ABSTRACT
The right of exchange may be asserted as a direct deduction from the law of equal freedom. Among the Polynesian races, exchange is variously interfered with by the chiefs: here, foreign trade being monopolized by them; there, prices fixed by them; and in other places the length of a day’s work. It is worthy of note, however, that the changes which established almost entire freedom of trade in England, were chiefly urged on grounds of policy and not on grounds of equity. Throughout the Anti-Corn-Law agitation little was said about the “right” of free exchange; and at the present time such reprobation as we hear of protectionists, at home and abroad, is vented exclusively against the folly of their policy and not against its inequity. In earlier times interferences with the right of exchange were of course accompanied by interferences with the right of contract.
