Tricks of Merchants; Wm. and Mary Qrtly., Vol. 8, No. 2

Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project

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Tricks of Merchants

   William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
   (Oct., 1899), pp. 83-84.

                          TRICKS OF MERCHANTS.

   Virginia was first settled by sharp-witted people from the English cities, who came
over for trade.  A Dutch ship-captain, De Vries holds this language in reference to
them in 1642:

   The English there [in Virginia] are very hospitable, but they are not proper persons

to trade with.  You must look out when you trade with them, Peter is always by Paul, or
you will be stuck in the tail; for if they can deceive any one they account it among
themselves a Roman action.  They say in their language "He played him an English trick",
and then they have themselves esteemed.

   A writer about 1690 thus paid his compliments to the people of Massachusetts, along
the same line:*

   The people are naturally courteous, affable and obliging, but for the generality of
them that are of the gathered churches, their Religion spoils them, makes them morose
and unsociable, proud and conceited, looking on others as mean, abject creatures who
deserve their pity rather than their company.

   In their dealings they are very crafty and subtle, outdoing even Jews themselves,
who (as I hard one of those N.E. men boasting say) could not live among them.  They are
watchful of all advantages over them that they deal with, and when they have a man
within their clutches gripe him unmercifully.

   The wooden nutmegs of Connecticut have been often mentioned as proof of the 
mercantile craft of that enterprising State.  But the following extract from the will
of Lewis Morris, of Morisania, father of Gouverneur Morris (made November 19, 1760,
and recorded in the surrogate's office of the county, of New York) is quite as sugges-
tive, and is not so familiar:

   * * * It is my desire that my son Gouverneur Morris may have the best education
that is to be had in England or America, but my express will and Directions are that
he be never sent for that purpose to the Colony of Connecticut least he should imbibe
in his youth that low craft and cunning so encident to the people of that country 
which is so interwoven in their constitutions that all their art cannot disguise it
from the world, tho' many of them under the sanctified Garb of Religion have endeavored
to empose themselves on the world for honest men. * * * 

   How merchants were regarded in England by the rural gentry is shown by the following
from one of Edmund Burke's speeches:


   "Do not talk to me of a merchant; the merchant is the same in every part of the
world - his gold his god, his invoice his country, his ledger his Bible, his desk his
altar, the exchange his church, and he has faith in none but his banker."
_____________________________________________________________________________________
   *Perry's Historical Collections, Massachusetts.

Page 84.


   Virginians had lost their mercantile character at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and till lately they did not admire merchants.

   R. H. Lee said that "the spirit of commerce throughout the workd is a spirit of
avarice".  In this message to the Legislature in 1810, Governor Tyler said:  "Commerce
is certainly beneficial to society in a secondary degree, but it produces also what is
called citizens of the world - the worst citizens in the world - who, having no
attachment to any country, make themselves wings to fly away from impending dangers".

   With the destruction of negro slavery, the Virginians seem to be gradually losing
their rustic simplicity and returning to the worldly character of the first English
settlers.  The country districts are in a measure being deserted and the towns are
building up.  They do not say now in Virginia that "they played a man an English
trick", but the "Virginia yankee" is a common phrase to designate a money-making man.