This summary leaves me with a haunting sense of how little I have really been able to say to you. It was obviously impossible in the course of one short hour to compass all the aspects of a great subject. Much had to be omitted on account of its trivality more on account of its importance. My aim was to be practical. T have been able to convince you that in the common affairs of our daily business life there are high principles at stake and great interests involved; that in the right perception of these principles and our faithful performance of the duties they entail lies our personal responsibility for issues of good and evil greater than the mind can conceive if [have been able to make any of you think that these common things are worth thinking about, and even to stimulate some of youth the study of them, my object to-night has been accomplished. "Let me recommend to you in this connection the University Extension Series' manual on money which I have drawn upon freely in the course of this lecture.
Do not believe those who tell you that Such studies unfit a man for the practical work of daily life.
Do not believe that to be successful in business you must needs be an ignoramus. I do not deny that there was a time when this may have been partially true. Ibis possible to lose in force what you gain in breadth. Business success demands a great deal of concentration and concentration comes more easily to narrow minds. There was a time, I say, when with the increase of productive and locomotive machinery, there may have been a positive advantage in that dull, stolid tenacity of purpose which had neither eyes nor ears ut for the business in hand, which slaved in the counting-house from morning to night, and even then could hardly keep ce With a commerce that was advancing by leaps and bounds. That time has passed. The merchant can no longer afford to slave in his counting-house, or to close his eyes to avast variety of matters which were formerly considered unpractical and unnecessary. Trade no longer comes to him; he has to search it out. It has ceased to be parochial it has become international. Breadth of view is now required as well as concentration of purpose. Political economy has itself become cosmopolitan and a sound business knowledgeimpliessucha familiarity with the conditions—social, climatic, agricultural, political—of other countries as well as our own, that it is hardly too much to say that there is no branch of knowledge which may not find its legitimate business vocation, hope no one of you will say, that, however true these things may be, they do not concern those who, with but little prospect of advancement, are compelled to occupy themselves with the mean details of office drudgery. To think so, gentlemen, is, indeed the surest way to remain a drudge all your days. These questions do concern you. Do not lose sight of the dignity of your labour amid its necessary and often tedious details, Remember you are a part of the great industrial machine which de-Firmonious cooperation of the whole. Our ends for its successful working upon the
work is what we make it. There are fow departments of work which are not interesting if only you will bring intelligence to bear upon them. No work is mean so it be honestly performed—
"All service ranks the same with God, With God, whose puppets best and worst Are we. There is no last nor first,""
Here and now in China it needs no pro-photic vision to see that we stand at the parting of the ways. Changes, vital and far-reaching, are taking place before our very eyes. We cannot hope to escape the difticulties which novel and less favourable conditions will surely create. It is not the old who will be called upon to surmount them. It isthe young. Itisyou. Believe me, gentlemen, if we are to maintain our supremacy in these lands and hand on undiminished the inheritance committed to us, it will be by no timorous, old-womanish, rule-of-thumb methods, but by the resolute action of men schooled to boldness and decision, with the capacity to grasp the situation and the ability to control it for widely peaceful and beneficent ends. May you so school and equip yourselves now, that, when your time comes and you are called upon to step into the breach, you will found wanting neither in courage nor capacity. Let me leave with you as my parting words Burke's solemn admonition to the little for the ephete of our duty-if on the English people: "If we make ourselves too
contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass of the object, be well assured that everything about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are sunk to' the dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean reparations upon mighty ruins."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.