Art. I.-THE DIGNITY AND IMPORTANCE OF COMMERCE:*

No. 1.

ILLUSTRATED IN THE HISTORY AND PROGRESS OF THE GREAT WESTERN STATES AND TERRITORIES OF OUR COUNTRY.

Ir is especially gratifying to witness the spirited and successful effort to disseminate the advantages of literature throughout the commercial circles of a large city; for the numbers, the energy, and the wealth of this class, render it important that their intellectual and moral character should be cultivated, and their influence well directed. In estimating the relative standing and influence of the different classes of our population, there are, I think, two very grave mistakes usually committed: one of which assigns the highest place in the scale of merit to manual labor, while the other disdains, as low and coarse, all that partakes of physical exertion: by the one class, the farmer, the laborer, and the mechanic, are lauded as wielding the creative power by which all the elements of wealth are brought into existence; by the other, the members of the learned professions are

The following paper was prepared by Judge Hall, at the request of the Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati, and read before them. It abounds in historic interest, and emanates from one of the most gifted minds in the westthe author also of several works upon that region.

The Mercantile Association of Cincinnati evidences great prosperity. Its Annual Report for 1817 has been politely furnished us by JAMES LUPTON, Esq., Corresponding Secretary, with a communication from which we make this extract: The intimate commercial relations of New Orleans and Cincinnati, and many other reasons judiciously presented, should, I think, procure for your COMMERCIAL. REVIEW a subscription list in this city at least equal to any in our western or south-western cities. The press, so far as I recollect, has spoken of your journal with unqualified praise."

The Mercantile Association are now the owners in perpetuity of a suit of rooms in the splendid edifice of the Cincinnati College. Its newspaper list includes daily papers. 3 tri-weekly, 1 semi-weekly, 12 weekly, and 2 semi-monthly. Its raagazine list 7 quarterlies, 1 bi-monthly, 9 monthly, and 1 weekly. Within the past year the library has been increased by the purchase of 246 vol.-donations of 258-magazine volumes 32-aggregate cost, $282 46. Whole number of books in the library, 4786. Number of new members in 1846, 283, viz.: 3 life, 198 active, 82 honorary-whole number of members, 1007, viz., 69 life, and 938 active and honorary. Receipts in 1846, from all sources, $7,957 59. From the donors

revered as the depositories of all knowledge, the makers and arbiters of public opinion; and these respective classes have been courted and flattered by those who have sought to rise upon the breath of popular favor.

The truth lies, we suppose, between these extremes. While we concede to the hard hand of labɔ, a vast amount of power, utility, and consequent influence, and grant to intellect and education the force of a mighty lever, it will require but little reflection to satisfy us that the resources of this country are controled chiefly by that class, which in our peculiar phraseology we term "the business community," embracing all those who are engaged in the great occupations of buying and selling, exchanging, importing and exporting merchandise, and including the banker, the broker, and the underwriter. In a population so active as ours, and spread over so wide an expanse of territory, with lands so prolific, a climate so diversified, productions so various, mineral treasures so vast, and facilities for interior navigation so great, the pursuit of commerce must form a prominent occupation. The commercial and fiscal concerns of such a people cannot be otherwise than important. We have no hesitation in asserting that they employ more of the wealth, the industry, and the intellect of the American people, than all other employments and professions united. Vast and vastly diversified, they extend to every place, and are interwoven with every occupation. Commerce is limited only by the boundaries of civilized intercourse. Wherever men congregate in social life, it is there; in the most obscure hamlet it is found among the first clements of the most simple form of society; in the proudest metropolis, it employs the highest energies of the human intellect, and is seen in the most magnificent displays of wealth and power. The vast navies that circumnavigate the globe are hers, great cities acknowledge her sway, her merchants are princes, the revenues of mighty nations are under her control. She is the arbitress of war and peace.

names we select the following, as most liberal and worthy of preservation and imitation:

ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN STATES. 19

Under the influence of that fell spirit of demagoguism which has swept over our land, it has become fashionable to flatter the agricultural and laboring classes, because they are the most numerous, and wield the greatest power at the ballot boxes; while a systematic effort has been made to decry the merchant and the banker, and to stigmatize their business as inimical to the liberty and prosperity of the country. We might pass over these incendiary doctrines with the contempt they deserve, if it were not for the wide-spread mischief which they work, by deluding, to their own injury, the numerous classes whom they are intended to cajole and flatter. The laborer and mechanic are taught to dislike the banker, whose means furnish them with daily employment, and the farmer's mind is diligently im bued with a settled hatred for the merchant, without whose assistance his crops would rot upon the field. The prosperity of the country, its peace, its character, and its credit, are deeply affected by the too successful influence of these wretched intrigues. The masses are imbued with the opinion that wealth and poverty, commerce and labor, education and the want of education, constitute hostile interests; and the legislative halls are disgraced by an abject subserviency to those prejudices, which has banished justice, and patriotism, and manly freedom of thought, from that high sanctuary of sovereign power. Even the bench has not been free from these pernicious opinions, and demagogues have been found so hardened and so daring as to carry into that sacred tribunal the profligate pledge of party obedience, and to consummate there the atrocious proscription of individuals and classes.

It appears by the census of 1810, that the number of persons in Ohio engaged in Commerce, in Agriculture, and in Mechanical Labors and Trades, was as follows:

By this showing, it appears that the disparity between these classes is very great, that the oppression attempted to be practised by the many over the few, is at least safe to the agents employed in the experiment; and that however abject and unjust, however repugnant to the constitutional principles of equality and democracy, such appeals to the prejudices of the mass may be, the demagogues who use them, do so in the confidence of an impunity guarantied by an odds of thirty to one in their favor.

The streams of water which afford beneficent supplies of that necessary element to our city, are distributed by the force of a powerful engine. Situated at a distance, and silently performing its appointed office, its gigantic action is unobserved by the mass of human beings who enjoy the benefits of its incessant labor-who derive refreshment, comfort, health, and perhaps life itself from its operations. Through the agency of that powerful machine, the healthful current circulates throughout all the avenues of the city; it is present in every street, it is used in every dwelling; yet the agent that distributes a blessing so universal and indispensable is by no means obvious to the casual observer. It is so with commerce; though its advantages are pre-eminent and widely diffused, the number engaged in this profes

sion is so small in comparison with the aggregate of society, and their transactions, especially those of the greatest magnitude, attract so little attention, that the observation of the public is not awakened to a just appreciation of the mercantile character.

*

We have chosen, therefore, as a topic for this occasion, THE DIGNITY AND USEFULNESS OF COMMERCE, which we shall endeavor to illustrate from the familiar facts of our own recent history. We might, indeed, appeal to the annals of the world, from the earliest times, to show that commerce has always led the van in the great march of human improvement-in the discovery of new countries— in promoting the intercourse between nations-in affording employment to industry and ingenuity-in promoting science and diffusing knowledge-in adding to social comfort-in the spread of civilization and Christianity. We might refer to Greece and Rome, in the dark periods, when little else was regarded than fighting and the fine artsto Venice and Genoa-to the brightest ages in the histories of Holland and of England-and to the whole history of America, from its discovery until now, for proofs that commerce is the most efficient agent of national prosperity. The occasion will not, however, allow us to enter upon so wide a field; and we shall confine ourselves to our own country, and to recent times.

Allow us, then, to occupy a few minutes in presenting some of the prominent facts in our history, for the purpose of inquiring, what are the obligations of the country to the class of our citizens who are engaged in commercial pursuits—and we are sorry that the subject is so broad and so varied in its details, that it is impossible to do it justice in the brief space of a single discourse.

The French, who first explored our northern frontier, ascended the great chain of lakes to Huron and Michigan, and afterwards pencirated through Lake Superior, to that remote wilderness, where the head branches of the St. Lawrence interlock with those of the Mississippi. Adopting, and probably improving the bark canoe of the natives, they were enabled to traverse immeasurable wilds, which nature had seemed to have rendered inaccessible to man, by floods of water at one season, and masses of snow and ice at another, by the wide spread lakes, and ponds, and morasses, which in every direction intercepted the journey by land, and by the cataracts and rapids, which cut off the communication by water. All difficulties vanished before the efficiency of this little vessel: its wonderful buoyancy enabled it, though heavily freighted, to ride safely over the waves of the lakes, even in boisterous weather; its slender form and lightness of draught permitted it to navigate the smallest streams, and pass the narrowest channels; while its weight was so little, that it was easily carried on the shoulders of men from one stream to another. Thus when these intrepid navigators found the river channel closed by an impassable barrier, the boat was unloaded, the freight, which had previously been formed into suitable packages for that purpose, was carried round the obstruction by the boatmen, the boat itself performed the same journey, and then was again launched in its proper element. So, also, when a river had been traced up to its

* See Commercial Review, Vol. I., Second Edition, reprint.-ED.

ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN STATES. 21

sources, and no longer furnished sufficient water for navigation, the accommodating bark canoe, like some amphibious monster, forsook the nearly exhausted channel, and traveled across the land to the nearest navigable stream. By this simple but admirable contrivance, the fur trade was secured, the great continent of North America was penetrated to its centre, through thousands of miles of wilderness, and a valuable staple brought to the marts of commerce. If we regard that little boat as the means of bringing to market this great mass of the treasures of the wilderness, we may well remark, that never was an important object effected by means so insignificant. But the human labor, and peril, and exposure-the courage, the enterprise, and the skill employed, were far from insignificant. The results were great. Besides the vast trade which was developed, the interior of a great continent was explored-the boundaries between two empires were traced out and incidentally established-an intercourse with the Indian tribes was opened, and valuable facts were added to the treasures of science. And all this was accomplished, not by the power of an empire-not by the march of a conqueror impelled by military ambition or the lust of conquest-not by a lavish expenditure of money, or the shedding of human blood-but by the action of humble individuals acting under the great stimulus of commercial enterprise.

Turning our attention to another part of that great theatre of early adventure, we see the bold explorers crossing from the Lakes to the Mississippi, passing down and up that river, tracing its gigantic course from the Gulf of Mexico to the Falls of St. Anthony, erecting forts, planting settlements, and, in short, establishing a chain of posts and colonies, extending from the mouth of the Mississippi, westward of the British Colonies, to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. The adventurers to Louisiana sought the precious metals; imaginary mines of gold and silver allured them across the ocean, led them to brave the terrors of the climate and the wilderness, and sustained them under the greatest extremes of toil and privation. Though disappointed in the object of their search, they became the founders of an empire; they explored and developed the resources of the country; they led the way to that flood of emigration which has been gradually filling up the land, and scattered the germs of that prosperity which we see blooming around us, and promising harvests too great to be estimated. When the sagacious eye of Washington first beheld the country lying about the head waters of the Ohio, he saw and pointed out the military and commercial advantages which might be secured by its occupation. Had the annexation of this country to the American Colonies, or at a later period to the States, been made a political question, how various would have been the opinions, how deliberate the discussion, how slow the action, how uncertain the result! But this splendid example of national aggrandizement was not achieved by the wisdom of statesmen, nor by the valor of armies. No sooner had a few daring pioneers settled in the wilderness, than the eager spirit of trade, ever on the watch for new fields of adventure, discovered the rich promise of gain offered by a region so wide and so fertile. Commerce did not then, nor in any instance in the settlement of our country, wait until "grim visaged war had smoothed his