en be so
regulated as to become useful even to those that pay them; and they may
be, likewise, so unequally imposed as to discourage honesty, and depress
industry, and give temptation to fraud and unlawful practices.

To teach all this is the design of the Commercial Dictionary; which,
though immediately and primarily written for the merchants, will be of
use to every man of business or curiosity. There is no man who is not,
in some degree, a merchant, who has not something to buy and something
to sell, and who does not, therefore, want such instructions as may
teach him the true value of possessions or commodities.

The descriptions of the productions of the earth and water, which this
volume will contain, may be equally pleasing and useful to the
speculatist with any other natural history; and the accounts of various
manufactures will constitute no contemptible body of experimental
philosophy. The descriptions of ports and cities may instruct the
geographer, as well as if they were found in books appropriated only to
his own science; and the doctrines of funds, insurances, currency,
monopolies, exchanges, and duties, is so necessary to the politician,
that without it he can be of no use either in the council or the senate,
nor can speak or think justly either on war or trade.

We, therefore, hope that we shall not repent the labour of compiling
this work; nor flatter ourselves unreasonably, in predicting a
favourable reception to a book which no condition of life can render
useless, which may contribute to the advantage of all that make or
receive laws, of all that buy or sell, of all that wish to keep or
improve their possessions, of all that desire to be rich, and all that
desire to be wise[2].

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A new Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, compiled from the
information of the most eminent merchants, and from the works of the
best writers on commercial subjects in all languages, by Mr. Rolt.
Folio, 1757.

[2] Of this preface, Mr. Boswell informs us that Dr. Johnson said he
never saw Rolt, and never read the book. "The booksellers wanted a
preface to a dictionary of trade and commerce. I knew very well what
such a dictionary should be, and I wrote a preface accordingly."
This may be believed; but the book is a most wretched farrago of
articles plundered without acknowledgment, or judgment, which,
indeed, was the case with most of Rolt's compilations.

PREFA