The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1879-12-20
the shanghai Mercury, Friday, 18th Aug. 1879.
The Three Commercial Eras.
CoruERcE IS TnE LIE OF NATIONS

COMMERCE is THE LIE OF NATIONS
BY her activity, by the development of her
commerce, not by the overbearing of her armies,
Carthage was the powerful and dreaded rival of
Rome. After two long and disastrous wars
against the then all-powerful Rome. Carthage
was able in a few years by the means of her com
merce to recover her former splendour, and the
great Roman senator Cato, who thought he
would find her deserted and mourning, after he
had seen her harbOrs full of ships, her warehouses
gorged with every kind Of goods, Ter streets
thrOnged with merchants, was terror-stricken,
and when he returned TO Rome he thundersd
forth his DeieHda Carthage ! Carthage must be
destroyed !-And Scipio Africanus had the miser-
able glory to burn and destroy that commercial
Emporium Of the then known world. Sad Vic
tory. force against labourl
Through jealousy of commerce masked under
religious zeal, Philip Ill of Spain sent his fleet
against England. But when the hriRcibie
Armada had been yanquished by two hurricanes
and by tie British navy led by Howard, the Com
meTcial and maritime power OF Spain fell from its
high position To rise no more. When Napoleon
the Great wanted to wound England in her heart
he established the famous continental system.
But the consiancy and activity Of the English
people came out victorious from the hard trial,
and England continued to sell her productions to
all nations not excluded by France.
Commerce, nourished by manufacturing indus
try and by agriculture, is a factor not only of
riches but Of civilization, because through it.
relations can be established between people who
did not know each other, or who feared or detest-
ed each other. In such a manner in high Egypt,
i'm Japan, in China. and in many tribes of Cent
raj Asia and Central Africa. and in Islands not
long ago segregated from the rest Of the world,
to-day they welcome among them Europeans and
Americans and exchange with them their pro-
ducts, accept their ideas and even mitigate their
customs and laws emanating from centuries back.
What an admirable spectacle did not France
present little over a year ago? Alter n terrible
struggle and ruin and slaughter and thousands
Of millions lost and paid over to her enemy, she
has given the challenge to the civilized world TO
come and vie with her in the noble and peaceful
wrestling Of industry and arts.
The geographical alterations, the new ways Of
communications, the political revolutions, the
discoveries create the great commercial centres.
Those 20 in decadence; these are rejoicing in the
zenith Of their sPlendOur, at the same time that
an unknown Island, n deserted region, n country
a short time before poor and obscure, attracts
the merchandise and the speculations of the
whole world.
In the remote centuries when the principal
means of communication was the Camel, when to
reach the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the
Black Sea, the merchandise had upon the back of
that animal (Which the arabs call the ship Of the
deSsrO, to cross the immense sOlitudes OF the
Sahara and Of Gobi-the cities which were stu
ated on the roads of the caravans have grown and
become rich, have Aourished splendid in that era.
Thebes, Tyre, SidOnis, Memphis, Palmyra
= . to-day they are no more than ruins or me-
mories,
THAT WAS THE ERA or CAMELs.
More late PhoenIcians, Syrians, Persians and
Greeks gIided over the seas with imperfect ships
and with imperfect knowledge of navigation.
Those first navigators, according to the calcula-
tions Of Pliny and of StrabO, did not make more
than fourteen miles per diem. Yet the new
principle, that new means of communication,
has given new development and impulse to the
Ommerce Of that time, and Nineveh, Babylon,
GAIA, Alexandria, Byzantium flourish in their
turn powerful and splendid.
About two thousands years after, Venice held
the sceptre Of the commerce Of the world because
her numerous galleys were going to Tunis, Al
giers, Tripoli, Alden, Alexandria, Smyrna and
BeyrOut, to ship the merchandise which her en-
terprising merchants transported across the de-
sert. But when, with the new road 10 India,
has been discovered, a new World by the i'm
mortal Italian Navigator Christopher Columbus,
the splendOur Of Venice has begun to eclipse,
and she was no more formidable for her aeets nor
for her OmmeTce-
THAT WAS THE ERA OF SHIPS.
Portuguese, Spaniards, French and English
were contesting among themselves the trident of
Neptune fallen from the hands of the ancient
Queen Of the Adriatic.
France and England have disputed among
them both the supremacy {. the seas with Il
hundred years of war. The sceptre at last re-
NAMED in the hands of the latter, already
powerful through the impotence ofSpain. And
Albion, Modern Carthage, pushed the TOSfTun of
her ships to the rich coast of India, and every
where in the far East and her Puritan sons in
dignant, have founded, although wanderers, a
second England, on the west side Of the Atlantic
ocean, to-day inhabited by forty millions of free,