"Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies. "The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone are warmed with the fleeces of our sheep. When I have been upon 'Change I have often fancied one of our 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 lands themselves." This wonderful tribute to Commerce seems to breathe the spirit of the times when the merchant-adventurers held their heads high, knowing perfectly that of all the so-called "learned professions" their own great profession required keener, quicker judgment, a broader horizon of thought, a nerve and strength of purpose greater than any. They were doing more than all the others to make their country great. Money, profit, followed their undertakings then, as they do now, but the simple seeking for wealth was in no way the chief part of their effort. They all, to a man, let imagination become a vital part of every undertaking, and we find them still "playing the game for the game's sake" long after there was any necessity for the stakes. Not only to make a fortune, but to surround its accumulation with adventure was then as truly the fashion in life as in story books; and the men whose motto was "nothing venture nothing have" were surely more likely to accomplish really great things than the mere plodders by penurious saving. The good but not very exciting precepts of Samuel Smiles had not then stamped themselves upon the rising generations. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise " was a later doctrine-good in its way, but cautious rather than imaginative. It is possible that such advice and all the kindred maxims which accompany it may be beneficial to the great rank and file, but when they permeate the leaders to the detriment of nerve those leaders become commonplace and uninteresting, afraid to venture or to try the new. Just as life is often so much of a gamble, so the making of a fortune possesses almost always in its formula a large quantity of risk. This is not the risk of the lottery kind, which brings success or failure on the turn of the card, nor does it depend on the element of pure chance which so many call luck. But it stakes its future on the judgment of its leader; it bets on its own conclusions. The absolutely sure things in this world are not so interesting, to say the least of it, as those which may not win, but which in winning win big stakes. Anything which places a barrier against progress, against walking in any but the old frequently trodden paths, tends to dry up the springs of imagination. And this faculty of imagination is one of the most useful that the real man of Commerce can possess. It cuts the path through the forest of inexperience upon which judgment can more carefully walk. Imagination urges on. It is the yeast of progress. It pictures the desirable. It is like the architect's plan, while judgment and effort follow and build. No great thing was ever accomplished by the world's greatest men or greatest merchants without imagination. Samuel Smiles and his rules of saving, of thrift, of following in the footsteps of our fathers, may be well enough, but a long way behind the principles of those great merchant-adventurers who fearlessly planted the flag and established the outposts of the nation's Commerce in the most distant points of the civilized and uncivilized earth. |