen years in 
 conquering the secret of the white enamel, hitherto peculiar 
 to the china of China ; and out of his enterprise, well imi- 
 tated by others, grew the famous factories of Sevres and 
 Dresden.
 
 Science in Trade. 171 
 
 Improved pottery came to England witli tlie Dutch and 
 Huguenot immigrants of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies. Two brothers, named Elers, in particular, arrived 
 from Germany, and set up a manufactory near Burslem, em- 
 ploying the most stupid persons they could find to do the 
 drudgery, and keeping the finer parts for their own mani- 
 pulation in secret. They managed to produce pottery far 
 superior to any before known in Staffordshire, and their very 
 efforts at concealment naturally aroused the jealous curi- 
 osity of the English workmen round about. One especially, 
 Samuel Astbury, resolved to discover their secret. Dis- 
 guising himself, and pretending to be half an idiot, he ob- 
 tained employment from them, and aftected such utter 
 ignorance and incompetence that he was by degrees allowed 
 to watch all their movements, and make himself master of 
 their plans for imitating the red unglazed ware of Japan, and 
 for producing the black ware since known as Egyptian — two 
 varieties in which earlier Englishmen had been quite un- 
 skilled. That done, Astbury threw otf his disguise, left his 
 masters, and set up a rival establishment of his own. Therein 
 he throve famously, partly by the discovery of the use of 
 calcined flint, which has been described. Others followed 
 in his lead, made further improvements, and occasioned a 
 wonderful growth of the Staffordshire potteries. 
 
 Of these younger men by far the most notable was 
 Astbury's nephew by marriage, Josiah Wedgwood. Born at 
 Burslem in 1730, he began his trade in a humble pot-work 
 that had belonged to his family during several generations. 
 That business, however, descended to his brothers, and in 
 1 75 1 or 1752 he became manager for another potter, in 
 whose service he began to make considerable improvements 
 in the shape, colour, and consistency of the snuff-boxes, 
 pickle-dishes, tea, coftee, and chocolate pots, and candle- 
 sticks, that were the staples of his employer's trade. The 
 more artistic work on which his heart was set he was not
 
 172 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 allowed to engage in. Therefore, as soon as he had saved 
 money enough, in 1759, he started in business on his own 
 account. He made tea-services, vases, white tiles for fire- 
 places, and other articles, ornamenting them with raised 
 figures of animals and the like, composed of coloured clay ; 
 and these were so well received that in little more than a 
 year he was able to double his business, and to make bolder 
 efforts at the advancement of his art. " He had for a con- 
 siderable period," says Miss Meteyard, his biographer, 
 " turned his attention to the improvement of the ordinary 
 cream-coloured ware ; he now concentrated all his energies 
 in this one direction. Every essential of the body, glaze, 
 form, and ornament was alike the object of his care. But 
 through the various necessary processes his patience was 
 often sorely tried, and his repeated failures were most dis- 
 heartening. One kiln after another was pulled down, in 
 order to correct some defect, or eftect some necessary im- 
 provement. His losses from this source alone were, at this 
 period, very heavy, and the ware itself was often destroyed 
 before he could bring his firing processes to the requisite 
 degree of perfection. His chemical combinations often 
 baffled him, and his experiments, both in body and in glaze, 
 would, after the greatest pains, turn out entire failures. He 
 had to invent, and, if not that, to improve, every tool, instru- 
 ment, and apparatus, and to seek for smiths and mechanics 
 to work under his guidance. He often passed the whole 
 day at the bench beside his men, and in many cases in- 
 structed them individually. Unwearied and indomitable in 
 spirit, he persevered, and success came." By the end of 
 1 76 1 his main object was gained. He had found the way 
 of making cream-ware lighter, brighter, and in every way 
 much more perfect than any that had been produced before. 
 There was a ready market for it in England, but a large 
 fjuantity found its way to America, by way of Liverpool, 
 where Wedgwood's chief agent in disposing of it was
 
 Science in Trade. 173 
 
 Thomas Bentley, a young and noble-hearted merchant. A 
 firm friendship grew up between the maker and the dealer, 
 and the result was their joining in partnership, as managers 
 of the new and famous works set up by them at Etruria, near 
 Burslem, in 1767. " If you think you could really fall in 
 love with and make a mistress of this new business, as I 
 have done," wrote Wedgwood to Bentley, in a charac- 
 teristic letter, proposing the partnership, " I should have 
 little or no doubt of your success ; for, if we consider the 
 great variety of colours in our raw materials, the infinite 
 ductility of clay, and that we have universal beauty to copy, 
 we have certainly the fairest prospect of enlarging this branch 
 of manufacture to our wishes ; and, as genius will not be 
 wanting, I am firmly persuaded that our profits will be in 
 proportion to our application. I am as confident that it 
 would be, beyond comparison, more congenial and delightful 
 to eveiy particle of matter, sense, and spirit in your compo- 
 sition to be the creator, as it were, of beauty, rather than 
 merely the vehicle or medium to convey it from one hand 
 to another." That letter shows with what high and worthy 
 views Wedgwood pursued his calling. Bentley was a fit 
 partner for him. Under their guidance Etruria throve won- 
 derfully. Bentley soon settled in London, to carry on, 
 through the London market, a busy trade with all the 
 world. That trade had become very great before Bentley's 
 early death in 1780. It continued to thrive, and to have 
 ever fresh impetus from Wedgwood's continued improve- 
 ments in his art, during the ensuing fifteen years. Dying in 
 1795, he had brought the manufacture of earthenware to so 
 excellent a state that there has been little for his successors 
 to do besides following in his steps. The scientific methods 
 that he brought to bear upon English pot-making have con- 
 verted a rude craft into a noble art, and, besides gratifying 
 the refinements of life among rich and luxurious persons 
 at home, have added another staple to British trade with
 
 174 '-itJ^ Romance of Trade. 
 
 foreign countries, and by many times multiplied the pros- 
 perity of the Staffordshire district in which the manufacture 
 is chiefly carried on. 
 
 Other great English manufactures, however, show yet 
 more strikingly the trade-value of science, and its marvellous 
 development in modern times. All our principal manufac- 
 tures have been revolutionised by scientific improvements in 
 machinery, and the improved construction of machinery has 
 been made possible by the discovery of scientific processes 
 in the extraction and use of coal. 
 
 Coal was dug up and employed in manufactures, as well 
 as in domestic ways, by the Roman civilisers of Britain. 
 Coal-cinders were found in the buried city of Uriconium, now 
 AVroxeter, which was discovered a few years ago ; and a huge 
 cinder-heap, supposed to be a relic of Roman times, used to 
 exist at Aston, a suburb of Birmingham, while in Wednesbury 
 Old Field, another of its suburbs, have been found numerous 
 ancient coal-pits, "which," says the local historian, "the 
 curious antiquarian would deem as long in sinking as the 
 mountain of cinders in rising." Coal seems to have been 
 also employed by the Anglo-Saxons and their successors 
 in their rude workmanship ; and early in the Middle Ages 
 Newcastle began to be famous for its supply of the fuel 
 which, in spite of prejudice, expressed in Acts of Parliament 
 as well as in popular outcries, was gradually coming into 
 fashion as a substitute for wood, already growing scarce. 
 But till very recent times the coal was only shovelled up 
 from those fields in which it was most easy of access ; and 
 the lack of better means of obtaining it was a hindrance to 
 its extensive application in manufacturing ways. Those 
 hindrances were overcome by the same scientific energy to 
 which the direct development of the manufactures was due. 
 
 The first great difficulty experienced by the coal-workers, 
 as soon as they had picked all the outermost portions of 
 their mineral store, was the flooding of the remainder with
 
 SciEXCE IN Trade. 175 
 
 water, which for a long time they liad no better means of 
 removing than the old-fashioned air-pump, quite unequal to 
 such extensive work. Several attempts were made during 
 the seventeenth century to provide a more suitable instru- 
 ment ; but the first of any practical value, and that only a 
 suggestion which others had to perfect, was Thomas Savery's 
 "fire-engine," made in 169S, and based on an independent 
 discovery of the motive-power of steam, Papin's discovery 
 having occurred some ten years before. In this engine, a 
 cylindrical vessel filled with steam was plunged into the 
 water, which by its coldness at once condensed the steam, 
 and rushed through a valve to fill the vacuum, where, its 
 egress being prevented by a clack, it was forced out through 
 a stand-pipe by a fresh blast of steam, and so fitted for re- 
 immersion in the water, while that previously sucked up was 
 being drained away. The ingenious machine enabled a boy 
 to do easily as much pumping as had previously given 
 laborious occupation to twenty or thirty men ; but it was 
 quickly superseded through Newcomen's invention, in 1705, 
 of his "atmospheric engine," in which the steam was made 
 to work a piston, and the work of pumping was greatly 
 facilitated. Newcomen's machine was also soon improved 
 upon, and other improvements followed, until they culmi- 
 nated in Watt's steam-engine, invented in 1765, but vainly 
 advocated by him until 1774, when he entered into partner- 
 ship with Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, and Boulton 
 and Watt's engines at once began to effect an entire change, 
 not only in the mode of pumping water from coal-mines, 
 but in every branch of manufacture dependent upon coal. 
 Steam-power, employed in clearing the mines of water, was 
 quickly employed also in sinking shafts, in lifting the coal 
 itself, and in other processes connected with this dangerous 
 and important industry. A main inducement with Watt in 
 prosecuting his great invention was the economising of coal, 
 which, by Newcomen's engine, was used very wastefully in
 
 176 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the process of pumping. The result of that invention is 
 that, while the economy per ton is very great, the use of 
 coal in manufacturing ways has been increased more than a 
 hundredfold. 
 
 Next to coal-working, the great promoter of all other 
 workmanship is iron-working. Ever since the time of the 
 Romans, there have been iron-works in England, although, 
 in the Middle Ages, iron brought from the coast of Biscay 
 was preferred to that of native produce. Our superiority 
 over other nations dates from the time when coal took the 
 place of wood as fuel. Until then, indeed, no great effort 
 was made to extend the trade. In 1354 the exportation of 
 iron was forbidden, on account of the scarcity' of timber ; 
 and in 1581 the erection of iron-works within certain dis- 
 tances from London and the Thames was prohibited, " for 
 the preservation of the woods." Forty years later, in 1621, 
 Lord Dudley obtained a monopoly of " the mystery and art 
 of melting iron-ore, and of making the same into cast works 
 or bars, with sea-coals or pit-coals, in furnaces, with bellows," 
 which had been introduced by his famous son, Dud Dudley. 
 Dudley suffered much from the opposition of rival iron- 
 workers; "but," he said, "I went on with my inventions 
 cheerfully, and made annually great store of iron, good and 
 merchantable, and sold it unto divers men at j[^\2 per ton. 
 I also made all sorts of cast-iron wares, as brewing-cisterns, 
 pots, mortars, and the like, better and cheaper than any yet 
 made in their nations with charcoal." After persevering 
 efforts, Dudley succeeded in producing seven tons of iron a 
 week, " the greatest quantity of pit-coal iron ever yet made 
 in Great Britain," as he said ; and in his efforts to advance 
 the trade he had an able coadjutor in Andrew Yarranton. 
 In 1677, too, a Dr. Frederick de Blewstane obtained a 
 patent for "a new and effectual way of melting down, 
 forging, extracting, and reducing of all metals with pit-coal 
 and sea-coal, as well and effectually as ever hath yet been
 
 Science in Trade. 177 
 
 done by charcoal, and with much less charge," though we 
 are not informed as to the nature and results of his method. 
 Before the close of the seventeenth century, it was reckoned 
 that 180,000 tons of iron were produced in England in the 
 course of a year j and in 17 19 iron was considered to be 
 third in the rank of English manufactures, and to give 
 employment to 200,000 persons. 
 
 Then and for long afterwards, however, notwithstand- 
 ing the inventions of Dud Dudley and others, and mainly 
 because of their exclusive patents for the use of coal, the 
 ore was chiefly smelted, and in rude ways, by help of wood 
 and charcoal. The consequent waste of timber frightened 
 short-sighted politicians, who, instead of attempting to 
 encourage the use of coal, sought only to check the pro- 
 duction of iron by other means. " The waste and destruc- 
 tion of the woods in the counties of Warwick, Stafford, 
 Hereford, Monmouth, Gloucester, and Salop, by these 
 iron-works," it was said in the House of Commons, " is not 
 to be imagined. If some care be not taken to preserve our 
 timber from these consuming furnaces, there will not be oak 
 enough left to supply the Royal Navy and our mercantile 
 shipping.'' Exportation of iron was accordingly discouraged; 
 and, at the same time, as a false favour to the iron-masters, 
 in the hope that their prices might be increased, cruel 
 restrictions were put by Parliament upon the preparation of 
 iron in the American colonies, where both ore and timber 
 were abundant. It was enacted in 17 19 that "none in the 
 plantations should manufacture iron wares of any kind what- 
 ever, out of any sows, pigs, or bars whatever." That law 
 could not be enforced. But the colonies, eager to develop 
 their resources, were hindered by heavy restrictions upon 
 the sending of their metal to the English market ; and when, 
 in 1750, a somewhat better policy prevailed, and a law 
 was passed " to encourage the importation of pig and bar 
 iron from his Majesty's colonies in America," it was coupled 
 
 M
 
 178 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 with a cruel clause, " to prevent the erection of any mill or 
 other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any plating- 
 forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for the 
 making of steel, in the said colonies ; " that is, only the 
 roughest work was permitted, and all the fine manipulation 
 was reserved for England, to which the pig-iron was to be 
 shipped. It was by unmotherly legislation of that sort that 
 the mother country was parted from her first and fairest 
 offspring, and the United States were forced to win their 
 independence by war and hatred. 
 
 England, also, of course, suffered by the foolish legisla- 
 tion. In the course of half a century the iron-trade was 
 reduced to a tenth of its former proportions. In 1740 only 
 17,350 tons were produced; yet in the meanwhile the 
 scientific manufacture had been greatly developed. Dud 
 Dudley's plan of using coal instead of charcoal was only 
 partially successful, the old-fashioned furnaces being unfit 
 for the new kind of fuel. Coal and coke burning slowly, 
 and with feeble chemical affinities for the iron-ore, it required 
 to be subjected to a much more powerful blast than could 
 be obtained in the shallow furnaces then in use. The secret 
 of this blast was discovered by Abraham Darby, whose 
 father had purchased the Coalbrook-dale Iron-works in 1709. 
 " Young Abraham Darby entered upon the management 
 about 1730," says Mrs. Darby. "As the supply of charcoal 
 was fast failing, he attempted to smelt with a mixture of 
 raw coal and charcoal, but did not succeed. Between 1730 
 and 1735 he determined to treat pit-coal as his charcoal- 
 burners treated wood. He built a fire-proof hearth in the 
 open air, piled upon it a circular mound of coal, and covered 
 it with clay and cinders, leaving access to just sufficient air 
 to maintain slow combustion. Having thus made a good 
 stock of coke, he proceeded to experiment upon it as a 
 substitute for charcoal. He himself watched the filling of 
 his furnace during six days and nights, having no regular
 
 Science in Trade. 179 
 
 sleep, and taking his meals at the furnace-top. On the 
 sixth evening, after many disappointments, the experiment 
 succeeded, and the iron ran out well. He then, in the 
 bridge-house at the top of his old-fashioned furnace, fell 
 asleep so soundly that his men could not wake him, and 
 carried him, sleeping, to his house, a quarter of a mile 
 distant. From that time his success was rapid. To increase 
 the power of his water-wheels of twenty-four feet diameter, 
 he set up a ' fire-engine ' to raise water from under the 
 lower and send it to the upper pond, which supplied water 
 to the works, and put in motion the largest bellows that 
 had been made. He obtained additional leases, and erected 
 seven furnaces, with five fire-engines. In 1754 the first 
 furnace at Horsehay was blown in. In December, 1756, 
 ' Horsehay's work ' was declared to be ' at a top pinnacle of 
 prosperity, twenty and twenty-two tons per week, and sold 
 off as fast as made, at profit enough.' " 
 
 Darby's great improvement, however, was quickly im- 
 proved upon. In 1760, at the Carron Ironworks, near 
 Falkirk, Smeaton substituted a new blowing-apparatus, con- 
 sisting of large cylinders, with closely-fitting pistons, for the 
 old clumsy bellows. In 1766 the Cranages introduced a 
 reverberatory or air furnace, by which, without any bellows, 
 the pig-iron was made malleable and rendered fit for the 
 forge hammer; and in 1783 Peter Onions, of Merthyr- 
 Tydvil, started the idea of a puddling-fumace, wherein, with 
 help of a current of air from beneath, the fire was left to act 
 upon the metal until it was brought, as he said, "into a kind 
 of froth, which the workmen, by opening the door, must 
 turn and stir with a bar or other iron instrument, and then 
 close the aperture again, applying the blast and fire until 
 there was a ferment in the metal," and the dross could 
 be cleared away. In the same year, Henry Cort, of Gos- 
 port, made independent discovery of that process, and, by 
 working it out successfully, brought iron manufacture very 
 
 M 2
 
 I So The Romance of Trade. 
 
 near to perfection. In 1783 he patented a method of fagot- 
 ing the bars, and then passing them through rollers which 
 pressed out the earthy particles, and rendered the iron tough 
 and fibrous. In 1784, with a second patent, "he introduced 
 a reverberatory furnace heated by coal, and with a concave 
 bottom, into which the fluid metal is run from the smelting- 
 furnace, and he showed how, by a process of puddling, which 
 exposed it to the oxidising current of flame and air, the cast 
 metal could be rendered malleable." These inventions of 
 puddling and rolling, now aided by the application of Watt's 
 steam-engine, proved of immense value. In i860 upwards of 
 eight thousand of Cort's furnaces were in operation in Great 
 Britain alone, each one producing more iron in a week than 
 could often with the old appliances be obtained in a year. 
 But Cort himself, after spending more than ;^2o,ooo in per- 
 fecting his inventions, was robbed of all reward, and left to 
 die almost in beggary. 
 
 Among later improvements in the manufacture of iron, 
 the most important is the hot-blast process, invented by 
 Mr. Neilson, of Glasgow, in 1824. Hitherto all furnaces and 
 forges, requiring the use of the bellows or any other blowing- 
 apparatus, had been fed with cold blasts, which absorbed 
 niuch of the heat before they could act on the metal. 
 Mr. Neilson ^suggested the simple plan of heating the air 
 at a separate fire before applying it to the iron, and the 
 method has been found to give so much fresh power over 
 refractory ores that from three to four times the old quantity 
 of iron can be worked, at the cost of only one-third more 
 fuel, and that, generally, without the coal needing to be 
 coked, or the ore to be calcined. The result of this and 
 all other inventions connected with iron-manufacture is that 
 now more than 4,000,000 tons of iron are annually extracted 
 from some 12,000,000 tons of ore, at a market value of 
 about ;^i 2,000,000. 
 
 It is not necessary here to set forth the stages, for the
 
 Science in Trade. i8i 
 
 most part somewhat similar to those of iron, by which other 
 metals have advanced in manufacture ; and many volumes 
 would be needed to detail all the applications of science by 
 which manufactures in metal have kept pace with the manu- 
 facture of metals. From railways and steamships down to 
 gold watches and silver sj)oons, steel pens and brass pins, 
 each has a separate history, illustrating the gradual and 
 always serviceable application of science to trade. 
 
 The most important metal wares, of course, are those 
 by which the staple textile manufactures have been revo- 
 lutionised. By them the cotton trade has been almost 
 created, while the progress of the older woollen, linen, and 
 silk manufactures has been hardly less wonderful. 
 
 Spinning and weaving have been practised in the world 
 for at any rate forty centuries, and the importance to England, 
 in past times, of its wool trade, greatly increased by the 
 immigration of skilled workmen from Flanders and other 
 parts, has been already referred to. Its value cannot be 
 overstated, and its growth was steady. But the workmen of 
 a century and a half ago used nearly the same sort of tools 
 and followed nearly the same ways as had been in fashion 
 for a thousand years before, or as still prevail in India, the 
 birthplace of textile workmanship. Most of the manufacture, 
 true to the original meaning of the word, was done by hand 
 in private houses, and the largest factories rarely comprised 
 more than twenty or thirty workmen, hand-work being then 
 supplemented by mill-power derived from the streams at the 
 side of which the humble buildings were erected. 
 
 The old process of manufacture may be briefly described. 
 The wool or cotton to be converted into cloth, having been 
 first cleaned, was carded — that is, its filaments were opened 
 up by a minute sort of fork, and spread out in parallel lines, 
 so as to form a loose ribbon of eight or more fibres, accord- 
 ing to the thickness of the yarn required. A band of leather, 
 supplied with iron bristles and coiled round a cylinder, was
 
 iS2 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the card; and this preUminary stage has only been improved 
 upon by scientific apphances for making the tufts perfectly 
 regular, and working the card by machinery instead of by 
 hand. The fibrous ribbon was next coiled round the spindle 
 and subjected to the spinning-wheel, which till a century 
 ago differed little from the rude instrument now in use in 
 India. The spinner, or spinster, having adjusted one end of 
 the ribbon to a large wheel, which she turned with one hand, 
 fed it with the other, giving the fibre a slight twist as she 
 did so, in order that the roving, as it was called, which was 
 worked off from the wheel upon the bobbin, though still frail 
 and porous, might have a little of the strength and cohesion 
 of thread ; the roving had to be again worked round the 
 wheel, with slower feeding and a more rapid twist, to convert 
 it into yarn fit for the weaver to work up. This yarn was 
 made of two sorts — the warp-yarn had to be very firmly 
 twisted, so as to form the longitudinal substance of the 
 web ; the weft-yarn, to form the transverse substance or woof, 
 though of equal thickness with the other, was looser and 
 lighter. The yarns having been thus prepared by the spinner, 
 were handed over to the weaver, who adjusted them to his 
 old-fashioned and clumsy loom. In this loom the warp was 
 wound round a beam, and thence drawn through two heddles 
 consisting of twines looped in the middle, one half being 
 through the front heddle, the other half through the back 
 heddle, and the two being so arranged that they could be 
 alternately lifted and depressed by a treadle, which the 
 weaver worked with his foot, while, as the threads rose and 
 fell, he threw backwards and forwards between them the 
 shuttle, from which the weft uncoiled as it passed. The cloth 
 thus produced was generally rolled on a beam opposite to 
 that covered by the warp^yarn, and was then ready for the 
 market. The workmanship alone of a pound of coarse cloth, 
 half cotton and half linen, as was then common, cost about 
 4S. 6d. in 1741 ; now good cotton fabric can be obtained
 
 SciEXCE IN Trade. 183 
 
 for about 2d. per lb., including both the cost of the raw 
 material and the expense of manufacture. 
 
 A series of notable inventions have effected this change, 
 and rendered the textile manufactures of England nearly a 
 hundred times as extensive as they were a hundred years 
 ago. Started mainly in the interests of the new trade in 
 cotton, they have been extended, with easy modifications, to 
 wool and linen, and in a lesser degree to silk. The first 
 important step in the way of scientific improvement was 
 made by John Kay, a native of Bury, but then working as a 
 loom-maker at Colchester, who, in 1733, invented the fly- 
 shuttle, which, as its name implies, moved much more swiftly 
 and easily than the older shuttle, and enabled the weaver to 
 do his work in half or a third of the time previously required. 
 His invention, however, brought him nothing but trouble. 
 The men whom he thought to benefit, and whose descend- 
 ants he did benefit immensely, rejected his machine, and, 
 after long and sullen opposition, mobbed his house, in 1753, 
 and nearly killed him. " I have a great many more inven- 
 tions than what I have given in," he wrote, with a pathos 
 not lessened by the clumsy phrasing that certainly betrayed 
 his lack of education, in 1764, a few years before he died, 
 an unknown pauper, in France, "and the reason that I 
 have not put them forward is the bad treatment that I had 
 from woollen and cotton factories, in different parts of Eng- 
 land, twenty years ago ; and then I applied to Parliament, 
 and they would not assist me in my affairs, which obliged 
 me to go abroad, to get money to pay my debts and support 
 my family." 
 
 There can be no excuse for the ill-usage that Kay received ; 
 but it is partly explained by the fact that his fly-shuttle and 
 his other inventions had to do with weaving only, and, there- 
 fore, while lessening the weaver's toil in making each yard of 
 cloth, reduced the wages which he received for it, without 
 enabling him to fill up his leisure, and add to his wages,
 
 184 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 by making a greater quantity than he had produced before. 
 The weaver was dependent on the spinner for his yarn, 
 and, until improvements were made in spinning, Kay's im- 
 provements in weaving were only of partial benefit. That 
 hindrance, however, was soon removed, although it lasted 
 for a generation longer than it need have done. 
 
 John Wyatt is one of the neglected heroes of commerce. 
 Born about the beginning of the eighteenth century, he was 
 residing in a village near Lichfield, and in some way con- 
 nected with the cotton manufacture, then in its infancy, and 
 suffering much from the competition of wool and flax, when, 
 in 1730, he thought of a plan by which the spinning of all 
 fibres might be greatly facilitated. In lieu of passing the 
 carded fibre twice round the hand-worked one-thread spin- 
 ning-wheel, he proposed to draw it between a pair of revolv- 
 ing cylinders, one plain and the other fluted, whereby it was 
 converted into roving, and then to pass it at once between 
 another pair of rollers, revolving three, four, or any number 
 of times more quickly than the first pair, according to the 
 fineness to which the yarn was to be brought, and thus to 
 convert it at once into warp or weft, not only in very much 
 less time than was required by hand-spinning, but also with 
 very much more exactness. He spent some three years in 
 developing the idea. " In 1733," says his son, "by a model 
 of about two feet square, in a snmll building near Sutton 
 Coldfield, without a single witness to the performance, was 
 spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the 
 intervention of human fingers, we, to use his own words, 
 'being all the time in a pleasing but trembling suspense.'" 
 
 Suspense that was not pleasing followed. Having no 
 money of his own with which to bring his great invention 
 before the world, Wyatt went to Birmingham, and there 
 he made the acquaintance of Lewis Paul, an ingenious man, 
 who made many important suggestions for improving textile 
 machinery, but wliose treatment of Wyatt seems to have
 
 Science in Trade. 185 
 
 been somewhat unfair. By offers and bargains which he 
 never fulfilled, he persuaded Wyatt to transfer to him the 
 invention, and, after adding to it some other details, he ob- 
 tained a patent for it, in his own name, in 1738. A book- 
 seller named Warren advanced ^^ 1,000, and in 174 1 or 
 1742 a small mill, "turned by two asses walking round an 
 axis," while ten girls attended to the details, was set up in 
 the Upper Priory, at Birmingham. " This establishment," 
 we are told by Wyatt's son, "unsupported by sufiicient pro- 
 perty, languished a short time, and then expired. The 
 resources were exhausted, and the inventor much injured by 
 the experiment, but his confidence in the scheme was un- 
 impaired. It was tried again, and on a larger scale, a few 
 years later, at Nottingham, the money being provided by or 
 through Edward Cave, the famous editor of the Gentlemaiis 
 Magazine., and Dr. Johnson's friend. Here the mill was 
 turned by water, and fifty pair of hands worked two hundred 
 and fifty spindles ; but this, too, failed. Leaving Paul to 
 superintend the work, Wyatt visited London for some time, 
 on other business ; and when he returned to Nottingham 
 he found that, although 3,300 lbs. of cotton had been spun 
 by the new process, the machinery had fallen out of order, 
 and everything was in hopeless confusion. Dissatisfied with 
 his partners, and perhaps disheartened as to the value of his 
 invention, he went back to Birmingham, and gave his atten- 
 tion to other matters. He died in 1766, surviving by seven 
 years Lewis Paul, who had also occupied himself with fresh 
 inventions, among the rest with one for a new method of 
 carding wool and cotton ; and the spinning-machine was 
 forgotten until its idea was revived and made successful by 
 Sir Richard Arkwright. 
 
 Arkwright's history is well known, and only too much 
 praise has been accorded to him for his share in the good 
 work by which he, unlike most inventors — being unlike most 
 inventors in shrewd self-seeking and steady business habits —
 
 1 86 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 profited as much as the world. Prospering in a humble 
 way as a cheap barber at Bolton, and as a travelling 
 dealer in false hair and hair-dye, he appears, about the 
 time of Wyatt's death, to have obtained the details of his 
 invention. Soon after that, being in Warrington, he there 
 luckily fell in with a watchmaker who had just before 
 assisted a Thomas Highs in constructing a spinning-machine, 
 which was either based on knowledge of Wyatt's invention, 
 or a kindred and half-developed invention of his own. 
 Arkwright employed the watchmaker to help him in making 
 another machine, which was in the main a copy of Wyatt's, 
 and by showing this to influential friends, to whom he re- 
 presented that the device was his own, he easily obtained 
 money enough to bring it into notice. More than all, he 
 obtained -the co-operation of Jedediah Strutt, the great 
 mechanician and stocking-manufacturer of Derby, and of 
 Strutt's partner, Samuel Need. In 1769 he procured a 
 patent "for the making of yarn from cotton, flax, or wool," 
 in which Wyatt's principle was adopted, but greatly improved 
 upon. In 177 1 he established a mill at Cromford-on-the- 
 Derwent, which worked successfully. In 1775 he obtained 
 his second great patent, " for carding, drawing, and roving 
 machines, in preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spin- 
 ning," which was subsequently withdrawn, on the ground 
 that its ' specialities had already been anticipated. 
 
 But though Arkwright's claims as an inventor are open 
 to dispute, there can be no question as to his services to 
 manufacturing enterprise. With marvellous powers of ap- 
 plication, fertility of resource, and administrative ability, he 
 was the pioneer in a famous race of progress. Resolved to 
 succeed, he persevered against the opposition of both friends 
 and enemies, and, after many years of pecuniary loss, of 
 battling against difficulties in the management of machinery, 
 and of yet greater difiiculties in overcoming prejudice, h'e 
 triumphed himself, and showed others how to triumph.
 
 SciEyci^ ix Trade. 1S7 
 
 Before Ark^\Tight's spinning-machine, or water-frame, as 
 it was called, from being worked by a water-mill, found 
 favour, another great improvement had been quietly initiated. 
 James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver of Stand-hill, near 
 Blackburn, was waiting one day for the weft which his wife 
 was producing, when her one-thread wheel fell on its side, 
 and the spindle was thus thrown from a horizontal into an 
 upright position. Both wheel and spindle continued to 
 revolve, and it occuiTed to Hargreaves that, by widening the 
 wheel, and placing a number of upright spindles side by side, 
 he might be able to spin several threads at once. He ac- 
 cordingly contrived a frame with spindles, and machinery for 
 feeding them. This machine, though rudely made, worked 
 well. His wife being named Jenny, he called it the spin- 
 ning-jenny, and used it for a year or two in his own house, 
 producing eight times as much yarn as before, until the 
 neighbours, at first only astonished at the rapidity of his 
 work, became jealous, broke into the house, and destroyed 
 the jenny. That was in 1768. Hargreaves was forced to 
 leave Blackburn, but settling in Nottingham, he there found 
 a partner with intelligence and money, and set up a small 
 mill. His invention, in which the number of spindles was 
 increased from eight to sixteen, was patented in 1770, and 
 soon came into general use, the number of spindles being 
 augmented till they amounted to a hundred and twenty, 
 or sometimes even more. The Lancashire manufacturers, 
 preferring it to Arkwright's more novel and complicated 
 machinery, paid him ;^4,ooo for permission to adopt it, and, 
 in spite of serious riots, which, in 1779, drove old Robert 
 Peel and other masters from Blackburn, the spinning-jenny 
 held its ground, until both it and Arkwright's machine were 
 in part superseded by another great invention. 
 
 Samuel Crompton, born in 1753, was the son of a farmer 
 settled near Bolton, but, left an orphan when he was very 
 young, had to support himself by spinning. He was sixteen
 
 1 88 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 when he began to use Hargreaves' spinning-jenny, and soon 
 afterwards he heard of Arkwright's drawing-machine. When 
 he was about one-and-twenty, he bethought him that his 
 work might be done more easily if he could construct a 
 machine combining the principles of both the others, and, 
 after five years of experimenting, in 1779 his project was 
 successful. With the poor tools and out of the poor mate- 
 rials at his disposal, he fashioned what, with the simplicity 
 and modesty natural to him, he called a mule, as being the 
 offspring of two different kinds of instruments. It drew out 
 the roving by help of an adaptation of the water-frame, and 
 then passed it on to be finished and twisted into yarn by an 
 adaptation of the spinning-jenny. Nothing could be simpler, 
 nothing more efficacious. Twelve hundred spindles are now 
 often worked by it at once, and by one spinner, with a few 
 boys or girls to assist him in seeing that no knots or flaws 
 are allowed to spoil any of the twelve hundred threads; and 
 the threads produced by this wonderful economy of labour 
 are finer, firmer, and more uniform than any that the earlier 
 inventions were able to draw out. 
 
 Crompton, a plain, honest, working man, did not him- 
 self perceive the whole value of his machine. Having 
 roughly made it for his own use, he fixed it in his garret, 
 and was only annoyed at the curiosity of his neighbours, 
 who marvelled at the great quantity of yarn, and better than 
 they could spin, which he produced each day. They used 
 to climb up and tiy to peep in at the window. He built a 
 screen to impede their view ; but, at length, when he was 
 tired of keeping his troublesome secret, he told them that, 
 if fifty of them would subscribe a guinea a-piece, he would 
 show them his instrument, and teach them how to make 
 others like it for themselves. The money was soon found, 
 and thus it was published to the world. It was quickly 
 copied by thousands, and improved upon by Crompton 
 himself. At the close of 181 1 more than four and a half
 
 Science in Trade. 1S9 
 
 million spindles worked by mules were in use in various 
 parts of England, spinning about forty million pounds of 
 cotton in a year, and giving occupation to seventy thousand 
 workpeople, besides a hundred and fifty thousand more 
 who were employed in weaving the yarn thus spun. By 
 that success, however, Crompton was only a sufferer. 
 Brought out of the seclusion in which he would have pre- 
 ferred to live, and thus forced to spend more money than 
 he could earn, he received nothing for his invention, save 
 the first sum of fifty guineas, till 181 2, when Parliament 
 voted him a grant of ;^5,ooo. He died in poverty in 1827. 
 There was one great difficulty, however, yet to be over- 
 come. Spinning being now so much easier than it had 
 hitherto been, there was, instead of the lack of yarn for 
 weaving which had at first resulted from Kay's invention, 
 more yarn to be worked up than the weavers could handle. 
 Dr. Cartwright, a Kentish clergyman, when conversing with 
 some manufacturers, suggested that the next thing necessary 
 was a machine for weaving. They all declared that this 
 was impracticable. "They adduced arguments," he said, 
 "which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to 
 comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having 
 never at that time seen a person weave. I controverted, 
 however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that 
 there had lately been exhibited in London an automaton 
 figure which played at chess. ' Now, you will not assert, 
 gentlemen,' I said, ' that it is more difficult to construct a 
 machine that shall weave than one which shall make all 
 the variety of moves that are required in that complicated 
 game.' Some little time afterwards I employed a carpenter 
 and smith to carry my ideas into effect. As soon as the 
 machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in the warp, 
 which was of such materials as sail-cloth is usually made of. 
 To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was 
 the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts
 
 1 90 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor 
 had ever seen a loom at work, or knew anything of its con- 
 struction, you will readily suppose that my first loom was a 
 most rude piece of machinery." But the principle was there, 
 and though Cartwright's power-loom, patented in 1785, was 
 of but very little value, more expert mechanicians easily 
 adapted its idea, and the result was the establishment of 
 power-looms, in lieu of the old hand-looms. They were per- 
 fected by Horrocks, of Stockport, in 1813. 
 
 Thus was completed the great series of inventions, 
 started especially for the benefit of the cotton manufac- 
 ture, but by which the spinning and weaving of wool and 
 linen as well were revolutionised. Inventions in aid of 
 carding, and other auxiliary processes, were made before 
 Crompton's mule, and a hundred minor improvements were 
 made afterwards, but it is not necessary here to detail 
 them. All these, however, would have been very much 
 less advantageous than they have proved to be, had not 
 Watt's steam-engine come to their aid. That engine, 
 patented in 1769, which is also the date of Ark\\Tight's 
 memorable patent, had quickly found favour as an auxiliary 
 to mining operations ; but its first application to textile 
 manufacture, in improvement of the old water-mills, was in 
 1785, when a Nottinghamshire cotton-spinner had one set 
 up in his works. In 1787 three others were started in Not- 
 tingham and one in Warrington, and from that time they 
 began to be rapidly employed, so rapidly that Boulton and 
 Watt were hardly able to execute the orders sent to them. 
 The immeasurable advantages of steam-power over water- 
 power were at once apparent. Moreover, the necessity of 
 erecting all mills, in which any other than hand-work was 
 to be done, by the side of manning streams being removed, 
 manufacturers were at liberty to choose sites convenient in 
 other ways, and a much wider field of factory enterprise was 
 open to them. Of this they made prompt use.
 
 Science in Trade. iqi 
 
 All the improvements in textile manufacture that have 
 been referred to were the outcome of mechanical science ; 
 but the services of the sciences, and especially of chemistry, 
 have been hardly less important. Even woollen fabric, as it 
 comes from the weaver's loom, is not fit for the uses to which 
 it has to be put ; and this is still more the case with linen, 
 cotton, and, above all, silk. They need to be dyed, bleached, 
 and otherwise treated by chemical processes, before they 
 can satisfy the tastes of those who are to wear them. 
 
 The art of dyeing fabrics, practised by Flemings and 
 Englishmen from very early times, is older than Flemings 
 and Englishmen. The great skill in colouring, now dis- 
 played by the natives of India, was practised by their 
 ancestors in times far remote, and taught by them to other 
 nations. " Garments are painted in Egypt in a wonderful 
 manner," said Pliny, " the white clothes being first smeared, 
 not with colours, but with drugs which absorb colour. 
 These applications do not appear upon the cloths ; but 
 when the cloths are immersed in a caldron of hot dyeing 
 liquor, they are taken out painted tlie moment after. It is 
 wonderful that, although the dyeing liquor is only of one 
 colour, the garment is dyed by it of several colours, accord- 
 ing to the different properties of the drugs which have been 
 applied to the different parts ; nor can this dye be washed 
 out. Thus the vat, which would doubtless have confused 
 all the colours if the cloth had been immersed in a painted 
 state, produces a diversity of colours out of one, and, at the 
 same time, fixes them immovably." That process shows, 
 not only considerable knowledge of chemical arts, but also 
 considerable skill in applying them to manufacturing pur- 
 poses. As great proficiency was not displayed in England 
 till the eighteenth century, coarse dyeing with woad, log- 
 wood, and a few other substances being the best that could 
 be done ; but since then marvellous advances have been 
 made.
 
 192 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 The first dyeing in Europe was effected upon the yarn 
 before it was woven, a plan that, for certain fabrics, can 
 only be improved upon by improving the quality and variety 
 of the dye, and which therefore still prevails. By it, of 
 course, only one colour could be given to the cloth, which, 
 if the proposed garment was to be of many colours — like 
 Joseph's coat — had to be joined together by patchwork ; 
 but thus a goodly number of colours were long ago pro- 
 duced. An English Act of Parliament, passed in 1552, 
 limited the variety to " scarlet, red, crimson, murray, pink, 
 brown, blue, black, green, yellow, orange, tawny, russet,/ 
 marble-grey, sadnew colour, azure, watchett, sheep's colour, 
 motley, and iron-grey." And, by a law of William IIL's, 
 "violet, azure, friar's grey, crane, purple, and old medley," 
 were added to the list. Wiser legislation of later times has 
 allowed free trade in colours, and chemists and manufac- 
 turers have made good use of the license. 
 
 The simplicity of workmanship two centuries ago is 
 illustrated by the exploits of William Flakefield, son of a 
 Glasgow trader, who, having been bred as a weaver, aban- 
 doned his calling to enlist in the Cameronians, and after- 
 wards joined the famous regiment of Scots guards in France. 
 He lived some years abroad, till, having met with a blue 
 and white check handkerchief, woven in Germany, a great 
 novelty in those days, it occurred to him that he would try 
 and make others like it. He accordingly returned to 
 Glasgow in 1700, and set about the work. " A few spindles 
 of yam fit for his purpose," said the old local historian, in 
 1793, "was all at that time that William Flakefield could 
 collect, the which was but ill-bleached, and the blue was 
 not very dark. They were, however, the best that could be 
 found in Glasgow. About two dozen of pocket-handker- 
 chiefs composed the first web. When the half was woven, 
 he cut out the cloth, and took it to the merchants. They 
 were pleased with the novelty of the blue and white stripes,
 
 Science in' Trade. 193 
 
 and especially with the delicate texture of the cloth, which 
 was thin-set in comparison with the hollands that they 
 generally dealt in. The new adventurer asked no more for 
 his web than the net price of the materials and the ordinary' 
 wages for his work. All he asked was readily paid him, and 
 he went home rejoicing that his attempts were not unsuc- 
 cessful. This dozen of handkerchiefs, the first of the kind 
 ever made in Britain, was disposed of in a few days." 
 Others were disposed of in abundance, as quickly as they 
 could be made. Weavers from all parts came to learn the 
 trick, and many of them settled down in Glasgow to practise 
 it with success, and to eclipse the humble enterprise 01 
 Flakefield, who died, poor and forgotten, as a town drum- 
 mer. " The number of looms," it is added, " daily in- 
 creased, so that Glasgow became famous for that branch of 
 the linen trade. The checks were followed by the blanks, 
 or linen cloth for printing ; and to these is now added the 
 muslin trade." 
 
 The delicate figured muslins out of which ladies' dresses 
 are now often made, as well as the stout and many-coloured 
 carpets whereon they tread, illustrate the perfection to 
 which fabric-dyeing and other intricacies of manufacturing 
 art have been brought in modern times. In carpets various 
 yarns are variously dyed in sections, and the several colours 
 are brought to the surface at the proper times, with mar- 
 vellous exactness. In muslins the colours are successively 
 impressed upon the material after it is woven, the old- 
 fashioned wooden blocks, used by hand, having been 
 replaced by much more rapid and much more e::act printing- 
 presses, worked by steam. To the same sort of improve- 
 ments are due the advances that have been made in calico- 
 printing, and in the production of coloured silks, art here 
 especially being the handmaid of science. 
 
 The progress of silk-manufacture, like its process, differs 
 in some important respects from that of the other textile
 
 194 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 articles. Rudely practised in England at an early date, 
 and greatly encouraged by the settlement of Huguenot 
 refugees, the silk-working establishment of the Lombes at 
 Derby, which has been already described, furnishes an 
 instance of the extensive application of machinery to its 
 development in times when mechanical improvements were 
 little thought of with reference to other fabrics. But the 
 Lombes' manufactory was only a prodigy, wondered at, but 
 not imitated. The trade, chiefly carried on by French 
 workmen in Spitalfields, and by French-taught v/orkraen in 
 Coventry, had no extensive footing in this country, and 
 being practised almost entirely for the benefit of the rich, 
 who often took pride in paying high prices for their goods, 
 there was no national movement for reducing the cost of 
 production, and bringing it, like wool and linen, into direct 
 competition with cotton. In France there Avas, until recently, 
 hardly any cotton, woollen, or linen manufacture for it to 
 compete with, and so long as the workmen found a ready 
 market for their wares, they had no mind to abandon the 
 old mode of labour. The special character of the fibre, 
 moreover, needing much less toil and ingenuity than those 
 of shorter staple in reducing it to yarn, lessened the demand 
 for improved spinning arrangements, in order that the 
 weaver might have material to work upon. Therefore the 
 old-fashioned processes, to a large extent continued to this 
 day, were not interfered with till long after the other trades 
 had been revolutionised. 
 
 The first and almost the only great change effected was 
 due to Joseph Marie Jacquard, born at Lyons in 1752, a 
 humble silk-weaver by inheritance, but also at different 
 times a bookbinder, type founder and cutter. In 1802 he 
 saw in an English newspaper that our Society of Arts had 
 offered a prize to any one who should invent a plan for 
 weaving nets by machinery. He set his wits to work, and, 
 for his own amusement, soon produced a loom adapted to
 
 Science in Trade. 195 
 
 the purpose ; but he made no attempt to obtain the reward, 
 and, after showing his invention to a friend, put it aside, 
 and for some time it was forgotten by him. To his surprise, 
 he was one day sent for by the prefect of the department, 
 who inquired about the machine, and' requested him to 
 make another, the original having been lost or destroyed. 
 That he did, and a few weeks later he was summoned to 
 Paris and introduced to Bonaparte. "Are you the man," 
 asked Carnot, the minister, "who pretends to do what God 
 Almighty cannot do, tie a knot in a stretched string?" 
 Jacquard answered that he could do, not what God could 
 not do, but what God had taught him to do. He explained 
 his device to the Emperor, who rewarded him with a 
 pension of a thousand crowns, gave him employment in the 
 Conservatoire des Arts, and, while thus enabling hinr to 
 exercise his ingenuity in other ways, encouraged the adop- 
 tion of the excellent Jacquard loom. That, however, was 
 almost more than imperial patronage could effect. The 
 loom was publicly destroyed by the Conseil des Prud'- 
 hommes, the official conservators of the trade of Lyons, and 
 Jacquard was denounced as a man worthy only of hatred 
 and ignominy. Many years passed before the means which 
 it afforded for vast improvement in the manufacture of 
 figured silks were recognised, and Jacquard, dying in 1834, 
 hardly lived long enough to see the good fruits of his 
 invention. 
 
 It was first generally adopted, indeed, in St. Etienne, the 
 chief rival of Lyons in France ; and in England it was soon 
 used extensively in other manufactures besides that of silk. 
 The first Jacquard loom was set up in Coventry in 1820. 
 In 1838 that town and its adjoining villages had 2,228, and 
 the number continued to increase till 1858, when they 
 began to be speedily replaced by the superior a-la-bar looms, 
 invented by two brothers weaving at St. Etienne. A great 
 cause of the change was the change of fashion by which 
 
 N 2
 
 196 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 plain silks, now for the first time able to be made of clear 
 and smooth colour and texture throughout, in great measure 
 superseded the more gorgeous figured silks. Mechanical 
 appliances have never found much favour with the weavers 
 of France ; but they more than compensate for their folly 
 in this respect by their laudable zeal in cultivating artistic 
 tastes, and thus rendering their wares more attractive than 
 any that can be produced in other countries. 
 
 None of the thousand inventions by which all other 
 branches of manufacturing skill have been aided nearly as 
 much as those concerned in the production of textile fabrics 
 — old trades being renovated and new ones created — need 
 be here detailed ; and it is hardly necessary to call attention 
 to the marvellous effect upon commerce produced by the 
 mechanical exploits, growing directly out of Watt's steam- 
 engine, and kindred achievements of science, which have 
 opened up railways upon land and ploughed the sea with 
 steam-ships. These have been described oflen enough. It 
 is the fortunate blending of science with trade in England, 
 whereby its rich stores of coal and iron have been utilised, 
 that has made possible its unparalleled development during 
 the past three generations. The story of that development, 
 leading to political and social results of the very highest 
 import, is, more notably than any other, a romance of trade.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FASHION IN TRADE. 
 
 'I'lie Services of Fashion to Commerce— The Introduction of Forks- 
 Porcelain and China-ware —Wedgwood as a Caterer to Fashion- 
 Fashion in Dress— Gloves— Shoes and Stockings— William Lee and 
 the Stocking-frame— The Results of his Invention -Other Fashions 
 and their Value— The "Isabella" Colour — Fashions in Travelling — 
 Coaches — Bianconi and his Cars. 
 
 Of the effects of fashion upon trade there is no lack of 
 curious instances. Nearly every stage, indeed, of man's 
 progress from his first rude barbarism to his present civilisa- 
 tion, and of the consequent increase of commerce, called 
 upon to satisfy his growing needs and artificial requirements, 
 may be said to have been in part built up by fashion. 
 Thousands of commodities, now looked upon as absolute 
 necessaries of life, or only proper luxuries, have been 
 brought into use by novelty-hunters, whose whim or wisdom 
 has been imitated by others, until each new-fangled fashion 
 has given birth to an important trade. 
 
 So it is with articles of food, as we have already to 
 some extent seen ; so yet more with food-utensils of every 
 sort. Forks, for example, now indispensable at every 
 dinner-table, and furnishing employment to half-a-dozen 
 different trades, have hardly been in common use in England 
 for two hundred years. " I observed," said an old traveller, 
 Thomas Coryate, in his "Crudities,"' published in 1611, "a 
 custom in all those Italian cities and towns through the which 
 I have passed that is not used in any other country that I 
 saw in my travels ; neither do I think that any other nation 
 of Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italians do 
 always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their
 
 198 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 meat. For while with the knife, which they hold in one 
 hand, they cut the meat out of the dish, they fasten the 
 fork, which they hold in their other hand, upon the same 
 dish ; so that one who should unadvisedly touch the dish of 
 meat with his fingers, from which all the table do cut, will 
 give occasion of offence unto the company, insomuch that 
 for his error he shall be at the least browbeaten, if not 
 reprehended in words. This form of feeding is generally 
 used in all places of Italy ; their forks being, for the most 
 part, made of iron, steel, and some of silver, but those are 
 used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity 
 is because the Italian cannot by any means endure to have 
 his dish touched with fingers, seeing that all men's fingers 
 are not alike clean. Hereupon I myself thought good to 
 imitate the Italian fashion by this forked-cutting of meat, 
 not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and 
 oftentimes in England, since I came home." Forks seem 
 to have been employed in Italy — by some, at any rate — since 
 the eleventh century • and though Coryate may be correct 
 in his boast of having first brought them into use in Eng- 
 land, they were known in this country before his time. To 
 Queen Elizabeth were presented, at different times, " a fork 
 of crystal, garnished with gold slightly, and sparks of 
 garnets;" "a fork of coral, slightly garnished with gold;" 
 and " a fork of gold, garnished with two little rubies, two 
 little pearls pendant, and a little coral." But the dainty 
 Queen preferred the old habit of fingering her meat, and 
 forks were for a long time regarded as a worthless, foppish 
 institution. One divine, in James I.'s reign, preached a 
 sermon against forks, declaring it to be " an insult on Pro- 
 vidence not to touch one's meat with one's fingers ; " and 
 Fynes Morison, in his "Itinerary," pubhshed in 161 7, 
 advised all young travellers, " returning home, to lay aside 
 the spoon and fork of Italy, the affected gestures of France, 
 and all strange apparel." Mcrccraft, in Ben Jonson's
 
 Fashion in Trade. 199 
 
 " Devil is an Ass," makes fun of forks, when speaking of his 
 "pains at Court" to obtain for himself a monopoly in 
 favour of 
 
 " The laudable use of forks, 
 Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy, 
 To the sparing of napkins, " 
 
 which would have resulted in his making of gold and silver 
 forks " for the better personages," and of steel ones " for the 
 commoner sort." In one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, 
 " your fork-carving traveller " is spoken of as an object 
 of contempt. Even in 1652, Heylin, speaking of the ivory 
 sticks used for eating in China, said " the use of silver forks 
 came from hence into Italy, and \vith us, taken up of late 
 by some of our spruce gallants, from thence into England." 
 Forks were then, and for some time after, looked upon as 
 the absurd affectations of coxcombs ; they only came into 
 general use late in the seventeenth century. 
 
 ■ Hardly older is the common employment of earthenware 
 plates and dishes instead of wooden platters ; but the effects 
 of fashion upon trade have been shown more notably in 
 the case of the finer sorts of potter}^ It was the demand for 
 antique Etruscan wares that first gave an impetus to improve- 
 ment in the rude earthenware manufacture of old times ; and 
 fresh encouragement came with the introduction in Europe 
 of the delicate workmanship of China and Japan. The 
 Dresden factory owes its greatness to this cause, and it was 
 to rival Dresden that porcelain-manufacture was started at 
 Sevres, where the business threatened to die out before 
 Madame de Pompadour's passion for china induced Louis 
 XIV. to buy up the establishment, and put it in a fair way 
 of success. Josiah Wedgwood, our own great potter, also 
 owes half his renown to his skill in catering for purely 
 fashionable requirements, and Queen Caroline greatly 
 helped to make his fortune when she made him " royal 
 potter." " The demand for the cream-colour, alias queen's
 
 200 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 ware, alias ivory," he wrote to his friend and partner 
 Thomas Bentley, "still increases. It is really amazing how 
 rapidly the use has spread almost over the v/hole globe, and 
 how universally it is liked. How much of this general use 
 and estimation is owing to the mode of its introduction, and 
 how much to its real utility and beauty, are questions in 
 which we may be a good deal interested for the government 
 of our future conduct ; for, if a royal or noble introduction 
 be as necessary as beauty to the sale of an article of luxury, 
 then the manufacturer, if he consults his own interest, will 
 bestow as much pains in gaining the favour of these advan- 
 tages as he would in bestowing the latter." Wedgwood, at 
 any rate, profited by the pains which, with this end, he took. 
 For many years, from 1770, his showroom in St. Martin's 
 Lane was one of the sights of London, a fashionable resort 
 for idlers about Court, as well as an object of attraction to 
 foreigners and country visitors. By it his fame was spread 
 abroad, and commissions came to him from every part of 
 Europe. One memorable commission was from the Empress 
 of Russia, for an immense cream-ware service, of which each 
 piece was to have a separate English landscape painted on 
 it. " I am just returned," wrote Mrs. Delaney, in June, 1774, 
 " from viewing the Wedgwood-ware that is to be sent to the 
 Empress of Russia. It consists, I believe, of as many pieces 
 as there are days in the year. There are three rooms below 
 and two above filled with it, laid out on tables." The 
 price paid for this service was ;z^3,ooo, and it became a 
 splendid advertisement of Wedgwood throughout the whole 
 of Europe. There has been no diminution in later times in 
 the production of costly earthenware and kindred articles to 
 meet the requirements of fashion. 
 
 But it is in articles of dress and their materials that the 
 influence of fashion upon trade is most of all apparent. 
 Wedgwood's friend, Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham, 
 Watt's partner in the introduction of the steam-engine,
 
 Fashion in Trade. 201 
 
 began his famous career by making better buttons and shoe- 
 buckles than had hitherto been known, and thousands of 
 locaUties have been enriched by their manufacture of articles 
 of dress less useful than buttons and buckles. 
 
 Gloves may serve as one illustration. Worn in England 
 from Anglo-Saxon times, they were, all through the Middle 
 Ages and long after, reserved as ornaments for the rich and 
 noble ; although, made only of coarse leather and laden with 
 heavy acessories, it is not easy to see how they can have 
 been ornamental. Better gloves came into fashion in the 
 sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Oxford is 
 reported to have been the first Englishman who brought 
 perfumed gloves from Italy; and in 1578 a pair which cost 
 sixty shillings, perfumed and garnished with embroidery and 
 goldsmith's work, was presented to the Queen by the 
 University of Cambridge. " Her Majesty, beholding the 
 beauty of the said gloves," says the old chronicler, "as in 
 great admiration, and in token of her thankful acceptation 
 of the same, held up one of her hands, and, smelling into 
 them, put them half-way upon her hands." Italian gloves 
 soon became fashionable in England, until special skill in 
 their manufacture passed from Italy to France. Fifty thou- 
 sand or more persons are now employed in glove-making in 
 England, and, in addition to all their produce, some nine 
 or ten million pairs, worth nearly ^1,000,000, are annually 
 brought over from France. 
 
 Coverings for the feet are more necessary than coverings 
 for the hands, and we find that shoes and stockings were of 
 more ancient use than gloves ; but here also fashion has 
 wrought great changes. The early Britons wore coarse bags 
 of hide, made all of one piece, and tied round the ankle, but 
 the Romans introduced daintier foot-gear, and from them 
 the Anglo-Saxons learnt to make both boots and shoes of 
 leather, both being generally of one piece, laced from the 
 toes all the way up with strings, and sometimes protected at
 
 202 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 tlie sole with a sort of wooden clog. A pair of shoes worn 
 by Bernard, King of Italy, and grandson of Charlemagne, 
 were recently found in his tomb. " The soles were of wood 
 and the upper parts of red leather," says an Italian Avriter. 
 " They were so closely fitted to the feet that the order of 
 the toes, terminating in a point at the great toe, might easily 
 be discovered." Finer, neater, and greater ornamentation 
 came to be employed in later times. Some one with a 
 deformed foot is said to have first had shoes pinched at the 
 toe, and the innovation was so much admired that, in spite 
 of the denunciations of monks and priests, it was widely 
 followed by courtiers and gallants of the Middle Ages. There 
 were scorpion-tail shoes and ram's-horn shoes ; the long curly 
 points being stuffed with tow as well at toe. Shoe-toes 
 became more natural, but high heels, then called chopines, 
 were introduced in Elizabeth's reign. " By'r lady," Hamlet 
 says to one of the lady actors, in his play before the King of 
 Denmark, " your ladyship is nearer heaven than when I saw 
 you last, by the altitude of a chopine !" This fashion also 
 came from Italy, and Coryate reports that in his time the 
 chopine was so common that no one could go without it. 
 " It is a thing made of wood,'' he says, " and covered with 
 leather of sundry colours, some white, some red, some 
 yellow. Many of them are curiously painted, some also of 
 them I have seen fairly gilt. There are many of these 
 chopines of a great height, even half a yard high ; and by 
 how much the nobler a woman is, by so much the higher 
 are her chopines. All their gentlewomen, and most of their 
 wives and widows that are of any wealth, are assisted and 
 supported either by men or women when they walk abroad, 
 to the end they may not fall." Chopines as absurd as that 
 were not common in England, but pantofles, or high-heeled 
 slippers, worn to protect the daintily-embroidered shoes of 
 courtly folk, found favour, and these i)antofles even came to 
 be extravagantly ornamented with silver and gold buckles,
 
 Fashion in Trade. 203 
 
 costly rosettes, and the like. The heels were not more than 
 two or three inches high. The changes of fashion in shoes 
 and boots during the last two or three centuries may be 
 traced in familiar paintings, such as Hogarth's. 
 
 Stockings have necessarily varied less in shape and style, 
 though the alterations in their material and mode of pro- 
 duction have had greater influence upon trade. They were 
 made of coarse cloth, and, in fact, were little other than tight- 
 fitting trouser-legs or gaiters with feet, till early in the six- 
 teenth century when the art of spinning them out of worsted, 
 silk, and other materials was discovered in Scotland, im- 
 proved upon in France and Spain, and soon adopted in 
 England. Stubbes, in his "Anatomy of Abuses," in 1596, 
 complains loudly of the innovation. " They have nether- 
 stocks," he says of the spendthrifts of his day, " not of cloth, 
 though never so fine, for that is thought too base, but of 
 worsted, silk, thread, and such-like, or else, at the least, of 
 the finest yarn that can be got, and so curiously knit, with 
 open seam down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the 
 ankles, and sometimes haply interlaced about the ankles 
 with gold or silver threads, as is wonderful to behold. And 
 to such impudent insolency and shameful outrage is it now 
 grown that every one almost, though otherwise very poor, 
 having scarce forty shillings wages by the year, will not stick 
 to have two or three pair of these silk nether-stocks or else 
 of the finest yarn that may be got, though the price of them 
 be twenty shillings or more, as commonly it is. The time 
 hath been when one might have clothed all his body well, 
 from top to toe, for less than a pair of these nether-stocks 
 will cost." 
 
 The " nether stocks " were at first produced by the same 
 process of hand-work which is followed by good housewives 
 and country people at the present day ; but, to meet the 
 demands of the fashion for knitted stockings, something else 
 was needed. It was supplied by "W^illiam Lee, a native of
 
 204 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Woodborough, in Nottinghamshire, who, after graduating 
 at St. John's College, Cambridge, settled down as curate 
 of Calverton, very near to his birthplace, about the year 
 1586. Two pretty stories are told concerning him. The 
 one represents that, while still a student, he courted a pretty 
 country lass, whose trade was stocking-knitting, and that, 
 finding she was always, when he went to visit her, too busy 
 about her work to pay to his love-making all the attention 
 he desired, he set his wits to work at finding some expedient 
 by which her stockings might be made more quickly, and 
 she might have more time to talk and walk with him. The 
 other story is to the effect that after leaving college he for- 
 feited his fellowship, that he might marry die maiden, and 
 only found when the deed was done that his curacy did not 
 provide money enough to maintain himself, his wife, and the 
 children who began to come ; that, consequently, the young 
 wife had to bring out her knitting-needles again and do her 
 share of the bread-winning j and that it was Lee's distress 
 at seeing her toiling over her work from early morning till 
 late at night that led to the invention of his stocking-frame. 
 Both stories are doubtful, but both may be true. Perhaps 
 the invention may have been begun while he was a dreamv 
 lover, but have been left unfinished until he had to fulfil the 
 duties of a practical husband. It is only certain, however, 
 ihat in 1589 Lee produced his stocking-frame, in which a 
 row of knitting-needles, kept going by a treadle, did the 
 work very much more quickly and easily than it had before 
 been done by hand ; and out of his machine, the principle 
 being the same, but the details very much more complicated, 
 have grown all the devices now in force for the manufacture 
 of stockings, and of every other sort of knitted hosiery as 
 well. 
 
 The romance does not end with Lee's mechanical triumphs 
 in 1589. During two years or so he spent, in perfecting 
 his invention, more money than he made. That done, he
 
 Fashion in Trade. 205 
 
 threw up his curacy, and brought the machine to London, 
 hoping that fashionable people would aid him in developing 
 his plan for helping the world of fashion. He gained 
 access to Lord Hunsdon, who informed Queen Elizabeth 
 that there was a poor parson lodging in Bunhill Fields 
 who had a wonderful machine for making stockings, which 
 he wanted her Majesty to see. Her Majesty went to see it, 
 but, while admiring its ingenuity, expressed her disgust that 
 it was adapted only for coarse worsted stockings, and not for 
 the finer workmanship in silk. When Lord Hunsdon urged 
 her to grant a patent for the invention, she refused. " My 
 lord," she said, " I have too much love for my poor people 
 who obtain their bread by the employment of knitting to 
 give my money to forward an invention that will tend to 
 their ruin, by depriving them of employment, and thus make 
 them beggars. Had Mr. Lee made a machine that would 
 have made silk stockings, I should, I think, have been 
 somewhat justified in granting him a patent for that mono- 
 poly, which would have affected only a small number of my 
 subjects ; but to enjoy the exclusive privilege of making 
 stockings for the whole of my subjects is too important to 
 be granted to any individual." If Lee really coveted the 
 exclusive right of stocking-making. Queen Elizabeth had 
 good reason for her refusal, although that reason did not 
 weigh in the case of other monopoHes granted by her ; but 
 it is likely that he asked, and she certainly might have given 
 it, only some protection in the use of his machine, and in 
 sending out its produce to compete with hand-knit hose. 
 
 Lord Hunsdon, however, seems to have rendered the 
 inventor some assistance, and he showed his appreciation of 
 the invention in a very notable way, by apprenticing his 
 son, Sir William Carey, to the new trade begun by him. For 
 seven or eight years Lee worked on in Bunhill Fields, making 
 stockings and improving his machine, bearing always in 
 mind the Queen's hmt that she might help him if he could
 
 2o6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 make a frame delicate enough for silk-work. That was 
 really a second invention, and he completed it about the 
 year 1598. The first pair of silk stockings made by him he 
 carried to Court. Queen Elizabeth praised their elasticity 
 and beauty, but she gave him nothing but praise. Parlia- 
 ment had just begun to quarrel with her about her monopoly- 
 granting, and, while she could not venture upon aiding him 
 thus, she had no money to spare in other sort of aid ; there- 
 fore, he was left to toil on as best he could. He had nine 
 machines at work, and made plenty of stockings ; but popu- 
 lar prejudice hindered their sale, and the debts he had in- 
 curred in developing his plans made him very poor indeed. 
 Lord Hunsdon, his patron, and Sir William Carey, his aris- 
 tocratic apprentice, moreover, both died, and thereby he lost 
 his only friends at Court. On James I.'s accession, he is re- 
 ported to have made another attempt to secure royal favour ; 
 but, if so, he was disappointed, and he is said to have been, 
 during some time, in such utter dejection that he hardly 
 cared to carry on his work. 
 
 Brighter but false prospects came to him in 1605, when, 
 by Henry IV. 's invitation, he went to France with a few 
 workmen, and set up his machinery at Rouen. Here the 
 royal patronage helped him to prosper for a short time ; 
 but Henry's assassination by Ravaillac proved his ruin. 
 Persecuted, both as a Protestant and as an Englishman, 
 he wandered miserably from place to place, and, at length, 
 in 16 10, died, broken-hearted and starving, in Paris, just 
 as his invention was beginning to give ease and comfort to 
 thousands. 
 
 Two of his workmen remained in France, and there kept 
 alive his secret. The other seven returned to Nottingham, 
 and entered the service of Aston, a former apprentice of 
 Lee's, who had, in the interval, effected some improvements 
 in the machine, and under whose management the stocking 
 manufacture was developed in England. So extensive was
 
 Fashion in Trade. 207 
 
 this trade in Cromwell's time that its London members 
 sought to be incorporated in a guild. Cromwell refused, 
 but Charles II. assented, and the Stocking-weavers' Corpo- 
 ration dates froni 1663. It lasted till 1753. It was in 
 Nottinghamshire, however, the place of its birth, and in the 
 adjoining counties of Leicester and Derby, that the trade 
 fared best, great advances having been made in recent times, 
 through the improved machinery of Jedediah Strutt and 
 others, and through the use of cotton as a cheaper if not 
 better material than silk or worsted. In 1670 there were 
 700 stocking-frames in England ; in 1753 the number had 
 risen to 14,000. In 1845 ^t was reckoned that 73,000 per- 
 sons were engaged in making 3,510,000 dozen pairs of 
 stockings, and the trade has increased greatly during the last 
 five-and-twenty years. Great Britain now makes nearly 
 four-fifths of the stockings worn all over the world ; and 
 all this useful trade has grown out of Lee's kindly effort to 
 lessen the toil of his wife in catering for a fashion that grew 
 up in Queen Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 Other fashions have had yet greater results. " The 
 advantages of the East India Company," said one, writing in 
 1690, "is chiefly in their muslins and Indian silks, and 
 these are becoming the general wear in England. Eashion 
 is truly termed a witch — the dearer and scarcer the com- 
 modity, the more the mode. Thirty shillings a yard for 
 muslins, and only the shadow of a commodity when pro- 
 cured ! " Our trades in silk, linen, wool, and cotton owe 
 much, if not most, of their encouragement to the demand 
 for better and handsomer clothing and for showy and 
 luxurious accessories that has grown up in recent centuries, 
 and been especially brought over by English fashion-mon- 
 gers from France. As the old satirist exclaimed — 
 
 " O France, whose edicts govern dress and meat, 
 Thy victor, Britain, bends beneath thy feet. 
 Strange, that pert grasshoppers should lions lead, 
 And teach to hop and chirp across the mead.
 
 2o8 The Romance Oh Trade. 
 
 Of fleets and laurel' d chiefs let others boast, 
 Thy honours are to bow, dance, boil, and roast ; 
 'Tis thine thy slaves to teach the shantiest cuts. 
 Give empty coxcombs more important struts. 
 Prescribe new rules for knots, hoops, mantuas, wigs, 
 Shoes, soups, complexions, coaches, farces, jigs." 
 
 Even the most foolish fashions, however, have generally 
 been of benefit to trade, in helping to promote the industry 
 and enterprise of the country, and to transfer money from 
 the empty-headed rich to the empty-handed poor. Hoops, 
 furbelows, hair-dyes, and face-powders have not been alto- 
 gether useless, and many fancy tastes, like those in lace and 
 embroidery,- have had a very perceptible eflect upon national 
 refinement. 
 
 Many fashions have a strange origin, but few stranger 
 than that attributed to the once fashionable dye called 
 " Isabella." " When Ostend was besieged by the Spaniards, 
 under the command of the famous Spinola," we are told, 
 the Infanta Isabella of Spain, animated with a most heroic 
 zeal for her country, made a solemn vow not to change her 
 linen till the town should be taken. The besieged held out 
 till time, which sullies everything, brought her royal high- 
 ness's linen to a colour which wanted a name. In a person 
 of that rank it could not be dirty, it was therefore called 
 ' Isabella.' It became the fashionable loyal colour, was worn 
 with honour by all, and with great convenience by many." 
 
 If fashion has been most influential upon trade in articles 
 of dress and dyes, and other articles accessory thereto, its 
 influence has also been very great in other ways, notably 
 in matters of house-furniture and the like. Its share in the 
 construction of railways^ and of the other great machinery 
 of transit, has been only indirect ; but upon some notable 
 modes of conveyance its effect has been great and immediate. 
 
 Till a few centuries ago, foot-journeying satisfied all 
 the requirements of travellers over short distances, while 
 longer journeys were taken on horseback by men and
 
 Fashion in Trade. 209 
 
 women ; and carriages were only clumsy carts and wagons, 
 thought fit to hold nothing but baggage and lumber. Light 
 cars were used by numerous ladies on the Continent, and 
 especially in Italy, from the thirteenth century ; but they 
 were long regarded as disgracefully effeminate, hardly tole- 
 rable for women, and quite unsuitable for men. Gradually 
 they came to be looked upon with more favour, and, after 
 foreign princes as well as princesses had begun to use 
 coaches upon state occasions, they were introduced into 
 England. The first English coach is said to have been 
 made in 1535, for the Earl of Rutland, by Walter Rippon ; 
 and in 1564 the same man built a cumbersome and gaudy 
 vehicle for Queen Elizabeth. " The first coach," says John 
 Taylor, the water-poet, " was a strange monster in those 
 days, and the sight of it put both horse and man into amaze- 
 ment ; some said it was a great crab-shell brought out of 
 China, and some imagined it to be one of the pagan temples 
 in which the cannibals adored the devil." The coaches of 
 those days were not adapted to make rapid progress, but the 
 fashion for using them ran apace. Stow records how, soon 
 after the building of the Queen's coach, "divers great ladies, 
 with great jealousy of the Queen's displeasure, made them 
 coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the 
 great admiration of all the beholders ; and then, by little and 
 little, they grew usual among the nobility." By James I.'s 
 reign gentlefolk had learnt to follow the nobility ; coaches 
 became necessary adjuncts of fashionable life, and that in 
 spite of the mockery and denunciations of satirists. " I 
 think," said John Taylor, in 1623, "since Phaeton brake his 
 neck, never land hath endured more trouble and molestation 
 than this hath, by the continual rumbling of these upstart 
 four-wheeled tortoises. Whence comes leather so dear, but 
 by reason, or, as I should say, against reason, of the multi- 
 tude of coaches and carriages, who consume and take up 
 the best hides that can be gotten in the kingdom? by which 
 
 o
 
 210 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 means many honest shoemakers are either undone or un- 
 doing, and infinite numbers of poor Christians are enforced 
 to go barefooted in the cold winters. They have been the 
 universal decay of almost all the best ash-trees in the king- 
 dom ; for a young plant can no sooner peep up to any per- 
 fection, but presently it is fitted for the coach ; nor a young 
 horse bred of any beauty or goodness, but he is ordained 
 from his foaling to the service of the coach. And if it be 
 considered in the right cue, a coach or carriage are mere 
 engines of pride, which no one can deny to be one of the 
 seven deadly sins ; for two leash of oyster-women hired a 
 coach, on a Thursday after Whitsuntide, to take them to the 
 green-goose fair at Stratford tlie-Bow, and, as they were 
 hurried between Aldgate and Mile End, they were so be- 
 madame'd, be-mistress'd, and ladyfied by the beggars, that 
 the foolish women began to swell with a proud supposition 
 of imaginary greatness, and gave all their money to the 
 mendicanting canters, insomuch that they were fain to pawn 
 their gowns and smocks the next day to buy oysters. The 
 superfluous use of coaches hath been the occasions of many 
 vile and odious crimes, as murder, theft, cheatings, hangings, 
 whippings, pillories, stocks, and cages ; for housekeeping 
 never decayed till coaches came into England." 
 
 Honest Taylor lost his head in his abuse of coaches. 
 Though some blame might fairly be laid upon them, as 
 causes of extravagance and effeminacy, they were useful in 
 many ways, and the use was greatest when the fashion 
 passed out of aristocratic circles, and hackney-coaches and 
 the like came to be common among common folk. That 
 was in 1625. Some ten years later, a new and worse fashion 
 was introduced by the Duke of Buckingham, who brought 
 sedan-chairs from Spain. They were necessities of life to 
 the hooped and powdered ladies of the Restoration days 
 and after, but, in turn, gave place to the newer sorts of 
 carriage that came into use one after another.
 
 Fashion in Trade. 211 
 
 Stage-coaches and omnibuses were a direct outgro\frth 
 of the fashionable want begotten of the old carriages of 
 Queen Elizabeth's and James I.'s times ; and stage-coaches, 
 almost entirely, and omnibuses, in part, have been replaced 
 by railways and tramways, A new life has been developed 
 by the facilities of travel that modern ingenuity has pro- 
 duced ; and every^vhere a test of the prosperity of any dis- 
 trict is to be found in the opportunities of access to it, and 
 of interchange of its local products with those of other 
 districts. 
 
 Of the good that may be so done, and of the benefits 
 that may result from one man's wise guidance of fashion, a 
 curious instance may be given. About the year 1800, Carlo 
 Bianconi' a native of Milan, settled in Dublin as a humble 
 picture-dealer and frame-maker. Prospering therein, he. 
 went, some ten years afterwards, to start a larger business at 
 Clonmel, but found that the town, with excellent natural 
 facilities for trade, suffered greatly by its isolation from other 
 towns. In 18 1 5 he started a cheap car, shaped somewhat 
 like the ordinary "jaunting-car," but as large as a London 
 omnibus, which went every day to Cahir and back, and 
 conveyed passengers for about twopence a mile. That 
 experiment succeeding, he extended the distance to Tip- 
 perary and Limerick, and sent other cars to Cashel and 
 Thurles, to Carrick and Waterford, and new cars and routes 
 were added every year. In 1857 he had sixty-seven convey- 
 ances, worked by nine hundred horses, running to and from 
 all the towns and most of the villages in the south and west 
 of Ireland. " The advantages which these cars have afforded 
 to the country," says Mr. S. C. Hall, "are immense. In 
 the interior of the country, from which farmers come to the 
 little villages, they have only a few facilities for obtaining 
 their commodities, and that at an enormous rate. But since 
 the introduction of these cars, people in business, who 
 hitherto were obliged to go to market at a very heavy 
 
 2
 
 212 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 expense, which prevented their doing so frequently, now 
 find their way to the larger towns, and have been enabled 
 to secure supplies at once from the first-cost market \ and, 
 from the cheapness of bringing the articles home, they were 
 enabled to reduce their prices considerably, and in those 
 districts the consumption has, in consequence, wonderfully 
 augmented. Shops and fresh sources of competition con- 
 tinually increase, thereby enabling parties to use articles 
 hitherto inaccessible to them. A great saving of time is 
 also effected. For example, it took a man a whole day to 
 walk from Thurles to Clonmel, the second day to do his 
 business, and the third to walk back ; now, for seven shil- 
 lings, he purchases two clear days, saves himself the trouble 
 of walking sixty English miles, and has four or five hours 
 to transact his business."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GREAT FACTORIES. 
 
 The Rise of Great Factories— The Transitions from Single-handed to Co- 
 operative Labour— The Growthof Manchester— Its Early Manufactures 
 and the Habits of its Manufacturers — The Peels' Cotton-works at 
 Bury— John Rylands and his Enterprises in Manchester, Wigan, and 
 Ainsworth — The Wealth of the Manchester District — The Glasgow 
 Cotton District — David Dale and Robert Owen's Factory at New 
 Lanark— James Monteith's Factory at Blantyre — Woollen Manufacture 
 — The Progress of Halifax and Leeds— Benjamin Gott— Bradford and 
 its Worsted Manufacture— Linen Manufactures— Belfast and its Linen 
 Faatories — Dundee — The Baxters' Factories— Leeds— John Marshall's 
 Mills — Metal Factories — The Carron Irou-works — The Manufacturing 
 History of Birmingham— John Taylor— Matthew Boulton — Soho and 
 its Manufacture of Steam-engines — Boulton's other Good Works -The 
 Extent of English Factories — French Factories— The Silk Trade and 
 Lyons — St. Etienne— Cotton Factories at Rouen and Mulhouse — 
 American Factories — New York — Philadelphia — Pittsburg — The New 
 England Faatories— Lowell. 
 
 The migrations and developments of manufacturing and 
 trading energy, in successive ages, and in various portions of 
 the world, form a curious and instructive study; and equally 
 noteworthy, though within a narrower area, are the similar 
 migrations and developments that have occurred in our own 
 land, and in comparatively modern times. To these a few 
 allusions have been made in earlier pages ; some further 
 illustrations may here be given. Commerce is, in its own 
 way, as true an index of human progress and national health 
 as politics or religion, literature or art ; and the index is 
 aptly reflected in the past and present condition of great 
 marts and great factories. 
 
 There were great marts but, apparently, no great factories 
 in the ancient world. Then men dealt chiefly in the easy
 
 214 TiJ^ Romance of Trade. 
 
 produce of the soil, and in manufactures which were chiefly 
 handiwork, and which were prepared for the market by 
 single labourers, or little groups of toilers, who toiled when- 
 ever they chose, without being crowded together by mecha- 
 nical appliances like those of modern times, which make it 
 easier for work to be done, under one roof or in close 
 proximity, by hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands 
 of workers, subject to one rule, and guided by one master- 
 mind. Ghent and other cities of the Middle Ages were in 
 the place of great factories, but it was only because inde- 
 pendent producers found it more for their own convenience 
 to band together in guilds, or live, as mere neighbours, 
 within easy reach of the merchants who periodically collected 
 their wares, and conveyed them to Bruges and other great 
 marts, for distribution far and near. Thus in England, even 
 after it had become an important manufacturing country, 
 while we find many towns serving as centres of production, 
 there was among the dwellers in them, notwithstanding the 
 influence of close corporations and monopolies of all sorts, 
 much less cohesion than is found now ; and, in spite of the 
 jealousy of towns and townsmen, manufacturing energy was 
 much more loosely spread over the whole country, and dis- 
 charged by separate labourers in towns and hamlets. 
 
 So it was with that simplest form of manufacture by 
 which the commercial strength of the kingdom was in 
 great measure begun, the shearing and skinning of sheep, 
 and packing up the wool and hides, for conveyance to the 
 fairs and markets at which they were to be sold or bartered ; 
 and so, when England began to make its own clothing, for 
 a long time it continued. In every village there were small 
 manufacturers, who set their wives and daughters to spin, 
 and, with help of their sons, and, perhaps, a few labourers, 
 wove the yarn into coarse cloth, some of which they sold 
 to their neighbours, while the rest found its way to the 
 fairs, and markets, and other centres of trade. The Spital-
 
 Great Factories. 215 
 
 fields silk-weavers furnish an illustration of the way in 
 which, with a certain show of independence, but under 
 great pecuniary disadvantage, the old arrangement prevails 
 in the case of manufactures that are now best carried on by 
 aggregation of labour ; and illustrations of the way in which 
 other trades are still mainly and wisely carried on in old 
 ways, are furnished by bootmakers and tailors — although 
 even bootmaking and tailoring are beginning to be taken 
 out of the hands of men who are their own masters and 
 their own workmen, and to be concentrated in special 
 localities and in huge establishments. 
 
 As regards the staple trades, of course, a certain amount 
 of concentration in special localities has always occurred ; 
 and this has resulted both from natural and from artificial 
 causes. Woollen manufacture, for example, was necessarily 
 most abundant in districts where sheep were most plentiful, 
 and within those districts preference was given to sites easy 
 of access to suitable marts and ports, and, as soon as the 
 business had made suflicient progress for mill-work to be 
 used as a substitute for or supplement to hand-work, on 
 the banks of a rapid stream. Where a few enterprising men 
 settle down and prosper, moreover, others are sure to follow, 
 and of this striking instances occur in the history of the 
 wool trade. While it was a trade, but not a manufacture, 
 or, at any rate, one of very little note, Winchester, through 
 favour of the Romans, was its centre ; and St. Giles's Fair 
 caused Winchester to prosper long after the manufacture 
 had been chiefly developed in other parts. The planting 
 of Flemish colonists in Gloucester and elsewhere, on the 
 banks of the Severn, by Henry II., made Bristol a great 
 centre of manufacture, as well as of trade, during the 
 ISIiddle Ages ; and no sooner did Hull become the great 
 rival of Bristol as a trading-town, chiefly by reason of its 
 convenient nearness to Flanders, than Leeds and other 
 well-placed towns in Yorkshire attained importance as col-
 
 2i6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 lecting-places for wool, the importance being retained when 
 trade in wool gave place to trade in cloth. The later setde- 
 ment of wool-working Netherlanders in Norfolk, again, 
 made Norwich a great manufacturing resort in Elizabeth's 
 time and after. Woollen manufacture, however, was plenti- 
 ful all through those early centuries in all the midland 
 counties, from Berkshire up to Derbyshire. The first 
 great English clothier on record was John Winchcombe, 
 better known as Jack of Newbury, and perhaps his was 
 the first great woollen factory in England. A hundred 
 looms, it is said, always worked in his house, and he was 
 rich enough to put a hundred of his journeymen in armour, 
 and send them to Flodden Field. His kerseys were famous 
 all over Europe. 
 
 The progress of Manchester, the greatest manufacturing 
 town in the world, and the capital of a great manufac- 
 turing . commonwealth, may help to show how, in modern 
 times, great factories have arisen. It had existed as a 
 little town or village from Roman times, but first became 
 important in the fourteenth century, like Halifax, Bradford, 
 Leeds, and other northern towns, as a seat of woollen 
 manufacture. There some Flemings settled, and began 
 to develop their craft, in 133 1, and they had shrewd fol- 
 lowers. Martin Byrom was its great clothier in Henry 
 Vni.'s reign, and, according to an old writer, " kept a 
 great number of servants at work — carders, spinners, 
 weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen, &c." Linen manufac- 
 ture was also extensively carried on in it. "The town 
 of Manchester," it was stated in an Act of Parliament, 
 passed in 1542, "is, and hath of long time been well 
 inhabited, and the inhabitants have obtained, gotten, and 
 come unto riches and wealthy livings, and have kept and 
 set many artificers and poor folks to work within the said 
 to^vn ; and, by reason of the great occupying, good order, 
 and straight and true dealing of the inhabitants, many
 
 Great Factories. 217 
 
 strangers, as well of Ireland as of other places within this 
 realm, have resorted to it with linen yarn, wool, and neces- 
 sary wares for making of cloths, and have used to trust 
 the poor inhabitants which had not ready money to pay 
 in hand for the said yarns, wools, and wares, until, with 
 their industry, labour, and pains, they might make cloths 
 of the said wools, yarns, and other wares, and sell the 
 same to content and pay their creditors ; wherein hath 
 consisted much of the common wealth of the said town, 
 and many poor folks have living, and children and ser- 
 vants, all these virtuously brought up, in honest and true 
 labour, out of all idleness." Manchester cottons, or coat- 
 ings, were then and afterwards a coarse kind of woollen 
 cloth, much esteemed for its warmth and durability ; but, 
 as soon as the fibre we now know as cotton was brought to 
 England, Manchester had a share in its manufacture, which 
 also spread rapidly to Bolton, Blackburn, Bury, and other 
 neighbouring towns, that had begun, in like manner, as seats 
 of trade in wool and linen. 
 
 Manchester, though famous at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, was still in its infancy, and its greatest 
 men lived and worked in a way that their successors of the 
 present times have far surpassed. " An eminent manufac- 
 turer of that age," says Dr. Aikin, " used to be in his ware- 
 house before six in the morning, accompanied by his chil- 
 dren and apprentices. At seven, they all cam.e in to break- 
 fast, which consisted of one large dish of water-pottage, 
 made of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled thick and 
 poured into a dish. At the side was a pan or basin of milk, 
 and the master and apprentices, each with a wooden spoon 
 in his hand, without loss of time, dipped into the same dish, 
 and thence into a milk-pan ; and, as soon as it was finished, 
 they all returned to their work." More luxurious ways 
 gradually crept in, but, for a long time, kitchens, garrets, 
 sheds, and poor outhouses were large enough and good
 
 2i8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 enough for the most extensive manufacturing operations that 
 were carried on. 
 
 Old Robert Peel, the founder of the great manufac- 
 turing house that bears his name, and the grandfather of 
 the statesman, began his career at Blackburn, in that humble 
 way ; and was as humble when, in 1779, he was driven out 
 by the operatives, enraged at his use of Hargreaves' spin- 
 ning-jenny, and forced to carry on his business at Burton-on- 
 Trent. His partners, Haworth and Yates, developed a 
 large business at Bury, but that establishment was re-shaped 
 and made the first princely manufactory by his son, the 
 elder Sir Robert Peel, the first princely cotton-manufacturer 
 of England. " The principal of these works," said Dr. Aikin, 
 in 1795, "are situated on the side of the Irwell, from which 
 they have large reservoirs of water. The articles here made 
 and printed are chiefly the finest kinds of the cotton manu- 
 facture, and they are in high request both at Manchester 
 and London. The printing is performed both by wooden 
 blocks and by copper rollers, and the execution and colours 
 are some of the very best of the Lancashire fabric. The 
 premises occupy a large portion of ground, and cottages 
 have been built for the accommodation of the workmen, 
 which form streets, and give the appearance of a village. 
 Ingenious artists are employed in drawing patterns and cut- 
 ting and engraving them on wood and copper ; and many 
 women and children in mixing the colours, and so forth. 
 The company has several other extensive factories in the 
 neighbourhood, as well on the Irwell as on the Rock. 
 Some of them are confined to the carding, stubbing, and 
 spinning of cotton ; others to washing the cottons with 
 water-wheels, which go round with great velocity, but can be 
 stopped in an instant, for taking out and putting in the 
 goods. Boiling and bleaching the goods are performed at 
 other works. In short, the extensiveness of the whole con- 
 cern is such as to find constant employment for most of the
 
 Great Factories. 219 
 
 inhabitants of Bury and its neighbourhood, of both sexes, 
 and all ages ; and, not\vithstanding their great number, they 
 have never wanted work in the most unfavourable times. 
 The peculiar healthiness of the people may be imputed 
 partly to the judicious and humane regulations put in force 
 by Mr. Peel." The whole town of Bury became a sort of 
 appendage to Peel's factories, and, in consequence of his 
 great success, its population steadily advanced, from being 
 about 2,000, in 1773, to upwards of 15,000, in 1831. His 
 own operatives in 1803 numbered about 15,000, though 
 more than half of them were at Tamworth and in other 
 parts of England, in which also he established factories. 
 
 Peel's busy factory still thrives, under the management of 
 his successors, but other establishments have in later times 
 arisen to vie with it in greatness ; and, just as the Peels began 
 early to combine into one great trade the trades, formerly 
 separated, of cotton-spinning, cotton-weaving, and calico- 
 printing, so the more enterprising of the younger firms have 
 found it best to make their business yet more composite. They 
 not only, besides selling their own goods, buy the produce 
 of some of their neighbours' mills, for disposal in the public 
 market, and so have become merchants, as well as manufac- 
 turers ; they have also become iron-workers, in order that 
 they may most cheaply construct their own tools ; and even 
 colliers, in order that they may most advantageously procure 
 their own fuel, both for making and for using the machinery. 
 The way in which this composite development of the factor}' 
 system has grown up will be best illustrated by a glance at 
 the progress of one of the younger and more enterprising of 
 the Lancashire houses. 
 
 Joseph Rylands, born at Parr, near St. Helens, in 1761, 
 was the son of a hand-loom weaver in a small way of 
 business, for whom he worked, in company with a few other 
 labourers, and, as the business was well managed, and only 
 tlie best calicoes were produced, it had grown considerably
 
 2 20 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 by 1787, when young Rylands became master, and it con- 
 tinued to grow under his shrewd direction. In 1810 he 
 opened a draper's shop at St. Helens, where other goods 
 were sold besides the outcome of his own mill. His three 
 sons were taught to fight their own way in the world. John, 
 the youngest son, born in 1803, was the ablest scholar of 
 the three. When he was about fourteen, he spent his 
 pocket-money in buying a parcel of trinkets put up at an 
 auctioneer's sale, and, having sold these at a good profit, he 
 found himself with an unusually large sum of money in his- 
 pocket. He told his good fortune to an old nurse of the 
 family, who, with her husband, had been trained in hand- 
 loom weaving. " Why don't you buy a little warp and weft 
 with the money you've got," she said, "and let us weave 
 them ? " John liked the suggestion, bought some material 
 for the old lady to work up, and, the speculation proving 
 profitable, continued to employ her, and thus became both 
 merchant and manufacturer in a very small way, while he 
 was still only a schoolboy. Promoted to serve in the 
 draper's shop, he carried on the trade, and spent his leisure 
 hours in weaving himself, whereby he was able to increase 
 his stock-in-trade. 
 
 If there was no great romance in that beginning of life, 
 there was promise of future success. The eldest brother, 
 Joseph, had gone to Wigan, there to start a small mill of his 
 own, and there he prospered so well that in 1821 he asked 
 John, then eighteen, to join him as partner, and to under- 
 take the travelling part of the business. That was agreed 
 to, and for a short time John Rylands followed the old 
 fashion, going on horseback to the various towns of Lan- 
 cashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and North Wales, with his 
 pack-saddle full of patterns, there to solicit orders for the 
 calicoes, ginghams, and other cotton goods which his 
 brother prepared at home. The business was so successful 
 that old Joseph Rylands offered to become a partner, and
 
 Great Factories. 221 
 
 put into it more capital than his sons could command, and 
 the result was the establishment of the since famous firm of 
 Rylands and Sons, with weaving-mills at Wigan and St. 
 Helens, and a large draper's shop in the latter place. The 
 draper's shop was given up in 1824, but before that a larger 
 establishment had been started at Manchester. At first the 
 Rylands sent most of their goods to Chester, at that time, 
 relatively to Manchester, a very much more important 
 trading-place than now. " I tell you what," said John to 
 ■Joseph, in 1822, "instead of sending goods to Chester fair, 
 let us send them to Manchester fair, and open a warehouse 
 in that town." The suggestion was promptly acted upon. 
 Before the close of the year, a house had been taken in 
 High Street, and stocked with cotton wares, which John 
 Rylands, living on the spot, made the centre of his trading 
 operations. Cotton goods being then, even more than now, 
 mixed with linen, the firm had early developed a trade with 
 the flax-growers and spinners of the north of Ireland, and as 
 it had also added dyeing and printing to its other opera- 
 tions, it had already made a good beginning to its many- 
 sided trade. 
 
 Accident helped its further extension. In 1824 the firm 
 bought two large estates near Wigan, on one of which 
 dyeing and bleaching works were already erected, while on 
 the other they set up a spinning-mill, for producing both 
 cotton and linen yarns. This mill was a monster establish- 
 ment when they built it, but, though increased in the 
 interval, was of pigmy proportions, as compared with its 
 rivals, when they gave it up in 1854. In that year it was four 
 storeys high, was worked by engines of sixty-six horse-power, 
 contained 20,000 throstles, and gave employment to about 
 350 hands. The chief value of the new purchase, however, 
 was in the fact — unknown at the time — that under the 
 adjoining land there were veins of excellent coal, both for 
 domestic and manufacturing nurposes. The Rylands es-
 
 22 2 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 tablished a colliery, which now gives employment to nearly 
 a hundred colliers, besides clerks and other agents, and, 
 while selling the house-coal to others, employed the coarser 
 quality in their own works. Thereby all the coal-dealer's 
 profit, and the cost of transit from a distance, were saved, 
 and the firm was able to work on and increase its operations 
 with very great advantage. 
 
 In 1839 Joseph Rylands the younger retired from the 
 business, and proceeded to establish and be chief partner 
 in a huge concern in Hull, known as the Hull Flax and 
 Cotton Mills. In the same year, John Rylands and 
 his father, who lived on till 1847, bought the Ainsworth 
 Cotton Mill, between Bolton and Bury, where now, by 
 about 600 operatives, some fifteen tons of cotton are 
 weekly spun, and woven into some 30,000 lbs. of cotton 
 fabric, for sale at the great warehouse in High Street, 
 Manchester, which, by successive additions, has been 
 converted into a vast establishment about a hundred yards 
 long. In it, besides its own cottons and linens, the firm 
 sold woollen and silk goods of every sort, and a thousand 
 articles of haberdashery and millinery — from umbrellas and 
 bonnets to stays and stockings. 
 
 This mercantile business, however, was always subor- 
 dinate to the manufacturing business. In 1864 Rylands 
 and Sons, now represented by only one of the sons, bought 
 some extensive cotton-mills at Gorton, which they furnished 
 with new machinery, and converted into one of the 
 largest factories in England. They cover 16,000 square 
 yards of land. There is a mechanics' shop, for producing 
 all the necessary tools. The spinning-shed contains 32,000 
 throstles and 31,000 mule spindles, able to produce 75,000 
 lbs. of yarn every week. In the weaving-shed there are 
 1,500 power-looms. The whole machinery is turned by six 
 high-pressure engines, with an aggregate of 300 horse-power ; 
 and on the estate there ai-e 150 cottages for the use of some
 
 Great Factories. 223 
 
 of the 1,500 hands employed. But this factory is surpassed 
 bv another, set up a year later by the same firm, near 
 Wigan, and known as the Gidlow Works. " This magni- 
 ficent mill," we are told, "is three storeys high, and the 
 whole of it is fireproof. The top room of the north end is 
 for receiving cotton, brought from the railway over a viaduct 
 of 292 feet in length, crossing a reservoir, whose area is 
 7,306 square yards, and holding above 8,000,000 gallons of 
 water for condensing purposes. The second floor contains 
 the machinery for cleaning, opening, and making ready for 
 the card-room. The bottom room is for boilers, mechanics' 
 shop, &c. The second or middle division contains four 
 horizontal steam-engines, of 200 horse-power, and the chief 
 gearing for driving the mill. The south end has three 
 storeys, each 273 feet by 108 feet. The bottom and top 
 rooms are for throstles and mules, and contain 60,000 
 spindles, producing about 70,000 lbs. of yarn weekly. 
 The middle room is for carding and preparing for these 
 spindles. The weaving-shed, 540 feet long, 196 feet wide, 
 and 20 feet high, is calculated to hold 2,940 looms, driven 
 by two horizontal engines, of 100 horse-power." Of the 
 whole establishment, the present Earl of Derby said, while it 
 was being built, " I saw the other day, near Wigan, a new 
 mill of vast extent rising, which is not, as usual, an eyesore, 
 but a pleasure to the eye to rest on, so well has architectural 
 effect been studied in its construction." The three mills at 
 Gidlow, Gorton, and Ainsworth give employ to more than 
 4,500 operatives. 
 
 These three mills, like most of their great rivals or 
 compeers, are situated at some distance from Manchester. 
 Manchester, indeed, with its population of 358,000, is now 
 chiefly the mart and centre of a busy trading province 
 of workshops, stretching into Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and 
 Cheshire, as well as Lancashire, giving employment to more 
 than two million persons, directly and indirectly, in the
 
 2 24 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 manufacture of cotton. "In i860," says Mr. Bazley, "the 
 number of spindles employed was about 32,000,000, the 
 number of looms about 340,000. The production in t?ie 
 machine-making trade had doubled within ten years. Bleach- 
 works, print-works, and dye-works had been largely extended 
 during the same period. The first investments, including 
 the value of land and rights to water, amounted to not less 
 than ^60,000,000, to which must be added a working 
 capital of ;^2 0,000, 000 ; add to these again the value of 
 merchants' and tradesmen's stock at home and abroad, the 
 value of raw cotton and subsidiary materials, and of bankers' 
 capital, and the grand total of capital employed in the trade 
 will not be less than ^,^200,000,000." 
 
 All that wealth of trade, however, is not promoted by 
 Manchester and its far-reaching suburbs alone. While, in 
 1 86 1, there were 2,639 factories in the Manchester district, 
 in which 397,462 operatives worked 28,000,551 spindles 
 and 364,323 power-looms, the Glasgow district, and chiefly 
 Lanark and Renfrewshire, had 138 factories, in which 41,237 
 operatives worked 1,915,398 spindles and 30,110 power- 
 looms. 
 
 The first, or almost the first, cotton-mill established in 
 the northern counties, was begun at Rothesay, by an English 
 company, in 1778. It was bought, in 1783, by David Dale, 
 a great Glasgow merchant and eccentric philanthropist, and, 
 in making it the nucleus of a vast enterprise, he was largely 
 helped by his famous son-in-law, Robert Owen, no less 
 eccentric, and no less philanthropical. For the first fifteen 
 or sixteen years. Dale managed the concern alone. He 
 greatly enlarged the new Lanark Mills, as they came to be 
 called, built numerous cottages for the use of his labourers, 
 procured Highlanders and Irishmen to do the factory work 
 that the Lowland Scots had no taste for, and brought from 
 the poorhouses of the great towns hundreds of orphans and 
 pauper children, whom he trained to become good work-
 
 Great Factories. 225 
 
 people. " His little kingdom," said one who visited the 
 establishment, in 1797, "consists of neat, well-built houses, 
 forming broad, regular, and cleanly streets. Near the middle 
 of the town stand the mills, and opposite to them the chief 
 mansion of the place, the residence of the superintendent 
 of the works. The town contains 2,000 inhabitants, mostly 
 Highlanders, all of whom that are capable of labour are 
 employed by Mr. Dale in his service, either in working 
 at the cotton manufactory, or in repairing and keeping the 
 mills in order. Five hundred children are entirely fed, 
 clothed, and instructed at the expense of the venerable 
 philanthropist. The rest of the children live with their 
 parents, in comfortable and neat habitations in the town, 
 and receive weekly wages for their labour. The health and 
 happiness depicted in the countenances of these children 
 show that the proprietor of the Lanark Mills has remembered 
 mercy in the midst of his gain. The regulations adopted 
 here for the preservation of health, both of mind and body, 
 are such as do honour to the goodness and discernment of 
 Mr. Dale, and present a striking contrast to the generality 
 of large manufactories in this kingdom. ' It is a truth that 
 should be engraven in letters of gold, to the eternal honoui 
 of the founders of New Lanark, that, out of nearly three 
 thousand children w^orking in these mills, during a period of 
 twelve years, from 1785 to 1797, only fourteen have died, 
 and not one hath suffered criminal punishment. The lesser 
 children, that are not yet old enough to work, are instructed 
 in the daytime ; the elder children learn in the evening, 
 when the daily labour is concluded. Proper masters and 
 mistresses are employed, to teach both the boys and the 
 girls. The boys learn to read and write, and cast accounts ; 
 the girls, in addition to these, are taught to work at the 
 needle." 
 
 In 1799 David Dale, having more than his old age per- 
 mitted hira to do in attending to his other businesses, sold 
 
 P
 
 2 26 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the cotton-mills to a company, of which Robert Owen was 
 partner and acting manager ; and by him, during more than 
 twenty-five years, the concern was superintended, and, while 
 being greatly extended as a commercial enterprise, was 
 diligently used in developing his socialist ideas, not then 
 as far advanced as they were in later years. Both experi- 
 ments succeeded, and the New Lanark Mills won the admi- 
 ration of men as different as Jeremy Bentham and William 
 Allen, the Quaker. But Owen's partners disapproved of his 
 communism, and, after long disputing about the religious 
 and social questions mixed up with the trading concern, 
 he parted from them in 1825. New Lanark passed into 
 other hands, and, following the fashion of other factories, has 
 continued to share their prosperity. 
 
 In 1785 David Dale had established another cotton- 
 factory at Blantyre. He sold it, in 1792, to James Monteith, 
 the great promoter of linen manufacture in Glasgow, and its 
 neighbourhood. Wisely administered during nearly eight 
 years, it has grown into another famous manufacturing out- 
 post of Glasgow, excelling in the dyeing and weaving that 
 it has added to the spinning with which it began. " The 
 buildings," it was said in i860, "in which the cotton-spinning 
 was carried on in the year 1805 have remained very much 
 as they were, but, by the introduction of improved machinery, 
 the work is now efficiently carried on by two hundred and 
 sixty workers, of whom two hundred and one are females, 
 and fifty nine males." These labourers now do twenty times 
 as much work as in 1805 was done by thrice as many hands ; 
 and the whole number employed in the factory, rather more 
 than a thousand, maintain one of the most efficient and 
 comprehensive cotton-factories to be found in Scotland. 
 
 With woollen manufacture Glasgow has not much to do ; 
 but it gives occupation to multitudes in various parts of 
 Scotland, as well as in nearly every county of England. Of 
 most of the trade, however, Leeds is the centre, and it
 
 Great Factories. 227 
 
 abounds most in the districts adjoining it ; the woollen pro- 
 vince extending through northern Yorkshire, till it touches 
 the cotton province, with Manchester for its capital. 
 
 Leeds, though a very ancient town, has only lately 
 become considerable. Under the Plantagenets and Tudors, 
 it was surpassed by Halifax. "The parish of Halifax 
 and other places thereunto," we read in an Act of Parlia- 
 ment of Queen Mary's reign, "being planted in great 
 wastes and moors, where the fertility of the soil is not apt to 
 bring forth common good grass, but in rare places, and by 
 exceeding great industry of the inhabitants, the inhabitants 
 do altogether live by cloth-making ; and the greater part of 
 them neither groweth corn, nor is able to keep a horse to 
 carry wool, nor yet to buy much wool at once, but hath ever 
 used only to repair to the town of Halifax, and some other 
 nigh thereunto, and there to buy of the wool-dealer, some a 
 stone, some two, and some three or four, according to their 
 ability, and to carry the same to their houses, some three, 
 four, five, or six miles off, upon their heads or backs, and to 
 make and convert the same into either yarn or cloth, and 
 to sell the same, and so buy more wool of the wool-dealer • 
 by means of which industry the barren grounds in these 
 parts are much inhabited, and above five hundred house- 
 holds there newly increased within these forty years past." 
 That paper shows in what humble ways all our great woollen 
 towns rose to importance. Wakefield was for a long time 
 the chief rival of Halifax, and Leeds only began to surpass 
 them about the middle of the eighteenth century. Even 
 then, however, it was much more a mart than a manufac- 
 turing town. To its weekly cloth-market came the small 
 manufacturers of the surrounding districts, to sell their wares 
 to the traders of Hull and Boston, and the traffic increased 
 so rapidly that, a great Mixed Cloth Hall having been 
 erected in 1758, another wool-exchange, kno^vn as the 
 White Cloth Llall, had to be set up in 1775. In that year 
 
 r 2
 
 2 28 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Leeds contained 17,117 inhabitants. 671865 the number 
 had risen to 224,025, and, while the trade in wool had grown 
 rapidly in the course of those ninety years, the town and. 
 its suburbs had been crowded with great manufactories, in 
 which all the famous improvements introduced in the spin- 
 ning, weaving, dyeing, and finishing of cotton fabric had been 
 adapted to the working of woollen fibres. In 1858 Leeds 
 had 128 factories, giving employment to more than £ 0,000 
 operatives. The whole woollen and worsted manufacture 
 of Yorkshire is nearly eight times as extensive, and York- 
 shire enjoys about a fourth of the woollen manufacture 
 of Great Britain, in which more than 300,000,000 lbs. of 
 fibre are worked up by about 300,000 operatives. 
 
 The foremost woollen manufacturer of Leeds, and the 
 man who helped most to form the character of the improved 
 woollen trade of modern times, was Benjamin Gott. Bom 
 in 1762, and the son of a working man, who rose to some 
 distinction as a civil engineer, he began work in a small 
 factory, though one of the largest then existing in Leeds. 
 Therein, from being a humble clerk, he rose to be a partner, 
 and, at length, he succeeded to the entire management of the 
 concern, which grew mightily under his hands. At the time 
 of his death in 1840, about eleven hundred workpeople, 
 aided by the most improved machinery, were employed in 
 dyeing, spinning, weaving, fulling, and dressing cloth, made of 
 the best Saxony wool, the whole arrangement of the factory 
 being a model of wise and successful management. One of 
 Gott's great merits was the scrupulous regard always shown 
 by him for the men in his employ, and the class to which 
 they belonged. Beginning his enterprise just when the old 
 ways of private work were being in great part superseded by 
 factory labour, he strove hard to perpetuate the spirit of 
 manly independence which had been begotten by the older 
 institutions ; and from first to last he encouraged the private 
 workers to bring him their wares, and use him as their agent
 
 Great Factories. 229 
 
 in disposing of them. Much of the woollen trade of York- 
 shire, as of other parts, is still of that sort, and it prevails 
 especially in the wide-spread area of Scotland, which has for 
 it staple work the production of woollen goods. 
 
 Woollen manufacture embraces two distinct trades. In 
 the one close, firm yarn is prepared, and converted into cloth ; 
 the other produces the loose yarn known as worsted, which 
 is converted into a great variety of articles, from winter 
 stockings and mats for drawing-room tables, to carpets and 
 tapestry of all sorts. While Leeds is the centre of the cloth 
 trade, the neighbouring town of Bradford is the chief place 
 of worsted manufacture. 
 
 In Tudor times Bradford vied with Leeds as a seat of 
 cloth-making, though both were inferior to Wakefield. It 
 fell behind in the race of progress during the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, but has in later times done much 
 to retrieve its position. Worsted-making had been one of 
 its special crafts, and in this it v/as for a long time surpassed 
 by Norwich, fortunate in the immigration of great numbers 
 of Flemish artisans in Queen Elizabeth's reign. But the 
 Norwich workmen, it is said, proud of their supremacy, 
 began early in the eighteenth century to claim higher wages 
 than the masters could afford, and on that account the trade 
 was in great measure carried back to the cheaper labour-field 
 of Yorkshire. The change, however, was not made without 
 opposition, even from the inhabitants whom it was to enrich. 
 In 1793 an enterprising Bradford manufacturer, named 
 Buckley, proposed to start a mill, to be worked by steam- 
 power; but was deterred by a threat from his neighbours 
 that, in the event of his doing so, he would be prosecuted for 
 causing a nuisance. The first spinning-machine of Cromp- 
 ton's make was set up in 1794, by James Garnett, founder 
 of one of the largest factories in England. " I remember 
 spinning-machines being used in the Paper Hall by Mr. 
 James Garnett," said an old workman, "who employed in
 
 230 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 the work ten or a dozen hands. There were three men 
 regularly at work, the rest being women. The machines 
 were turned by hand." Within ten years of that time, Brad- 
 ford had several mills and thousands of spinning-machines ; 
 and, the first mechanical apparatus being once introduced, 
 the progress of the town was steady and rapid, save in the 
 year or two following a great strike of combers and weavers 
 in 1825. In 181 5 there were 10 mills, with an aggregate of 
 250 horse-power. In 1825 the numbers and power had 
 severally risen to 26 and 706; in 1835 to 73 and 1,647; 
 and in 1850 to 194 and 4,185. In 1856 there were in the 
 United Kingdom 525 worsted factories, giving employment 
 to 87,794 persons, and of these factories Bradford and its 
 suburbs claimed 186, employing 30,517 labourers. 
 
 Of both cotton and woollen manufacture England has 
 the chief share, and nearly all the rest is carried on in Scot- 
 land, hardly any being in Ireland. Ireland, however, is 
 largely concerned in flax-spinning and linen manufacture, 
 though Scotland has slightly surpassed it, and England 
 engrosses about a sixth of the trade. Belfast, Dundee, and 
 Leeds are the centres in the three countries. 
 
 Belfast owes its greatness chiefly to English and Scottish 
 enterprise. Given, in 1604, to Sir Arthur Chichester, it was 
 by him converted into a flourishing town, a good example ot 
 industry being afforded to the Irish residents by the Devon- 
 shire workpeople whom he transplanted. Later immigrants 
 came from Scotland, and by them especially, having Louis 
 Crommelin, the Huguenot refugee, for an instructor, the 
 cultivation of flax and the preparation of linen cloth were 
 developed. " No women are apter to spin linen thread well 
 than the Irish," said Sir William Templfe in 1681, "who, 
 labouring little in any kind with their hands, have their 
 fingers more supple and soft than women of the poor con- 
 dition amongst us. And this may certainly be advanced 
 and improved into a great manufacture of linen, for the soil
 
 Great Factories. 231 
 
 and climate are proper for whitening, both by the frequent 
 brooks, and also by the winds of that country." Though 
 much less has been done than was possible, the progress of 
 its linen trade has been the main source of the improved 
 condition of Ireland in recent times, and both social pros- 
 perity and wealth have been most abundant in Belfast and 
 its outlying districts. In 1758 Belfast had a population of 
 8,549, and exported to Liverpool more than 14,000,000 
 yards of linen. In 1861 the population had incrcoased to 
 121,602, and the linen exportation of 1865 was nearly 
 100,000,000 yards. The value of the linen trade to Belfast 
 and its suburbs is reckoned at ;^io,ooo,ooo a year. 
 
 The trade might have been greater, however, had the 
 Belfast manufacturers made prompt and full use of the 
 mechanical inventions by which, during the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, textile workmanship was improved. Flax-growing was 
 increased, and its preliminary manipulation was extended ; 
 but tardiness in adopting the best ways of weaving allowed 
 that part of the trade to be transferred in great measure to 
 Dundee and Leeds. It has since been considerably re- 
 claimed, and Belfast now contains the best power-looms, as 
 well as the best spinning-machines that can be obtained. 
 In and near Belfast there were, in 1862, a hundred great 
 factories, in which 592,981 spindles and 4,666 power-looms 
 were worked by 33,525 operatives. 
 
 Dundee had linen manufacture for one of its trades as 
 early as Belfast ; but during many generations the work was 
 spread over nearly the whole of Scotland, and Dundee was 
 no more conspicuous for it than a dozen other towns. In 
 1742 its linens were described as "the poorest and meanest" 
 of any produced in Scotland, and long after that date its 
 chief manufacture was very coarse cloth, sent undressed and 
 unbleached to Sweden and Germany. Its superiority dates 
 only from about the commencement of the present centuiy, 
 and was caused solely by the energy of a few wise manu-
 
 232 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 facturers, who made good use of the machines already 
 adopted in the making up of cotton goods. Even then the 
 enterprise was chiefly shown in spinning, and but Httle 
 attention was paid to improvements in weaving. As late as 
 1833 it was said that in Dundee power-looms had not been 
 employed with any advantage, and that those set up were 
 nearly abandoned. The change that has been eftected in 
 later years is especially due to William Baxter- and his sons, 
 whose achievements illustrate Scottish enterprise in linen 
 manufacture at its best. 
 
 In 1822 William and Edward Baxter erected a small 
 spinning-mill, worked by a steam-engine of fifteen horse- 
 power, on the Dens Burn, in the north-eastern part of Dun- 
 dee, which succeeded so well that, three years later, another 
 engine of thirty horse-power was added, and these were re- 
 placed in 1833 by one large engine of ninety horse-power, 
 the firm then altering its name to Baxter Brothers and Com- 
 pany. In 1836 it set up the first successful power-loom 
 factory known in Dundee, therein alone employing 300 
 workpeople. Other additions followed in later years, and 
 now more than ten acres of land are covered by mills, 
 factories, warehouses, and other premises necessary to the 
 conversion, in a year, of more than 77,000 tons of flax into 
 about 20,000,000 yards of cloth, by between 4,000 and 4,500 
 operatives, the whole forming by far the largest linen-factory 
 in the world. In it there are twenty-two steam-engines, 
 with an aggregate power of 750 horses, and thirty-two steam- 
 boilers, which consume about fifty tons of coal every day. 
 The whole process of manufacture is here carried on. The 
 flax arrives in bales, whence it is taken out in bunches, and 
 subjected to the pickling-machines, which vary according 
 to the quality of the raw fibre and the quality of the 
 finished fabric to be made from it ; after that it is bleached, 
 roved, and spun into suitable yarn. It is then, by 1,200 
 power-looms, woven into cloth of every kind, froni fine
 
 Great Factories. 233 
 
 cambrics and lawns to rough sheetings, towelhngs, and 
 osnaburgs. 
 
 Jute manufacture, conjointly with or apart from linen, 
 forms an important addition to the staple trade of 
 Dundee. In 1867 the town and its suburbs contained 72 
 factories, employing in all 35,310 operatives. There were 
 in all Forfarshire 108 Victories, and 51 in Fifeshire, the 
 whole linen manufacture of Scotland being represented by 
 197 factories, containing 487,579 spindles and 19,917 
 power-looms, and giving work to 77,195 men and women. 
 
 Leeds has kept pace with Dundee in this department of 
 labour, and here also its progress is mainly due to the enter- 
 prise of one famous family. John Marshall, born in 1765, 
 was a shop-boy when, flax-spinning having been carried on 
 in a humble way throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire 
 during many previous generations, he began to devise 
 improvements on the best spinning-machinery then in use. 
 In 178S, with the help of two partners, who found the 
 money, he started a small mill at Mean wood, near Leeds; 
 and in 1791 he transferred his operations to Leeds itself, 
 setting up in Water Lane the modest mill which, during the 
 half-century prior to his death in 1845, was mightily 
 increased, and, by its o\vn work and the example it has 
 set to others, has added another great trade to Leeds. In 
 182 1 there were nineteen mills in Leeds, of which four 
 belonged to John Marshall, these four being as extensive 
 as all the spinning-machinery then in Dundee. In 1856 
 there were 37 linen-factories in Leeds, with an aggregate 
 steam-power of 1,831 horses, and in which 198,076 spindles 
 and 140 power-looms were worked by 9,458 hands. 
 
 The largest of John Marshall's three great mills is one 
 of the wonders of the world. It forms one vast room, 
 seven times as large as Exeter Hall in London. "It 
 is 132 yards long, 72 yards wide, and 20 feet high," 
 it was said in 1867. "The roof consists of 72 brick
 
 234 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 arches, supported on as many iron pillars, and secured 
 together by strong iron-work. The brick roof has a thick 
 coating of composition, to prevent the water from coming 
 through, and it is covered with earth, from which has 
 sprung up a beautiful grass sward. There are 66 glass 
 domes in the roof, each 48 feet round, and ii| feet high, 
 containing 10 tons of glass in iron window-frames. The 
 total weight of the roof is 4,000 tons. There are four 
 steam-engines of 100 horse-power, and two of 80 horse- 
 power ; and one engine of 7 horse-power which does 
 nothing but blow hot or cold air into the room. The 
 building covers more than two acres of ground, and it is 
 supposed that 80,000 persons might stand in the room. 
 This hall is occupied for spinning and weaving by power, 
 and the whole processes incidental to the trade, subsequent 
 to pickling, are performed in it, the flax going in in 
 bundles, and the linen out in bales. To non-practical 
 people it is one of the most interesting sights that can be 
 witnessed, as regards both the beautiful machinery, with its 
 many and curious motions, and the immense number of 
 active and apparently happy male and female workers, who 
 guide its operations, and turn out the beautiful yarns and 
 linens, the production of which has rendered the Marshalls 
 so famous. To those practically acquainted with the trade, 
 this sight is worth seeing, as even the most advanced would 
 learn much, as to both the construction of the machinery 
 and its arrangement." Here, as in most of the other fac- 
 tories of Leeds, the more delicate kinds of linen — damasks 
 and the like — are chiefly made. 
 
 Metal-factories, of course, differ essentially from clothing- 
 factories, although some of the most important of them have 
 grown famous by producing the tools and engines needed 
 for textile manufacture. Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and 
 every other cloth-making town, has many great establish- 
 ments of this sort, one of the oldest and most notable being
 
 Great Factories. 235 
 
 the Carron Iron-Works, near Glasgow, founded in 1760, and 
 which Burns was once not allowed to inspect, the porter 
 supposing that he wished to discover the secrets of the 
 concern. Burns consoled himself by scratching these lines 
 on the window-pane of the inn at Carron : — 
 
 " We cam' na here to view your warks, 
 
 In hopes to be mair wise, 
 But only, lest we gang to hell, 
 
 It may be nae surprise : 
 But when we tirl^d at your door, 
 
 Your porter dought na hear us ; 
 Sae may, should we to hell's yetts come. 
 
 Your billie Satan sair us ! " 
 
 The Carron Iron-works are specially memorable, in that 
 at them James Watt, for a brief time the partner of their 
 founder. Dr. Roebuck, constructed his first steam-engine. 
 All his others were made at Soho, in Binningham, where he 
 found a more congenial partner in Matthew Boulton ; and, 
 if only on that account, Soho would be the most important 
 factory, as it has been directly and indirectly the most bene- 
 ficial, in the world. 
 
 Bimtiingham, however, was a great centre of metal 
 manufacture long before the time of Boulton and Watt. 
 " The beauty of Birmingham, a good market-town, in the 
 extreme parts of Warwickshire," said Leland, in Henry 
 VIII. 's reign, " is one street, going almost from the left 
 bank of the brook up a mean hill, by the length of a quarter 
 of a mile. There be many smiths in the to\vn, that use to 
 make knives and all manner of cutting tools ; and many 
 lorimers, that make bits ; and a great many nailers ; so that 
 a great part of the town is maintained by smiths, who have 
 their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire." These trades 
 continued, and others were added to them. Iron, steel, and 
 brass workers abounded in the towTi throughout the 
 eighteenth century, and Birmingham wares then, as now, 
 included a hundred different sorts of articles — swords, guns.
 
 236 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 knives, tools, pots, pans, pins, needles, buckles, and buttons, 
 in especial ; the manufacture of buttons alone, in glass, horn, 
 bone, pearl, steel, and other substances, being so extensive 
 that it was divided into nearly sixty separate branches. 
 
 A representative manufacturer of Birmingham, in the 
 eighteenth century, was John Taylor, who was born in 17 14, 
 and died in 1775. Beginning life as a common labourer, he 
 made buttons, buckles, snuff-boxes, and other fancy articles, 
 with so much taste and tact, that he soon became master of 
 a large establishment. His shop-sweepings, consisting of 
 quicksilver, brass-scrapings, and the like, he sold for ^1,000 
 a year. A nobleman, who visited Birmingham, and made 
 several expensive purchases in Taylor's shop, is reported to 
 have said that " he plainly saw he could not live in Birming- 
 ham for less than ;^2oo a day." From being a great button- 
 maker, Taylor became a great banker, and he died worth 
 ^200,000. 
 
 His contemporary, and a much greater man, was Matthew 
 Boulton, born in 1725, who made much we-alth by trade 
 akin to Taylor's before 1762, when he bought a small mill 
 that had been set up eight years before at Soho, then a 
 dreary Staffordshire heath, about two miles distant from the 
 town, which at that time contained, within narrow limits, 
 about 40,000 inhabitants, about an eighth of the present 
 population. "I founded my manufactory," he said in 1790, 
 " upon one of the most barren commons in England, where 
 there existed but a few miserable huts, filled with idle, 
 beggarly people, who, by help of the common land and a 
 little thieving, made shift to live without working. The 
 scene is now entirely changed. I have employed a thou- 
 sand men, women, and children in my manufactory for 
 nearly thirty years past. The lord of the manor hath 
 exterminated those very poor cottages, and hundreds of 
 clean, comfortable, cheerful houses are found erected in 
 their place."
 
 Great Factories. 237 
 
 The history of the progress at Soho during these thirty 
 years and the years that followed is very instructive. Boulton 
 began his enterprise as a mere extension of his old " toy "- 
 making trade, using his larger establishment for the honest 
 and artistic manufacture of the various minor articles on 
 account of which Birmingham was styled by Burke " the 
 toy-shop of Europe." "The building," it was said in 1774, 
 " consists of four squares, with shops, warehouses, &c., for 
 a thousand Avorkmen, who, in a great variety of branches, 
 excel in their several departments, not only in the fabrication 
 of buttons, buckles, boxes, trinkets, &c., in gold, silver, and 
 a variety of compositions, but in many other arts, long pre- 
 dominant in France, which dose their reputation on a com- 
 parison with the products of this place ; and it is by the 
 natives hereof, or of the parts adjacent, whose emulation 
 and taste the proprietors have spared no care or expense to 
 excite and improve, that it is brought to its present flourish- 
 ing state. The number of ingenious mechanical contrivances 
 they avail themselves of, by the means of water-mills, much 
 facilitates their work, and saves a great portion of time and 
 labour. The plated work has an appearance of solid silver, 
 more especially compared with that of any other manufac- 
 tory. Their excellent ornamental pieces in ormulu have 
 been admired by the nobility and gentry, not only of this 
 kingdom, but of all Europe, and are allowed to surpass 
 anything of that kind made abroad; and some articles 
 lately executed in silver-plate show that taste and elegance 
 of design prevail here in a superior degree, and are with 
 mechanism and chemistry happily united." A large and 
 profitable trade with foreign countries, as well as in England, 
 resulted from Boulton's praiseworthy devotion to his busi- 
 ness. " If, in the course of your future travelling," he wrote, 
 in 1767, to an agent in Italy, "you can pick up for me any 
 metallic ores or fossil substances, or any other curious 
 natural productions, I should be much obliged to you, as I
 
 238 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 am fond of all those things that have a tendency to improve 
 my knowledge in mechanical arts, in which my manufactory 
 will every year become more and more general, and there- 
 fore wish to know the taste, the fashions, the toys, both 
 useful and ornamental, the implements, vessels, &c., that 
 prevail in all the different parts of Europe, as I should be 
 glad to work for all Europe, in all things that they may have 
 occasion for — gold, silver, copper, plated, gilt, pinchbeck, 
 steel, platina, tortoise-shell, or anything else that may become 
 an article of general demand." 
 
 In 1770 Boulton truly described Soho as "the largest 
 hardware manufactory in the world." " I have almost every 
 machine," he added, " that is applicable to these arts. I have 
 two water-mills, employed in rolling, polishing, grinding, 
 and turning various sorts of lathes. I have trained up many 
 and am training up more plain country lads into good work- 
 men, and wherever I find indications of skill and ability I 
 encourage them." That zeal in the education of good 
 workmen and constant care of his subordinates was a 
 notable trait in his character. " I have built and furnished," 
 he said to an applicant, Avho came prepared to pay a premium 
 of several hundred pounds for admission to Soho as an 
 apprentice, " a house for one kind of apprentices — fatherless 
 children and hospital boys — and gentlemen's sons would 
 probably find themselves out of place in such companion- 
 ship." Boswell visited Soho in 1776, and observed a plea- 
 sant instance of Boulton's treatment of his men. " One of 
 them came to him complaining grievously of his landlord, 
 for having distrained his goods, ' Your landlord is in the 
 right. Smith,' said Boulton ; ' but I'll tell you what — find a 
 friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and I will 
 lay down the other, and you shall have your goods again.' " 
 " I shall never forget Mr. Boulton's expression to me, when 
 surveying the works," adds Boswell : " ' I sell here, sir, what 
 all the world requires to have — Power.' I contemplated
 
 Great Factories. 239 
 
 him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be the father of 
 his tribe." 
 
 A year before that, in 1775, Boulton had begun to be, 
 much more than previously, an iron chieftain. He then, 
 after much earher negotiation, entered into partnership with 
 James Watt, who, during the ten years preceding, had been 
 vainly trying to bring his steam-engine into pubHc favour. 
 Boulton's practical energy, supplementing Watt's scientific 
 enterprise, succeeded in overcoming popular prejudice; but 
 the difficulties of the work during the first five years absorbed 
 all the profits that had been made at Soho from the time of 
 its commencement, and necessitated an outlay of ;^i 1,000 
 besides. Boulton had to borrow money from all his friends — 
 Thomas Day, the eccentric author of " Sandford and Mer- 
 ton," being one of them — and was for some time hardly able 
 to save himself from bankruptcy. He and Watt and the 
 steam-engine, however, triumphed in the end. Watt, in 
 despair, over and over again proposed to abandon the busi- 
 ness as hopeless. " Almost the whole county is against us," 
 he wrote to his partner, in 1782, from Cornwall, when he was 
 superintending the first application of the steam-engine to 
 mining operations, " and look upon us as oppressors and 
 tyrants, from whose power they believe the horned imps of 
 Satan are to relieve them." " The care and attention which 
 our business requires," he complained, in another letter, 
 "make me at present dread a fresh order with as much 
 liorror as other people with joy receive one. What signifies 
 it to a man, though he gain the whole world, if he lose his 
 health and his life ? The first of those losses has already 
 befallen me, and the second will probably be the consequence 
 of it, without some favourable circumstances, which at present 
 I cannot foresee, should prevent it." But Boulton was never 
 faint-hearted. 
 
 The hardware-works at Soho were not abandoned, but 
 they were rendered insignificant by the setting up, in the
 
 240 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 same establishment, of the engine-factory, in 1775. In 1785 
 that factory began to pay its working expenses ; thence- 
 forward it prospered. The steam-engine, at first only used 
 for mining, was found equally helpful to manufacturing pur- 
 poses. Once used, its use soon became general, in Man- 
 chester, Leeds, Glasgow, and all other factory-towns. In 
 1795 Boulton and Watt's extensive business necessitated 
 the establishment of a separate establishment for making 
 engines, and the Soho Foundry was started. Watt's patent 
 expired in 1799, and then similar institutions were set up in 
 various parts of the country ; but the fame of Soho, well 
 maintained by the ability with which it was managed by the 
 first proprietors and their successors, made it, for a long 
 time, the chief seat of engine manufacture. During the 
 seven years prior to 1866, the Soho Foundry, now covering 
 an area of ten acres, produced 1,878 steam-engines, with an 
 aggregate of 70,958 horse-power. Of these, 319 were 
 pumping-engines, 1,090 were rotative engines, for manufac- 
 turing purposes, and 469 were marine engines, the largest of 
 these latter being the works for the Great Eastern, with 
 1,700 horse-power. 
 
 Boulton's energy was shown in many other ways, and he 
 was the author and producer of many other famous inven- 
 tions and improvements, by which Birmingham and all the 
 world have been greatly aided. The common copying- 
 press was introduced by him. He was the first silver-plater 
 in his native town, now so famous for its work in that way. 
 To him are due the great improvements in coining which, • 
 after trial at his own Soho Mint, were introduced by him in 
 the London Mint on Tower Hill, and also in the mints of 
 Russia, Spain, Denmark, Calcutta, and Bombay. " Had 
 Mr. Boulton done nothing more in the world than he has 
 accomplished in improving the coinage," said Watt, "his 
 name would deserve to be immortalised ; and if it be con- 
 sidered that this was done in the midst of various other
 
 Great Factories. 241 
 
 important avocations, and at enormous expense, for which, 
 at the time, he could have no certainty of an adequate 
 return, we shall be at a loss whether most to admire his 
 ingenuity, his perseverance, or his munificence. He has 
 conducted the whole more like a sovereign than a private 
 manufacturer, and the love of fame has always been to him 
 a greater stimulus than the love of gain." 
 
 Boulton died in 1809, Watt in 18 19. In 1800 they had 
 handed over the management of the Soho Foundry to their 
 sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt the 
 younger. In 1848 the good old name of Boulton and Watt 
 was abandoned, and the firm began to be known as James 
 Watt and Company. The older Soho hardware manufactory 
 has long since been discontinued. 
 
 Other hardware factories, however, abound in Birming- 
 ham, and the trade, like the town, has grown mightily, in 
 consequence, to a great extent, of Matthew Boulton's ex- 
 ample, and of the assistance afforded by his introduction of 
 the steam-engine. Many Birmingham factories, like those 
 in which the Elkingtons produce electro-plated goods, the 
 Gillotts pens and the Edelstons pins, have attained world- 
 wide notoriety ; and hundreds of others, large and small, 
 contribute to the wealth of the town and the prosperity of 
 its inhabitants. Birmingham's chief rival, in old times as in 
 the present, Sheffield, has shared its progress, and kindred 
 factories have arisen in abundance in all parts of the countr}'. 
 Much of the work done in Sheffield is in steel, and Bir- 
 mingham has brass for one of its specialities ; but brass and 
 steel, as well as other metals and other wares, are worked 
 up in a hundred other districts, and the result of all is a 
 vast increase of English enterprise, giving wealth to thou- 
 sands and maintenance to hundreds of thousands. By help 
 of its countless factories, England is able to carry on a 
 commerce of unparalleled greatness \vith all the world, and 
 to feed a population more than thrice as large as the agri- 
 
 Q
 
 242 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 cultural resources of the country, unaided by the fruits of 
 other nations, bought with the profits of its factory labour, 
 could possibly support. 
 
 No other nation has factories as large or manufacturing 
 establishments as various as those of England ; but every 
 nation has learnt something of England's skill, and many, 
 either as learners or as pioneers, have acquired special ex- 
 cellence in special departments. This has been shown by 
 recent international exhibitions, better and more pleasantly 
 than could be done by any mere description, however lengthy, 
 and it is needless here to attempt to show it in a few short 
 paragraphs. Nor is it necessary to heap up old statistics 
 concerning the extent and operations of foreign factories in 
 textile goods, in metal wares, and in other articles. It will 
 suffice to turnish very brief illustrations of the manufacturing 
 condition of the two chief manufacturing countries after 
 England — France and the United States. 
 
 France, excelling Elngland in many minor branches of 
 manufacture, excels her notably in one great staple article 
 of trade. Henry IV. and our James I. sought with equal 
 zeal to naturalise the silkworm in their respective dominions. 
 The experiment failed in England, but succeeded in France, 
 and to that natural advantage must be in part attributed the 
 sui)eriority of France in silk-working. 
 
 The history of the French silk trade is noteworthy. A 
 slight manufacture was carried on at jMarseilles, Avignon, 
 and other places as early as the fourteenth century, just 
 about the same time that London had its silk-women, both 
 countries being supplied with their raw material from Spain, 
 Italy, and the Levant. But the craft made but little progress 
 for three centuries. Henry IV., growing mulberry-trees in 
 the garden of the Tuileries, and breeding silkworms in his 
 own palace, was not able to advance it much ; and its first 
 great development was due to the violent energy of Colbert, 
 who caused mulberry-trees to be planted along all the higli
 
 Great Factories. 243 
 
 roads of the south, and offered a premium of twenty-four 
 sous for every tree that was three years old. The bribe suc- 
 ceeded, and before long the south-eastern provinces abounded 
 in food for the worms that became plentiful as soon as there 
 was suitable sustenance for them. Great increase of silk- 
 spinning and silk-weaving quickly resulted, the Protestants 
 of Languedoc being the chief workers. 
 
 Then religious fanaticism nearly stifled the trade. The 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, reduced the 
 number of looms from 9,000 to 3,000, and a large proportion 
 of their owners, settling in Spitalfields, helped to develop 
 in England so much of the trade as it has since acquired. 
 Many years elapsed before it revived in France. In 1788, 
 however, the first year concerning which we have authentic 
 details, it was found- that 1,600 tons of raw and thrown silk 
 were annually wrought in the country, two-thirds being of 
 native growth, and one-third imported ; and that the value 
 of the fabric produced amounted to about ^5,000,000, 
 nearly a fifth being converted into stockings and a fourth 
 into ribbons and braid. Only ;^i, 000,000 worth was ex- 
 ported, the rest being used chiefly by the Court ladies, 
 gallants, and superior clergy in attendance on Louis XVI. 
 
 The French Revolution brought another violent reverse. 
 At the siege of Lyons, the Royalists, for whom almost exclu- 
 sively the silk had been made, destroyed the factories. In 
 the adjoining districts, the mulberry-trees were rooted up, 
 and the worms died out. The aristocrats being exiled, 
 moreover, as the local historian says, " the only remaining 
 use of silk was to make the victorious standards of the 
 army of France." In 181 2 only a third as much silk was 
 produced and a third as much imported as in 1788, and of 
 this a larger proportion, when made into tissue, was exported. 
 The rise of wages and other circumstances, however, caused 
 this smaller quantity to be of nearly equal value to the 
 supply of 1788, and the augmented price has been since 
 
 Q 2
 
 2 44 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 maintained. Jacquard's loom facilitated the manufacture. 
 But the increasing intelligence of the workpeople, ever on 
 the watch for artistic improvements, and the growing require- 
 ments of fashion, stimulated the demand for their produce, 
 both at home and abroad. In 1 8 1 2 the number of looms at 
 work were 27,410, yielding fabric worth ;^4,3oo,ooo. In 1853 
 the looms numbered 220,000, the manufacture was valued 
 at ;^2 1,000,000. In the ensuing sixteen years both have 
 been doubled, if not more. In 1865 the exports alone 
 amounted in value to ^17,000,000. In recent times, 
 however, the internal trade has been greatly altered. In 
 1853 the total yield of native cocoons was 26,000 tons ; but 
 in that year a disease appeared among the silkworms, by 
 which the supply has been rapidly reduced. In 1865 the 
 yield was only 5,500 tons. The deficiency, as well as the 
 increased demands of commerce, have had to be met by 
 importation of raw silk from other parts, and this, in 1864, 
 amounted to upwards of ;^i 0,000,000, showing a great 
 gain to foreign trade, but a serious loss to the farmers and 
 peasants in the silk-producing districts. The value of the 
 yield in the department of the Drome, which has suffered 
 most of all, sank from about ;^6oo,ooo in 1853 to about 
 ^100,000 in 1864. 
 
 One effect of this change has been to concentrate the 
 enterprise, more than ever, in Lyons and its neighbourhood. 
 Here, at present, about two-thirds of the silk-manufacture 
 of France is carried on, while the other towns in which it 
 prevails make considerable use of Lyons as their market. 
 
 Lyons, advantageously placed at the junction of the 
 Rhone and the Saone, which provided easy transit for the 
 wares of Marseilles, and greatly helped by Louis XL's 
 institution of its commercial fairs in 1492, rose to vast 
 importance m the sixteenth century, and was fitly styled, in 
 Henry IV.'s days, the Golden Gate of France. The silk- 
 trade found in it from the first a natural home, the produce
 
 Great Factories. 245 
 
 of the town and its suburbs being augmented by the cocoons 
 brought hither from more remote districts. In 1680 its silk- 
 workers numbered nearly 12,000. Five years later they 
 were reduced by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to 
 about a third, and there was no great increase till about 
 1750, when the old trade received fresh stimulus, and con- 
 tinued to grow till 1790, when it gave employment to 18,000 
 workpeople. The Revolution again reduced the number, 
 which in 1800 hardly exceeded 3,000. Bonaparte's rule, 
 however, began a revival, which has had no subsequent 
 check. At the time of the peace of 181 4 the town con- 
 tained 12,000 silk-workers, and the number was nearly 
 doubled in the two years ensuing. In 1837 there were 
 27,000 spinners and weavers. In 1863 there were about 
 10,000 master-workers and 60,000 journeymen; and, as 
 about as many labourers were employed in tool-making, 
 growing, buying, selling, and other necessary occupations, 
 the trade then gave work to more than a third of the entire 
 population of 318,803, and to more persons than the whole 
 town contained forty years before. 
 
 The proportion of master-workers to journeymen shows 
 the nature of the silk-manufacture of Lyons. There are no 
 great factories, as in England, with its cotton, wool, and linen 
 trades. All the town is a vast factory, in which the master- 
 workers, sometimes their own masters altogether, but oftener 
 bound to silk-merchants, who lend them money for buying 
 their material and paying their labourers, generally carry on 
 their craft in meagre lodgings, one or two rooms serving for 
 sleeping in, and another for spinning or weaving. The master 
 works with his wife, two or three experienced labourers, and 
 two or three apprentices, the hours of daily toil varying from 
 twelve, in slack times, to twenty, when orders are most 
 pressing. The Lyons weavers fare much better than the 
 Spitalfields weavers, but their condition is, in most respects, 
 far inferior to that of our own factory operatives. The
 
 246 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 spinners, who supply them with yarn, and who reside in the 
 healthier suburbs, sometimes have happier times, but we 
 must go to the romance-writers for a pleasant picture of 
 their lot. " A particular charm," says M. Michelet, " sur- 
 rounds the working of silk. It ennobles those who make it. 
 In crossing our rudest countries, among the valleys of the 
 Ardeche, where all is rock, where the mulberry and the 
 chestnut seem to live without earth, on pebbles and air, where 
 low houses in dry stone sadden the eye with their grey tints, 
 everywhere I saw at the doors two or three bright-eyed 
 girls, with brown skins and white teeth, who smiled at the 
 passer-by; and spun gold." 
 
 One welcome phase in this factory-life of Lyons is the 
 zeal shown in artistic instruction, by which the silks of 
 France are rendered superior to nearly all those of other 
 countries. The great school of St. Pierre gives free teaching 
 to about two hundred students, whose special business it is 
 to learn how best to devise beautiful patterns, and to apply 
 them in weaving and dyeing. Here and elsewhere botanical 
 gardens, halls of sculpture, and natural history museums 
 do good work in the special and general education of the 
 people, though most of them find a readier school for eye 
 and hand in cultivating that love of flowers which is one of 
 the most agreeable characteristics of the French tempera- 
 ment. 
 
 Moires, velvets, and the richest silken wares are made 
 almost exclusively at Lyons. Ribbons are the staple pro- 
 duce of St. Etienne, the Coventry of France, where in 1864 
 there were 25,000 looms and 40,000 persons engaged in the 
 trade, most of them, however, being peasant-farmers of the 
 neighbourhood, whose children helped them in their light 
 and dainty workmanship. 
 
 The use of little but hand-labour, and the continuance of 
 the old-fashioned independence of work which characterises 
 the silk-trade of France, are for the most part common also
 
 Great Factories. 247 
 
 to its other textile manufactures. The result appears in the 
 insignificance of its production of woollens, linen, and cotton 
 fabrics, as compared with that of Great Britain. The making 
 of cotton goods is more extensive than that of the other 
 tissues ; but the difference and the cause of its sluggishness, 
 as compared with the enterprise of our own country, can be 
 understood by every one who, after visiting our busy centre 
 of cotton industry, walks through the streets of Rouen, the 
 Manchester of France. Here good work is done by the 
 50,000 or more men, women, and children employed in the 
 trade — nearly half of the whole population — and the " rouen- 
 neries," or printed cloths, for which they are especially 
 famous, well deserve their fame ; but much of the labour 
 still follows the old ways, and the best spinning and weaving 
 in large establishments is done by Englishmen and other 
 foreigners. Great factories seem out of place in France, 
 and ill-fitted to the dispositions both of employer and of 
 employed. 
 
 Mulhouse would be an exception to that inference, were 
 not Mulhouse still more Swiss than French. A busy place 
 of woollen manufacture from early times, calico-printing was 
 begim in it in 1745, and it soon became a famous haunt of 
 cotton spinners and weavers. Its annexation by France in 
 1795 did not greatly alter its character, while it facihtated 
 the transit to it of cotton-fibre from Marseilles, Bordeaux, 
 and Havre. Basle continued to supply most of the energy 
 by which the manufacture was extended. Many large 
 factories have been set up, and Mulhouse, lately making a 
 special study of English arrangements, has taken the fore- 
 most place in the cotton manufacture of France. A large 
 proportion of its 46,000 inhabitants find therein their chief 
 employment. 
 
 If France shows us how a nation older than England has 
 allowed us to get far ahead in manufacturing energy, and 
 the national wealth that is acquired by it, we may see in the
 
 248 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 United States what very rapid strides can be made in a new 
 country, richly endowed with natural advantages, and peopled 
 by a race well fitted to make use of them. The manufac- 
 tures of the United States are still in their infancy, but the 
 infantine robustness gives promise of unrivalled exploits in 
 future years. 
 
 New York and Philadelphia, both of them great marts as 
 well, are still the chief centres of manufacturing energy in 
 America, New York having a slight pre-eminence as regards 
 the value of its products, estimated in i860 at about 
 j^3 2,000,000, and giving employment to 90,188 hands in 
 4,374 establishments. Most of those establishments, how- 
 ever, are devoted to minor trades, and Philadelphia sur- 
 passes it as a seat of great factories. Therein, in i860, 
 there were 6,467 establishments, giving employment to 
 107,931 persons, and producing goods worth more than 
 ^^30,000, 000 a year. Shoemaking, millinery, and fifty 
 other trades help to swell those figures ; but of staple 
 manufactures in textile goods, ironwork, and the like 
 Philadelphia now has a large share. 
 
 One of these, the Pascal Iron-works, may illustrate the 
 progress of many. In 182 1, when the city contained 1 20,000 
 inhabitants, a fifth of the number now resident in it, Stephen 
 Monis opened a shop for making and selling stoves and 
 grates. His success therein enabled him, in 1828, to take 
 larger premises, in partnership with two others, and there 
 set up a foundry for extensive iron-manufacture. In 1836 
 the making of wrought-iron tubes, for gas, steam, or water, 
 became a special branch of work, and the firm now makes 
 of them more than 5,000,000 feet a year. Other appliances 
 for heating and lighting houses and buildings of all sorts 
 were introduced by Morris and his successors, and the 
 establishment in 1868 covered four acres of ground and 
 gave emjjloyment to more than 1,100 workmen. 
 
 Philadelphia almost took the lead in American cotton-
 
 Great Factories. 249 
 
 manufacture. In 1775 a society was formed for the ad- 
 vancement, in the town and its neighbourhood, of textile 
 manufactures, and this was reshaped as the Pennsylvania 
 Society of Manufactures and Useful Arts in 1787. By it 
 great pains were taken to encourage native factories, but 
 their growth was slow, both here and in other districts. The 
 largest cotton-factory now in Philadelphia was started, in 
 very recent times, by William Divine, an Irishman, born 
 in i8or. First apprenticed to muslin-weaving in Belfast, 
 he came in 1822 to Manchester, and was during five years 
 engaged in silk-manufacture. In 1827 he resolved to 
 emigrate, and a tedious voyage of twenty-one weeks con- 
 veyed him to New York, whence he at once passed on to 
 Philadelphia. There he worked as a hand-loom weaver, 
 earning a dollar a day, the usual wages, for the first month, 
 after which his superior skill enabled him to obtain double 
 the amount. After eleven years of such work, he had saved 
 sufficient money to buy a set of wool-weaving machines, and 
 to rent a room connected with a mill already established, 
 and fed by its machinery. There he prospered, and in 
 1 841 was rich enough to build a mill for himself. In that 
 year he started the Kennebeck Factory, for woollen-manufac- 
 ture. In 1846 he bought the Penn Factory, in which he had 
 formerly worked as a weaver and foreman, and there began 
 to spin cotton-yarn for himself, and to produce checks and 
 printed goods. He subsequently opened another factory for 
 woollen goods, and in these two he now gives employment 
 to 200 looms, to 5,000 spindles, and to 350 operatives. 
 Philadelphia in i860 contained in all 132 cotton and 
 woollen factories of that description, giving work to about 
 4,000 men and 5,000 women. 
 
 More strictly a manufacturing town than Philadelphia is 
 Pittsburg, at the other end of Pennsylvania. Founded in 
 1765, it made but little progress till the close of the century, 
 and in 1810 contained only 4,768 inhabitants. In i860
 
 250 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 its population, including its two great suburbs of Alleghany 
 and Birmingham, amounted to 160,000, more than 20,000 
 being employed in 1,191 manufacturing establishments, 
 large and small. It is reckoned that its trade has been 
 more than doubled during the past ten years, and its future 
 greatness can hardly be estimated. "Pittsburg," said an 
 American writer in 1866, "is the greatest and the richest 
 mining centre in America, Situated at the confluence of 
 Monongahela and the Alleghany, the banks of the former 
 ribbed with coal -veins and beds of iron-ore, from source 
 to mouth, and the banks of the latter, with its tributaries, 
 bordered by the richest oil-lands in the world ; at the head 
 of navigation on the Ohio, by which she has commercial 
 intercourse with the whole great south and west, and the 
 cities across the ocean ; at the junction of the two richest 
 rail thoroughfares in the country; yearly planning and 
 receiving new channels for her trade, east, west, north, and 
 south ; forging the great guns and iron-clads that made the 
 old Union strong again, and making ploughshares, engines, 
 and implements of agriculture, for the 'piping times of 
 peace;' the centre of great steel, iron, and glass works; a 
 Newcastle, a Sheffield, a Birmingham, a Staffordshire ; every- 
 thing that any city could ever aspire to be, in commercial, 
 manufacturing, mining, and political position, is Pittsburg." 
 
 Pittsburg owes its sudden greatness mainly to its splendid 
 coal and iron fields. In 1868 it had thirty great iron- 
 factories, the annual produce of which was reckoned at 
 ;^i,2oo,ooo. It had also seven hardware establishments, 
 and as many steel-works, producing half of all the steel- 
 work in the United States, as well as fifty other factories for 
 the working up of iron in various ways. Its oldest staple 
 trade is glass manufacture, for which it has fifty-three 
 establishments, issuing ^^2,400,000 worth of glass every 
 year. Its youngest staple trade is oil-refining, vvhich began 
 only about twelve years ago, and in 1868 gave employment
 
 Great Factories. 251 
 
 to more than 3,000 persons, and was worth more than 
 ^3,000,000. In 1859 Pittsburg produced 7,037 barrels of 
 petroleum ; in 1865 the yield was about 1,200,000 ban'els. 
 
 Other great centres of manufacturing energy are rising in 
 the western districts of the United States, but the leading 
 factories are still in the older settlements of the east, and 
 they are most numerous in the New England States. Here 
 began the manufacture of cotton, almost before it was 
 practised in old England. Early in the eighteenth century, 
 when the first colonists of Massachusetts and Connecticut 
 were only a pastoral people, they began to spin and weave 
 their own clothing, and it was to supply them with material 
 that the first exportations of Barbadoes cotton-wool were 
 made. That the trade should not have grown more rapidly 
 than it did is hard to understand ; but it grew more rapidly 
 in New England than anywhere else, and in the course of 
 the present century has assumed considerable importance. 
 It has given life, especially, to one notable trading-town. 
 
 Lowell, twenty-five miles north of Boston, was begun in 
 1 82 1, by the purchase of four hundred acres of land, for 
 ;^2o,ooo, by the Merrimac Manufacturing Company, which 
 set up its first cotton-mill in 1822. Other mills have been 
 added, and in i860 the company employed 2,400 operatives, 
 who, by help of 2,380 looms and 85,720 spindles, turned 
 80,770 lbs. of cotton-fibre into 380,000 yards of cotton 
 fabric every week. Other companies also followed in its 
 lead, and the result has been the rapid growth of a hand- 
 some town, altogether devoted to manufactures. Its popu- 
 lation was 6,477 11"^ 1830, 20,981 in 1840, 33,385 in 1850, 
 and about 40,000 in i860. Nearly a third of the residents 
 are actually employed in the cotton-factories, in the pro- 
 portion of about two women to one man, their total weekly 
 produce in i860 being estimated at 2,463,000 yards ; while 
 the other factories yielded in the same time about 44,000 
 yards of woollen cloth, about 25,000 yards of carpeting, and
 
 252 ^ 2he Romance of Trade. 
 
 50 rugs, besides an abundance of machinery and goods of 
 all sorts requisite for carrying on the staple trade of the 
 town. The special point of interest in Lowell, besides the 
 fact that it is the largest cotton-manufacturing town in the 
 United States, is the care taken by its New England foun- 
 ders, and maintained by their descendants, to promote the 
 moral and physical well-being of the operatives. In con- 
 nection with each factory are some twenty or thirty board- 
 ing-houses, in which, males and females being kept apart, 
 cheap living is provided for all the workpeople. The girls 
 earn from two to twenty shillings a week, besides their 
 board, according to their age and efficiency, and the men 
 receive on an average about two shillings a day. An hospital 
 is provided for them, in case of sickness, and stringent 
 rules prevail throughout the town for averting sickness, by 
 careful ventilation, good paving, and the like. " The moral 
 police," we are told, "which is established, appears to be of 
 the greatest value, so far as it ensures a virtuous character 
 and correct deportment. No persons are employed who 
 are addicted to intemperance or guilty of immorality, and 
 even association with persons of suspected character is 
 deemed good ground for dismissal from the mills, and also 
 for the rejection of all applications of this sort. Every 
 person wishing to leave a mill can do so by giving a fort- 
 night's notice, and the operative so discharged, having been 
 employed during the year, is entitled to an honourable cer- 
 tificate. The names of all persons dismissed for bad con- 
 duct are entered in a book, which is sent to all the 
 counting-houses in the city, and the individual is thus pre- 
 vented from elsewhere obtaining occupation." There are 
 evening-schools, lending-libraries, religious services, and 
 public lectures in abundance ; and the whole machinery is 
 one of patriarchal government, mixed with Puritan socialism, 
 which is unique among manufacturing arrangements. 
 
 " The j)opulation of Lowell," wrote John Greenleaf
 
 Great Factories. 253 
 
 "Whittier, in 1843, "is constituted mainly of New Eng- 
 landers ; but there are representatives here of almost every 
 part of the civilised world. The good-humoured face of 
 the Milesian meets one at almost every turn ; the shrewdly 
 solemn Scotchman, the Transatlantic Yankee, blending 
 the crafty thrift of Roger Snailsfoot with the stern religious 
 heroism of Cameron ; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German, 
 from the towered hills which overlook the Rhine. Here, 
 too, are pedlars from Hamburg and Bavaria and Poland, 
 \vith their sharp Jewish faces and black, keen eyes. But 
 of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most 
 numerous. Light-hearted, wrong-headed, impulsive, un- 
 calculating, with an Oriental love of hyperbole and, too 
 often, a common dislike of cold water and of that gem 
 which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, 
 the Celtic elements of their character do not readily ac- 
 commodate themselves to those of the hard, cool, self- 
 relying Anglo-Saxon." That description is true still. Lowell 
 contains representatives of all the races that make up the 
 people of the United States, and shows how, by blending 
 all, the nation is working out its greatness. ' 
 
 Lowell suffered, hke every other town concerned in the 
 manufacture of cotton goods, from the civil war that began 
 in 1 86 1 ; and, even yet, it has hardly advanced upon the 
 position it had reached in i860. In that year the whole 
 number of cotton-factories in the United States, more than 
 half being in New England, was 1,091. In these 46,766 
 men and 75,206 women were employed ; and the produce 
 of their toil was nearly double that of 1850, being valued at 
 about ;^24,ooo,ooo. The woollen-factories of the United 
 States numbered 1,967 in i860, and gave work to 25,926 
 men and 16,618 women; the value of the cloth produced, 
 nearly half as much again as in 1850, being about 
 
 ;^I3,000,000.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 GREAT MARTS. 
 
 The Growth of London— Its Trade and Aspect in the Middle Ages — 
 London Lackpenny — The Emporium of Europe — The Recent Pro- 
 gress of London — Its Exchange^Its Commercial Coffee-houses — Old 
 Bristol and its Merchants — The Rise of Liverpool— Its Tobacco Trade 
 — Its Slave Trade— Its Cotton Trade— Primitive Glasgow— Its To- 
 bacco-lords — Its later Progress— The History of Bombay — Its present 
 Importance— Calcutta — The Origin of Melbourne— Its RapidGrowth — 
 New York before and after the War of Independence — New Orleans 
 before and after the War of Secession — St. Louis and San Francisco — 
 Sir Francis Drake at San Francisco — Its Recent Progress — European 
 Marts — Marseilles — Bordeaux. 
 
 The history of great factories is alm'ost wholly modern ; 
 the history of great marts is nearly as old as the history of 
 commerce itself Babylon, Tyre, Alexandria, Venice, Ant- 
 werp, and the multitude of lesser marts that have arisen and 
 decayed in the course of centuries, show how, as soon as in 
 each age and nation trade became important, the import- 
 ance was largely developed by the concentration of energy 
 in cities convenient for the resort of merchants, and for 
 bringing together and distributing the wares in which they 
 trafficked. A little has been already said concerning some 
 of the older marts. It will be sufficient here to notice some 
 of those which are still influential. 
 
 London, now the greatest mart in the world, and greater 
 than any of tliose which it has succeeded in pre-eminence, 
 has a commercial history covering more than twelve cen- 
 turies. Bede says that, in 604, it had become, " by its 
 happy situation on the banks of the noble, navigable river 
 Thames, the emporium for many nations repairing to it by 
 land and sea ; " and from that time, if not before, it begau
 
 Great Marts. 255 
 
 to grow as a centre of trade. The growth at first was slow, 
 but long before the Nonnan Conquest its convenient near- 
 ness to foreign ports had rendered it the chief trading-town 
 of England, and, the same causes which produced its com- 
 mercial supremacy leading to its selection as the centre of 
 political government, its political importance greatly con- 
 duced to its commercial development. Special privileges, 
 both of trade and of political self-management, were granted 
 to it by William the Conqueror, and those privileges were 
 confirmed and extended by later monarchs. "Amongst 
 the noble and famous cities of the world," wrote William 
 Fitz-Stephen, about the middle of the twelfth century, 
 " London is one of the most reno\\Tied, on account of its 
 wealth, its extensive trade and commerce, its grandeur and 
 magnificence. To this city repair merchants of every 
 nation in the world, bringing their commodities by sea : — 
 
 " Arabia's gold, Saboea's spice and incense, 
 Scythia's keen weapons, and the oil of palms 
 From Babylon's deep soil ; Nile's precious gems, 
 China's bright shining silks, and Gallic wines, 
 Norway's warm peltry, and the Russian sables." 
 
 In that description there was some exaggeration, as well 
 as in Fitz-Stephen's statement that London in his time 
 contained between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants. But 
 that it was, even then, a large and rich trading-town is 
 clear. " London," said another old chronicler, William ot 
 Malmesbury, " is a noble city, renowned for the opulence 
 of its citizens, who, on account of the greatness of the city, 
 are considered of the first quality, and rank as noblemen of 
 the kingdom. It is filled with merchandise brought by the 
 merchants of all countries, but chiefly those of Germany ; 
 and, in case of scarcity in other parts of England, it is a 
 granary, where com may be more cheaply bought than any- 
 where else." The German merchants of the Steelyard, as 
 we have seen, had for rivals traders from Lorraine and
 
 256 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 other parts, who came to deal with the local merchants 
 already beginning to combine in guilds, and prepare for 
 taking the place of the foreigners as chief merchants in 
 the London market. The first native trading-ship of which 
 we have record was the Little Edtvard. This ship, "be- 
 longing to the port of London, owned and commanded by- 
 John Brand, citizen and merchant of London, loaded with 
 a cargo of wool, owned by three merchants of the hanse of 
 Germany, who had lived in England in the enjoyment of 
 the ancient privileges granted to them," was, in 13 15, pro- 
 ceeding from London to Antwerp, when, off Margate, she 
 was seized by the French, and taken to Calais. As com- 
 pensation, ;^4o was claimed for the value of the vessel, and 
 ;^i,2oo for her cargo, by Edward II. That transaction 
 aptly illustrates the method and the dangers of London 
 commerce in the fourteenth century. 
 
 The London of the Plantagenets, all included within the 
 old city walls, and with plenty of vacant space in it, was full 
 of markets, and of other appliances for native and foreign 
 trade, many of the localities of which are still marked by the 
 names of streets and buildings. Westward from the Tower, 
 along the water's side, from Billingsgate to Dowgate, were 
 the rude quays and hythes at which the trading-vessels depo- 
 sited their cargoes, and took in others of English produce ; 
 and north of it were great selds or warehouses, set up for 
 this purpose, and extending to the Chepe, or market-street, 
 portions of which are still known as Eastcheap and Cheap- 
 side, stretching from the Tower to St. Paul's Cathedral. In 
 this street and its purlieus each trading class had its separate 
 place of resort. In the open space near St. Mary Wool- 
 church was the Woolchurch Haw, the great meeting-place of 
 wool and cloth merchants ; Cornhill and Grasschurch-yard, 
 to the east of it, being the haunts of dealers in corn and 
 hgy. Toucliing it on the western side, on the site now occu- 
 pied by the Mansion House, was the Stocks Market, appro-
 
 Great Marts. 257 
 
 priated to butchers on flesh days, and to fishmongers on fish 
 days, and hard by was the Poultry, for the use of poulterers. 
 In that busy part room was afterwards found for Hebrew 
 bankers, in Old Je^\Ty, and, a little later, for Italian bankers, 
 in Lombard Street. The western half of Chep^ was assigned 
 to the grocers, the mercers, the goldsmiths, and other traders, 
 whose shops extended to St. Paul's Churchyard, north of 
 which was Smithfield, which gradually became a great 
 market for dealers in live cattle, when it was not required 
 for St. Bartholomew Fair. West of St. Paul's was the long 
 thoroughfare which, after passing the river Fleet and the 
 Temple Bar, was known as the dismal and unfrequented 
 Strand, and led, through open fields, to the independent 
 City of Westminster, which had its own nest of markets, 
 the principal being at the gates of Old Westminster 
 Hall. 
 
 A lively picture of the trading aspect of London in the 
 fifteenth century appears in Lydgate's account ot the expe- 
 riences of London Lackpenny, a country bumpkin, who 
 came up to try his luck in town. He went first to West- 
 minster, but there, instead of getting any help, he was pushed 
 about, and robbed of his hood and his purse : — 
 
 "Within this hall neither rich nor yet poor 
 
 Would do for me aught, although I should die ; 
 
 Which seeing, I got me out of the door. 
 When Flemings began on me for to cry : 
 ' Master, what will you copen or buy ? 
 
 Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read? 
 
 Lay down your silver, and here you may speed.' 
 
 ** Then into London I did me hie — 
 Of all the land it beareth the prize. 
 ' Hot peascods ! ' one began to cry, 
 ' Strawberries ripe, and cherries in the rise ! 
 One bade me come near, and buy some spice ; 
 Pepper and saflfron they gan me bede, 
 But, for lack of money, I might not speed.
 
 258 The Romance of Tradf.. 
 
 " Then to the Chepe I gan me drawen, 
 Where much people I saw for to stand. 
 
 One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn ; 
 Another he taketh me by the hand : 
 ' Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land !' 
 
 I never was used to such things indeed, 
 
 And, wanting money, I might not speed. 
 
 " Then went I forth by London Stone, 
 
 And throughout all Candlewick Street : 
 Drapers much cloth me offered anon ; 
 Then comes me one crying, ' Hot sheeps' feet !' 
 One cried, 'Mackerel!' 'Ryster green 1' another gan me 
 greet. 
 One bade me buy a hood to cover my head ; 
 But, for lack of money, I might not speed. 
 
 "Then into Cornhill anon I rode, 
 
 Where there was much stolen gear among. 
 I saw where hung mine ownti hood 
 
 That I had lost among the throng. 
 
 To buy my own hood, I thought it wrong. 
 I knew it as well as I did my Creed, 
 But, for lack of money, I could not speed. 
 
 " Then hied I me down to Billinsgate ; 
 
 And one cried, ' Ho ! now go we hence !' 
 I prayed a bargeman, for God's sake. 
 
 That he would spare me my expense. 
 
 ' Thou goest not here,' quoth he, ' under two pence. 
 I wit not yet bestow any alms' deed.' 
 Thus, lacking money, I could not speed." 
 
 London Lackpenny fell in with only the retail dealers of 
 the metropolis. Before that time, however, native wholesale 
 merchants had become numerous and influential. Foreigners 
 still had much of the foreign trade, but Englishmen had 
 arisen as famous and enterprising as AValworth, Philpot, and 
 Whittington. By them, and such as them, trade was carried 
 on with near and distant parts of Europe ; and the trade 
 grew steadily in every later generation, till the foreign mer- 
 chants, though not actually driven out of London, and, in- 
 deed, often treated more liberally than in the earlier times,
 
 Great Mart'^. 259 
 
 were forced into an insignificant position by the greater 
 enterprise of London-born or London-bred Englishmen. 
 The trading-guilds of the INIiddle Ages helped this progress ; 
 the younger companies of merchants helped it still more. 
 The wealth of industry that was developed throughout the 
 kingdom under the Tudors, and the worthier position that 
 England then acquired among the nations of Europe, encou- 
 raged and made easy the progress of all its trading-ports, 
 but most of all of London. 
 
 Venice, in its palmiest days, had had a formidable 
 northern rival in Bruges. Antwerp inherited the supremacy 
 of both Bruges and Venice. But, in the sixteenth century, 
 Antwerp began to be surpassed by London, and, in the 
 seventeenth, the superiority was complete. " Shipped hence," 
 said Lewis Roberts, in 1638, "the staple commodities of 
 England, in former times, yielded by their returns from 
 foreign parts all those necessities and wants we desired or 
 stood in need of But the late great traffic of this island 
 hath been such that it hath not only proved a bountiful 
 mother to the inhabitants, but also a courteous nurse to the 
 adjoining neighbours; for in what matter of traffic they have 
 lost we have been found to have gained, and what they have 
 wanted we have been noted to have supplied them with. 
 Hath the proud and magnificent city of Venice lost her 
 great traffic and commerce with India, Arabia, and Persia ? 
 England hath got it, and now furnisheth her plenteously 
 with the rich commodities thereof Hath all Italy lost 
 Venice, that fed it with those dainties? London now sup- 
 plieth her place, and is found both to clothe and nourish it. 
 Hath France almost lost the excellent commodities of Con- 
 stantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and generally of all Turkey? 
 London can and doth furnish it. Nay, is Turkey il.':elf de- 
 prived of the precious spices of India ? England can and 
 doth plentifully afford them. Will you view Muscovy, sur- 
 vey Sweden, look upon Denmark, peruse the East Country,
 
 2 Go The Romance of Trade. 
 
 and those other colder regions ? There you shall find the 
 English to have been ; the inhabitants, from the prince to 
 the peasant, wear English woollen linsey, feed in English 
 pewter, sauced with English spices, and send to their 
 enemies real English leaden messengers of death. Will you 
 behold the Netherlands, whose eyes and hearts envy Eng- 
 land's traffic? Yet they must perforce confess that, for all their 
 great boasts, they are indebted to London for most of their 
 Syrian commodities, besides what other wares else they have 
 of English growth." Roberts, indeed, like many others in 
 his day, was nearly as much frightened as pleased at the won- 
 derful progress that England had made in the commerce 
 that had London for its principal mart. " England," he said, 
 " being naturally seated in a northern corner of the world, 
 bending under the weight of too ponderous a burthen, can- 
 not possibly always and for ever find a vent for all those 
 commodities that are seen to be daily exported and 
 brought within the compass of so narrow a circuit, unless 
 there can be, by the policy and government of the State, 
 a means found out to make this island the common empo- 
 rium and staple of all Europe." 
 
 An emporium of more than all Europe England has 
 become, the whole island being enriched thereby, and 
 London more than any other part of it. The enterprise of 
 the East India Company, the Levant Company, and other 
 great trading corporations, brought to London a vast store 
 of the treasures of the East. The enterprise of other com- 
 panies, by which the West Indies and the most favoured 
 parts of North America were colonised by Englishmen, pro- 
 vided a market for part of those treasures, and opened up 
 sources of even greater wealth. England made herself mis- 
 tress of the seas by virtue of her naval prowess, shown in the 
 skill and heroism of her warriors ; but she secured for herself 
 a much truer and more beneficial and more beneficent do- 
 minion, by the wise selfishness and indomitable energy dis-
 
 Great Marts. 261 
 
 played by her great merchants in trading with every part of 
 the world, and in supplying every country with all the wares 
 that it needed, in exchange for all the wares that it had to 
 dispose of 
 
 For nearly two centuries, London monopolised a very 
 large proportion of this traffic, and of the wealth that was 
 won by it. In 1732 the port had 1,487 vessels, Liverpool 
 having only about 200, and Bristol not more than 300. At 
 the commencement of the present century, London engrossed 
 a third of the trade of the empire, and the annual value of 
 its exports and imports exceeded ;^7o,ooo,ooo. In i860 it 
 owned only a seventh of the 21,000 vessels belonging to all 
 the British ports, but their aggi^egate tonnage was more than 
 a fourth of the whole ; and it had hardly less than a fourth of 
 the entire trade of the kingdom, represented by more than 
 ;^i6o,ooo,ooo worth of exports, and about ;;^2 10,000,000 
 worth of imports. Besides all that, its merchants are enriched 
 by the profits upon a vast trade in articles produced in 
 foreign countries, and sold by them to foreign countries, but 
 which never enter the Thames at all ; and further wealth comes 
 to London from its gigantic share in all the great financial 
 enterprises by which railways and other huge undertakings 
 are rendered possible at home, and by which foreign loans, 
 both national and private, are negotiated. 
 
 The great pivot of this purely financial trade is the Stock 
 Exchange, in Capel Court, to which reference will be made 
 hereafter. The great pivot of the general commerce of the 
 City is the Royal Exchange, the first building for which was 
 erected, at the instigation of Sir Thomas Gresham, in 1569, 
 and destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. Its substitute was 
 also burnt to the ground in 1841, the present more commo- 
 dious structure being completed in 1844. If all the bargains 
 that have been struck, and all the achievements that have 
 been begun by nods and whispers on that memorable site, 
 during the past three centuries, could be recorded, a more
 
 262 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 eventful story of trade, and not of trade alone, would be pro- 
 duced than any other mart in the world could, even in a small 
 degree, rival. " There is no place in town," wrote Addison, 
 in 17 1 1, "which I so much love to frequent as the Royal 
 Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some 
 measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see 
 so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting 
 togetlier upon the private business of mankind, and making 
 this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I 
 must confess I look upon High Change to be a great council, 
 in which all considerable nations have their representatives. 
 Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the 
 politic world. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these 
 several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by 
 their different walks and different languages. Sometimes I 
 am jostled among a body of Armenians, sometimes I am 
 lost in a crowd of Jews, and sometimes make one in a 
 group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman, 
 at difierent times \ or rather fancy myself like the old phi- 
 losopher, who, upon being asked what countryman he was, 
 announced that he was a citizen of the world. When I have 
 been upon the 'Change, I have often fancied one of the old 
 kings standing in person where he is represented in effigy, 
 and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people 
 with which that place is every day filled. In this case, how 
 would he be surprised to hear all the languages of Europe 
 spoken in this little spot of his former dominions, and to see 
 so many private men who, in his time would have been the 
 vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for 
 greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in 
 the royal treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British 
 territories, has given us a kind of additional empire. It has 
 multiplied the number of the rich, made our landed estates 
 infinitely more valuable than they were formerly, and added 
 to them an accession of other estates as valuable as the
 
 Great Marts. 263 
 
 lands themselves." The Royal Exchange has lost all the 
 picturesqueness that it possessed in the days of Addison ; 
 but its national and international value has certainly not 
 lessened in the century and a half that divide Queen Victoria's 
 London from Queen Anne's. 
 
 The changes of the interval may be in some degree mea- 
 sured by the altered uses to which some notable buildings 
 that sprang up in or near Addison's time have been put. 
 Lloyd's Coffee-house, for example, started in Lombard Street, 
 at the corner of Abchurch Lane, late in the seventeenth 
 century, began only as a convenient place of gossip and 
 refreshment for City people. It was a great meeting-place, 
 "where the auctions are usually kept," when Addison wrote the 
 Spectator only a lively club fit for Sir Roger de Coverley 
 to be laughed at in ; but gradually its social uses gave place 
 to commercial. Transferred for a short time to Pope's Head 
 Alley, the coffee-house was abandoned in 1774, and Lloyd's 
 Rooms, then located in the upper part of the Royal Exchange, 
 became strictly a business resort for ship-owners, ships' cap- 
 tains, and ship-insurers. INIore than a thousand insurance- 
 brokers and underwriters there find a busy trade, in specu- 
 lating upon losses by accidents at sea. Lloyd's agents 
 are now established in every port of the world, and from 
 each comes prompt information concerning the arrivals and 
 departures, and the good fortunes, and the casualties of 
 the many thousand vessels in which London merchants are 
 interested. 
 
 Lloyd's, no longer a coffee-house, is cosmopolitan in its 
 interests and information. Some other buildings, though 
 still nominally coffee-houses, are hardly less active centres of 
 business in special departments of the trade by which London 
 has grown great. The North and South American Coffee- 
 house, in Threadneedle Street, is the special haunt of traders 
 with the vast continent that gives it its name, and especially 
 with its greatest nation, the L^nited States. All the Trans-
 
 264 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 atlantic newspapers are here filed, for reference to the trade 
 details and political details, bearing upon trade, that they 
 furnish, and merchants are constantly looking in to consult 
 them, or to exchange other details of which they are possessed, 
 or to use those details in making bargains with one another 
 or jealously watching one another's operations. Of the Jeru- 
 salem Coffee-house, in Cowper's Court, Cornhill, similar use 
 is made by the thousands of merchants trading with the great 
 Eastern Hemisphere, from Bombay all the way round to 
 China and Japan, and across the Indian Ocean, down to the 
 great colonies of Australia and New Zealand. The Jamaica 
 Coffee-house, in St. Michael's Alley, on the other side of 
 Cornhill, has lost much of its importance with the compara- 
 tive decay of the West Indian trade, since the days when 
 Port Royal was a busier mart than Bombay, and there was a 
 larger trade with Barbadoes than with Victoria. The Baltic 
 Coffee-house, in Threadneedle Street, on the other hand, has 
 grown in value with the growth of English trade with Russia 
 and the other European countries that send us tallow, hemp, 
 and half-a-hundred other wares. Some old coffee-houses, 
 like Garraway's, in Change Alley, still retain a litde of their 
 old character as refreshment-rooms ; but here the glass of 
 punch or the sandwich that is bought is wholly unimportant, 
 in comparison with the great contracts that are often pro- 
 posed or concluded in the five minutes nominally set apart 
 for eating or drinking. The old-fashioned air that still per- 
 vades some of these old haunts contrasts strangely with the 
 ever new enterprise that is developed by the men who 
 frequent them. 
 
 In trade with the United States London is surpassed by 
 Liverpool and Glasgow, but of the commerce carried on with 
 European countries, with India, China., and Australia, it has 
 still the largest share. 
 
 London's chief rival in former times was Bristol. The 
 earliest record extant concerning this mart and its trade is
 
 Great Marts, 265 
 
 curious. " There is a seaport-town called Bristol," it was 
 written, shortly after the Norman Conquest, " opposite to 
 Ireland, to which its inhabitants make frequent voyages of 
 trade. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, cured the people of 
 this town of a most odious custom, which they derived from 
 their ancestors, of buying men and women in all parts of 
 England, and exporting them to Ireland, for the sake of gain. 
 You might have seen, with sorrow, long ranks of youths and 
 maidens, of the greatest beauty, tied together with ropes, and 
 daily exposed for sale ; nor were these men ashamed — oh, 
 horrid wickedness ! — to give up their nearest relations, even 
 their own children, to slavery." 
 
 That trade, if the report of it was anything more than a 
 Norman slander of the Anglo-Saxons, was soon exchanged 
 for something better. During the Middle Ages, Bristol had 
 an extensive trade with the Danes, who were then masters of 
 a large part of Ireland. Not content with voyaging to Ireland, 
 moreover, its merchants soon— while London still did little 
 more than trade w'ith the nations divided from it by only the 
 British Channel and the German Ocean— went on more dis- 
 tant expeditions, to Denmark and Iceland, to the Mediter- 
 ranean and the Levant. The extensive manufacture of 
 woollen cloth that then sprang up on both sides of the 
 Severn, in Wiltshire and in Devonshire, had Bristol, itself a 
 busy cloth-making town, for its chief mart ; and enterprising 
 merchants exchanged the native wares for foreign goods, by 
 which the whole district was enriched. Most famous of all 
 these merchants was William Canynge, who, during the eight 
 years previous to 1460, had ten vessels, one of them with the 
 unusually large burthen of 900 tons, and manned in all by 
 Soo mariners, and who carried English trade farther than it 
 had ever been carried before in native craft, before ending 
 his days as a priest in the splendid church of St. Mary, 
 Redcliff, which he spent much of his well-earned wealth in 
 restoring. But other notable merchants were contemporary
 
 266 The Romance of Tirade. 
 
 with him ; among the number, Robert Sturney, who, having 
 gone with a hundred and sixty pilgrims on a pious visit to 
 Jerusalem, with which some trade was joined, continued to 
 carry on a brisk commerce with the Levant ; and John Jay, 
 who, not content with European trade, sent out a great ship, 
 in 1480, to seek for those fabled treasures of the West, which 
 soon afterwards Columbus reached, when, expecting to dis- 
 cover a new passage to India, he opened up America to 
 Europeans. 
 
 Bristol and the Cabots, Venetian traders who made it 
 their home, share with Spain and Columbus the honour of 
 discovering America ; and though the Bristol merchants, 
 landing on the barren shores of Labrador, gained nothing in 
 comparison with the advantages which Spain derived from 
 its acquisition of the West Indies and the neighbouring 
 mainland, their trading enterprise bore good fruit in the 
 sixteenth and following centuries. In the colonisation of 
 the British West Indies they had a large share, and, as long 
 as commerce with them had for its principal item traffic in 
 negro slaves, the supremacy of Bristol continued. Queen 
 Anne said that she never knew she was a queen until she 
 went to Bristol ; and its pomps and shows exceeded even 
 those of London in the eighteenth century. In 1761 the 
 town contained nearly 100,000 inhabitants. In 1861 its 
 population amounted to 154,093, and there had been in the 
 interval a steady growth in all the old ways of trade. In 
 the new ways of trade that have been opened up, however, 
 Bristol has been far surpassed by its younger rival, Liver- 
 pool, partly because of the greater energy of the traders of 
 Liverpool, but still more because of its convenient nearness 
 to the great manufacturing districts to which it has become 
 the chief mart. 
 
 Though a young rival, Liverpool is an old town. It 
 existed in Anglo-Saxon times, had a well-fortified castle 
 under William the Conqueror, and received from Henry IL,in
 
 Great Marts. 267 
 
 1 1 73, a charter directing that the whole estuary of the Mersey 
 should be for ever free to " the men of Lyrpole," coming 
 and returning with their ships and merchandise ; and, that 
 charter being confirmed by King John in 1207, Liverpool 
 was, by Henry III., in 1229, made a free borough, with a 
 merchants' guild, and like liberties of tollage, passage, 
 stallage, and customs to those enjoyed by the burgesses of 
 London, Bristol, Hull, and other towns. For a long time, 
 however, it was one of the smallest boroughs in the king- 
 dom. In 1272 it contained only 168 houses, and in 1565 
 Stow reports that it had no more than 138 houses, scattered 
 over seven streets, the market price of two of the principal 
 houses being ^£10, while another was let for ^4 a year. 
 Yet long before that it had made a small beginning of that 
 special trade which has mainly conduced to its greatness. 
 In 1524 Leland said that there was "good merchandise at 
 Lyrpole ; much Irish yarn that Manchester men do buy is 
 there, and Irish merchants come much thither, as to a good 
 haven ;" and Camden, writing in 1586, calls it "the most 
 convenient and most frequented passage to Ireland." It had 
 also, at that time, a little foreign trade. It was Humphrey 
 Brooke who, in 1588, gave to Queen Elizabeth's ministers 
 the first intimation of the coming of the Spanish Armada ; 
 he having, he said, " departed out of St. Jean de Luce, in 
 France, the day after the fleet set sail." 
 
 Its importance as a mart dates from the seventeenth 
 century. Its merchants imported iron from Biscay, then 
 the most famous iron district in Europe, and sent it to 
 Birmingham, Sheffield, and other towns, to be converted 
 into cutlery and hardware, much of which it received again 
 for transmission to Ireland. It was also a great market for 
 the woollen, linen, and cotton goods brought from Man- 
 chester, Blackburn, Wakefield, Halifax, and Bradford, which 
 it fed with Irish fla.K, then its staple import. In carrying 
 these wares to and fro, its traders found employment in
 
 268 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 1618 for four-and-twenty ships. Its merchant navy was 
 more than ten times as great at the close of the century. 
 Being the chief mart of Manchester, it grew with the growth 
 of the famous manufacturing town. 
 
 Other causes conduced to its prosperity. Favoured by 
 Cromwell, as the best highway to Ireland, and made of 
 political importance by the great share taken by its leading 
 men in the Commonwealth strife, it had the great good 
 fortune of being directed by an excellent lord of the manor. 
 "It is of late," wrote one who visited the town in 1673, 
 " at the great charge and industry of the family of the 
 Moores, of Bank Hall, which family for some hundreds of 
 years have had a large property therein, and at present 
 combine chief lords and owners of the greatest share thereof, 
 having divers streets that bear their name, which hath so 
 enlarged the town that its church, though large and good, 
 is not enough to hold its inhabitants, which are many. 
 Amongst whom are divers eminent merchants and trades- 
 men, whose trade and trafiic, especially into the West 
 Indies, makes it famous, its situation affording in great 
 plenty, and at reasonabler rates than in most parts of Eng- 
 land, such exported commodities as are proper to the West 
 Indies, as likewise a quicker return for such imported com- 
 modities, by reason of the sugar-bakers and great manufac- 
 turers of cotton in the adjacent parts. Here is now erecting, 
 at the public charges, a famous town-house, placed on 
 pillars and arches of hewn stone, and underneath is the 
 public exchange for the merchants. It hath a very con- 
 siderable market on Saturdays, for all sorts of provisions and 
 divers commodities, which are brought by the merchants, 
 and hence transported as aforesaid." 
 
 Having thus slowly made for itself a place among Eng- 
 lish trading-towns before the close of the seventeenth century, 
 Liverpool advanced mightily in the eighteenth, by means of 
 its energetic commerce in three special articles of traffic, of
 
 Great Marts. 269 
 
 which one was wholly A\Tong, and the other of doubtful 
 value to the world. The first, in order of time, was the 
 tobacco trade. Tobacco, in spite of the opposition of 
 James I., and many who thought with him, in his days and 
 after, had quickly come into favour with both Englishmen 
 and foreigners, and, to supply their demands, had become 
 the staple produce of Virginia. In the ten years from 1700 
 to 1709, the average annual importation of it to Great 
 Britain amounted to 12,880 tons — 7,857 tons for reshipment 
 to other countries, and 5,023 tons, about two-thirds of the 
 quantity now used by thrice as large a population, for home 
 consumption. Bristol and Glasgow were enriched by the 
 commerce, but neither of them had so great a share as 
 Liverpool. Its chief merchants of a hundred and fifty 
 years ago, Sir Thomas Johnson, Sir William Norris, and 
 William Clayton, applied themselves to it with wonderful 
 success, being led into a good deal of smuggling, by the 
 exorbitant duties claimed for the revenue. Half the ship- 
 ping and more than half the wealth of Liverpool was, 
 during some years, devoted to this traffic. It was to meet 
 its requirements that the Old Dock — the oldest dock in 
 England — was begun in 1699, ^J^d completed about twenty 
 years later, thereby enabling a far greater number of ships to 
 load and unload at Liverpool than it could receive before, 
 and tempting many shipowners to use its safe harbourage, 
 instead of going to other ports. Thus a fresh impetus was 
 given to the growth of the port. A tourist, writing in 1727, 
 declared that, "in his first visit to Liverpool, in 1680, it was 
 a large, handsome, and thriving town ; at his second visit, 
 ten years later, it was become much bigger ; but, at his third 
 visit, in 1726, it was more than double its bigness of the 
 said second visit;" and in 1760 it was said that "Liver- 
 pool, in point of a vastly-extended foreign commerce and 
 mercantile shipping, is long since become undoubtedly the 
 greatest and most opulent seaport in the kingdom, next
 
 270 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 after London and Bristol, probably employing about three 
 hundred sail of her own, greater and lesser shipping, mostly 
 in the Guinea and American trades. 
 
 That Guinea trade, joined with the American trade, 
 provided the next and most reprehensible source of wealth 
 to Liverpool. The Virginian and neighbouring colonists 
 had learnt from the Spaniards the evil habit of employing 
 negro slaves ; and Liverpool, sending its ships for tobacco, 
 found it very profitable to send them first to the West Coast 
 of Africa, and there take in human ballast. In 1709 it 
 began its share in the slave trade with one vessel of thirty 
 tons; in 1760 the trade gave employment to seventy-four 
 vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 8,178 tons, and 
 enriched upwards of a hundred merchants, moie than 
 half as many as were to be found in London and Bristol 
 put together, those being the only two other towns largely 
 concerned in this branch of commerce. It continued to 
 grow during the next half century. In the ten years between 
 1795 and 1804, the busiest period of all, the Liverpool 
 merchants shipped 323,770 slaves from Africa to America 
 and the West Indies — the London share in the traflfic inclu- 
 ding 46,405 slaves, and the Bristol people being responsible 
 for the shipment of only 10,718. It was well, for the honour 
 of England, that the trade was put a stop to in 1S07. 
 
 But a hundred years ago no dishonour attached to it in 
 the pubhc estimation. Foster Cunliffe, the founder of a 
 great trading family, and, according to his panegyrist, " a 
 merchant whose honesty, diligence, and knowledge in mer- 
 cantile affairs procured wealth and credit to himself and his 
 country; a magistrate, who administered justice with discern- 
 ment, candour, and impartiality ; a Christian, devout and 
 exemplary in the exercise of every private duty ; a friend to 
 merit, a patron to distress, an enemy only to vice and sloth," 
 was one of the most energetic and prosperous of all the 
 Liverpool slave-merchants. In 1753 he had four ships, fitted
 
 Great Marts. ayii 
 
 to hold 1, 1 20 slaves in all, which made two or three voyages 
 in the year between Guinea and the West Indies and North 
 America, and brought profit enough to stock a dozen vessels 
 with rum, sugar, and other articles, for sale in England. 
 Five of the twelve traded with Antigua, four with Maryland, 
 two with Montserrat, and one with Jamaica. As this instance 
 shows, the trade had been developed since its commence- 
 ment. Instead of using the same vessels for slaves, tobacco, 
 and rum, and sending them the whole round, it was found 
 better to build ships specially adapted for human chattels, 
 and to let the others go to and fro with ordinary wares. 
 Thereby Liverpool was greatly enriched. During the seven 
 years ending with 17 16, when the tobacco trade was the 
 chief staple, its annual shipping averaged 18,371 tons, being 
 one twenty-fourth that of all England. During the seven 
 years ending with 1792, when the slave trade had thrown 
 the tobacco trade into insignificance, the yearly average was 
 260,380 tons — more than a sixth of that of the whole king- 
 dom ; that is, while the nation at large had in the interval 
 increased its shipping about three times, the maritime trade 
 of Liverpool had been multiplied by more than twehe. 
 
 The population of the town grew proportionately. 
 Between 1700 and 1752, the chief period of the tobacco 
 trade, the inhabitants had increased in number from 5,715 
 to 18,500. In the next half century, the chief period of 
 tlie slave trade, they had increased to 77,708. "This quon- 
 dam village," said Erskine, in 1791, "which is now fit to be 
 a proud capital for any empire in the world, has started up 
 like an enchanted palace, even in the memory of Uving men. 
 I had before often been at the principal seaports in this 
 island, and believing that, having seen Bristol and those 
 other towns that deservedly pass as great ones, I had seen 
 everything in this great nation of navigators on which a 
 subject should pride himself, I own that I was astonished 
 and astounded when, after passing a distant ferry and
 
 272 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 ascending a hill, I was told by my guide, 'All you see 
 spread out beneath you — that immense plain, which stands 
 like another Venice upon the waters, which is intersected 
 by those numerous docks, which glitters with those cheerful 
 habitations of well-protected men, which is the busy seat of 
 trade, and the gay scene of elegant amusements growing out 
 of its prosperity, where there is the most cheerful face of 
 industry, where there are riches overflowing, and everything 
 that can delight a man who wishes to see the prosperity of 
 a great community and a great empire — all this has been 
 created by the industry and well-disciplined management of 
 a handful of men since you were a boy.' " 
 
 That growth, however, was only an earnest of the progress 
 yet to be made. In 1861 the population of Liverpool, six 
 times as great as it was in 1801, was 437,740; and 4,682 
 vessels, with an aggregate of 2,658,732 tons, entered its 
 harbour. The prime agent in this third stage of develop- 
 ment, better than tobacco, and certainly better than slaves, 
 has been cotton. Liverpool, as we have seen, began to rise 
 from a village honoured with the name of a borough, by 
 supplying Manchester with linen-yarn from Ireland. It was 
 all along a chief mart for the sale of Manchester goods, 
 woollen, linen, and, to the small extent of its trade therein, 
 cotton. It now became a more important auxiliary' to the 
 manufacturing town and its hundred suburbs, by providing 
 for it an ample store of the newer commodity. This trade, 
 of course, grew naturally out of its old dealings with the 
 West Indies and the United States, and it began more than 
 a hundred years ago. In a Liverpool newspaper, dated the 
 3rd of November, 1758, appeared this novel advertisement: 
 " To be sold by auction, at Forbes and Campbell's sale-room, 
 near the Exchange, this day, at one o'clock, twenty-five 
 bags of Jamaica cotton, in five lots." From that time cotton 
 was regularly brought from the West Indies, and gradually 
 Virginia, Maryland, and the other districts of the mainland
 
 Great Marts. 273 
 
 began to join in the trade. It only became important, how- 
 ever, about the commencement of the present century. 
 How it has grown and benefited other towns besides Liver- 
 pool we have already seen. By bringing cotton from America, 
 India, and other parts, Liverpool has vastly extended its 
 commerce, and if its staple trade is in importing the raw 
 fibre and exporting the manufactured cloth, that trade is 
 supplemented by commerce in a thousand other articles. 
 Liverpool is now a mart for everything, and for all the world. 
 
 The only British town that has kept pace with it is 
 Glasgow. But Glasgow, though as old as Liverpool, and, 
 in early times, much more famous on other grounds, is yet 
 younger as a busy place of trade. Early in the fifteenth 
 century, William Elphinstone, father of the Bishop Elphin- 
 stone who founded the University of Aberdeen, gained 
 celebrity by his shipments to France and other parts of 
 Europe of pickled salmon and dried herrings, in exchange 
 for which he received wine and brandy; and a hundred 
 years later we are told that Archibald Lyon, youngest son 
 of Lord Glamis, Earl of Strathmore, " undertook great 
 voyages and adventures, in trading to Poland, France, and 
 Holland," and that his son, and the husbands of his three 
 daughters, were all great merchants, and fathers of other 
 m.erchants ; but most of the trade of Glasgow seems to 
 have been local and insignificant, until the union of England 
 and Scotland, in 1702, threw open to the northern kingdom 
 all the commercial facilities that the southern kingdom had 
 slowly acquired by centuries of enterprise and toil. 
 
 Very soon after that, Glasgow began to compete with 
 Liverpool in its lucrative tobacco trade. Six or eight ad- 
 venturers chartered a ship, and sent it to Virginia with a 
 store of native produce, to be there sold, and the proceeds 
 spent in buying tobacco. The captain was appointed to act 
 as supercargo. " This person," says the old chronicler, 
 " although a shrewd man, knew nothing of accounts , and 
 
 s
 
 274 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 when, on his return, he was asked by his employers for a 
 statement of how the adventure had turned out, he toid 
 them he could give them none, but there were its proceeds, 
 and threw down upon the table a large hoggar " — (that is, a 
 stocking) — " stuffed to the top with coin. The adventure 
 had been a profitable one ; and his employers conceived 
 that, if an uneducated, untrained person had been so 
 successful, their gains would have been still greater had a 
 person versed in accounts been sent with it. Under this 
 impression, they immediately dispatched a second adventure, 
 with a supercargo highly recommended to them for his 
 knowledge of accounts, who, on his return, produced a 
 beautifully made out statement of his transactions, but no 
 hoggar." Other enterprises succeeded in yielding both 
 balance-sheets and money. 
 
 " I once asked the late Lord Provost Cochrane, of 
 Glasgow, who was eminently wise, and who has been a 
 merchant there for seventy years, " said Sir John Dalrymple 
 in 1788, "to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of 
 Glasgow. He said it was all owing to four young men of 
 talent and spirit, who started at one time in business, and 
 whose successes gave example to the rest. The four had 
 not ;^i 0,000 amongst them when they began." These four 
 enterprising youths were William Cunningham, Henry 
 Ritchie, Alexander Spiers, and John Glassford. Glassford, 
 during some years before his death in 1783, had twenty-five 
 ships of his own,' in which he each year imi)orted ^500,000 
 worth of tobacco ; and Spiers was still richer. They and 
 others pursued their trade so successfully that Glasgow soon 
 acquired more than half of the tobacco trade, then less 
 prized than formerly by Liverpool, which found its chief 
 profit in slave-dealing. In 1772 Glasgov/ imported 49,000 
 out of the 90,000 hogsheads brought into Great Britain, 
 Spiers receiving an eighth of the Glasgow share, and Glass- 
 ford an eleventh.
 
 Great Marts. 27c 
 
 Very soon after that, mainly because of the American 
 War of Independence, the tobacco trade began to dechne ; 
 but the wealth and commercial energy that it had concen- 
 trated in Glasgow found exercise in other ways. Linen- 
 manufacture had long before been established in the town and 
 its neighbourhood, and the merchants had occupation in 
 importing flax and exporting clothing. Cotton-manufacture 
 had also, as we have seen, been introduced by David Dale 
 and others, and iron-works of all sorts soon followed. Glas- 
 gow following closely the lead of Liverpool, and being, in 
 fact, a Liverpool and a Manchester for Scotland, shared 
 the prosperity of the southern towns. Many of its leading 
 men, like the Monteiths, were both merchants and manufac- 
 turers : others were merchants alone. Trading at first chiefly 
 with the West Indies and the United States, and therein 
 having sugar and cotton for their staples, in succession to 
 tobacco, its merchants have now learnt to trade with all 
 the world, and Glasgow, from being an insignificant town, 
 famous only for its pickled salmon and dried herrings, has 
 become the third great British mart, inferior in size and 
 trade only to London and Liverpool. 
 
 The same English trading enterprise that has led to the 
 development of these marts at home, has effected yet greater 
 wonders in the creation of other marts in the far East, in the 
 far South, and in the far West alike. Brief reference to a few 
 of the most notable of these will illustrate the growth of all. 
 
 Bombay, almost the oldest of them, built on a little 
 island in one of the finest harbours in the world, was occupied 
 by the Portuguese in 1532, and held by Spain till 166 1, when 
 it formed part of the Infanta Catherine's dowry, when she 
 was married to Charles II. Even then it was not acquired 
 without a struggle. Its Portuguese holders refused to admit 
 the English, and it had to be besieged with heavy loss 
 before the transfer was effected. The value of the port was 
 better known to the Portuguese on the spot than to the 
 
 s 2
 
 2/6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 English at home. " It seems strange to me," said Pep)'S in 
 1663, "that such a thing as this, which was expected to be 
 one of the best parts of the Queen's portion, should not be 
 better understood ; it being, if we had it, but a poor place, 
 and not really so as was described to our King in the draught 
 of it, but a poor little island ; whereas they made the King 
 and Lord Chancellor, and other learned men about the 
 King, believe that that and other islands which are near to 
 it were all one piece." It is to her possession of the " poor 
 place," however, more than to any other single circumstance, 
 that England owes her great Indian Empire. 
 
 At first Bombay, then containing about ten thousand 
 natives, a few Portuguese, and fewer Englishmen, was used 
 by its new owners merely as a military station, the old 
 factory at Surat being retained as the chief trading-centre. 
 Here the famous Sepoy army was begun, by the training of 
 two or three companies of native soldiers, under English 
 officers. These serving to keep order, the protection afforded 
 by them was used as an inducement to native cotton-spin- 
 ners, weavers, and traders of all sorts to immigrate from the 
 mainland. Special privileges were also offered to Bombay 
 manufacturers. By these means the native population was 
 in a few years raised from ten to sixty thousand, and, unusual 
 care being taken by the East India Company for the good 
 government of the town, it rapidly acquired importance as a 
 place of trade. Before the close of the seventeenth century 
 it was, what it has ever since continued, the chief English 
 mart in India. 
 
 Bombay was invaded by the great Aurungzebe in 1788. 
 but the threatened danger was bought off, and soon the town 
 became strong enough to send invading armies of its own 
 across the mainland. Much of its later history is mixed up 
 with the political history of the East India Company ; and 
 often political causes disturbed the progress of its commerce. 
 But the commerce has grown steadily, being promoted not
 
 Great Marts. 277 
 
 only by enterprising Englishmen, but also by the strange 
 and enterprising race of Parsees, relics ot the old fire-worship- 
 pers of Persia, who have made Bombay their special home. 
 
 The Parsees, aliens among the Hindoos and Mahometans 
 with whom they live, have clung to English power and in- 
 fluence from its first appearance in India. As zealously 
 devoted to commerce as the earliest Jews, to whose history 
 theirs has some resemblance, their intimate acquaintance 
 with India and its people, when both were strange to Eng- 
 land, made them very valuable auxiliaries in early days, and 
 their aid has been no less valuable in later times. To them 
 Bombay owes half its prosperity. It is by their enterprise, 
 mainly, that the splendid docks which the town possesses 
 have been constructed, and in ship-building and use of the 
 ships when built they show equal tact. 
 
 The growth of Bombay during the present centuiy has 
 been very rapid. In 1816 it had 161,338 inhabitants; in 
 1864 the number was 816,562. About a hundredth part 
 of these were Europeans, about a fifth Parsees, and the 
 rest Hindoos and Moslems, of various creeds and castes. 
 Bombay, aided by railway communication, is now the great 
 centre for collection and distribution of all native produce, 
 and of the wares brought from the other parts of the world. 
 From Great Britain it receives each year about ^8,000,000 
 worth of cotton and woollen goods, iron, hardware, and other 
 articles, sending back ;;^i 0,000,000 worth or more of raw 
 cotton from the interior, and other native wares, and of silk, 
 cotton, spices, and the like, brought by its merchant-ships 
 from China and elsewhere. Its exports to China alone, in 
 1862, exceeded ^6,000.000 in value; its total exports in 
 that year, conveyed in 3,052 vessels of 156,449 tons, being 
 worth ;^i8,622,462, while its imports, in 2,814 vessels, of 
 169,546 tons, were worth ^,^9,468, 965. It is a curious 
 phase of Indian commerce from the earliest times, that it 
 gives far more than it takes.
 
 278 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Calcutta, the second mart of India, differs greatly from 
 Bombay. Its trade, chiefly internal — the old use of the 
 Ganges being now supplemented by railways— is much more 
 Oriental in its character. The English quarter of the town 
 has handsome stree,ts and noble buildings, justifying its claim 
 to the title of "city of palaces." The native portion is a 
 maze of narrow dirty streets, crowded with inhabitants, of 
 whom many seem to combine in their characters all the 
 ]£uropean and all the Asiatic vices, whose only occupation 
 is in a low sort of catering for the wants of both natives and 
 foreigners. Founded in 1698, but of small account, Lord 
 Clive, building Fort William in 1757, made it a chief seat of 
 government. It had in 1866 a population of 377,924, besides 
 some 1 7 7,000 daily visitors. 
 
 A younger and more promising mart than Calcutta, or 
 even Bombay, which has grown out of English enterprise, 
 is Melbourne. Sydney, founded in 1788, had become an 
 imj)ortant trading-place, and had colonised Van Diemen's 
 Land, when, in 1802, the great Australian country now 
 known as Victoria was discovered, and a feeble effort was 
 made to plant a town on the present site of Melbourne ; but 
 that effort failed, and was forgotten for thirty years. In 
 1835, however, John Batman, a settler in Van Diemen's 
 Land, crossed the channel with his family, and quietly took 
 possession of the neglected district, and, before many months 
 were over, his sole possession of it was disputed by another 
 Van Diemen's Land colonist, John Pascoe Fawkner, who 
 also crossed over, and built a hut for himself on the banks 
 of the Yarra-Yarra. His jjetty quarrels with Batman helped 
 to direct public attention to the district, and by the summer 
 of 1836 Fawkner's hut was surrounded by 177 other adven- 
 turers, who built rude dwellings for themselves, and thus laid 
 the foundations of the city of Melbourne. Its growth was 
 rapid from the first. It had 11,738 inhabitants in 1841 ; 
 32,875 in 1846, and 77,345 in 1851, In the brief space of
 
 Great Marts. 279 
 
 sixteen years it had become a great town, larger than Sydney ; 
 and even then it had handsome streets, great warehouses, 
 and busy counting-houses, carrying on a thriving trade with 
 the sheep-farmers of the interior, and the mother country, to 
 which it sent vast supplies of native wool, in exchange for 
 the home produce required for the use of the colonists. 
 
 Then, however, a wonderful discovery occurred, the 
 results of which throw into the shade the achievements of 
 the former half-generation. Gold was found in Bathurst, 
 near Sydney, in February, 185 1. In the following September, 
 tlie Ballarat mines, within easy reach of Melbourne, were 
 opened, and these proved only the firstfruits of a marvellous 
 series of gold-findings, which eclipsed the old fables of El 
 Dorado, and caused an unrivalled stream of immigration from 
 all parts of the world to flow through the fortunate port ot 
 Melbourne. The strange and in many respects ugly story 
 of the gold-seekings that ensued need not here be detailed. 
 Their solid benefits appear in the extensive colonisation of 
 Victoria, yielding better fruit than gold, and, most of all, in 
 the growth of Melbourne. "A more striking contrast," says 
 Mr. Therry, an old Australian judge, "could not well be 
 furnished than the appearance Melbourne presented when I 
 was there in 1845, and afterwards, when I visited it in 1S56. 
 In 1845 Bourke Street contained but a few scattered cot- 
 tages, and sheep were grazed on the thick grass then growing 
 in the street. It was only known to be a street in that year 
 by a sign indicating 'This is Bourke Street' In 1856 it 
 was as crowded with fine buildings, and as thronged and 
 alive Avith the hurrying to and fro of busy people as Cheap- 
 side at the present day. Two branches of Sydney banks 
 supplied the district in 1845 with banking accommodation 
 that only occupied them with business a few hours each day; 
 in 1856 eight banks could scarcely meet the pecuniary 
 exigencies of the community. In the principal street — 
 Collins Street — there was, in 1845, but one jeweller, who
 
 i:3o The Romance of Trade. 
 
 displayed a scanty supply of second-hand watches and pinch- 
 beck brooches, in a shop similar to those in which pawn- 
 brokers display their articles of used-up jewellery in the by- 
 streets off the Strand. In 1856 might be seen in the same 
 street jewellers' shops as numerous and brilliant as those that 
 glitter in Regent Street. The harbour of Hobson's Bay, on 
 the morning on which I left it for Sydney, in 1846, contained 
 two large ships, three brigs, and a few small colonial craft. 
 In 1856 the same harbour was filled with about two hundred 
 large London and Liverpool ships, and countless other 
 vessels from America, New Zealand, and other parts. In 
 1845 there was little more than one clergyman of -each 
 religious denomination. In 1856 a numerous clergy of the 
 various denominations officiated ; the two principal, Church 
 of England and Roman Catholic, presided over by bishops 
 of their respective creeds. In short, in size, in wealth, in 
 numbers, in varied social enjoyments, the humble town I had 
 quitted in 1845 had been transformed in 1856 into a splendid 
 city, and presented such a transition from poverty to splen- 
 dour as no city of the ancient or modern world had hereto- 
 fore exhibited in a coiresponding period." In 1856, how- 
 ever, Melbourne had not 90,000 inhabitants ; now they are 
 above 160,000, and the town seems to have only begun its 
 career as a great Southern mart, capable of unlimited expan- 
 sion, to meet the growing requirements of the great Southern 
 continent, that is being peopled with Englishmen, and that 
 may, ere long, become another Europe, or another America. 
 
 No American mart has grown so rapidly; but the nearest 
 counterpart to the development of Melbourne is to be found 
 in the progress of San Francisco, the youngest mart of that 
 American commerce in which New York led the way and 
 still has pre-eminence. 
 
 New York has had nearly eight times as long a period to 
 grow in as Melbourne, and is now ten times as large. Its 
 site was discovered, in 1609, by Henry Hudson, in the course
 
 Great Marts. 281 
 
 of an expedition in searcli of the north-western passage to 
 India, upon which he was employed by the Dutch, and the 
 Dutch accordingly laid claim to the territoiy discovered, and 
 in 1614 planted upon it their little town of New Amsterdam, 
 calling the whole district New Netherlands. During sixty 
 years their colony grew, in spite of English claims to posses- 
 sion of it, which issued in quarrels lasting till 1674, when 
 the mastery of the English was formally acknowledged, and 
 the name of the town was changed from New Amsterdam 
 to New York. It had then about 2,500 inhabitants, and 
 the population became about five times as numerous in the 
 course of the ensuing century. Quarrels between the 
 Dutch and English settlers, quarrels with the neighbouring 
 colonies, quarrels with the native Indians, and quarrels with 
 the French Canadians, however, retarded its progress, and 
 until the War of Independence the town had an uneasy 
 career. 
 
 Its first trade was with the Indians, for furs, while most 
 of the colonists became farmers, and made good use of the 
 fertile lands owned by them. " The bolting of flour and 
 baking of bread," it was said in 1692, "hath been and is 
 the chief support of the trade and traffic of this city, and 
 maintenance of its inhabitants of all degrees." Therefrom 
 arose more trade. As early as 1727 it was a ground of com- 
 plaint that New York supplied Canada almost entirely with 
 wheat and other articles of food, instead of leaving the traffic 
 in the hands of the French. To Barbadoes and the other 
 flourishing West Indian Islands, also, it sent its breadstuff's, 
 receiving in exchange an abundance of rum and sugar, for 
 the use of its own people and of the natives. The annals 
 of the eighteenth century abound in curious contro\ersies 
 among English politicians concerning their trade complica- 
 tions, opposed, as they were, to the short-sighted views that 
 then prevailed concerning the balance of trade, and other 
 myths now happily obsolete. "There is yearly imported
 
 282 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 into New York," it was said in 1732, " a very large (juantity 
 of the woollen manufactures of this kingdom, for their cloth- 
 ing, which they would be rendered incapable to pay for, and 
 would be reduced to the necessity of making for themselves, 
 if they were prohibited from receiving from the foreign sugar- 
 colonies the money, rum, sugar, molasses, and cotton-wool 
 which they at present take, in return for provisions, horses, 
 and lumber, the produce of that province and of New 
 Jersey." New York not having much cloth-making of its 
 own, and therefore proving a good customer in the Englisli 
 market, and also having no young iron manufactures to enter 
 into competition with the home trades, was less restrained 
 in its commerce with other colonies than some of the neigh- 
 bouring ports ; but the obstacles thrown in its way by 
 narrow-minded statesmen at home were considerable, and it 
 had good reason for joining in the great war of free trade by 
 which the independence of the United States was brought 
 about. English folly necessitated that war, and New York, 
 at any rate, lost nothing by its issue. 
 
 Before the war began. New York, trading chiefly in 
 English-built and English-owned ships, shared with Phila- 
 delphia and Boston, which in the early times had surpassed 
 it as a trading-town, extensive traffic with the sugar islands 
 of the West Indies, sending to them flour, biscuits, fish, 
 timber, and other articles of native produce, and a smaller 
 traffic with British North America, just then vastly augmented 
 by the addition of Canada. Much American flour, also, was 
 brought to England, and some was sent to Portugal, Spain, 
 Italy, and even to the Levant. But England had sought to 
 check all trade that did not commend itself to the selfish 
 views of the moment, and her powers of checking it were 
 very great indeed. " She has cut off" our trade with all the 
 world," was the just complaint of the " Declaration of Rights." 
 The English colonists, beginning to trade with all the world, 
 resolved that they would submit to no restraint. The
 
 Great Marts. a 03 
 
 citizens of New York were among the first to take part in 
 the rebelhon, and, finding that by that step they had endan- 
 gered all the commercial vitality they then possessed, and 
 that all their trade was laid under embargo by the English, 
 they entered heartily into the work until it was completed, 
 and England, compelled to acknowledge the freedom of the 
 United States, was forced to tolerate its commerce as that of 
 an independent nation. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution, the trade of New York 
 with England was surpassed by that of Philadelphia and 
 Boston, and all these three northern ports together had less 
 trade with the mother country than was possessed by Caro- 
 lina, and only about half as much as that of Virginia and 
 Maryland. New York had then much larger trade than 
 many of its rivals with other parts, but it was only an inferior 
 mart. A change, however, began before the close of the 
 eighteenth century. In 1797, for the first time, it took pre- 
 cedence of all other ports, and since then its advance upon 
 them has been rapid. The excellence of its harbour gave 
 it an advantage over the New England and Pennsylvanian 
 marts ; the freedom of its institutions gave it a yet greater 
 advantage over the marts of the slave states. AVith less 
 local patriotism than any of them, it became a common 
 centre for all the trade of the new empire. \Miile the other 
 ports sent abroad the special produce of their neighbour- 
 hoods, and brought back the special commodities that were 
 most accessible in the districts visited by their ships, they all 
 looked to New York to provide them with the other require- 
 ments of commerce. The leading mercantile houses in every 
 town of the Union had their branches in New York, and 
 very often these branches soon became the chief establish- 
 ments, using their parents as mere agencies. Thus New York 
 made progress, and earned its title of " the empire city." 
 
 The rapidity of its growth is shown by the statistics of 
 its population. In 1697 it had 4,302 inhabitants. The
 
 ?.S^ The Romance of Trade. 
 
 number had risen in 1756 to 10,381, in 1790 to 31,131, and 
 in 1820, when it was the largest city in the Union, to 
 123,706. In T850 it amounted to 575,507, and in i860 to 
 805,657, besides 266,661 in its great suburb of Brooklyn. 
 The population of city and suburb cannot now be less than 
 1,500,000. 
 
 New York is now inferior to London alone as a great 
 emporium of trade ; and its very monotony of progress • 
 renders its history unromantic. Its sometime chief rival, 
 New Orleans, has had a more chequered career. 
 
 New Orleans was founded on the Mississippi in 17 18, 
 by the French, as the capital of their colony of Louisiana. 
 When Charlevoix visited it in 1722, it consisted, as he says, 
 of " a hundred cabins, disposed with little regularity, a large 
 wooden warehouse, two or three dwellings that would be 
 no ornament to a French village, and the half of a sorry 
 storehouse, which they were pleased to lend to the Lord, 
 but of which He had scarcely taken possession when it was 
 proposed to turn Him out to lodge under a tent." There 
 was soon plenty of provision made for the teaching of 
 religion, but not. much heed was paid to commerce, or the 
 wonderful faciUties provided for it by the Mississippi, until 
 New Orleans passed out of the hands of the French. 
 Jesuits, priests, and Ursuline nuns were its most enter- 
 prising inhabitants. France, proposing to take possession 
 of the whole American continent, failed in permanently 
 holding any part of it. While Canada was being seized by 
 England, Louisiana had to be ceded to Spain, and soon 
 after its restoration the French were glad, in 1803, to sell 
 the vast and sparsely-peopled territory to the United 
 States. 
 
 New Orleans then contained about 8,000 inhabitants. 
 That number was more than doubled by 18 10. In 1830 
 it amounted to 46,310, in 1S50 to 126,375, and in i860 to 
 163,823.
 
 Great Marts. 285 
 
 For a time, New Orleans threatened to outstrip New 
 York in the race for wealth. It soon surpassed Charleston, 
 as a mart for the cotton and tobacco of the Southern States. 
 The Central States and western territories were then begin- 
 ning to be colonised, and the Mississippi and its tributaries 
 offered twenty thousand miles of navigable watercourse, 
 running in and out of a vast area of a million square miles, 
 for conveyance of their produce to New Orleans, and thence, 
 out into the Atlantic. New York, by help of canals, and, 
 more recently, of railways, has absorbed mAich of this com- 
 merce. The merchants of New Orleans strove heartily to 
 preserve it in its natural channel, and, with this end, made 
 river navigation a scientific study. In 18 10 the voyage 
 from St. Louis to New Orleans, a distance of 1,500 miles, 
 occupied a hundred and twenty days of tedious travelling 
 in flat boats, pushed along by boatmen, who thrust their 
 poles into the mud, and so, by walking aft, enabled the 
 rickety craft to crawl and hobble down the river. In 181 5 
 the first steamer plied on the Mississippi, and completed 
 the voyage in twenty-five days. In i860 it occupied only 
 three days. The dangers of these flying steamers are 
 famous, but American travellers and traders have been 
 willing to run the risk, and New Orleans has received an 
 immense accession of commerce, steamers giving speed, 
 and an improvement on the old flat boats giving cheap- 
 ness of transit. 
 
 The position of New Orleans is itself a wonder. Built 
 on a swamp, from two to four feet below the level of the 
 sea and river at high tide — causing it, till recent sanitary 
 improvements were made, to be grievously plagued with 
 yellow fever — it has to be protected by a high rampart, 
 one part of which, known as the Levee, serves as a con- 
 venient landing-place. " The Levee of New Orleans," it 
 was said, about thirty-five years ago, "is one continued 
 quay, four miles in extent, and of an average breadth of
 
 286 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 loo feet. It is fifteen feet above high water mark, and six 
 feet above the level of the city, to which it is graduated by 
 an easy descent, and, like the river it margins, it Isolds a 
 serpentine course. It is constructed of deposit swept from 
 the north by the Mississippi ; and the deposit is so great, 
 and the consequent formation of land so rapid, immediately 
 in front of that portion of the quay which is most used for 
 the purposes of commerce, that it has, within a few years, 
 become necessary to build piled wharves, jutting out from 
 50 to 100 feet into the riv^er." 
 
 The progress of this Southern mart during fifty years 
 was more rapid even than that of New York. In 181 7 it 
 collected for exportation 65,000 bales of cotton and 
 28,000 hogsheads of tobacco, besides other produce of all 
 sorts. In 1848 its cotton exports amounted to 1,201,897 
 bales, and its tobacco to 60,364 hogsheads, and the increase 
 of trade in many other important articles, especially bread- 
 stuffs, had been very much greater. As early as 1822 its 
 citizens began to anticipate the time when the town would 
 be without a rival in the Old World or the New. " New 
 Orleans alone," it was then said, " will be for ever, as it is 
 now, the mighty mart of the merchandise and produce 
 brought from more than a thousand rivers. With Boston, 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore on the left, Mexico 
 on the right, Havannah in front, and the immense valley of 
 the Mississippi in the rear, no such position for the accu- 
 mulation and perpetuity of wealth and power ever existed. 
 Unless prevented by some great accident in human affairs, 
 this rapidly-increasing city will, in no very distant time, 
 leave the emporia of the Eastern World far behind." 
 
 The " great accident in human affairs " occurred in 
 186 1. The great Southern Rebellion, partly instigated for 
 the aggrandisement of New Orleans, led to its downfall. 
 In i860 the port cleared 1,293 vessels, with a total burthen 
 of 894,353 tons. In 1 86 1 it cleared 130 vessels, with a
 
 Great Marts. 287 
 
 total burthen of 76,935 tons; and that sudden decimation 
 has been followed by no sudden recovery. New Orleans 
 may once more become a thriving port, but its hope of 
 supremacy can never be realised. New York has now 
 found, in railway communication, a better access to the West 
 than even the Mississippi could furnish to New Orleans. 
 
 And in the West is growing up a mart which, though it 
 can never stand alone, promises ere long to surpass even 
 New York as a great American mart. In 1796 St. Louis 
 had 891 inhabitants, and in TS30 no more than 5,852. 
 In 1850 its population amounted to 77,860; it was 160,773 
 in i860 ; and the last ten years have probably again more 
 than doubled the number. A manufacturing town itself, 
 St. Louis is in the centre of manufacturing districts, yet in 
 their infancy, but possessed of wonderful resources for future 
 development ; yet more a mercantile town, it is the nucleus 
 of a hundred markets, lately born or still to be started. 
 Excellently placed on the Mississippi, and near to the 
 Missouri and the Ohio, it has unrivalled facilities for inland 
 water communication, and the Great Pacific Railway has 
 now brought it within easy reach of both New York and 
 San Francisco — the gates of the two great oceans, which, 
 between them, wash the shores of all the civilised world. 
 
 San Francisco owes its progress, yet more than Mel- 
 bourne, to gold discoveries. There is a romantic episode 
 in its early history. Sir Francis Drake, seeking for Spanish 
 booty in the course of his famous voyage round the work'>, 
 visited its harbour in 1579, and there spent five weeks, 
 repairing his ship and holding friendly intercourse with the 
 natives. After two days of cautious exchanging of presents 
 and other tokens of mutual kindliness, the English, who 
 were in huts, with their ship on dry land, saw, with some 
 fear, that the Indians were gathering in the distance in large 
 numbers. " Presently," says the old chronicler of the 
 voyage, '' came down from the countiy a great multituae,
 
 2?8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 and, among them, a man of goodly statiue and 
 comely personage, who was the king, accompanied 
 by many tall and warlike men. Before his majesty 
 advanced, two ambassadors presented themselves to 
 the general, to announce his approach, and continued 
 speaking for about an hour, at the end of which the 
 king, making as princely a show as he possibly could, with 
 all his train came forward, in the course of which they cried 
 continually, after a singing manner, with a lusty courage. 
 As they drew nearer and nearer unto us, so did they more 
 and more strive to behave themselves ■with a certain come- 
 liness and gravity in all their actions." The " comeHness 
 and gravity " were of a curious sort. The men sang and 
 danced as they approached ; the women " tore themselves 
 till the face, breasts, and other parts were bespattered with 
 blood." As they bore no arms, save a few quaintly- 
 ornamented clubs hanging from the necks of the chiet 
 persons, Drake made no opposition to their coming. 
 " Then," proceeds the chronicler, " they made signs to our 
 general to have him sit down ; to whom both the king and 
 divers others made several orations, or rather, indeed, if we 
 understood them, supplications, that he would take the 
 province and kingdom into his hand, and become their king 
 and patron, making signs that they would resign unto him 
 their right and title in the whole land, and become his 
 vassals. That they might make us, indeed, believe that it 
 was their true intent and meaning, the king himself, with 
 great reverence, joyfully singing a song, set the crown upon 
 his head, offering unto him many things, honoured him with 
 the name of hioh — or ' king.' They added thereto, as it 
 might seem, a song and dance of triumph, because they 
 were not only visited of the gods, for so they still judged us 
 to be, but that the great and chief god was now become 
 their god, their king, and patron, and themselves were 
 become the only happy and blessed people in the world,
 
 Great AT arts. 289 
 
 which thing our general thought not meet to reject, because 
 he knew not what honour and profit it might be to our 
 country. Wherefore, in the name and to the use of her 
 Majesty, he took the sceptre, crown, and dignity of the said 
 country in his hands." 
 
 To the district of which he was thus crowned king 
 Drake gave the name of New Albion. He little thought 
 that in its precincts, hidden only by a thin coating of earth, 
 was Californian gold, but of his possessions no use was 
 made by him or his countrymen during two centuries and a 
 half. 
 
 San Francisco took its name from the mission of San 
 Francisco de Assissi, founded in 1776 by two monks, who 
 here established a missionary settlement, which flourished 
 for about ninety years. In 1834 the religious supremacy 
 gave way to the civil power, and from that time the town 
 slowly grew. In 1847, however, it contained only a few 
 rude cabins, and the entire population numbered only 459. 
 Next year all was changed. In the spring gold was dis- 
 covered in California, and San Francisco was altogether 
 deserted for a few months. In the autumn its inhabitants 
 returned, laden with treasure, and accompanied by thousands 
 of other gold-finders and their satellites, who suddenly con- 
 verted the little town into a busy mart. Gold being its 
 first staple, it now deals extensively in everything that gold 
 can buy. In i860 it had 56,802 inhabitants. In the last 
 ten years the population has doubled or trebled. 
 
 Very different from the sudden growth of new marts, like 
 San Francisco, though greatly enriched by them and the 
 new commerce they have created in recent times, is the 
 slow growth of the old European marts. In illustration of 
 the progress of these trading-towns, it wU suffice, after what 
 has been said concerning English ports, to refer briefly to 
 the two of most importance in France — Marseilles and 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 T
 
 290 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Marseilles is almost the oldest mart in Christendom. 
 Founded by a Greek colony, six hundred years before the 
 Christian era, it emerged from the obscurity into which it had 
 fallen during the dark ages, and became a vigorous rival of 
 Venice and Genoa in the times of their greatness. The 
 exploits of Jacques Coeur in the fifteenth century have 
 been already noticed. From his time till the present day 
 it has continued to be the chief mart of France, and has 
 grown with its growth. Its prosperity in the eighteenth 
 century may be understood from the fact that 1,264 vessels 
 entered its harbour in 1753. In 1821 it had 101,217 
 inhabitants. That number was doubled in the ensuing 
 thirty years, and in 1866 the population amounted to 
 300,131. In 1864, 9,047 vessels, with an aggregate burthen 
 of 1,667,419 tons, entered the port, and 8,893, '^^^ 15657,831 
 tons in all, quitted it. Of this shipping one-sixteenth 
 belonged to Marseilles itself, and nearly two-thirds to the 
 rest of France. Of the remaining third, one-sixth was 
 British, another sixth Spanish, a third Italian, and the rest 
 chiefly Austrian. Raw silk is the staple import of Marseilles, 
 but it also receives large supplies of cotton, coffee, sugar, 
 and coals. There are numerous manufactories in the town 
 and its neighbourhood, and the exports comprise, besides 
 silk goods, every variety of French produce. 
 
 Bordeaux, with a population of 92,375 in 1820, and of 
 about 190,000 in 1865, is a manufacturing town, as well as a 
 mart for all sorts of articles ; but its staple trade has, from 
 the earliest times, been in wine. It began to be famous as 
 a port belonging, with the rest of Guienne and Aquitaine, to 
 the English Crown, and to that circumstance was due the 
 favour with which its merchants were regarded by mediaeval 
 England, and, in part, the importance of its later commerce 
 with this country. The entire annual produce of the vine- 
 yards of France averages about 856,000,000 gallons, and of 
 this some 25,000,000 gallons, or about half of the whole
 
 Great Marts. 291 
 
 quantity exported from the country, passes out of Bordeaux. 
 Its merchants collect, not only the produce of the neigh- 
 bourhood, but large supplies from the Champagne and other 
 districts, for shipment to England, the United States, and 
 other countries. 
 
 T 2
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MANIAS AND PANICS. 
 
 " The Madness of the Multitude" and its Variations — The Tulip Mania — 
 Manias of Discovery— The Darien Project — The Mississippi Scheme — 
 The Origin and Progress of English Stock-jobbing— The South Sea 
 Company and the South Sea Bubble — Contemporary Bubbles — Later 
 Developments of Stock-jobbing — Famous Stock-jobbers— Nathan 
 Meyer Rothschild and his Exploits — The Joint-stock Company Mania 
 and Panic of 1825-6 — The Railway Mania and Panic of 1845-1847 — 
 The Panics of 1857 and 1866. % 
 
 When the South Sea Bubble had been blown to its highest 
 and to its flimsiest hugeness, Sir Isaac Newton was asked what 
 would be the end of it. "I can calculate," he answered, 
 " the motions of erratic stars, but not the madness of the 
 multitude." The madness of the multitude has been stirred 
 up in strange ways, and has taken simnge courses in each 
 age of the world, and in every line of thought and action ; 
 and commercial follies are inferior only to religious follies in 
 the violence of their working, and in the mischiefs that they 
 have occasioned. Their issues, however, have not been 
 always mischievous. Just as the blind seekings of the old 
 alchemists after the philoso})her's stone, and the power of 
 turning all meaner metals into gold, conduced greatly to the 
 development of modern science, so many famous manias, 
 the direct consequences of which have been only panics and 
 ruin to thousands, have, indirectly, been of great value, not 
 only as warnings to posterity, but in actually opening up 
 new and very helpful paths of trade. 
 
 One of the first great manias of modern times was one 
 of the most foolish. In the middle of the sixteenth centuiy, 
 Counsellor Herwart, of Augsburg, a lover of rare plants, re-
 
 Manias and Panics. 293 
 
 ceived from Constantinople, where they had for a long time 
 been cultivated, a present of tulips. Conrad Gesner saw 
 them in bloom in 1539, and his praises, circulated through- 
 out Europe, quickly rendered the flower very popular every- 
 where, but most of all in Holland. It does not seem to 
 have been brought to England till 1600, and the fashion of 
 tulip-gromng never reached such .a pitch in this country as 
 on the Continent, though its virtues were sung by other poets 
 as well as by Cowley in these lines : — 
 
 " The tulip next appeared, all over gay, 
 But wanton, full of pride, and full of play ; 
 The world can't show a dye but here has place ; 
 Nay, by new mixtures, she can change her face. 
 Purple and gold are both beneath her care ; 
 The richest needlework she loves to wear ; 
 Her only study is to please the eye. 
 And to outshine the rest in finery." 
 
 It was the unusual susceptibility of the tulip to variega- 
 tions in colour, and delicacy of petals resulting from careful 
 cultivation, that occasioned its great value in the eyes of 
 curiosity-lovers in and out of Holland in the seventeenth 
 century. For three-quarters of a century the love grew, and 
 gardeners found it profitable to train and alter the plant 
 until it was brought to a sickly beauty, all the more attrac- 
 tive to their customers because of the extreme care needed 
 for keeping the exotic alive ; and in 1634 the artificial taste 
 burst out into a mania. In that year the whole Dutch nation 
 went mad about tulips. All ordinary trades were neglected, 
 and rich and poor, young and old, alike devoted themselves 
 to tulip-growing and tulip-selling. The price of bulbs rose 
 every day, and those most in value were sold for enormous 
 sums. In 1635 a good "Viceroy" was worth ^^300, an 
 " Admiral Lief ken " was worth more than ^^400, and a "Sem- 
 per Augustus" could hardly be bought for ;^55o. Of that 
 last variety there were, early in 1636, only two good bulbs to 
 be found in Holland. One, in Amsterdam, was sold for ^450
 
 294 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 a new carriage, two grey horses, and a set of harness. Tlie 
 other, owned by a lucky dealer in Haarlem, was exchanged 
 for the fee-simple of twelve acres of building-ground. For 
 one " Viceroy" bulb, at about the same time, were bartered 
 two lasts of wheat, four lasts of rye, four fat oxen, eight fat 
 swine, twelve fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four tuns of 
 beer, two tons of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese, a 
 bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver drinking-cup, the value of 
 the whole being ^240. We are told, among many like 
 stories, of a Dutch merchant, to Avhom some good news was 
 brought by a sailor, and who rewarded him with the present 
 of a fine red-herring for his breakfast. On his way out of 
 the counting-house, the sailor saw what he thought was an 
 onion lying on a table, and, being fond of onions with his 
 herrings, he quietly put it in his pocket. An hour or two 
 afterwards he was finishing his meal, when the merchant and 
 a whole bevy of clerks rush out to accuse and convict him 
 of the theft, which they had just discovered. He had stolen 
 and eaten, not an onion, but a valuable bulb, worth 
 nearly ^300, and the price of which, as the merchant said, 
 " might have sumptuously feasted the Prince of Orange and 
 the whole court of the Stadtholder ;" and he had leisure for 
 digesting it during several months' imprisonment with which 
 his innocent felony was punished. 
 
 For more than a year the tulip-mania Avas at its height. 
 Speculations in bulbs engrossed all the attention of moneyed 
 men in the exchanges of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haarlem, 
 Leyden, and every other town in Holland. In each the 
 tulip-notary was, for the time, a more important man than 
 the chief magistrate. The infection spread to other coun- 
 tries, and foreigners flocked to the Dutch marts to buy tulips 
 for sale in their own lands ; and the money brought by them 
 and by buyers from country districts to Amsterdam and the 
 large towns encouraged the idle belief that the tulip trade 
 would be of more permanent profit to the country than trafiic
 
 Manias and Panics. 295 
 
 with the East Indies, or any other branch of commerce in. 
 which the Dutch had rendered themselves famous. But the 
 necessary signal soon came. Prices rose constantly till near 
 the end of 1636, when a fall began. Speculators, finding 
 that they were losing money by purchases they had already 
 made, refused to buy more, and thus still further reduced the 
 market value. A panic ensued, which brought thousands of 
 rich persons to beggary, and left a itvf fortunate adventurers 
 in the possession of vast wealth. Less injury was done by 
 this than by many other memorable manias ; but years of 
 litigation among tulip buyers and sellers ensued, and there 
 was a long stagnation of the more legitimate trade of the 
 country. 
 
 England, at that time too busy with its political troubles, 
 and its preparations for civil war and the overthrow of 
 Charles I., took but little part in the tulip-mania, and lost 
 nothing by the tulip-panic. The high value set upon tulips 
 in consequence of this whim, however, has been enduring in 
 this country. In iSoo their average price was fifteen guineas 
 apiece, and in 1835 a "Miss Fanny Kemble" bulb was sold 
 in London by public auction for ;^75. In Holland the 
 mania for tulip-growing is not dead yet. 
 
 Very different from the tulip folly was a series of manias 
 that excited Europe, and spread far beyond European limits, 
 in the fifteenth and following centuries. The earliest of 
 these was, in some measure, connected with the projects of 
 the old alchemists. While mistaken men of science sought 
 in their closets to find out the philosopher's stone, and the 
 secret of transmuting useless ores to gold, men of action 
 were panting to discover the islands of perpetual youth and 
 the lands of inexliaustible wealth, that were supposed to 
 exist somewhere in undiscovered quarters of the world. The 
 exaggerated stories of Marco Polo and other travellers con- 
 cerning the countries they had visited passed from mouth to 
 ear with ever fresh exaggerations, until, shortly before the
 
 296 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 time of Columbus, the belief was prevalent that in the far 
 East, near the unknown site of the Garden of Paradise, was 
 a region of boundless wealth and boundless happiness. A 
 score of different fables, based on traditions handed down 
 from ancient times, and, to some extent, justified by the 
 treasures obtained by the Venetian merchants from Oriental 
 traders, found credence in and before the fifteenth century, 
 and proved of notable benefit to the world, by furnishing 
 supporters to more sober adventurers, like Prince Henry of 
 Portugal and Christopher Columbus. They helped to make 
 possible the discovery of America, and, as soon as America 
 was discovered, they took bolder shape, and proved of 
 further benefit by encouraging its exploration and colonisa- 
 tion. It was the quest of the fountain of life that led to 
 the conquest of Florida. It was the quest of El Dorado, 
 the Golden City of Manoa, the Golden Lake of Parina, and 
 kindred golden myths, that led to the conquest of Peru, 
 Guiana, and all the intermediate northern parts of South 
 America. 
 
 These and others like them were manias which would 
 have been altogether beneficial, had the men who devoted 
 their lives to them been honest and generous enough to 
 make good use of their successes, seeing that, when the 
 fables that produced them were exploded, facts better than 
 any fables were brought to light. Some kindred manias, 
 however, were less fortunate in their issues. 
 
 One of the first and most notable of these was the Darien 
 project, by which Scotland was nearly ruined in the closing 
 years of the seventeenth century. Its author was William 
 Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, who urged 
 upon both James II. and William III. the expediency of 
 colonising the Isthmus of Darien, and using it as " the key 
 of the Indies and door of the world." Paterson, ignorant of 
 the inhospitable nature of this tract of land, but attracted by 
 its wonderful fitness, had other things been propitious, for a
 
 Manias and Panics. 297 
 
 great emporium of trade between Europe and Asia, advo- 
 cated the project again and again, before it was taken up, in 
 1695, by the Scots. " Being an isthmus, and seated between 
 the two vast oceans of the universe," he said, *' it is furnished 
 on each side with excellent harbours, between the principal 
 of which lie the more easy and convenient passes between 
 the one and the other sea. These ports and passes, being 
 possessed and fortified, may be easily secured and defended 
 against any force, not only there, but that can possibly be 
 found in those places, which are not only the most convenient 
 doors and inlets into, but likewise the readiest and nearest 
 means of gaining, and afterwards for ever keeping the com- 
 mand of, the spacious South Sea, which, as it is the greatest, 
 so it is by far the richest, side of the world. These ports so 
 settled, with passes open, through them will flow at least two- 
 thirds of what both Indies yield to Christendom. The time 
 and expense of the voyage to China, Japan, and the richest 
 part of the East Indies, will be lessened more than half, and 
 the consumption of European commodities soon be more 
 than doubled, and afterwards yearly increased." 
 
 No commercial speculation ever entered upon was 
 worthier in design or more honestly propounded, and, as far 
 as lay in his power, worked through by its author, than this 
 Darien project, but its history was painfully disastrous. 
 
 Paterson erred in thinking that the Isthmus of Darien 
 was, "in healthfulness and fruitfulness," a fit place for an 
 army of raw colonists to suddenly take possession of and 
 make their home without careful preparation and pioneering. 
 He erred, also, in trusting the large enterprise which he 
 projected to a nation so poor as Scotland was two centuries 
 ago. That, indeed, he did not at all intend. His first and 
 constant idea was to employ upon it an abundant store of 
 English capital, and when, in 1695, his Scottish friends 
 proposed to make Edinburgh the headquarters of the project, 
 he expected that more than half the funds to be collected
 
 29S The Romance of Trade. 
 
 would come from wealthy English speculators. English 
 jealousy of Scotland, however, as well as the special jealousy 
 with which the East India Company, the Levant Company, 
 and other trading associations, regarded the establishment 
 of a powerful rival, caused his anticipations to fail. As soon 
 as the Scottish African and Indian Company, as it was 
 styled, took shape in Edinburgh, a hue-and-cry was raised 
 against it in London. King William III. and some of his 
 shrewdest advisers, men like Lord Halifax and John Locke, 
 approved of it; but it was fiercely denounced in Parliament, 
 as a project wildly fanatical in itself, and certain to bring 
 about war with Spain, by its tampering with the Spanish 
 monopoly of trade with Central America. The impeach- 
 ment of Paterson and his chief fellow-workers was even 
 proposed in the House of Commons, and though this was 
 soon abandoned, every sort of influence was used to bring 
 the men and their arguments into discredit. These so well 
 succeeded that whereas more than ^300,000 had, in the 
 course of a few days, been promised by wealthy Londoners, 
 these promises were speedily recalled, and, after long effort, 
 hardly a tenth of that sum was actually raised in England. 
 The whole burthen of the project fell upon Scotland, and 
 then more than eighteen months had to be spent in preach- 
 ing up the scheme among Scotchmen, before a capital of 
 ;^4oo,ooo could be collected. Paterson himself subscribed 
 ;;^3,ooo, and a crowd of noblemen and merchants made 
 large contributions ; but most of the shares were taken by 
 humbler adventurers, who found it hard to scrape together 
 a few pounds, and to whom loss of their money would be 
 ruin. The mania ran through Scotland, however, and by 
 the middle of 1697 much of the available wealth of the 
 country was in the hands of the African and Indian 
 Company. 
 
 Then difficulties arose about building ships and collect- 
 ing stores, for which Leith, at that time a very poor port, 
 
 I
 
 Manias and Panics. 299 
 
 though the best in Scotland, offered few facihties. Paterson 
 went to Amsterdam and Hamburg to buy articles that could 
 not be obtained in Edinburgh, and to pay for them he 
 entrusted a London merchant \vith ;^25,ooo. The Lon- 
 don merchant proved dishonest, and defrauded the Com- 
 pany of about ;^8,ooo before his peculations were dis- 
 covered. That loss was more than the Company could 
 bear ; but, through Paterson's excess of honesty, it led to 
 the ruin of the whole project. The fraudulent agent having 
 been appointed by him, he rashly took upon himself the 
 responsibility of the whole misfortune, and declared himself 
 indebted to the Company for all the ;^8,ooo that had been 
 stolen. In part payment thereof, he gave up his ;^3,ooo 
 share, and being unable to pay the rest, he offered the 
 directors "either to dismiss him out of the Company's 
 service, allowing him time to recover some fortune or em- 
 ployment, and then, as he became able, he would pay by 
 degrees ; or to retain him in their service, and allow him, out 
 of the Company's free profits, some reasonable considera- 
 tion for his pains, charges, and losses in promoting the 
 same, out of which allowance he doubted not, in a few years, 
 to discharge the balance." The latter alternative was 
 chosen ; but the directors of the Company meanly and 
 unwisely degraded him from his natural position as leader 
 of tlie project, and retained him in a subordinate capacity. 
 
 Thereby the Darien scheme was ruined. After long 
 delays, a party of twelve hundred adventurers quitted Leith 
 in July, 1698, and another party followed in August, 1699. 
 Paterson went with the first company, not as its general, 
 but as an adviser, whose advice was not to be taken. With 
 notable folly, the direction of the voyage, the planting of the 
 colony, and the business to be done afterwards were in- 
 trusted to seven incompetent councillors, with equal powers. 
 Paterson complained of this arrangement at starting, and 
 complained of the bad provisions with which the party were
 
 300 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 supplied, but he was overruled, both then and all through 
 the tragic history of the expedition. Painful, by reason of its 
 monotony of sadness is his record of the enterpiise, in which 
 nothing was done as he wished and had purposed. " During 
 the voyage," he says, " our marine chancellors did not only 
 take all upon them, but likewise browbeat and discouraged 
 everybody else. Yet we had patience, hoping things would 
 mend when we came ashore. But we found ourselves mis- 
 taken ; for though our masters at sea had sufficiently taught 
 us that we fresh-water men knew nothing of their salt-water 
 business, yet, when at land, they were so far from letting us, 
 turn the chase, that they took upon them to know everything! 
 better than we. I must confess, it troubled me exceedingly 
 to see our affairs thus turmoiled and disordered by tempers 
 and dispositions as boisterous and turbulent as the elements 
 they are used to struggle with, which are at least as mis- 
 chievous masters as ever they can be useful servants." The 
 ignorant leaders of the expedition insisted upon landing on 
 what Paterson called "a mere morass, neither fit to be forti- 
 fied nor planted, nor, indeed, for the men to lie upon;" the 
 absurd reason given for this being that thereby labour would 
 be saved in supplying the colonists with water. After two 
 months had been wasted, and many men had been weakened, 
 if not killed, by their unhealthy situation, the colony was 
 transferred to another part of the isthmus. Already, how- 
 ever, most of the provisions brought from Scotland had been 
 eaten or lost. The colonists were in no condition to sow 
 and reap for themselves. All their time was spent in build- 
 ing houses and laying out grounds, negotiating with the 
 native Indians, and protecting themselves from the jealous 
 treatment of the Spanish settlers in the neighbourhood. 
 Many died of starvation, many others fell victims to the 
 fevers of the tropics. At length all the survivors, a bare 
 eighth of the twelve hundred that had gone out, expecting to 
 found a more successful trading-colony than had yet been
 
 Max/ AS AND Panics. 301 
 
 established, painfully toiled home again, in the autumn of 
 1699. They had hardly gone when the second party 
 arrived ; but the new-comers, seeing the ill-success of their 
 predecessors, wisely abstained from making much effort at 
 continuing the exploit. Attacked by Spanish war-ships, 
 they speedily capitulated, and made their way back to 
 Scotland. Thus ended Paterson's great Darien scheme 
 
 At home the troubles were long felt. Scottish trading 
 energy seemed to have spent itself upon this luckless project, 
 and the rich found themselves poor, and the poor yet 
 poorer, by reason of the loss of all the capital they had 
 embarked, and the restraining of all fresh enterprise during 
 the next few years. The union between England and 
 Scotland, which Paterson greatly helped to bring about, and 
 in which he made ample atonement for the mischiefs which 
 he had innocently occasioned, soon remedied the evil, and 
 the northern country, now one in commercial as well as in 
 political interests with the southern country, quickly re- 
 covered its equilibrium, and entered on a new career of 
 prosperity. 
 
 More lasting depression followed upon a yet greater 
 mania, akin to the Darien project in its ostensible purposes, 
 though in nothing else, which soon afterwards arose in 
 France. Its author, a countryman, and, perhaps, at one 
 time an acquaintance, of Paterson's, was the celebrated John 
 Law. 
 
 Law, born in 167 1, was the son of a wealthy goldsmith 
 in Edinburgh, who died in 168S. The young man came to 
 London, took high rank among its fops and gallants, spent 
 all his fortune, and in 1697 killed an antagonist in a duel. 
 Being imprisoned for that offence, he contrived to escape, 
 and the next twenty years were passed by him as a gambling 
 adventurer in Scotland, Flanders, Holland, Germany, 
 Hungary, and France. As early as 1705 we find him 
 advancing the false monetary system for which he was after-
 
 30 2 The Romance of Tirade, 
 
 wards notorious. In that year he addressed to the people 
 of Edinburgh " two overtures for supplying the present 
 scarcity of coin and improving trade, and for clearing the 
 debts due by the Government to the army and civil list, by 
 issuing paper-money." But the cautious Scots were in no 
 mood to listen to him, and they were altogether deterred by 
 two able pamphlets, in which Paterson showed the mischief 
 of that and all other "imaginary projects," and maintained 
 that there could be no national credit without solid cash, 
 and no national progress without persevering industry. 
 Law was as unsuccessful in the like arguments which he 
 offered to Louis XIV. and other foreign princes, until the 
 death of Louis, and the appointment of the foolish Duke of 
 Orleans as Regent of France, in 17 15, paved the way to his 
 better fortune. 
 
 France was then on the verge of bankruptcy. Mis- 
 government had ruined the credit of the State, and the 
 frauds of men in office, and their allies in the trading com- 
 munity, had crippled all the resources of the country, and 
 brought its commerce almost to a standstill. By depre- 
 ciating the coinage, and by violent raids upon some great 
 delinquents, who gladly paid high bribes in order that they 
 might escape punishment, the Regent attempted to tide over 
 the difficulty ; but after a few months affairs were in a worse 
 state than ever. Then Law appeared at Court, and, with a 
 mixture of truth and folly, urged that a metallic currency 
 was by itself quite inadequate to the commercial needs of 
 France, and proposed that a national bank should be set up, 
 which should collect and distribute the royal revenues, and 
 issue paper-money on their security, and on that of the public 
 lands. His proposals were readily listened to, and, though they 
 were not altogether adopted, he was allowed, in May, 1 7 16, to 
 establish a bank with a capital of 6,000,000 livres, one-fourth 
 in specie, the rest in State-paper, and to issue notes, payable 
 on demand, which were to be accepted in payment of taxes,
 
 Manias and Panics. 303 
 
 and to have full currency throughout the kingdom. Law's 
 bank succeeded so well that in the course of a year his notes 
 were worth fifteen per cent, more than gold and silver money, 
 which was liable to depreciation at the whim of the Crown. 
 The favour which he won thereby with statesmen, courtiers, 
 and common folk made easy the adoption of a new project, 
 the Mississippi scheme, which he now devised. 
 
 While the English colonists were making sure their posi- 
 tion on the eastern coast-line of North America, above and 
 below New York, the French, having conquered Canada, 
 gradually extended their power in the interior, pushed south- 
 wards along the Mississippi till they reached its mouth, and 
 then founded New Orleans. From the vast territory thus 
 acquired, and vaguely described as Louisiana, they expected 
 great benefits ; and their national vanity was quickened by 
 the hope that, in due time, they would be able, from their 
 inland vantage-ground, to drive the English and all other 
 aliens into the sea, and thus to gain possession of the whole 
 North American continent. But, in spite of the efforts of 
 Colbert and other bold statesmen at home, and of skilful 
 and indefatigable generals in Canada and Louisiana, their 
 Transatlantic possessions proved only a source of weakness to 
 France. N o firm footing was gained even on the St. Law- 
 rence, and on the Mississippi nothing but barren victories 
 resulted from the martial energy that there had ample play. 
 France was beginning to grow tired of its American colonies, 
 when Law and his friends revived the old notion, really a 
 true one, that under the prolific soil of Louisiana there was 
 boundless mineral wealth — not gold, as they represented, 
 but coal and iron, which are better than gold. Law proposed 
 that a new company should be founded to utilise the wealth 
 of this great district, that miners and traders should be sent 
 out to it, and that, with the proceeds, the French exchequer 
 and the whole French nation should be mightily eniichcd. 
 The proposal was agreed to. The company was incor-
 
 304 The Ro:iTANCE of Trade. 
 
 porated in August, 17 17, with a nominal capital 01 
 100,000,000 livres, and with it was associated Law's bank, 
 with enlarged functions and privileges, and finally converted 
 into the Royal Bank of France. The processes by which 
 •'[he company and the bank played into each other's hands, 
 and quickly flooded the country with paper-money, need 
 not be detailed. The Parliament of France boldly and 
 honestly opposed their mischievous follies, and Law was 
 more than once impeached and denounced as an enemy to 
 the country. But the Regent supported him, and soon 
 encouraged him in more extravagant measures than he would 
 have dared by himself to adopt ; and the people of France, 
 from peer to peasant, rushed madly into the tempting maze 
 of speculation prepared for them. 
 
 Early in 17 19, when the mania was at its height, the 
 Mississippi Company was re-organised and endowed with 
 exclusive trading privileges to the East Indies, China, and 
 the South Seas, under the new name of the Company of the 
 Indies. Fifty thousand fresh shares were created, with a 
 nominal value of 25,000,000 livres, and upon them Law 
 promised an annual profit of 1 20 per cent. So great was the 
 demand for these shares that their number was increased to 
 three hundred thousand, and all were taken up in a few weeks. 
 Country folks crowded up to Paris, and nearly every resident 
 therein joined in the insane rush. Law's house in the Rue 
 de Quincampoix was besieged from morning to night by a 
 rabble of dukes, duchesses, merchants, milkmaids, and all 
 other representatives of noblesse and bourgeoisie. So many 
 were there crushed to death or maimed for life that Law 
 had to remove to the Place Vendome, and at length to take 
 the great Hotel de Soissons, the garden of which, covering 
 several acres, was large enough to hold a few of the most 
 eager speculators. Law's antechambers were crowded with 
 persons of all ranks, who waited all day long, and day after 
 day, for their turn to obtain the coveted shares ; and the
 
 Manias and Panics. 305 
 
 shares, as soon as they were bought, were taken into the 
 great market in the garden, there to be traded with among 
 the thousands who were ready to pay any price that was 
 asked for them, and who generally sold them again at yet 
 higher rates. The turmoil of speculation, which lasted for 
 a year, has no parallel in the history of financial follies. 
 
 Curious stories by the dozen are told concerning this 
 turmoil and its consequences. A cobbler, whose stall was 
 near to the headquarters of the speculation, gained 200 
 livres a day by providing standing-room and pens and paper 
 for the adventurers. A hunchback, whose deformity was 
 his only stock-in-trade, made a fortune by turning himself 
 into a movable writing-desk. A lady, who had long in vain 
 sought access to Law's counting-house, devised an original 
 plan for meeting him. Ordering her coachman to run up 
 against a post as soon as he could meet the great financier 
 in the streets, she drove about incessantly for three days 
 before Law came in sight. At last she was lucky enough to 
 see him approaching her. " Upset us now, for God's sake, 
 upset us now ! " she shouted. The coachman obeyed, and 
 she was thrown upon the pavement. Law ran to assist her, 
 escorted her into his house, and there heard that the lady 
 suffered from nothing but want of Mississippi shares, and so 
 was induced to place her name on the list of applicants. 
 
 All ordinary occupations were neglected during this time 
 of frenzy, save those by which the v/isest persons grew rich 
 in catering for the extravagant ways of living that it begot 
 or quickened. Costly viands abounded. Pictures, jewellery, 
 and the like were brought to Paris in greater quantities than 
 ever, and sold for fabulous sums. Thousands of paupers 
 were enriched, and as many wealthy men were impoverished. 
 A few speculators were notably fortunate, among the rest 
 Louis XIV.'s illegitimate son, the Due de Bourbon, who 
 rebuilt the palace at Chantilly, and bought vast estates with 
 his profits on Mississippi paper. Many foreigners, too, went 
 
 u
 
 3o6 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to Paris to speculate shrewdly in paper money, and then took 
 their proceeds in solid coin out of the country, and native 
 adventures followed the same wise course. We are told, for 
 instance, of one yermalet, who covered a cart-load of gold 
 and silver, worth nearly 1,000,000 livres, with hay and 
 stubble, and, disguising himself in a peasant's blouse, quietly 
 smuggled it into Belgium, and thence to Amsterdam. 
 
 It was by such draining out of the real money of France 
 that the inevitable sequel of the Mississippi mania was 
 hastened. In the first week of 1820, Law began to find 
 tliat he had not enough coin in his bank to meet the require- 
 ments of his customers. Depreciation of the already depre- 
 ciated gold and silver money was resorted to, but in vain. In 
 vain, also, an edict was obtained restricting specie payments 
 to each person to one hundred livres in gold, and five livres 
 in silver. These measures only informed the public of the 
 coming danger, and increased the demand for coin which 
 could not be supplied. So desperate were affairs at the end 
 of February, that the Regent forbade any one, under heavy 
 penalties, to have more than 500 livres of coin — about ;^2o 
 — or any jewels or other commodities that could be easily 
 transported, in his possession ; and, in order that crimes of 
 this artificial sort might be detected, informers were to be 
 entitled to half the worth of the illicit valuables which they 
 brought to light. Thereby all social relations were wantonly 
 disturbed, and public confidence in the paper currency was 
 utterly destroyed. " Never," says a contemporary historian, 
 "was seen a more capricious Government; never was a more 
 frantic tyranny exercised by hands less firm. It is incon- 
 ceivable to those who were witnesses of the horrors of those 
 times, and who look back upon them now as on a dream, 
 that a sudden revolution did not break out, that Law and 
 the Regent did not perish by a tragical death. They were 
 both held in horror, but the people confined themselves to 
 complaints. A sombre and timid despair, a stupid consterna-
 
 Manias and Panics. 307 
 
 tion, seized upon all, and men's minds were too vile even to 
 be capable of a courageous crime." 
 
 It was well that the " courageous crime " was not perpe- 
 trated. France suftered enough without it ; and perhaps the 
 hundreds of thousands who were ruined by Law's folly — we 
 have no reason to say that he was guilty of more than most 
 cruel folly — had sufficient wisdom to see that the folly was 
 also their own. But the national and individual distress 
 that ensued was altogether grievous. Law, who, after being 
 exiled from France, resumed his old gambling habits, and 
 died a pauper, in Venice, in 1729, had issued notes to the 
 nominal value of 2,700,000,000 livres, which soon shrivelled 
 into worthless paper, and left France with a national debt of 
 3,100,000,000 livres, and so unhinged the trade and capital 
 of the country that the mischief could never be adequately 
 repaired. French commercial prosperity is almost a novelty 
 of our own days. 
 
 The age of the Mississippi mania in France was also the 
 age of the South Sea mania in England ; but here fortunate 
 circumstances rendered the national folly much less disas- 
 trous. The South Sea mania was only the most memorable 
 episode in two centuries of stock-jobbing, which, as it fills an 
 important place in our commercial history, and is the chain 
 on which all our great manias and all our great panics have 
 been suspended, needs to be briefly traced to its com- 
 mencement. 
 
 The word stock, in its present commercial sense, was first 
 applied to the shares of the East India Company, and of the 
 other great associations established during the seventeenth 
 century, for foreign and colonial trade. At first the stock 
 was not marketable. A separate subscription was made for 
 each enterprise, and the subscriber was held responsible for 
 his shares until the transaction was completed, and his por- 
 tion of profits, if there were any, was assigned to him. But 
 soon the shares became permanent, and their holders were
 
 3o8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 enabled, if they chose, to dispose of them like any other 
 property, for whatever they were worth. Then the National 
 Debt was begun, starting from Charles II.'s illegal seizure, 
 in 1679, of the money lodged for safety in the Mint ; and 
 it was soon found to be a convenient means for investment 
 of the savings of persons who had no commercial facilities 
 for applying them in enterprises of their own. There was 
 plenty of this surplus cash floating about, or, rather, until 
 space was found for it to float in, hoarded up by its owners. 
 Pope's father, v/hen he retired from business, carried ;^2o,ooo 
 down to his country-house, to be locked up in a strong 
 box, and taken out, a little at the time, as he had need 
 of it. Thousands of rich men did the like, while others, 
 afraid of keeping so much money in their own hands, en- 
 trusted it to the goldsmiths and others, who, in those days, 
 took the place of regular bankers, paying them, however, for 
 the trouble of taking care of it, instead of receiving from 
 them interest for its use. To all such people it was a great 
 boon to have opportunities of profitably investing their 
 money, instead of merely stowing it away. During the 
 troublous times of Stuart misrule, tliey did it with fear and 
 trembling; but no sooner had William III. taken possession 
 of the English throne, than the public stocks, for which 
 Government was held responsible, and the private stock of 
 the East India, and other trading-companies, came to be 
 eagerly sought after, and bandied about from one hand to 
 another, as they rose or fell in value. 
 
 Addison, in the Spectator has a pleasant allegory, "or 
 what else the reader shall please to call it," as he says, 
 of a beautiful virgin, seated on a throne of gold, in the old 
 meeting-place of the Bank of England, whose name was 
 Public Credit. " The walls, instead of being adorned with 
 pictures and maps, were hung with many Acts of Parliament, 
 written in gold letters. At the upper end of the hall was 
 the Magna Charta, with the ' Act of Uniformity ' on the right
 
 Manias and Panics. 309 
 
 hand, and the 'Act of Toleration' on the left; at the lower end 
 of the hall was the ' Act of Settlement,' which was placed full 
 in the eye of the virgin that sat upon the throne. Both the 
 sides of the hall were covered with such Acts of Parliament 
 as had been made for the establishment of the public funds. 
 The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these 
 several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed 
 her eye with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as 
 she looked upon them, but, at the same time, showed a very 
 particular uneasiness, if she saw anything approaching that 
 might hurt them. She appeared, indeed, infinitely timorous 
 in all her behaviour, and she changed colour and started 
 at everything she heard. She was, likewise, as I afterwards 
 found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, 
 even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary con- 
 sumptions, that, in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall 
 away from the most florid complexion and the most healthful 
 state of body, and wither into a skeleton. Her recoveries 
 were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch, that she would 
 revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper into a habit 
 of the highest health and vigour. I had very soon an oppor- 
 tunity of observing these quick turns and changes in her 
 constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of secretaries, 
 who received, every hour, letters from all parts of the world, 
 which the one or other of them was always reading to her, 
 and according to the news she heard she changed colour, 
 and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness. Be- 
 hind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, 
 which were piled upon one another so high that they touched 
 the ceiling. The floor, on her right-hand side and on her 
 left, was covered with vast sums of gold, that rose in pyra- 
 mids on either side of her; but this I did not so much 
 wonder at, when I heard that she had the same virtue in her 
 touch which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly 
 possessed of, and that she could convert whatever she pleased
 
 3IO The Romanxe of Trade. 
 
 into that precious metal." Addison goes on to tell how, at 
 the threat of danger to tlie commonwealth, nine-tenths of the 
 bags of money collapsed, and the heaps of gold were turned 
 into heaps of paper, and Public Credit nearly expired ; and 
 how, on the return of safety, the lady revived, and her sur- 
 roundings were restored to their former grandeur — showing 
 that national wealth varies greatly and constantly, with the 
 various prospects of national liberty and mutual trust. And 
 William Paterson, writing in 1716, five years after Addison, 
 expresses the same truth in other words. " The present 
 public credit," he says, " hath at least a hundred feet, some 
 greater, some smaller, some weaker, some stronger; and, 
 possibly, this may be the reason why the public credit is so 
 apt to reel and totter, that stocks and other public securities 
 often fall or rise four or five, and sometimes fifteen or six- 
 teen per cent, on very slight occasions." 
 
 Out of this rise and fall of public stocks arose the trade 
 of stock-jobbing. As a trade, it seems to have been publicly 
 recognised in 1688. With that year, the year of William III.'s 
 coming to England, began a swarm of financial projects, 
 fraudulent and honest, wise and foolish, all offering facilities 
 to capitalists for the investment of their money, and all in- 
 tended by the men who started them and kept them afloat 
 to be sources of profit to themselves. These men, the men 
 who made it their business to deal in the shares of the real 
 and bubble companies newly-established, as well as in the 
 public funds and the stock of older corporations, were 
 thenceforward known as stock-jobbers, and they soon 
 became famous, and had a locality of their own in the City 
 of London. "The centre of jobbing," said one of the 
 pamphleteers who assailed them in 1692, "is in the kingdom 
 of 'Change Alley and its adjacencies. The limits are easily 
 surrounded in about a minute and a half. Slipping out of 
 Jonathan's into the Alley, you turn your face full south ; 
 inoving on a ity^ paces, and then turning due east, you
 
 Manias and Panics. 311 
 
 advance to Garraway's ; from thence, going out at the other 
 door, you go on still east into Birchin's Lane ; and then, 
 halting a little at the Sword-Blade Bank, you immediately 
 face to the north, enter Cornhill, visit two or three petty 
 provinces there on your way to the west, and then, having 
 boxed your compass, and sailed round your stock-jobbing 
 globe, you turn into Jonathan's again." In this same year, 
 1692, Shadwell, only living long enough to do it, wrote his 
 comedy of " The Stock-jobbers," wherein the merits of the 
 Mouse-trap Company and the Flea-killing Company are 
 seriously discussed, and a party of Puritans consider whether 
 it is lawful for the godly to have shares in a company about 
 to be established for importing rope-dancers from China, 
 jdelding at last to the arguments of one who says that those 
 whose consciences forbid it need never go and look at the 
 rope-dancing, if, indeed, they ever have the chance. " The 
 thing is like to take," he adds. "The shares will sell ; and 
 then we shall not care whether the dancers come over or no." 
 The trade, growing up like a mushroom, took root like 
 an oak. The successful establishment of the Bank of Eng- 
 land, at Paterson's suggestion, in 1695, gave it great en- 
 couragement, and encouragement as great came from the 
 tunnoil o. continental war, in which England was then and 
 for some time afterwards engaged. Sir Henry Fumess, the 
 Bank Director, found it profitable to have a complete courier 
 system of his own, and, thereby receiving news of good or 
 bad occurrences long before even the Government advices 
 arrived, to use his early information in successful bartering 
 of stock. It was said by his detractors that he never 
 scrupled to invent reports of victories or defeats, and that 
 most of his great wealth was amassed by means of these 
 false reports, and the immense advantage which they gave 
 him. Another story is to the effect that IMedina, the 
 Jewish banker and jobber, attained a like end by contracting 
 with the Duke of jMarlborough for early expresses, in return
 
 312 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 for a secret payment of ;^6,ooo a year. Such statements 
 as these may not have been true ; but it is clear that stock- 
 jobbing, from its very commencement, offered great tempta- 
 tion for dishonesty, and that there were many who yielded 
 to them. " It is a complete system of knavery," it was said 
 in 1 70 1, "founded in fraud, born of deceit, and nourished 
 by trick, cheat, wheedle, forgeries, falsehoods, and all sorts 
 of delusions, coining false news, whispering imaginary terrors, 
 and preying upon those they have elevated or depressed." 
 " The stock-jobbers," said another pamphleteer of the same 
 year, " can ruin men silently, undermine and impoverish 
 them, by the strange and unheard-of engines of interest, 
 discount, transfers, tallies, debentures, shares, profits, and 
 the devil and all of figures and hard names." 
 
 These were engines, however, that steadily gained favour, 
 both with the many who were damaged by them, and with 
 the few who used them for their own advancement. All the 
 stock-jobbers, of course, ,were not dishonest. Thomas Guy, 
 the benevolent founder of Guy's Hospital and of various 
 useful charities in his native town of Tamworth, was one of 
 the most prosperous of them, and he seems to have worked 
 honestly from first to last. And there were many like him. 
 Perhaps, indeed, these honest men, in giving their counte- 
 nance to the movements of the dishonest, did most harm of 
 all. At any rate, incalculable harm' was done. The stock- 
 jobbers ran riot for forty years. Then came the South Sea 
 Bubble, and the hundreds of other bubbles that were blown 
 round about it, until, all rushing together, they suddenly col- 
 lapsed, and brought grievous distress upon the people of 
 England. 
 
 The Bubble expanded slowly during eight years. In 
 171 1, six years before Law's Mississippi Company was 
 formed, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer, 
 procured an Act of Parliament, appointing that, " to the 
 intent that the trade to the South Sea be carried on for the
 
 MA^^IAS AND Fanics. 313 
 
 honour, and increase of the wealth and riches of this realm," 
 a company should be formed with the exclusive privilege of 
 trading, colonising, and fighting in the southern seas, and 
 along the whole western side of South America. The mem- 
 bers of this South Sea Company were to be the holders of 
 the Government bonds for the National Debt, then amount- 
 ing to nearly ^^i 0,000,000, the interest of which, if not 
 the principal, it was thought could easily be paid out of the 
 profits of commerce with the gold and silver districts of 
 Peru and Chili. After the company was formed, it trans- 
 pired that the King of Spain claimed more than a fourth of 
 their profits for permitting English merchants to deal with 
 his colonists, and then only sanctioned their sending one 
 shipload of negroes every year ; but even with this limita- 
 tion great benefits were anticipated, especially as the Eng- 
 lish reckoned that, if they were only allowed to trade at all, 
 they could make the trade as extensive as they liked. The 
 preparations were tardy, and the first vessel did not leave 
 England till 1 7 1 7 ; then the war with Spain, which broke out 
 in the following year, made orderly commerce with Chili and 
 Peru impossible. 
 
 But before this the South Sea stock-holders discovered 
 that South Sea traffic was an unimportant part of their en- 
 terprise. From the first, the new company was in favour 
 with the public, and a busy trade was carried on in its shares. 
 The Mississippi Company, started in Paris in 17 17, showed 
 how this trade might be augmented. The South Sea Com- 
 pany offered to increase its capital, and so be able to lend 
 ;^2, 000,000 to the State, and the Bank of England, stirred 
 up to rivalry, made a similar offer. A fierce war was carried 
 on betAveen the Bank and the Company during more than 
 two years, and, in their eff"orts to outbid one another with 
 the Government and the country, a turmoil of stock-jobbing 
 was engendered, which received no check from the wretched 
 failure of the Mississippi scheme in 17 19. By the com-
 
 314 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 mencement of 1720 the South Sea stock had risen nearly 
 two hundred per cent, in value, and all that its holders 
 desired was, by promises that could not possibly be realised, 
 to raise the value yet more, and so to sell their shares at 
 great profit. In this they succeeded for a time. The Com- 
 pany triumphed over the Bank. In Februaiy, 1720, a bill 
 was brought into Parliament, authorising it to take upon 
 itself the whole National Debt, growing rapidly, and then 
 exceeding ;^3o,ooo,ooo, and the bill became law in April. 
 
 In vain Sir Robert Walpole warned the country that 
 "the great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate 
 magnitude. It was to raise artificially the value of stock, by 
 exciting and keeping up a general infatuation; and, by pro- 
 mising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate 
 to the purpose, it would hold out a dangerous line to decoy 
 the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the 
 earnings of their labour for a prospect of imaginary wealth." 
 The warning was unheeded. The madness of speculation 
 that had just ruined France had seized England, with nearly 
 equal violence. Pope's satire was sober history when, pro- 
 phesying after the fact, he said : — 
 
 " At length corruption, like a general flood, 
 So long by watchful ministers withstood, 
 Shall deluge all ; and avarice, creeping on, 
 Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun. 
 Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks ; 
 Peeress and butler share alike the box ; 
 And judges job, and bishops bite the town. 
 And mighty dukes pack cards for half-a-crown ; 
 See Britain sunk in lucre's sordid charms. 
 And France revenged on Anne's and Edward's arms." 
 
 The South Sea mania, rampant in February, 17 20, increased 
 till August, when each ^100 share was worth ^^^"ijOoo. 
 'Change Alley, swarming with professional and amateur 
 stock-jobbers of every rank and of both sexes, was aptly 
 compared by Swift to a gulf in the South Sea.
 
 Manias and Panics. 315 
 
 ** Subscribers here by thousands float. 
 And jostle one another down, 
 Each paddling in his leaky boat, 
 And here they fish for gold, and drowii, 
 
 " Now buried in the depths below, 
 
 Now mounted up to heaven again, 
 They reel and stagger to and fro, 
 
 At their wits' end, like drunken men. 
 
 ' ' ' Meantime, secure on Garraway Cliffs, 
 A savage race, by shipwrecks fed, 
 Lie waiting for the foundering skiffs, 
 And strip the bodies of the dead." 
 
 Humbler poets described the mania in street ballads 
 and coffee-house epigrams without number. One said — 
 
 " Then stars and garters did appear 
 Among the meaner rabble. 
 To buy and sell, to see and hear 
 The Jews and Gentiles squabble. 
 
 " The greatest ladies thither came, 
 And plied in chariots daily. 
 Or pawned their jewels for a sum 
 To venture in the Alley." 
 
 The South Sea Bubble was only the greatest among a 
 crowd of great bubbles. The older companies shared in 
 the brief show of imaginary prosperity. East India Stock, 
 worth ;^ioo, rose to be worth ^445 ; and African Stock, 
 advanced in value from ;£2t, to ^200. There is extant a 
 list of nearly two hundred principal bubble companies started 
 in this year of bubbles, their nominal capital varying from 
 ;!^i,ooo,ooo to ^10,000,000 apiece, and the total of the 
 whole exceeding ;^3oo,ooo,ooo. " Any impudent im- 
 postor," says the contemporary historian, "whilst the delu- 
 sion was at its height, needed only to hire a room at some 
 coffee-house or other house near Exchange Alley for a few 
 hours, and open a subscription-book for somewhat relative 
 to commerce, manufacture, plantation, or some supposed
 
 3i6 The Romance op Trade. 
 
 invention, either hatched out of his own brain or else stolen 
 from some of the many abortive projects of former times, 
 having first advertised it in the newspapers of the preceding 
 day, and he might in a few hours find subsciibers for one 
 or two millions, in some cases more, of imaginary stock. 
 Many of these very subscribers were far ^ from beheving 
 those projects feasible. It was enough for their purpose 
 that there would soon be a premium on the receipts for 
 those subscriptions, when they generally got rid of them in 
 the crowded alleys to others more credulous than them- 
 selves." One company, with a capital of ;2£"3, 000,000. was 
 " for insuring to all masters and mistresses the losses 
 they may sustain by servants ;" another was " for fur- 
 nishing merchants and others with watches;" a third, 
 with a capital of ;^i, 000,000, was "for a wheel for per- 
 petual motion;" a fourth was for making salt water 
 fresh ; a fifth was " for planting mulbeny- trees and 
 breeding silkworms in Chelsea Park;" and a sixth was 
 designed " to import a number of large jackasses from Spain, 
 in order to propagate a larger kind of mule in England" — as 
 if there were not already jackasses enough in London. So 
 preposterous were many of the genuine projects, that it is 
 hard to say whether it was in jest or in earnest that an adver- 
 tisement was issued announcing that " at a certain place, on 
 Tuesday next, books will be opened for a subscription of 
 ;^2, 000,000 for the invention of melting sawdust and chips, 
 and casting them into clean deal boards, without cracks or 
 knots." Another advertisement invited speculators to pay 
 ;^2 as a deposit on each of five thousand ;^ioo shares in 
 " a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advan- 
 tage, but nobody to know what it is," the remaining ;^98 
 for each share being due in a month's time, when the details 
 of the scheme were to be published. The name of the pro- 
 moter of this secret company was never known, but his 
 advertisement drew so many adventurers on tlie appointed
 
 Manias and Panics. 317 
 
 day that in less than six liours he had received a thousand 
 deposits of ^£2 each. With that success he was satisfied. 
 Instead of waiting for another day, in which his transparent 
 fraud might be exposed, he pocketed the ^2,000, and 
 decamped the same night. 
 
 The South Sea mania lasted a shorter time and had 
 fewer victims in England than the Mississippi mania in 
 France ; but it was great enough to prove a source of ruin to 
 hundreds of thousands, and of serious national discredit. 
 During eight months every coftee-house was a stock exchange, 
 subject to no laws of honesty, and swayed by rampant folly; 
 and the milliners' shops were put to like uses by those ladies 
 who could not stand the crush of the men's meeting-places. 
 Wealth changed hands with unheard-of rapidity, and was 
 steadily concentrated by the hundreds of knaves to whom 
 thousands of fools were willing dupes. According to the 
 old epigram — 
 
 " This evil Solomon espied 
 Among the rabble rout, 
 That beggars did on horseback ride 
 Whilst princes walk on foot. 
 
 " South Sea has verified the same ; 
 For mighty men of late 
 Are brought to poverty and shame, 
 Whilst scoundrels ride in state." 
 
 But their skilful horsemanship was brief. Quarrels among 
 the South Sea directors opened the eyes of the public, and 
 the great bubble and all the lesser bubbles suddenly col- 
 lapsed. Early in August, 1720, the South Sea shares were 
 bought eagerly for ;^i, 000 apiece; late in September they 
 could not be sold for ;^i5o. George I., then in Hanover, 
 hurried back to England. Parliament made a searching 
 inquiry into the state of affairs. Many ringleaders of the 
 fraud were severely punished ; and efforts were made to 
 lessen the misfortunes of those whom they had beguiled. 
 In February, 1721, the chief culprit, Aislabie, the Chancellor
 
 3i8 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 of the Exchequer, who had used his official position to inflate 
 the bubble, was committed to the Tower of London, and a 
 huge bonfire on Tower Hill showed him, on the first night 
 of his captivity, what sort of vengeance the London mob 
 would have been glad to execute on him and his accomplices. 
 Great injury was done to multitudes, and the commerce of 
 the country was crippled during many years. But England 
 was rich enough and English enterprise was diverse enough 
 for the disaster to be much less keenly felt by the whole 
 nation than was that greater one which Law and his patrons 
 had provoked in France. 
 
 It would have been almost well had the retribution been 
 more violent, and an end been thus put to the vicious 
 ways of trade which rendered the social history of 1720, as 
 Smollett said, " a detail of transactions which only serves to 
 exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless vice and mean 
 degeneracy." Stock-jol)bing was hindered, but not crushed, 
 by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, and a few years 
 served to render it at any rate as vigorous as it had been 
 before 1720. Statesmen and satirists sought in vain to do 
 away with it, and no good came of an Act of Parhament " to 
 prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobbing," passed in 
 1734, and of which Sir John Barnard, a great London mer- 
 chant, and an intelligent champion of free trade and of 
 various enlightened views of commerce in the House of 
 Commons, was the most eloquent and energetic supporter. 
 " The many bad consequences of stock-jobbing are well- 
 known," he said, in one of his speeches on the subject, 
 " and it is high time to put an end to that infamous practice. 
 It is a lottery, or, ratlier, a gaming-house, publicly set up in 
 the middle of the City of London, by which the heads of our 
 merchants and tradesmen are turned from getting a liveli- 
 hood bv the honest means of industry and frugality, and are 
 enticed to become gamesters by the hope of getting an 
 estate at once. It is not only a lottery, but one of the worst
 
 Manias and Panics. 319 
 
 sort, because it is always in the power of the principal 
 managers to bestow the benefit tickets as they have a mind. 
 The broker comes to a merchant and talks to him of the 
 many fatigues and dangers, the great trouble and small 
 profits, that are in his way of trade ; and, after having done 
 all he can to put him out of conceit with his business, 
 which is often too easily effected, he proposes to dig for him 
 in the rich mine of 'Change Alley, and to get more for him 
 in a day than he could get by his trade in a twelvemonth. 
 Thus the merchant is persuaded. He engages, he goes on 
 for some time, but never knows what he is a-doing till he is 
 quite undone." 
 
 By the law which Sir John Barnard was instrumental in 
 passing, it was provided that " all contracts and agreements 
 whatsoever which shall be made or entered into to put 
 upon or to deliver, receive, accept, or refuse any public or 
 joint-stock, or other public securities, or any part or share 
 therein, shall be null and void, to all intents and purposes 
 whatsoever." This law, the only law of importance con- 
 cerning stock-jobbing to be found in the English statute- 
 book, still remains in force ; but its force only helps to keep 
 rogues from punishment. It makes stock-jobbing debts 
 illegal, just as betting debts are illegal, and thus, while 
 speculators are not at all, or very slightly, restrained by it, it 
 gives immunity, as far as the law is concerned, to the dis- 
 honest. The only tribunal by which they can be punished 
 is the Stock Exchange Committee, which summarily expels 
 from the great meeting-place of the stock-jobbers eveiy one 
 who fails to fulfil his engagements. 
 
 For about a hundred years the London jobbers had 
 Jonathan's Coftee-house, in Sweeting's Rents, for their 
 chief resort, the whole of Sweeting's Alley and the neigh- 
 bouring parts being also frequented by them in busy times. 
 In 1804 the growth of business made necessary the esta- 
 blishment of a more convenient haunt, and accordingly the
 
 320 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Stock Exchange, precursor of the building that now occiipies 
 the same ground, was erected in Capel Court, on the site 
 of the old mansion of Sir Thomas Capel, who was Lord 
 Mayor in 1504. At first this building was used only for 
 traffic in English funds, dealers in foreign stock being left 
 to carry on their trade where they chose, generally in the 
 Royal Exchange. But soon the Stock Exchange was thrown 
 open to stock-jobbing of all sorts ; dealings in English 
 funds being conducted in one part of the house, foreign 
 stocks being bought and sold in another department, and the 
 railway and other share market having also a province of 
 its own. The establishment now contains about a thousand 
 members, each being elected by ballot, and passing through 
 a period of probation before he is admitted to the full 
 privileges of the society and has a voice in the election of 
 the committee by which, in the ordinary way, the Stock 
 Exchange is absolutely governed, the government to some 
 extent applying to the many other establishments that, in 
 imitation of the London Stock Exchange, have been set up 
 in all the chief centres of provincial trade. The members 
 are of two sorts, jobbers and brokers, neither of whom are 
 allowed to carry on any other business, although they may 
 be, and are, for the most part, chiefly agents of the thou- 
 sands upon thousands of outsiders, who make a trade or 
 an amusement of speculation in stocks and shares. These 
 outsiders are stock-jobbers too, although, their names not 
 generally appearing in the transactions in which they take 
 part, the nominal responsibility rests Avith the jobbers and 
 brokers who have access to the Stock Exchange. The 
 jobber is, or is supposed to be, a wealthy man, possessed 
 of all sorts of stocks and shares, which he is ready to sell, 
 and of means with which to buy any others that are offered 
 to him on satisfactory terms. The broker is avowedly the 
 agent of other people, commissioned to buy and sell such 
 shares as they require or have for disposal
 
 Manias and Panics. 321 
 
 This trade, within proper hmits, is, of course, a neces- 
 sary branch of English commerce ; and for many generations 
 it has been honestly pursued by honest men without number. 
 But its opportunities for dishonesty are great, and by use 
 of these opportunities the turmoil of speculation has been 
 promoted, and manias and panics, more or less momentous, 
 have followed one another in quick succession ever since 
 the beginning of the trade. The old offence of the dis- 
 honest stock-dealers and their patrons and their followers, 
 i:)ractised long ago, and practised still, has been " the getting 
 up of companies," the reckless encouragement of new ways 
 of speculation in which the public may be induced to invest 
 their money, in order that brokers may secure their certain 
 and jobbers their uncertain profits. Another offence which, 
 tnough of long standing, has lately been committed with 
 unexampled impudence, is of a different sort. It consists 
 of two complementary processes, known in Stock Exchange 
 phraseology as " bulling " and " bearing.". The Stock 
 Exchange and the stock-brokers' offices are open every day 
 and all day long, but stocks and shares can only be actually 
 transferred at stated periods, intervals of four weeks being 
 fixed for English Consols, and a fortnight for most other 
 kinds of shares and foreign stocks. Hence the buying and 
 selling of scrip throughout the intermediate time is all in 
 anticipation of the delivery-days, and the time between 
 one delivery-day and another is available for any shameless 
 gambling in which the jobber chooses to engage. In it he 
 is free to "buy" and "sell" a thousand shares, though he 
 may have in his possession neither a single one, nor the 
 means of purchasing it. If he buys, it is of course in 
 expectation that, before delivery-day comes round, the 
 shares will have risen in value, and he will thus be able to 
 sell them again, and pocket the difference between the 
 two prices. If he sells, he expects, on the other hand, 
 that prices will fall, and that, in consequence, he will be able
 
 322 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 to buy shares enough to meet his obhgations, and thus also 
 make money by the transaction. In the first instance he is 
 a "bull," speculating for a rise; in the other he is a 
 " bear," speculating for a fall. If he is prudent and honest, 
 he can generally, like his peers in the betting-ring, make 
 a. safe book by hedging one speculation against another. 
 If he is reckless and dishonest, he can often help himself 
 by means of the " tricks, cheats, forgeries, falsehoods, and 
 all sorts of delusions, coining false news, and whispering 
 imaginary terrors " that were complained of in 1701. 
 
 We have seen how stock-jobbing began in England. 
 It is not necessary to describe the details of all its later 
 stages. In spite of the Act of 1734, its field of opera- 
 tions has, ever since that year, been steadily enlarged, both 
 through the rapid increase of the National Debt, and 
 through the yet more rapid development of all kinds ot 
 mercantile and manufiicturing energy. For great factories 
 and trading concerns, and yet more for docks, canals, and 
 other public works undertaken in furtherance of the interests 
 of commerce, large sums of money had to be borrowed, 
 and all the bonds and pledges issued in acknowledgment of 
 these various debts being taken into the market, just like 
 Government stock and the shares in public companies, 
 passed from hand to hand at varying prices, according to 
 the varying prospects of success and the chances of 
 prompt return of the capital embarked in them. By all 
 such means the stock-brokers and stock-jobbers were 
 supplied with business during the eighteenth century. 
 
 The trade, however, has assumed very much more gigantic 
 proportions during the last sixty or seventy years, most of its 
 chief promoters not being themselves members of the Stock 
 Exchange — only stock-jobbers, as it were, on the sly. Pre- 
 eminent among these men were Aln-aham and Benjamin 
 Goldsmid, one of whom died in iSoS, the other in 1810; 
 Sir Francis Baring, who also died in 181&, and Nathan
 
 Manias and Panics. 323 
 
 Meyer Rothschild, who fairly entered on his Avonderful 
 career of prosperity in the latter year, and held his place 
 without a rival — unless Alexander Baring might be called 
 one — till his death in 1836. The Goldsmids and the elder 
 Baring made their fortunes, and helped to enrich half the 
 members of the Stock Exchange, by their successful nego- 
 tiations of the English loans made necessary by Pitt's per- 
 sistent carrying on of his great war with France, agreeable 
 to antique theories of fame and glory, but productive of 
 incalculable misery to the nation at large. Rothschild was 
 also a contractor for the English Government ; but his 
 prosperity resulted chiefly from his introduction of con- 
 tinental loans into the English market. The vast trade in 
 foreign Consols, which now gives occupation to hundreds of 
 merchants, bankers, and stock-dealers, and finds favour with 
 thousands of speculators, owes its oiigin entirely to him. 
 
 Rothschild was the very type and perfection of a stock- 
 jobber. His first great undertaking, after settling in London, 
 was the buying up, in 18 10, of a number of Wellington's 
 drafts for expenses incurred by the army in Spain, floating 
 about or sinking in the market. Having paid for these 
 much less than their nominal value, he straightway claimed 
 their redemption at par, and. Government not being able to 
 do this, he furnished the necessary funds from his own well- 
 filled coffers ; thus, by one clever trick, making a large profit 
 as a jobber and another large profit as a money-lender. " It 
 was the best business I ever did," ha said, twenty yeais after. 
 But he did plenty of other business of a like sort, Wellington 
 being again an unconscious sharer in the most notable of 
 all. Rothschild was at Hougoumont on the memorable day 
 of the battle of Waterloo, watching its incidents almost as 
 eagerly as either Napoleon or his great antagonist could do. 
 Immediately the issue of the battle was clear, he hurried 
 off, and, with help of carriages and horses, carefully appointed 
 along his route, reached England a day before any other 
 
 V 2
 
 324 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 messenger arrived. During that day his secret agents, on 
 the strength of a report, said to have originated with him, 
 that the Enghsh forces were defeated, bought at panic- 
 prices, a cartload of shares, bonds, stock, and scrip of every 
 sort, all of which, as soon as the true news arrived, and 
 confidence was thereby restored, he was able to sell again 
 for their real value ; thereby, it was rumoured, he cleared 
 ^1,000,000. 
 
 Nathan Rothschild was an honest and a good man in his 
 way. He conferred many benefits on English commerce ; 
 but, in showing how sharp practice in money-making may be 
 brought to perfection, he did more harm than can ever be 
 atoned for. 
 
 He rarely failed in his speculations. Therein he differed 
 from the crowd of men, most of them more dupes than 
 knaves, who brought about the chief financial disasters of 
 the present century. 
 
 The first of these, the greatest English mania since the 
 South Sea Bubble, and, notwithstanding the changes wrought 
 by a century of commercial progress, curiously like it in 
 some respects, began in 1824. In that year the South 
 American colonies of Spain achieved their independence, 
 and thus was opened up to England that same trade ^vith 
 the eastern shores of the Pacific from which the South Sea 
 Company had expected to derive boundless wealth. The 
 old expectations were revived, and British sympathy for the 
 young republics of Chili and Peru came in aid of commercial 
 speculation. When the Peruvian loan was brought into the 
 London market, so great was the demand for its stock that it 
 was sold by public auction, in the Royal Exchange, and 
 until its financial worthlessness was discovered, a constant 
 trade was eagerly carried on in it. Much more extensive 
 were the private and joint-stock enterprises promoted by 
 persons who honestly thought that another El Dorado 
 was before them, and by others who were ready to make
 
 Manias and Panics. 325 
 
 profit out of the delusions of their neighbours. A vast 
 quantity of EngUsh capital was sunk in projects for trade of 
 all sorts with Mexico and South America. Other projects 
 floated merrily in the stream of speculation that was thus 
 started, and the Joint-Stock Company INIania of 1825 was 
 the result. 
 
 " In all these speculations," says a chronicler of the day, 
 " only a small instalment, seldom exceeding five per cent., 
 was paid at first, so that a very moderate rise in the price of 
 the shares produced a large profit on the sum actually in- 
 vested. If, for instance, shares of ^100, on which ^5 had 
 been paid, rose to a premium of ^^40, this yielded on every 
 share a profit equal to eight times the amount of the money 
 which had been paid. This possibility of enormous profit, 
 by risking so small a sum, was a bait too tempting to be 
 resisted. All the gambling propensities of human nature 
 were brought into action, and crowds of individuals of every 
 description — -the credulous and the suspicious, the crafty and 
 the bold, the raw and the experienced, the intelligent and 
 the ignorant, princes, nobles, politicians, placemen, patriots, 
 lawyers, physicians, divines, philosophers, poets — intermingled 
 with women of all ranks and degrees, spinsters, wives, and 
 widows, hastening to venture some portion of their property 
 in schemes of which scarcely anything was known except the 
 name." The Anglo-Mexican mining shares, on which only 
 ^10 were paid, sold for £^t, on the loth of December, 
 1824, and for ;^i5o on the nth of January, 1825. The 
 Real del Monte shares, with ^"jo paid up, rose in value 
 during the same short period from ;^55o to ^1,350. About 
 three hundred joint-stock companies were brought out during 
 1824 and 1825, and their nominal capital amounted to 
 ;j^i 80,000,000, though the amount paid up was hardly 
 ;!^ 1 8,000,000. Most of them, of course, had nothing to do 
 with the Spanish- American projects, save that they were off- 
 shoots of the speculative spirit thereby aroused, and oftea
 
 326 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 started only to enable adventurers to recover their losses 
 upon the earlier schemes. Banking companies, canal com- 
 panies, gas companies, insurance companies, sugar com- 
 panies, fishing companies, and early-milk-delivery companies 
 were among the number. 
 
 The mania was at its height during the first fiDur months 
 of 1825. During the next seven months there was a struggle 
 between mania and panic, desperate expedients being re- 
 sorted to in order to maintain public confidence, and devise 
 new projects to prop up those that were falling. In 
 December the crash came. To avert it heavy drains were 
 made upon the bullion reserve of the Bank of England, 
 heavy drains having previously been made in furtherance of 
 the speculations. At the end of November, 1824, the Bank 
 reserve wa;^ ;^i 1,323,760. At the end of November, 1825, 
 it was only ^3,012,150, and that scanty store was nearly 
 exhausted during the ensuing weeks. It was said, indeed, 
 that the Bank was only saved by the accidental finding of 
 two million one-pound notes, which had been packed away 
 and lost sight of some time before. 
 
 Other banks were not so lucky. A great Plymouth 
 bank. Sir William Elford's, failed on the 2gth of November. 
 One as great in Yorkshire, that of Wentworth and Company, 
 immediately followed ; and the news of these disasters told 
 grievously in London. On the 3rd of December the Bank 
 of Poole, Thornton, and Company, one of the largest in 
 London, was in such difficulties that the directors of the 
 Bank of England had to meet on Sunday and agree to 
 advance it ^^300,000 before banking-hours on Monday. 
 Thereby Poole's house was saved for a week, but it fell on 
 the following Monday, the 12th of December ; and Williams, 
 Burgess, and Company had to close their doors on Tuesday. 
 Other London banks failed, and at least eighty country 
 banks were ruined by their fall. " On Monday morning the 
 storm began," said the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Eng-
 
 Manias and Panics. 327 
 
 land, "and till Saturday night it raged with an intensity that 
 it is impossible for me to describe. On Saturday night it 
 had somewhat abated. The Bank had taken a firm and 
 deliberate resolution to make common cause with the 
 country, and on Saturday night it was my happiness, when 
 I went up to the Cabinet, reeling with fatigue, to be able to 
 call out to my Lord Liverpool, and to the members of his 
 Majesty's Government then present, that all was well." 
 
 All was not well; but the crisis had been checked by the 
 arbitrary but wise policy of the Bank of England in issuing, 
 between Wednesday and Saturday, more than ^5,000,000 
 of notes in excess of their bullion reserve, which could be 
 measured ' by handfuls, and their Government securities. 
 Old Londoners still remember with a shudder the horrors of 
 that week ; how hundreds of men, supposed to be rolling in 
 wealth, wandered distractedly up and down the streets, fearing 
 that in an hour or two they might be bankrupts ; and how 
 thousands watched their movements with ghastly interest, 
 knowing that the bankruptcy of those in whom they trusted 
 meant starvation to themselves. 
 
 Many did starve. When public confidence was restored, 
 and the troubled sea of commerce was smooth again, the 
 waters rippled over wretched dupes without number, undone 
 for ever by their own folly and the temptings of those who 
 had led them into speculations beyond their means. Old 
 men lay down to die under the load of disgrace that they 
 had brought on themselves. Young men rushed into mad 
 acts, with the blind hope of retrieving their fortunes ; and 
 the silent ^vretchedness of widows and orphans, robbed of 
 their all, furnished a strange contrast to the gratulations of 
 those who had prompted the mania and made money out of 
 the panic. 
 
 The tide of speculation proceeded without very much 
 abatement. Many of the joint-stock companies formed in 
 1824 and 1825 were built on firm bases, honestly supplied
 
 328 The Romance of Irade. 
 
 real needs of commerce, and, having proved their stability 
 during the panic, flourished after it more than ever. Other 
 laudable enterprises followed their example and shared their 
 success ; while there were ])lenty of other schemes, \\Tongly 
 devised, or wrongly conducted, which during their long or 
 brief careers, proved pitfalls to the unwary, and, in painful 
 ways, continued to teach the trite and little-heeded lesson 
 that " honesty is the best policy." 
 
 During the forty years following upon 1825, English 
 trade throve wonderfully ; but there has been a monotony of 
 variety in its progress, tempting fanciful observers to pro- 
 pound a law of financial tides and storms. After a crisis 
 there is a lull of a year or two, in which speculators are 
 cautious and " money is tight." Then speculating energy 
 revives and steadily gains force during seven or eight years, 
 until it develops into a mania, lasting for about a year, and 
 ending in another panic. The sequel of our last panic does 
 not conform to that hypothesis, but it was nearly true 
 between 1825 and 1865. 
 
 The joint-stock mania of 1S25 was followed by the less 
 disastrous mania of 1835 and 1836, and that by the great 
 railway mania of 1845. Railway construction, begun with 
 Stephenson's famous exploit on the Manchester and Liver- 
 pool line, had given healthy occupation to English capitalists, 
 and proved of inestimable advantage to Englishmen of all 
 grades during fifteen previous years ; but its progress was 
 only too slow until the close of 1844. Then there was a 
 sudden outburst of well-guided and misguided zeal. In 
 January, 1845, sixteen new railway companies were registered. 
 In April fifty-two were started. From that time till the 
 autumn eight, ten, or more new schemes were brought out 
 every day. In September, the most prolific month of all, 
 the number was four hundred and fifty-seven, making for the 
 year then ended a total of a thousand and thirty-five, to 
 which three hundred and sixty-three were added in October.
 
 Manias axd Panics. 329 
 
 Nearly eveiy village in the kingdom was to have a line or a 
 branch of its own; and all our colonies, as well as foreign 
 countries, ^\ ere to be similarly blessed by English enterprise. 
 The island-rock of St. Kitt's, for instance, four miles wide 
 and fifteen long, was to have a railway, for the benefit of its 
 negro inhabitants. The capital required for British schemes 
 alone was more than ;^ioo,ooo,ooo, and nearly as much was 
 asked for foreign projects. 
 
 But none paused to consider where this wealth was to 
 come from. Stock-jobbers and their mjTmidons, known as 
 " alley-men," puffed, and believed their own puffs. Mer- 
 chants and retail traders, seeing the real value to them of 
 improved communication between one place and another, 
 rushed madly into the speculation, and manufacturers fol- 
 lowed as eagerly. Persons of all grades and classes shared 
 the infatuation. For three-quarters of a year London was 
 giddy with a tumult far greater than that which arose in 1825, 
 and worthy to be compared with the tumult of the South 
 Sea Bubble year ; and the excitement of London spread to 
 every other town in the country, with a force for which 
 previous manias furnished no parallel. Earlier manias were 
 concentrated in the metropolis ; but the railway infatuation 
 ran through every district in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
 through which the railways were to run. Some of the pro- 
 jects, as the last quarter of a century has proved, were, ot 
 course, sound in conception and wisely conducted ; but 
 most of them, whether born and bred of folly or of fraud, 
 were utterly preposterous, and, in many cases, no lawless art 
 was spared in working upon the greed of the public, and 
 fostering the delusion by which it was being ensnared. 
 " Rigging the market " was the most successful art. Imme- 
 diately after the announcement of a new project, it was 
 given out that all the shares were taken up. The few that 
 had been really issued were bought and sold at high pre- 
 miums by secret partners m the scheme, and thus a demand
 
 33° The Romance of Trade. 
 
 was created for the unissued shares, and they were then 
 sold with enoiTnous profit. The promoters of hundreds of 
 companies knew from the commencement that their pro- 
 jected Unes would never be established ; but they could 
 make money by projecting them, and thus their sole object 
 was achieved. It was with them as with Shadwell's Flea- 
 killing Company, so long as shares were taken and de- 
 posits were paid up, there was no need for seeing whether 
 the fleas could really be killed. 
 
 One cause of the mania was the abundance of capital 
 and the low rate of interest which speculators in the funds 
 and other safe channels of investment could obtain for their 
 money at the close of 1844. The Bank rate of discount 
 was then only 2\ per cent., and so it continued for a 
 year, and Government securities yielded a correspondingly 
 low profit. The temptation to invest in enterprises pro- 
 mising to yield four, six, or eight times as much interest 
 was too great for incautious capitalists, and even the cautious 
 were disarmed by the great favour with which the Govern- 
 ment approved and Parliament sanctioned a vast number of 
 railway projects. Both Government and Parliament began 
 to assume a different attitude in the autumn of 1S45, and 
 thereby a slight check was given to railway speculation, 
 Many projects collapsed, and others lost favour. But the 
 mania continued, as far as most of the schemes already pro- 
 pounded were concerned, throughout 1846 and half of 1847. 
 The rage for excessive speculation once aroused, moreover, 
 found vent in other ways as well as in railroads. The high 
 price of corn, especially, caused merchants to import great 
 quantities of grain from abroad, and this brought about the 
 crash. Railway shareholders, including corn-merchants, as 
 well as every other class in the country, were called upon 
 for fresh instalments of the amount promised by them to 
 lines in process of construction, just at a time when an un- 
 expectedly favourable harvest brouglit down the price of
 
 Manias and Panics. 331 
 
 wheat, and rendered all speculations therein unprofitable. 
 The result was the failure of one great house after another, 
 and a panic which spread all over the country. 
 
 The panic began, after more than two years of mania, on 
 the 9th of August, 1847, when Leslie, Alexander, and Com- 
 pany declared themselves unable to meet their liabilities, 
 amounting to ^500,000. Other failures, to the extent of 
 ^700,000, followed within a week, and in succeeding weeks 
 the heap of ruins accumulated with terrible rapidity, till the 
 money involved amounted to ^15,000,000. The fall of 
 mercantile houses necessitated the fall of banks that had 
 lent them money, and the fall of banks brought speculators 
 of every class to bankruptcy. There is a terrible similarity 
 in panics, and the miseries that ensued in 1847 differed 
 only from those of 1826 in that they were more wide-spread, 
 and, by reason of the continuous demands for instalments 
 of the capital pledged for railways that were being laid down, 
 more far-reaching. 
 
 There was another panic in 1857, here especially note- 
 worthy because one of its causes, if not the principal, only 
 indirectly a commercial one, was the war-mania which 
 caused England to join with France in strife with Russia, 
 and to achieve a victory that brought all the conse(]uences 
 of a defeat. Another cause was the spirit of over-trading 
 that had found such strange development in 1844, and the 
 ensuing years, and had received no adequate check even 
 from the troubles of 1847. 
 
 It was as a curb upon this tendency to over-trading, and as 
 a protection to speculators who, for every two or three pounds 
 that they contributed to the old joint-stock companies, might 
 in the course of years be compelled to pay fifty or a hundred, 
 that the "Limited Liability Act" was passed in 1862. 
 If productive of some good, however, it also produced much 
 fresh evil. Its limitations provoked a false confidence in the 
 minds of investors, and yet left them subject to liabilities
 
 332 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 which might cause their ruin. And, while ostensibly pro- 
 tecting honest men who are not supposed to understand all 
 the ramifications of commercial adventure, it was pernicious 
 in that it also, but much more efficiently, lessened the re- 
 sponsibilities of the dishonest men who start new undertak- 
 ings, and modify old ones, with the sole or chief purpose 
 of encouraging speculation. It begot a limited liability 
 mania, which, in 1865, caused the formation of two hundred 
 and eighty-seven companies, with an aggregate authorised 
 capital of more that ^100,000,000, but with only 
 ^12,000,000 of paid-up deposits. The failures of 1S66 
 and a panic not yet allayed were the results. 
 
 There have been plenty of other manias, and consequent 
 panics, besides those here enumerated, many in England, 
 many in the United States and elsewhere. There have 
 also been panics without number, great and small, hardly 
 to be attributed to commercial manias. Diverse in origin, 
 in progress, and in effect, caused sometimes by fraud, some- 
 times by folly, sometimes by nothing but misguided wisdom, 
 they all teach one transparent lesson of prudence and 
 honesty; but when that lesson is duly learnt and truly 
 practised, the romance of trade will have reached a climax 
 nvleed romantic-
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NOTABLE TRADERS 
 
 The Merchant-princes of Mediaeval States — Salvestro, Vieri, Giovanni, and 
 Cosmo de' Medici — -The Fuggers of Augsburg — Other old Merchant- 
 princes — Sir Thomas Gresham and his English Predecessors — Sir 
 Edward Osborne — Sir Thomas Smythe — Sir Hugh Myddelton — Sir 
 Giles Mompesson — American Merchants — Sir William Pepperell — John 
 Hancock — Elias Hackett Derby, of Salem — Stephen Girard, of Phila- 
 delphia — Thomas Eddy, of New York— Gideon Lee, of New York- 
 Jacob Little, of New York— The Lawrences, of Boston — George Pea- 
 body — Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, of Bombay. 
 
 Old-world commerce was great, but even the names of 
 the men who promoted it, and whom it enriched, are, for 
 the most part, unknown to us. The biographical interest of 
 trading history hardly covers five centuries, and commences 
 with those famous merchant-princes of Italy who, more than 
 any others of the Middle Ages, aided the revival of com- 
 merce in modern times, and, in so doing, by accident or 
 design, gave notable help to the progress of political and 
 scientific, and even of literary and religious enlightenment. 
 
 One family of these merchant-princes is especially re- 
 markable. There were Medici at Florence in the com- 
 mencement of the fourteenth century, if not during all the 
 previous centuries in which the chief inland city of Italy 
 had been making itself famous among the foremost cities of 
 the world. Venice, first of all the northern commonwealths, 
 liad risen from obscurity by reason of her merchant-enter- 
 prise, and become the world's great mart — 
 
 " A ruler of the waters and their powers ; 
 And such she was ; her daughters had their dowers 
 
 From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 
 Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers : 
 
 In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
 Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased."
 
 334 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 Genoa, on the otlier side of the Penhisula, had learnt to vie 
 with Venice in commercial greatness. Florence, no less 
 commercial, but debarred by her position from maritime 
 exploits, had taken the lead in manufacture of the woollen 
 and silken wares for which the material was collected by 
 her friendly rivals, and had found a yet greater source of 
 influence by early development of the banker's calling. It 
 was by her banking especially that Florence won her great- 
 ness. With agencies in all the other busy towns, her citizens 
 drew from all abundant wealth, which, before it bore fruit 
 in luxurious degradation, enabled them to wage a noble and 
 successful war against Suabian tyranny, and, when that was 
 over, to fight somewhat less nobly against aristocratic tyrants 
 at home. A worthier liberty was achieved by Florence than 
 by any of the other Italian cities, or by any of the young 
 commonwealths then rising in Europe. The struggle between 
 conservatism and radicalism was carried on with varying 
 benefit, but more beneficially than elsewhere in the Florence 
 of tlie fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; and, though no- 
 where else were Guelph and Ghibelline divisions greater, 
 the contest was controlled by the hard-working spirit of its 
 citizens and the common sense of dignity, with generally true 
 views as to the method of its attainment and preservation. 
 As we often see in later periods, but in a way for which 
 contemporary history furnishes no parallel, we find men 
 constantly rising from the ranks and taking high place in 
 civic councils, gradually losing the plebeian sympathies with 
 which they began, but not quickly sinking into useless aris- 
 tocrats under the load of their own aggrandisement. These 
 sources of prosperity were not very permanent, but they 
 lasted through several generations; and the Medici played 
 a famous part in the city's healthy growth before they took 
 the lead in its unhealthy sequels. 
 
 While they were quietly working their way to influence, 
 earlier Florentine traders achieved greater wealth and fame.
 
 Notable Traders. 2iZ^ 
 
 In the thirteenth century the Mozzi and the Spini acted as 
 Papal bankers and farmers of the Papal revenues. In the 
 fourteenth century the Peruzzi, the Bardi, and the Albert! 
 had agencies in Venice, Naples, Rome, Perugia, Sienna, 
 Avignon, Paris, Brussels, Bruges, and even in London, York, 
 and Hull. It was to a great extent by means of money lent 
 to him by the Peruzzi that Edward III. was able to carry on 
 his war with France ; and the English monarch's failure, in 
 1346, to pay 1,365,000 golden crowns which he owed to 
 the Florentine bankers caused a panic which was felt 
 throughout Europe. 
 
 The Medici began to be notable late in the fourteenth 
 century. Salvestro de' Medici was gonfaloniere in 1370; and 
 he was elected for another period of two months' signory in 
 May, 1378. Florence was then seething with opposition of 
 the plebeian community to the capitani and the aristocratic 
 oligarchs. Salvestro was called upon to violate his duty for 
 the gratification of his superiors. He refused, and, on the 
 1 8th of June, when he was chairman of the signory, he 
 summoned a meeting of the whole body of citizens, design- 
 ing to submit to them a law for the repression of the capi- 
 tani. But his law was not approved by his colleagues, and, 
 on their rejection, he rushed angrily from the council-board 
 to the public meeting, and addressed it in words never for- 
 gotten. '' Citizens ! " he exclaimed, " I have striven to-day 
 to purge this city of the pestilent tyranny of the great and 
 overbearing. But I have not been permitted to do so ; my 
 colleagues will not allow it. It would have been for the 
 welfare of tlie citizens and of the entire city, but I have 
 not been listened to or received the attention due to your 
 gonfaloniere. Since I am powerless, therefore, to do good, I 
 will no longer hold office, either as prior or gonfaloniere. 
 I shall retire to my own house, and you may make whom 
 you will gonfaloniere." He was not suffered to retire. A 
 shout of approval greeted him ; a flame of democratic zeal
 
 33^ The Romaxce of Trade. 
 
 spread through the meeting and through the city, and the 
 flame took real shape in the burning of palaces and houses 
 in the aristocratic quarter. The mob ruled in Florence for 
 a month, and though order was then restored, and the 
 tumult was soon followed by rejoicings and submission to 
 the capitani, and Salvestro de' Medici narrowly escaped ven- 
 geance for his contumacious action, a beginning was then 
 made of that popular supremacy which the later Medici 
 were to turn altogether to their own advantage. 
 
 Salvestro de' Medici returned to his banking, and his 
 name is afterwards only vaguely met with in Florentine 
 history as a champion of the people, other champions being 
 his kinsmen and partners, Averardo and Vieri. One episode 
 in Vieri de' Medici's banking history aptly illustrates the 
 condition of affairs in Florence. In 1389 the Duke of 
 Milan was scheming for the city's overthrow. That did not 
 hinder his keeping a banking account with the Medici ; but 
 one day an agent of the duke entered the bank, and asked 
 in his name for a thousand crowns in a sealed bag. Vieri 
 l)aid the money, but, suspecting treachery, tracked the mes- 
 senger until he discovered that the bag was handed as a 
 bribe to one of the gonfalonieri then in office. The func- 
 tionary was brought to justice, and branded as a traitor, and 
 Vieri became more popular than ever. Averardo, the other 
 cousin, made but little stir in Florence; but he was the 
 father of Giovanni de' Medici, and Giovanni was the father 
 of Cosmo and head of all the famous Medici of the Middle 
 Ages and of later days. 
 
 Giovanni de' Medici, then about sixty, and representative 
 of the wealthiest and most influential family in Florence, 
 was chosen gonfaloniere in 142 1. His election was opposed 
 on the ground of his great riches and his great talents. 
 Niccolo da Uzzano, his chief opponent, showed from the 
 history of the commonwealth, says the old historian, " how 
 great was the danger of drawing up a man who enjoyed so
 
 Notable Traders. 337 
 
 great and universal a reputation,_and how easy a thing it 
 was to prevent an evil in its beginning, and how exceedingly 
 difficult to remedy mischief when it had grown strong ; there 
 were many capabilities and qualities in Giovanni de' Medici 
 which very much surpassed those of Salvestro, and it there- 
 fore behoved the citizens to be very careful what they were 
 putting their hands to." That argument, that Giovanni de' 
 Medici was too able a man for office, shows the defect of 
 Florentine institutions at that time. They could only be 
 propped up by weak and unambitious men. 
 
 Giovanni was accordingly kept down till Florence could 
 not do without him. He was then placed in power, and 
 the fears of his enemies were realised. ■ His election to the 
 signory, though only for two months, began the supremacy of a 
 family that could never afterwards be suppressed. Giovanni, 
 however, worked quietly and unostentatiously. He toiled 
 on at his ledgers, handed money across the counter, and 
 sent it to distant parts of the world, was courteous to every 
 one, and straightforward in all his dealings. The result, 
 whether he cunningly planned it or not, was the acquisition 
 of all that power for which he seemed to care little. During 
 the brief remainder of his life he was the most popular man 
 in the commonwealth, trusted by all classes, consulted on 
 all public busmess, employed in every sort of work. He 
 unobtrusively effected a great reform in the method 01 
 taxation, which brought much ease to the community, while 
 it increased its revenues ; and he as unobtrusively effected 
 other changes. His son Cosmo blamed him for want of 
 ambition ; but his mode of life did more than anything 
 else could do to help Cosmo's own ambition. " He was a 
 merciful and charitable man," said Macchiavelli, " and not 
 only gave assistance to those who asked it of him, but often, 
 unasked, succoured the poor in their need. He felt kindly 
 towards all men, and was not chary of praise to the good 
 or of compassion to the bad. He was a partisan of peace, 
 
 w
 
 338 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 and always sought to avoid war. He asked for none of the 
 honours of the State, and enjoyed them all. As a magis- 
 trate, he was gracious and affable ; not endowed with much 
 eloquence, but abundantly gifted with sagacity and prudence. 
 His outward appearance was of a melancholy cast, but 
 in conversation he was agreeable and facetious. He died 
 enormously rich in treasure, but richer still in good repute 
 and in the goodwill of his fellow-citizens. And this inherit- 
 ance was not only maintained, but was increased by his son 
 Cosmo. 
 
 Giovanni de' Medici died in 1429, leaving 178,000 
 golden florins ; and that vast wealth was vastly increased by 
 his descendants. At one time they had sixteen branch banks 
 in the various capitals of Europe. Their network of finance 
 covered the whole civilised world of the West, and contri- 
 buted mightily to their growing riches and to their growing 
 influence. It is noteworthy that these Medici, like other 
 mediaeval merchants, but unlike most modern traders, stuck 
 to business long after they had made politics their foremost 
 employment ; but from the time of Giovanni's death their 
 commercial history becomes insignificant, in comparison witli 
 their political influence. The story of that influence neeti 
 not be given here. To tell it in detail would be to recount 
 all the later and the most familiar portion of Florentine 
 history. From 1433, when Cosmo de' Medici was banished 
 from Florence for ten years, to be recalled in less than a 
 year, this is especially the case. Every one knows how he 
 returned to be "the father of his country" during thirty years. 
 And the power of his wealth, and of other valuable properties 
 besides wealth, spread far beyond Florence. " He not only," 
 says Macchiavelli, " overcame the domestic opposition and 
 civic rivalries of his enemies, but also conquered that ot 
 many foreign powers, and that with such rare felicity and 
 prudence that whoever opposed him lost his money and his 
 time, if not his territory ; as the Venetians can well testify,
 
 Notable Traders. 339 
 
 who, as long as they were alhed with him, were constantly 
 victorious over the Duke Filippo Visconti, but disunited 
 from him, were as constantly beaten, first by Filippo and 
 then by the new duke, Francesco Sforza. And when they 
 were leagued with Alfonso against the Republic of Florence, 
 Cosmo, by means of his credit, so emptied Venice and 
 Naples of money, that they were constrained to make 
 peace on such terms as were granted to them. Cosmo had 
 a higher renown and wider reputation than any citizen, 
 not a man of arms, that Florence or, indeed, any other 
 city had ever possessed. He surpassed every other man 
 of his times, not only in authority and wealth, but also 
 in liberality and prudence, for the chief among all the 
 qualities that made him the first man in his country were 
 his generosity and munificence. After his death it was 
 found that there was not a single citizen of any position 
 to whom Cosmo had not lent large sums of money. His 
 magnificence was shown also by the abundance of build- 
 ings undertaken by him. He rebuilt from their foundations 
 the convents and churches of San Marco and San Lorenzo, 
 and the monastery of Santa Verdiana, in Florence, and San 
 Girolamo and the Badia, on the hill of Fiesole, and a church 
 of the Franciscans in the Mugello. Besides all this, he 
 erected altars and chapels of exceeding splendour in the 
 church of Santa Croce, in that of the Servites, in that of the 
 Holy Angels, and at San Miniato, and furnished them richly 
 with all things needed for the celebration of holy worship. 
 To these sacred edifices must be added his own private 
 residences, one of which, in the city, is a mansion befitting 
 such a citizen, and four others in the country are all palaces 
 of royal magnificence, rather than what might be expected to 
 belong to a private person. And, as if it did not suflice him 
 to be known throughout Furope for the splendour of his 
 buildings, he erected an hospital for poor and infirm pilgrims 
 at Jerusalem." 
 
 w 2
 
 ^•^40 The Romance of Tpade. 
 
 Cosmo de' Medici, born in 1389, and dying in 1464, 
 was the most notable of all the merchant-princes on record. 
 His descendants, though many of them merchants, were 
 chiefly memorable as princes. From him sprang Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent, Pope Leo X., and Pope Clement VIL, 
 Catherine, the queen-mother of France, who instigated the 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and Alexander, the first Duke 
 of Florence, who culminated the change from the popular 
 influence in their own city of the early Medici to the tyranny 
 of the later. From his brother Lorenzo, the younger son of 
 old Giovanni, issued the long line of Medicean Grand Dukes 
 of Tuscany, who reigned from 1537 to 1737. 
 
 A merchant family of a very different sort to the Italian 
 Medici, but hardly inferior to it in commercial importance, 
 was that of the Bavarian Fuggers, whose name, during the 
 Middle Ages, was often Italianised into Folcari. John Fugger 
 was a weaver in a village out of Augsburg, in the middle of 
 the fourteenth century. His son, the second John Fugger, 
 transferred his weaving business to Augsburg, in which he 
 acquired rights of citizenship in 1370, through marriage with 
 a citizen's daughter. Augsburg was then the chief seat of 
 linen manufacture in Europe and, advantageously placed on 
 the highway between Venice and Bruges, a great emporium 
 of trade in all native and foreign wares for which there was 
 a market in the surrounding countries. John Fugger throve 
 here. Starting as a humble weaver in 1370, he died in 1409, 
 one of the richest and most enterprising of the merchants of 
 Augsburg. His sons, Andrew and James, followed in his 
 steps, and greatly augmented the family wealth and influence. 
 The offspring of the elder withdrew from commerce, and 
 entered the ranks of the nobility, as founders of the house 
 of Fugger the Roe ; but trade was followed successfully by 
 nearly all the eleven children of the younger son. Three of 
 these especially — Ulric, George, and James — were renowned 
 for their industry, integrity, and shrewdness. All three
 
 Notable Traders. 341 
 
 married ladies of rank, and were themselves ennobled. 
 They did not abandon linen manufacture, but prospered 
 most as merchants, and became rivals of the Medici and all 
 the other Italian financiers in banking enterprise. They 
 were the Emperor Maximilian's chief bankers, and found 
 for him the money \vith which he was able to wage his 
 European wars. James Fugger was also a great miner, and 
 opened up the mineral treasures ot the Tyrol, where he 
 built the famous Fuggerau Castle. He died without issue. 
 Ulric also was childless. But George, the second of the 
 three brothers, had two famous sons, Raymond and Anthony, 
 and by them, and especially the younger, the family was 
 raised to its highest pitch of greatness. 
 
 They owned the gold-mines of the valley of the Inn and 
 the silver-mines of Falkenstein and Schwartz. They had 
 banking and commercial agencies in Venice, Genoa, Ant- 
 werp, and a dozen other marts. Their ships went into every 
 sea, and brought wealth from every port. Once nearly twenty 
 of their vessels were captured in the Baltic, by a fleet of the 
 Hanseatic League, whose monopoly they were assailing by 
 traffic with the northern ports of Europe. They joined in 
 Portuguese expeditions to the East Indies and in Spanish 
 expeditions to the West. Maximilian employed them in 
 diplomacy, as well as in financial agencies, and his son, 
 Charles v., found them yet more useful. When the Emperor 
 was at Paris, and the Crown jewels of France were shown to 
 him, he exclaimed, with more pride than good taste, " I 
 know a weaver in Augsburg who could buy all that." 
 Anthony Fugger was the weaver. Charles was sumptuously 
 entertained by him for a year and a day, during his attend- 
 ance at the famous Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and to the 
 conclusion of that or ot some later visit is referred a mythical 
 story which has its counterpart in the traditional biography 
 of many another great merchant. " I feel myself," Anthony 
 Fugger is reported to have said, " so amply repaid by the
 
 342 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 honour of this visit that this bond is now useless," and 
 thereupon producing the Emperor's bond for 800,000 florins, 
 he threw it into a fire of cinnamon- wood that was burning 
 in the hall. An odd bargain, showing more business-like 
 qualities, is on record between Anthony Fugger and our 
 own Edward VL In 1551 the Augsburg merchant lent 
 ^60,000 to the English King, part to be repaid in May and 
 part in August- But in April Edward found himself unable 
 to meet his liabilities, and was forced to make a compromise 
 thus quaintly worded in the King's own journal : " First, 
 that the Fulcare should put it off for 10 per cent; secondly, 
 that I should buy 12,000 marks, at six shillings the ounce; 
 thirdly, that I should pay 100,000 crowns for a very fair 
 jewel, four rubies, marvellous big, one orient and great 
 diamond, and one great pearl." That transaction shows 
 very plainly how the Fuggers and their peers and rivals made 
 money in old days. 
 
 Anthony Fugger died worth 6,000,000 solid golden 
 crowns, besides jewels and treasures of immense value, great 
 houses and estates in various parts of Germany, and trading- 
 factories all over Europe and in both the Indies. He was 
 known as Anthony the Rich, and concerning him a ghost- 
 story is extant, which they who like may believe. " It was 
 told me at Naples," said George Sandys, the gossiping old 
 traveller, in 16 10, "by a countryman of ours, and an old 
 pensioner of the Pope's, who was a youth in the days of 
 King Henry, that it was then generally bruited throughout 
 England that Mr. Gresham, a merchant, setting sail from 
 Palermo, being crossed by contrary winds, was constrained 
 to anchor under the lee of the island of Stromboli, which 
 place is commonly affirmed by the Roman Catholics to be 
 the jaws of hell. Now about midday, when for certain 
 hours it accustomedly forbeareth to flame, he ascended the 
 mountain with eight of the sailors ; and, approaching the vent 
 as near as they durst, amongst other noises they heard a voice
 
 Notable Traders. 
 
 343 
 
 cry aloud, ' Dispatch ! dispatch ! the rich Anthony is coming !' 
 Terrified herewith, they descended, and anon the mountain 
 again evaporated fire. But from so dismal a place they 
 made all the haste they could ; when, the wind still thwart- 
 ing their course, and desiring much to know more of this 
 matter, they returned to Palermo ; and forthwith inquiring of 
 Anthon)', it was told them that he was dead, and, com- 
 puting the time, they did find it to agree with the very 
 instant that the voice was heard by them. Gresham reported 
 this at his return to the King, and the mariners, being called 
 before him, confirmed by oath the naration. In Gresham 
 himself it wrought so deep an impression that he gave over 
 all traffic, distributing his goods, a part to his kinsfolk and 
 the rest to good uses, retaining only a competency to him- 
 self, and so spent the rest of his life in solitary devotion." 
 Dates and circumstances contradict this record ; but it is as 
 trustworthy as most other ghost-stories. 
 
 Anthony Fugger hardly deserved to be cast into ever- 
 lasting torment, through the jaws of Stromboli. He vied, 
 in a humble way, with the Medici in his patronage of art 
 and literature, and, like some of his ancestors and many of 
 his descendants, he was as charitable and good-hearted as 
 he was honest and enterprising. Schools, hospitals, alms- 
 houses, and endowments of all sorts, in and out of Augs- 
 burg, still attest his benevolence, and that of his father, 
 uncles, and sons. These sons and other descendants of the 
 family, retaining their interest in the trade still carried on in 
 their name, gradually settled down as landed proprietors. 
 In 1 619 there were five branches of the family of Fugger, 
 including forty-seven counts and countesses, and three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five members of all grades. Of the descend- 
 ants of Raymond and Anthony Fugger alone there are now 
 four great branches, owning large portions of Bavaria, and 
 retaining the name of feudal lordship over 50,000 or more 
 dependants.
 
 344 ^^-2" Romance of Trade. 
 
 Hardly inferior to the Fuggers, in commercial dignity, 
 under Charles V., were the Welsers, also Augsburg merchants, 
 who, among a crowd of other famous exploits, farmed the 
 South American province of Venezuela, and fitted out several 
 expeditions in search of El Dorado, whereby they gained 
 less gold than that which came from more commonplace 
 trade in districts nearer home. Another, and rather earlier 
 merchant-prince, Jacques Coeur, the Frenchman, has been 
 already described ; and of earlier and later English merchants 
 something has also been said. 
 
 The growth of British commerce in the Middle Ages is 
 illustrated by the familiar history of men like the De la 
 Poles of Hull, Walworth, Philpot, and Whittington of Lon- 
 don, and the Canynges of Bristol ; and the greater achieve- 
 ments of the Greshams — with the exception of that uncle of 
 Sir Thomas Gresham whom Anthony Fugger's ghost, as we 
 have seen, is recorded to have driven from trade into the 
 priesthood — inaugurate the greater age of commerce that 
 began with the Tudors. 
 
 Sir Thomas Gresham was the greatest English merchant 
 of the old stamp, and no mean rival of Anthony Fugger. 
 Living long in Antwerp, and having agencies all over 
 Europe, his commercial and financial operations on his own 
 account were hardly more important than the political 
 services which he rendered to Edward VL and Queen 
 Elizabeth. He had many notable contemporaries and im- 
 mediate successors, who were more strictly and exclusively 
 merchants. One of the chief of these was Sir Edward 
 Osborne, who began life as an apprentice to Master William 
 Hewit. Hewit's warehouse and counting-house were on Old 
 London Bridge, and his little daughter Anne, tumbling out 
 of the window and falling into the Thames one day, was 
 only saved from drowning by the bravery of young Osborne, 
 who jumped in after her. Her grateful father gave her 
 to him for a wife when she was old enough to marry, and in
 
 Notable Traders. 345 
 
 the end bequeathed to him his wealth and business. Osborne 
 made good use of his inheritance, and was one of the first 
 of those enterprising merchants who, not content with the 
 old-fashioned European trade to which Gresham devoted 
 himself, sent their ships into far-off seas, and were the 
 pioneers of trade and colonisation in distant lands. He 
 traded with the West Indies when the West Indies were 
 hardly known to Englishmen. He was the chief founder of 
 the Levant Company; and almost the first Englishmen who 
 went to India in search of new ways of trade were sent by 
 him. 
 
 A yet more enterprising merchant of the same sort was 
 Sir Thomas Smythe, one of the founders of the East India 
 Company, and its first governor, holding the office over and 
 over again, as often as he would allow himself to be elected, 
 till the end of his life, and, whether holding it or . not, its 
 real master. To him, more than to any other single man, 
 our present vast empire in India and the imperial trade 
 carried on with it, owe their origin. But with that work 
 and the profit that it brought him Smythe was not satisfied. 
 For twelve years he was governor of the Virginia Company. 
 Under his skilful rule, the colony, which had failed under 
 Raleigh's planting, prospered greatly. From the board-room 
 in London he ruled it with despotic power, and thus the 
 same merchant, who was the chief promoter of British in- 
 tercourse with India, was also the chief promoter of that 
 famous group of colonies out of which the United States 
 of America has grown. Sir Thomas Smythe, dying in the 
 same year as his sovereign, was the greatest English mer- 
 chant in the days of James I. 
 
 He had many famous contemporaries, many good and 
 many bad. One of the worthiest was renowned Sir Hugh 
 Myddelton, who turned aside from commerce with India 
 and America, to construct the New River which gave whole- 
 some water to thirsty Londoners, and a fresh impetus to
 
 346 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 engineering skill. One of the worst, if not the worst, was 
 Sir Giles Mompesson, who turned aside from foreign trade to 
 traffic in monopolies, which brought upon him and Charles I. 
 the just wrath of the House of Commons, and to engage in 
 yet worse traffic, which caused Massinger to paint his portrait, 
 hardly exaggerated, as Sir Giles Overreach, in " A New Way 
 to Pay Old Debts." When Lord LovcU, whom he wishes 
 to marry his daughter, asks him — 
 
 " Are you not frighted with the imprecations 
 And curses of whole families, made wretched 
 By your sinister practices?" 
 
 Sir Giles Overreach answers — 
 
 ' ' Yes, as rocks are 
 When foamy billows split themselves against 
 Their flinty ribs ; or as the moon is moved 
 When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her brightness. 
 I am of a solid temper, and, like these. 
 Steer on, a constant course. With mine own sword, 
 If called into the field, I can make that right 
 Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong. 
 When in bitterness they call me 
 Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder 
 On my poor neighbours' rights, or grand encloser 
 Of what was common, to my private use, — 
 Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries, 
 And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold, 
 I only think what 'tis to have my daughter 
 Right honourable ; and 'tis a powerful charm 
 Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity. 
 Or the least sting of conscience. I am marble. 
 Nay more, if you will have my character 
 In little, I enjoy more true delight 
 In my arrival to my wealth by dark 
 And crooked ways, than you shall e'er take pleasure 
 In spending what my industry hath compassed." 
 
 Of dishonest merchants, as in every other walk in life, 
 there have been many to throw an ugly shade over the his- 
 tory of commerce, and by the contrast to render brighter 
 the careers of traders who, though they ma}- not have seen,
 
 Notable Traders. 347 
 
 or cared to see, that their enterprise was, at every turn, rich 
 in beneficent results of every sort, chose honourable ways 
 for their own advancement, and understood that, in helping 
 others, they were most surely augmenting their own wealth. 
 There is, for the most part, less of striking personal 
 incident in the lives of modern English merchants than in 
 those of their predecessors. A few familiar stories of beggar- 
 boys who have risen to be millionaires, by steady perse- 
 verance and quick perception of the ways in which to make 
 best use of the chances open to them, illustrate the careers 
 of thousands of great merchants. There is plenty of ro- 
 mance still in ledgers and office-stools, cheque-books and 
 cash-boxes ; but there is more variety and charm in the 
 history of the heroes of such lately-born commerce as we 
 find in England's great American offshoot than generally 
 occurs in the recent trading annals of our own country. 
 
 The first great American merchant was Sir William 
 Pepperell, the son of a Cornish fisherman who, thriving in 
 his humble trade at home, emigrated to New England in 
 Charles II.'s time, and in 1679 settled at Kittery Point, in 
 Maine, where he married the daughter of a ship-builder. 
 The building of small ships and filling them with fish for 
 coasting and West Indian trade were then the chief occupa- 
 tions of all New Englanders who were not farmers, and the 
 elder Pepperell grew rich thereby. He was a soldier, having 
 repeatedly to withstand the efforts of the native Indians to 
 recover their fatherland, as well as a merchant. His son, 
 born in 1696, was trained in both pursuits. He was a shop- 
 lad, busy with trade in lumber, fish, provisions, and other 
 ships' stores, before he was sixteen, when, several of his 
 friends having been murdered in the streets of Kittery, he 
 had to go out and take vengeance on the aggressors. Busi- 
 ness alternated with fighting, however, and when his father 
 died in 1734, young Pepperell succeeded to the manage- 
 ment of a thriving trade, and the ownership of more ships,
 
 34^ The Romance of Trade. 
 
 warehouses, mills, and farms than any other merchant in 
 New England possessed at that time ; he was also colonel of 
 the militia of Maine. During the next five-and-twenty years 
 he prospered in both ways. 
 
 The most famous exploit in his career occurred in 1744. 
 In that year, England and France being at war, Governor 
 Shirley, of Massachusetts, conceived the bold design of 
 capturing Louisbourg, " the Dunkirk of America," a strong 
 town built on Cape Breton, with a stone rampart twelve 
 yards high, and a ditch twenty-seven yards wide, which had 
 been twenty-five years in building, and had cost 30,000,000 
 livres. Eighty-six heavy guns, mounted in three batteries, 
 were supposed to render it impregnable, and made a safe 
 harbour for French trading-ships, and a nest for the French 
 privateers, that dashed out to sea and darted along the 
 coast to do serious damage to the English vessels going to 
 and from the American colonies. Failing in obtaining the 
 assistance which he sought from home for what was con- 
 sidered a Quixotic enterprise, Shirley consulted Pepperell, 
 who, being the most popular as well as the richest man in 
 those parts, quickly collected about four thousand sturdy 
 volunteers for land-fighting, and rendered further help by 
 contributing to the organisation of a volunteer fleet of a 
 hundred armed vessels. He was appointed commander-in- 
 chief of the land forces dispatched to Cape Breton, and 
 was a chief adviser in the naval operations by which his 
 siege of Louisbourg was aided. The siege lasted seven 
 weeks. In the end Louisbourg surrendered, and this victory, 
 when reported to England, was acknowledged, amid bonfires 
 and fireworks, to be the most valiant and beneficial in the 
 whole war. Mr. William Pepperell, merchant, was made Sir 
 William Pepperell, Bart. ; and when, five years afterwards, 
 he visited London, he was feasted by its citizens and wel- 
 comed at Court with all the honour due to a hero. When, 
 shortly afterwards, a great French armament was fitted out
 
 Notable Traders. 349 
 
 to recover Louisbourg, and take vengeance on Massachusetts, 
 Pepperell was at the head of the movement for its resistance ; 
 but shipwreck and pestilence anticipated the work of soldiers 
 and sailors, and from that time the English possession of 
 Louisbourg was undisputed. 
 
 Sir William Pepperell did other service to the mother 
 country, and helped to enrich himself, by his ship-building. 
 One vessel especially, the America, carrying forty-four guns, 
 which he constructed for the British Government, was for a 
 long time one of the best in our navy, and proved useful in 
 the war which too soon broke out between England and her 
 colonists. 
 
 In that war Pepperell did not live long enough to take 
 part. In 1748 he retired from active business. In Februarj-, 
 1759, Pitt made him a lieutenant-general, the first native 
 American to receive that honour ; but he only enjoyed it 
 for a few weeks. He died in the following July. 
 
 Massachusetts had several other famous mercliants in 
 that and the following generation ; the most famous of all, 
 by reason of his achievements apart from commerce, being 
 John Hancock. Hancock, the son of a clergyman who died 
 young, was born at Quincy, near Boston, in 1737, and after 
 more careful education than was then common in the 
 American colonies, entered the counting-house of his uncle, 
 a merchant of Boston. That was in 1754. In 1764 his 
 uncle died, and he succeeded to the business. Though 
 showing himself a skilful merchant, he found time for further 
 studies, and became a leader in intellectual society and a 
 favourite with all classes. In 1766 he was chosen repre- 
 sentative of Boston in that memorable General Assembly, 
 in which armed resistance of England was threatened unless 
 its tyrannical measures of taxation and interference with 
 local affairs were rescinded. Hancock and Samuel Adams 
 were the great promoters of the opposition. Hancock's 
 sympathies with English refinements, and his prommcnt
 
 350 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 position in American society, caused Lord North to make 
 special efforts to withdraw him from the revcihitionary party 
 which he was helping to form, and to bribe him to fidelity 
 to the mother country. But those efforts were indignantly 
 rebuffed, and their only effect was to make Hancock a more 
 zealous secessionist than ever. He was then, and with good 
 reason, denounced as " the arch-rebel." He and Adams, 
 outlawed for their patriotism, had, during some years, to lead 
 the life of fugitives, and in all their wanderings became fire- 
 brands of revolution. They were concealed in Lexington 
 on the memorable 19th of April, 1775, when the first blood 
 was shed, and the brief victory of General Gage was the 
 signal for general insurrection, quickly issuing in a lasting 
 triumph. It was in vain that, in June, a pardon was offered 
 to all rebels except Adams and Hancock, whose offences 
 were too great to be forgiven. All Americans shared the 
 spirit of Adams and Hancock, and they had Washington for 
 their general. The battle of Bunker's Hill, on the 17th of 
 June, 1775, was followed by the congress of delegates from 
 all the insurgent colonies which met in Philadelphia, and 
 Hancock, representing Massachusetts, though almost the 
 youngest man amongst them, was chosen its president. 
 Modest and true-hearted as he was, he is said to have been 
 so astonished at this great mark of confidence, that he 
 urged the selection of some older man, and refused to take 
 his seat until one brawny colleague took him ap in his arms 
 and forced him into it. Once installed in the office, how- 
 ever,'he held it worthily. To the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, issued in 1776, his signature, as president, was first 
 affixed. Ill-health caused him to retire for some time from 
 public life in 1777, when the independence of the United 
 States was completed \ and he took no very prominent part 
 in the later work, but he was Governor of Massachusetts 
 from 1780 till 1793, with an interval of two years He died, 
 at the age of fifty-six, in 1793.
 
 Notable Traders. 351 
 
 John Hancock stands pre-eminent among the merchant- 
 patriots of the United States. But trade was soon resigned 
 by him for better work, while others of his day and of his 
 temper continued to apply themselves to commercial as well 
 as to pohtical affairs. One of his most notable contem- 
 poraries was Elias Hackett Derby, of Salem. 
 
 Salem, near Boston, began even before it to be a busy 
 haunt of trade, and one of its first merchants was Roger 
 Derby, who emigrated from Devonshire in 167 1, and who, 
 dying in 1698, left a gi-eat house, a warehouse, a wharf, and 
 a keen commercial spirit to his son Richard, who, in turn, 
 bequeathed all these, and more, to a son of the same name. 
 Richard Derby the younger, born in 17 12, traded with New 
 York and other towns on the coast, and often sent his ships 
 on more adventurous voyages to the West Indies and to 
 Europe. Many fights between his captains and the 
 buccaneers of Jamaica and the Spanish Main are recorded. 
 During the French war, between 1756 and 1763, he was 
 especially famous for his trading enterprise. He owned 
 several great ships, armed with eight or twelve guns apiece, 
 which went to and fro, adding privateering to regular com- 
 merce, and greatly enriching himself and his family. He 
 had six giant sons, the shortest of whom was six feet six 
 inches tall, all trained to seamanship, to commerce, and to 
 war; and of these Elias, the second, born in 1739, was the 
 most remarkable. 
 
 At the commencement of the War of Independence, 
 when Boston declared against the English, great efforts were 
 made to secure the fidelity of Salem. The British Govern- 
 ment ofil^"ered to make it, instead of Boston, the chief town 
 of Massachusetts, and the promise of extensive ship-building 
 and the armed protection of its commerce rendered the 
 bribe a great one. The Derbys, and the other merchants of 
 Salem, however, bluntly refused, and thougla their patriotism 
 brought heavy loss at first, the ultimate gain was vast. Elias
 
 352 The Romance op Trade. 
 
 Derby had seven ships of his own trading to the West Indies, 
 some of which were seized, while the rest proved useless for 
 their old purposes. The young merchant turned them into 
 privateers, and employed all his own property, and all his 
 influence with his merchant -brothers and his brother- 
 merchants, in increasing the number. Before the war was 
 over he was concerned, more or less, in the fitting out and 
 vigorous use ot as many as a hundred and fifty-eight 
 privateers, mounting in all more than two thousand guns, 
 and the exploits of these vessels fill an important place in 
 the history of the war. One of them, the Revenge, a ten-gun 
 sloop, captured four Jamaica-men, laden with rum, on its first 
 expedition in 1777, and that success was followed by many 
 other like achievements, by which England suffered and 
 New England gained. The names given to some of these 
 vessels aptly show the temper of the men who owned them. 
 One was the Tyrannicide, and proved a fit associate for the 
 Revenge; but Captain Hunsdon, who at first commanded it, 
 made himself especially obnoxious to the British after his 
 transfer. to another, the Pickering, a tough little schooner 
 carrying fourteen guns, In 1780 she had just taken a ship 
 of her own size in the Bay of Biscay, and was towing her 
 into port, when the AcJiiHes, a forty-two-gun frigate, came 
 up. Hunsdon bravely prepared to meet this foe of thrice 
 his own strength, fought desperately within sight of some 
 hundred thousand Spaniards who crowded down to the shore 
 to watch the result, and was cheered by their shouts of 
 sympathy when he forced the Achilles to withdraw and leave 
 him in quiet possession of his prize. It was by prowess 
 of that sort that American independence was achieved. 
 
 In the Salem privateering Elias Derby is supposed to 
 have had at least a fourth share ; of many vessels he was 
 sole owner, of nearly all the rest he was a part proprietor. He 
 made ship-building his great study during war-time. He esta- 
 blished great building-yards, and constructed a multitude of
 
 Notable Traders. ;i5j 
 
 better ships than other merchants then generally possessed ; 
 and these ships, planned for fighting, he easily converted, as 
 soon as peace was restored, into trading-vessels, which went 
 into every sea. Between 1785 and 1799, thirty-seven of his 
 merchantmen made a hundred and twenty-five voyages, of 
 which forty-five were to the East Indies and China. Of the 
 American trade with the East Indies he was the father ; and 
 while that branch of commerce, as far as England was con- 
 cerned, was a monopoly of the East India Company, he set the 
 fashion, which others quickly followed, of carrying free trade 
 into the distant East, and of taking home tea, silk, and a 
 hundred other wares, which could be sold in America at a 
 very much lower price than those obtained through England. 
 The value of that trade to the United States in their infancy 
 can hardly be over-estimated: its value to Derby himself 
 was very great. In the ten years ending with 1799 he 
 increased his wealth five-fold ; and when he died, in that year, 
 he was the richest merchant in America. Four sons and a 
 dozen other kinsmen succeeded to his enterprise, and main- 
 tained the fame ot his name in Salem and all over the 
 United States. 
 
 Pepperell, Hancock, and Derby were all native New Eng- 
 landers. Hardly less memorable was Stephen Girard, a 
 Frenchman, who became a citizen of Philadelphia, and the 
 greatest of its early merchants. His career was a strange 
 one. The son ot a sea-captain, he was bom at Bordeaux in 
 1750. When he was about ten, and could barely read and 
 write, he went as cabin-boy in a vessel bound for the West 
 Indies. There, or on the voyage thither, he lost one eye, 
 and this misfortune and the ridicule it brought upon him 
 roused his temper, and rendered it more difficult for him, 
 without money and without iriends, to fight his way in the 
 world. Fight he did, however, and with notable success. 
 From a cabin-boy he rose, before he was twenty, to be the 
 captain and part-owner of a small ship trading between the 
 
 X
 
 354 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 West Indies and New Orleans, then a French port. In 
 1769 he quitted the sea, went to Philadelphia, and there 
 opened a little shop for retail trade, partly stocking it with 
 goods brought from San Domingo. In that business also he 
 prospered, until it was destroyed by the war, and he had to 
 begin life again as a bottler of claret and cider, at Mount 
 Holly, until he had saved money enough to return, in 
 1780, to his former trade between New Orleans and the 
 West Indies. Peace and its opportunities brought him 
 back, two or three years later, to Philadelphia, and that 
 town then became his home for nearly half a century. He 
 brought with him some strangely-gotten wealth. Two of his 
 ships were lying in the harbour of San Domingo when in- 
 surrection broke out. A crowd of planters hurried down 
 with as much of their treasures as they could carry, and left 
 them on board while they returned for more. Most of 
 them were murdered before they could get back to the 
 harbour, and, in consequence, Girard's vessels went home to 
 New Orleans laden with valuables for which no claimants 
 could be found, and which he was thus left to take as his 
 own. 
 
 If there was questionable honesty in that proceeding, 
 Stephen Girard proved himself an honest man during his 
 long residence in Philadelphia. The selfishness and morose- 
 ness which had been shown by him in his early struggles 
 for life also peeled off, and he became a patriot and a 
 philanthropist. 
 
 In 1793 a terrible plague of yellow fever broke out in 
 Philadelphia. Most of the inhabitants fled for their lives, 
 and the dying were left to die untended. " While the pesti- 
 lence was raging at its umost height," we are told, "an 
 individual of low and square stature was perceived alighting 
 from a coach which drew up before an hospital where the 
 most loathsome victims of the disease had been collected. 
 The man entered this living sepulchre, and soon returned
 
 Notable Traders. 3^5 
 
 bearing in his arms a form that appeared to be suffering in 
 the last stages of the fever. The man Avho perfomied this 
 act was Stephen Girard, and it is a well-attested fact that, 
 during the prevalence of the disease, he continued a con- 
 stant attendant in the hospital, performing all those offices 
 which would seem revolting to the humblest menial." 
 Another hospital was full of patients, but all its attendants 
 save three had died or run away, and there were no funds for 
 nourishing the sufferers. Girard gave both money and attend- 
 ance. He took upon himself the entire management of the 
 house. " The deplorable situation to which fright and 
 sickness have reduced the inhabitants of our city," he wrote, 
 in a quiet matter-of-fact way, which precisely illustrates his 
 character, " demands succour from those who do not fear 
 death, or who, at least, do not see any risk in the epidemic 
 which now prevails here. This will occupy me some time, 
 and if I have the misfortune to succumb, I will have at 
 least the satisfaction to have performed a duty which all 
 owe to each other." He did not succumb. During sixty 
 days the rough sailor-boy, who had become a hard merchant, 
 was in constant attendance, nursing the sick with all a 
 woman's care and tenderness. His example encouraged 
 others to work with him; but only when the violence of the 
 plague was removed, and he had made arrangements for 
 providing for those who had recovered, and for the orphans 
 left by the dead, did he go back to his counting-house, there 
 to furnish another instance of the double blessing that 
 springs from " the quality of mercy." 
 
 In 1797 and 1798 the fever broke out again, and he 
 again, by personal services and liberal contributions, helped 
 the sufferers. " During all this frightful time," he wrote to a 
 doctor of his acquaintance, " I have constantly remained in 
 the city, and, without neglecting my public duties, have 
 played a part which will make you smile. Will you believe, 
 my friend, tl\at I have visited so many as fifteen sick people 
 
 X 3
 
 356 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 in a day? And — what will surprise you still more — I have 
 lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little. 
 I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single person ; 
 but you will think with me that, in my quality of Phila- 
 delphian physician, I have been very moderate, and that not 
 one of my confreres has killed fewer than myself" 
 
 It seemed as if the very name of " brotherly love," 
 which William Penn had given to his city of Philadelphia, 
 had effected a revolution in Girard's character. Contemning 
 Christianity, and scorned by his enemies and all Pharisees 
 as an atheist, he showed a true Christian spirit in all his 
 relations with the poor and needy who were around him. 
 He was profuse in his charities during life, and 2,000,000 
 out of the 9,000,000 dollars which he left behind him were 
 applied in founding the Girard College for Orphans in Phi- 
 ladelphia. Nearly all the rest of his wealth was divided 
 among hospitals, schools, and the like, or left to be spent in 
 street improvements and similar beneficial works, in Phila- 
 delphia, New Orleans, and other parts. 
 
 Stephen Girard's philanthropy did not hinder his money- 
 making, and therein he helped his adopted country as well 
 as himself. He had been rich enough, on his second settle- 
 ment in Philadelphia, to start at once as an enterprising 
 merchant. His commerce throve, and in the end he became 
 the greatest banker in the country. In 181 2 he purchased 
 the old Bank of the United States, to which a renewal of 
 its charter liad been refused, and commenced banking ope- 
 rations with a capital of 1,200,000 dollars. Vast business 
 came into his hands, and none the less because he steadily 
 refused to countenance the speculative disposition then 
 abroad in America. He never discounted an accommoda- 
 tion bill, and never renewed a promissory note ; thus setting 
 an example which was of great benefit to the nation, and 
 securing for himself unlimited confidence. The Girard Bank 
 came to be regarded as the safest establishment in the
 
 Notable Traders. 357 
 
 United States. " The establishment of this bank," says a 
 native writer, " exhibited to the country the novel spectacle 
 of a private American banker conducting his institution 
 upon a large scale, and conferring upon the community 
 advantages nearly as great as those which had been received 
 from State or national auspices And this bank rendered 
 important services to Government. The fiscal affairs of the 
 nation had been thrown into confusion by the dissolution of 
 the former bank, and the suspension of specie payments 
 added to the general confusion ; yet, while the public credit 
 was shaken to its very centre, and the country was involved 
 in difficulties springing from its exhausted finances and the 
 expenses of v/ar, the bank of Mr. Girard, not only received 
 large subscriptions for loans, but made extensive advances 
 to the Government, which enabled the country to carry on 
 its belligerent enterprises — loans, too, which were the spon- 
 taneous act of patriotism, as well as of prudence. This aid 
 appears to have been rendered from time to time down to 
 181 7, when the second national bank superseded his assist- 
 ance. In spite of the suspension of specie payments by 
 the State banks, resulting from the 'Non-Intercourse Act,' 
 not a single note of his own was suffered to be depreciated, 
 and he was thus enabled, in 1817, to contribute effectually 
 to the restoration of specie payments." 
 
 Girard's long and useful life, lasting till 183 1, overlapped 
 that of many younger men, and made him a contemporary 
 of merchants still active in the service ot their country. In 
 Philadelphia he has had many noteworthy successors ; but 
 the modern development of New York as the chief trading 
 capital of America has drawn to it a yet greater number of 
 enterprising merchants. 
 
 One of these was Thomas Eddy, whose Quaker parents 
 emigrated from Ireland about the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, and settled in Philadelphia. There he was born, in 
 1758. In 1779 he went to New York, with ninety-six dollars
 
 358 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 in his possession, a very scanty education, and no knowledge 
 of business. He made money, however, out of the turmoil 
 then caused by the English occupation of New York, trading 
 thence to England and Ireland, where he had a brother and 
 a friend for partners. In 1782 he returned to Philadelphia, 
 hoping to increase his business ; but there, two years after- 
 wards, taking part in tobacco speculation, he was ruined 
 through the failure of some of his fellow-speculators. He 
 worked on quietly till he had paid his debts, and then came 
 to England for a few years. In 1792 he started again in 
 New York, this time to succeed beyond his expectations. 
 The funding of the public debt in that year gave new life to 
 the trade of stock-jobbing, and Thomas Eddy, following it 
 honestly, was quickly enriched by it. He made good use 
 of his riches, and of the leisure that they brought him. His 
 zeal in the reformation of prisons, and of the penal code of 
 New York, which still sanctioned whipping-posts, pillories, 
 and other mediceval tortures called punishments, procured 
 for him the title of the Howard of America. He did other 
 useful public work, reconstruction of the New York Hospital 
 and the introduction of savings-banks into the State being 
 among the number. His greatest commercial enterprise, 
 also, was undesignedly philanthropical. Of the Erie Canal 
 he was the chief projector in 1810, and he worked on at 
 its extension till his death in 1827. 
 
 Another representative merchant of New York was 
 Gideon Lee, born of poor parents, at Amherst, in Massa- 
 chusetts, in 1778, "I remember," he wrote in his old age, 
 "when I was a lad living with my uncle, it was my business 
 to feed and milk the cows ; and many a time, long before 
 light in the morning, I was started off in the cold and snow, 
 without shoes, to my work, and used to think it a luxury to 
 warm my frozen feet on the spot just before occupied by 
 the animal that I roused. It taught me to reflect and to 
 consider possibilities; and I remember asking myself, 'Is
 
 Notable Traders. 359 
 
 it not possible to better my condition ? ' " He settled that 
 it was possible, and, having gone without shoes hitherto, 
 resolved to make shoes for other people as well as for him- 
 self. He apprenticed himself to a shoemaker and tanner ; 
 and, as soon as his apprenticeship was; over, he set up for 
 himself The first hundred dollars that he earned he spent in 
 improving his education at Westfield Academy. Then he 
 went to his trade again, and he throve so well in it that he 
 eventually removed to New York, and there became a great 
 leather-merchant and a dealer in everything, dying rich and 
 famous for his honesty and worth in 1841. One anecdote 
 illustrates his character. A trader, richer than he was, was 
 once in his shop, boasting that he had overreached this per- 
 son, that person, and others ; " and now," he added, " I 
 have gained an advantage over you." " That may be," 
 answered Gideon Lee, "but if you will promise never to 
 enter my office again, I will give you that bundle of goat- 
 skins." The man promised, took up the bundle, and walked 
 away. Fifteen years afterwards he again came into the 
 office. " You have broken your word," exclaimed Lee, who 
 had never seen him in the interval. " Pay me for the goat- 
 skins ! " " Oh, I am quite poor," replied the man, " and 
 have been very unfortunate since I saw you." " Yes," 
 answered Gideon Lee, " and you always will be poor ; 
 that miserable desire of overreaching others must ever keep 
 you so." 
 
 Let one other New York merchant be mentioned. Jacob 
 Little was born, in 1797, at Newburyport, Massachusetts, 
 where his father was a well-to-do merchant, until the war with 
 England ruined him in 181 2. In 18 17 young Little went 
 to New York, and was for five years a clerk to Jacob Barber, 
 one of the chief traders then in the city. In 1822 he started 
 business for himself as a specie-broker, having a humble 
 office in Wall Street. He toiled up during twelve years, 
 often giving eighteen hours a day to business. His evenings
 
 360 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 he spent in going round to the shops and buying up worn- 
 out coin, which he disposed of in the mornings. Thus he 
 gradually worked his way into larger trade. In 1834, and 
 for thirty years afterwards, he was the leading financier and 
 banker in New York, sometimes making 200,000 dollars in 
 a year. He was the " Railway King " of America, known 
 as "the Napoleon of the Board." His success in railway 
 speculations made him many enemies, and in 1834 there 
 was a plot laid for his ruin. It was known that he had con- 
 tracted to sell a large quantity of Erie stock ; but no one 
 would sell him the scrip which he needed to complete his 
 bargain. Crowds assembled on delivery-day to see his 
 expected ruin at two o'clock ; but at one o'clock he quietly 
 walked into the Erie Railway Company's office, produced 
 bonds for money lent by him to the Company, asked for 
 shares which, according to the stipulation made therein, he 
 was entitled to receive on demand, and thus baffled his 
 rivals. Thrice he nearly failed, and had to suspend pay- 
 ment, but each time he quickly retrieved his position ; and 
 it was a common saying that "Jacob Little's suspended 
 paper was better than the cheques of most merchants." In 
 railway shares he traded suecessfully to the last, and in 1847 
 he was invited to join in starting the first telegraph projected 
 in America, between Boston and New York. That proposal he 
 declined, and thereby he was prevented from being the richest 
 man in America. He was nearly the richest man, however, 
 until the Southern rebellion swept away most of his fortune. 
 He died in 1865. 
 
 New York, during the last hundred years, has produced 
 or drawn into it a multitude ol famous mercliants, of whom 
 these three may serve as specimens. Boston, also, has had 
 many, but none more remarkable tlian the Lawrences. 
 Samuel Lawrence, descended from John Lawrence, a native 
 of Suffolk, who emigrated in 1630, was a respectable fanner 
 in Massachusetts a century ago. When the war broke out
 
 Notable Traders. 361 
 
 in 1775 ^''6 ^^ri seven miles in forty minutes, to tell all his 
 neighbours and dependants that the English were marching 
 into Boston, and to summon many of them to follow him as 
 volunteers for the defence of their homesteads ; and during 
 the next three years he was a soldier. Once he had a holi- 
 day for his wedding, but while he and his bride were stand- 
 ing up in church the alarm-bell rang. He had to beg the 
 parson to hurry over the service, ran off the moment it was 
 done, and only saw his wife now and then, for a few hours 
 at a time, until the war was ended. 
 
 His hardly-used wife bore him, besides other children, 
 four famous sons, William, Amos, Abbot, and Samuel. 
 William, born in 1783, was intended to be a farmer. Amos, 
 three years younger, began life as shop-boy in a general store 
 at Groton, where everything was sold, from pins to rum. So 
 much rum was also drunk on the premises that Amos Law- 
 rence, in disgust, resolved, when he was fifteen, never again 
 to drink spirits, or anything with spirit in it ; and it was partly 
 to his carrying out of that resolution that he attributed his 
 success in life. In 1808, his apprenticeship being over, he 
 left Groton for Boston, there to set up business for himself, 
 with help of 1,000 dollars which his father mortgaged his 
 farm to lend to him. " I told him he did wi-ong," Amos 
 wrote afterwards, " to place himself in a situation to be made 
 unhappy if I lost the money. He told me he guessed I 
 wouldn't lose it." Nor was it lost. Amos lived frugally, 
 worked hard, and prospered. The debt on the farm was 
 soon paid off, and his shop was quickly turned into a 
 merchant's counting-house. In 1808 Abbot Lawrence, his 
 younger brother, was apprenticed to him, and in 1809 the 
 eldest son, William, also came to him as a clerk. William 
 started a separate business, however, in 18 10, afterwards 
 taking the other brother, Samuel, as his partner. This firm 
 was less notable than that of Amos and Abbot Lawrence. 
 It took that name in 1S14, when the younger brother had
 
 362 The Romance of Trade. 
 
 completed his apprenticeship, and the elder was able to put 
 50,000 dollars into the concern, the savings of seven years. 
 Both brothers were mightily enriched by their enterprise, 
 and found wise use for their riches. 
 
 Amos Lawrence was a simple, honest merchant, and a 
 good man. When ill-health caused his retirement from 
 business, he used to spend much of his leisure in buying nick- 
 nacks and valuables of all sorts, and putting them up in neat 
 parcels to be sent round, with kind messages, to his poor 
 neighbours ; a parcel of books or a case of instruments for 
 this hard-working student, a neat bundle of clothes for that 
 well-behaved damsel, a box of crockery and other household 
 utensils for yonder newly-married couple, a pair of spec- 
 tacles and a large-type Bible for these old people — and inside 
 each parcel there was generally a five or a fifty dollar note, 
 according to the needs of the neighbour to whom it was 
 sent. For public charity, moreover, Amos Lawrence was 
 justly famous. He died on the last day of 1852, and then 
 it was found that since 1828 he had given away to benevo- 
 lent institutions of various kinds at least 639,000 dollars. 
 
 Abbot Lawrence was hardly less charitable, but he was 
 able to do good work in other ways. First coming to Eng- 
 land, soon after the year 181 4, in furtherance of his own and 
 his brother's business, he came again in 1849 ^.s representa- 
 tive of the United States at the Court of Queen Victoria, 
 and during four years he stoutly maintained the honour of 
 his country. He was a great promoter of railways, and 
 all through life a zealous friend to native manufacturing 
 energy. Of Lowell he was one of the founders ; and in 1847 
 he started a scientific school in Harvard University, with 
 the main object of encouraging American industry. He 
 died in 1855. 
 
 A richer merchant, and to that extent, if not otherwise, 
 a more philanthropic man than any of the Lawrences, or any 
 other American merchant, was George Peabody. Peabody's
 
 Notable Traders. 363 
 
 uneventful life of successful trade in both hemispneres, and 
 his large-hearted charities, both in the land of his birth and 
 in the land of his adoption, are too well known to be re- 
 peated here. There is a quiet romance, most pleasant and 
 instructive, in the career of that true-hearted grocer's boy 01 
 Danvers, who became a great merchant in Baltimore, and a 
 greater merchant in London, who, without knowing it, was 
 the greatest hero of commerce in our day, and Avhose body 
 was conveyed with fitting pomp by men-of-war of both 
 nations from his death-place in England to his burial-place 
 in America. He had done much, as other great merchants 
 have done, but not yet with complete success, to turn swords 
 into ploughshares and spears into reaping-hooks ; and when 
 all was over, the implements of war were turned into marks 
 of peace, and the roar of cannon, instead of betokening un- 
 holy slaughter, was muffled into an impressive utterance of 
 holy grief at the death of a good man and a great merchant. 
 Another good man and great merchant, worthy to be 
 named in the same breath with George Peabody, was 
 Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. This eminent Parsee, the son of 
 poor parents in Bombay, was born in 1783. He became a 
 clerk in the office of Framjee Messenvanjee, an earlier Parsee 
 merchant of Bombay, who, valuing his great business abili- 
 ties, made him his son-in-law and partner in 1800, when he 
 was only seventeen years old. Before settling down in 
 Bombay, he made several trading-voyages to the distant East 
 and the distant West ; he Avent five times to China, and he 
 came once, at any rate, to England. In the course of one of 
 the Chinese expeditions, being on board a vessel in the fleet 
 commanded by Sir Nathaniel Dance, he narrowly escaped 
 capture by the French. On another occasion, when off the 
 Cape of Good Hope, he was actually captured by them. 
 He lost all his property, and, after long waiting at Cape 
 Town, had to make the best of his way in a Danish ship to 
 Calcutta, and so back again to Bombay. All that was before
 
 364 The Romance op Trade. 
 
 the peace of 181 5. The happier dmes that followed were 
 so helpful to the great Indian mart that its imports rose from 
 ^^870,000 in 1814 to ;^3,o52,ooo in 1819, and they have 
 never ceased growing during the subsequent half-century. 
 It was Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy's good fortune to be resident in 
 Bombay from the commencement of that rapid improve- 
 ment, and to have wisdom to use it for his own and his 
 fellow-men's advantage. In 1820 he was acknowledged to 
 be the greatest merchant in Bombay, and his supremacy 
 became more and more marked during the next eight-and- 
 thirty years. His commerce spread over all the world. His 
 philanthropies were chiefly local. In 1822 he released all 
 the poor debtors in Bombay by paying their debts. 
 Between that year and 1858 he spent more than ^^250,000 
 in benevolent and beneficent work of all sorts. He gave 
 ;^44,ooo to the Parsee Benevolent Institution, ;^i 5,000 to 
 the DhurumsuUa, or Poor Asylum of Bombay ; he endowed 
 the Jamsetjee Hospital with ;^i 6,000, and the Jamsetjee 
 School of Industrial Art with ;^io,ooo. He constructed 
 the Poona Waterworks, at a cost of ;^i 8,000 ; and he con- 
 tributed ^15,000 to the causeway and arched stone bridge, 
 undertaken by the Indian Government, mainly at his instiga- 
 tion, from Mahim to Bandora, thus connecting the island of 
 Salsette with the island of Bombay. In acknowledgment 
 of his great services, he was knighted in 1842 ; and English 
 appreciation of his large contributions to the Patriotic Fund 
 was shown by the baronetcy conferred upon him in 1857. 
 "By industry and liberahty " was the motto which he set 
 upon his coat-of-arms. He died in 1859, and all Bombay 
 mourned over his grave. 
 
 The names of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and of George 
 Peabody, both English and yet not English, fitly close our 
 little series of notable merchants illustrating the romance of 
 trade.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abraham as a merchant, 2. 
 
 Accidental discoveries of scientific 
 improvements, 169. 
 
 Achievements of Josiah Wedgwood, 
 171. 
 
 Addison in Spectator, 308. 
 
 writes concerning Bank of Eng- 
 land, 82. 
 
 concerning the Royal Exchange, 
 
 262. 
 
 — — on public credit, 309. 
 
 Adrian, colony of Jews planted by, 7. 
 
 Adventurers, Society of Slerchant, no. 
 
 Advertisements, curious, 59, 272. 
 
 Ages, trade and aspect of London in 
 Middle, 255. 
 
 Agnes Sorel, 127. 
 
 Ainsworth, John Rylands, his enter- 
 prises in Manchester, Wigan, and, 
 219. 
 
 Aislabie, Chancellor of the Excheque-. 
 
 317- 
 
 A-la-bar looms, 195. 
 
 Alen9on, lace makers transferred 
 calling to Cranfield, in Bedford- 
 shire, from, 115. 
 
 Alexander, Leslie, and Co., failure of, 
 
 331- 
 Alexandria, resort of money-makers, 7. 
 Almanacks and Bibles, 156. 
 Alpaca, 41. 
 America, the Puritans and English 
 
 colonise, 117. 
 American merchants, 347. 
 Coffee-house, North and South 
 
 264. 
 
 ■ factories, 248. 
 
 "Anatomy of Abuses," Stubbes on 
 
 fashion in his, 203. 
 Anglo-Mexican, mining shares, 325. 
 
 Antwerp, commercial greatnessof, no. 
 
 Arabia, coffee-drinking first practised 
 in, 31. 
 
 Arc, Joan of, 126. 
 
 " Areopagitica '' of Milton, 156. 
 
 Argentier, or .treasurer to the Crown, 
 125- 
 
 Arkwright, Sir Richard, his success, 
 186. 
 
 Arkwright's adaptation of Wyatt's 
 drawing-frame, 185, 
 
 Art, The Jamsetjee School of Indus- 
 trial, 364, 
 
 Arteveldt, Jacob van, 108. 
 
 Arts, Pennsylvania Society of Manu- 
 factures and Useful, 249. 
 
 Aspect and trade of London in Mid- 
 dle Ages, 255. 
 
 Assissi, San Francisco named from 
 San Francisco de, 2S9. 
 
 Astbury, Samuel, 171. 
 
 Astlett, his defalcations, 86. 
 
 Asylum, theDhurumsulla, of Bombav, 
 or Poor, 364. 
 
 Augsburg, CounsellorHervvart.of, 292. 
 
 bargain made with the Fulcare, 
 
 or Fuggers of, 123. 
 
 the Fuggers of, 340. 
 
 Aurelian, death of Emperor, 49. 
 
 Babylon, captivity of Judah to, 6. 
 Bacon, Lord, on monopolies, 147. 
 
 on commerce, 165. 
 
 Baltic Coffee-house, 264. 
 
 Bank of Amsterdam, prosperity of, 81. 
 
 of England, frauds upon the, 88. 
 
 accidental saving of, 326. 
 
 difficulties of, 86,
 
 366 
 
 Index. 
 
 Bank of England, duties of, 83. 
 
 its charter, 87. 
 
 opened, 81. 
 
 London and Westminster, 89. 
 
 the Girard, 356. 
 
 Banker, origin of the calling of, -j-^. 
 Banking, first rude stages of, 74. 
 Barbarossa Frederick, 97. 
 Barber, Jacob, trader in New York, 359. 
 Baring, Sir Francis, stock-broker, 20, 
 
 322. 
 Barnard, Sir John, London merchant, 
 
 318. 
 Bartholomew Fair, 65. 
 Dattata, 25. 
 Battle of Waterloo, 131. 
 
 Rothschild at the, 323. 
 
 Baxters' factories, 232. 
 
 Bay Company, Hudson's, i6r. 
 
 Beale, William, goldsmith, 153. 
 
 Beaucain-, great French fair at, 66. 
 
 Bede on marts, 254. 
 
 Bedford, Duke of, 126. 
 
 Beef, native growth of English, 25. 
 
 Beer as a national beverage, 29. 
 
 Belfast and its manufactories of linen, 
 
 230. 
 Benevolent Institution, the Parsee,364. 
 Bentley, Thomas, merchant, 173. 
 Beverley, cloth manufacture at, 103. 
 Bianconi, Carlo, car inventor, in Ire- 
 land, 211. 
 Bibles and almanacks, 156. 
 Birmingham, Matthew Boulton of, 
 
 175, 200, 236. 
 
 manufacturing history of, 235. 
 
 Blackburn, J. Ilargreaves, weaver, of 
 
 Standhill, near, 187. 
 Blanket, Thomas, cloth manufacturer, 
 
 104. 
 Blantyre, J. Monteith's factory at, 226. 
 Blewstane, Frederick de, Dr., 176. 
 Bombay, history of, 275. 
 
 ' its present importance, 277. 
 
 Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, of, 363. 
 
 the Dhurumsulla,or Poor Asylum 
 
 of, 364. 
 Book-fair of Leipzig, 67. 
 Boston, the Lawiences of, 360. 
 Eoswell, writing of Boulton's good 
 
 works, 238. 
 Boulton, Matthew, of Birmingham , 
 
 175, 200, 236. 
 
 describing Soho, 238. 
 
 other good works of, 239. 
 
 Boyle, his account of the potato, 26. 
 Bradford and its worsted manufacture. 
 
 229. 
 
 Saltaire mills, built near, 43. 
 
 Lrand, John, captain of the Little 
 
 Ediuard, 256. 
 Bread, more than half of foreign 
 
 grain, 25. 
 Bristol, rise of, through slave trade, 59. 
 
 Canynges of, merchants, 344. 
 
 cloth manufacture at, 103. 
 
 old, and its merchants, 265. 
 
 Bruges as a seat of trade, io5. 
 
 and Ghent, 108. 
 
 Bubble, South Sea Company and 
 
 South Sea, 312. 
 Bubbles, contemporary, 316. 
 Buckinghamshire, famed for lace 
 
 manufacture, 115. 
 Biilleyn, Geoffrey, merchant, 143. 
 " Bulls'' and "bears," 321. 
 Bunhill Fields, reference to, 205. 
 Burgess, Williams, and Co., fall of 
 
 bank of, 326. 
 Burns and the Carron Iron-works, 235. 
 Burton, his reference to coffee in his 
 
 "Anatomy of Melancholy," 31. 
 Bury, Peels' cotton-works at, 218. 
 John Kay of, works at Colches- 
 ter, 183. 
 Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 21. 
 Byrom, Martin, clothier, 216. 
 
 Cadiz (Gades), rise of, 4. 
 
 Cahir, first car started by Bianconi 
 to, 211. 
 
 Calcutta, 278. 
 
 Cambray, place of cambric manu- 
 facture, 44. 
 
 Cambric, manufactured at Cambray, 
 44. 
 
 Canynges of Bristol, merchants, 344. 
 
 Capel Court, 319. 
 
 C'ardinal Mazarin, 128. 
 
 Carey, Sir William, son of Lord 
 Hunsdon, 205. 
 
 Carlyle, Mr., on sinews of trade, 73. 
 
 Caroline, Queen, assists Wedgwood's 
 fortunes, 199. 
 
 Carriages, 208. 
 
 Carron Iron-works, 235. 
 
 Smeaton's invention at the, 179. 
 
 Cars, Bianconi and his cars, 211.
 
 Index. 
 
 3C7 
 
 Carthage, rise of, 4. 
 
 • destruction of, by Romans, 5. 
 
 Cartwright's power-loom, 189. 
 Caterer to fashion, Wedgwood as a, 
 
 199. 
 Cave, Edward, Editor of Gentleman s 
 
 Magazine, 185. 
 Caxton, William, 154. 
 Chancery Lane, Rolls Chajjcl hr^.X 
 
 in, 13. 
 Change Alley, 310. 
 Charles I. and James I., political 
 
 effects of the monopolies granted 
 
 by, 152. 
 
 VII., 126. 
 
 Charta Mercatoria of Edward I., 104. 
 Cheapside famous in trade, 257. 
 Check handkerchiefs, W. Flakefield's, 
 
 192. 
 Chetham, H., first cotton merchant, 
 
 4S- 
 
 College, founding of, 45. 
 
 Chichester, Sir A., owns Belfast, 230. 
 Child, Francis, of Fleet Street, banker, 
 
 80. 
 
 progress of banking under, 89. 
 
 China ware and porcelain, 192. 
 Christian tmies, wanderings of Jews 
 
 in, 7. 
 Cinchona first introduced, 37. 
 Clayton, Wm. , tobacco merchant, 269, 
 Cloth Hail, White, 227. 
 
 Mixed, 227. 
 
 Coaches, 209. 
 
 Coal monopolies, 153. 
 
 and coal-mining, primitive, 171. 
 
 use of, in smelting, by Lord 
 
 Dudley, 177. 
 Coalbrook Dale Iron-works, 178. 
 Cobden Treaty, the, 136. 
 
 services to commerce, of, 137. 
 
 Cochineal, useful in a variety of ways, 
 
 Cochrane, Lord Provost of Glasgow, 
 
 274. 
 (Jocoa, increase of sugar mainly due 
 
 to, 28. 
 Coeur, Jacques, a merchant, 125. 
 Coffee, increased consumption of sugar 
 
 mainly due totheuseof tea, cocoa, 
 
 and, 28. 
 
 house, Garraway's. 264. 
 
 Baltic, 264. 
 
 Jamaica, 264. 
 
 Jerusalem, 264. 
 
 Coffee house, Lloyd's, 263. 
 
 North and South American, 263. 
 
 houses, commercial, of London, 
 
 Coining, Boulton's improvements in, 
 
 240. 
 Colbert, Jean Baptiste, his origin and 
 
 success, 128. 
 Colchester, J. Kay, of Burv, works at, 
 
 183. 
 College, the Girard, for Orphans, in 
 
 Philadelphia, 356. 
 Colony of Jews, planted by Adrian, 
 
 in Spain, 7. 
 Colour, the " Isabella," 20S. 
 Commerce, gains of, by science, 195, 
 
 and w'ar, 129. 
 
 connection of Jews with, 2. 
 
 of food, importation of flesh of 
 
 beasts, 25. 
 
 of the old world, 3. 
 
 political interference with, 96. 
 
 sen-ices of Cobden to, 137. 
 
 services of fashion to, 197. 
 
 Commercial greatness of Antwerp, 
 
 108. 
 — — cotfee-houses of London, 263. 
 
 history of Flanders, 105. 
 
 results of English wars, 130. 
 
 treaties, 134. 
 
 treaty between David and Hiram, 
 
 4- 
 Company, Loyd, Jones, and, bankers, 
 
 90. 
 
 Grocers', or Pepperers', 140. 
 
 Herries, Farquhar, and, bankers, 
 
 94. 
 
 Hudson s Bay, 161. 
 
 Mercers', 142. 
 
 monopolies of the Great, 160. 
 
 of Merchants of the Staple, no. 
 
 origin of East India, 120. 
 
 panic and mania (1825-6) of the 
 
 joint-stock, 326. 
 
 rivals of the East India, 160. 
 
 South Sea Bubble and South 
 
 Sea, 3T2. 
 
 the Merrimac Manufacturing, 
 
 SSI- 
 Consolidated stock, or Consols, 85. 
 Consols, or Consolidated stock, 85. 
 Contemporary bubbles, 316. 
 Co-operative, transitions from single- 
 handed labour to, 214. 
 Com, native growth of England, 25.
 
 368 
 
 Index. 
 
 Corporation of stocking-weavers, 207. 
 
 Coryate, Thos., on fashion, in his 
 " Crudities," 197. 
 
 Cotton, 46. 
 
 district of Glasgow, 224. 
 
 factories at Rouen and Mul- 
 
 house, 247. 
 
 trade of Liverpool, 272. 
 
 works, Peels', in Bury, 218. 
 
 Coutts, family of John, 94. 
 
 bank of, 93. 
 
 Patrick, merchant, 93. 
 
 Thomas, banker, 93. 
 
 Cows, importation of, 25. 
 
 Cranfield, Bedfordshire, lacemakers 
 of Alengon and Valenciennes 
 transfer their calling to, 115. 
 
 Cripplegate, burial-place of Jews, 10. 
 
 Crisp, Sir Nicholas, first introducer 
 of coffee into England, 31. 
 
 Crommelier, Louis, first flax manu- 
 facturer, 44. 
 
 Crompton's mule, 188. 
 
 Crown, argentier, or treasurer to the, 
 125. 
 
 "Crudities" ol Thomas Coryate, 
 197. 
 
 Cunliffe, Foster, merchant, 270. 
 
 Cunningham, William, merchant, 274. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dale, D., and R. Owen's factory, at 
 
 New Lanark, 224. 
 Dalrymple, Sir J., writes concerning 
 
 enterprise, 274. 
 Darby, A., furnace of, 178. 
 Darien project, 296. 
 David's commercial treaty withHiram, 
 
 4- 
 
 Davy, Sir H., 168. 
 
 Day, Thomas, author of " Sandfopd 
 and Merton," 239. 
 
 Deal, settlement of foreigners in, 114. 
 
 Denison, Joseph, born at Leeds, 91. 
 
 — — his ambition and success, 91. 
 
 Derby, first silk merchant, John 
 Lombe, of, 50. 
 
 Elias Hackett, ol Salem, Ameri- 
 can merchant, 351. 
 
 Derwent, erection of a silk-throwing 
 machine, by Sir F. Lombe, on 
 the, 52. 
 
 Development of iron trade, 177. 
 
 later, of stock-jobbing, 318. 
 
 Devonshire, famed for lace manufac- 
 ture, 115. 
 
 Dhurumsulla, or Poor Asylum ol 
 Bombay, 364. 
 
 Diaper (cloth d'Ypr^s), its importa- 
 tion, 44. 
 
 m;inufactured at Yprfes, 44. 
 
 Dickens, Mr., his reference to Titus 
 Salt, 41. 
 
 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Society 
 for the, 158. 
 
 Dillon, John, merchant, 91. 
 
 Discoveries of scientific improvements, 
 accidental, i6g. 
 
 Discovery, manias of, 295. 
 
 District, wealth of the Manchester, 
 224. 
 
 cotton, of Glasgow, 224. 
 
 Divine, Wm., cotton manufacturer, 
 249. 
 
 "Domesday Book," reference to a 
 fair in Bedfordshire, 61. 
 
 Taunton, 61. 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 119. 
 
 at San Francisco, 287. 
 
 Dress, fashion in, 200, 
 
 Drummond, banker, 94. 
 
 Dudley, Lord, use of coal in smelting 
 by, 177. 
 
 Dundee, 231. 
 
 Dutch and Flemish gardeners, 27. 
 
 Dyeing and printing of fabrics, im- 
 provements in, 191. 
 
 Dyes, closely connected with materials 
 for clothing, 53. 
 
 Eardley, Sir S. G. , 20. 
 
 Baron, 20. 
 
 Early manufactures and habits of 
 manufacturers of Manchester, 217. 
 
 Eason, M., 142. 
 
 East India Company, origin of, 120. 
 
 rivals of, 160. 
 
 Eddy, Mr. Thos., of New York, 357. 
 
 Edward L , Charta Mercatoria of, 104. 
 
 edict of, 17. 
 
 VL, Sir T. Gresham sends pre- 
 sents to, 50. 
 
 trademonopoliesgranted by Henry 
 
 VIII., Mary, and, 144. 
 
 Egypt, early wealth of, 3. 
 
 Elers, the brothers, 171. 
 
 Elford, Sir W., fall of bank of, 326.
 
 Index. 
 
 369 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, private monopolies 
 of, 148. 
 
 Flemish emigrants in England, in 
 
 reign of, 114. 
 
 supports Sir J. Hawkins in slave 
 
 trade, 58. 
 
 Elphinstone, W., founder of Aberdeen 
 University, 273. 
 
 Emporium, London, of Europe, 260. 
 
 Engine, steam, 175. 
 
 England, settlement of Jews in, 9. 
 
 accidental saving of Bank of, 326. 
 
 Bank of, opened, 81. 
 
 expulsion of Jews from, 17. 
 
 Flemish emigrants under the 
 
 Plantagenets in, 103. 
 
 Flemish emigrants to, in the reign 
 
 of Queen Elizabeth, 114. 
 
 native and foreign merchants in 
 
 mediaeval, 97. 
 
 origin and progress of stock- 
 broking in, 307. 
 
 English, America colonised by Puri- 
 tans and, 117. 
 
 banking, difference as compared 
 
 with that of Scotland, 91. 
 
 factories, extent of, 241. 
 
 predecessors of Sir T. Gresham, 
 
 345- 
 
 wars, commercial results of, 130. 
 
 Enterprises of J. Rylands in Wigan, 
 
 Ainsworth, and Manchester, 219. 
 Ethelred the Unready, the advantages 
 
 given to foreign merchants by, 97. 
 Etruria, near Burslem, 173. 
 Europe, London the emporium of, 
 
 260. 
 European marts, 289. 
 Exchange, the Royal, 261. 
 Exeter Flail, a room in J. Marshall's 
 
 mill compared to, 233, 
 Existing monopolies, 164. 
 Exploits of N. M. Rothschild, 322. 
 Expulsion from England of the Jews, 
 
 17- 
 Ezion-geber, colony established at, 5. 
 
 Fabrics, dyeing and printing, improve- 
 ments in, 191. 
 
 Factories, American, 248. 
 
 at Rouen and Mulhouse, cotton, 
 
 247. 
 
 — — extent of English, 241. 
 
 Factories, French, 242. 
 
 metal, 234. 
 
 of D. Dale and R. Owen, at New 
 
 Lanark, 224. 
 
 the Baxters', 232. 
 
 the New England, 251. 
 
 the rise of great, 244. 
 
 Factory, J.Monteith's.at Blantyre,226. 
 Failure of crusade and tax upon Jews 
 
 by Henry H., 11. 
 Fairs, 60. 
 
 results of, 61. 
 
 Falkirk, Smeaton's invention at the 
 
 Carron Iron-works, near, 179, 
 Famous stock-jobbers, 322. 
 " Farewell to Wine," 135. 
 Farquhar, Herries, and Co., bankers, 
 
 94. 
 Fashion, Coryate on, 197. 
 
 Heylin on, 199. 
 
 the services of, to commerce, 197. 
 
 Wedgwood as a caterer to, 199. 
 
 Fashions, other, and their value, 207. 
 
 in dress, 200. 
 
 Fauntleroy, his defalcations, 86. 
 Fawkner, John Pascoe, 278. 
 Filatoe, ancient name for a spinning- 
 engine, 51. 
 Fire of London, Great, 261. 
 First silk merchants of Derby, 50. 
 Flakefield, Wm., check handkerchiefs, 
 
 192. 
 Flanders, commercial history of, 105. 
 
 fleet, 100. 
 
 Fla.x manufacture, 44. 
 
 Ireland and its, 147. 
 
 Fleets, the Venetian trading, 100. 
 Flemish, and Dutch gardeners, 27. 
 and French traders in London, 
 
 100. 
 emigrants in England in reign of 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, 114. 
 emigrants under thePlantagenets, 
 
 103. 
 emigrants, their services to trade, 
 
 103. 
 Fly-shuttle, Kay's, 184. 
 Forbes, SirWm., banker, 94. 
 Foreign merchants in mediaeval 
 
 England, 97. 
 Forks, the introduction of, 197. 
 France, sufferings caused by war with, 
 
 131- 
 Frankfort, celebrated fair at, 68. 
 Free-trade principles, growth of, 129. 
 Y
 
 370 
 
 Index. 
 
 French and Flemish traders in London, 
 
 IOC. 
 
 factories, 242. 
 
 silk trade, history of, 242. 
 
 Froissart, testimony of, 109. 
 
 Fuggerau Castle, 341. 
 
 Fuggers of Ausburg, or Fulcare, bar- 
 gain made with, 123. 
 
 of Ausburg, 340. 
 
 Fulcare, or Fuggers of Ausburg, bar- 
 gain made with the, 123. 
 
 Fuller, his description of a merchant, 
 
 23- 
 Furnace, reverberatory, 179. 
 Furness, Sir H., Bank director, 311. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gades (Cadiz), rise of, 4. 
 Gains of commerce by science, 195. 
 Garraway's Coffee-house, 264. 
 Genoa, chief trading city in Middle 
 
 Ages, 5. 
 Ge?itleman' s Magazine, E. Cave, editor 
 
 of, 185. 
 Gerarde, account of potato, 26. 
 German Steelyard and Men of the 
 
 Emperor in London, 97. 
 Ghent and Bruges, 108. 
 Ghost-story, a, 342. 
 Gideon Sampson, celebrated merchant, 
 
 20. 
 Gilbart, John, banker, 89. 
 Gilhalda Teutonicorum estabhshed, 
 
 98. 
 Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of the 
 
 Flemings, 103. 
 Girard, Bank, 356. 
 
 Stephen, of Philadelphia, 353. 
 
 College for Orphans in Philadel- 
 phia, 356. 
 Gladstone, Mr., on commerce, 136. 
 Glasgow, primitive, 273. 
 
 cotton district, 224. 
 
 famed for tobacco, 34. 
 
 its later progress, 275. 
 
 its tobacco trade, 274. 
 
 Glassford, J., merchant, 274. 
 Gloucester j J. Wood, chandler, grocer, 
 
 and banker in, 89. 
 Gloucestershire, in ancient times a 
 
 poor sort of wine used in, 29. 
 Gloves, 201. 
 
 Gold-weighing machine, 84. 
 Goldsmids, the, 20, 322. 
 
 Goldsmiths as bankers, 79. 
 
 Guild, 78. 
 
 Gott, B., woollen manufacturer, 228. 
 
 Great Fire of London, 261. 
 
 factories, rise of, 214. 
 
 marts, rise of, 254. 
 
 Greatness of Antwerp, commercial, 
 108. 
 
 Greeks, first bankers, 74. 
 
 Gresham, Sir T., and his English pre- 
 decessors, 345. 
 
 banker to Edward VL andQueen 
 
 Elizabeth, 78. 
 
 sendspresentstoEdwardVI., 50. 
 
 Greshams, the bankers, 122. 
 
 Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry, 82. 
 
 or Pepperers' Company, 140. 
 
 Growthof free-trade principles, 129. 
 
 of London, 254. 
 
 of Manchester, 216. 
 
 Guilds, old London, 140. 
 
 good work of, 141. 
 
 out of London, 143. 
 
 Guy, Thomas, bookseller, 158. 
 
 H. 
 
 Habits of manufacturers, and early 
 
 manufactures of Manchester, 217. 
 Halifax and Leeds, progress of, 227. 
 Hall, Mr. S. C, on Bianconi's cars, 
 
 211. 
 
 Mixed Cloth, 227. 
 
 White Cloth, 227. 
 
 Hamlet on fashion, 202. 
 Hampshire, quantity of paper prepared 
 
 for Bank purposes in, 84. 
 Hancock, J., American merchant, 349. 
 Handkerchiefs, W. Flakefield's check, 
 
 192. 
 Hanseatic League formed, 98. 
 Hardware manufactory, the Soho, 238. 
 Hargreaves, J., weaver of Standhill, 
 
 near Blackburn, 187. 
 
 his spinning-jenny, 187. 
 
 Hariot, T., account of potato, 25. 
 
 his name for tobacco, 33. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir J., Plymouth merchant, 
 
 57- 
 
 W., father of Sir J., 57. 
 
 Henry 11. taxes the Jews, 11. 
 
 VIII., trade monopolies granted 
 
 by Edward VI., Mary, and, 144. 
 Prince, of Portugal, supports 
 
 slavery, 56.
 
 Index. 
 
 371 
 
 Hentzner, P., visits Smithfield, 65. 
 Heriot, G., founder of Heriot's Hos- 
 pital, 78. 
 
 his friendship with James VI. , 79. 
 
 Hemes, Sir R., tobacco merchant, 94. 
 
 Farquhar, and Co. , bankers, 94. 
 
 Herwart, counsellor of Augsburg, 292. 
 Hewit, W., merchant, 344. 
 Heylin on fashion, 199. 
 Heywood Brothers, bankers, 91, 
 Hicks, Sir B., merchant, 143. 
 Hiram's commercial treaty with David, 
 
 4- 
 History of French silk trade, 242. 
 manufacturing, of Birmingham, 
 
 235- 
 
 of Bombay, 275. 
 
 of Flanders, commercial, 105. 
 
 of pottery and porcelain trade, 
 
 early, 170. 
 
 Holland, J., Bank of Scotland esta- 
 blished by, 92. 
 
 Honiton famed for lace manufacture, 
 
 Honorius, Pope, animosity towards the 
 
 Jews, 17. 
 Hore, or Hoare, banker, 80. 
 Horsehay furnace blown in, 179. 
 
 work at, 179. 
 
 Solomon, 4. 
 
 Hospital, the Jamsetjee, 364. 
 Hudson, Henry, explorer of Hudson's 
 
 Bay, 161. 
 Hudson's Bay Company, r6i. 
 Huguenot settlement m England, its 
 
 effects on trade, 117. 
 Huguenots as traders, 116. 
 Hull, fair at, 62. 
 
 cloth manufacture at, 103. 
 
 Smith, Payne, and Smith, bankers 
 
 in, 90. 
 Hunsdon, Lord, 205. 
 Hurdwar, great Indian fair at, 71. 
 Hutcheson, G., banker, of Glasgow, 
 
 92. 
 Hyde, L., 149. 
 
 I. 
 
 Improvements, accidental discoveries 
 
 of scientific, 169. 
 Independence, New York, before and 
 
 after the War of, 281. 
 
 War of, 351. 
 
 India Company, rivals of the East, 160. 
 early wealth of, 3. 
 
 India Company, origin of the, 120. 
 
 Indian name for potato, 25. 
 
 Indigo, valued by civilised nations of 
 
 the East, 53. 
 IndustrialArt, the Jamsetjee School of, 
 
 364- 
 Institution, the Parsee Benevolent, 364. 
 Introduction of forks, 197. 
 Ireland and its fla.x, 147. 
 Iron manufacture, progress of, 175. 
 
 trade, development of, 177. 
 
 works at Coalbrook Dale, 178. 
 
 ; works, Pascoe, 248. 
 
 '■ works, Carron, near Falkirk, 
 
 Smeaton's invention at, 179. 
 
 works, the Carron, 235. 
 
 " Isabella" colour, 208. 
 
 Italians, bankers of the, 76. 
 
 Itchin, paper manufactory established 
 
 by H. de Portal, at Laverstoke, 
 
 in Hampshire, on the, 117. 
 " Itinerary" of Fynes Morison, 198. 
 
 J- 
 Jacquard's loom, 194. 
 
 J. M., born at Lyons, 194, 
 
 Jacques Coeur, 125. 
 
 Jamaica Coffee-house, 264. 
 
 James L, his aversion to tobacco, 34. 
 
 and Charles I., monopolies of, 
 
 and political effects, 152. 
 Jamsetjee Hospital, 364. 
 
 School of Industrial Art, 364. 
 
 Jejeebhoy, Sir J., of Bombay, 363. 
 
 his motto, 364. . 
 
 Jerusalem coffee-house, 264. 
 Jew, the wandering, i. 
 
 animosity of, 8. 
 
 as donor to Croyland Abbey, 9. 
 
 as money-lender, 10. 
 
 burial-ground in Cripplegate, 
 
 of, 10. 
 
 colony planted by Adrian, 7. 
 
 emigration of, 6. 
 
 e.xpulsion from England of, 17. 
 
 first bankers, 74. 
 
 friendship of William Rufus to, 
 
 10. 
 in Christian times, wanderings 
 
 of, 7. 
 
 owners of half Paris, 9. 
 
 persecution at Lincoln of, 15. 
 
 residence at Old Jewry of, 10. 
 
 settlement in England of, g. 
 
 Y 2
 
 372 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Jew, Shakespeare's, 7. 
 
 Stock Exchange, resort of, 19. 
 
 used temples as banking- 
 houses, 75. 
 
 with commerce, connection of, 2. 
 
 Jewry, residence of Jews at Old, 10. 
 
 Johnson, Sir T., tobacco merchant, 
 269. 
 
 Joint-stock company, panic and 
 mania (1825-6) of the, 326. 
 
 Jones, Loyd, and Co., bankers, 90. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, his praise of tobacco, 
 
 34- 
 Joseph, first merchant-prmce, 2. 
 Judah, captivity to Babylon of, 6. 
 Jute manufacture, 233. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kay's fly-shuttle, 184. 
 
 John, of Bury, works at Col- 
 chester, 183. 
 
 Kennebeck Factory, the, 249. 
 
 Kent, Flemish and Dutch refugees 
 as gardeners in, 27. 
 
 settlement of foreigners in, 114. 
 
 Knowledge, Society for the Diffusion 
 of Useful, 158. 
 
 Labour, the transitions from single- 
 handed to co-operative, 214. 
 
 Lackpenny, London, 257. 
 
 Lanark, New, D. Dale and R. Owen's 
 factory at, 224. 
 
 Lancaster, Captain, 120. 
 
 Langton, Archbishop, 14. 
 
 Las Casas supports slavery, 56. 
 
 Later developments of stock-jobbing, 
 318. 
 
 Laverstoke paper manufactory, esta- 
 blished by Henri de Portal, on the 
 Itchin, in Hampshire, 117. 
 
 Lawrences of Boston, the, 360. 
 
 League, Hanseatic, formed, 98. 
 
 Ledger, Mr. Charles, woollen manu- 
 facturer, 43. 
 
 Lee, Gideon, of New York, 358. 
 
 William, and the stocking- 
 frame, 203. 
 
 results of his invention, 205. 
 
 Leeds, fair at, 62. 
 
 and Halifax, progress of, 227, 
 
 233- 
 
 Legislation, mischievous, 144. 
 
 Leipzig, fair at, 67. 
 
 Fair noted for its book trade, 63. 
 
 University, founding of, 68. 
 
 Leslie, Alexander, and Co., failure 
 
 of, 331- 
 Limited Liability Act passed, 331. 
 Lincoln, colony of Jews at, 10. 
 
 persecution of Jews at, 15. 
 
 Smith, Payne, & Smith, bankers 
 
 in, 90. 
 
 cloth manufacture at, 108. 
 
 Linen a rival to wool, 44. 
 
 Belfast and its manufactories of, 
 
 230. 
 
 manufacture, 230. 
 
 Little, Jacob, of New York, 359. 
 Liverpool famed for tobacco, 34. 
 
 cotton trade, 272. 
 
 increase of banking in, 90. 
 
 its slave trade, 270. 
 
 its tobacco trade, 269. 
 
 rise of, 267. 
 
 rise of, through slave trade, 59. 
 
 Livy, testimony concerning banking 
 
 of, 75. 
 Lloyd's Coffee-house, 263. 
 Lock, John, slave trader, 57. 
 Lombard Street, Central Bank of 
 
 Smith, Payne, and Smith, in, 90. 
 Lombe, John and Sir Thomas, first 
 
 silk merchants, 50. 
 London, Company of Silk-women 
 
 established in, 50. 
 
 and Westminster Bank, 89. 
 
 Bristol an early rival of, 264. 
 
 Flemish and French traders in, 
 
 100. 
 
 Great Fire of, 261. 
 
 growth of, 254. 
 
 guilds out of, 143. 
 
 its commercial coffee-houses, 
 
 263. 
 
 its Exchange, 261. 
 
 its trade and aspect in Middle 
 
 Ages, 255. 
 
 Lackpenny, 257. 
 
 old guilds of, 140. 
 
 the Emjieror's IVIen and German 
 
 Steelyard in, 97. 
 
 the emponuin of Europe, 260. 
 
 the recent progress of, 261. 
 
 Lowell, factories at, 251. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier writes 
 
 concerning, 252. 
 Loyd, Jones, and Co., bankers, 90.
 
 Index. 
 
 373 
 
 Lynn, colony of- Jews at, lo. 
 
 Lyons, Joseph Marie Jacquard, bom 
 
 at, 194. 
 
 and the silk trade, 243. 
 
 styled ' ' the Golden Gate of 
 
 France," 244. 
 Lyrpole, 267. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay, testimony of, concerning 
 
 banking, 81. 
 M 'Arthur, Captain J., wool -grower, 
 
 39- 
 
 Macchiavelli concerning the De' Me- 
 dici, 337. 
 
 "Madness of the Multitude " and its 
 variations, 292. 
 
 Maidstone celebrated for thread 
 manufacture, 115. 
 
 Manchester, J. Rylands and his 
 enterprises in Wigan, Ainsworth, 
 and, 219. 
 
 centre of cotton manufacture, 45. 
 
 growth of, 216. 
 
 increase of banks in, 90. 
 
 its early manufactures, and 
 
 habits of manufacturers, 217. 
 
 wealth of the district of, 224. 
 
 Mania, the tulip, 293. 
 
 and panic (1825-6) of joint-stock 
 
 company, 326. 
 and panic (1845-7), the railway, 
 
 328. 
 Manias and panics, 292. 
 
 of discovery, 295. 
 
 Manilla, indigo culti\ated in, 54. 
 Manufactories, Belfast and its linen, 
 
 230. 
 Manufacture of steam - engines at 
 
 Soho, 237. 
 
 Bradford and its worsted, 229. 
 
 linen, 230. 
 
 progress of iron, 175. 
 
 progress of silk, 193, 
 
 woollen, 226. 
 
 Manufacturers, habits of, and early 
 
 manufactories of Manchester, 217. 
 Manufactures and Useful Arts, the 
 Pennsylvanian Society of, 249. 
 
 of Manchester, its early, and 
 
 habits of manufacturers, 217. 
 
 Manufacturing Company, Merrimac, 
 
 251. 
 history of Birmingham, 235. 
 
 Marco Polo, description of indigo, 
 
 by, S3- 
 Marseilles, 125, 290. 
 Marshall, J., mills of, 233. 
 Marts, great, 254. 
 
 European, 289. 
 
 Mary, trade monopolies, granted by 
 
 Henry VIII., Edward VI., and, 
 
 Massachusetts, Governor Shirley, of, 
 348. 
 
 Matthew Paris records failure of 
 Westminster Fair, 62. 
 
 of Westminster, on cloth manu- 
 facture, 103. 
 
 Mayor, R. Searle, Lord, 142. 
 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, 128. 
 
 Mediaeval, States, merchant-princes 
 
 of. 333- 
 Medici, de', Salvestro, Vieri, Giovanni, 
 
 Cosmo, 333. 
 Medina, Jewish banker, 311. 
 Melbourne, origin of, 278. 
 
 rapid growth of, 278. 
 
 Men of the Emperor in London, the 
 
 German Steelyard and, 97. 
 Mercatoria,Charta, of Edward VI. ,104. 
 Mercers, Company of, 142. 
 Merchants, political services of, 122, 
 
 Adventurers, Society of, no. 
 
 American, 347. 
 
 of the Staple, Company of, no. 
 
 old Bristol and its, 265. 
 
 princes of medigeval States, 333. 
 
 princes, other old, 344. 
 
 Merecraft, in Ben Jonsons "Devil is 
 
 an Ass," on fashion, 199. 
 Merrimac Manufacturing Company, 
 
 251. 
 Merthyr-TydvO, P. Onions of, inven- 
 tor, 179. 
 Metal factories, 234. 
 
 sweepings, 236. 
 
 Meteyard, Miss, biographer, 172. 
 Methuen Treaty, 131;. 
 Michelet, M., on silk trade, 246. 
 Middle Ages, trade and aspect of 
 
 London in, 255. 
 Middleton, SirT., 142. 
 Mills of J. Marshall, 233. 
 Milnes, bankers, 91. 
 Milton's " Areopagitica," 156. 
 Mines Royal, Company of 148. 
 Mining, the Anglo-Mexican shares, 
 
 325-
 
 374 
 
 Index. 
 
 Mint, the Royal, founding of, 79. 
 
 Mississippi sclieme, 303. 
 
 Mompesson, Sir G., merchant, 346. 
 
 Money, first use of, 73. 
 
 lenders, Nehemiah and the, 6. 
 
 Monopolies of trade granted by Henry 
 VIII., Edward VI.. and Mary, 
 144. 
 
 coal, 153. 
 
 existing, 164. 
 
 in England, origin of, 138. 
 
 of James I. and Charles I., 
 
 political effects of, 152. I 
 
 of Queen Elizabeth, private, 148. 
 
 of the Great Company, 160. I 
 
 Parliamentary opposition to, 148, 
 
 — — woollen, 138. 
 
 Monopoly, opium, 121. 
 
 story of the printing, 154. 
 
 Monte, Real del, shares, 325, 
 
 Monteith, J., factory at Blantyre of, 
 226. 
 
 Morison, Fynes, his " Itinerary," 198. 
 
 Morris, Stephen, and the Pascal Iron- 
 works, 248. 
 
 Mozzi, bankers and farmers, 335. 
 
 Mule, Crompton's, 187. 
 
 Mulhouse, cotton factories at Rouen 
 and, 247. 
 
 Multitude, madness of the, 292. 
 
 Myddelton, Sir Hugh, merchant, 345. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nantes, revocation of the Edict of, 50. 
 
 National, Debt, rise of 82. 
 
 Nations, earliest trading, 3. 
 
 Native and foreign merchants in 
 medireval England, 97. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, overthrow of his 
 prosperity, 5. 
 
 Need,S., Messrs. J. Struttand, manu- 
 facturers, 186. 
 
 Nehemiah and the money-lenders, 6. 
 
 Neilson, Mr., of Glasgow, 180. 
 
 Netherlands, War of the, with Philip 
 II., 113. 
 
 Newcomen's invention, 175. 
 
 New England, factories, 251. 
 
 Lanark, D. Dale and R. Owen's 
 
 factory at, 224. 
 
 Orleans, before and after War of 
 
 Secession, 284. 
 
 York and Philadelphia, 248. 
 
 before and after War of Independ- 
 ence, 281. 
 
 New York, T. Eddy of, 357, 
 
 G. Lee of, 358. 
 
 J. Little of, 359. 
 
 Nicot, first cultivator of tobacco, 33. 
 Nicotiana, scientific name for tobacco, 
 
 33- 
 Nijnii Novgorod, great Russian fair 
 
 at, 69. 
 Norfolk, Flemish and Dutch refugees 
 
 as gardeners in, 27. 
 
 settlement of foreigners in, 114. 
 
 Norris, Sir W. , tobacco merchant, 269. 
 Northumberland, Duke of, 124. 
 Norwich, colony of Jews at, 10. 
 
 cloth manufacture at, 103. 
 
 famed for lace manufacture, 115. 
 
 Notable traders, 333. 
 
 Nottingham, Smith, Payne,and Smith, 
 
 bankers in, 90. 
 
 O. 
 
 Old Jewry, residence of Jews at, 10. 
 
 legend, reference to fairs in, 6r. 
 
 London guilds, 140. 
 
 world, commerce of, 3. 
 
 Onions, Peter, of Merthyr-Tydvil, in- 
 ventor, 179. 
 
 Opium monopoly, 121. 
 
 Opposition, Parliamentary to monopo- 
 lies, 148. 
 
 Origin of Melbourne, 278. 
 
 and progress of English stock- 
 
 bro.cing, 307, 
 
 of the calling of banker, 73. 
 
 Orphans, the Girard College in Phila- 
 delphia for, 356. 
 
 Osborne, Sir Edward, merchant-prince, 
 
 344- 
 
 Other old merchant-princes, 344. 
 
 Overreach, Sir Giles, 346. 
 
 Overstone, Lord, son of Lewis Loyd, 
 i of Jones, Loyd, and Co., 90. 
 
 j Owen, R., and D. Dale's factory at 
 I New Lanark, 224. 
 
 I O.xford, animosity of students towards 
 I Jews in, 15. 
 
 I shire, famedforlace manufacture, 
 
 i "5- 
 
 I ^• 
 
 ■ Palestine, return of Judah to, 6. 
 
 \ Panic and mania (1825-6) of the joint- 
 
 i stock companies, 326. 
 
 ' and mania (1845-7), the railway. 
 
 1 328.
 
 Index. 
 
 37.5 
 
 Piinics and manias, 292. 
 
 of 1857 and 1866, 331. 
 
 Papas, 25. 
 
 Paper manufactory established by H. 
 de Portal, at Laverstock, on the 
 Itchin, 117. 
 
 Papin, D., curator of Royal Society, 
 167. 
 
 Parliamentary opposition to monopo- 
 lies, 148. 
 
 Parsee Benevolent Institution, 364. 
 
 Pascal Iron-works, 248. 
 
 Patents, useless, 153. 
 
 Paterson, W., 81. 
 
 established Bank of England, 92. 
 
 Payne and Co., bankers in Notting- 
 ham, 90. 
 
 Peabody, G., merchant, 362. 
 
 his successful career, 363. 
 
 Peel, Sir R., Act of Parliament of, 87. 
 
 Peels' cotton-works in Bury, 218. 
 ' Pembertons, bankers, 91. 
 
 Pennsylvania Society of Manufac- 
 tures and Useful Arts, 249. 
 
 Pepperell.SirW., American merchant, 
 
 347- 
 Pepperers' or Grocers' Company, 140. 
 Pepys, reference to tea in Diary of, 30. 
 Persia, early wealth of, 3. 
 Peruvian loan, the, 324. 
 Philadelphia and New York, 248. 
 
 S. Girard of, 354. 
 
 Girard College of Orphans in, 
 
 354- 
 
 plague at, 362. 
 
 Philip Agustus, his dealings with Jews, 
 
 9- 
 II., Warof the Netherlands with, 
 
 113- 
 
 the Fair, 107. 
 
 Philpot, Sir J., merchant, 142. 
 Phoenicians, early connection with 
 
 commerce, 3. 
 Pigs, importation of, 25. 
 Pilgrim Fathers, 118. 
 Pilots, first mention of, 5. 
 Pinder, Sir P., 152. 
 Pittsburg, factories of, 249. 
 Plantagenets, Flemish emigrants in 
 
 England under the, 103. 
 Pliny on monopolies, 147. 
 Plutarch, his testimony with reference 
 
 to banking, 75. 
 Pole, SirW. de la, first English banker, 
 
 17- 
 
 Political services of merchants, 122. 
 
 effects of monopolies of James I. 
 
 and Charles I., 152. 
 
 Politics in trade, 96. 
 
 Pompadour, Madame de, leader of 
 fashion, 200, 
 
 Poole, Thornton, and Co., fall of bank 
 of, 326. 
 
 Poona water-works, 364. 
 
 Poor Asylum of Bombay, or the 
 Dhurumsulla, 364. 
 
 Pope, his testimony concerning 
 coffee, 32. 
 
 satire of, 314. 
 
 Porcelain and china ware, 199. 
 
 and pottery, influence of science 
 
 on, 169. 
 
 early history of trade of, 170. 
 
 Port-wine, 134. 
 
 Portal, H. de, paper-maker, 169. 
 
 manufactory of paper at Laver- 
 
 stoke on the Itchin, in Hamp- 
 shire, established by, 117. 
 
 Potato first introduced into Europe, 
 
 25- 
 
 account by Gerarde of, 26. 
 
 account by T. Harlot of, 25. 
 
 cultivation of, extended to Scot- 
 land, 26. 
 
 Indian name papas converted 
 
 into battata, 25. 
 
 Pottery and porcelain, influence of 
 
 science on, 169. 
 
 trade, early history of, 170. 
 
 Poultry, Grocers' Hall in the, 82. 
 Power-loom, Cartwright's, 189. 
 
 value of steam, 190. 
 
 Predecessors, Sir T, Gresham and his 
 
 English, 344. 
 Primitive coal and coal-mining, 174. 
 
 Glasgow, 274. 
 
 Princes, other old merchant, 344. 
 Principles, growth of free-trade, 129. 
 Printing, story of the monopoly of, 
 
 154- 
 
 and dyeing, improvement of 
 
 fabrics by, 191. 
 
 Progress of London, recent, 261. 
 
 of Glasgow, later, 275. 
 
 of Halifa.x and Leeds, 227. 
 
 of iron manufacture, 175. 
 
 of San Francisco, recent, 289. 
 
 of the silk manufacture, 193. 
 
 Puddling and rolling, H. Cort's in- 
 vention for, 179.
 
 ;76 
 
 Index. 
 
 Puritans and English colonise 
 America, 117. 
 
 Quinine, 36. 
 
 R. 
 
 Railway mania and panic (1845-7), 
 328. 
 
 Ramsay, D. , inventor of modern 
 plough, 152. 
 
 Real del Monte shares, 325. 
 
 Recent progress of London, 261. 
 
 Results, commercial, of English 
 wars, 130. 
 
 Ribbons, the staple produce of St. 
 Etienne, 246. 
 
 Rice first introduced into England, 
 27. 
 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, Jewish tra- 
 gedy in reign of, 11. 
 
 " Rigging the market," 329. 
 
 Rippon, W., first coachmaker, 209. 
 
 Rise of great factories, 214. 
 
 of Liverpool, 267. 
 
 Ritchie, H., merchant, 274. 
 
 Rivals, East India Company and its, 
 160. 
 
 Roberts, L. , concerning cotton, 45. 
 
 on foreign marts, 259. 
 
 Rolling and puddling, H. Cort's in- 
 vention for, 179. 
 
 Rolls Chapel built in Chancery Lane, 
 
 13- 
 Romans, destruction of Carthage by, 
 
 Rothschild, N, M., his exploits, 322. 
 
 at Waterloo (battle), 323. 
 
 Rothschilds, the, 20. 
 
 Rouen, cotton factories at Mul- 
 
 house and, 247. 
 Royal, Company of Mines, 148. 
 
 Society, 166. 
 
 its benefits to trade, 168. 
 
 Boyle's account of the potato at 
 
 the, 26. 
 Russia, first introduction of tea into, 
 
 30- 
 Rutland, Earl of, first coach made 
 
 by Walter Rippon, for, 209. 
 Rye, settlement of foreigners in, 
 
 114. 
 Rylands, John, and his enterprises 
 
 in Manchester, Wigan, and Ains- 
 
 worth, 219. 
 
 S. 
 
 Salem, E. H. Derby, of, American 
 
 merchant, 351. 
 Salt, Sir T., woollen manufacturer, 
 
 41. 
 Saltaire mills, 43. 
 San Francisco and St. Louis, 287, 
 its recent progress, 289. 
 
 named from San Franciso de 
 
 Assissi, 289. 
 
 Sir F. Drake at, 287. 
 
 Sandwich, settlement of foreigners in, 
 114. 
 
 Sarcasm by a judge in passing sen- 
 tence, 88. 
 
 Savery, T., fire-engine of, 175. 
 
 Saxons, trade under the Anglo, 24. 
 
 School of Industrial Art, the Jam- 
 setjee, 364. 
 
 Science, gains of commerce by, 195. 
 
 services of, to trade, 165. 
 
 Scientific improvements, accidental 
 discoveries of, 169. 
 
 Scotch banking, 91. 
 
 Sea Company, South, 312. 
 
 Searle, R., mercer and Lord Mayor, 
 142. 
 
 Secession, New Orleans before and 
 after the War of, 284. 
 
 Services, political, of merchants, 122. 
 
 of fashion to commerce, 197. 
 
 Shadwell wrote comedy of "Stock- 
 jobbers," 311. 
 
 Shakespeare's Jew, 7. 
 
 Shares, Anglo-Mexican mining, 325. 
 
 Real del Monte, 325. 
 
 Sheep, importation of, 25. 
 
 Sheffield, Lord, 152. 
 
 Shirlev, Governor of Massachusetts, 
 348. 
 
 Shoes and stockings, 2or. 
 
 Sidney, Sir H., Lord-Deputy of Ire- 
 land, 115. 
 
 Sir P. , his remarks on foreign 
 
 manufactures, 115. 
 
 Sidon " Haven of Fishermen," 4. 
 
 Silk, introduction of, 48. 
 
 history of the French, trade, 
 
 242. 
 
 manufacture, progress of, 193. 
 
 trade and Lyons, 243. 
 
 Single-handed labour, the transitions 
 
 from, to co-operative, 214. 
 Slave trade of Liverpool, 270.
 
 Index. 
 
 zn 
 
 Slave trade of Bristol, 265. 
 
 trade abolished in England, 59. 
 
 Slavery as a wandering ware, 56. 
 
 Smeaton's invention at Carron Iron- 
 works, 179. 
 
 Smith, Payne, and Smith, bankers 
 in Nottingham, 90. 
 
 Smithfield market, 257. 
 
 fair of St. Bartholomew, held 
 
 at, 64. 
 
 Smythe, SirT. , merchant, 345. 
 
 Society of Manufactures and Useful 
 Arts at Pennsylvania, 249. 
 
 of Merchant Adventurers, no. 
 
 for the Diffusion of Useful 
 
 Knowledge, 158. 
 
 the Royal, 166. 
 
 Soho and its manufacture of steam- 
 engines, 237. 
 
 Solomon, treaty with Hiram, 4. 
 
 South and North American Coffee- 
 house, 264. 
 
 Sea Company and South Sea 
 
 Bubble, 312. 
 
 Southwell, Sir R., account of potato, 
 
 26. 
 Spain, colony of Jews planted by 
 
 Adrian in, 7. 
 Spanish War of the Succession, 130. 
 Spectator, Addison in, 308. 
 Spenser, E., his praise of tobacco, 
 
 34- 
 
 Spiers, A,, merchant, 274, 
 
 SpiAi, farmers and bankers, 335. 
 
 Spinning and weaving, 181. 
 
 ■ jenny, 187. 
 
 Spitalfields, French Protestant re- 
 fugees settle in, 50. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, fair of, 64. 
 
 St. Edmondsbury, colony of Jews at, 
 10, 
 
 St. Etienne, ribbons the staple pro- 
 duce of, 246. 
 
 St. Louis and San Francisco, 287. 
 
 Stafford, forgeries of R. W. Vaughan, 
 of, 88. 
 
 shire, first potmakers in, 171. 
 
 in 1760, 236. 
 
 Stamford, colony of Jews at, 10. 
 
 Standhill, J. Hargreaves, weaver of, 
 near Blackburn, 187. 
 
 Staple, Company of Merchants of 
 the, no. 
 
 Stationers' Company, 157. 
 
 Steam-engine, 175. 
 
 Steam-engines, Soho and its manufac- 
 ture of, 237. 
 
 power, value of, 190. 
 
 Still, Bishop, drinking-song attri- 
 buted to, 29; 
 
 Stock-broking, origin and progress 
 of English, 307. 
 
 Exchange phraseology, 321. 
 
 resort of Jews, 19. 
 
 Stocking-frame of W. Lee, 203. 
 
 weavers, corporation of, 287. 
 
 Stockings and shoes, 201. 
 
 "Stock-jobbers," comedy of, written 
 by Shadwell, 311. 
 
 famous, 322. 
 
 Stock-jobbing, later developments of, 
 318. 
 
 Story of the printing monopoly, 154. 
 
 Strafford, Earl of, 147. 
 
 Strutt and Need, manufacturers, 186. 
 
 Stubbes in his " Anatomy of Abuses," 
 on fashion, 203. 
 
 Succession, War of Spanish, 130. 
 
 Sufferings caused by war with France, 
 
 131- 
 Sugar, first introduction of into 
 
 English colony, 28. 
 Swords, the town of, 115. 
 
 Taylor, J. , the water-poet, on coaches, 
 
 209. 
 of Birmingham, manufacturer, 
 
 236. 
 Taxation of Jews under Henry H., 11. 
 Tea, increased consumption of sugar 
 
 mainly due to the use of cocoa, 
 
 coffee,' and, 28. 
 Temples used as banking-houses by 
 
 Greeks, 75. 
 Teutonicorum, Gilhalda, established, 
 
 98. 
 Textile manufactures, scientific changes 
 
 in, 181. 
 Therry, Judge, on the growth of Mel- 
 bourne, 279. 
 Thornton, Poole, and Co., fall of bank 
 
 of, .326. 
 Thread manufacture, 115, 
 Threadneedle Street, money made at, 
 
 84. 
 Tobacco, first cultivation of, in Lisbon, 
 
 33- 
 called tobako, 33,
 
 37« 
 
 Index. 
 
 Tobacco introduced into England, 33. 
 lords of Glasgow, 274. 
 
 name given by Hariot, 33. 
 
 nicotiana, 33. 
 
 trade of Liverpool, 264. 
 
 "Toy-shop of Europe," the, 237. 
 Trade, cotton, of Liverpool, 272. 
 and aspect of London in Middle 
 
 Ages, 255. 
 
 benefits of Royal Society to, 168, 
 
 by Huguenots, effects on, 117. 
 
 development of iron, 177. 
 
 history of French silk, 242. 
 
 Lyons and its silk, 243. 
 
 monopolies granted by Henry 
 
 VIIL, Edward VL, and Mary, 
 
 144. 
 
 philosophy of, 24. 
 
 politics in, 96. 
 
 principles, growth of free, 129. 
 
 — — services of Flemish emigrants to, 
 
 103. 
 
 services of science to, 165. 
 
 sinews of, 73. 
 
 slave, of Liverpool, 270. 
 
 tobacco, of Liverpool, 269. 
 
 under the Anglo-Saxons, 24. 
 
 Traders, notable, 333. 
 
 Huguenots as, 116. 
 
 Trading nations, earliest, 3. 
 
 fleet first organised, 5. 
 
 fleet, the Venetian, 100. 
 
 Tragedy upon Jews in London, 11. 
 
 upon Jews in York, 12. 
 
 Transitions from single-handed to 
 
 co-operative labour, 214. 
 Travelling, fashions in, 208. 
 Treasurer, or argentier to the Crown, 
 
 125- 
 Treaties, commercial, 134. 
 Treaty, the Methuen, 135. 
 
 of Vienna, 131. 
 
 the Cobden, 136. 
 
 Tulip mania, 293. 
 Tyre, rise of, 4, 
 
 U. 
 
 Uppowoc, name given by Hariot to 
 
 tobacco, 33. 
 Useful Knowledge, Society for the 
 
 Diffusion of, 158. 
 Arts, Pennsylvania Society of 
 
 Manufactures and, 249. 
 Uzzano, Nicolo da, 336. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valenciennes, lacemakers transferred 
 calling to Cranfield, in Bedford- 
 shire, from, 115. 
 
 Variations of "madness of the multi- 
 tude," 292. 
 
 Vaughan, Richard William, of Staf- 
 ford, forgeries of, 88. 
 
 Venetian trading fleets, the, 100. 
 
 Venice, chief trading city in Middle 
 Ages, 5. 
 
 Vermalet, 306. 
 
 Vienna, Treaty of, 131. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walpole, Sir R., warning of, 314. 
 Walsingham, Sir F., 115. 
 Wanderings of the Jews in Christian 
 
 times, 7. 
 Wandsworth, beaver hats made in, 117. 
 War of the Netherlands with Philip 
 
 n.. 113. 
 
 and commerce, 129. 
 
 of Independence, 351. 
 
 New York before and after 
 
 the, 281. 
 
 of Secession, New Orleans be- 
 fore and after the, 284. 
 
 of the Spanish Succession, 130. 
 
 with France, sufferings caused 
 
 by, 131. . 
 
 Wars, commercial results of English, 
 
 ISO- 
 Waterloo, battle of, 131, 
 N. M. Rothschild at the battle 
 
 of, 323. 
 " Water-plough," the, 152. 
 Water-works, Poona, 364. 
 Wealth of Manchester district, 224. 
 Weaving and spinning, 181. 
 Webster, .D., testimony concerning 
 
 banking of, 95. 
 Wedgwood, J., achievements of, 171. 
 
 as a caterer to fashion, 199. 
 
 Queen Caroline assists fortunes 
 
 of, 199. 
 Welsers, Ausburg merchants, 344. 
 Wentworth and Co., fall of bank of, 
 
 326. 
 Westminster, Henry HL, appointed 
 
 a fair to be h -Id at, 62. 
 — — Bank of, London and, 89. 
 Matthew of, on cloth manufac- 
 ture, 103.
 
 Index. 
 
 379 
 
 Wheeler. Wm., banker, 80. 
 
 White Cloth Hall, 227. 
 
 Whittier, J. G., writes concerning 
 
 Lowell, 252. 
 Whittington, Sir R., banker to Henry 
 
 IV. and v., 78. 
 Wigan, J. Rylands and his enterprises 
 
 in Manchester, Ainsworth, and, 
 
 219. 
 Wildgape, T., inventor of modern 
 
 plough, 152. 
 William Rufus, friendship to Jews of, 10. 
 Williams, Burgess, and Co., fall of 
 
 bank of, 326. 
 Winchcombe, J., known as Jack of 
 
 Newbury, clothier, 216. 
 Winchester, fair at, 63. 
 as centre of primitive cloth manu- 
 facture, 103. 
 
 Fair, decline of, 64. 
 
 Wine used in Gloucestershire in early 
 
 times, 29. 
 Wood, J. , chandler, grocer, andbanker, 
 
 89. 
 
 Wool, first introduction of, 38. 
 
 Woollen monopolies, 146. 
 
 manufacture, 226. 
 
 Works, Boulton's other good, 239. 
 
 Carron Iron, 235. 
 
 World, commerce of the, 3. 
 
 Worsted, Bradford and its manufac- 
 ture of, 229. 
 
 Wyatt, J., his invention, 184. 
 
 his drawing-frame, and Ark- 
 
 \vright's adaptation of it, 184. 
 
 Yarmouth, settlement of foreigners in, 
 
 114. 
 Yarranton, Andrew, coal merchant, 
 
 176. 
 York, colony of Jews at, 10. 
 
 cloth manufacture at, 103. 
 
 Jewish tragedy at, 12. 
 
 Youghal, importation of potato by 
 
 Raleigh, 26. 
 Ypres, diaper manufactured at, 44. 
 
 CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C.
 
 A SELECTION FROM 
 
 Cassell Petfer & Ga /pin's Publications. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WORKS. 
 
 Art Studies of Home Life. With Twenty-four full-page Photographs, 
 printed by the Woodbury Process, of famous Pictures by Collins, Leslie, Linnell, 
 Landseer, Mulready, Maclise, Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c. With Descriptive 
 Letterpress by Godfrey Turner. Demy 4to, cloth elegant, gilt edges, 155. 
 
 The National Portrait Gallery. Containing 20 Portraits of our most 
 distinguished Celebrities, printed in the highest style of Chromo-Lithography, with 
 accompanying Memoirs, compiled from authentic sources. Cloth, 12s. 6d. 
 
 Pictures from English Literature. With Twenty full-page Illus- 
 trations, by E. M. Ward, R.A., J. C. Horsley, R.A., W. F. Yearies, A.R.A., and 
 others. The Text by J. F. Waller, LL.D. Cloth, 7s. 6d. ; cloth gilt, gilt edges, 
 10s. 6d. 
 
 Homely Scenes from Great Painters. With Twenty-four fidl-page 
 Copies ofFaiHoiis Pictures, printed by the Woodbury Process, from Pictures by Frith, 
 Leys, Stone, &c. &c. With Illustrative Text. Demy 410, cloth gilt, gilt edges, 15s. 
 
 Illustrated Travels. A Record of Discovery, Geography, and Adven- 
 ture. Edited by H. \V. Bates, Assistant-Secretary of the Royal Geographical 
 Society. Vols. I., IL, IIL, IV., V., and VI. now ready, containing nearly 200 
 Engravings in each Volume. Royal 4to, 15s. cloth, or i8s. cloth, gilt edges, each. 
 
 Casseil's Illustrated Shakespeare. With 500 Illustrations by H. C. 
 
 Selous. Edited by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. Three Vols., cloth, 
 £i 15s.; half-morocco, £2 los. Vol. I. of the New Royal a,to Edition is now ready , 
 cloth, gilt edges, 21s. 
 
 The Races of Mankind. By Robert Brown, M.A., Ph.D., F.L.S., 
 
 F.R.G..S. Vols. I., II., and III., extra crown 410, Illustrated, cloth, 6s. each. To 
 he completed in 4 Vols. 
 
 Casseil's Arabian Nights. With 350 Illustrations. E.xtra crown 4to, 
 760 pages, cloth bevelled, gilt edges, 12s. 6d. 
 
 Illustrated Readings. First and Second Series. Each Series 
 
 Complete in One Volume. Illustrated by H. K. Browne, W. Small, Wiegand, 
 LiiiTCH, Cruikshank, Barnard, F. GiniEKT, J. Gilbert, &c. &c. Cloth, each, 
 7s. 6d. ; cloth, gilt edges, ids. 6d. 
 
 The World of Wit and Humour. With about 400 Illustrations by 
 F. Barnard, J. Proctor, L. Sambourne, Matt. Stretch, &c. Cloth, 7s. 6d. ; 
 cloth gilt, gilt edges, los. 6d. 
 
 N.B.— For a List of the DORE FINE ART BOOKS, ,f^^ Cassell's 
 Complete Catalogue, post free on application. 
 
 Cassell Fetter (^ Galpin : London, Paris 6^ Nei.iJ York. 
 
 5G— 1075
 
 A Selection from CasscU Fetter & Galpin's Publications. 
 
 STANDARD WORKS. 
 
 Cassell's Illustrated History of England, from the Earliest f^eriod 
 
 to the Present Time. With about 2,000 Illustrations. New Toned Paper Edition. 
 Complete in 9 Vols., cloth, each, gs. 
 
 Cassell's Illustrated History of the War between France and 
 
 Germany. With 500 Engravings and Plans of the I'attlc-fields. Complete in Two 
 Volumes. E.xtra crown 4to, cloth, gs. each ; or bound in half-calf, 30s. 
 
 BritisTi Battles on Land and Sea. By James Grant, Author of 
 
 "The Romance of War," &c. With about 600 Illustrations. Complete in -i, I'ols,, 
 e.\tra crown 4to, cloth gilt, gs. each. 
 
 Old and New London. Vols. I., II., and III. now ready, with about 
 200 Illustrations in each; extra crown 4tD, cloth gilt, gs. each. 
 
 The History of Protestantism. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D. 
 
 Vol. I., with upwards of 200 Original Illustrations. Extra crown 410, 620 pages, 
 cloth, gs. ( To be completed m 3 Vols. ) 
 
 Cassell's History of the United States. Vol. I., with 200 Illustra- 
 tions and Maps. Extra crown 4to, 620 pages, cloth, gs. (To be completed in 3 I'ols.) 
 
 The Bible Educator. Edited by the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Exegesis of the New Testament, King's College, London. With 400 
 Engravings and Maps. Complete in 4 Vols., cloth, 6s. each ; or in Two Double 
 Vols., 21s. 
 
 Cassell's New Popular Educator. Revised to the Present Date, with 
 
 ninncrous Additions. Complete in .Si.x Vols., 412 pp. each, cloth, 6s. each ; or Three 
 Vols., half-calf, ^2 los. 
 
 Cassell's Popular Recreator. A Guide and Key to In-door and Out- 
 door Amusement. Complete in Two Vols., witti about 1,000 Illustrations, cloth, 5s. 
 each ; or One Vol., los. 6d. 
 
 Cassell's Technical Educator, With Coloured De.signs and numerous 
 Illustrations. Complete in Four Vols., extra crown 4to, cloth, 6s. each ; or Two 
 Vols:, half-calf, 31s. 6d. 
 
 The Book of the Horse. By Samuel Sidney. With Twenty-five 
 
 Fac-simile Coloured Plates from Original Paintings, and upwards of 100 Woodcuts. 
 600 pages, demy 4to, cloth bevelled, gilt edges, 31s. 6d. ; half-morocco, £2 2s. 
 
 The Illustrated Book of Poultry. By L. Wright. W^ith Fifty 
 
 Coloured Portraits of Prize Birds, and numerous Engravings. Demy 4to, 600 pages, 
 cloth bevelled, gilt edges, 31s. 6d. ; half-morocco, gilt edges, £2 2S. 
 
 Cassell's Household Guide. With Coloured Cookery Plates, and Illus- 
 - trations on nearly every page. Complete in Four Vols., 6s. each ; cr Two Vols., 
 half-calf, ^i IIS. 6d. 
 
 Cassell's Guinea Illustrated Bible. Willi 900 Illustrations. Royal 
 
 4to, 1,476 pages. Cloth gilt, 21s. ; leather, 25s. 
 
 Cassell's Bible Dictionary. With 600 Illustrations, Imperial Svo, 
 1,159 P^S^S) cloth, 21s. ; morocco, 40s. 
 
 The Child's Bible. With 220 Illustrations. Demy 4to, cloth gilt, 
 £\ IS. ; leather, 30s..; morocco elegant, 42s. 
 
 Cassell Fetter &^ Galpin : Loudon, Paris &= New York.
 
 A Selection from Casscll Fetter &^ Galpin^s Publications. 3 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 
 
 Book of Good Devices, The. Edited by Godfrey Golding. With 
 
 i,cx)0 Precepts for Practice. Cloth , bevelled, gilt edges, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Chapters on Trees. A Popular Account of their Nature and Uses. 
 By ]\I. and E. Kirby. Profusely Illustrated. 330 pages, extra crown 8vo, cloth 
 gilt, 5S. 
 
 Civil Service, Guide to Employment in the. Ntnu Edition. With 
 
 an Introduction by J. M. Worell, LL.D. Cloth, 2s. 5d. 
 
 Civil Service, Guide to the Indian. By A. C. Ewald, F.S.A. 
 
 Neau and Cheaper Edition. Cloth, 2s. fid. 
 
 Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. By the Rev. Dr. Brewer. 
 
 Neiv mid C/ieaper Edition. Demy Svo, i,och3 pp., cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 Facts and Hints for Every-day Life. A Comprehensive Book on 
 
 Every Subject connected with the Comforts of Home and the Health and Prosperity 
 of its Inmates. Second Edition. 2s. fid. 
 
 Half-Hours with Early Explorers. By T. Frost. Profusely Illus- 
 trated. Second Edition. Cloth, 5s. 
 
 Hymns and Poems for Little Folks. Uniform with "The Chil- 
 dren's Album." With 150 full-page Pictures. Super-royal ifimo, 320 pages, cloth, 
 3S. fid. 
 
 Manners of Modern Society. A Comprehensive Work on the 
 
 Etiquette of the Present Day. Fourth Edition. Cloth gilt, 2s. fid. 
 
 North-West Passage by Land. By Viscount Milton and Dr. 
 
 Cheadle. Original Edition, demy Svo, cloth, with 22 Plates, 21s. Neiu and 
 Ciicaper Edition, crown Svo, with Map and Illustrations, 2S. fid. 
 
 Notable Shipwrecks. By Uncle Hardy. 320 pages, crown Svo, 
 
 with Frontispiece. Second Edition. Cloth gilt, 5s. 
 
 Our Children, and How to Rear and Train Them. A Manual 
 
 for Parents, in the Physical, Educational, Religious, and ]Moral Training of their 
 Children. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. fid. 
 
 Pictures of School Life and Boyhood. Selected from the Best 
 
 Authors, and Edited by Percy Fitzgerald, M. A. 256 pages, crown Svo, cloth gilt, 
 with Frontispiece, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Practical Poultry-Keeper, The. Eighth Edition. By L. Wright. 
 
 Illustrated with numerous Wood-cuts, 3s. fid. ; or with Eight new Chromo Plates, 5s. 
 
 Soldier and Patriot, The Story of George Washington. By F. 
 
 1\I. Owen. 256 pages, cloth, bevelled boards, 3s. fid. 
 
 The Three Homes. A Tale for Fathers and Sons. By F. T. L. 
 Hoi'E. 400 pages, crown Svo, cloth, gilt edges, 5s. 
 
 Truth will Out. By Jeanie Hering, Author of "Golden Days," 
 " Little Pickles," &c. 240 pages, crown Svo. With Frontispiece. 3s. fid. 
 
 Young Man in the Battle of Life, The. By the Rev. Dr. Landels. 
 
 Fcap. Svo, 292 pages. Third Edition. Cloth gilt, 3s. fitl. 
 
 Cassell Fetter <Sr» Galpin : London, Pai'is c--^ Ne-S) York.
 
 4 A Selection from Cassell Pettcr &= GalphUs Puhlieations. 
 
 CASSELL'S EDITION OP THE POETS. 
 
 In fcap. 8vo, bound in cloth extra, with Illuminated Title. Illustrated with numerous 
 full-page Engravings on Wood, from Designs by Eminent Artists. In cloth gilt, 
 3S. 6d. 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 Scott. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Moore. 
 
 "Wordsworth. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 Milton. 
 
 Pope. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 The Casquet of Gems. 
 
 The Book of 
 
 Humorous Poetry. 
 Ballads, Scottish and 
 
 English. 
 Lives of the British 
 Poets. 
 
 CASSELL'S LIBRARY EDITION OF THE POETS, 
 
 In Bold, Readakle Type, with Memoir of each Poet, Notes, and Critical Dissertation, 
 bound in cloth, as under : — 
 
 Scott's Poetical Works. Three Vols., cloth, 2s. each. 
 Burns' Poetical Works. Two Vols., 2s. each. 
 Thomson's Poetical Works. One Vol., cloth, 2s. 
 Young's Poetical Works. One Vol., cloth, 2s. 
 Dryden's Poetical Works. Two Vols., cloth, 2s. each. 
 Milton's Poetical Works. Two Vols., cloth, 2s. each. 
 Goldsmith, Wharton, and Collins' Poetical Works. One 
 
 Vol., 2S. 
 
 1^ The foHowhig- CATALOGUES of Messrs. Cassell Petter & 
 Galpin's Publications can be had from all Booksellers, or post free on 
 application to the Publishers : — ■ 
 
 CASSELL'S COMPLETE CATALOGUE, containing a complete List 
 of Woi-ks, including Bibles and Religious Literature, Children's Books, 
 Dictionaries, Educational Works, Fine Art Volumes, Handbooks and 
 Guides, History, Miscellaneous, Natural History, Poetry, Travels, 
 Serials. 
 
 CASSELL'S EDUCATIONAL CATALOGUE, containing a description 
 of their numerous Educational Works, &c. , with Specimen Pages and 
 Illustrations, including their Elementary and Technical Series, together 
 with a List of their Mathematical Instruments, Water-Colours, &c. 
 
 V 
 
 Cassell Petter Q^ Galpin : London, Paris 6^ New York. 
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 I SEP 2 5 19^2 
 
 6 mo 
 
 § 135; I 
 
 AUG 2 1 196t 
 KAY I'l 
 
 ^^1 
 
 
 \9(^1 
 
 NOV IS 
 
 Form L-0 
 2.-.m -2, '43(5205) 
 
 
 1965 
 
 p^A 
 
 UNIVKi^ 
 
 JKJMIA 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 7^1 
 
 fV.- 
 
 3 1158 00020 5178 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 001 036 736 5