DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0084
68 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
permitted by the jus gentium. The autocrat, whose power seems
boundless, is a stranger out of his own country. He is like his
own money, which is mere bullion when it leaves his borders.
There is no sovereign who seems to be more absolute than the
Tzar of Russia. But in matters of international business he has
to conform as absolutely to the rules and regulations, to the
caprices and suspicions of the Stock Exchange, as the pettiest
state has. I do not pretend to have a great admiration for Stock
Exchange people, but their action, and the rules by which they
bind themselves and others, are the best illustrations which I know
of international morality.
The machinery by which contracts are enforced, and credit is
sustained, is exhibited in the old law of debt. In any country, it
has been exceedingly, and, I presume, necessarily severe during
the earlier days of credit. Lawgivers, like Draco and the
Decemvirs, the authorities of the Pandects, and our Edward I.
and Henry VIII., were, I am sure, convinced that the strict main-
tenance of commercial contracts was a condition precedent to
all trade. The ancient Roman was probably, when he dared,
a stubborn cheat. I have little doubt that there were many
Athenian gentlemen, like Strepsiades in the " Clouds," who had
an invincible repugnance to refunding what they had borrowed.
The vigorous law of statute merchant and statute staple was
Edward's remedy against commercial fraud. The legislation of
Henry VIII., under which entails were forfeited for bankruptcy,
was no doubt deemed necessary. Compare our own old law on
contract debts with the far milder process under which distraint
was the very precarious and only remedy for default in paying
the landlord's rent, and one will see how differently the two were
viewed. There is a striking passage in Fitzherbert, where he
compares the remedies against breach of contract with failure to
meet the landlord's dues. In course of time these severe laws
have been mitigated, only, I conclude, because in the general
growth of commercial morality they had become superfluous.
Their modern analogue is a bankruptcy law, and curiously enough,
the least protected creditor of ancient times, the landlord, is the
most protected now.
Commercial law, that is, the law which protects, and intends to
permitted by the jus gentium. The autocrat, whose power seems
boundless, is a stranger out of his own country. He is like his
own money, which is mere bullion when it leaves his borders.
There is no sovereign who seems to be more absolute than the
Tzar of Russia. But in matters of international business he has
to conform as absolutely to the rules and regulations, to the
caprices and suspicions of the Stock Exchange, as the pettiest
state has. I do not pretend to have a great admiration for Stock
Exchange people, but their action, and the rules by which they
bind themselves and others, are the best illustrations which I know
of international morality.
The machinery by which contracts are enforced, and credit is
sustained, is exhibited in the old law of debt. In any country, it
has been exceedingly, and, I presume, necessarily severe during
the earlier days of credit. Lawgivers, like Draco and the
Decemvirs, the authorities of the Pandects, and our Edward I.
and Henry VIII., were, I am sure, convinced that the strict main-
tenance of commercial contracts was a condition precedent to
all trade. The ancient Roman was probably, when he dared,
a stubborn cheat. I have little doubt that there were many
Athenian gentlemen, like Strepsiades in the " Clouds," who had
an invincible repugnance to refunding what they had borrowed.
The vigorous law of statute merchant and statute staple was
Edward's remedy against commercial fraud. The legislation of
Henry VIII., under which entails were forfeited for bankruptcy,
was no doubt deemed necessary. Compare our own old law on
contract debts with the far milder process under which distraint
was the very precarious and only remedy for default in paying
the landlord's rent, and one will see how differently the two were
viewed. There is a striking passage in Fitzherbert, where he
compares the remedies against breach of contract with failure to
meet the landlord's dues. In course of time these severe laws
have been mitigated, only, I conclude, because in the general
growth of commercial morality they had become superfluous.
Their modern analogue is a bankruptcy law, and curiously enough,
the least protected creditor of ancient times, the landlord, is the
most protected now.
Commercial law, that is, the law which protects, and intends to