To illustrate this, we may say with the lawyers, that as all contracts may be reduced under one of the following heads, _Do ut des, do ut facias; facio ut des, facio ut facias_; so he who actually gives or performs his part, is the creditor, or the person who gives credit; and he who only promises to give or perform, is the debtor, or the person who receives it. Credit, therefore, is no more than a _well established_ confidence between men, in what relates to the fulfilling their engagements. This confidence must be supported by laws, and established by manners. By laws, the execution of formal contracts may be enforced: manners, alone, can introduce that entire confidence which is requisite to form the spirit of a trading nation. Credit, in its infancy, must be supported by statutes, and enforced by penalties; but when it is once well established, every recourse had to law, is found to wound the delicacy of its constitution. For this reason we see, that in certain nations, the legislator wisely excludes the ordinary courts of justice from extending their rigid jurisdiction over mercantile engagements: they leave to the prudence and good faith of men versed in commerce, to extricate the combinations which result from such transactions; because they are to be interpreted more according to the constant fluctuation of manners, than to the more permanent institutions of positive law. The more the jurisdiction of the statesman is unlimited; or in other words, the less the power of any sovereign is restrained, by the laws and constitution of the state he governs, the more it behoves him to avoid every step of administration which can make his authority be felt in cases where credit is concerned. If he should happen, for example, to be a debtor himself, he must take good care never to appear in any other light to his creditor. The moment he puts on the sovereign, the same moment all confidence is lost. For these reasons, we have hitherto had few examples (I might perhaps have said none at all) where credit has been found _permanently_ solid, under a pure monarchy. But we must observe, at the same time, that the stability of credit is not incompatible with that form of government. At certain times, we have seen credit make a surprising progress in France; and it has never suffered any check in that state, but from acts of power, which I think have proceeded more from inadvertency, and want of knowledge, than from a design of defrauding creditors. These may be looked on as blunders in administration; because they have constantly disappointed the purpose for which they were intended. Let me prove this by some examples.