produced to them a beautifully made-out statement of his transactions, but no hoggar. The Virginia trade continued for a considerable time to be carried on by companies formed as described. One of the partners acted as manager: the others did not interfere. The transactions consisted in purchasing goods for the shipments made twice a year, and making sales of the tobacco which they received in return. The goods were bought upon twelve months' credit; and when a shipment came to be paid off, the manager sent notice to the different furnishers to meet him on such a day, at such a wine-shop, with their accounts discharged. They then received the payment of their accounts, and along with it a glass of wine each, for which they paid. This curious mode of paying off these shipments was contrived with a view to furnish aid to some well-born young woman, whose parents had fallen into bad circumstances, whom it was customary to place in one of those shops in the same way that, at an after period, such a person would have been put into a milliner's shop. These wine-shops were opposite to the Tontine Exchange, and no business was transacted but in one of them.'

The man who did more than any other to improve this state of things, and to make of Glasgow the greatest commercial city in the British empire, after London and Liverpool, was Patrick Colquhoun. Descended, through both his parents, from the old family of Colquhouns, he was born on the 14th of March, 1745, at Dumbarton. There his

father, an old class-fellow of Smollett's, served as local judge and registrar of county records. But the boy seems to have been an orphan, and not very well off, before he was sixteen years old. Then, or thereabouts, he emigrated to Virginia, to reside in its eastern part, separated by Chesapeake Bay from the centre of the colony. There he occupied some sort of mercantile position, and twice each year, we are told, he crossed the water to trade with the people who came up to

VOL. VIII. NO. XLVII.

the General Courts at Richmond. He himself was fond of listening to and joining in the legal talk. His chief friends in America were lawyers and law students, among whom he added much to the scanty education he had received at home, and developed a taste, strong and healthy all through life, for political economy and social science. But ill health brought him back to Scotland in 1766.

one

In 1767, when two-and-twenty years of age, he started as a merchant in Glasgow, there chiefly to reside for another term of two-andtwenty years. Of his own commercial dealings we hear very little. He was one of those patriotic merchants who, without neglecting their duties to themselves and their immediate dependents, make it their chief business to study the welfare of society at large. All good works came naturally to Colquhoun, but he devoted himself especially to the promotion of British commerce and the advancement of Glasgow among its great places of resort. In 1776, during the American war, he was of fourteen principal contributors to a fund for raising a Glasgow regiment of troops. In 1779, and again in 1780, he came to London to hold conferences on trade with Lord North, then Premier, and to work through Parliament a bill of considerable importance to the commerce of Scotland; and in the latter year we find him chosen a local magistrate and a member of the City Council of Glasgow. 1781 he started a scheme for building a Glasgow coffee-house to be developed into the Chamber of Commerce. He also procured the improvement of the Glasgow Exchange, and so led to the construction of the new and splendid building now in use. In 1781, moreover, he was chosen a commissioner from Glasgow to a convention of the royal burghs of Scotland, then sitting at Edinburgh; and next year he came to London, as agent of that convention, to obtain an Act of Parliament, placing the linen manufacturers of North Britain on a par with those of Ireland.

In

Near the end of 1782 the building

2 H

appointed for the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of the city of Glasgow was completed and opened amid great rejoicings. Colquhoun was elected its first chairman, to continue in office till 1786; and it started with about three hundred members. It was designed for the consideration of all plans and proposals for protecting and improving every branch of domestic trade and manufacture, and the establishment of rules for the guidance and extension of all sorts of foreign trade. It was also designed to give help and advice to all individual traders, both in the immediate advancement of their callings and in furtherance of their dealings with the Government, with Parliament, or with foreign countries, and to procure relief or redress in every grievance, hardship, oppression, or inconvenience affecting any particular branch of trade or manufacture carried on by the members of the society.' In short, as it was stated in the charter of incorporation which Colquhoun came up to London to procure in the spring of 1785, it was intended to take cognizance of every matter and thing in the least degree connected with the interests of commerce, and to give stability and encouragement to the commerce and manufactures of the city of Glasgow and in the towns and villages in the neighbourhood.'

That most assuredly it did. No single event in the history of Glasgow was so advantageous to its mercantile interests as this founding of the Chamber of Commerce, due altogether, as it seems, to the forethought and perseverance of Patrick Colquhoun. At this time also he began to work with his pen. In 1783 he wrote some very sensible 'Observations on the Present State of the Linen and Cotton Manufactures.' In 1785 he published another work on "The Interchange of British Manufactures with Ireland;' and in 1788, at Pitt's request, and for his guidance, he prepared a minute account of the state of the cotton trade in Great Britain. Many other books and pamphlets followed these, all giving proof of his devotion to trade and his enlightened appreciation of

its character and needs. This he showed in all sorts of other ways. Often he hurried up to London to hold interviews with the ministers, with members of Parliament, and with the great City merchants. Often he went on like errands to Manchester, Paisley, and other towns. During the later months of 1788 and the beginning of 1789 he was in Flanders and Brabant, oftenest in Ostende, at that time the great European depôt for East Indian goods, seeing how far British manufactures could be brought to compete with foreign goods. Thence he returned to London, and did his utmost for the organization of a new national machinery for the interchange of commodities with the continental towns, as well as among the great British marts. His efforts were very beneficial, though greatly crippled, we are told, by the jealousies of the great merchants of London, who were loth to have smaller people in any sort of partnership with them. To him, it seems, was chiefly due the introduction of British muslins on the Continent, soon to issue in the establishment of an immense and very profitable trade.

In other ways, through more than thirty years, Patrick Colquhoun did great service to the nation. But his work, henceforth, had not much to do with Glasgow. For some reason unexplained-probably because, as a merchant, he had already made money enough to enable him in future to devote himself, without hindrance, to employments wholly philanthropic and altogether to his taste-he abandoned the pursuit of commerce in November, 1789. That done, he quitted Glasgow and came, at the age of forty-four, to take up his residence in London. For oneand-thirty years he busied himself in all sorts of ways for the good of society, and especially for the advancement of commerce. He was commercial agent in London for several of the West Indian islands and some continental towns. He was also, during many years, an able police magistrate. He was a frequent adviser both of the ministers of the crown and of the great City

men on matters of trade and the trading interests. He also wrote many valuable books; the most important being a treatise on The Police of the Thames,' which led to the establishment of organized plans for preventing the serious depredations of river-thieves, and another on Political Economy, full of enlightened views and charitable doctrines. He died in 1820, at the age of seventy-five, much honoured by all the good people of London, and with so much fame induced by his philanthropic works among them that his share in the advancement of Glasgow and Glasgow commerce was almost forgotten.

But the good effects of his labours in that cause could not be forgotten. Leaving Glasgow in 1789, he left it in a very different condition from that in which he found it when he first made it his home in 1767. Glasgow was even then on the high road to prosperity, and must, in any case, have steadily grown rich and influential. But Patrick Colquhoun greatly helped it in so doing, by his own example of mercantile honour and enterprise and by his advocacy of the highest commercial interests both at home and abroad. To him must be traced many of the enlightened views that characterised the Glasgow merchants who joined with him in the formation of the Chamber of Commerce, and whom he left to carry on his principles when he retired to London. Of these merchants the most notable of all was David Dale, in many ways a pupil of Colquhoun's, though his senior by six years or more.

David Dale was born, on the 6th of January, 1739, at Stewarton, in Ayrshire, where his father, breaking through the custom of his ancestors who, through many generations, lived and died as simple farmers, had established himself as a grocer and general dealer. At first David, whose only schooling was acquired by himself in later years, was a sort of farmer's boy. Then he was apprenticed to a weaver at Paisley. Not liking his work, he ran away from it; but soon after we find him returning to the same kind of employment and serving as a weaver's

lad in Hamilton. Thence he went to Glasgow, to be advanced to a clerkship in a silkmercer's establishment; and prospering therein he was able, in 1763, to start in business on his own account. Renting a shop in High Street, five doors from the Cross, for which he paid 57. a year, he sub-let half to a watchmaker for 50s., and for twenty years confined himself to the other half, finding his occupation in importing linen yarn from Flanders for sale to the manufacturers in Glasgow and elsewhere. In 1783, in consequence of his marriage to the daughter of a rich Edinburgh merchant and banker, he was appointed agent in Glasgow of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Thereupon the watchmaker was turned out of his old quarters, that they might be converted into a banking house.

In this year also, the first year of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Dale made other work for himself. He invited Sir Richard Arkwright to Glasgow, with his assistance selected the site of the famous New Lanark cotton mills on the Clyde, and, engaging to buy from him the exclusive right of using his spinning machine in Scotland, proceeded to expend on this enterprise most of the money he had been laying by during the previous twenty years. Just then, however, Arkwright's patent right was challenged, and David Dale was thus enabled to spend in other ways the amount he was about to pay for its use. In company with George M'Intosh and a Frenchman named Papillon, he established the first Scotch works for dyeing cotton Turkey-red; and in the same year, we are told, he joined in a large undertaking for the manufacture of cotton goods. The individual, who, some thirty or forty years before, was a little herdboy at Stewarton,' says his biographer,* I was now sole proprietor of, or connected as a managing partner with, several of the most extensive mercantile, manufacturing, and banking

* Andrew Liddell, Esq., in Chambers's 'Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotchmen,' to whom we owe most of the information about David Dale that is given above.

concerns of the country, the proper supervision of any one of which would have absorbed the entire powers of most other men. Mr. Dale, however, was eminently qualified to sustain the numerous and varied offices which he had undertaken. Every duty being attended to in its own place and at the proper time, he was never overburdened with work, nor did he ever appear to be in a hurry. We find him successfully conducting,with strict commercial integrity, all the important enterprises in which he was embarked, together with others not included in the enumeration.

Be

sides devoting his time and money to various benevolent schemes, he discharged the onerous duties of a magistrate of the city of Glasgow, to which he was elected in 1791, and again in 1794. Moreover, every Lord's day, and sometimes on other days, he preached the Gospel to a congregational church of which he was one of the elders.' The busy merchant had been of religious disposition from the first; and about the year 1769 he and some others 'discarded, as unscriptural, church government by sessions, presbyteries, and synods, maintaining that all who possessed the qualifications for the ministry, as laid down in the apostolic writings, and who were called by their brethren to the exercise of these gifts, were not only at liberty, but were bound, to exercise them for the good of their fellowcreatures, although they had never entered the portals of a college or a divinity hall. These new views, especially when acted upon by the appointment of Mr. Dale to the ministry, raised a shout of derision. He was hooted and jostled in the streets, and many times forced to take shelter under some friendly roof. Even the meeting-house did not escape the popular dislike; stones and other missiles were hurled against it, till the windows, roof, and other parts of the building were much injured.' David Dale paid no heed to this petty persecution, however, and preached on as his conscience bade him. In so doing he lost no favour with any whose favour was worth having, as was

curiously shown during his magistracy in 1791. 'It was then and for a long time afterwards the practice of the magistrates and other civic functionaries to walk in procession to the parish church, escorted by city officers in uniform, with halberds and other tokens of authority. Mr. Dale could not, of course, accompany the procession to the parish church; but rather than allow a magistrate to go unescorted to any place of worship, it was arranged that a portion of the city officers should, in livery and with halberds, attend him to and from his own place of worship and wait upon him while there.'

Honest Dale did not suffer his religious zeal to interfere with his zealous attention to business matters; but like many other rich merchants, he was famous for his charitable disposition. During the famine years of 1782, 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1799, we learn, he chartered several ships and sent them to America, Ireland, and the Continent, there to buy all sorts of wholesome food, which, when brought to Glasgow, he caused to be sold to the poor at cost price or less. David Dale gives his money by sho'elfuls,' the poor people of Glasgow used to say; but God Almighty sho'els it back again.' And his charity found expression in all sorts of ways. Once, it is said, a young man brought to the bank, to be discounted, a draft which excited the cashier's suspicions. The matter was referred to David Dale himself, and he, on questioning the youth, soon drew from him a confession that he had forged the bill under the pressure of great want. It proved to be a reckless and foolhardy, rather than a criminal act. So, at any rate, thought the banker. He therefore pointed out to the youth the danger he had incurred and the mischief that might have arisen to others as well as himself from his rashness, and then not only destroyed the draft, and with it all proof of his guilt, but seconded his good advice with a present of some money.

When establishing the mills at New Lanark in 1783, Dale took

every care of his workpeople. He built comfortable dwellings for them, gave them good wages, and promised them constant employment. But the great prejudice then existing among the Lowland Scots against factory work made it difficult for him to get labourers enough. He had to bring from a distance great numbers of Highlanders, and also to draw from the poorhouses of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the other large towns all the orphans and pauper children who were found worthy of employment. That, by itself, was a great boon to Scotland.

These mills brought to Dale the larger part of his great wealth. But, owing to the care and anxiety that they gave him, he resolved in 1799, when he was sixty years of age, to dispose of them. To that step he was further led by a visit from the famous Robert Owen, who had raised himself from a position of poverty to one of affluence as manager of a large spinning mill at Chorlton, near Manchester. The young man had been long known to him, and now he had come, it seems, to marry the merchant's eldest daughter. It therefore was thought well that he should transfer his residence to Glasgow, and that suitable employment should be found for him. A company was accordingly formed, with Robert Owen for a chief member, which bought the business at New Lanark for a sum of 66,000l. Owen managed it very successfully for eight-and-twenty years. In 1814 some changes were made, and many new partners, especially Jeremy

Bentham and William Allen, the Quaker, were introduced. It was then arranged that, after five per cent. on the capital had been paid to the shareholders, all further profits should be applied to the religious, educational, and moral improvement of the workers and of the community at large.' The biographer of William Allen tells us that provision was made for the religious education of all the children of the labourers employed in the works, and that nothing should be introduced tending to disparage the Christian religion or undervalue the authority of the Holy Scriptures.' Unfortunately, differences between Robert Owen and his partners soon arose upon questions of religion and religious duty.

Before that, however, and before there was anything to cause disagreement between him and his son-in-law, good old David Dale had left Glasgow for ever. In 1782 he had built for himself a great house at the corner of Charlotte Street, at a cost of 6,000l. There,

on the 17th of March, 1806, he died. In the sixty years that have elapsed since then, Glasgow has prospered even more rapidly than Liverpool or Manchester, through the energy of a crowd of famous merchants and manufacturers. But we must not forget that Patrick Colquhoun and David Dale were the men who, more than any others, helped to raise it out of the insignificance in which it had lain during four previous centuries.

H. R. F. B.