Improper Customs Destroys Commerce

Chapter 13: How Improper Customs Destroys the Freedom of Commerce

WHEREVER commerce subsists, customs are established.

• Commerce is the exportation and importation of merchandise with a view to the state’s advantage.
• Customs are a right over this exportation and importation, founded also on the state’s advantage.

The state should be neutral between its customs and its commerce. These two should not interfere with each other. After this, the people enjoy a free commerce.

Customs tax-farming destroys commerce by its:

• injustice
• vexations
• the excess of the imposts

Independent of this, it destroys commerce even more by:

• the difficulties that arise from it, and
• the formalities it exacts.

In England, the customs are managed by the king’s officers. Business there is negotiated with a singular dexterity. One word of writing accomplishes the greatest affairs. The merchant need not lose an infinite deal of time. He has no occasion for a particular commissioner, either to:

• obviate all the difficulties of the tax farmers, or
• submit to them.

Chapter 14: The Laws of Commerce on the Confiscation of Merchandise

THE Magna Charta of England forbids the seizing and confiscating, in case of war, the effects of foreign merchants, except by way of reprisals. It is an honour to England that they have made this one of the articles of their liberty.

In the recent war between Spain and England, Spain made a law, which punished with death those who:

• brought English merchandise into Spanish dominions
• brought Spanish merchandise into England

Only the laws of Japan is similar to this.

The severity of the penalty is not proportional to the crime and therefore shocks humanity, the spirit of commerce, and the harmony. It makes a civil crime a crime against the state.

Chapter 15: Imprisoning Merchants

SOLON copied an Egyptian law that decreed that the citizens should no longer be imprisoned for civil debts. It had been made by Boccoris, and renewed by Sesostris. This law is extremely good, with respect to the generality of civil affairs.

But it is not observed in commercial law.

Merchants pay and receive large sums of money for a very short time. It is essential that the debtor constantly fulfill his engagements at the time prefixed. Hence it becomes necessary to lay a constraint on his person.

• In common civil contracts, the law should not permit imprisonment because the liberty of one citizen is more important than the ease or prosperity of another.
• But in commercial conventions, the law should consider the public prosperity as more important than the liberty of a citizen.
  • This, however, does not hinder the restrictions demanded by humanity and good policy.