commentaries on the law. with this difference, that ours will require time before it can be fully developed, while his was at once laid before the public perfect and complete. Every subject that can be interesting or useful to the merchant, will be embraced from time to time; for it is our intention to render the Merchant's Magazine and Commercial Review a standard work on the subjects to which it will be devoted, so that it may be referred to with certainty and confidence, for counsel and direction in the various questions arising in commercial affairs. Currency, exchanges, banking, commercial and marine law, partnerships, agencies, and statistical information, commercial and manufacturing, will have our special attention, as well as the domestic trade of the United States; and we are happy at being enabled to say, with confidence, that we have secured able and talented assistance in the various departments of our work, and the whole will be under our immediate supervision. Well written communications will be received with pleasure, and inserted as far as our limits will permit, reserving to ourselves the right of abridging or excluding, as far as circumstances may render it necessary; and it will be at all times grateful to us, as proving an interest in our success, to receive communications from practical and scientific men, for as by the collision of flint and steel, light is extracted, so from the intercourse between mind and mind, truth is elicited, an impulse given to examination, and an incentive applied to research, which may produce valuable results for thought is the germ of action. ART. II. — COMMERCE, AS CONNECTED WITH THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. [We are satisfied that we cannot present our readers with any thing more acceptable than the following able lecture, read before the "Mercantile Library Association of New York," on the 4th of December, 1838, by the Hon. DANIEL D. BARNARD, and furnished by him, at the request of the Association, for publication in our Magazine. It needs no comment from us, in ushering it into the world; for the subject is so ably treated, and so happily discussed, that it will be read with interest and advantage. We may be permitted, however, to remark, that it is peculiarly gratifying to see so many highly gifted minds turning their attention to commercial inquiries, and illustrating the importance of trade. No nation on earth is as eminently qualified, as the United States, by geographical position, internal resources, the spirit and indomitable enterprise of the people, for running a proud and successful career; and in proportion to the attention paid to these advantages by those who wield the destinies; and develop the resources of our young, but giant republic, will be the impulse given to our onward march in wealth and national greatness.] THE subject with which it is proposed to occupy the present hour, is commerce, as connected with the progress of civilization. And it is proper, and perhaps necessary, to a right understanding of the subject, that I should begin with a word or two of explanation. What is civilization? In its ordinary acceptation, it denotes a condition of society, freed from the rudeness and ignorance of the savage or barbarous state, instructed in the arts, and practising the rules and customs of regular and polished life. I mean this by the word, and I mean something more. Besides the idea which it conveys, of settled homes, and regular employments; of country, and government, and laws; of protection to life, limbs, and liberty; of property, and its securities, and the comforts, and conveniences which represent and result from property besides all this, I employ the word, at present, to denote a high degree of social prosperity, abounding in wealth, without which the advance of any people in knowledge, in positive happiness, or in the exercise of the nobler qualities and virtues of our nature, will be retarded and uncertain; a high degree of personal refinement; superior cultivation, physical, intellectual, and moral; a superior acquaintance with the art of living generously and well, with all the accommodations thereto, "the means and appliances to boot;" in short, a condition of dignified enjoyment of substantial happiness to the human being such as we know to be within the capabilities of his nature. I suppose, that from the creation, mankind have been tending, on the whole, towards excellence towards the exaltation of the human character, and the bettering of their earthly condition and prospects. A candid appeal to history, I think, would demonstrate this fact. I suppose that the world has been man's school of improvement, furnished and fitted with every requisite and means of culture, carefully adapted to his nature, and affording precept upon precept, and lesson upon lesson, of instruction, and varied according to his age and according to his progress. I suppose that men always have been improveable, that they are so now, and probably always will be. And I suppose that they have been actually improved that they have from the earliest ages made an actual, though not an invariable, advance; and that that advance is not likely to be arrested, but accelerated rather, so long as the means of improvement on the one hand, and the capability of improvement on the other, are found to remain undiminished or unexhausted. On this topic, I rely upon facts, and I discard all speculations. I believe what I see, and I make all the past a credible and an accredited witness for the truth. I have no opinions, and I indulge in no conjectures, about the perfectibility of human nature, or of human happiness. Progression, improveability, is all that I insist upon; and this, I think, rests on the strongest proofs and the clearest demonstrations. It is demonstrable, I think, as the existence of God is demonstrable, from the evidences of design and adaptation. It is shown as a result, in the actual history of the race. And to the deep and contemplative student and observer of events, it is plainly discernible in the rise and fall of nations, and the wonderful way in which each has been made to serve the cause of human instruction and improvement, in its turn, and then to give place to its legitimate and appointed successor-appointed to carry forward a work to which the other was no longer competent; or perhaps to introduce a new system, or subject, of instruction and improvement, of which the other was ignorant, and must forever have remained so; and which, so far as we know, could have been introduced in no other manner. Of course, I reject the fanciful and atheistical notion, that nations start into accidental existence, mature, grow old, and then fall into decay, all equally without cause and without consequence. And I have as little faith in the idea entertained by some, that there must needs be, after a general intellectual progress and advance, a general decline, either periodical or otherwise. Such notions are contradicted by abundant fact and abundant experience. I reject them all. I look back, and I think I discover, bridging the long tract of time, since the morning of man's existence, a regular graded plain, of gentle and constant, though not uniform ascent, along and upon which his pathway has been made, and by which, almost without perceiving it, he has reached al -a creditable and com ready—at least, the van of the host has reached. But I have one word more to say on this subject. There is nothing so true and indisputable, that some may not be found to doubt and cavil about it; just as there is nothing so absurd and impossible, that some may not be found to believe it. Happily for the object I have at present in view, it is should be quite unnecessary that the faith of others, in regard to the progress of civilization, past or to come, should square exactly with my ownneither greater nor less than that which I entertain. There is a common ground, on which we may all meet. Nobody doubts- every one admits and understands, that there is a broad distinction between the savage, or as between the Romans, in the fifth barbarous state, and the civilizedcentury, and the Northern hordes that swept over and trampled them down; and between our own Indian tribes, and the swelling tide of white populaAs little is it doubted by tion, before which they are fast melting away. any, that civilization admits of comparison and degrees-that one people may be more or less civilized than another-just as civilization in the East, though once in advance of the rest of the world, is at this day behind And there are none, I think, the civilization of Europe and America. among us, at the present day, who pretend to doubt that a state of civilization is the preferable state for any people, and by the same rule, that the higher the degree of civilization, the better and the happier. So far, then, we are all agreed, that civilization is a desirable thing, and that it cannot be carried to too high a pitch, any more than it is possible for this people to be too wise, too virtuous, too prosperous, and too happy. It may be admitted, moreover, that we are already highly civilized and if this was the fourth day of July, instead of the fourth day of December, we might, without spoiling our present argument, one and all, admit and insist, that the sun never shone on so glorious a country and people before, and never would again. So much, I say, we might admit and insist upon, without spoiling our present argument; for still it would be true that, as wise men, it would do us no harm to look a little to the sources of our prosperity and glory. That if we could do nothing to enhance the advantages of our position, we might, at least, take care that we should not begin to decline prematurely, and, by what we should do, or omit to do, precipitate our own inglorious fall. Every one must be aware, that there exists at this day, as in times past, and in this country, as elsewhere, more or less distrust of commercemore or less prejudice against commercial operations and commercial men. Ancient Egypt began to be civilized with beginning to be commercial. Her merchants were the first who found their way to the great Indian continent, which they did by the way of the Red Sea; and with bringing in the commodities of the East, they brought in also, and diffused, a taste for the arts, and especially for that style of heavy and massive architecture, which finally constituted about all there was of civilization in Egypt, and which, I think, there can be no doubt, was borrowed from the models of Indian architecture then existing, and of which some remarkable specimens still remain. But it did not suit the policy of the political priests of Egypt, to tolerate trade. They desired to encourage agriculture exclusively, and they made their restrictive measures effectual, by fortifying their harbors, forbidding strangers to enter, and teaching their own people that the sea, to which their river flowed, was a monster, which only waited an opportunity to swallow up bodily their God, the Nile, and leave them a deserted, ruined, and starving people. Now, some of the prejudices excited against commerce in modern times, have been worthy of this elder example. Napoleon knew well enough where the strength of Sampson lay; but when he wished to render England odious to a nation of soldiers, and make his own continental system acceptable, or at least endurable, he stigmatized the English as a nation of shop-keepers. The expression had its effect; but the catastrophe which Napoleon had the sagacity to dread, and which he endeavored to avoid, was not thereby averted. The shops of England, in that most memorable controversy, eventually proved too powerful for the military genius and resources of the greatest captain of any age. For to the eye of the philosophic observer, it must be apparent, that it was commerce that triumphed on the field of Waterloo. That battle would probably never have been fought, much less won, as it was, had it not been for the outpoured and exhaustless resources of England - resources which clearly had their foundation and their growth in commerce. I shall not deem it necessary, nor would it be discreet, to allude with any particularity whatever, to the prejudices with which rival interests sometimes, and mistaken views and opinions always, have, to a greater or less extent, imbued and warped some minds amongst ourselves, in regard to commerce. - in regard to its interest, its objects, its real character, and its mighty, but little understood operations and influence. It is no part of my business or purpose, to vindicate the mercantile interest from any petty aspersions, of which it may, at any time, have been the subject. My plan, I trust, is a broader and more comprehensive one. I desire to do what little can be done by me, and in so brief an opportunity as this must be, towards placing commerce on its true foundation - towards giving it that position of importance and high consideration which really belongs to it- especially in the estimation of mercantile men themselves, the younger and more inexperienced members of the class particularly. I desire that the first claims of commerce, and of the class of merchants, shall be understood and felt, at least by themselves, if not by others; for out of this proper appreciation, it is reasonable to hope, that some valuable results, as well to the country and the world, as to themselves, may chance to flow. In short, I desire to show that commerce always has been, that it now is, and always must be, especially and most closely connected with the progress of human improvement—that this is a capital element among the means and instruments of a thorough and complete civilization -and that it is quite within the power, as it is both the interest and the duty, of those having the charge of commerce, either conducting its affairs, or exercising any control over it, to wield the vast influence which naturally belongs to it, in a way to make it productive of a much greater amount of benefit to themselves, to the country, and to mankind, than could be expected from ordinary, neglected, and accidental results only. And in the first place, a brief recurrence to the well known records of the rise and progress of commerce, will show how exactly it has kept pace * To say nothing of the nature and principal cause of the continued struggle between England and France, -a war for mastery between the Colonial and the Continental systems. with the rise and progress of civilization or rather, it will show, I think, that civilization has followed almost uniformly in its train. I have already alluded to the early, incipient trade of Egypt, as having lasted just long enough, before its suppression, to introduce, along with the productions of the East, such an acquaintance with learning and the arts, then existing in the East and nowhere else, and so much taste for them, as enabled the Egyptians to maintain, through several centuries-in the a demidst, however, of an essential barbarism in manners and moralsgree of intellectual cultivation, of which no other example was found, at the time, among the western nations. The Egyptians cultivated the natural sciences and architecture, and by colonizing Attica, lent to Greece the torch-light of the knowledge possessed and cultivated by them. The first example of an extended and flourishing commerce, was set by the Phoenicians and Tyrians; and, for a long period, the whole Western World was barbarian, compared with them. They traded with Asia, Africa, and Europe, and with the Islands of the Atlantic. They made territorial discoveries, and obtained a knowledge of geography, of which the Greeks themselves were wholly ignorant at a much later period. They may be said to have invented, rather than improved, ship-building; and they carried the art to some degree of perfection. They discovered the manufacture of glass, and that of woollen cloth; they prepared the inimitable purple dye; and they executed mechanical works in great variety. They built cities, which were enriched by trade, and refined by the arts. They cultivated and the invention of letters, and of arithmetic, and their introastronomy; duction into Greece, is commonly attributed to them. They were not warlike, because their occupations were peaceful; and they extended a peaceful dominion, by colonization and alliances, over a considerable part of the then known world; much of it, indeed, known only to themselves, or through themselves. Wherever they went, they carried with them knowledge and the arts. The first notions of civil society in Greece came from them. Asia Minor, several of the principal islands in the Mediterranean, Carthage, and Cadiz, received their first population, and their first impulse towards improvement and knowledge, from this commerce-loving people. The spirit of commerce, and with it, that intellectual activity and enterprise which distinguished the Tyrians, were transmitted to the Carthaginians. As the Phoenicians had engrossed the trade with India, the Carthaginians struck out boldly into the Atlantic. Passing the gates of Gades, they pushed their adventures along the coast of Spain, and of Gaul, and finally penetrated to Britain. Nor were the voyages of this people merely those of trade or private adventure. Voyages for discovery only were made, and fleets were fitted out for the purpose by the Republic, and at the public charge. That Carthage was a leading state among the ancients in cultivation and civilization, we all know. Of her wealth, her prowess, and her power, let her early conquests, her successful commercial wars, and her commercial treaties, speak. She was finally crushed beneath the ponderous weight of her great rival; but her overthrow was only accomplished, after she had been gradually stripped of the best part of her possessions and her property, and reduced to poverty and abjectness, by the interruption and destruction of her trade. A fact which tends to show that both the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, had made a creditable advance in civilization, is this: that they were enabled to establish and maintain their governments under republican forms. And the Carthaginian constitution was very remarkable, for a period so |