HARRIET MARTINEAU.
LONDON:
CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1833.
PREFACE.
In planning the present story, I was strongly tempted to use the ancient method of exemplification, and to present my readers with the Adventures of a Bill of Exchange, so difficult is it to exhibit by example the process of exchange in any other form than the history of the instrument. If, however, the transactions of Messrs. Vanderput and Snoek should be found to furnish my readers with a pretty clear notion of the nature and operation of the peculiar kind of currency of which this Number treats, I shall readily submit to the decision that the present volume has little merit as a specimen of exemplification. Though the working of principles might be shown in this case, as in any other, it could not, I think, be done naturally in a very small space. If I had had liberty to fill three octavo volumes with the present subject, an interesting tale might have been made up of the effects on private fortunes of the variations in the course of the Exchange, and of the liabilities which attend the use of a partial and peculiar representative of value. As it is, I have judged it best to occupy a large portion of my confined space in exhibiting a state of society to which such a species of currency is remarkably appropriate, in order that light might be thrown on the nature and operation of bills of exchange by showing what was being done, and what was wanted by those who most extensively adopted this instrument into their transactions.
In case of any reader questioning whether Dutchmen in the seventeenth century could advocate free trade, I mention that the principle has never been more distinctly recognized than at a remoter date than I have fixed, by countries which, like Holland, had little to export, and depended for their prosperity on freedom of importation. Every restriction imposed by the jealousy of those from whom they derived their imports was an unanswerable argument to them in favour of perfect liberty of exchange. As their herrings and butter were universally acknowledged to be the best herrings and butter in existence, and yet were not enough for the perfect comfort of the Dutch, the Dutch could not resist the conclusion, that the less difficulty there was in furnishing their neighbours with their incomparable herrings and butter, in return for what those neighbours had to offer, the better for both parties. The Dutch of the seventeenth century were therefore naturally enlightened advocates of the free trade.--Whether their light has from that time spread among their neighbours equally and perpetually, my next Number will show.