to all men of business, that it may perhaps be thought unnecessary to give an account of it. But as this book may come into the hands of many people who are not men of business, and as the effects of this practice upon the banking trade are not perhaps generally understood even by men of business themselves, I shall endeavor to explain it as distinctly as I can.
The customs of merchants, which were established when the barbarous laws of Europe did not enforce the performance of their contracts, and which, during the course of the last two centuries, have been adopted into the laws of all European nations, have given such extraordinary privileges to bills of exchange, that money is more readily advanced upon them, than upon any other species of obligation; especially when they are made payable within so short a period as two or three months after their date. If, when the bill becomes due, the acceptor does not pay it as soon as it is presented, he becomes from that moment a bankrupt. The bill is protested, and returns upon the drawer, who, if he does not immediately pay it, becomes likewise a bankrupt. If, before it came to the person who presents it to the acceptor for payment, it had passed through the hands of several other persons, who had successively advanced to one another the contents of it either in money or goods, and who to express that each of them had in his turn received those contents, had all of them in their order indorsed, that is, written their names upon the back of the bill; each indorser becomes in his turn liable to the owner of the bill for those contents, and, if he fails to pay, he becomes, too, from that moment a bankrupt. Though the drawer, acceptor, and indorsers of the bill should, all of them, be persons of doubtful credit; yet still the shortness
