PREFACE. ON the day that Mr. Budgett died I was in Bristol, staying with one whose heart was that day full. He who had just departed was naturally the subject of conversation, and the incidents of his early life were freely talked over. Just then the prospect of a long involuntary leisure was before me; and designs for improving it by literary occupation were already formed. But as the uncommon history of the deceased merchant was discussed, the thought arose that to make it the subject of a Commercial Biography would be the most useful application of the expected leisure. This design was more homely than those originally entertained, and at first, not very welcome; but after some time spent in observing and inquiring, the conviction of its superior usefulness was confirmed. I therefore ventured to request permission from the family to acquaint myself with all the accessible details of his life, and to prepare them for the Public in the form which had suggested itself to me. The request was unexpected, but was kindly met; and without a trace of the vulgar reluctance to allude to the earlier stages of a remarkable rise, every particular was communicated and freely left at my disposal. A strong desire, indeed, was manifested to lay me under restraint as to anything which might be construed into business display; but my design required freedom to show what Mr. Budgett had attained, and that I was obliged to use. I saw him carried to his grave, and that day conversed with numbers of his neighbours and his men, none knowing my intentions. At long intervals, such conversations were repeated with many who had known him closely, some being aware and others not aware that a book was in contemplation; and certainly very seldom has a master been pourtrayed so much by the hand of his own men, or a citizen by that of his neighbours, as in the following pages. Biographers, like portrait painters, are a suspected race it is generally taken for granted that they paint men as they ought to be; while to the historian you must look for the delineation of men as they are. How far the infirmity of the race besets me would not be discussed impartially just here; but it may fairly be said that, in the picture you are asked to look upon, an effort has been made to insert, with a firm hand, every real scar. Some will say they are too slight; others will say they are too deep, and these they who most intimately knew the original. The design of this volume is to furnish a work wherein an actual and a remarkable life is traced in relation to Commerce. It was never meant to enlarge the knowledge of the scholar, to mature the graces of the holy, or to hallow the retirement of the contemplative; but to be a friendly, familiar book for the busy, to which men from the counting-house or the shop might turn, feeling that it concerned them, and for which they might possibly be the better here and hereafter. Beyond this, one hope did arise, that it might perhaps meet the eye of some whose leisure, abilities, and spirit would fit them to direct a more powerful literature or a sacred eloquence to the quickening of commercial life with the principles of Christian charity and uprightness. May God grant that, by the |