and by great weights," such as at the present day would be called wholesale importers; and, indeed, out of the grocers rose the Levant, the East India, and other great importing and trading companies.

The drapers were not as now, dealers in cloth, but makers of cloth. The merchant tailors were the active importers of woolen goods; and the skinners were those who dealt in furs; which being greatly used by the royal family, nobles, and gentry, caused their merchandise to be both extensive and valuable.

Nor were the members of these companies confined to persons engaged in the business indicated by the name of the corporation, for Edward III., having found them "the main spring of the trade of his kingdom," not only gave them stability by his charters, but consequence by his example, by becoming himself "a brother of the company of merchant tailors." Richard II. became a brother in the same company; and the great, both clergy and laity, as well as principal citizens, dazzled with the splendor of such associates, hastened to be enrolled as tradesmen in the fraternities. Ten kings, three princes, twenty seven bishops, twenty-six dukes, fortyseven earls, have been members of the merchant-tailors company; while five kings, together with numerous princes, dukes, earls, and lords, were brothers of the grocers livery. The late Duke of Wellington was a merchant tailor, and the gentle Sir Philip Sidney, the first Earl of Chatham, and his greater son, William Pitt, were grocers.

It is an interesting fact, as regards the history of some of the livery companies, that women were admitted as free sisters of the corporation. And surely it is no disparagement to the female sex, when we remember that in the most exquisitely drawn character of a virtuous women, a prudent mistress, a noble wife, a godly mother, in the whole Bible, I mean that contained in the 31st chapter of Proverbs, a woman is compared by Solomon to "the merchant's ships," is spoken of as perceiving "that her merchandise is good;" as "making fine linen and selling it;" and "delivering girdles unto the merchant."

Nor should we forget that the first convert to Christianity in Europe, was a female merchant, Lydia, "a seller of purple" at Philippi, "whose heart," says St. Luke, "the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul;" that the founder of that noble institution, the Savings Bank, was Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield; and that Queen Elizabeth did not think it beneath her dignity to be elected "a free sister of worshipful company of mercers."

Thus these companies soon became wealthy corporations, ingrossed civic honors, built palace-like halls, enacted gorgeous pageants, kept up great state, loaned money to kings, gave sumptuous dinners, and were the centers of political parties; and though originally designed for mutual protection in trade, and the observance of religious rites, are now, in the language of the Parliamentary Commissioners, who were appointed, in 1826, to investigate their charters and doings, "mere trustees for charitable purposes or chartered festivals." It has been stated by the writer, who abridged the reports of these commissioners, that "nearly all the charitable funds in London are under the control and management of the city companies. The annual value of these charities, even under the present system of admin

An Account of Public Charities in England and Wales, abridged from the Report of his Majesty's Commissioners on Charitable Foundations, &c. 2 vols. Lond, 1828, 1, 10.

istration, amounts to £138,583. The property consists of manors and estates, messuages, tenements, church-livings, tithes of parishes, and of vast sums invested in the public funds. The objects for which this property was principally bequeathed were, to feed, clothe, and educate the poor, and provide funds for apprenticing poor boys, for assisting young men commencing business with gratuitous loans, for erecting almshouses, and for relieving unfortunate debtors in confinement; in a word, for mitigating all the evils of life resulting from ignorance, age, penury, sickness, and misfortune."

The mercers company, which heads the list of the twelve great companies, "which from their wealth, influence, and politics, are considered the most potent in the city," have in their charge, twenty-two clerical livings, about fifty scholastic exhibitions or temporary pensions to poor scholars, at Oxford or Cambridge, ranging in value from $100 to $500 per annum, four schools, four almshouses, and eleven lectureships in churches.

The grocers have four schools, two almshouses, eight exhibitions, and three livings, and distribute about $6,000 per annum. The drapers have five schools, eight almshouses, one hospital, three lectureships, and one exhibition, disbursing yearly about $20,000.

The fishmongers, the fourth in the order of precedence of the metropolitan guilds, having furnished from its members forty Lord Mayors, and which is now the great Whig club of London, and gives great Whig banquets,* have one free school, two hospitals, twelve almshouse, and a fellowship and a scholarship at Cambridge, and expend about $4,000 a year in charities.

The merchant tailors, composed at present of the members of the stockexchange, first-class merchants, &c., and which is now the leading Tory club, have six schools, one almshouse, thirty-eight Oxford fellowships, besides exhibitions, and scholarships, and expend nearly $20,000 annually. These are specimens, favorable ones, of the charitable nature of these companies, which disburse in this method about $150,000 per year.* If we contrast their bestowments with their revenues, we shall find that they fall far short both of their trust, duty, and ability. Their halls, banquets, equipage, and political intrigues, absorb a large portion of their income, and in many instances, endowments for the poor are diverted from their design, and made to minister to the pomp or palate of the rich.

Despite, however, these things, the merchant charities of London are really munificent. In Stowe's "Survey of London," published in 1633, he has a chapter entitled "To the Honor of Citizens, and Worthiness both of Men and Women in the same," and out of nearly two hundred names of men whose benefactions he there records, over one hundred were merchants; and a somewhat extensive examination of the charities of London, leads me to the conclusion, that of the four hundred and sixteen charitable institutions of that city, with an annual income of nearly $5,000,000, the majority of them are indebted for their original existence and present continuance, to London merchants.

In addition to the fact, that all the merchant companies have funds for charitable uses, to be dispensed to those who were once freemen of these corporations, or their widows, and children, there are some special institu

* Bohn's Pictorial Handbook of London, 1854, 333.

* The Charities of London, by Sampson Low, Jr. London, 1850, 193.

*

tions, which seem to contemplate, to a certain extent, the class of men to whom the benefactions of the merchants' fund are applied. The earliest of these is Whittington's College, or Almshouse, Highgate; or as his executor termed it, "God's House," which was founded by the far-famed Sir Richard Whittington, in 1421.

The story of "Whitington and his Cat" is familiar to nearly every child; and however fable may have exaggerated fact, yet the history of this once poor boy, who by his success as a merchant raised himself to the highest civic dignity, being "thrice Lord Mayor of London," and to the honor of knighthood, is both interesting and instructive. Whittington left his dwelling-house, and all his land and tenements in London, "for perpetual sustentation of needy and poor people." The recipients of this bounty must have been freemen of the mercers company, and not less than 55 years of age. Each inmate, according to the direction of the founder, must be "meek of spirit, destitute of temporal goods, by which he might competently live, i. e. cannot possess property beyond £30 annually, must also be chaste, and of good conversation." The inmates receive £30 annually, besides other advantage in the shape of a delightful residence (which cost $100,000,) gifts, medical attendance, &c. About $9,000 in money, per annum, are given to the recipients of this bounty, in addition to the expense of keeping up the present elegant establishment at Highgate Archway.

The next in point of seniority is the "Charter House," in Charter House Square, Aldersgate Street, London, instituted in 1611, by Thomas Sutton, called, par excellence, "The Wealthy Merchant of London." This gentleman, after being educated at Eton, and so distinguishing himself in civil and military service as to obtain the commendation of Queen Elizabeth, and a pension for his faithful services, became a merchant, employing thirty agents abroad; and by his judgment, prudence, and success, amassed so great a fortune, that he was offered a peerage, on condition (as he was a bachelor) that he would make the Duke of York (afterwards James I.) his heir. This he declined, and having bought the Convent of the Monks of the order of the Carthusians or Chartreaux, so called from Chartreuse, in Dauphiny, where the order originated, he instituted the present charity, still preserving its name of Charter House. He died before his benevolent intentions were carried out; leaving to his new institution, $300,000 in ready money, and an annual income of $25,000, which Stowe records "as the greatest in England, either in Protestant or Catholic times, ever bestowed by any individual;" and so it was when Stowe wrote; but a hundred years later, Thomas Guy, a bookseller, founded Guy's Hospital, spending upon it not only $100,000 during his life, but bequeathed to it $1,000,000,-the largest sum ever left in England by one person for charitable purposes.

The Charter House charity now maintains eighty aged men, called pensioners, who must, at the date of admission, be fifty years old, natives of Great Britain, and Protestants of the Church of England, preference being given to those who have seen better days.

In connection with this charity, is the celebrated Charter House School,

• Herbert's Livery Companies; Low's Charities of London; Highmore's History, Design, and Present State of Public Charities, in and near London, 1810.

where Addison, Steele, and some of the first scholars of the day, have received their education.

The latest institution, and that which comes the nearest to the design of the merchants' fund, is what is called "Morden College;" for a college, signifying merely a collection of people, is a name often given to almshouses and charitable foundations as well as to seminaries of learning.

This college, located at Blackheath, was founded in 1695, by Sir John Morden, a merchant actively engaged in the Levant trade. The college he built in his lifetime, but at his death devised all his freehold and personal property to its endowment, "for poor, honest, sober, and discreet merchants, of the age of fifty years, at the least, who may have lost their estates by accidental ways and means in their honest endeavors to get their living by way of merchandise." The applicants for this bounty, who are now appointed by the Hon. East India Company, must be fifty years old, members of the Church of England, and widowers or bachelors. The present number of pensioners is forty, who receive £72 per annum, medical attendance, coals, candles, and washing; the college has excellent accommodations, a tasteful chapel, handsome dining hall, ample pleasure grounds, baths, &c., &c.

These instances are noble illustrations of merchant charities, and deserve high encomium, but they lack the catholicity, the secrecy, and the efficiency which pertain to the merchants' fund association of Philadelphia.

You give without respect to age, creed, or country. The institutions named are tied up to one church, one nation, one period of life. You give in such a way that a proper pride of character is preserved on the part of the recipient; his feelings, made keenly sensitive by misfortune, are not wounded by exposure; nor is he taken away from his home, and his remaining domestic ties, to be shut up in an almshouse, even though it be named a "college," and boast of its Gothic walls, its richly carved chapels, its excellent accommodations, and its extensive gardens. You go to the decayed, infirm, or indigent merchant, and the only evidence that you have been there, like that which marks the hidden spring in the field, is the green spot which you create in the else sandy wastes of poverty. They give, after public investigation, and public ballot, and strife for election, and then the recipient of their bounty is ever known as a pensioner and an almsman. In the whole range of British charities, I find nothing exactly corresponding with the merchants' fund; and hence I have no hesitation in saying, that noble as some of these London institutions are, they suit not our day nor our land; and they are not, for the purposes of practical benevolence, as available or effective as the more humble and unobtrusive charities, which build indeed no colleges of poverty, endow no trusts, dole out no stipends at the sound of the trumpet, but which quietly reach down the hand of relief to the needy, gently lift him from the dust, and give him "the oil of joy for mourning, and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

Especially should you aim to preserve intact the personal independence and social position and gentlemanly feelings of your beneficiaries, when you consider that they are not the vicious, the idle, the dissipated, the reckless speculator, the fraudulent debtor, or the dishonest tradesmen, but the honest merchant, fallen from his high estate of honor, trust, and wealth, not by his own fault or guilt, but by those reverses which occasionally sweep over the commercial world, and which, like the wind, blow

where they list, no man being able to tell whence they come or whither they go.

No men, as a class, are more exposed to pecuniary reverses than merchants. A storm may wreck their ships, a fire burn their goods, a freshet destroy their mills, a panic depreciate their stocks, a drought or a frost. cut off the crops, and a war may blast their trade. Events like these, which no human wisdom can foresee, no prudence forefend, no credit or capital sustain, may make him poor to-day, who yesterday was lord of the exchange, and bring to the almoners of your charity as a suppliant, him who once gave liberally to your fund!

And then, again, mercantile houses are so linked together by the mutual dependencies of credit and exchange, as buyers or sellers, that the downfall of one great merchant involves many lesser ones in ruin, as the uprooting of a wide-branching oak breaks a hundred saplings in its mighty

crush.

The same effect is produced by the bursting of some commercial bubble like the old "South Sea Company," by the failure of insurance offices, as in the case of the great conflagration in New York, by the breaking of a large bank, or by the fraud of some knight of the stock-exchange, such as has been recently seen in London. These things unsettle the credit of an entire community, and cause panic, failure, and ruin, to many an honest merchant for each of these events is, in the language of Shakespeare,

Art. II.-THE MONEY OR COMMERCIAL VALUE OF A MAN.

THE human brain is a composition formed from various elements; it may be considered as a soil, or a garden, of which the wind is the gardener; the blood is a compost constantly poured through a thousand vascular channels, traversing every part of the brain, which is thus enriched; while all that is useless is carried away by the ever-moving current. Little by little the various particles of the brain are decomposed, or as it were dissolved, and then floated away, and their places taken by new material; thus brain succeeds brain in rapid succession, the activity of the processes by which the growth of brain is accomplished being very great; yet the changes by which a brain mature in size and age are produced, are so numerous that many years are consumed in its growth, and its production and perfection required a great investment, both of material and time.

The brain is, therefore, an agricultural product of great commercial importance, and one of the first duties of political economy should be to discuss its expense and its value as an investment, for it will be found that all other interests of the State collectively do not equal the brain-growing interest alone, either on account of the amount of the investment, or the per cent profit which it can be caused to yield.