CHAP. X. ship engagements have been found highly useful to the cultivation and extenfion of particular concerns, and very conducive to the mutual benefit of perfons, whose separate capitals, or individual labor and industry, would have been too limited for many objects easily attainable by their united operation. It seems therefore natural and proper to apply fome attention, in these introductory remarks, to the fubject of Commerce in general, with a view to trace out the fources from whence the advantages of trading in a joint ftock proceed; before entering upon the confideration of the law by which Partnership is regulated and governed. It is difficult to fix the precife time when commercial dealings by the intervention of money first began in the world; or to trace with much accuracy the feveral ftages of commercial credit to its present height in this country. The exchange of goods preceded the commencement of merchandize by the use of any common measure of value. The firft moveable property used for fuch common meafure, to estimate and ascertain the price of other things, feems to have confifted in cattle; hence the wealth of perfons was defcribed by the fize of their herds and flocks. Thus alfo in Homer (a) the armour of Glaucus and Diomede are valued, one at an hundred oxen, and the other at nine. Whether we understand his meaning literally, or only as a mode of defcribing the value by a comparison of price, the allufion comes to the fame point; and with the like allufion money, and indeed every species of estate and property was among the Romans named Pecunia, from Pecus. The use of metals, as the moft convenient ftandard of common value, or price to be paid upon the transfer of property, is of very ancient date. We trace it back in facred history to the days of the patriarch Abraham: In profane hiftory we find it under Midas, and alfo under Janus who was the most ancient (b) of the gods in Italy. And according to Heathen Mythology Mercury was the God of Merchandize. (α) Π. b. 6. 1. 236. ἱκατόμβοι ἱπεαβοίων. (b) Fuu. 6.193. Thus |