concealed so, as that the buyer pays for it as sound and perfect, bind the seller in conscience, either to void the bargain or to give just satisfaction.

Secondly, it should be considered, whether the buyer, before the bargain be stricken, hath required of the seller to signify the faults of the commodity to be sold; and, out of a reliance upon the seller's fidelity and warrant, hath made up the match: or, whether, in the confidence of his own skill, without moving any question, he enter resolutely, (de bene esse), upon the bargained commodity.

If the former, a double bond lies upon the seller to deal faithfully with the buyer; and therefore to let him know the true condition of the thing exposed to sale: that so, either he may take off his hand, or, if he shall see, that, notwithstanding that defect, it may serve his turn, he may proportion the price accordingly: otherwise he shall be guilty, besides falsehood and oppression, of perfidiousness.

But, if the buyer will peremptorily rely upon his own judgment; and, as presuming to make a gain of that bargain, which the seller, out of conscience of the imperfection, sets, as he ought, so much lower as the defect may be more disadvantageous to the buyer, will go through with the contract, and stand to all hazards; I see no reason, why the seller may not receive the price stipulated: but, withal, if the match may carry danger in it to the buyer; as, if the horse sold be subject to a perilous starting or stumbling, the house sold have a secret crack that may threaten ruin, or the land sold be liable to a litigious claim which may be timely avoided; the seller is bound in conscience, at least after the bargain, to intimate unto the buyer these faulty qualities, that he may accordingly provide for the prevention of the mischief that may ensue.

But if the seller shall use art to cover the defects of his commodity, that so he may deceive the buyer in his judgment of the thing bargained for; or shall mix faulty wares with sound, that they may pass undiscovered; he is more faulty than his wares, and makes an ill bargain for his soul.

In this, shortly, and in all other cases that concern trade, these universal rules must take place.

That it is not lawful for a Christian chapman to thrive by fraud: That he may sell upon no other terms, than he could wish to buy:

That his profit must be regulated by his conscience; not his conscience by his profit:

That he is bound, either to prevent the buyer's wrong; or, if heedlessly done, to satisfy it:

That he ought rather to affect to be honest, than rich:

And, lastly, That, as he is a member of a community both civil and Christian, he ought to be tender of another man's indemnity, no less than of his own.

CASE IV.

Whether may I sell my commodities the dearer, for giving days of payment?

THERE is no great difference, betwixt this case, and that of loan, which is formerly answered: save that there, money is let; here, commodities, money-worth: here, is a sale; there, a lending: in the one, a transferring of the right and command for the time; in the other, perpetually. But the substance, both of the matter and question, is the same: for, in both, there seems to be a valuation of time; which, whether in case of mutation or sale, may justly be suspected for unlawful.

For answer :

There are three stages of prices acknowledged by all Casuists: the highest, which they are wont to call rigorous; the mean; and the lowest. If these keep within due bounds, though the highest be hard, yet it is not unjust; and if the lowest be favourable, yet it is not always necessary.

If then you shall proportion but a just price to the time and worth of your bargain; so as the present shall pass for the easiest price, some short time for the mean, and the longer delay for the highest; I see not wherein, all things considered, you do offend.

And, certainly, to debar the contract of a moderate gain for the delay of payment upon months prefixed, were to destroy all trade of merchandise. For not many buyers are furnished with ready money, to buy their wares at the port: nor could the sellers make off their commodities so seasonably, as to be ready for further traffic, if they must necessarily be tied to wait upon the hopes of a pecuniary sale; and not left to the common liberty of putting them over to wholesale men, upon trust, who, upon a second trust, distribute them to those, that vent them by retail; both, for days agreed upon by which means the trade holds up, and the commonwealth enjoys the benefit of a convenient and necessary commerce a practice, that is now so habituated amongst all nations into the course of trade, that it cannot well consist without it; so as nothing is more ordinary in experience, than that those, who are able to pay down ready money for their wares, know to expect a better pennyworth, than those, that run upon trust. And there may be just reason for this difference: for the present money received enables the seller to a further improvement of his stock, which lies, for the time, dead in the hands that take day for their payment.

So, then, it is not mere time, that is here set to sale, which were odious in any Christian to bargain for: but there are two incidents into this practice, which may render it not unwarrantable.

The one, is the hazard of the sum agreed upon, which too often comes short in the payment; while those subordinate chapmen, into whose hand the gross sum is scattered, turn bankrupts, and

forfeit their trust: so as no small loss is, this way, commonly sustained by the confident seller: in which regard, we are wont to say justly, that "One bird in the hand is worth two in the wood."

The other, is the cessation of that gain, which the merchant might, in the mean time, have made of the sum differed; which might, in likelihood, have been greater than the proportion of the raised price can amount unto.

To which may be added, the foreseen probability of the raising of the market in the interval of payment; the profit whereof is precluded, by this means, to the seller: whose full engagement takes him off, perhaps, from a resolution to have reserved those commodities in his own hands, in expectation of an opportunity of a more profitable utterance, had not the forwardness of the buyer importuned a prevention.

Upon these considerations, if they be serious and unfeigned; I see not why you may not, in a due and moderate proportion, difference your prices according to the delays of payment, without any oppression to the buyer. Howbeit, if any man pleaseth to be so free, as to take no notice of time, but to make future days in his account present, I shall commend his charity, though I dare not press his example as necessary.

The case is equally just, on the behalf of the seller; who, if he be either driven by some emergent necessity, or drawn by the opportunity of a more gainful bargain to call for his money before his day, may justly be required by the late buyer, to abate of the returnable sum, in regard of the prevention of the time covenanted; by reason of the inconvenience or loss whereunto he is put upon the sudden revocation of that money, which is not by agreement payable till the expiration of the time prefixed. But what quantity is to be allowed on the one part, or defalked on the other, is only to be moderated by Christian Charity; and that universal rule, of doing what we would be willing to suffer.

CASE V.

Whether, and how far, monopolics are, or may be lawful. THE most famous Monopoly, that we find in history, is that of Egypt; Gen. xli. 56, 57: wherein the provident patriarch Joseph, out of the foresight of a following dearth, bought up the seven years' grain for Pharaoh, and laid it up in public store-houses; and, in the general scarcity, sold it out to the inhabitants and strangers, with no small advantage: which was so far from unlawful, as that he thereby merited the name of the Saviour of Egypt *. And if any worthy patriot, out of a like providence, shall, beforehand, gather up the commodities of his country into a public magazine, for *So the Vulgate renders Zapnath Puaneah, "Salvator Mundi," Gen. xli. 45.

the common benefit and relief of the people, upon the pinch of an ensuing necessity; he is so far out of the reach of censure, as that he well deserves a statue, with the inscription of "Public Benefactor." So as it is not the mere act of monopolizing, that makes the thing unlawful; but the ground and intention, and the manner of carriage.

All monopolies, as they are usually practised, are either such as are allowed by sovereign authority; or privately contrived, by secret plot and convention, for a peculiar gain to some special per

sons.

If the first, it must be considered, upon what reason that privi lege is granted, and upon what terms. If both these be just, the grant can be no other. For, first, it may not be denied, that supreme authority, whether of princes or states, hath power to grant such privileges where they shall find just cause; and, secondly, that there may be very just motives of granting them to some capable and worthy persons: I should be ashamed to imagine, that either of these should need any probation. Doubtless, then, there is manifest equity, that, where there hath been some great merit, or charge, or danger in the compassing of some notable work for a common good, the undertaker should be rewarded with a patent for a secured profit to himself. As put the case some well-minded printer, as one of the Stephens, is willing to be at an excessive charge in the fair publication of a learned and useful work, for the benefit of the present and following ages: it is most just, that he should, from the hands of princes or states, receive a privilege for the sole impression; that he may recover, with advantage, the deep expence he hath been at: otherwise, some interloper may, perhaps, underhand fall upon the work at a lower rate, and undo the first editor; whose industry, care, and cost shall thus be recompensed with the ruin of himself and his posterity: as were too easy to instance. If a man have, by notable dexterity of wit and art, and much labour and charge, after many experiments, attained to the skill of making some rare engine of excellent use for the service of his prince and country; as some singular water-work, or some beneficial instrument for the freeing of navigable rivers from their sandy obstructions; it is all the reason in the world, that, by the just bounty of princes, he should be so far remunerated, as that he alone may receive a patent of enjoying a due profit of his own invention. But, how far it may be lawful for a prince, not only to gratify a well-deserving subject, with the fee of his own device, but with a profit arising from the sole sale of marketable commodities through his kingdom; or, whether, and how far, in the want of moneys, for the necessary service of his state, he may, for the public use, raise, set, or sell monopolies of that kind; is diversely agitated by Casuists; and must receive answer, according to the absoluteness or limitation of those governments, under which they are practised but with this, that, where this is done, there may be great care had of a just price to be set upon the commodities so restrained, that they be not left to the lawless will of a privileged en

grosser; nor heightened to an undue rate, by reason of a particular indulgence.

This may be enough, for Authoritative Monopolies.

The common sort of offensive practices this way are Private, and single; or conventional, and plotted by combination. The former, as when some covetous extortioner, out of the strength of his purse, buys up the whole lading of the ship, that he may have the sole power of the wares to sell them at pleasure, which there is no fear but he will do with rigour enough: the true judgment of which action, and the degrees of the malignity of it, must be fetched, as from the mind, so from the management of the buyer; as being so much more sinful, as it partakes more of oppression. The latter, when some brethren in evil conspire to prevent the harvest, to buy up or hoard up the grain; with a purpose to starve the market, and to hatch up a dearth: a damnable practice, in both kinds; and that, which hath, of old, been branded with a curse: neither less full of injustice, than uncharitableness; and that, which cries aloud for a just punishment and satisfactory restitution. I cannot, therefore, but marvel at the opinion of learned Lessius, which he fathers also upon Molina, that too favourably minces the heinousness of this sin; bearing us in hand, that it is indeed an offence against charity and common profit, but not against particular justice: His reason:"To buy that corn," saith he, "could not be against justice, for he bought it at the current price; nor yet to sell it could be against justice, because he was not tied, out of justice, at that time to bring it forth to sale:" when he might easily have considered, that it is not the mere act of buying, or of not selling, that, in itself, is accused for unjust; but, to buy, or not to sell, with an intention and issue of oppressing others, and undue enriching themselves by a dearth for what can be more unjust, than for a man to endeavour to raise himself, by the affamishing of others? Neither can it serve his turn to say, by way of excuse, that the multitude of buyers may be the cause of a dearth, and yet without sin: since they do rather occasion, than cause a scarcity; and are so far from intending a dearth in making their market, that they deprecate it, as their great affliction. And if, by his own confession, those, who, either by force or fraud, hinder the importation of corn, that a dearth may continue, are guilty of injustice, and are bound to make restitution, both to the commonwealth in giving cause to raise the price, as also to the merchant whom they have hindered of his meet gain; how can those be liable to a less sin or punishment, that either buy up or wilfully keep in their grain, with a purpose to begin and hold on a dearth? and what less can it be, than force or fraud, that, by their crafty and cruel prevention, the poor are necessitated to want that sustenance, whereby their life should be maintained?

Wise Solomon shall shut up this scene for me. He, that with holds corn, the people shall curse him; but blessings shall be upon the head of him, that selleth it. Prov. xi. 26.