lify it and keep it within due bounds. We are not accustomed to class that profession among the liberal ones; and yet it ought to be classed among the most liberal, as being that which, when properly and wisely exercised, requires the most general knowledge, and affords the fairest opportunities for acquiring and enlarging it. There is nothing in its practice which tends to contract the mind, to sophisticate the understanding, or to corrupt the feelings. SIR THOMAS MORE. It is from those merchants who were "as Princes," that Princes themselves have derived assistance, states strength, and statesmen information, the arts their best patronage, and literature not unfrequently its best encouragement. Did you know more of the merchants of Tyre, it would appear that in that age no other power or influence upon the face of the earth was so beneficially exercised as theirs. Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, had such merchants in my days. The Moors had them, before the Portugueze, by the conquest of Ceuta, by the destruction of their little commercial states along the coast of Eastern Africa, where every petty chieftain (like Alcinous) was a merchant, by their seizure of Malacca and Ormuz, and the system of destructive warfare which they car ried on in the Indian and Red Seas, cut the roots of Mahommedan power, and unhappily of Mahommedan civilization. You have such merchants now. MONTESINOS. Many such. The evil in that profession is, that men are tempted by the hope of great prizes to undue risks; the spirit of enterprize is allowed to pass the bounds of prudence and of principle, and then the merchant becomes in fact a gamester. Examples of this become more frequent as the habits of life become more emulously expensive. But the ordinary and natural consequences of commerce are every way beneficial; they are humanizing, civilizing, liberalizing; if it be for the purpose of gain that it compasses sea and land, it carries with it industry, activity, and improvement: these are its effects abroad, while it brings wealth to us at home. Whereas the immediate and home effect of the manufacturing system, carried on as it now is upon the great scale, is to produce physical and moral evil, in proportion to the wealth which it creates. Here is our danger, our sore and spreading evil... here, I had almost said, is the harm That never shall recover healthfulness!"* * Lord Surrey. At such a price national prosperity would be dearly purchased, even if any prosperity which is so purchased were, or could be, stable. Alas! wherefore is it that communities and individuals so seldom keep the even line, though it appears to be plain and straight before them! SIR THOMAS MORE.` Because they walk sometimes in mist and darkness, and sometimes giddily and precipitately when the way is clear. But the way is not always plain, nor, when plain, is it always easy. Both men and nations are liable to evils which are the consequence, not of their own errors, but of their position, .. of circumstances in which they find themselves, and over which they have had no control. MONTESINOS. "For he that once hath missed the right way, The further he doth go, the further he doth stray.' SIR THOMAS MORE. Society has its critical periods, and its climacterics; no change, no developement can take place at such seasons without inducing some peculiar and accompanying danger; and at all seasons it is liable to its influenzas and its plagues. This is one of its grand climacterics. Faery Queen. A new principle,..a novum organum has been introduced,.. the most powerful that has ever yet been wielded by man. If it was first Mitrum that governed the world, and then Nitrum, both have had their day,.. gunpowder as well as the triple crown. Steam will govern the world next,.. and shake it too before its empire is established. 200 COLLOQUY VIII. STEAM-WAR-PROSPECTS OF EUROPE. "THE ancients," says* Dr. Arbuthnot, “had more occasion for mechanics in the art of war, than we have; gunpowder readily producing a force far exceeding all the engines they had contrived for battery. And this, I reckon, has lost us a good occasion of improving our mechanics; the cunning of mankind never exerting itself so much as in their arts of destroying one another." Since Arbuthnot's age the desire of gain has produced greater improvements in mechanics than were ever called forth by the desire of conquest. And yet the great inventions of the world have arisen from a worthier origin than either; they have generally been the work of quiet, unambitious, unworldly men, pursuing some favourite branch of science, patiently, for its own sake. Steam, said I to Sir Thomas when he visited * Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning. |