all the passions and faculties of a people: it buys all they produce, at half price; it keeps them in a state of perpetual labour, without enjoyment, and smiles at its own power and superiority; while the wretch it fattens on, shrinks, withers and dies, from the very famine it imposes on him. Being then naturally a tyrant, it ought never to receive vigour and nourishment from public opinion-from unequal institutions-from legal monopolies from the imaginary horrors of public journals; lest the working people should awaken to a due sense of their real importance in the scale of society, and shaking off their lethargy, and treading their ignorance and ideas of servitude under foot, rouse themselves to a proper vindication of their violated rights, and a restitution of their extorted labour, through legal enactments and constitutional ordinances. We propose no wrong to capital and capitalists, but that they shall do no wrong in law and equity-leaving them even, all the wrong which they naturally and inevitably commit, from the sweeping immensity of their power. And for this, terror is affected, and revolution forebodingly deprecated! If this is not adding insult to oppression, it is certainly seeking to conceal error amidst the fogs of absurdity, and the philosophy of romance.

The merchant's prosperity and the success of commerce, then, being so entirely dependent on labour, it follows that every cause which tends to burden and depress industry, such as bank credits, stocks, and fictitious capital, must prove extremely pernicious to the merchant and his trade; as all paper capital and money operate as a heavy tax upon labour, and the interest of the merchant consists in buying labour as cheap as possible, so that he may have greater profits by the sale.

NOTE.-Mr. Hume has so beautifully described the origin of the Merchant, on principles so purely scientific and just, that I cannot

abstain from presenting it to the reader, as worthy of his attention. Every thing useful to life, says that philosopher, arises from the ground; but few things arise in that condition which is requisite to render them useful. There must, therefore, beside the peasants and the proprietors of land, be another rank of men, who, receiving from the former the rude materials, work them into their proper form, and retain a part for their own use and subsistence. In the infancy of society, these contracts between the artisan and the peasants, and between one species of artisans and another, are commonly entered into immediately by the persons themselves, who, being neighbours, are easily acquainted with each other's necessities, and can lend their mutual assistance to supply them. But when men's industry increases and their views enlarge, it is found that the most remote parts of the state can assist each other as well as the more contiguous, and that this intercourse of good offices may be carried on to the greatest extent and intricacy. Hence the origin of merchants, one of the most useful race of men, who serve as agents between those parts of the state that are wholly unacquainted, and are ignorant of each other's necessities. There are in a city 50 workmen in silk and linen, and 1000 customers; and these two ranks of men, so necessary to each other, can never rightly meet, till one man erects a shop, to which all the workmen and all the customers repair. In this province, grass rises in abundance: the inhabitants abound in cheese, and butter, and cattle; but want bread and corn, which in a neighbouring province are in too great abundance for the use of the inhabitants: one man discovers this; he brings corn from the one province and returns with cattle, and supplying the wants of both, he is, so far, a common benefactor. As the people increase in numbers and industry, the difficulty of their intercourse increases. The business of the agency, or merchandise becomes more intricate; and divides, subdivides, compounds, and mixes to a greater variety. In all these transactions it is necessary and reasonable, that a considerable part of the commodities and labour should belong to the merchant, to whom in a great measure they are owing. And these commodities he will sometimes preserve in kind, or more commonly convert into money, which is their common representation. If gold and silver have increased in the state together with the industry, it will require a great quantity of these metals to represent a great quantity of commodities and labour. If industry alone has increased, the prices of every thing must sink, and a small quantity of specie will serve as a representation.

COMMERCE, or the interchange of commodities be tween one country and another, was of the earliest origin in society; as the first struggle, after having attained to comfort, would be to indulge in luxuries, and acquire fortune. The thirst for novelty is one of the strongest instincts of the soul, and the most exquisite pleasure is to reach that which is difficult of attainment, or enjoy that which puts life in peril to arrive at the fruition of.

It is evident that production must have advanced to the possession of superfluity, before commerce would be invented or practised, to open a vent for those commodities, which experience instructed us we could spare without inconvenience or pain. Hence, LABOUR must have produced a redundant stock of industry, before commerce began to swell her sails in quest of foreign profits, and exotic fruits.

The merchant is the agent, or representative, of those who labour. Let us analyze his character. He builds a ship: How? Not surely by his own hands. No-but the shipwright-the blacksmith—the ropemaker—the sailmaker-the manufacturer of sail cloth-the boiler of tar and rosin-the hemp grower-the wood cutterthe sawyer and all the other numerous labourers come into the account of the production of the ship. What

agency has the merchant? He pays in money borrowed of the banks, for the ship :-he pays with the wealth of the labouring man, for a vessel that the labouring man has constructed! So far the merchant produces nothing; not even the philosophical wealth which the utopians of economy talk of, but which I never yet saw, and never before heard of. Well-to proceed in the analysis; the ship is brought to the wharf-not by the merchant-but by working men! She is loaded-not by the merchant, but by working men'! Does the merchant produce the cargo? No! it is the product of the cotton planter-the grain grower-the mechanic, the manufacturer! She is laden; and sails for her destined port! Who works her there, but the working men. She returns with coffee, sugar, cocoa, pimento, hides, &c. Did the merchant produce these? No, like the outward cargo, they are the simple fruits of labour. The merchant, therefore, produces no wealth; although he deals in the wealth produced by others' labour. The error is one of superficial observation, and has its origin in education, which too often instructs us in ignorance, and rears us to error. It is the twin delusion to that idea alluded to in one of my preceding chapters-that the merchant pays all the duties to government-whereas he pays nothing-but acts as the agent of the consumer; as he does in his business for the producer. The merchant is unquestionably useful in his sphere of action; but he produces no national wealth by his own labour: his gains are the gains of speculation, extortion, and monopoly, except what he gains for, or rather pays back to the producer, which is the real wages of labour, and constitutes exclusively the wealth of the nation.

I marvel not, that some have fallen into an error which pervades all society-that the merchant pro

duces national wealth, and that commerce is the fountain of riches; an error propagated by the imposing force of wealth, pomp, pride, circumstance, and aristocracy, of the mercantile character-an error analogous tò that which invests a general with the sole glory of a victory produced by the valour of his troops; and which decrees to an English noble, who is a large landed proprietor, but never saw his own land, the credit of an agriculturist! Absurdities of this gross character, are not to be admitted by an intelligent community of scrutinizing freemen.

The legitimate merchant is only entitled to his commission, which is a deduction from the wages of labour, and the profits of the working man. The merchant, after all, is nothing more than the agent of labour, mutually authorized by two foreign countries, to exchange their commodities, and surplus produce and manufactures. With the business of the merchant I am perfectly familiar; I have been one-know all his operations, and have studied all his principles in practice and in science: and cannot but smile, when I hear his claims enforced to the character of a producer of wealth.

"Material products," are objected to by some as wealth-and our meaning is pronounced unphilosophical. I must confess I am perfectly ignorant of any other but "material" wealth, unless it be the philosopher's stone. I know of nothing that has worth, in this sense, that can be called wealth. Even a bank bill, although almost immaterial, still has worth-thanks to the working people, who make it worth anything. If® they will show us immaterial wealth, we will believe in their philosophical doctrine of unsubstantial worth.

I do certainly maintain, that one part of society does produce all the wealth; and that is the labouring part.