Famous London Merchants - H. R. Fox Bourne




XIII. George Peabody (1795-1869)

We have already seen how enterprising men have come from various parts of England and from foreign lands to settle in our great metropolis, and to win fame and fortune for themselves and to augment the wealth and enterprise of their adopted house, as famous London merchants. Our last hero shall be one, surpassed in worth and wisdom by none of his forerunners, who was neither an Englishman nor a foreigner, one of the famous race of colonists, who, having England for their mother-country, have established a greater England on the other side of the Atlantic. George Peabody is only the most notable of a crowd of great Americans, who, enriching themselves and the land of their birth, have done no less service to the nation from which their own nation is descended.

[Illustration] from Famous London Merchants by H. R. Fox Bourne

GEORGE PEABODY.


The Peabody family seems to be of Leicestershire origin, but it was from Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire, that Francis Peabody went, in 1635, to be one of the first settlers in New England. He was then twenty-one, and he lived sixty-three years in his new home. Six sons and eight daughters were born to him, and the family multiplied greatly in succeeding generations; Danvers, in Massachusetts, being its headquarters. There George Peabody, the great-great-great-grandson of old Francis, the patriarch, was born on the 18th of February, 1795. His parents were not rich, and all the education possible to him was obtained in the district school of his native town, still little more than a village. Even that came to an end when he was eleven years old. In 1806 he became a grocer's boy in Danvers, and he was so employed for four or five years. At sixteen he went to be clerk to his elder brother, who had started a dry-goods store at Newburyport, in the north-eastern corner of Massachusetts; but only a few months afterwards a great fire broke out in the town, half destroying it, and ruining the enterprise of the brothers. Young Peabody then went to Georgetown, in Columbia, where an uncle offered him a post in a dry-goods business, which he also had just started.

That was in the spring of 1812. The war of 1812 was then breaking out, and the lad became a volunteer in a company of artillery. He was stationed for a few months at Fort Warburton, but no active work could be found for him or his comrades, and he soon went back to his uncle's store. The uncle being a poor man, and perhaps not a very clever one, the store was not successful, and after two years' occupation in it, George Peabody left to become manager of another dry-goods business, established by a rich Columbian, named Elisha Riggs. Elisha Riggs's friends blamed him for confiding so much to a youth of only nineteen; but his wisdom was soon proved. The business was very successful. In 1815 it was transferred to Baltimore, to be carried on in a larger way by the new firm of Riggs & Peabody, which afterwards, on the retirement of the senior partner in 1829, was changed to Peabody, Riggs, & Company.

For more than twenty years George Peabody lived in Baltimore, working hard at his trade, which consisted chiefly in the importation of manufactured goods from Europe and their sale in America, but to which, almost from the first, an irregular sort of banking business was added. In 1822 branch businesses were opened in Pennsylvania and New York, all being under the close superintendence of Peabody. He was also occasionally employed in financial negotiations for the State of Maryland, and these duties, as well as his own trade, brought him often on short visits to England during the ten years following upon 1827. On both sides of the Atlantic he won the respect of all with whom he came in contact, by "a judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound; a decided purpose; a firm will; energetic and persevering industry; punctuality and fidelity in every engagement; justice and honour controlling every transaction; and courtesy, that true courtesy which springs from genuine kindness, presiding over all the intercourse of life."

In 1836 Peabody resolved to leave the business which he had already made famous in other lands, and to extend it mightily by opening an establishment, under his own management, in London. Since February 1837, London has been his adopted home, and fortune, favouring him amid the misfortunes of others, came with him. The summer of 1837 was a time of great commercial crisis in America and among English merchants whose chief trade was with the American continent Three-quarters of all the banks in the United States fell one after another with a tremendous crash, and thousands of traders, hitherto prosperous, were ruined by the catastrophe.

"That great sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit," said George Peabody's friend, Edward Everett, the great author, orator, and diplomatist, twenty years afterwards, "as far as the United States were concerned, was for the time paralysed. At that moment, Mr. Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was the cause of firmness in others. There were not at that time, probably, half-a-dozen other men in Europe who, upon the subject of American securities, would have been listened to for a moment in the parlour of the Bank of England. But his judgment commanded respect; his integrity won back the reliance which men had been accustomed to place in American securities. The reproach in which they were all involved was gradually wiped away from those of a substantial character; and if, on this solid basis of unsuspected good faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be remembered that at the same time he retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, of which he was agent—performing the miracle by which the word of an honest man turns paper into gold."

That excellent beginning of his career in London placed Peabody in the foremost rank of merchant princes. In London and in all parts of England he bought British manufactures for shipment to the United States, and the ships came back freighted with every kind of American produce for sale in England. To that lucrative occupation, however, was added one far more lucrative. The merchants and manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic, who transmitted their goods through him, sometimes procured from him advances on account of the goods in his possession long before they were sold. At other times they found it convenient to leave large sums in his hands long after the goods were disposed of, knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that in the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that they were certain of a proper interest for their loans. Thus, he became a great banker as well as a great merchant, and, ultimately, much more of a banker than a merchant.

From the year 1843 especially, when he retired from the house of Peabody, Riggs, & Company, and founded the much greater house of George Peabody & Company, he ran a race with other great monetary traders like Samuel Gurney, the Rothschilds, and the Barings. The Barings having most to do with American commerce, were his chief rivals; and here the friendly rivalry was carried on with a native of his own country. The working head of the house of Baring at this time was Joshua Bates, who was born at Weymouth, near Boston, in 1788. In 1825, having previously had many dealings with the family, he came to London to become a member of the famous establishment, and from 1828 till the time of his death in 1864 he was its principal manager. For many years he was in intimate friendship with Coleridge, and during that period Bates's drawing-room was a favourite haunt of the admirers of the great thinker and great talker.

Another of Joshua Bates's friends was Prince Louis Napoleon. The intimacy which existed before 1848 between the wealthy merchant and the eccentric refugee continued without hindrance, it is said, after the refugee had become Emperor of the French. Bates was of generous disposition, and, among other benefactions, gave more than £20,000 to found and maintain the free library of Boston.

Much greater and wider have been the philanthropies of George Peabody. From the commencement of his wealth-winning, he put his riches and the influence that came with them to good use. Of his trading establishment, he said:

"I have endeavoured, in the constitution of its members and the character of its business, to make it an American house, and to give it an American atmosphere, to furnish it with American journals, to make it a centre of American news, and an agreeable place for my American friends visiting London."

An American himself, who had become a citizen of London, he did his utmost to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the United States and Great Britain. During many years, until it was deemed more suitable that the whole body of American residents in London should unite in the work, he celebrated the famous Fourth of July with a sumptuous dinner, at which the leading men of both countries were invited to join in the fostering of international friendship. To him were due the principal arrangements for organising and making conspicuous the wonderful display of American manufactures at the great Exhibition of 1851, and an entertainment given by him, at the London Coffee-House, on the 27th of October in that year, was everywhere recognised at the time as an unparalleled occasion for the interchange of national courtesies and the strengthening of national good-will.

These were matters which, by reason of their practical results, were not to be thought lightly of. But the daily influences of his honest life and stupendous work were yet more momentous. So, too, the private charities which preceeded and attended his great acts of public benevolence have been of no mean importance. Acquiring great wealth, he has always used it generously.

From the first he showed himself a good friend to his native village, since grown into a prosperous town. Once, when it was grievously injured by fire, he helped to rebuild it, and, over and over again, he furnished fresh tokens of his generous remembrance of it. In 1852, on the occasion of a public celebration, he sent from London a letter, asking that he might not be forgotten in the rejoicings of his friends, and enclosing a sentiment, which was not to be opened until the proper time for toast-giving at the dinner. The sentiment was:

"Education, a debt due from present to future generations," and as his share in payment of the debt, he placed in the envelope a draft for £4,000 to be applied to "the promotion of knowledge and morality in Danvers." Out of that gift grew the Peabody Institute, to which he afterwards subscribed upwards of; £5000 more.

In 1856 he went to Danvers, to revisit the scenes of his childhood, and to receive the honours which his fellow-townsmen were eager to offer.

"Though Providence," he then said, "has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy who left yonder unpretending dwelling. There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble boy among you."

Another famous instance of George Peabody's generosity was in a gift of £100,000 to Baltimore, for the establishment of an Educational Institute, which should also contain a free library, an academy of music, and a gallery of art. In 1866 he gave £30,000 to the Harvard University. A yet greater instance signalised his retirement from the commercial world of London in 1862. He then placed in the hands of trustees; £150,000, to be so expended as "to ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy of this great metropolis, and to promote their comfort and happiness;" and suggested that the best way of carrying out his intentions would be "to apply the fund, or a portion of it, in the construction of such improved dwellings for the poor as may combine, in the utmost possible degree, the essentials of healthfulness, comfort, social enjoyment, and economy." That suggestion being adopted, commodious buildings have been set up, or are still being erected, at Spitalfields and at Chelsea, with accommodation for about two hundred persons in each; at Bermondsey, large enough for about four hundred; at Islington, adapted for six hundred and fifty; and at Shadwell, for a yet larger number of inmates. In continuance of this good work, the benefactor applied a further sum of £100,000 in 1866, and a second sum of like amount on the sth of December 1868.

The modest, manly letter to the trustees announcing this fresh act of munificence, is worth quoting entire:—

"My Lord and Gentlemen,—I beg to acquaint you, who have so kindly undertaken the management of the fund set apart under my second deed of gift of the 19th of April 1866, for the benefit of the poor of London and its vicinity, that, in pursuance of an intention which I have entertained since the creation of that fund, I am desirous now of adding to it a further sum of £100,000.

"In contemplation of this, I purchased, about three years ago, a tract of freehold building land, of about fifteen acres in extent, at Brixton, near the City of London School, easily accessible, and within a few minutes' walk of frequent trains to and from London. This land has increased in value, and can now be let, on building leases of eighty years, at rents producing about 8 percent, per annum on the cost, which is £16,285 17s. 3d. This land I propose to convey to you with the same powers as are conferred by the deed over the other property of this trust, and with discretion to you either to deal with it as a source of income by letting it, or any portion of it, on lease; or, should you deem it expedient, to retain it in your own hands as sites for dwellings to be erected by the trust.

"Pursuant to my letter of the 29th January 1866, I transferred to you, subject to a contingency therein explained, 5000 shares in the Hudson's Bay Company, which accordingly stand in your names, together with 642 additional shares purchased by the reinvestment of the accruing income of the previous 5000. These 5642 shares I have since redeemed, conformably to the deed of the 19th April 1866, by the payment of £100,000 on the 1st February last. I have now to acquaint you that it is my intention, so soon as the necessary deeds can be prepared, to hand the shares over to you to be retained or dealt with, according to your best judgment and discretion. The price of these shares shall be fixed on the 17th inst. by the Stock Exchange sales on that day, when I will hand to you a cheque for the balance to make the gift a cash value of £100,000. This amount will increase my former donation of the second trust to £200,000, and, including my gift under the first trust in March 1862, of £150,000, a total of £350,000.

"I trust you will see manifested in this further donation an expression of my entire satisfaction with the manner in which you have conducted the affairs of the trusts.—I am, with great respect, your humble servant,

"George Peabody."

It is not strange that a man so generous as this should be publicly thanked for his benefactions by the United States Congress and the Queen of England; or that spontaneous praises of him should rise from the hearts of millions on both sides of the Atlantic, to find utterance sometimes in verses like the following:—

"We mourned the old chivalric times,

Their virtues, with their glories, dead—

Life stricken wholly from romance—

'And what is left to us?' we said;

Up through the land the murmur rose:

'Oh for the days that are no more,

When love of God wrought love of man.

And all were human to the core!


"'The great Arthurian days we mourn,

And all the lapsing years that wrought

Change after change, yet evermore

Some varying phase of splendour caught;

Still noble deeds, still gentle lives.

Till every knightly heart grew cold,

And Valour's sunset-radiance lit

The toumay of the Cloth of Gold


"'The poetry of earth is dead:

What lesser griefs should we bemoan,

With Science in the place of Faith,

With quicken'd brains and hearts of stone?

Our noblest triumphs mock our skill,

We link the Continents in vain—

It only tends to sordid ends,

And whets the appetite for gain.'


"So from our lips remonstrance fell.

When through the land a rumour went,—

'The old heroic fire revives—

Its pulsing fervour is not spent!

The record of the glowing past

Shows in its dim and doubtful page

No deed like that which greets the eyes

Of this debased, prosaic age.


"'For lo! a Queen of sovereign sway,

Of zoneless empire, quits her throne.

Stooping to welcome one who comes

A stranger, nameless and unknown:

No comely youth in knightly guise

Shining at ruffled beauty's knees—

A silvered head, a homely form—

No more the queenly woman sees.


"'No more; but in her heart there glows

The memory of a noble deed,

Of succour to her people lent.

Of princely aid in sorest need.

And gracious is her tearful smile

As forth she thrusts a trembling hand,

And bids him in her name receive

The homage off her grateful land.'


"Homage to Goodness! Queenly meed

Of generous thanks to simple Worth!

Thus does the old chivalric soul

Survive in us of later birth;

Nor doubt its promptings in the heart

Of him,—his nation's noblest son,—

The largesse of whose liberal hand

A sovereign's thanks has rightly won.


"Never did truer beauty clothe

The radiant limbs of courtly knight,

Than clothes that brow serenely smooth.

And fills those eyes with gentle light

To latest times that homely form,

And that familiar, kindly face,

The holier memories of men

Will with a tender beauty grace.


"Where'er that honoured name is heard

The tears will gleam in woman's eyes;

The hearts of men will stir and creep,

And blessings to their lips will rise.

Though Science join'd the sunder'd worlds,

It needed yet what he has done,—

A noble action, meekly wrought,

Has knit the hearts of both in one.


"Yes, and as, far above the glow,

When all the West is fierce with flame,

A faint star brightens to the night,

Deep'ning about it—so his fame,

Surviving all the transient bloom

That makes the passing present bright,

Will shine, and still resplendent shine.

An orb of ever-gathering light."

[From London Society October 1866.]

George Peabody has earned all that honour by reason of his princely benefactions; but there has been no less benefaction in his honest pursuit of commerce, during more than twenty years in Baltimore and five-and-twenty years in London. Every honest merchant is a benefactor, as thereby he aids the progress of all classes of society in wealth and civilisation.

The sum of the benefactions of the merchants of London is to be seen in its present prosperity. The prophecy of Pope has been more than fulfilled:—

"The time shall come, when, free as sea or wind,

Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind;

Whole nations enter at each swelling tide,

And seas but join the regions they divide."

London is now the great emporium of the world. In it are assembled traders of every race, who deal in the produce of every quarter of the globe. About 30,000 ships enter it each year, bearing more than 6,000,000 tons of cargo, valued at considerably more than £30,000,000: and the same ships take back to the lands from which they came an equal quantity of goods of almost greater value. Chief among its annual imports are about 400,000 oxen, sheep, and cows; more than 3,000,000 quarters of corn; 300,000 tons of sugar; more than 80,000,000 pounds of tea, and more than 70,000,000 pounds of coffee; about 16,000,000 gallons of wines and spirits, and more than 35,000,000 pounds of tobacco; an immeasurable store of all sorts of miscellaneous articles of food, including 10,000,000 pounds of pepper alone; a supply, no less various and extensive, of dyes, drugs, and the like; more than 80,000,000 pounds of wool; and more than 30,000 tons of metal. In return for these imports, it exports each year about £9,000,000 worth of textile fabric, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, besides about £1,500,000 worth of made-up clothing, and leather of nearly the same value; nearly £6,000,000 worth of rough metals, and finished machinery to be sold for about £9,000,000. In other words, though robbed of the East India monopoly, it still has more than three-quarters of the stupendous trade that has grown up with India, receiving nearly all its produce, with the exception of cotton, which goes direct to Liverpool or Glasgow. It receives nearly seven-eighths of the coffee sent from Ceylon, and from China it imports nearly all the tea sent to this country, with about a third of its silk Australia sends to London more than half of the wool grown for English use; and to it come about a fifth of the corn, and a sixth of the wool, nearly half of the tobacco, and quite half of the sugar despatched to Great Britain from the West Indies and the continent of America, Moreover, it absorbs more than half of the English trade with Europe, receiving about a quarter of the grain, about half of the provisions, about two-thirds of the wines and spirits, and nearly all the live cattle, with a goodly share of all the other commodities that are brought thence for sale among us. In return for these imports, it exports a sixth of the textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk that are manufactured in England for foreign or colonial use, a quarter of the wrought and unwrought metals, and a third of the finished machinery, about half of the leather, and more than half of the provisions and miscellaneous articles which are sent abroad each year.

Some notion of the extent of London commerce may be gathered from the nature of the docks which it employs. In former times, the old-fashioned quays and wharves of the Thames served for all the loading and unloading that had to be done. But near the middle of the eighteenth century these wharves and quays began to be quite insufficient for the growing wants of commerce. At last, in 1796, a plan was started by the West India merchants for the construction of a dock and adjacent warehouses adapted to the trade in which they were engaged. The projected capital of £800,000 was subscribed in a couple of days; and after five years spent in obtaining the sanction of Parliament, the West India Docks were begun in 1800, and opened for business in 1802. In 1801 the London Docks were commenced, to be finished in 1805, at a cost of £2,000,000. They were 100 acres in extent, with room for 500 ships at a time, and with warehouses large enough to hold 230,000 tons of the wine, brandy, tobacco, rice, and miscellaneous articles for which they were specially designed. The East India Docks were sanctioned in 1803, "for the accommodation of the East India shipping of the Port of London." In 1838 they were united with the West India Docks, the two having a surface of 87 acres, with room for 624 vessels, and warehouses able to contain about 200,000 tons of goods. On one occasion there was lodged in them £20,000,000 worth of colonial produce, comprising 148,563 casks of sugar, 70,895 barrels and 33,648 bags of coffee 35,158 pipes of rum and Madeira, 14,000 logs of mahogany, and 21,000 tons of logwood.

These three establishments had, for some twenty years, a monopoly in the dock-business of London. In 1823 the Saint Katherine's Docks were instituted "on the principle of free competition in trade, and without any exclusive privileges and immunities," as it was declared in the Act of Parliament permitting them. They were constructed by Telford in more imposing shape than any of the others, on as much space as could be obtained between the London Docks and the Tower. That space measured 23 acres, and was obtained by the demolition of 1250 houses, and the turning out of 11,300 residents in them, at a cost of about £2,000,000; but it was soon found to be wholly inadequate to the wants of the city. Therefore, in 1850, the Victoria Docks were set up, with all the later appliances of engineering and mechanical progress. In 1860 the Victoria Docks gave shelter to 2682 ships, with a burthen of 850,327 tons; the East and West India Docks to 1200 ships carrying 498,366 tons; the London Docks to 1032 ships with 424,338 tonnage; and the Saint Katherine's Docks to 905 ships with 223,397 tonnage. Very extensive also are the Commercial Docks on the south side of the Thames.

In general commerce London engrosses nearly a fourth of the whole business of Great Britain. It has almost a monopoly in another branch of trade. Nearly all the gold and silver bullion and specie, either imported or exported, enters, quits, or passes through the town in which the Bank of England and the Mint are lodged. In 1865, London received gold valued at £5,045,000 from Australia, £4,298,000 from the United States, and £5,126,000 from other places; in all, £14,469,000 of which rather more than half was sent abroad again, £6,072,000 to the Continent of Europe; £575,000 to India and Egypt, £1,581,000 to Brazil and South America, and £245,000 to other places. In the same year £54,923,000 came to London in silver from Mexico, £72,000 from Brazil, £1,654,000 from the Continent, and £306,000 from other parts, in all,£6,955,000; and of this nearly all was sent abroad again, £3,801,000 to India and Egypt £5,703,000 to the Continent, and £193,000 to other parts.

These figures show an excess of imports over exports, in gold and silver bullion and specie, of £6,254,000. The increased wealth of the country, however, is by no means indicated by the increase of gold and silver in its possession. Wealth is now understood to be neither money by itself, according to the shallow systems of economical science that preceded the times of Adam Smith, nor, as Adam Smith defined it, "the annual produce of the land and labour of society;" but "all useful or agreeable things which possess exchangeable value." This, indeed, is the oldest view of all "We call wealth," said Aristotle, "everything whose value is measured by money"—money being the most convenient standard of measurement, or the most portable representative of the wealth, which is composed alike of land and its material products, such as the houses that are built on it, the corn that is grown from it, the minerals that are dug out of it, and the thousand and one manufactured articles that result from its cultivation; of the labour that is expended upon those operations, and in all other exercises of muscle and brain; and of incorporeal, transferable property, like shares in trading companies, mortgages on material possessions, or property in the public funds.

"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, or pecus; put it in his pocket, and call it pecunia, money. Yet hereby did barter grow sale; the leather money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have been outmiracled; 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."

Money now really consists, not only of the coin issued from the Mint, and of the notes issued from the Bank of England on the security of the coin or bullion retained in its coffers, and of the debts for which Government is answerable, but also of all other marketable symbols of property. Bills of exchange, promissory notes, and all the various paper equivalents of wealth, real or assumed, are now of vastly more extensive currency than that which has the Mint mark, or the Bank of England stamp.

And the trade in these materials is, now-adays, the most gigantic of all. The farmer and the miner bring to light the buried treasures of the earth; the manufacturer makes those treasures available for use; and the merchant either brings them together for manufacture, or, when they are manufactured, sends them far and near to every district that is in need of them; but it is the banker who provides the circulating medium, without which none of those businesses could conveniently or efficiently be carried on. The richest and most influential men in all the world are now the bankers and bill-discounters, the negotiators of foreign wants, and other dealers in public credit. Hence the vast importance of the Stock Exchange, in which millions pass each day from hand to hand, partly in answer to the healthy requirements of trade, and partly, perhaps chiefly, in furtherance of wanton and often ruinous speculation.

The great financial question of the day is, how to regulate this institution so as best to meet the needs of honest trading, and to leave least room for the gambling and fraud which are the chief causes of money panics and commercial disasters. But there can be no question as to the magnitude of its operations, and the extent of its influence. In 1865, besides all its traffic in the English funds, in foreign shares, and in the shares of the innumerable public companies already in existence, the Stock Exchange was the scene of negotiation for six new foreign loans, amounting in all to £46,236,363, and for two hundred and eighty-seven companies, with a professed capital of £106,995,000, all available for speculative purposes, and with an actual deposit of £12,174,790.

But the commercial importance of London is greater even than any statistics would imply. The chief centre of trading life, vast transactions, are carried on in it, which are in no way represented by its own imports and exports. Its merchants buy in other markets goods for other markets, without their being required to pass through London at all. Men like George Peabody, the Barings, and the Rothschilds sit like kings upon commercial thrones, and issue mandates that are obeyed, in every quarter of the world, with a promptitude and thoroughness that despots might envy. And the wealth that they win by their enterprise makes them richer than many sovereigns. To understand the profits of London merchants, we must measure their landed possessions, and see the places they have attained in the ranks of the aristocracy. From the time when commerce began to be important in English history, the wealth and worth of its leading men have won for them high rank and honour; and more great families owe their origin to trade than, to any other calling. Some have attained nobility, like the Dukes of Leeds, who trace their pedigree to Ned Osborne, the London 'prentice of Queen Elizabeth's days, and the family of Barings, now possessed of two titles, Ashburton and Northbrooke. Others are no less eminent as commoners, whether their eminence is in their wealth, like that of the Rothschilds, or their worth, like that of Cobden, a merchant himself, or Gladstone, the son of a merchant

Here, then, our brief sketches of famous London merchants come to an end. We have seen how the general influences of civilisation have been wisely strengthened by a few notable men in the direction of trading enterprise. The few whose lives we have glanced at are only conspicuous specimens of the many who have made London and its commerce what they now are. They are only some of the captains of a vast army, which has been fighting zealously for English advancement and the civilisation of the whole world during half-a-dozen centuries.

There was fighting in long previous centuries, but, as far as England and London were concerned, only by an untrained rabble. There were merchants of a humbler sort in very ancient times. Their fundamental principles of action were the same as those of the most enlightened and prosperous men of modern times. To utilise the treasures of the earth, to subject them to skilful handiwork, directed by skilful headwork, and then to exchange the commodities they had produced for the commodities produced by others,—this was their attempt But at first the attempt was necessarily feeble. The best workers were very ignorant, and they were opposed by people more ignorant than themselves. English commerce made but poor strides until its worthies learnt to band themselves together, as we have seen them doing in the trading companies and the guilds of the Middle Ages. That was the first effort at organising the great army of commerce, and by this means famous triumphs were attained. In course of time, however, the discipline of these guilds and companies proved oppressive to their most enterprising members, who broke from the ranks to achieve special triumphs, either as independent toilers or as founders of new trading associations, which, in turn, did excellent work, and were superseded when that work was done. So it was with men like Whittington and Gresham; so with such institutions as the Turkey and East India Companies.

In the meanwhile commerce progressed. Unlike the armies of contending nations, in which disaffection is dangerous and mutiny fatal, the great army of peaceful traders profited by every disaffection, and every mutiny which had any principle of wisdom and justice in it has been wholly beneficial. The only evils that have arisen have been those based on false views of trade and its transactions, exhibited in crises like those of the South-Sea Bubble and its bursting, and the many smaller panics of recent times. These evils, however, were short-lived, and very slight in comparison of the good that has prevailed in spite of them, Commerce has advanced with giant strides, and no part of the world has gained more by the advance than London.

On the ruins of an old Roman camp has arisen the richest and busiest city in the world. Its ships bring the produce of every clime to add to the comfort and welfare of its citizens, and all connected with them; but more, its ships bear civilisation and all its blessings to every clime. Surely then, in spite of the selfishness of some and the folly of others, a high place in the catalogue of heroes and philanthropists is due to Famous London Merchants.

[Illustration] from Famous London Merchants by H. R. Fox Bourne

LONDON STONE.