It is difficult to say what men will agree to consider “perfect freedom of trade;” but it appears to me, that commerce was as unshackled at Athens as it could have been consistently with the welfare of the community. Mr. Bœckh says, “There are abundant proofs that exportation and importation were regulated according to the exigencies and interests of the community, which is by no means consistent with the perfect freedom of trade.”[1616] There appears to lurk a fallacy in this. Such freedom as this writer would call perfect is inconsistent with the very existence of civil society, whose fundamental laws require that no man’s freedom shall trench upon the freedom, and still less upon the life, of another. But if in commerce the exigencies and interests of the community could have been set at nought, there would have been an end of such community, since frequently its well-being, if not its being, depended on its commercial relations with foreign states. ----- Footnote 1616: Pub. Econ. i. 73, seq. ----- So far, therefore, it must, doubtless, be admitted, that commerce was not free. To this extent, and no further, does Aristotle counsel or contemplate interferences with trade: “With regard to importation and exportation,” he says, “it is necessary to know how large a supply of provisions the state requires, and what proportion of them can be produced in the country and what imported, and what imports and exports are necessary for the state, in order that commercial treaties and agreements may be concluded with those of whom the state must make use for this purpose.”[1617] ----- Footnote 1617: Rhet. i. 4. -----