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An essay on the early history of the law merchant (1904)
An essay on the early history of the law merchant - 1904 Author:William Mitchell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. The Law Merchant has been aptly called " the private international law of the Middle Ages." It was regarded as a kind o... more »f jus gentium known to all the merchants throughout Christendom and the later writers who treated the subject laid stress upon its international character1. " The Law Merchant," wrote Sir John Davies in the 17th century, "as it is part of the law of nature and nations is one and the same in all the countries in the world ; there is not one law in England, another in France, another in Germany, but the same rules of reason and the like proceedings are observed in every nation." This statement is too sweeping. Strictly construed it was not correct for the law as it existed in the 17thcentury, and it was still less correct for the Law Merchant in the earlier stages of its evolution. There was during the early middle ages no strictly uniform system of mercantile law administered throughout the whole of Western Europe either in town or seaport or fair. The Great Fairs of Champagne had their own style, usage and customs which were at times altered in important points by royal ordinance. The Merchants of Antwerp refused1 to submit to the law of London, and in the numerous " lettres de foires " that have recently been discovered at Ypres2 the alien creditor has always to promise not to recover Ids debt by any other law than the law of Ypres. In Italy the special codes of commerce that almost every great city possessed, show greater or smaller discrepancies in almost every section, and as a natural result, in several cities3, the commercialjudges were ordered to give aliens no better law than their own citizens would have in the alien state. 1 Malynes, Lex Bfercatoria, 3. "The said customary law of merchants hath a peculiar prer...« less