The main principle of modern commerce is still just what it was among the rude Indians of Brazil, where the tribes who make the deadly arrow-poison prepare more than they want for their own use, so as to exchange the rest for spears of the hard wood that grows in other districts, or the hammocks of palm-fibre netted by tribes elsewhere. Wealth is created by trade as well as by manufactures. The Canadian trapper wants for his own use but few of his plentiful furs, but all he can take are wealth to him, because the trader brings him in exchange the clothes and groceries and other things he wants. The general history of commerce in the world, which is the development of this simple principle, need not be dwelt on here by giving details of the ancient traffic of Egypt with Assyria and India, the Phoenician trading colonies on the Mediterranean, the old trade-routes across Asia and Europe, the rise of the merchant princes of Genoa and Venice, the first voyages round the Cape to the East Indies, the discovery of America, the rise of ocean steam-navigation. It is specially interesting to the student of civilization to notice that the travelling merchant had in early ages another business hardly less important than conveying ivory and incense and fine linen from where they were plentiful to where they were scarce. He was the bringer of foreign knowledge and the explorer of distant regions in days when nations were more shut up than now within their own borders, or went across them only as enemies to ravage and destroy. The merchants did much to break down the everlasting jealousy and strife between nations into peaceful and profitable intercourse. Moreover it may be plainly proved that the old hostile system of nations is kept up by every kind of restriction on trade, every protective duty imposed to force the production of commodities in countries ill-suited to them, to prevent their coming in cheap and good from where they are raised with least labour. There is no agent of civilization more beneficial than the free trader, who gives the inhabitants of every region the advantages of all other regions, and whose business is to work out the law that what serves the general profit of mankind serves also the private profit of the individual man.
CHAPTER XII.
ARTS OF PLEASURE.
Poetry, [287]—Verse and Metre, [288]—Alliteration and Rhyme, [289]—Poetic Metaphor, [289]—Speech, Melody, Harmony, [290]—Musical Instruments, [293]—Dancing, [296]—Drama, [298]—Sculpture and Painting, [300]—Ancient and Modern Art, [301]—Games, [305].
To those who have not thought particularly about straightforward prose talk, and poetry which is set in metre and rhyme, and song which is chanted to a tune, it may seem that these are three clearly distinct things. But on careful examination it is found that they shade into one another, and it can be made out how human speech passed into all three states. Savage tribes have some set form in their chants, which shows they feel them different from common talk. Thus Australians, to work themselves into fury before a fight, will chant, “Spear his forehead!—Spear his breast!—Spear his liver!—Spear his heart!” and so on with the other parts of the enemy’s body. Another Australian chant is sung at native funerals, the young women taking the first line, the old women the second, and all together the third and fourth.
| “Kardang garro Mammul garro Mela nadjo Nunga broo.” | “Young-brother again Son again Hereafter I-shall See never.” |
Here the words of the savage chant are no longer mere prose, but have passed into a rude kind of verse. All barbaric tribes hand down such songs by memory, and make new ones. The North American hunter has chants which will bring him on the bear’s track next morning, or give him victory over an enemy. The following is the translation of a New Zealand song:—
“Thy body is at Waitemata,
But thy spirit came hither