A WORD FOR AGRICULTURE.

29

recruits to that vast array of clerks and junior partners which constitutes so important a part of the effective force of commerce. If a foreigner, curious in such matters, wished to compare the natives of the different portions of the Republic, down to the remotest savannas and the most secluded valleys, the best thing he could do, would be to attend a general meeting of one of our "Mercantile Library Associations." From every quarter the tide sets with a steady flow towards the depôts of commerce. And so powerful is this current, that we must make up our minds, for the present, to see the greater part of our children drawn into it. Here and there a young man of metropolitan birth astonishes his friends by turning farmer. And it is gratifying to see that retired merchants are beginning to wake up to the fact that the globe is not all covered with rows of houses and stores, and that there are some sources of rational enjoyment beyond the pavement. This feeling ought to be fostered. It will promote that attention to husbandry which is already elevating agriculture amongst us from the debasement of a mere handicraft to the dignity of a science. It will develop our resources. It will embellish the country with those well-tilled farms and tasteful homes, which make the rural districts of England so delightful to the traveller. It will help to correct the earthly and

sordid tendencies in our national character. It will give position and stability to our farming population, and invigorate those virtues on which the prosperity of States mainly depends, and which have usually found their most genial home among the cultivators of the soil.

"Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade:
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,

When once destroyed, can never be supply'd."

We are not in immediate danger, certainly, from this source; but it will be of no ultimate advantage to the country, if our children are trained, whether by precept or example, to disparage agricultural pursuits as inferior in respectability, in usefulness, or in true independence, to a life of traffic. And every indication of an opposite kind is to be hailed as a conservative and patriotic movement in the right direction. - Still, commerce will continue to assert its claims, and they will be acknowledged. Merchants may become bankrupt; banks and insurance companies may fail; financial crises may ever and anon spread disaster and ruin through all the world of trade; capitalists may remonstrate, and moralists admonish; but the mass of our young men will flock,

COMMERCE AND THE PUBLIC MORALS. 31

as they have done, to the marts of business. And, dealing with this as a practical question, we are not merely to inquire into the wisdom and expediency of their course, but to lend them such help as we may in meeting the perils and difficulties before them.

These considerations may suffice to show that the mercantile body have a real and urgent claim upon the pulpit for all the assistance it can render them a claim based upon their numbers, their dangers, and the essential difficulty of applying the principles of Christian morals to the endless and abrupt contingencies of a life of traffic. But it must further be taken into the account, as already hinted, that this is not a mere class-question, a matter affecting simply the commercial interest. The whole country has a deep stake in the character of its merchants. It is they who regulate in a great measure the current morality of our cities, and our cities in turn make their mark upon the nation at large. How potent this must be, may be seen by any one who will reflect upon the boundless resources of every kind, physical, financial, and intellectual, which are employed in mercantile business. Look at the imposing array of banks, insurance companies, loan offices, and general agencies, concentrated in every large city; look at the daily newspaper press; look at the fleets of ships and steamers at the wharves, the railroads clasping

distant States together with bands of iron, the telegraphic wires along which the subjugated lightning, "tamed by one of our countrymen, and taught to speak by another," flies with its news, outstripping time itself: all these are the implements of commerce, and have their share in giving tone and direction to the moral sentiment of the country. To this must be superadded the entire mercantile transactions of a nation like ours-the exchanges, the credits, the buying and selling, the contracts of every type and grade, involving the daily transfer from hand to hand of millions of dollars-all which goes, however imperceptibly, to fix the general standard of morals. And this view derives additional force from the reflection, that the people are identified with the government. The agency which fashions their morality, decides the moral tone of our legislation. Comparatively few mercantile men are seen in our legislative assemblies: they are otherwise employed, and cheerfully relinquish to others the honour of making and administering the laws. But their influence is there, and tells, often with a plenary, though noiseless, influence, upon the general course of administration. The purity of our government could not long survive the extinction or radical decay of commercial integrity throughout the Union.

We may take still another step. The character

OUR TRUE REPRESENTATIVES.

33

of our merchants is so far from being a mere question of caste, that it involves our national reputation for probity, all over the globe. The Imports of the United States for the last fiscal year amounted to $207,000,000, and the Exports to $150,000,000; to which must be added, foreign merchandise re-exported $17,000,000, and $42,000,000 of specie. This enormous traffic was, of course, in the hands of our merchants. It carried them, or their deputies, to every accessible country. It brought them in contact with people of every government and religion, from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope, from Turkey, through the Pillars of Hercules, to Cape Horn and China. Our flag floated from the masts of their majestic clippers, in the harbours of Sydney and Valparaiso, of Macao and Monrovia, of Trieste and Tahiti, of Bombay and Archangel. In these, and hundreds of ports besides, they were the chief, not to say the only, representatives of our great confederation. By them were we to stand or fall, in the judgment of these numerous tribes and governments, as an honourable or a profligate nation. What we might be as to our political institutions, our schools and our churches; how opulent we might be in material or in intellectual wealth; who were our leading statesmen and jurists, our physicians and divines, our manufacturers and agriculturists; these were points about