contraband do but play at hazard with the
authorities. When we pass the gauntlet unharmed, we gain; and when we
lose, the servants of the crown find their profit. The stakes are equal,
and the game should not be stigmatized as unfair. Would the rulers of the
world once remove the unnecessary shackles they impose on commerce, our
calling would disappear, and the name of free-trader would then belong to
the richest and most esteemed houses."

The Alderman drew a long, low whistle. Motioning to his companions to be
seated, he placed his own compact person in a chair, crossed his legs with
an air of self-complacency, and resumed the discourse.

"These are very pretty sentiments, Master--a--a--a--, you bear a worthy
name, no doubt, my ingenious commentator on commerce?"

"They call me Seadrift, when they spare a harsher term;" returned the
other, meekly declining to be seated.

"These are pretty sentiments, Master Seadrift, and they much become a
gentleman who lives by practical comments on the revenue-laws. This is a
wise world, Captain Cornelius Ludlow, and in it there are many men whose
heads are tilled, like bales of goods, with a general assortment of
ideas.--Hornbooks and primers! Here have Van Bummel, Schoenbroeck, and Van
der Donck, just sent me a very neatly-folded pamphlet, written in good
Leyden Dutch, to prove that trade is an exchange of what the author calls
equivalents, and that nations have nothing to do but to throw open their
ports, in order to make a millennium among the merchants!"

"There are many ingenious men who entertain the same opinions;" observed
Ludlow, steady in his resolution to be merely a quiet observer of all that
passed.

"What cannot a cunning head devise, to spoil paper with! Trade is a racer,
gentlemen, and merchants the jockeys who ride. He who carries most weight
may lose; but then nature does not give all men the same dimensions, and
judges are as necessary to the struggles of the mart as to those of the
course. Go, mount your gelding, if you are lucky enough to have one that
has not been melted into a weasel by the heartless blacks, and ride out to
Harlaem Flats, on a fine October day, and witness the manner in which the
trial of speed is made. The rogues of riders cut in here, and over there;
now the whip and now the spur; and though they start fair, which is more
than can always be said of trade, some one is sure to win. When it is neck
and neck, then the neat is to be gone ov