is actually a prejudice in favour of foreign goods, and, curiously enough, this is found to be so even in countries in which a protective policy has been very highly developed.  It is, or was a few years ago, common to see in American newspapers, flaming advertisements heralding sales of imported goods, which were definitely stated to be such obviously because the sellers thought that they were likely to be able to sell them better because they were stated to be so.  It is also a proud boast of English manufacturers that in many countries on the Continent it is common, or was until quite lately, for native manufacturers to sell their goods more easily in their home markets by describing them as English.  Political and national prejudice seems to be overruled by the common human desire for something new and strange, and consequently, in spite of all friction that has arisen from international trade, and of the number of wars which have had their origin in commercial questions, there is good reason for the assertion that on the whole commerce has been a mighty promoter of intercourse among the nations and of the unity of mankind.  If it had not been for commerce, the cheapening and quickening of communication could never have been carried out.  The trader goes first, and after him the traveller and the tourist.

This claim can be made with perhaps even more certainty when we proceed to the realm of finance.  If commerce is international and unifying, finance is perhaps even more so.  Finance, of course, arises out of commerce and is an essential part of its machinery.  By finance we mean the machinery of money—­money-dealing and money-lending.  Money becomes necessary as soon as the exchange of commodities, which is the meaning of trade, becomes fairly developed.  At first, primitive peoples exchanged their commodities one for another, but a difficulty arose when out of a pair of possible traders one had something which the other wanted but the other had not.  For example, if the arrow-maker had arrows to sell and wanted to buy fish, there obviously could be no bargain if his friend who wanted to buy arrows had only got deerskins to give in exchange.  It was essential to the development of trade that some commodity should be hit on which could always be taken in exchange and so form a circulating medium.  We have seen from the twenty-third chapter of Genesis that a certain weight of silver had in Abraham’s time begun to assume this function.  Economic text-books tell us that many other commodities had the form and function of money before the metals came into use.  Until quite lately there were many places in which the use of an agreed medium of exchange had not been adopted to facilitate the purposes of commerce.  Jevons begins his very interesting book on money by relating how