ing given rise in England to so much absurd and mischievous legislation, were not yet corrected by the enlarged commercial experience of the present period. In 1402, we find the parliament enacting, in the spirit of former statutes, that all merchants, whether strangers or denizens, importing commodities from abroad, and selling them in the country for English money, "shall bestow the same money upon other merchandise of England, for to carry the same out of the realm of England, without carrying any gold or silver in coin, plate, or mass, out of the said realm, upon pain of forfeiture of the same, saving always their reasonable costs."[1] There can be no doubt that the main motive of this and other prohibitions of the same kind was far more to prevent the purely imaginary evil of the export of English money than even to promote the really desirable, however unwisely pursued object, of the export of English produce or manufactures. The law, however, entirely failed of its intended effect. The statute of 1402 was confirmed the following year,[2] with additional provisions for its more effective execution—a fact which is itself sufficient evidence that it had proved useless, or been generally evaded; but this new attempt to compass an impossibility was not more successful than the former; for, in a few months after their enactment, we find the principal part of the recent more stringent regulations abandoned, and declared "utterly void and annulled for ever," as having been seen by the king and his parliament to be "hurtful and prejudicial as well for himself and his realm, as for the said merchants, aliens, and strangers. "[3] From other recorded facts, also, it appears that, notwithstanding all these prohibitions, English money constantly found its way to the continent, and was commonly current in every country of Europe. Thus, when Eric, King of Sweden, in 1408, bought the Isle of Gothland, with its great commercial emporium of Wisbuy, from the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, he is stated to have paid for it in
