ENGLISH COMMERCE AND ENGLISH EDUCATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:]
think the writer of the article in the Spectator of July 10th on "English Commerce and English Education" takes too low a view of our mercantile activity. It would be an ex- ception for a merchant here not to understand and correspond in the language of the countries with which be did his principal business, or for a Birmingham traveller not to speak the lan- guage of the country to which he was sent. My firm corre- sponds regularly in five foreign languages, and employs twelve persons (besides agents living abroad), as clerks or travellers, who understand at least one language besides English, and this has been the case with us, more or less, for more than a hundred years. I do not think London, Manchester, and Liverpool are behind Birmingham in this respect.
There is never any difficulty in inducing Birmingham manu- facturers to adopt new patterns, and a far larger variety of articles is made here to snit the wants of different countries than in America and Germany. The American spades, axes, &c., which have so successfully competed with ours are patterns made originally for their own purposes, which they have in- duced nearly the whole world to adopt.—I am, Sir, &c, A BIRMINGHAM MERCHANT. [Yet the explicit stater.sents of the authorities referred to in the Blue-book are strong in the opposite sense.—En. Spectator.]
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