Middlemen in English Business 349 



the upkeep. Here the merchants managed, negotiated and began 

 business with one another. It was a great resort for brokers of ex- 

 change and of merchandise. The crowd that congregated here was 

 very motley in nationaUties and costumes, and was a seething mass 

 of business.^ The other larger trading cities of England erected build- 

 ings of like character and purpose as soon as they acquired a consid- 

 erable body of merchants and bulk of foreign trade. - 



FUNCTIONS OF THE MERCHANT AND TRADESMAN. 



The world appreciates but little the transcendent advantage it has 

 enjoyed through the agency of the merchant and tradesman. A few 

 observers have at times recognized "The Merchant .... as 

 the Life, Spring, and Motion of the trading World," and as gi\ang 

 "Life and Vigour to the whole Machine."^ Limited locality and 

 ignorance of men and places, as well as pecuniary inability, render 

 manufacturers and farmers incapable, generally, of acting in the addi- 

 tional character of merchants. Their surplus products would perish 

 and decline or fail to arise were it not for a \'igilant, active class either 

 devoting their own property, time and abilities to traffic or devoting 

 their time and abilities to the sale and despatch of goods on the 

 accounts of these producers. Commerce consists in the equahzation 

 and distribution of surplus goods as between persons in different 

 places and different times. These ends are accomplished by car- 

 riage, storage, foresight, communication and exchange. The agents 

 of these acts are the merchants, tradesmen and brokers. Of two 

 persons, or of two places, the one receives a succor which is rela- 

 tively necessary to it, by exchanging a surplus which is relatively 

 useless to it, against the goods of which it is needy. 



These functions may be grouped in two classes. The middleman 

 buys with some distant or future market in view. As far as the future 

 market is the objective one, the business is purely speculative and 

 rests on the control of capital. This dealing in time-markets may be 

 regarded as the "capitalistic" function. But when this future market 

 is also a geographically distant one, a second function is called into 



^ Addison was a great lover of the place and has given an exquisite descrip- 

 tion of the confusion and crowd there during business hours. Spectator, No. 69. 

 The English merchants dressed very soberly. Besant, Tudor London, 197. The 

 reader will find pictures of the dress of the wealthy merchants of London, ibid., 308, 

 taken from a "Collection of Ancient and Modern Dresses, 1772." 



- At Bristol their exchange was called "Tolsel;" at Newcastle, "Maison-Dieu." 



= Campbell, 284; Dobbs, Essay on Trade, II, 18. 



