'England is a nation of shopkeepers'. Long before Napolean disdainfully paraphrased Adam Smith, British commerce had become a motor for economic growth and increased state power. This four-volume facsimile edition brings together a range of rare seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents about the mercantile system.

Introduction, Henry Parker, Of a bee Trade (1648), William Potter, The Trades-Man’s Jewel (1650), A Declaration Set Forth by the Lord Lieutenant Generall ... from the View of a Printed Paper Entituled An Act Prohibiting Trade with the Barbados (1651), Thomas Violet, TheAdvancement of Merchandize (1651), Henry Robinson, Certain Proposalls in Order to the Peoples Freedome and Accommodation in some Particulars ( 1652), The Reasons Humbly Offered to Consideration ... WOollen Manufactures of this Kingdom ([1662?]), Reasons Humbly Offer'd to the Honourable House '!/'Commons by the Tobacco and W.ne Merchants ([ 1700?]), Charles Davenant,An Essay upon the Probable Methods '!/'Making a People Gainers in the Ballance of Trade (1699), Truth is but Truth, as it is Timed! (1719), A Ballance for Merchants and Mariners ( 1719), [David Bind on ],A Letter from a Merchant who has left off Trade to a Member of Parliament(1738), Editorial Notes