business as well as private, rose accordingly, from almost £5,000 in 1763, to £64,000 in 1790, and to £500,000 in 1804. Network Early on Baring's business profits were derived mostly from international trade, especially between Britain, the western European coast, the Iberian peninsula, Italy, the West Indies, and, from the 1770s, North America. They arose from trading on sole account or, more often, on joint account with other merchants; from acting as London agent for overseas merchants, buying and selling consignments, making and collecting payments, and arranging shipping and warehousing; and, in due course, from trade finance through making advances or, more frequently, accepting bills of exchange. In the West Indies, Baring had major financial interests in sugar and slavery. It is said he made his fortune from the slave trade while only 16 years old. With the income he generated from these ventures, Baring bought Manor House in 1796. The success of this work was greatly influenced by the establishment of a powerful network of corresponding houses in the main international trading centres. These alliances with leading European and North American merchants were the keys to his success. Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, the most powerful merchant bank in Europe's leading financial centre, was Baring's most valuable connection. Their association is said to have begun in the 1760s, when Henry Hope passed Baring some bills to negotiate and ended up "exceedingly struck with the transaction which bespoke not only great zeal and activity, but what was still more important ... either good credit or great resources ... From that day Baring became one of their principal friends". The link was consolidated in other ways, in particular through the marriage in 1796 of Pierre César Labouchère [see under Hope family], a leading figure at Hopes, to Baring's third daughter, Dorothy. Vital connections were also established on the other side of the Atlantic. Baring was quicker than most to see the commercial potential of Britain's North American colonies, and his finance house quickly emerged as the European hub of a network of North America's most powerful merchants. In 1774 his first American customer was the leading Philadelphia merchant, Willing, Morris & Co.; its influential partners included Robert Morris, a future financial architect of American independence from Britain, and Thomas Willing, a future president of the Bank of the United States. Through them Baring was introduced to Senator William Bingham, one of