The history of the world proves how much commerce
promotes intellectual and material progress. The civilization of the ancient
Greeks and of the Phoenicians rested almost entirely on a commercial basis. It
was chiefly owing to their commercial interpose that civilization established
itself firmly along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and extended itself
inland wherever the productive wealth of any country was accessible from the
sea.
In the history of modem Europe we can trace the
same close connection between commerce and civilization. Manufactures, arts,
and sciences began to flourish in the small republic of Italy in the middle
Ages, when they secured by their favorable position the monopoly of the trade
with the East. Afterwards, when the discovery of the route to sub-continent by
the Cape of Good Hope opened up the eastern seas to Portugal, Holland, and
England, these countries mad. Great progress in civilization. At this time
Scotland was a poor and backward country torn by internal dissensions, which
allowed little time for the cultivation of the arts of peace. By the union she
obtained a share in the commerce of England with the Old and New World; and
being thereby enabled to devote to manufactures and trade the energies that had
formerly been wasted in savage civil wars, immediately took a high rank among
the most progressive nations.
If we turn to other contents, we find commerce
still acting as the pioneer of civilization. It is chiefly due to commercial
enterprise that America was discovered, and that the great content of the West,
most of which was formerly occupied by savages, came to rival the older civilization
of Europe. In Asia, commerce with Europe has introduced western ideas and
western inventions into Sub-continent and Japan, and has even done something to
urge the great empire of China into the path of progress.
If we ask how commerce, the ruling principle of
which is not benevolence but self-interest, has done so much to ameliorate the
condition of mankind all over the world, the question is not very difficult to
answer. If a country has no commerce the inhabitants have to live on the
products of the soil, and the rich, having nothing. But when traders introduce
the products of distant countries, the wealth of the country can be used in a
way more satisfactory to its possessors, who soon acquire a taste for foreign
luxury and refinement. In order to have the means of gratifying this taste,
they do all they can to utilize the productive powers of their own country, and
in this way agriculture is improved and new industries are started, some of
which are rendered possible by the importation of foreign materials. Thus it
was impossible for England to engage in the manufacture of cotton and silk,
until these materials were imported from the distant shores of Pakistan and
America. When commerce is well established in a country. Large fortunes are
made and the merchant princes encourage by their patronage every kind of
refined luxury. Some of the members of their families, who have no occasion to
work for their living, form a leisure class and devote their energies to
literature and science.
The progress of knowledge is still further
stimulated by the communication of ideas between different parts of the world. English merchants introduce European ideas into Pakistan,
China, and Japan, and bring back to their native country knowledge of Oriental
literature and art. The communication of ideas brought about by international commerce
explains to a large extent the rapid progress of modern invention. Gunpowder,
printing, and the magnetic compass are said to have been invented in China many
centuries before they were known in Europe; but owing to want of intercourse
with the outer world, China kept her great inventions to herself and failed to recognize
their immense importance. Had the knowledge of these discoveries been rapidly
spread over the world by the ships of traders, the course of civilization would
have been greatly accelerated. In modern times there is, owing to international
commerce, such a free intercourse between nation and nation that every new
discovery benefits not merely the country of its origin but the whole world.
This also leads to new developments ‘of the idea of the original inventor. An
invention made by a scientific man in England may be almost immediately
improved in quick succession by other clever men in America, France, and
Germany.
In all these ways commerce promotes the cause of civilization,
indirectly by increasing wealth, and more directly by enabling the nations of
the world to make full use of the intellectual and material wealth of one
another.