Commerce

"He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread."

"In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip.' We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one. In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."

"It is perhaps well enough that the people of the Nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy."

"I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war."

"The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power."

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance."

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!"

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests."

"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

"From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains, Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains; These first induce him the vile trash to try, Then lend his name, that other men may buy."

"Void of all honor, avaricious, rash, The daring tribe compound their boasted trash— Tincture of syrup, lotion, drop, or pill; All tempt the sick to trust the lying bill."

"But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments."

"So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor man's necessities."

"I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratch'd withal."

"Out, you impostors! Quack salving, cheating mountebanks! your skill Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill."

"It has been uniformly laid down in this Court, as far back as we can remember, that good faith is the basis of all mercantile transactions."

"A proceeding may be perfectly legal and may yet be opposed to sound commercial principles."

"Persons in trade had better be very cautious how they add a fictitious name to their firm, for the purpose of gaining credit."

"The law merchant respects the religion of different people."

"Nothing can fall within the custom of trade but what concerns trade."

"When a general usage has been judicially ascertained and established, it becomes a part of the law merchant, which Courts of justice are bound to know and recognise."

"Convenience is the basis of mercantile law."

"An universal custom is a law, and I know no distinction between lex mercatoria and consuetudo mercaborum."

"There are many situations in life, and particularly in the commercial world, where a man cannot by any diligence inform himself of the degree of credit which ought to be given to the persons with whom he deals; in which cases he must apply to those whose sources of intelligence enable them to give that information. The law of prudence leads him to apply to them, and the law of morality ought to induce them to give the information required."

"The law merchant is a system of equity, founded on the rules of equity, and governed in all its parts by plain justice and good faith."

"Arbitrio domini res cestimari debet: The price of a thing ought to be fixed by its owner."

"It is the privilege of a trader in a free country, in all matters not contrary to law, to regulate his own mode of carrying it on according to his own discretion and choice."

"Men lend their money to traders upon mortgages or consignments of goods, because they suspect their circumstances, and will not run the risque of their general credit."

"A trader is trusted upon his character and visible commerce: that credit enables him to acquire wealth. If by secret liens a few might swallow up all, it would greatly damp that credit."

"I should regret to find that the law was powerless to enforce the most elementary principles of commercial morality."

"It is admitted that there may be fair competition in trade, that two may offer to join and compete against a third. If so, what is the definition of fair competition? What is unfair that is neither forcible nor fraudulent."

"The great object of the law is to encourage commerce."

"It is when merchants dispute about their own rules that they invoke the law."

"The experience we have in Courts of justice leads us to know that persons who trade without due caution often find their hopes deceived: they find in the result that they have parted with goods for which they never can obtain the money."

"Merchants know perfectly well what they mean when they express themselves, not in the language of lawyers, but in the language of courteous mercantile communication."

"It must be remembered that all trade is and must be in a sense selfish; trade not being infinite, nay, the trade of a particular place or district being possibly very limited, what one man gains another loses. In the hand to hand war of commerce, as in the conflicts of public life, whether at the bar, in Parliament, in medicine, in engineering (I give examples only), men fight on without much thought of others, except a desire to excel or to defeat them. Very lofty minds, like Sir Philip Sidney with his cup of water, will not stoop to take an advantage, if they think another wants it more. Our age, in spite of high authority to the contrary, is not without its Sir Philip Sidneys; but these are counsels of perfection which it would be silly indeed to make the measure of the rough business of the world as pursued by ordinary men of business. The line is in words difficult to draw. . . ."

"What is one man's gain is another's loss."

"The word commission sounds sweet in a merchant's ear."

"Chitty, J., In re Trade-Mark "Alpine" (1885), L. R. 29 C. D. 880."

"The English trader is generally too much occupied with his business to devote much time to the invention of new or fancy words, and he is not always gifted with that degree of fancy which is capable of coining new words. Besides the English public is not so ready, apparently, to buy articles passing under an entirely new name, which may give rise to a suspicion of adulteration."

"An energetic tradesman naturally develops and extends his business. One business runs into another, and the line of demarcation is often indistinct and undefined. The linen draper of to-day in the course of a few years may come to be the proprietor of an establishment providing everything that man wants, or woman either, from the cradle to the grave."

"Some confidence there must be between merchant and manufacturer. In matters exclusively within the province of the manufacturer the merchant relies on the manufacturer's skill, and he does so all the more readily when he has had the benefit of that skill before."

"It is essential, when persons in trade come into this Court, that they should remember that the administration of equity is founded on perfect truth, and that if persons attempt to mislead the public by stating that which is not true, this Court will restrain them upon a clear case being made out against them."

"The freedom of trade, like the liberty of the Press, is one thing; the abuse of that freedom, like the licentiousness of the Press, is another. God forbid that this Court should do anything that should interfere with the legal freedom of trade."

"The great source of the flourishing state of this kingdom is its trade and commerce."

"This being an island, all imaginable encouragement ought to be given to trade."

"Empirical evidence tends to show that trade liberalisation may entail non-trivial adjustment costs for certain groups."

"The wide chasm separating the inevitabilities of economic life from the Christian ideal ... kept the most devout groups and all those with the most consistently developed ethics far from the life of trade."