Besides it has been truly written that

"He who feeds men serveth few,

He serves all who dares be true;"

and as there are services to the community for which money forms no ratio of measurement; so there are times, when to sustain an unpopular cause or to resist the sweeping current of a popular one may be a moral effort, to which the sacrifice of a man's last dollar would be a little thing. And, above all, the higher soarings of art and literature are products whose chief blessing it is that they cause all other wealth to be forgotten; and which leave results that will still be tending toward their zenith, when the utmost efforts of the chronicler cannot ascertain whether Shakspeare was worth a mill or a million. Fortunately, however, it needs not these high faculties; it needs not even a large share of the lower wealth which is the business man's special means of action, to become an instrument of good, and wonderful good. It takes wonderfully little money to be stewards and almoners of God. I observe that the agents and treasurers of our corporations, of all sorts, are generally selected from men of some capital, as if it were best not to intrust poorer men with the temptation. But God is not so suspicious; he intrusts something to everybody. Half-a-dollar and half-an-hour to spare are quite enough to set up for his stewards upon.

Stewards of God; ought not that to be the recognized basis upon which all property is held and used by us; ought not each individual to make that his habitual mode of viewing what his fate or faculties have given him? Let us a consider this a moment.

Think how much it has been your lot to receive! First, how much you have received from men. Society has put means of untold value into your hands; it has given you freely its machinery, its accumulated wisdom, its organizations, the protection of its laws, the use, on fair terms, of its moneycapital; the ways by which you have obtained one half your property, or business, or skill, or experience, have come directly or indirectly through others. You are incurring, at every moment, a debt far beyond what your annual tax-bills cover. Society has decreed to you a control over your own earnings, nay, over your father's earnings: and, for ages before you were born, the wise and good thought and acted for you. Now, what are you going to do about all this? Do business on this borrowed capital and pay nothing for it? Such would seem to be a common theory. "What should I do for posterity," said the celebrated speech," What has posterity ever done for me?" But to whom is all that accumulated debt of the Past payable, except to the Future? And the Present is constantly imposing a debt which you should pay to the Present.

But you say, I have received comparatively little from men, after all. Others have received as much and done nothing with it, nay, ask my help constantly, as if they had a perpetual lien upon me. There are natural differences among men, (you add ;) some are born to get on faster than others; God meant there should be differences among men!

Yes, but did he mean that those who have this natural superiority should employ it only for exclusive and personal purposes? is the the question. Inequalities? yes, there are inequalities everywhere in nature-on the surface of the earth there are inequalities-the hills are nearest the clouds, but do they take more than their share of the rain? No, they pour it down to enrich the valleys-should it be otherwise with men ?

In nature nothing exists for itself only; each particle of matter is needed for the whole likewise. The tree grows, yet not for itself only, but for shade to the flower; the flower grows, yet not for itself only, but for honey to the bee; men vary in gifts, graces, capacities, positions; yet the office of each one is to stand in his place and help all. Granted that God bestows special powers and opportunities on select individuals, he gives them not for exclusive but for universal purposes.

Do you say that this is hardly fair to the individual, that he ought to have some personal recompense for being great, skillful, powerful, rich, and the like? But is not the fact of being so, of having these opportunities, a sufficient reward? Who has not sometimes envied the gifted, the influential, the popular, the wealthy; not for the personal vanity of the position, but for the opportunity it brings! Wealth is not (as I have said,) the only or the highest mode of beneficence; but spend a day a visiting poor Irish families, and I defy you not to wish for wealth. Jenny Lind in London, wishing to help a benevolent society, resolved to give a concert for them, and when after singing one evening she had a thousand pounds for them, she is reported to have said for the first time in her life," After all it is a beautiful thing to have such a power!" This seems plainly the true view of all such special gifts, not of singing only but of trading and financiering and all others. As an agent is paid by a commission, and not expected to monopolize the funds in his hands also; so, as stewards of God we have our commission on our office in the privilege of discharging it. The fee of the statesman is the delight of governing well, "to read his history in a nation's eyes;" the reward of a writer or speaker is in the effect of his speech or writing; the commission of the holder of wealth is in the delight of serving others by it; the payment of great actions is in the privilege of doing them. And for those thus rewarded to ask in addition for a personal exclusive compensation, over and above other men ; for them to expect in addition to all this, to have cake and wine and velvet and carriages, and after death biographies and monuments. This seems to me as contrary to the laws of nature, as if the swamp oak tree in the spring-time, after spreading all its glad young leaves and guarding the white anenome from the sun through all the days of May, should think it proper on the first of Jnne to send in a bill for its shade, to the poor little flower.

Nothing shall convince me that the opportunity of a good action is not its own exceeding great reward. Nay, I have seen persons who have taken such extreme delight in such opportunities, that I have almost doubted whether we, any of us, deserved such happiness. And if it be so with the facilities common to all, how much more with the extraordinary ones of talent and wealth. It would seem that instead of asking what luxury is great enough to pay persons for being rich and powerful and gifted, we should rather ask what sacrifice, what penance on their part is great enough to atone for this inexpressible privilege.

Will it be said that I attack the institution of property? Far otherwise; I assume that as the basis of all. I complain only of the selfish use of property, and that must be cured by individuals. The trustee has as firm a legal control over trust property as if it were his own, only he cannot spend it for personal ends. I would have all property so regarded; and I would have the holder distinctly acknowledge that he is doing in this nothing particularly noble, but only a simple duty. When the steward pays out his employer's money on his employer's account, I am not aware that it is thought

a remarkably generous act; is it otherwise with the moral stewards of God?

The ideal of human relations is the idea of a simple happy family, where all are secured from want, and those more favored by fortune employ their powers, as a matter of course, for the enjoyment and blessing of all. It is not in our power at once to make such a relation universal, but it should be our privilege to do it as far as we can. "He is the divine man," says the Hindoo proverb, "to whom the whole world is as one household; but the words I and mine constitute narrowness."

It is thought by some, and ably maintained among others by De Tocqueville, that the use of wealth in aristocratic countries will ordinarily be nobler than in communities where each individual has by hard personal labor obtained it. But the history of commercial communities, from Florence to Boston, (aye, earlier, and we will hope later than either,) has not shown this theory to be correct, and it should be the proudest aim of every business man to prove it to be utterly baseless.

Do you sigh at this, and say sadly "Ah! but were the opportunity only given to me of this high undertaking. But stern poverty stares me in the face, and a life of fruitless effort for the means of doing good may be all that is before me!"

Is it so, indeed; then another opportunity opens before you, hardly less sacred-an opportunity of the most difficult duty which a business man can perform the opportunity of being poor; patiently, manfully, nobly poor! Be and continue poor, young man," says a noble German writer," while others around you grow rich by fraud and dishonor; be without place or power, while others beg their way upward; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others accomplish theirs by flattery; forego that for which others creep and cringe. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray with unstained honor, bless God, and die!"

CONCLUSION. But it is time to draw these thoughts and counsels to a close. Young man, just entering upon a business life, you stand in the presence of great dangers and great opportunities; but the greatest opportunities and the greatest dangers are those you carry within your own character. Your occupation will neither destroy nor save you, except as you choose either destiny. I believe that the merchant may stay in his profession. I know that many have left it, as incompatible with a manly life; but I know that some of the most sensitive have gone back again. Difficult it is indeed to unite it with a manly life; but this is difficult for any occupation. The temptation to falsehood and baseness runs through them all. Lawyer, physician, clergyman, statesman, all sin, or are saved by the struggle. Dwell among farmers, and you think that the meanest of men are to be found in that avocation; read the reports of trials in the newspapers, and you pardon Jack Cade for his proposition to hang all the lawyers; read the homeopathic journals, and you think the regular practitioner of medicine should fare little better; attend a "Come-outer" meeting and you hear all the ills which flesh is heir to laid upon the weak shoulders of the clergy. It is all one-sided severity. I have known young men go out of Commerce in disgust and go into other pursuits, and so I have known young men go out of other pursuits in disgust and go into Commerce. The temptations of the merchant are, after all, those of humanity selfishness, deception, the world, the flesh, and the devil; and if

they are greater than those of other men, it makes his opportunities so much greater also.

The difficulty, after all, is in the individual character; the rarity of great plans of life and high desires at starting. It is easy to find talent; every town has its young men to whom bright sayings and resolute actions are cheap and easy things; its young maidens, who can make uselessness fascinating by taste and grace; but where is earnestness?-where a spirit of self-consecration?-where the restless craving of an eagle eye that looks to the sun, and will take no less illumination?-where the vigor of a will that dates its force back to a motive power firmer than impulse and stronger than ambition?

If I have inspired in any reader one solitary thrill of this, I have not written in vain. I began by saying that every wise business man would thank any one who could teach him to make $50 equivalent to $500 in value. But I believe, I know, that there are thoughts and feelings which will make $50 equivalent, not to $100, not to $500, but to thousands and tens of thousands in the power of giving peace and enjoyment and usefulness; thoughts and feelings which make Rothschilds and Barings poor and pitiable beggars compared with humble men who may perhaps labor only that their overgrown wealth may become larger. And I write to say that he is the practical teacher who thus teaches, and he the practical man who improves such teachings; and that of all follies there is not one so great as to go on toiling for money only, and forgetting those realities of life for which money, age, reputation, and power, and all else, are only valuable as helping to attain.

Reader, especially if you are younger than myself, and if there is to you any meaning in what I am saying, I warn you, be wise TO-DAY. Do you feel one vision of larger duty, one impulse to a higher life than you have commonly led-let it not pass away now. It may never come so favorably again. You may think it will come, and that it is safe to let it go, and that you may expect it again; but the influences of the society in which you live are against it-most of the voices around you will not speak it. Tomorrow you will not be so ready for it-the next day, when you feel some returning impulse, and are ready for it, there may be no one to speak it— and the next day when some one speaks it you may not be any longer open to it and weeks and months may glide away;-and this time next year it may come back to you in some moment of sanity, that though your bank stock is doubled, and all your schemes have prospered, and you own an additional ship, and the freights of several more-though you are gaining all you most longed for, and have houses and horses, and a fair wife and a rich father-in-law-yet this one thought, which alone seemed really to make life worth the having, has passed away, and will not come for any prayers or any tears. And there seems nothing for it but to bid that fair dream adieu forever, and go back wearily to the aimless existence of those around you, and make your whole life henceforward only one more neat and skillful machine, built all of pure gold and silver, working away from morning to night among the rest, with the same dull metallic rattle, clicking for ever the same melancholy burden, "Vanity, vanity, vanity, and vexation of spirit forever and ever." Oh, may God preserve you, if you are not past preserving! There are noble opportunities opening before you. None can say what new ones the progress of society may yet bring to Merchants. "The mercantile profession," says the enthusiastic Mr. M'Culloch, "is an essential element in that division of labor" by which "civilized man becomes equal

to the most gigantic efforts, and appears endowed with almost omnipotent power." Let that magnificent power be nobly used! Let your share of it become a blessing to the whole race of man! So use it that when, as is inevitable, the advancing spirit of Humanity shall have educated men, step by step, into a co-operation of which the schemes of Owen, of St. Simon, of Fourier, are only fantastic hints and guesses,-the records of your business life may then be cited to point a moral, not of the hopeless degradation of this intermediate stage of progress, but of the possibilities which even this laid open, of wisdom and of virtue.

Art. 11. THE COTTON TRADE.

THE course of the cotton trade during the past year has been steady and uniform. The season opened in September and October at rates a trifle higher than were realized in December, but from January forwards the market slowly advanced, until it is now a little higher than it was a year ago. The price at Liverpool of fair cotton, on the 1st of September, 1851, was 51d., in October it was 51d., in January 5d., in March 5¦d., in May 5 d., in July 53d., and 6d. in September, 1852. The increased estimates of the crop depressed the price early in the season, but the immense consumption in every part of the world-in the United States, in England, and on the continent-encouraged the sellers to demand higher rates; and these have been maintained, in spite of the promise of another large crop for the ensuing year. The rates now current are not high, but they are above the average. For the thirteen years from 1840 to 1852, the whole American exports, (see Table I., at the end of this article,) amounting to nearly ten thousand millions of pounds, have been sold at an average price of eight-and-a-half cents. The price of good middling at Charleston is now, October 29th, 9 cents. Instead of declining below the the usual rates, the market has advanced, after receiving the largest crop ever produced, and with the prospect of another fully as large. What has maintained these prices? Are the causes temporary or permanent? Will they continue for the present year? or is their effect already past?

In attempting an answer to these questions, it may be remarked :

1st. That the advance is not due to the fact that lower rates are not remunerative. From 1840 to 1844, when the average (see Table I.) was only eight cents, the stocks were constantly increasing. The production outran the consumption. This led to lower prices, which discouraged planting, and at the same time increased the demand of the manufacturers. From 1845 to 1849 the average price (see Table I.) was only 7 cents. The surplus stocks then became small and prices advanced. Thus it appeared that an average of eight cents from year to year stimulated production, so that the supply exceeded the demand; while 7 cents produced an opposite effect. The present rates, therefore, are more than sufficient to pay the planter a proper profit on his investment. And the general advance on land and negroes, throughout the Southern States, confirms the conclusion thus indicated by the rise and the decline of the stocks lying over from year to year. The present prices will not only pay the cost of production, but allow a handsome profit to the producer. But

2d. The price has been kept up during the past year in part by a high