day, in
some other place, that doubt will be cleared." This is the advice of
Lord Coke to the student bewildered in the mazes of legal
investigation. Preface to the first Institute.

PREFACE TO ROLT'S DICTIONARY[1].

No expectation is more fallacious than that which authors form of the
reception which their labours will find among mankind. Scarcely any man
publishes a book, whatever it be, without believing that he has caught
the moment when the publick attention is vacant to his call, and the
world is disposed, in a particular manner, to learn the art which he
undertakes to teach.

The writers of this volume are not so far exempt from epidemical
prejudices, but that they, likewise, please themselves with imagining
that they have reserved their labours to a propitious conjuncture, and
that this is the proper time for the publication of a dictionary of
commerce.

The predictions of an author are very far from infallibility; but, in
justification of some degree of confidence, it may be properly observed,
that there was never, from the earliest ages, a time in which trade so
much engaged the attention of mankind, or commercial gain was sought
with such general emulation. Nations which have hitherto cultivated no
art but that of war, nor conceived any means of increasing riches but by
plunder, are awakened to more inoffensive industry. Those whom the
possession of subterraneous treasures have long disposed to accommodate
themselves by foreign industry, are at last convinced that idleness
never will be rich. The merchant is now invited to every port;
manufactures are established in all cities; and princes, who just can
view the sea from some single corner of their dominions, are enlarging
harbours, erecting mercantile companies, and preparing to traffick in
the remotest countries.

Nor is the form of this work less popular than the subject. It has
lately been the practice of the learned to range knowledge by the
alphabet, and publish dictionaries of every kind of literature. This
practice has, perhaps, been carried too far by the force of fashion.
Sciences, in themselves systematical and coherent, are not very properly
broken into such fortuitous distributions. A dictionary of arithmetick
or geometry can serve only to confound; but commerce, considered in its
whole extent, seems to refuse any other method of arrangement, as it
comprises innumerable particulars unconnected with each other, among
whi