ARTICLES. ART. ΡΑΟΣ. I. THE MERCHANTS, AND THE MERCHANTS' FUND. By WM. BACON STEVENS, D. D., 19 III. FRANCE AND THE SUEZ CANAL. By E. W., of New York... IV. DEDUCTIONS FROM PRUSSIAN VITAL STATISTICS. By E. B. ELLIOTT, Esq., of VI. DIGNITY OF THE MERCANTILE PROFESSION. By BEN CASSEDAY, Editor of the VII. THE LAW MERCHANT.-No. vi. The Proper Contents of a Receipt-Of the occasion for giving and taking Receipts-How long to keep Receipts. By ABBOTT BROTHERS, The Vanderbilt Company-Charter-Party.. Common Carriers-Giving Through Tickets does not make Partners. Case of smuggling Silks to the United States-Breach of Contract... Agency-When Principal bound by Contract of Agent--General Rule--Bill of Lading an exception 70 Agency Writing under Seal held binding only on Agent.... Shipowner-Power of Master to bind.-Joint-Stock Companies......... Review of the Money Market-The effect of Political Agitations upon the Commercial Interests -Cause of the recent excitement-Speculations in Sugar-State of General Trade-The Bank Movement-Production of Gold-Deposits and Coinage at the Assay Office and Mint-Imports and Exports at New York for May, since January 1st, and for Eleven Months of the Fiscal Year-Cash Revenue for the same time-Imports of Dry Goods-Exports of Domestic Pro- New York Cotton Market. By CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON, Broker, New York 79 STATISTICS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE. PAGE. Statistics of the Cotton Trade-Exports, Imports, and Duties of principal Commercial Countries 81 Commerce of Richmond, Virginia JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE. How to detect Counterfeit Bills. Condition of Banks out of Boston.... Gold and Silver Coinage of the United States Banking in South Australia ................ Condition of the Banks of Ohio.-Condition of the Banks of South Carolina... 92 99 100 Purchase of United States Stocks by the Government.-Money: whence comes the word?....... 101 102 POSTAL DEPARTMENT. The London Post-Office.... NAUTICAL INTELLIGENCE. Lighthouse on Troubridge Shoals, Gulf St. Vincent, South Australia COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS. Peruvian Guano Restrictions New Orleans Harbor Regulations... The Limited Partnership Law ..... Maritime Law in Time of War.-Importation of Breadstuffs into Sweden. JOURNAL OF INSURANCE. 103 104 104 105 105 106 106 107 108 109 Does a Man shorten his Life by insuring it? STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c. Progress of Vegetables and increase of Animals in United States The cost and manner of using Guano in Arequipa RAILROAD, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT STATISTICS. Shortest Route between Europe and America.-The United States Railroad Directory. Operations of the Railways of Massachusetts JOURNAL OF MINING AND MANUFACTURES. The Gold Product of Australia and California compared.. Gutta Percha and India-Rubber... The Great tron Works near Troy, New York.- Decline of the Weaving Trade in Scotland Paper from refuse Tanned Leather.-Characteristics of the rare Gems 126 Great Britain opposed to Cotton Manufactures.-Machine for Pegging Boots and Shoes Mercantile Library Association of New York.-The Landlord, Broker, and Merchant on Sunday 132 The stores of Protective Unions and Workingmen. The Louisville Chamber of Commerce.-The Cleveland Commercial Gazette Benefit of Advertising ... THE BOOK TRADE. Notices of new Books or new Editions. 133 134 135 136 136 137-144 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. JULY, 1856. Art. I.—THE MERCHANTS, AND THE MERCHANTS' FUND* 66 THE MERCHANT IS THE FRIEND OF MAN."-Gibbon. I. MERCHANTS-WHO AND WHENCE ARE THEY? 1. They are an historic class. Their existence as a body can be traced to the earliest annals of the world. As far back as the days of Abraham, nearly 2,000 years before Christ, we find the Patriarch buying the field of Machpelah, and paying Ephron for it "400 shekels of silver, current money with the merchant;" showing, not only the existence of merchants as a class, but also that they had standard weights and coins, and regulated the currency of the times. A little after this record, Moses writes of "Midianitish merchantmen,” who "came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt." Job speaks of "merchants" in his day; and towards the splendor of King Solomon, merchants largely contributed. The vast quantities of gold, and ivory, and spices, and precious woods, and linens, and wool, and other articles, which he accumulated, were obtained not only by traffic with foreign traders, but also through those denominated "the king's merchants," who were the factors We have been furnished with a copy of the address delivered before the "Merchants' Fund" Association of Philadelphia, on the occasion of their second anniversary, January 24, 1856. This article embraces, as will be seen, a comprehensive sketch of the merchants as an historic class, to gether with a brief sketch of the history and character of mercantile benevolence. For an account of the "Merchants' Fund" of Philadelphia our readers are referred to the department of " Mercantile Miscellanies," page 131, in the present number of the Merchants' Magazine.-ED. of the monarch, sending out his ships from Ezion-geber to Ophir, on the one hand, and trafficking with the numerous caravans which kept up an active land commerce on the other. When we come to the Bible descriptions of Tyre, we find ourselves, as it were, suddenly transported into an Eastern bazaar, where are gathered all Oriental commodities, nations, languages, and crimes. This city, which Ezekiel calls "a merchant of the people for many isles," was finely situated for trade at the head of the Mediterranean, and was at one time the commercial center of the world, having raised herself by her fleets and her caravans to be mistress of the sea. Indeed, we could not obtain a better inventory of ancient merchandise than that recorded in the 27th chapter of Ezekiel. Each of the surrounding nations is there represented as a merchant, bringing its peculiar productions to the warehouses of Tyre. Tarshish traded there with silver, iron, tin, and lead; Javan, with slaves and vessels of brass; Togarmah, in horses and mules; Dedan, in ivory and ebony; Syria, in emeralds, purple, broidered work, and fine linen; Judah, in wheat, and honey, and oil, and balm; Damascus, in the wine of Helbon and white wool-in fact, the chapter is an invoice of the merchandise of Tyre, at a time when it arrogated to itself the title of "Queen of Cities." Well may Isaiah say of Tyre, that it is "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth." Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms," "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," is styled by the prophet "a city of merchants." Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, that "exceeding great city," whose glory had set, ere that of Rome rose on the horizon; whose name even was forgotten when the memorable ten thousand, whose retreat from Cunaxa, 400 B. C., is celebrated in the Anabasis of Xenephon, passed over the plain on which it once stood; and whose remains, intombed over twenty-five centuries, have been recently disinterred by Botta and Layard, is said by the Prophet Nahum to have "multiplied its merchants above the stars of heaven." I need not pause to tell you how early merchants figured in the annals of Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and Carthage, for I have already carried you back before their day, and linked your mercantile genealogy with the wealthiest, the greatest, and the oldest cities of the world. 2. Merchants are a potential class. The three leading elements of mercantile power are mind, money, union. Where these exist, there is might; where these are exercised, there is success. Merchants, as a body, have each. They are a highly intellectual class, because their minds are stimulated to active thought, and brought in contact with varying influences, and made to meditate large designs. They are a moneyed class, for they hold the purse-strings of the nations-they control the sinews of war; and the temple of Janus opens or shuts its doors at the bidding of the priests of the temple of Mammon. They are a united class-united by law, by legislation, by oneness of interest, by harmony of pursuit-so that no class of men present on all important issues a more united front than does the merchant. When, then, we find a body of men who control the commerce of the world, who regulate the currency of the world, who are the factors of the industry of the world, and the purveyors for all the artificial wants of the world, we cannot but declare that they are indeed potential. History proves the truth of this assertion. When Themistocles wished to make the Athenians great, he sought to do it through the extension of their commerce, for he held the proposition which Pompey afterwards adopted, "that the people who were masters of the sea would be masters of the world."* At one time, indeed, the merchant was but little respected; for both at Athens and Thebes, any one who had sold in the market within ten years was not allowed to take part in the government. Yet Plutarch tells us that Solon and Thales, two of the seven wise men of Greece, were engaged in merchandise; that Hippocrates had his share in commerce, and that Plato," the divine Plato," as he has been called, trafficked in oil in Egypt, and thereby paid the expenses of his foreign travel. Grecian pride, boastful rather of its philosophy and its art than of its trade and navigation, was disposed to undervalue the merchant; but it was the merchant, not letters, who carried the Grecian name farther than the conquests of Alexander; and the stability and universality of the Grecian tongue, the language not only of Homer, and Plato, and Demosthenes, but the language of the Septuagint, of Paul, of Chrysostom," are essentially to be imputed to the commercial genius of the people, to the colonies and factories which they established, and the trade and commerce which they maintained with all parts of the then known world."§ The patricians of Rome, like the aristocracy of Greece, affected to look down upon the merchant. Their military spirit and their lust of conquest frowned upon peaceful trade, and their code, therefore, prohibited commerce to persons of birth, rank, or fortune. But their increasing necessities, foreign alliances, and thirst for wealth, which they saw ever following the track of commerce, changed their views, and, despite the language of Cicero, who regarded merchandising as "inconsistent with the dignity of the masters of the world," we find Cato abandoning agriculture for trade, and Crassus investing some of his enormous wealth in commerce. Here let me ask, in connection with the power of merchants, whence originated the Lex Mercatoria, or what jurists call the Law Merchant, made up of "the customs of merchants, the ordinances of foreign States, and the statute law;" or, in other words, commercial or maritime law? We trace it back through the ordinances of the Hanseatic League, the Laws of Wisby, the Code of Oleron, the Consolato del Mare, and the Pandects of Justinian, to the merchants of Rhodes, who "were the earliest people," says Chancellor Kent, "that actually created, digested, and promulgated a system of marine law.”** Thus the enterprise, justice, and intelligence of the Rhodian merchants, occupying a little island in the Grecian Archipelago, only about one-third the size of our American Rhode Island, not only gained for them the sovereignty of the seas, 700 years before Christ, but enabled them to give to the commercial world of all future time the germ of its maritime law; for "the Rhodian Statutes are truly," as Valin has observed, "the cradle of nautical jurisprudence." The revival of learning in the fourteenth century, and the discovery of America in the fifteenth-the one unfettering the long-shackled mind of |