ABSTRACT
Terence Hutchinson has drawn attention to a boom in economic writing and thinking that occurred in England during the 1690s. Although he is mainly interested in the analytical progress made during this period by authors such as North, Martyn and Barbon, he also points out that this period is remarkable for its general and synthetic works on trade and commerce. Thus around this time many authors struggled to join together ideas, theories and concepts which had been used in the previous discussions into a more coherent ‘discourse of trade’. The aim was to put forward a number of general principles upon which commerce and trade were instituted.1
