THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE
The laws for protecting commercial transactions against fraud were very severe. A few of the principal provisions will suffice to convey a general idea of the whole:—
A merchant who sold commodities to A, received money for them and then sold them to B or pawned them, was punishable with death if the price of the goods amounted to £16 or upwards, and with tattooing on the brow when the price fell short of that sum. But if, while lying in prison, he restored the money, capital punishment was changed into banishment from Yedo, and tattooing into expulsion from the street where he resided.
An unwitting purchaser of stolen goods was required to restore them and suffer the loss. If he had sold them, his duty was to trace them and re-purchase them from their actual holder, the principle being that responsibility rested on the person who had bought direct from the thief. If the goods could not be found, the original purchaser had to give back their money equivalent.
Any one wittingly buying stolen goods was banished from the street where he resided; and was liable to capital punishment if he had sold them.
Many rules were enacted to restrain usury. Compound interest was illegal, and the courts had no competence to entertain a creditor's suit after a bond had been frequently renewed. The latter restriction did not apply to blind creditors, however, and the results of the exception made in their favour have already been described. To fall into the clutches of a blind usurer was proverbially worse than the sharpest penury.
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