J. Currie Elles

“ State secrets are secrets, but the names of Sir Henry Parkes, Sir Robert Hart, Sir Ernest Satow, Sir John Macleavy Brown, and Sir Pelham Warren will ever live in the annals of the Par East as pillars of strength created by commerce and handed down to posterity as monuments of civilization. All these great men I am proud to say I have known. Even later, and quite lately, we have only to look at what has happened in Egypt under the gigantic intellect of one man. ”

“ Commerce presupposes and marches hand in hand with civilization, and commerce through all times has developed civilization, while civilization has often failed and retrograded to the detriment and set-back of commerce. During all the turbulent mundane history of this our earth, through all the effacements of empires and the downfall of civilization, commerce has ever emerged supreme from the ashes of her predecessors to initiate and establish a new era even more extensive and far reaching ”

“ Distrust and want of confidence have engendered a deplorable issue, and with the growth of education and development an unfortunate element of social unrest has arisen which bids fair to blast the prospects and arrest the progress of civilization. Viewing the events in Europe during the last fifty years, with the growth of anarchy, socialism, and nihilism, we may well wonder whether we have not taken a cast back to the horrors and darkness of the middle ages, and whether all our progress and civilization, as contrasted with that of the middle ages, can have anything to boast of. ”

“ In the daily avocations of the world, whether in commerce, in science, in literature, or in surgery, the demand is exacting, and the new discoveries in all of these branches call forth on all sides fresh incentives and caterers for the supply. The problem in all classes or professions is now how to adjust the supply, already over-abundant, to the demand. The professions are over-crowded, and, though the prizes may be great and few, the blanks are many and the list of failures is long. ”

“ Here be it recorded the world has much to owe to France in civilization and in commerce, though this power had to give way in the routine of fate to Britain's power, not only in India, but also in America. We have much to thank France for in literature, in science, and also in war; and war has always been a most potent factor in establishing commerce in her true place over a dying and ofttimes a defunct civilization. ”

“ In spite of overwhelming evidence it is most difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilization which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world. It is indisputable that much of the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to them by the embodiment of some permanent record. ”

“ I am in favour of all encouragement being extended and prosecuted, and opportunity given, at a small expense to the individual, towards making the youth of this country capable of grappling with their great future. In time to come, and it may not be in my time, probably not in the time of our children, this great continent of Australia, with its predominant position on the shores of the Pacific, will enter the arena of the Pacific Ocean, along with the countries on its shores, in the battle for existence and self-preservation. ”

“ The whole world is convulsed and paralysed by the mania from which no country is exempt, and which threatens to end in a revolution, the outcome of which will, if our position in the twentieth century be one of progress, initiate a base and degraded course on the progress of this cycle. It would seem as if in the so-called growth and progress of education and liberal ideas all that is to be revered and traditional in our minds is to be swamped by the irreverent and irresponsible. The worst feature is that the demand for intellect exceeds the supply in the conduct of the world's affairs. ”

“ Old-established laws and customs, in every known branch of trade and profession, give way to new: old sources of supply become dried up, and in turn have become sources of demand. Staple articles of trade and commerce lose ground and become supplanted by others whose existence hitherto had barely maintained a place in economy, from their very uselessness for any known purpose. Science having investigated the various capabilities of the products of the earth, one class is kept in check by the resources of the other. ”

“ It is a singular and interesting thing to witness the return of the cycle of thought from East to West, where the East enquires of the West for whatever is good in her philosophy, whence in earlier times the West derived all that she holds most sacred in learning and knowledge. But we cannot put Japan on a level with China in ancient civilization. Japan acknowledges her tribute to India and China for her Buddhist religion, and some centuries ago Japan adopted the Chinese written language as her own. ”

“ Every product of every country was to be found in Rome; every subject of every nation resided there either free or as a slave. The wealth from commerce and power in the Roman Empire was enormous, and stimulated and encouraged the highest pursuits of literature and learning. The legacy given by Rome to civilization and literature is incalculable in its value. In all parts of Europe, the British Isles, in Asia and in Africa, even now immense remains of Roman commerce and civilization are only just being unearthed. ”

“ The wealth of the erudite and ably commercial father, acquired by brain-power and daily toil, has, in Great Britain, come down to the sons, who, without the strenuous ordeal of individual effort, have in many cases relapsed into the ease begotten of bequeathed affluence and luxury. The same, to a certain extent, is true in Australia, though I must say that State aid to education is, I believe, having a most baneful effect on this country, through its indiscriminate favours, and especially so on the individual. The great principle of individual effort is being suppressed. ”

“ Very much of what is good and honest in this world has been called into being by commerce. The pre-supposition of and the establishment of honourable dealing rendered imperative on the first traders, as their raison d'etre, their existence and their livelihood, has survived in the high moral tone and character in trade initiated by the pioneers of commerce. In the old policies of insurance in the East, still surviving some forty years ago, the phrase, "In the name of God, Amen", was the first line in a policy of marine insurance. ”

“ There has been a material civilization, but, instead of the civilization expanding the law, the law has limited the civilization. It may also be remarked that the stationary condition of the human race is the rule, the progressive the exception." This may or may not be a true estimate, but it is none the less true and sad that the greatest commercial organizations the world has seen have led up to highly cultured systems of civilization, again to fall away through what I must call the era of theories and fads which have been the wreck of so many nations. ”

“ Now, in our great British Empire, the greatest the world has ever acknowledged, with her dependencies extending to every part of the globe, her hand directing through her commerce every movement of finance, the writing is on the wall indicating trouble created from within. In time the pre-eminent position of this great Empire will be challenged. It will not be the fleets and armies of other nations that will strike the first blow. It will be by what Maine calls the law stopping civilization. ”

“ I take it that a British Admiral is Emir of the Sea; that the office, British Admiral, is the highest given to any subject of any nation on earth. Long may he remain so, and long may a British Admiral's flag be feared, respected, and admired! The collapse of the Mohammedan power in Spain, destroying, as it did, the high state of commercial organizations and systems of civilization, is a calamity from which the civilized world has not recovered to this day. ”

“ The Phoenicians whose commerce, as I have said, spread from India to the British Isles, embraced all the products of the then known world at Tyre, their capital. They formed colonies on the Mediterranean at Carthage, the modern French naval station Bizerta; and though their commerce was immense, extending to all parts of the then known world, they paid tribute to the Lybians, from whom they acquired a site for a trading centre. Enriched by commerce, they acquired the unrest which comes from prosperity, which has been the overthrow of other nations, and many individuals. ”

“ The science of the foreign exchanges is as firmly fixed and governed by laws as are the rise and fall of the tides or the laws of storms. Anyhow, Australia is so far a portion of the British Empire that she cannot afford to remain apart, if not from her very dependence in every way on the Old Land, at least from her being part of the machinery upon which the old world's commerce and finance revolve and have their raison d'etre. ”

“ Yet the habits of advancing civilization are, if I mistake not, on the whole inimical to its growth. For the reverence grows out of a sense of constant dependence. Every great change, either of belief or of circumstances, brings with it a change of emotions. ”

“ The mantle of past empires was cast on Great Britain, As heir to all the ages she inherited all that was to be known from Chaldea, Babylon, Greece, Home, Egypt, and Arabia, Supreme in war, invincible in conquest by the power of individual effort, in the language of Homer, who described the ancient Egyptian Thebes, "She spread her conquests o'er a thousand States, and poured her heroes through a hundred gates". ”

“ The keen competition which enters into the case is the cause of the still keener efforts to supplant the successful ones, in turn giving way to some power or combination which is able to supply the demand on some newer and cheaper principle; and thus the world goes on, and the "survival of the fittest" doctrine in every case holds good: the newest acquisition of science and the latest discoveries in art and manufacture, all combining and being turned to account in the struggle for existence. ”

“ But when our Australian commercial community is educated thoroughly to understand, appreciate, and respect the great civilized nations of Asia, from whom most, if not all, of our civilization has been derived, then may commerce and civilization go hand in hand, and may it be said about Australia that she has derived "Ex Oriente lux". ”

“ The effects of over-education, or high education, promote a species of nervous disorders, which call forth the efforts of science to adjust, on the inhabitants of our day. The present state of Europe is that of a slumbering volcano, which may at any moment break forth into an eruption which will convulse humanity. The entire position is the outcome of long intervals of peace, the cultivation of progress in all its branches of science, colonization, and national development. ”

“ In active benevolence, in the spirit of reverence, in loyalty, in co-operative habits, they far transcend the noblest ages of pagan antiquity, while in that humanity which shrinks from the infliction of suffering, they were superior to Roman, and in their respect for chastity, to Greek civilization. ”

“ The older the period examined, the more unique the honesty of commerce disclosed.
The great economic study of the wants and requirements of the present day, and the means to satisfy them, is evolved in many ways; and the varied aspects of the question present an ever-changing front, an ever-varying quantity, sometimes giving rise to much speculation, and always the subject of much controversial argument. The growth of human knowledge and often the preponderating influence of human ignorance, the increased and exacting requirements of civilization ”

“ Now, in the days of our old land, when constant struggles for existence promoted a spirit of individual effort—not dependence, but a character for independence—these qualities seem to be decading, not only in Australia, but also in the old land. The great prosperity in Great Britain in the last two generations has engendered in the present era an effeteness and dependence on others. ”

“ In China a debt is a debt: it descends from father to son, and Chinese law can compel the son to make good his father's debts. Civilization being a growth on commerce has of times raised its baneful arguments against the hereditary law of honesty, established by commerce, and brought about side issues and legal technicalities to evade true indebtedness: in this way so-called civilization has hindered commerce. Commerce always is the honest, practical fact in history: civilization often the theoretical fad. ”

“ The great Empire of India became her vassal; a British subject is the Governor-General of India, and 300,000,000 of people are now governed by their Emperor, the Kaisar-i-Hindh, our beloved and able King, Edward VII. The great Empire of China, the pearl of all price of the East India Company, who reckoned their trade with India far inferior to their trade with China, became, is now, and may it ever remain so, dominated by majority of influence and commerce by the Union Jack. ”

“ This is an iconoclastic age: an age realistic rather than idealistic; an age of inventions, of perfecting of scientific discoveries; an age no longer of steam, but of electricity, which not only puts a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, but which grasps the lightning from the clouds to do its bidding. ”