iter of commerce. By
commerce, I at present mean domestic commerce only. It would lead me
into too large a field, if I were to attempt, to enter upon the nature
of foreign trade, it's privileges, regulations, and restrictions; and
would be also quite beside the purpose of these commentaries, which
are confined to the laws of England. Whereas no municipal laws can be
sufficient to order and determine the very extensive and complicated
affairs of traffic and merchandize; neither can they have a proper
authority for this purpose. For as these are transactions carried on
between the subjects of independent states, the municipal laws of one
will not be regarded by the other. For which reason the affairs of
commerce are regulated by a law of their own, called the law merchant
or _lex mercatoria_, which all nations agree in and take notice of.
And in particular the law of England does in many cases refer itself
to it, and leaves the causes of merchants to be tried by their own
peculiar customs; and that often even in matters relating to inland
trade, as for instance with regard to the drawing, the acceptance, and
the transfer, of bills of exchange[n].

[Footnote n: Co. Litt. 172. Ld Raym. 181. 1542.]

WITH us in England, the king's prerogative, so far as it relates to
mere domestic commerce, will fall principally under the following
articles:

FIRST, the establishment of public marts, or places of buying and
selling, such as markets and fairs, with the tolls thereunto
belonging. These can only be set up by virtue of the king's grant, or
by long and immemorial usage and prescription, which presupposes such
a grant[o]. The limitation of these public resorts, to such time and
such place as may be most convenient for the neighbourhood, forms a
part of oeconomics, or domestic polity; which, considering the kingdom
as a large family, and the king as the master of it, he clearly has a
right to dispose and order as he pleases.

[Footnote o: 2 Inst. 220.]

SECONDLY, the regulation of weights and measures. These, for the
advantage of the public, ought to be universally the same throughout
the kingdom; being the general criterions which reduce all things to
the same or an equivalent value. But, as weight and measure are things
in their nature arbitrary and uncertain, it is therefore expedient
that they be reduced to some fixed rule or standard: which standard it
is impossible to fix by any written law or oral proclamation; for no