MR. BLACK ON TRADE MORALITY.
Mr. Adam Black, one of the members for Edinburgh, delivered an ad- dress on Monday at Glasgow. His subject was trade morality, and his audience a gathering of the local Trade Protection Society.
The true merchant, he said, is but the true man illustrating a particular condition in life. The morality which governs all other relations should equally prevail in mercantile life, and neither opportunity nor policy, nor the most tempting prospects of gain, should allow- the merchant to deviate from the strict line of honesty; and the same honourable dealing should guide him, whether in the sale of a yard of calico or of an East 'Mittman. The true merchant will not try suddenly to get rich by borrowing money and engaging in hazardous gamblins' speculations. Suppose a man should attempt to borrow 1000/. in order to bet at a horse race, would any prudent man furnish him with the means, or would any upright man give him money for such a purpose ? Gamblers can borrow money only ' from gamblers or from fools. And if borrowing money to speculate on the chance of a rise in any commodity be not gambling, by what name shall we call it ? The principle is just the same, whether we stake the money on the swiftness of a horse, or on the failure of a crop, or on a rise in the funds. Suppose a man should borrow money for the purpose of buying a vast quantity of sugar, and awaiting an expected rise in its price, and should, without consulting his creditors, bet the whole sum on a decrease in the next sugar crop, would not the lenders be justified in charging him with a violation of faith in this reckless misuse of their money ? There would be scarcely a shade of difference between the morality of the two transactions. The only difference between the commercial gam- bler and the horse jockey gambler is this—the one cheats rogues like himself, the other cheats honest men ; and it is this unmanly impatience that will not wait for the reward of honest industry, this reckless hazarding Of bor- rowed money, which strews all the paths of commercial life with the bleach- ing bones of bankruptcy and robs the unsuspecting poor man of his small but well-earned substance. Well directed energy and enterprise are the life of
, commercial progress; but if there is one lesson taught more plainly than another by the great failures of late, it is that safety lies in sticking to a le- gitimate business. No man—merchant, trader, or banker—has au y moral
. right to be so energetic and enterprising as to take from his legitimate bust- ?, ness the capital which it requires to meet any emergency. The public-spirited !, merchant will be ready to assist in the promotion of undertakings which arc ,a likely to be generally beneficial to the community, but even here he must be I limited by prudence. When a crowd of creditors stand vainly waiting for their i dues 'it is little comfort for them to be told, "Well, one thing must be remem- bered, and that is that the money has been widely spread to aid important en- terprises." The old miuriui, "Be just before you are generous," comes up at . such times with great force, and the creditor naturally asks, "What right has this house to be enterprising with my money, apart from its legitimate , business ?" Apologies are sometimes made for hrms which have failed by , recurring to the important experiments they have aided, and the unnum- bered fields of enterprise where they have freely scattered their money. We are told that individual losses sustained by those failures will be as nothing compared with the benefits conferred on the community by their liberality in contributing to every public work. Now a man's relations to a creditor : are vastly different from what they are to what is called the public ; and it is no excuse for any house in their time of failure that, if they have wronged individuals, it has been in serving the public." iI ' Sound personal religion is the surest basis on which mercantile character i can be founded ; the man whose conduct is regulated by the precepts of Christianity has already adopted the soundest principles of mercantile : policy; lie is taught to. be diligent, in business, and to avoids those ' snares which would involve him in excess, extravagance, self-indulgence, and ultimate ruin. The religion of the Bible will impress him with an abiding sense of his responsibility to his Creator, and his duty to his fellow ' men in all his mercantile transactions. Nothing, however, can be more disgusting than to hear a tradesman making loud professions of religion in • order to secure an advantage in the way of business, or under the cloak of , superior sanctity to shirk his duty and to overreach his neighbours. It is ?
humiliating to hear the mercantile conduct of such men contrasted with the honourable dealings of men who make no profession of religion, but are i. only remarkable for their profanity and rough out-and-out honesty. If ' you wish to teat the qualities of a man's religion do not follow him to 1 church, where he must put on the garment of pious observance, but visit
it I. him at his shop or counting-house, and mark thespirit by which he is in-
I flueneed in his dealings with his fellow-man. If he regard merely his own 'nterests, and, in securing his own, invades the rights of his neighbour, it vould be small uncharitableness to pronounce that man no true follower of Aim who said, "As ye would that man should do to you do ye even so to them." Professors of religion sometimes seem to think their religion too .,pure a thing to be brought down into the sphere of trade ; but a man's re- ligion is not worthy of the name if it be not able to stand the ordeal of his business life, if it do not accompany him in his daily avocations, and lead him to sacrifice his lust of gain whenever it would prompt him to do what would injure his fellow-man. Mr. Black adverted to the desirableness of shortening the terms of credit , both in the wholesale and retail trade, inasmuch as lengthened credits increase t risks, and have a tendency to show a greater apparent gain than was ac-
tually realized. Petty expenses and bad debts are too often left out of view, 1 and an extravagant opinion of the profits of trade is often entertained not , only by the public but by many traders themselves. It is of the utmost
importance, therefore, to keep accurate books and annually to balance them. lien have sometimes gone on for years with a vague idea that they were making money, when in fact they were on the high road to bankruptcy. As a Commissioner of Income-tax he had been surprised to find so many tradesmen who could not give an account of their income because they did not keep books and made no annual balance. Perhaps they thereby thought
they would evade payment of the tax to the full amount chargeable, but in c, some cases he should not be surprised if they outwitted themselves, and, at all events, the Commissioners did not accept their apology, and threatened if they did not keep regularly balanced books to take upon themselves the risk of charging them too high. Mr. Black referred to those traders whom he might call the highwaymen of commerce, who follow a reckless, unprin- cipled determination to become rich by fair means, if oonvenient, or by foul, if necessary.
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