CHAPTER IX
Men of Business
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings."—Proverbs of Solomon.
"That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business affairs."—Owen Feltham.
HAZLITT, in one of his clever essays, represents the man of business as a mean sort of person put in a go-cart, yoked to a trade or profession; alleging that all he has to do is, not to go out of the beaten track, but merely to let his affairs take their own course. "The great requisite," he says, "for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale."[1] But nothing could be more one-sided, and in effect untrue, than such a definition. Of course, there are narrow-minded men of business, as there are narrow-minded scientific men, literary men, and legislators; but there are also business men of large and comprehensive minds, capable of action on the very largest scale. As Burke said in his speech on the India Bill, he knew statesmen who were peddlers, and merchants who acted in the spirit of statesmen,
- ↑ On 'Thought and Action.'
310
