Trade in General and in Particular
Particular and general interests
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Montchretien (1615 [1999]: 287) again tried to justify the gains made by merchants by separating honest gain linked with social usefulness from dishonest gain linked with covetousness.
He subsequently recommended, from a political viewpoint, not ostracising the honest merchants and trade in general. Indeed, the first characteristic of the science of trade is to refer to that trade, and not to trade in particular. This science is assumed to consist of writings which no longer present themselves just as pro domo pleas, defending particular interests in particular markets, but as writings whose conclusions can be applied to different sectors or nations and which can be put into practice by a sovereign.Mun (1664 [1986]: 1-3) had already observed that the merchant was the “stewart of the Kingdom stock” and it was in this capacity that he should certainly be “a good penman, a good arithmetician and a good accountant”, know all the details of his profession, the institutions and the customs of the markets, but also have followed Latin tuition. Child (1681 [1995]: 27) added that to deal with trade in general the merchant had to be experienced and educated, but also retired from business. It was with this proviso that he would consider trade, not from the sole viewpoint of his private, but from the higher viewpoint of the public interest. In this, Child was inspired by the Dutch model, as described by Temple, according to which practising merchants were in a minority in the trade councils, which were made up of “Civilians or Sons of Merchants, that have long since left off their active Trades”. In the same period, Barbon (1690 [1905]: 6) admitted that the merchants had not given their activities any purpose other than that of promoting their interests, and that they had rarely embraced the knowledge of trade in general.
Treating a particular trade as part of trade in general is indeed to make the latter a fully political subject and to assert that merchants’ particular interests are identical to those of trade in general, and therefore to those of the nation. But the demonstration of this identity is far from being self-evident (see Malynes 1622 [1971]: 3-4).Thus there are disadvantageous trades from a nation’s point of view, and particular interests that do not work in favour of the public interest. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Petyt (1680 [1856]: 289), echoed by Child (1681 [1995]: 26), again pointed out this questionable congruity of interests. A few decades later, Tucker (1753: iv-v) observed that the science of commerce had been misunderstood, judged to be “dark and crabbed” and lacking in “fixed and certain principles”. The conclusions of this science fluctuated depending on the divergent interests of the merchants, so much so that it was preferable that its study was entrusted to people “of a liberal and learned education, not concerned in trade”, “freer from the prejudice of self-interest” (ibid.: vi, original emphases). General trade was something that was too serious to be entrusted only to merchants, even if they were removed from business. From then on, it was taken care of by politics and also placed under the gaze of philosophers, lawyers, literati and polygraph writers.