394 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Population 



and stores the wares for times of dearth; that he buys in places of plenty 

 and carries to places of dearth; that these two major operations rest up- 

 on the possession of capital and a developed system of commercial credit. 

 Follo\\'ing this theme a number of pages have been devoted to outline 

 the character of the capital and credit technique, through which the 

 business of the time was done. The volume of commercial capital 

 was found to commence to increase during the EHzabethan reign and 

 to accelerate rapidly after the Restoration. Until about 1720 there 

 was a concentration of this capital and wealth about the metropolis 

 and the counties of the Thames valley soared in riches; after 1720 

 there was a provincializing tendency in wealth, business and industrial 

 life. The wealth accrued from the profits of trade, colonies and home 

 industries; the English merchant was handicapped by higher rates of 

 interest and, therefore, labored for higher rates of profit than the 

 Dutch merchant; as business was done increasingly on a credit basis 

 this handicap would have proved insuperable had not the volume of 

 capital and the credit organization been wonderfully improved and 

 caused the rate of interest to fall. The mercantile classes devised 

 and fostered commercial institutions. Their efforts to institute com- 

 mercial banks were supplemented by the rise of goldsmith banks and 

 the national bank, and during the eighteenth century they developed 

 the system of country banks with metropolitan connections. These 

 banks conducted the business of transmitting money by domestic 

 exchange and international exchange. The early merchants did a 

 more complex business: they were relieved by the specialization of 

 special classes of financial men, like the exchange brokers, bankers, and 

 the marine insurance brokers. All these functions were parts of the 

 medie\'al merchant's business : they are branches of the capitalistic part 

 of mercantile hfe. Some analysis of the process by which these dift'er- 

 entiations of functions were worked out has been given. This sketch 

 of the evolution of business classes based upon operations in capital 

 and credit is meant to bring out the importance that must be ac- 

 credited to these phases of middleman actixity. 



CHARACTER AND TRAINING. 



A writer posited, as a prime maxim relating to trade, that the constant 

 support of trade and na^^gation greatly depended upon the judgment, 

 skill, and address of the merchants and traders in general.^ Another 

 prized " trading merchants that lived abroad in most parts of the world, 

 who have not only the theoretical knowledge, but the practical expe- 



1 Postlethwayt, Diet, s. v. Trade. 



