HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE.

No. III.

SEPTEMBER, 1839.

ART. I. - THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF COMMERCE.

In the present enlightened state of the world, and the powerful influence which Commerce exercises over every thing connected with national politics and human affairs, it is an amusing and instructive pursuit to trace the course of Commerce from its first dawning, as it were, upon the world, to its present brightness and splendor.

In the earlier ages of the world, agriculture and arms were considered the more honorable pursuits, and the ancients deemed Commerce as ignoble. Hence we find Xenophon expressing a doubt whether Commerce could be of any advantage to the state, and Plato excluding it from his imaginary commonwealth; but, as time rolled on, in exact proportion as Commerce was fostered and encouraged as it acquired strength, and was permitted an unfettered exercise of its powers, and a development of the advantages it afforded its value was better understood, and its peaceful triumphs the more highly appreciated.

To pursue Commerce profitably, and to any extent, requires the possession of civil and political liberty: the freest countries are always the most strongly commercial, and the most barbarous and enslaved the least. In the former we find an extraordinary degree of intelligence, and a freedom from restraint discernible only in connexion with rational and well defined liberty; for the mind which has been accustomed to freedom of thought and action in commercial pursuits, would spurn the idea of submitting its free impulses to a tyrant's will. Hence we find an interference with the course of Commerce, commencing in illegal exactions, cost Charles the First his kingdom and his head; and a following up of the same blind policy by his successors, in regard to the colonies, ended in establishing the independence of the United States of America, now admitted to be the freest, and the most thoroughly imbued with the commercial spirit, of all the nations of the earth. And, if we take the map of the world, we may trace, step by step, the diminished amount of freedom enjoyed by the several nations according to its Commerce, the gradations fine, but yet clearly perceptible and strongly marked, until, in despotic countries, we realize the presence of arbitrary power by the total ab

sence of commercial enterprise; for Commerce and tyranny cannot exist together. The ascendency of the commercial spirit establishes a new era in policy, and we find a new genius diffused into the alliances of nations the savage barbarity of war tempered, humanized, and subdued, and man meeting his brother man on the wide platform of reciprocity and equal rights. Commercial nations have always been the most distinguished. It was from the opulence derived from Commerce that Carthage so long and so successfully contended with Rome; and, as the principles of Commerce extended over the continent of Europe, the manners became more polished, and according to the extent of their Commerce was their political power and influence amongst the surrounding nations.

Among the earliest and most successful pursuers of Commerce, were the Rhodians, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, and the Carthaginians.

The Rhodians are justly entitled to the first place as a commercial and maritime power; for, although Eusebius mentions the Cretans, the Lydians, and the Thracians, as maritime states, the first of whom flourished five hundred years, the next two hundred, and the last about eighty years before the Rhodians, yet it does not appear that any of these naval powers had any defined system or code of maritime law for their own guidance, and they certainly never communicated any to mankind. About the year 916 before the christian era, Rhodes obtained the sovereignty of the sea, and maintained her political power and importance unimpaired till the termination almost of the Roman republic. Many adventitious circumstances combined to increase the wealth of Rhodes: among these may be enumerated, the favorable position of the island for the purposes of navigation, in the Mediterranean sea, a few leagues from the continent of lesser Asia; and the richness and fertility of its soil has always been a favorite theme with poets and historians. If we add to these the active and industrious habits of the people, we can easily account for its long maintained superiority for the richness of its inhabitants -the anxiety with which its alliance was courted, though its general policy was a strict neutrality; but its very riches, by enervating the people, hastened its decline, and, at the period above mentioned, the wealth and power of Rhodes began visibly to decline.

Next in order come the Egyptians, who are said to have opened a trade between the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, and the western coast of the great Indian continent, soon after the establishment of the Egyptian monarchy. The productions of the East were carried by land from the Arabian Gulf to the banks of the Nile, and floated down that river to the Mediterranean. Natural causes, however, were in operation, tending to limit the attention of the Egyptians to Commerce, both in extent and in duration. The necessaries and comforts of life were produced in such profusion under the genial influence of their fertile soil and mild climate, that, wanting nothing from foreigners themselves, it became an established maxim with the Egyptians, whose habits of thinking and national institutions differed from those of other nations, to renounce foreign intercourse altogether. Consequently, they remained at home, holding seafaring persons as impious and profane,-and denied strangers admittance into their harbors, which they fortified; and it was not until the decline of their power, when their veneration for ancient customs had greatly abated, that they withdrew these restraints by opening their ports, and resuming the trade with foreigners.

Exactly the reverse of the Egyptians were the Phænicians, who, in character and situation, in manners and institutions, had no distinguishing pecu

liarity. They had no intolerant or unsocial superstition-there was nothing repulsive, or calculated to prevent an unscrupulous intercourse with other nations. They looked to Commerce as the source of opulence and power, for their territory was small and unproductive; and Tyre, of which we read so much in sacred and profane history, was built on an ungrateful and barren soil; but its excellent sea-ports, and favorable position for Commerce, more than counterbalanced the sterility of its soil, and Commerce yielded to the industry of man what nature appeared sternly to have denied; and a short reference to the commerce of the Phoenicians will sufficiently prove to what a height of glory, grandeur, and riches, a nation may attain through the aid and instrumentality of Commerce.

Lebanon and the neighboring mountains furnished the Phoenicians with excellent wood for ship building, and in a short time numerous fleets were ready to farther the spirit of enterprise by pursuing distant or unknown voyages; and their liberal institutions and enlightened spirit encouraging foreign intercourse, drew together an immense influx of strangers, and so rapidly did the population of Tyre increase, that they were soon in a situation to send out colonies, and, among others, the famous one of Carthage, which so long preserved the spirit of its settlers, and proudly vied with Tyre itself in the extent of its commerce, while it greatly surpassed it in dominion.

The report of profane writers of the glory and power of Tyre-the amount of its commerce and navigation would not be readily credited, were it not that we find that the prophets themselves speak of it with yet greater magnificence of language; and one of the most beautiful passages in the prophecy of Ezekiel is that where a description is given of its power and grandeur, the number of its vessels, the quantity of its merchants and its merchandise; and Isaiah speaks of Tyre as the common city of all nations, and the centre of all commerce, as the queen of cities, where its merchants were princes, and the traders the most illustrious persons of the earth. Such was ancient Tyre, which resisted the arms of Nebuchadnezzar, and stood a siege of thirteen years, during which time it had fortified and prepared a neighboring island, where they established the maritime forces, and to which the merchants removed their merchandise, so that the loss of the capital, when they ultimately surrendered up the barren soil to the conqueror, did not destroy their empire of the sea, or diminish the reputation of their commerce. As Commerce was the only source from which the Phoenicians derived opulence and power, we find that the trade of Tyre and Sidon was more extensive and enterprising than that of any state in the ancient world. The spirit of their laws and the genius of their policy was strictly commercial, and they may be briefly described as a people of merchants, whose object. was the empire of the sea, and who acquired and retained it through the medium of Commerce. Their ships frequented all the ports of the Mediterranean, and passed the ancient boundaries of navigation, the straits of Gades, visiting the coasts of Spain and Africa, in many places planting colonies, and communicating some improvement in knowledge and the arts to the rude inhabitants. While extending their commerce on the north and west, the more opulent and fertile regions of the south and east were not neglected: they secured several commodious harbors towards the bottom of the Arabian Gulf. Following the example of the Egyptians, they established a regular intercourse with Arabia and the continent of India on one hand, and with the eastern coast of Africa on the other. Drawing from these resources many

commodities unknown to the rest of the world, and engrossing for a long period, without rival or competition, that most lucrative branch of Commerce. Under the prosperous reigns of David and Solomon, the Jews were excited by the reports of the great wealth acquired by the Phoenicians in their monopoly of the commerce of the Red Sea, to aim at being admitted to a participation, which they succeeded in obtaining, by conquest and alliance, the first, of Idumea, which stretches along the Red Sea, and the second, with Hiram, king of Tyre, who furnished Phoenician pilots to the fleets fitted out by Solomon, which sailed from the Red Sea for Tarshish and Ophir, ports probably partly in India and Africa, which they were accustomed to frequent, and from which the Jewish ships returned with such valuable cargoes, as suddenly diffused wealth and splendor throughout the kingdom in such abundance, that, as the Scriptures finely expresses it, "He" (Solomon) "made silver in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar trees as sycamores that grow in the plains." And when we reflect that the return of one voyage only to Ophir produced four hundred and fifty talents of gold, (about two and a half millions of pounds sterling,) we cannot doubt of the immense profits yielded by this commerce. But the peculiar national character of the Jewish people, impressed upon them with a view of separating them from the idolatrous nations with which they were surrounded, conspired to form an unsocial national character, and to prevent that open and liberal intercourse with foreigners which the spirit of Commerce requires; owing to which, and the disasters which befell the kingdom of Israel, the spirit of Commerce spread slowly, and was checked easily. Other reasons might be given, from profane history, for the wonderful success of the Jewish commerce under Solomon, and its early extinction; but we prefer confining our remarks to historical facts, which are abundantly sufficient for our purpose, without travelling beyond the record, or seeking to enlist faith or prejudice in support of our conclusions.

It was the new city of Tyre which so daringly resisted the progress of Alexander the Great in his career of victory, and interrupted the master of one part of Asia, and delayed for a time his successful progress to subjugate the other; and, in punishment of its temerity, was entirely destroyed by the conqueror, its marine and commerce transferred to his new city of Alexandria, which he had founded as the capital of the empire of Asia, of which he then meditated the conquest, and intended consolidating into one gigantic kingdom; but observing the riches and power produced by Commerce, as evidenced in the obstinate resistance offered by Tyre to the progress of his arms, while with one hand he smote the proud and powerful opponent, he was anxious with the other to make Commerce his minister, and his ally in promoting the splendor of Alexandria; but his early death prevented his being a witness of its success.

Commerce has always been opposed to the spirit of conquest and aggression, from the time the first and the second Tyre resisted the arms of Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander, down to the period when Great Britain contended, as it were, single handed and alone, against the French usurper, whose blows were levelled at her commerce, but supported and maintained by which she subsidized the continent of Europe, and eventually, on the field of Waterloo, established the freedom of Commerce, and breathed fresh animation and renewed hope into the fainting form of liberty.

As the second Tyre fell before the arms of the conqueror, Carthage, a Tyrian colony, grew and strengthened by Commerce, and was enabled to

dispute with Rome herself the dominion and empire of the world. Carthage had early rivalled and soon surpassed Tyre in opulence and power, but does not seem to have contended for any share in the commerce of the Red Sea. The enterprise of the Carthaginians was exercised in another direction, chiefly towards the west and north. Passing the straits of Gades, as too circumscribed for their views of discovery, they visited the coasts of Spain and of Gaul, and penetrated at last into Britain. Not satisfied with their acquired knowledge in this quarter of the globe, they turned their inquiries south, made some very considerable progress by land into the interior provinces of Africa, trading with some, and subjecting others to their empire. Proceeding along the western coast of the great continent of Africa almost to the Tropic of Cancer, they planted several colonies with a view to civilization and Commerce. The Fortunate Islands, now known as the Canaries, were discovered by them, and formed the utmost boundary of discovery and navigation in the western ocean.

Rome, the great opponent, and eventually the conqueror of Carthage, was supported by conquest, by robbery, and rapine. Carthage, on the contrary, looked wholly to the peaceful returns of Commerce. While Rome extended her dominion, and formed a hardy and veteran army, Carthage, which Commerce had peopled with seven hundred thousand inhabitants, had to look within herself, and to oppose her raw and undisciplined recruits to the drilled forces of her opponents, and the city was comparatively deserted to furnish soldiers for the army; their fleets, accustomed to the transportation of merchandise, were now loaded with soldiers and warlike stores, and their chiefs and generals, who made Rome tremble, were selected from her wisest and most fortunate traders. The history of the Roman and Carthaginian wars, and their fatal termination as regarded Carthage, is so well known, that we have only to allude to the fact that it required fifty years cruel and doubtful war before Carthage was destroyed, during which, Rome was very nearly visited with that destruction which afterwards overtook her competitor for the mastery of the world.

We have already mentioned the city of Alexandria, to which the commerce and marine of the second Tyre had been transferred by Alexander the Great. The Ptolemies, who after his death got Egypt for their part of the spoil of conquest, took care to encourage and foster the infant trade of Alexandria, and soon brought it to such perfection and extent as to surpass Tyre and Carthage, and it seemed as if Alexandria had gathered to itself the wealth and commerce of the world. To accomplish this, it possessed great natural advantages. On one side a free commerce with Asia and the East by the Red Sea. The same sea and the Nile enabled her to penetrate the vast and rich countries of Ethiopia-the rest of Africa and Europe was open to her by the Mediterranean and as a facility to the interior commerce of Egypt besides the Nile, and the canals, the almost incredible work of the first Egyptians, the advantages of caravans, so convenient for the safety of merchants and the transportation of merchandise. If to these we add a large and safe port, where foreign vessels arrived from all parts, making Alexandria the depository of all the merchandise of the East and West, and the store house from whence vessels were constantly loaded for Egypt, and for all parts of the known world, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for its rapid growth, with surpassing wealth and power.

It was the immense riches which the commerce of Alexandria spread throughout Egypt, which enabled their kings to support themselves for over