Lord Fylingdale laughed pleasantly.
"Nay, captain, but there is another side to your picture also. Storms arise; the waves become billows; there are hidden rocks—where are your ships then?"
"The underwriters pay for all. There may be better money, I say, in ships than in land."
"Then the merchants should be richer than the landowners."
"Not always, by your leave, my lord. For there are too many merchants; and of landowners, such as your lordship, there are never more than a few. But some merchants are richer than some landowners. Of these my ward is one."
"I should like to know, captain, what you mean by rich. Your ward owns ships, and brings home their cargoes—turpentine and tar—a fragrant trade."
"The farmer's muck heap smells no sweeter, and pig-styes, my lord, are no ladies' bowers."
"Show me one of your ships, captain. If you have one in port, take me on board. Make me understand what this trade means. I doubt not that before long we shall all turn our ploughs into rudders, our maypoles into masts, and our oaks into ships, and so go a trading up and down the seas, and get rich like the merchants of Lynn Regis."
I do not know how far he spoke truthfully; I am, on the whole, inclined to believe that he was actually ignorant of trade and shipping of any kind. He and his class build up a wall between themselves and those who carry on the trade which pours wealth into the country and push out their fleets into far distant seas; and he and his class imagine that they are a superior race to whom Providence hath delivered the work of administering the kingdom, with all the offices, prizes, places, and honours belonging to that work. They will not admit the merchants to any share; they fill the House of Commons—which should be an assembly containing the merchants, and who make the country rich—with placemen (their servants), and their own cousins, sons, and brothers. They command our armies and our navies; they are our judges and our magistrates; for them the poet writes, the player acts, the artist paints. They do not condescend to penetrate into the ports where the ships lie moored and the quays contain the treasures brought home and the treasures sent out. They grow continually poorer instead of richer; their gambling, their troops of servants, their drinking, their pleasant vices impoverish them; they sell their woods and pawn their revenues. All this time the merchants are growing richer; they live in places where they never see anything of the fashionable world—in villages outside London; in towns like Bristol, Lynn, Southampton, Newcastle, where there are no noble lords; they do not concern themselves about the government if only the seas are kept open.
Again, if these noblemen meet the merchants on any occasion their carriage is cold and proud. Perhaps they show an open scorn of trade; in any case, they treat them with scanty consideration, as people who have no rank. Even when they desire to conciliate these inferiors their manner is haughty, and they speak from a height.