in Scotland, whence he was sent at an early age to an uncle residing in Philadelphia, then a commissary-general of prisoners in the British service. He went to school for a time at Burlington, New Jersey, and afterward entered his uncle's office as an assistant, where he continued till the close of the Revolutionary war. He married in this city in 1783, immediately after which he made a short visit to his native country, and on his return settled here as a merchant, where he remained permanently till his death, which occurred in December, 1839, in the 81st year of his age. Mr. Lenox commenced business on a scale commensurate with his means, then slender in the extreme; but he gradually and steadily enlarged his transactions till he eventually became one of the most extensive as well as successful merchants in the United States, and such was his prudence and sagacity that it is believed there was not a year during the whole period of his actual mercantile life in which he did not find his property greater at the close than it had been at the commencement. This will be deemed the more surprising when it is considered that a fierce war raged in Europe during the whole time, and that the commerce of this country was continually subjected to the most flagrant injuries at the hands of the principal belligerents. It may also be mentioned as an evidence of his industry, which was a prominent feature in his character, that even when most extensively engaged in business, and having no partner to assist him, he invariably posted his own books. After the war of 1812 he gradually relinquished mercantile pursuits, occupying himself with the care of his own estate, which had then become large, and which afforded him amusement for a few hours daily till within a very short period of his death. Mr. Isaac Carow was the elected successor of Mr. Lenox, and as it does not fall within the design of this sketch to include any notices of the living, we close our extracts from, and references to, the proceedings of the chamber. A few words more, and I will no longer abuse the patience with which this somewhat disjointed paper has been so kindly received. My hope and aim in thus reviving the past and placing before the present day some of the memorials of the merchants of our early beginning, our colonial and Revolutionary days, have been that those who now fill a place made vacant by them-may from such antecedents derive addi tional motives for a like exercise of civic virtues, of unflinching patriotism, and of intelligent enterprise. I have, I confess, another motive, that of contributing, if it may be, to revive interest in, and the energy and importance of, the Chamber of Commerce. We have seen that from its origin up to the commencement of this century, and occasionally to a more recent date, the chamber was called upon alike by the authorities of the city, and of the State, and of the nation, for its advice and opinions on questions supposed to be specially within its cognizance--questions of quarantine, and public health and cleanliness-the laws of trade, of currency, the effect of inspection laws, of high and low duties, of bankrupt laws, &c., and the records from which I have so largely quoted show, that the merchants composing the chamber could always bring to the consideration of these questions not only much practical knowledge, but the ability to state their views with great perspicuity and force. The memorials and reports embodied in the minutes of the chamber are many of them models of style and of cogent reasoning. In later years the chamber has been less attractive to the commercial body; the meetings have been negligently attended, and hastily despatched, and as a consequence the influence of the chamber has declined. This should not be, and would not be, if the part that it and its members have played in the brief but illustrious annals of our country, were more familiarly known. If what has been said this evening shall tend in any manner to revive interest in the Chamber of Commerce, I shall derive the highest gratification from being, in some humble degree, associated with such a revival, for I, too, was bred a merchant, and never cease to feel proud of being associated with a profession which is the civilizer, the refiner and the liberator of the world. The genius of commerce is indeed well symbolized on the seal of this corporation, by the god Mercury with his winged cap and his soul-compelling caduceus. The old Greek Mythology, full as it is of hidden wisdom, and typical of higher things, has in some of the attributes ascribed to Mercury, well foreshadowed the nature and conquests of commerce; for it, too, as is fabled of the youthful Hermes, robs Neptune of his trident, Venus of her girdle, Mars of his sword, Vulcan of his forges, and even Jupiter of his sceptre. It is commerce which covers with its ships the subject sea, which sweeps over the globe for materials to adorn beauty, which seals in its scabbard the red sword of war, and cultivates peace and the arts of peace; which lights the fires of the mechanic arts, and, last and greatest of all, teaches man no longer to bow down before idols of his own creation on earth or in the skies, but, looking erect to heaven, to walk among his fellow-men as an equal, while walking humbly and devoutly before the true and no longer conjectural or unknown God. It was the distinguishing feature of the merchants who formed this association, and of their immediate successors, that they filled that most interesting portion of our history, when commerce was rising from its cradle and taking the first steps in that grand progress, which is already the marvel of the world—and which is yet advancing. At such an epoch every movement was important. Events at other seasons the most trivial were now momentous, casting forward shadows of dark and solemn import. Nor were the men of that day limited in their reward to that which the eye of faith alone could discern--for many were the instances where the individual pioneers lived to enjoy in real fruition the harvests earned by their industry and forecast. A young German was found among the number, pursuing, within the solitude and depths of the primeval forests of New York, the trapping of the beaver upon its remote and then almost inaccessible waters. That individual lived to be pushed before the advancing wave of civilization inward and inward, and yet farther inward, through the great range of inland seas to the utmost extremity of Lake Superior, and thence onward to the Rocky Mountains, and still borne on by the wave, surmounting them, till he was checked only in his progress by the shores of the Pacific. This humble German boy, thus urged on from ocean to ocean, stands (and his memory will long endure) as a type of American progress. The field of his earlier achievements the Seneca Lake-then a solitude and a waste, is now gemmed with gardens, and temples of science and religion; and in this city, his final abode, and resting place, and sepulchre, are provided the means, through the munificence of that young trapper, of building, furnishing and maintaining, a public library, on a magnificent scale, free to all, and which will bear to all time the name of JoHN JACOB ASTOR. |