Usance between London and all the towns in the States Generals’ dominions, and also in the provinces now called the Austrian Netherlands [Belgium], is one month.  And two usance is two months; reckoning not from the acceptance of the bill, but from the date of it.  Usance between London and Hamburgh is two months, Venice is three months; and double usance, or two usance, is double that time.  Usance payable at Florence or Leghorn, is two months; but from thence payable at London, usance is three months.  Usance from London to Rouen or Paris, is one month; but they generally draw at a certain number of days, usually twenty-one days’ sight.  Usance from London to Seville, is two months; as likewise between London and Lisbon, and Oporto, to or from.  Usance from Genoa to Rome is payable at Rome ten days after sight.  Usance between Antwerp and Genoa, Naples or Messina, is two months, whether to or from.  Usance from Antwerp or Amsterdam, payable at Venice, is two months, payable in bank.

There are abundance of niceties in the accepting and paying of bills of exchange, especially foreign bills, which I think needless to enter upon here; but this I think I should not omit, namely—­

That if a man pays a bill of exchange before it is due, though he had accepted it, if the man to whom it was payable proves a bankrupt after he has received the money, and yet before the bill becomes due, the person who voluntarily paid the money before it was due, shall be liable to pay it again to the remitter; for as the remitter delivered his money to the drawer, in order to have it paid again to such person as he should order, it is, and ought to be, in his power to divert the payment by altering the bill, and make it payable to any other person whom he thinks fit, during all the time between the acceptance and the day of payment.

This has been controverted, I know, in some cases, but I have always found, that by the most experienced merchants, and especially in places of the greatest business abroad, it was always given in favour of the remitter, namely, that the right of guiding the payment is in him, all the time the bill is running; and no bill can or ought to be paid before it is due, without the declared assent of the remitter, signified under his hand, and attested by a public notary.  There are, I say, abundance of niceties in the matter of foreign exchanges, and in the manner of drawing, accepting, and protesting bills; but as I am now speaking with, and have confined my discourse in this work to, the inland tradesmen of England, I think it would be as unprofitable to them to meddle with this, as it would be difficult to them to understand it.[48]

I return, therefore, to the subject in hand, as well as to the people to whom I have all along directed my discourse.

Though the inland tradesmen do not, and need not, acquaint themselves with the manner of foreign exchanges, yet there is a great deal of business done by exchange among ourselves, and at home, and in which our inland trade is chiefly concerned; and as this is the reason why I speak so much, and repeat it so often to the tradesman for whose instruction I am writing, that he should maintain the credit of his bills, so it may not be amiss to give the tradesman some directions concerning such bills.