GENERAL DICTIONARY OF COMMERCE, TRADE, AND MANUFACTURES; EXHIBITING THEIR PRESENT STATE IN EVERY PART OF THE WORLD; AND CAREFULLY COMPILED FROM THE LATEST AND BEST AUTHORITIES. BY THOMAS MORTIMER, Esq. LONDON: PRINTED FOR RICHARD PHILLIPS, BRIDGE-STREET, BLACKFRIARS. 1810. [Price 25s. in Beards.] Gillet and Son, Printers, Crown Court, Fleet Street, London MANY years have elapsed since any work having the objects of the present, was offered to the public. The respectable publications of Postlethwaite and Beawes, although they cannot be called practical Dictionaries of Commerce, were well adapted to the periods at which they appeared; but since their last Editions, the face of Commerce has undergone a total change; the views of mercantile mien in Britain have been extended in a degree of which the ablest political speculators could not entertain the most remote idea; and, above all, the laws and customs relative to trade, given in former works, have long become obsolete, and their places have been supplied by others corresponding with the present policy of the various maritime nations. It can scarcely be necessary to observe, that such a publication as the present must, in every point of view, prove a desideratum in a country which has latterly absorbed the trade of the world, and which may be denominated the source of all Commerce, and the focus of Arts and Manufactures. That such a country should so long have been without a work of this nature, has afforded matter of great surprize; and every Bookseller has heard daily complaints relative to so glaring a defect in our national literature. Anxious to fill up the chasm, the Editor has turned his attention to the present undertaking; and by the aid of the best English publications; by the assistance he has derived from voluminous productions on the subject of Commerce, which have lately appeared in France, Germany, and Holland; by the acquisition of many original documents; and by a sedulous attention to the subject, for upwards of half a century, he trusts that his intentions will not prove abortive: but, on the contrary, that he shall be found to have presented to the trading part of the community, an important body of practical commercial knowledge. Whatever it is requisite for a man of business to become acquainted with, it has been the Editor's care to introduce into this work; and it will be found, on comparison, that this Dictionary contains at least Two THOUSAND ARTICLES MORE M362684 |