Incidental reference was had a little way back to an Exchange once made between King Solomon of Jerusalem and King Hiram of Tyre. Let that be our typical instance. (a) _There were two persons_, Solomon and Hiram. Those two, and no more, stood face to face, as it were, to make a commercial bargain. They made it, and it was afterwards executed. The execution indeed concerned a great many persons on both sides, and occupied a long period of time; but the bargain itself, the trade, the exchange, the covenant, concerned only two persons, and occupied but a moment of time. It made no difference with the bargain as such, with the binding nature of it, with the terms of it, with the mutual gains of it, that each person represented a host of others, subordinates and subjects, who would have to coöperate in the carrying of it out, because each king had the right to speak for his subjects as well as for himself, for commercial purposes each was an agent as well as a monarch, the word of each concluded the consent and the action of others as well as his own. Nor did it make any, the least, difference with this exchange or the advantages of it, that each party to it belonged to, was even the head of, independent and sometimes hostile Peoples. Commerce is one thing, and nationality a totally different thing. The present point is, in the words of the old proverb,--"It takes two to make a bargain." And it takes _only_ two to make a bargain. When corporations and even nations speak in trade, they speak, and speak finally, through one accredited agent. We reach, then, as the first bit of our analysis of Trade, the fact, that there are always two parties to it, "the party of the first part and the party of the second part."