But there is a glare and a grandeur about cases such as these, which may dazzle yet more than instruct. Let us pass then to a different scene, and seek some abode of poverty. We are, perhaps, afraid to enter, so repulsive, or unpleasing is all that meets the eye. In that rude home, which every wind of heaven can penetrate, we find a dying one. Perhaps for a quarter of a century, she has been the inmate of that abode; for all that time, she may have had no hand but the hand of God, and of charity, to feed her. What, then, is it that has sustained her spirit, amid trials which we almost shudder to see? She has lived, and is now preparing to die, upon the Word of her God. She is strong in the strength which it supplies, and the home which looks so cheerless to others, has been to her a home of hymns and of rejoicing. The God of the Bible has made her glad in the house of her pilgrimage by means of his Word. She has learned to regard it as God himself does; and it is visibly magnified in the effects which it thus produces in souls by nature weak, wavering, and ungodly.
But we have not nearly exhausted the illustrations of the power of truth in the Market-place. We have looked at some proofs of its power where it is honoured and obeyed: let us now glance at some of the results of neglecting it. If some men are of opinion that their main business upon earth is to “buy and sell, and get gain;” the Holy One has, on the other hand, made it plain that there is another God besides “the Mammon of unrighteousness.”
MERCANTILE MANIA.
We have referred to the crashes, and the failures, the gluts and stagnations which occur in trade, with a periodicity which can almost be calculated—they can at least be easily foreseen as they approach. MERCANTILE
MANIA. The adventurous “traffickers,” are sometimes seized with a mania which turns the counting-house into a gambler’s den, involving results and disasters from which the most judicious can with difficulty escape; so powerful is the current, so ingulfing the suction. Let us glance at some of these seasons.
THE TULIP MARTS OF HOLLAND.
THE TULIP
MARTS OF
HOLLAND. And the first which we mention is, the mania for dealing in Tulips, which engrossed even so calm and sedate a people as the Dutch, about two centuries ago. It began about the year 1634, and, like a violent epidemic, it seized upon all classes of the community, leading to disasters and misery such as the records of commerce, or of bankruptcies, can scarcely parallel. In their “haste to be rich,” one of the most temperate and self-possessed of all the nations of Europe rushed upon a ruin which affected thousands, and plunged multitudes into penury for life. In the year 1636, Tulip Marts had been established at Amsterdam, at Rotterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, and other towns in Holland.[21] As happens in all gambling transactions many were speedily enriched. Their fortunes, it has been said, rose like exhalations from the earth, but in many cases they vanished as speedily. Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, seamen, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney sweeps—all caught the fever for tulips and gold. Houses and lands were either sold for what they would bring in the market, or pledged, and bartered, that men might get possession of the coveted bulb or blossom. Amid these things, the prices of food, and other necessaries of life, rose to an unprecedented extent; and so complex, so ramified and pervasive did the tulip trade become, that special laws were passed to regulate it; special functionaries were appointed to direct it; in a word, amid the activities of Holland, then perhaps the foremost nation in the commercial world, a frail, ephemeral flower became literally the representative of man’s wealth, or the object on which the hearts of thousands doated.
THE SHADOW GRASPED.
Nor were these negotiations confined to the great central emporiums. Every village had its market-place for tulips; festive meetings were held when sales were effected; and the universal favourite—a tulip, was the constant decorator of such festivities. THE
SHADOW
GRASPED. The learned and the ignorant, the cautious and the eager, men of all classes and all temperaments, were infected; it seemed as if the commerce of the world were henceforth to run in one exclusive channel—the sale and the purchase of tulips. The eagerness with which men embarked in these wild speculations may be best explained by a statement of simple facts.[22] Property to the value of 100,000 florins[23] was invested in the purchase of a few roots. One kind of tulip, the Admiral Leifken, was reckoned worth 4,400 florins. A Semper Augustus was deemed cheap, if purchased for 5,500 florins. At one period there were only two roots of that rare species in Holland; and so intense was the passion to possess them, that a merchant offered twelve acres of building lots for one of them, which was at Haarlem, while its neighbour of Amsterdam was purchased for 4,600 florins, a carriage, a span of grey horses,[24] and a complete suit of harness. A Viceroy was worth 3000 florins. An Admiral Vonder Eyk was rated at 1,260 florins; and the whole were sold by weight as carefully as jewel merchants weigh the diamond. But to name no more, there was a single root which cost two lasts[T-10] of wheat, and four of rye; four fat oxen, eight fat swine, and twelve fat sheep; two hogsheads of wine, and four tuns of beer; two tons of butter, one thousand pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver drinking cup, valued in all at 2,560 florins.
Such is a glimpse of the tulip mania—such the effect of man’s extraordinary haste to be rich—such the condition into which men proverbial for their sobriety of judgment were precipitated, when they pushed their speculations beyond their legitimate channels.
THE SUBSTANCE THROWN AWAY.