Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/134

132 The ignorance and misconception from which all this legislation proceeded, are exhibited in a striking point of view by the fact that the above-mentioned original order of Edward I,, prohibiting the exportation of money, expressly permits the amount of the money to be remitted abroad in bills of exchange. And at all times, while the exportation of money was forbidden, the remittance of bills seems to have been allowed. But a bill of exchange remitted abroad is merely an order that a certain party in the foreign country shall receive a sum of money which is due to the drawer of the bill, and which would otherwise have to be sent to the country where he resides; if no such money were due, the bill would not be negotiable; every such bill, therefore, if it did not carry money out of the country, produced precisely the same effect by preventing money from coming in. It was fit and natural enough, however, that this simple matter should fail to be perceived in times when it was thought that a great advantage was gained by compelling the foreign merchant to sell his goods for produce instead of for the money which the produce was worth; indeed it may be fairly said, instead of for less money than the produce was worth, for all restraints of this description inevitably operate to enhance the price of what is prevented from being openly bought and sold on the terms that would be naturally agreed upon between the parties themselves.

Another strange attempt of the English commercial legislation of those times was to impose a certain measure upon all foreign cloths brought to the country. By the Act 2 Edw. III. c. 14, passed in 1328, it was ordered that, from the Feast of St. Michael ensuing, all cloths that were importcd should be measured by the king's aulnagers, and that all those that were not found to be of a certain specified length and breadth should be forfeited to the king. The dimensions fixed by the statute were, for cloth of ray (supposed to mean striped cloth), 28 yards in length by 6 quarters in breadth; and for coloured cloth, 26 yards in length by 6½ quarters in breadth. The regulation of weights and measures within