MEN OF BUSINESS.
Examples of a successful pursuit of wealth, either from the
beginnings of a moderate fortune, or from absolute penury, are
abundant. A life devoted to the acquirement of money, for its own
sake, cannot be made the subject of moral eulogy; it can only be
introduced among the “Triumphs of Perseverance,” as a proof of the
efficacy of that quality of the mind to enable the wealth-winner
to compass his resolves. It by no means follows, however, that a
career towards opulence is impelled by the mere sordid passion
for gain. Happily, among those who have started with a moderate
fortune, progressive increase in riches has often been found united
with increasing purposes of the noblest philanthropy and public
beneficence; while the manly aim for independence has equally
distinguished many who have risen to wealth from poverty. A brief
rehearsal of the biographies of two persons, of widely different
station and character, but whose names have alike become inseparably
connected with the history of the first commercial city in the world,
will suffice to illustrate our position.
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM,
The younger son of Sir Richard, who was a knight, alderman, sheriff,
and Lord Mayor of London, and a prosperous merchant, had the twofold
example set him by his father, of an intelligent pursuit of trade,
and of public spirit and munificence. He was sent to Cambridge,
distinguished himself in study, and might, undoubtedly, have risen to
reputation in one of the learned professions; but, by his father’s
wish, he turned his attention to business, and was admitted a member
of the Mercers’ Company at the age of twenty-four. Having, through
his father’s eminence as a merchant, succeeded in obtaining the
trust of agent to King Edward the Sixth, for taking up money of the
merchants of Antwerp, he quickly discerned the abuses under which
the king’s interest suffered. He proposed methods for preventing the
Flemish merchants from extorting unfair commissions and brokages, and
so turned the current of advantage to the king’s favour, that the
young prince was enabled to pay all the debts for which his father
and the Protector—Somerset—had left him responsible. During the short
reign of Edward, this active and enterprising merchant made forty
journeys from England to Antwerp; and, by the application of his
genius, retrieved English commerce from the disadvantage into which
it had fallen by mismanagement at home, and the superior shrewdness
of the Netherland merchants. The precious metals had become scarce in
our country, but Gresham brought them back again; our commodities
were low in price, and foreign ones high, but he reversed their
conditions of sale: while the king’s credit, from being very low
abroad, was, by Gresham’s skill, raised so high, that he could have
borrowed what sums he pleased. For such services the young and acute
negotiator had a pension of £100 a year appointed him for life, and
estates to the value of £300 a year were also conferred upon him by
the king.
At the accession of Mary, Gresham was discharged from his agency;
but, on his drawing up a memorial, and its allegements being proved,
he was re-instated. Queen Elizabeth immediately re-engaged him, at
her accession, and employed him to provide and buy up arms for the
national defence. She knighted him a year afterwards, and he then
built himself the mansion known by his name in Bishopsgate Street;
and, till lately, occupied by the “Gresham professors.”
His noblest public work was performed soon after. His father had
striven to move King Henry the Eighth to build an Exchange for the
city merchants, who then met in the open air in Lombard Street, but
could not. Sir Thomas Gresham now publicly proposed, if the citizens
would purchase a piece of ground large enough, and in the proper
place, to build an Exchange at his own expense, with covered walks,
and all necessary conveniences for the assemblage of merchants. This
was done; the site was cleared; Gresham himself laid the foundation
stone; and Queen Elizabeth, when the building was complete, “attended
by nobility, came from Somerset House, and caused it, by trumpet and
herald, to be proclaimed the ‘Royal Exchange.’” This building, as our
young readers know, was burnt down some years ago, and the present
stately fabric, opened by Queen Victoria, has been erected on its
site.
About the time that the building of the Royal Exchange was commenced,
Gresham was again employed to take up moneys for the royal use at
Antwerp. Experience had so fully shown him the evil of pursuing this
system, that he at length persuaded the Queen to discontinue it,
and to borrow of her own merchants in the city of London. Yet his
views were so much in advance of the contracted commercial spirit
of that age, that the London citizens, in their common hall, blind
to their own interests, negatived his proposition when it was first
made to them. But, on more mature consideration, several merchants
and aldermen raised £16,000, and lent it to the Queen for six months,
at six per cent. interest; and the loan was prolonged for six months
more, at the same interest, with brokage. This illustrious London
citizen, by his superior intelligence, thus opened the way for
increasing others’ as well as his own gains.
Sir Thomas Gresham’s successful negotiations issued in so large
an increase of his own wealth, that he purchased large estates in
several counties, and bought Osterley Park, near Brentford, where
he built a large mansion, in which he was accustomed to receive
the visits of Elizabeth. Even here the ideas of the merchant were
predominant. “The house,” says a writer of the period, “standeth
in a parke, well wooded and garnished with many faire ponds, which
affoorded not onely fish and fowle, as swannes and other water fowle,
but also great use for milles, as paper milles, oyle milles, and corn
milles.” On his retirement to Osterley, he transformed his residence
in Bishopsgate Street into a “college,” for the abode of seven
bachelor professors, who were to read lectures there on “divinity,
law, physic, astronomy, geometry, music, and rhetoric,” and to have
£50 each per year.
He was the richest commoner in England—such were what is usually
termed “the substantial” rewards of his perseverance; while his name
deserves lasting honour as the patron of learning, and the exemplar
of merchant-beneficence. He left, by will, not only ample funds for
continuing his “professorships,” but endowments for almshouses, and
yearly sums for ten of the city prisons and hospitals.
JAMES LACKINGTON,
[Illustration: JAMES LACKINGTON]
The son of a journeyman shoemaker and of a weaver’s daughter, passed
his early years amidst circumstances which must have enduringly
impressed him with the miseries of vice and poverty. His father was
a selfish and habitual drunkard, and his mother frequently worked
nineteen or twenty hours out of the four-and-twenty to support her
family. He was the eldest child of a numerous family, and was put two
or three years to a dame’s school; but was less intent on learning
than on “getting on in the world,” even while a boy. He heard a
pieman cry his wares, and soon proposed to a baker to sell pies for
him; and so successful did young Lackington prove as a pie-vender,
that he heard the baker declare, a twelvemonth after, that he had
been the means of extricating him from embarrassment. A boyish prank
put an end to this engagement; and when the baker wished to renew
it Lackington’s father insisted on placing him at the stall. Again,
however, his pedlar inclinations, which in after life led him to
affluence, rescued him from the disagreeable treatment he expected
to receive under his father’s rule. He heard a man cry almanacks
in the street, and importuned his father till he obtained leave to
start on the same itinerant enterprise. In this he succeeded so well
that he deeply aggrieved the other venders, who, as he tells us in
his very whimsical but interesting biography, would have “done him
a mischief had he not possessed a light pair of heels.” Resolute
on not continuing at home, he persuaded his father, at length, to
bind him apprentice with a shoemaker in a neighbouring town, and at
fourteen years of age sat down to learn his trade.
We will not follow this singular specimen of human nature, spoilt
by want of education and by evil example, through all the vagaries
of his youth. Taking him up at four-and-twenty, after he had
experienced considerable changes in religious feeling, and gathered
some smatterings of knowledge from reading, we find him marrying,
and beginning the world the next morning with one halfpenny. Yet
he and his wife set cheerfully to work, he tells us; and by great
industry and self-denial, they not only earned a living, but paid
off a debt of forty shillings, which was somewhat summarily claimed
by a friend of whom he had borrowed that sum. Trials very soon fell
to his lot which tended to make him deeply thoughtful. His wife was
ill for six months; and, at the end of that period, he was compelled
to remove her from Bristol to Taunton, for her health’s sake. During
two years and a half the poor woman was removed five times to and
from Taunton without permanent recovery; and Lackington, despairing
of an amendment of his circumstances under such discouragements,
resolved to leave his native district. He therefore gave his wife
all the money he had, except what he thought would suffice to bring
him to London; and, mounting a stage coach, reached town with but
half-a-crown in his pocket. He got work the next morning, saved
enough in a month to bring up his wife, and she had tolerable health,
and obtained “binding work” from his employer.
Lackington was now fairly entered on the path to prosperity. His
partner was a pattern of self-denial and economy; they began to save
money, bought clothes, and then household furniture, left lodgings,
and had a house of their own. A friend, not long after, proposed that
Lackington should take a little shop and parlour, which were “to let”
in Featherstone-street, City-road, and commence master shoemaker.
Lackington agreed, but also formed the resolution to sell old books.
With his own scanty collection, a bagful of old volumes he purchased
for a guinea, and his scraps of leather, altogether worth about
5_l._, he accordingly commenced master tradesman. He soon sold off,
and increased his stock of books; and next borrowed 5_l._ of John
Wesley’s people—“a sum of money kept on purpose to lend out for three
months, without interest, to such of their society whose characters
were good, and who wanted temporary relief.” Much to his shame he
traduces the character of the philanthropic Wesley and of his brother
religionists, in his “Confessions,” even while acknowledging that
this benevolent loan was “of great service” to him. He afterwards
endeavoured to make the _amende honorable_, but the mode in which it
was made was as unadmirable as his ungrateful offence. But, to return
to his narrative.
“In our new situation,” says he, “we lived in a very frugal manner,
often dining on potatoes, and quenching our thirst with water, being
determined, if possible, to make some provision for such dismal times
as sickness and shortness of work, which had often been our lot, and
might be again.” In six months he became worth five-and-twenty pounds
in old book stock, removed into Chiswell-street, to a more commodious
shop, though the street, he says, was then (in 1775) a dull street,
gave up shoemaking, “turned his leather into books,” and soon began
to have a great sale. Another series of reverses, during which his
wife died, his shop was closed, while he himself was prostrate with
fever, and was robbed by nurses, only served to sharpen his intents
and strengthen his perseverance, when he recovered. His second
marriage, with an intelligent woman, he found of immense advantage,
since his new partner was a very efficient helpmate in the book-shop.
Next, his friend Dennis became partaker in his business, and advanced
a small capital, by which they “doubled stock,” and printed their
first catalogue of 12,000 volumes. They took 20_l._ the first week,
and Dennis then advanced 200_l._ more towards the trade; but, after
two years, Lackington was left once more to himself, his friend being
weary of the business. A resolution not to give credit gave him
great difficulty, he says, for at least seven years, but he carried
his plan at last, principally by selling at very small profits. His
business premises were successively enlarged, and his sales likewise,
until his trade and himself became wonders. At the age of fifty-two
he went out of business, leaving his cousin head of the firm. He sold
100,000 volumes annually, during the latter years of his personal
attention to trade, kept his carriage, purchased two estates, and
built himself a genteel house. He once more became a professor of
religion, on retiring from business, and built several chapels.
He was, in the close of life, benevolent in visiting the sick and
indigent, and in relieving the distressed.
“As the first king of Bohemia kept his country shoes by him to
remind him from whence he was taken,” says the bookseller, in his
“Confessions,” “so I have put a motto on the doors of my carriage,
constantly to remind me to what I am indebted for my prosperity, viz.
‘Small profits do great things;’ and reflecting on the means by which
I have been enabled to support a carriage, adds not a little to the
pleasure of riding in it.” Alluding to the stories that were rife
respecting his success, attributing it to his purchasing a “fortunate
lottery-ticket,” or “finding bank-notes in an old book,” he says,
very emphatically, “I found the whole that I am possessed of,
in—_small profits_, bound by _industry_, and clasped by _economy_.”
[Illustration: Decoration]