 further of Advantage to each other, and that States are enabled to pay and dignify their upper Servants with Titles, rich Revenues, Principalities and Crowns.
The Merchant, above all, is extensive, considerable, and respectable by his Occupation. It is he who furnishes every Comfort, Convenience, and Elegance of Life; who carries off every Redundance, who fills up every Want; who ties Country to Country, and Clime to Clime, and brings the remotest Regions to Neighbourhood and Converse; who makes Man to be literally the Lord of the Creation, and gives him an Interest in whatever is done upon Earth; who furnishes to each the Product of all Lands, and the Labours of all Nations; and thus knits into one Family and weaves into one Web the Affinity and Brotherhood of all Mankind.
I have no Quarrel, I cried, to the high and mighty my Lords the Merchants, if each could be humbly content with the Profits of his Profession, without forming themselves into Companies, exclusive of their Brethren, our itinerant Merchants and Pedlars. I confess myself an Enemy to the Monopolies of your chartered Companies and City Corporations; and I can perceive no evil Consequence, to the Public or the State, if all such Associations were this Instant dissolved.
Permit me, he mildly replied, once for all, to set your Lordship right in this Matter. I am sensible that the Gentlemen of large landed Properties are apt to look upon themselves as the Pillars of the State, and to consider their Interests and the Interests of the Nation, as very little beholden or dependent on Trade; though the Fact is, that those very Gentlemen would lose nine Parts in ten of their yearly Returns, and the Nation nine Tenths of her yearly Revenues, if Industry and the Arts, (promoted as I said by Commerce) did not raise the Products of Lands to tenfold their natural Value. The Manufacturer, on the other Hand, depends on the landed Interest for nothing save the material of his Craft; and the Merchant is wholely independent of all Lands, or rather he is the general Patron thereof. I must further observe, to your Lordship, that this beneficent Profession is by no means confined to Individuals, as you would have it. Large Societies of Men, nay mighty Nations may and have been Merchants. When Societies incorporate, for such a worthy Purpose, they are formed as a Foetus within the Womb of the Mother, a Constitution within the general State or Constitution; their particular Laws and Regulations ought, always, to be conformable to those of the National System; and, in that
