=A Tale.= BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. ------------------ LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW. --- 833. PREFACE. -------------- In planning the present story, I was strongly tempted to use the ancient method of exemplification, and to present my readers with the Adventures of a Bill of Exchange, so difficult is it to exhibit by example the process of exchange in any other form than the history of the instrument. If, however, the transactions of Messrs. Vanderput and Snoek should be found to furnish my readers with a pretty clear notion of the nature and operation of the peculiar kind of currency of which this Number treats, I shall readily submit to the decision that the present volume has little merit as a specimen of exemplification. Though the working of principles might be shown in this case, as in any other, it could not, I think, be done naturally in a very small space. If I had had liberty to fill three octavo volumes with the present subject, an interesting tale might have been made up of the effects on private fortunes of the variations in the course of the Exchange, and of the liabilities which attend the use of a partial and peculiar representative of value. As it is, I have judged it best to occupy a large portion of my confined space in exhibiting a state of society to which such a species of currency is remarkably appropriate, in order that light might be thrown on the nature and operation of bills of exchange by showing what was being done, and what was wanted by those who most extensively adopted this instrument into their transactions.