Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), March 28, 1845, vol. 1, no. 13, p. ??

[page 193, column 2, continued:]

THE LIBRARY OF COMMERCE; Practical, Theoretical, and Historical. By Freeman Hunt, Editor of the Merchants’ Magazine. Vol. 1. 142 Fulton street. 1845.

THIS is the first number of “Hunt's Library of Commerce,” an important and much needed series of books, which the well known editor of the Merchants’ Magazine has undertaken to publish.

The present volume contains a sketch of the commercial intercourse of the world with China; a history of the British Corn laws; and Memoirs of Commercial Delusions: embracing sketches of the Mississippi scheme and the South Sea bubble. The first article, we presume to be from the pen of the editor; the others are republications frcm English works. The most valuable part of the book is that which relates to Commercial Delusions, because it shows, in a manner which cannot be misunderstood, the disastrous effects which must always follow all commercial speculations, when they are carried to excess. There are speculations of daily occurrence in our community, based upon no surer ground than those projected by Law and Scraggs, which do not create as much distress, only because they are not as widely spread as were the operations of those arch-financiers. A company was projected in Wall street, the past winter, in [page 194:] which several men of capital embarked, which was hardly more explicit in its objects than one started by a great genius in the time of the South Sea Bubble, entitled “A Company fur carrying on an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but Nobody to know what it is.” The projector of this surprising adventure is said to have gained two thousand pounds in instalments of 5 per cent. from subscribers to shares. The profits, of course, were nothing to nobody, excepting himself. If the mania for “companies” to do every thing, should ever return to this city, we hope to see a company started for keeping the streets free from mud. We think that if any enterprising genius should open the books for subscription to such stock even now, he could not fail to receive a very great number of subscriptions.

The Library of Commerce is published in a very neat form, and handsomely printed. It will, of course, be a prominent volume on every merchant's book-shelves.