Study Edition · Essay 21
The Royal Exchange
Source: The Spectator, No. 69, Saturday 19 May 1711. Text from The Spectator, ed. Henry Morley, Project Gutenberg #12030. Spelling and capitals modernized. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
Mr. Spectator visits the Royal Exchange, the great trading hall in the City of London, and delights in the crowd of merchants from every nation. The essay is an early hymn to global trade. It argues that nature spread its gifts unevenly so that peoples would need one another, and that merchants are the “ambassadors” who knit mankind together.
36 sentences: 10 simple, 11 moderate, 15 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- frequent (verb)to visit often
- emporiuma great centre of trade; a marketplace
- High-Changethe busiest trading hour at the Exchange
- factoran agent who buys and sells for a merchant
- correspondencefriendly relations; communication
- connive atto pretend not to notice
- remitto send money to someone at a distance
- forbearto hold back from; refrain
- superfluousmore than is needed; surplus
- disseminateto scatter or spread widely
- traffictrade; buying and selling (old sense)
- peculiar (to)belonging only to; special to
- tippeta fur scarf worn over the shoulders
- brocadea rich fabric woven with raised patterns, often in gold or silver
- hips and hawsthe red berries of wild rose and hawthorn
- sloea small, sour wild plum
- naturalizedmade at home in a new country
- vassala medieval tenant bound to serve a lord
- concoursea crowd of people gathered together
- accessionan addition; an increase
The Essay
Hic segetes, illic veniunt felicius uvae:
Arborei foetus alibi, atque injussa virescunt
Gramina. Nonne vides, croceos ut Tmolus odores,
India mittit ebur, molles sua thura Sabaei?
At Chalybes nudi ferrum, virosaque Pontus
Castorea, Eliadum palmas Epirus equarum?
Continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis
Imposuit Natura locis … (Virgil)1
There is no place in the town which I so much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange.2 It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth.3 I must confess I look upon High-Change to be a great council, in which all considerable nations have their representatives.4 Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the politic world; they negotiate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent.5 I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London, or to see a subject of the Great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy.6 I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages: sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen.7 I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman at different times; or rather fancy myself like the old philosopher, who upon being asked what countryman he was, replied, that he was a citizen of the world.8
Though I very frequently visit this busy multitude of people, I am known to nobody there but my friend, Sir Andrew, who often smiles upon me as he sees me bustling in the crowd, but at the same time connives at my presence without taking any further notice of me.9 There is indeed a merchant of Egypt, who just knows me by sight, having formerly remitted me some money to Grand Cairo; but as I am not versed in the modern Coptic, our conferences go no further than a bow and a grimace.10
This grand scene of business gives me an infinite variety of solid and substantial entertainments.11 As I am a great lover of mankind, my heart naturally overflows with pleasure at the sight of a prosperous and happy multitude, insomuch that at many public solemnities I cannot forbear expressing my joy with tears that have stolen down my cheeks.12 For this reason I am wonderfully delighted to see such a body of men thriving in their own private fortunes, and at the same time promoting the public stock; or in other words, raising estates for their own families, by bringing into their country whatever is wanting, and carrying out of it whatever is superfluous.13
Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another, and be united together by their common interest.14 Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it.15 The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another.16 The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbados: the infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane.17 The Philippine Islands give a flavour to our European bowls.18 The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates.19 The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth.20 The scarf is sent from the Torrid Zone, and the tippet from beneath the Pole.21 The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.22
If we consider our own country in its natural prospect, without any of the benefits and advantages of commerce, what a barren uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our share!23 Natural historians tell us, that no fruit grows originally among us, besides hips and haws, acorns and pig-nuts, with other delicates of the like nature; that our climate of itself, and without the assistances of art, can make no further advances towards a plum than to a sloe, and carries an apple to no greater a perfection than a crab; that our melons, our peaches, our figs, our apricots, and cherries, are strangers among us, imported in different ages, and naturalized in our English gardens; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the trash of our own country, if they were wholly neglected by the planter, and left to the mercy of our sun and soil.24 Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable world, than it has improved the whole face of nature among us.25 Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate: our tables are stored with spices, and oils, and wines: our rooms are filled with pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan: our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth: we repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies.26 My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of France our gardens; the Spice Islands our hot-beds; the Persians our silk-weavers, and the Chinese our potters.27 Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us greater variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with everything that is convenient and ornamental.28 Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that whilst we enjoy the remotest products of the North and South, we are free from those extremities of weather which give them birth; that our eyes are refreshed with the green fields of Britain, at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that rise between the Tropics.29
For these reasons there are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants.30 They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.31 Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies.32 The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone warmed with the fleeces of our sheep.33
When I have been upon the 'Change, I have often fancied one of our old kings standing in person, where he is represented in effigy, and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place is every day filled.34 In this case, how would he be surprised to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former dominions, and to see so many private men, who in his time would have been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the royal treasury!35 Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us a kind of additional empire: it has multiplied the number of the rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable as the lands themselves.36
Sentence Notes
In plain English: “Here corn grows best, there grapes; elsewhere young trees, and grasses turn green unbidden. Don't you see how Tmolus sends saffron scents, India ivory, the soft Sabaeans their incense, the naked Chalybes iron, Pontus pungent beaver-oil, and Epirus mares that win at Olympia? From the beginning Nature laid these laws and everlasting covenants on particular places.”
Reference & context: Virgil, Georgics I.54–61. Virgil's point, that each region has its own special product, is exactly the argument of Addison's essay.
In plain English: There's nowhere in London I love to visit as much as the Royal Exchange.
Reference & context: The Royal Exchange, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1565, was the meeting place for merchants in the City of London. The building Addison knew was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666.
In plain English: As an Englishman, I feel a private pleasure, and a little pride, in seeing such a wealthy gathering of Englishmen and foreigners discussing the world's business together, and turning London into a market for the whole planet.
In plain English: I admit I think of the Exchange at its busiest as a great parliament where every important nation has its representatives.
In plain English: Merchants' agents are to trade what ambassadors are to politics: they negotiate, make agreements, and keep up good relations between rich communities separated by seas and oceans or living at opposite ends of a continent.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A neat analogy that gives commerce the dignity of diplomacy.
In plain English: I have often enjoyed hearing a Japanese trader and a London alderman settle a dispute, or seeing a subject of the Mughal emperor make a deal with a subject of the Russian Tsar.
Reference & context: The Great Mogul was the Mughal emperor of India; the Czar of Muscovy was Peter the Great of Russia. An alderman was a senior member of the City of London's governing council.
In plain English: I love mingling with these various ‘ministers of trade’, each with their own section of the floor and their own language. Sometimes I'm pushed about among Armenians, sometimes lost in a crowd of Jewish merchants, sometimes one of a group of Dutchmen.
Reference & context: Merchants of each nation gathered in their own “walks,” fixed areas of the Exchange floor.
In plain English: At different moments I'm a Dane, a Swede or a Frenchman; or rather, I imagine I'm like the ancient philosopher who, asked where he came from, said he was a citizen of the world.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The ancient root of the word “cosmopolitan,” used here to celebrate an open, international spirit.
Reference & context: Diogenes the Cynic (4th century BC), according to Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers 6.63, answered “I am a citizen of the world” (kosmopolitēs), the origin of the word “cosmopolitan.” Goldsmith later called his own essay series The Citizen of the World.
In plain English: Though I go there often, nobody knows me except my friend Sir Andrew, who often smiles as he sees me pushing through the crowd but tactfully pretends not to notice me.
Reference & context: Sir Andrew Freeport is the merchant member of the fictional Spectator Club, who speaks for trade and the City. Mr. Spectator is famously silent and prefers to observe unrecognised.
In plain English: There is one Egyptian merchant who knows me by sight, because he once sent money to me in Cairo; but since I don't speak modern Coptic, our meetings consist only of a bow and a face.
Reference & context: In Spectator No. 1, Mr. Spectator says he once travelled to Grand Cairo to measure a pyramid. Coptic was the language of Egyptian Christians, by then used only in church. Addison's joke is that he imagines it is still spoken in the street.
In plain English: This great scene of business provides me with endless real enjoyment.
In plain English: Because I love humanity, the sight of a prosperous, happy crowd fills me with pleasure, so much so that at many public celebrations I can't help crying for joy.
In plain English: So I'm very pleased to see so many men getting rich privately while also adding to the nation's wealth; that is, making fortunes for their families by importing what the country lacks and exporting what it has too much of.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: An early, elegant statement of the idea that private profit can serve the public good, decades before Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776).
In plain English: Nature seems to have deliberately spread her gifts across different regions so that people would trade with each other, and so that the peoples of the world would depend on one another and be united by shared interests.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The essay's central idea: trade as nature's plan for binding humanity together.
In plain English: Almost every degree of latitude produces something of its own.
Reference & context: “Degree” here means a band of latitude, a region of the globe.
In plain English: Often the food comes from one country and the sauce for it from another.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A witty, homely way to state the whole argument in one short sentence.
In plain English: Portuguese fruit is sweetened with West Indian sugar; Chinese tea is sweetened with sugar cane from the Indies.
Reference & context: Barbados grew sugar on plantations worked by enslaved Africans, a dark side of the trade Addison praises. The “infusion of a China plant” is tea, newly fashionable in London. The “Indian cane” is sugar cane from the West Indies.
In plain English: The Philippines add spices to European bowls of punch.
Reference & context: Spices from the East Indies, including those shipped through Manila, flavoured the punch bowls of the time.
In plain English: One outfit of a fashionable lady is often made from materials from a hundred different regions.
In plain English: Her fur muff and her fan come from opposite ends of the world.
In plain English: Her silk scarf comes from the tropics, and her fur wrap from the Arctic.
In plain English: The gold and silver thread in her rich petticoat comes from Peruvian mines, and her diamond necklace from deep within India.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A striking image: a lady's clothes literally “rise” out of mines on the far side of the world.
Reference & context: Peru's silver mines (especially Potosí, in what is now Bolivia) and India's diamond mines at Golconda were famous sources of wealth.
In plain English: If we picture our country as nature made it, without the benefits of trade, what a bare and miserable patch of land we have been given!
In plain English: Naturalists tell us that the only fruits native to Britain are wild rose hips, haws, acorns, pig-nuts and similar ‘treats’; that left to itself our climate can produce nothing better than a sour sloe instead of a plum, or a crab apple instead of a real apple; that our melons, peaches, figs, apricots and cherries are all foreigners brought in over the centuries and settled in our gardens; and that they would all go wild and worthless if gardeners stopped caring for them.
Reference & context: Structure tip: this long sentence is a list of “that …” clauses, all depending on “Natural historians tell us.” A crab is a crab apple, small and sour. A pig-nut is a wild plant with an edible root.
In plain English: And trade hasn't only enriched our plants; it has improved everything around us.
In plain English: Our ships bring in the harvest of every climate. Our tables are full of spices, oils and wines. Our rooms have stacks of Chinese porcelain and Japanese lacquer. Our morning drink comes from the far corners of the earth. American medicines heal us, and we rest under Indian fabrics.
Reference & context: “Pyramids of China”: porcelain was displayed in stepped pyramids on mantelpieces. The “morning's draught” is coffee, tea or chocolate. “Drugs of America” included Peruvian bark (quinine), used against fever.
In plain English: My friend Sir Andrew says the French vineyards are our gardens, the Spice Islands our greenhouses, the Persians our silk-weavers and the Chinese our potters.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Sir Andrew treats the whole world as Britain's private household staff, which is both a witty and a revealing view of early empire.
Reference & context: The Spice Islands are the Moluccas, in modern Indonesia, the source of cloves and nutmeg. A hot-bed is a bed of soil heated by rotting manure, used to force plants.
In plain English: Nature gives us only the basics; trade gives us more variety of useful things, and also everything that is comfortable and beautiful.
In plain English: Not the least part of our good fortune is that we enjoy products from the far north and south without suffering the extreme climates that produce them. We look out on Britain's green fields while eating tropical fruit.
In plain English: So no one is more useful to a nation than its merchants.
In plain English: They bind humanity together through exchanging services, spread nature's gifts around, give the poor jobs, make the rich richer and the powerful more splendid.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “Knit mankind together” is the essay's governing metaphor in three words.
In plain English: The English merchant turns Cornish tin into gold and swaps English wool for rubies.
Reference & context: Tin from Cornwall and wool cloth were England's great exports.
In plain English: Muslims in the Ottoman lands wear British cloth, and people in the Arctic are kept warm with British wool.
Reference & context: “Mahometans” was the old European word for Muslims. English broadcloth was a major export to the Ottoman Empire through the Levant Company.
In plain English: When I've been at the Exchange I've often imagined one of our old kings, whose statues stand there, coming to life and looking down at the rich crowd that fills the place every day.
Reference & context: Statues of English monarchs stood in niches around the Exchange's courtyard.
In plain English: How amazed he'd be to hear every European language spoken in this little corner of his old kingdom, and to see ordinary men, who in his day would have been the serfs of some great lord, bargaining like princes for more money than the royal treasury ever held!
In plain English: Without adding any land to Britain, trade has given us a second kind of empire: it has made far more people rich, raised the value of country estates enormously, and added new forms of wealth worth as much as the land itself.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The essay's closing idea: commerce as an “empire” that conquers nothing yet enriches everyone.
Fun Fact
The Royal Exchange Addison loved burned down in 1838. Its replacement, opened by Queen Victoria in 1844, still stands opposite the Bank of England. It stopped being a place of trade long ago and is now a luxury shopping and dining arcade, so the “emporium for the whole earth” still sells imported goods, just to different customers.