Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

Mercantile Life.—The life of a merchant is necessarily a life of peril. He can scarcely move without danger. He is beset on all sides with disappointment, with fluctuations in the current of business, which sometimes leave him stranded on an unknown bar, and sometimes sweep him helpless into the ocean. These vicissitudes depend on causes which no man can control; and are often so sudden that no calculation could anticipate, or skill avoid them. To risk much, to be exposed to hazards, belongs to the vocation of a merchant; his usefulness and success depend, in many cases, on his enterprise. He must have courage to explore new regions of commerce, and encounter the difficulties of untried experiments. To be unfortunate in such pursuits is no more disgraceful to an upright trader, than to fail in the field of battle is dishonorable to the soldier, or defeat to a General who has done all that valor and skill could achieve to obtain the victory. Very different is the case of one who with but little of his own to jeopard, commences business on a system of commercial gambling, and makes his desperate throws at the risk of others; who embarks in rash and senseless adventures, condemned by common sense as by honesty; and when they end in a total wreck, looks his abused creditors coolly in the face, and offers them a list of bad debts, and an inventory of worthless goods, provided they will release and discharge him forever from their claims.

Our traders must consider themselves, or allow others to consider for them, as petty traffickers for petty gains by all advantages, but as merchants, in the fullest and most honorable sense of the term; as the men by whom the great operations of the world are sustained, by whom the intercourse of the human family, however scattered and remote, is kept up; as the instruments of civilization and intellectual improvement; as the agents to distribute the comforts and luxuries of life over the whole surface of the globe. By them the whole race of man, of every variety of complexion and character and wheresoever they may inhabit, are brought together, and taught to know each other and to aid each other. These are the peacemakers of the world, or they show it to be the interest and happiness of all to remain at peace, and they demonstrate that it is easier to obtain the good things we may desire by commerce than by arms. They soften national asperities and remove unjust prejudices. Such high functions cannot be performed by ordinary men; and those who do perform them faithfully are the noblest benefactors of mankind.

-Ingersoll.