Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/51

 we have not the pleasure of knowing, to give our most cordial approbation to his efforts, and strongly to recommend his Commercial Arithmetic as a standard work both for our seminaries and for private or self instruction, convinced as we are, that it will not fail to extend and diffuse mathematical knowledge among the rising generation.

Mr. Dubost’s Elements of Commerce may be looked upon as the sequel to his Commercial Arithmetic. Its principal contents will be found enumerated in the title-page. That a work of this description, involving the whole theory of commerce, should so long have remained a desideratum in a country where trade has been carried to the greatest extent and highest degree of perfectibility, has, in some measure, the appearance of a paradox; but it ought to be remembered, that the best treatises on subjects of any particular science have rarely emanated from the country where that science has been most successfully cultivated. The publications both old and modern, exclusively treating of exchange, monies, weights, and measures, which, from time to time, have been published in this country, do not contradict our assertion. The greater number of them term with errors of incorrectness or ignorance, nay, frequently with downright nonsense, copied from the nonsense of preceding publications. Their authors have preferred such a mode of writing to the trouble of searching into the classic works of a Kruse, Gerhardt, Nelekenbrecher, Paucton, Riccard, Giraudeau, and others on the same subject. A reproach of this nature does not attach to Mr. Dubost: he not only appears to have diligently consulted many of the above writers, but also to have obtained much original information from personal experience and observation, embracing the most recent changes in different countries.

It is not within our limits to present our readers with a regular abstract of the contents of a work so elaborate and comprehensive as the present treatise; we therefore shall content ourselves with tracing a short sketch of the author’s plan. It sets out with an exposition of the different calculations occurring in mercantile transactions, as Tare, Tret, Commission, Insurance, Interest, Discount, &c. exemplified by apposite practical questions. This chapter, as well as every subsequent one, is preceded by an appropriate and in many instances philosophical introduction, setting forth the nature and primary principles of the particular subject under consideration. Mr. D. next proceeds to the subject of exchange, which he prefaces by a full illustration of the necessary arithmetical rules, and particularly of the Rule of Equation universally adopted throughout his work. After elucidating the operations of exchange for every commercial place of note throughout the world, in upwards of 200 pages, he enters on the important doctrine of arbitrations of exchanges, and illustrates, by copious and well selected examples, the mode of deducing a proportionate rate of exchange between two places, from the known quotations of the courses or more intermediate cities: and in the next chapter, on banking operations. Mr. D. points out the rules for computing the profit or loss