The Law in Geneva and Rhodesia, Commercial Judges

Chapter 16: An excellent Law of Rhodes

Geneva has an admirable law which excludes the children of bankrupts from the magistracy and even from the admittance into the great council until they have discharged their father’s debts.

It gives a confidence in:

• the merchants
• the magistrates, and
• the city itself

There, the credit of the individual still has all the weight of public credit.

Chapter 17= A Law of Rhodes

THE Rhodesians went further.

Sextus Empiricus, in Hypotiposes, book 1, chapter 14, observes, that among Rhodesians, a son could not be excused from paying his father’s debts by renouncing the succession.

This law was for a commercial republic. Commerce itself causes this limitation that the father’s debts should not affect the property acquired by his son’s commerce.

A merchant should always:

• know his obligations, and
• square his conduct by his circumstances and present fortune

Chapter 18= The Judges of Commerce

XENOPHON, in his book of revenues, would have rewards given to the overseers of commerce, who dispatched the causes brought before them with the greatest expedition.

He knew the need of our modern jurisdiction of a consul.

Commercial affairs need just a few formalities. They are the actions of a day, and are every day followed by others of the same nature. Hence it becomes necessary, that every day they should be decided.

It is otherwise with those actions of life which have a principal influence on futurity, but rarely happen.

• We seldom marry more than once.
• Deeds and wills are not done every day.

Plato correctly says, in Book 8 of his book Laws, that in a city where there is no maritime commerce, there should not be more than half the number of civil laws:

• Commerce brings into the same country different kinds of people.
• It introduces also a many contracts, and species of wealth, with various ways of acquiring it.

Thus in a trading city, there are fewer judges, but more laws.