can fail to see?-how large a chapter it forms in the history of the world, although crowded out of the space it ought to fill by the wars and crimes which destroy what it creates. Hume was among the first to call attention to this branch of historical inquiry, and Heeren has investigated with much learning the commerce of the ancients. If we were in possession of lives of the great merchants of antiquity, what light would they not throw upon the origin of States, the foundation of cities, and inventions and discoveries, of which we now do not even know the dates?

Trade planted Tyre, Carthage, Marseilles, London, and all the Ionic colonies of Greece. Plato was for a while a merchant; Herodotus, they say, was a merchant. Trade was honorable at Athens, as among all nations of original and vigorous thought; when we find discredit attached to it, it is among nations of a secondary and less original civilization, like the Romans.

But if commerce forms so large a chapter in the history of the world, what would the history of America be if commerce and men of commerce were left out? Trade discovered America in the vessels of adventurers, seeking new channels to the old marts of India; trade planted the American colonies, and made them flourish, even in New England, say what we please about Plymouth Rock; our colonial growth was the growth of trade -revolution and independence were the results of measures of trade and commercial legislation, although they undoubtedly involved the first principles of free government: the history of the country, its politics and policy, has ever since turned chiefly upon questions of trade and of finance, sailor's rights, protection, banks, and cotton.