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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2003
Extract
In July 1768, the Boston merchant John Amory paid cash for two bills of exchange sold to him by a certain Mr Mumford. These bills, valued at £279 4s 3d and £342 10s, had originally been drawn on the London commission house of Lascelles and Daling by two Barbados merchants trading in partnership as Stevenson and Went. The bills were drawn in favour of another merchant called Charles Wickham. Stevenson and Went were in the business of supplying slaves to sugar planters on credits of up to twelve months, but as soon as their slave shipments arrived, however, the partners' own obligations to the merchants and mariners who had fitted out their vessels and supplied them with cargo fell due. To overcome this remittance problem, Lascelles and Daling acted as the slave importers' guarantors by agreeing to accept their bills before receiving the funds needed to pay them. A bill drawn on a sound London house was considered good for payment in any Atlantic port, including Rhode Island where Wickham was based. The bills presented to Lascelles and Daling were due at twelve months' sight, but creditors such as Wickham did not have to wait a full year before receiving their money. Wickham endorsed the bills in favour of Mumford (probably a coastal mariner to whom he owed a debt), who in turn passed them on to Amory. With balances owing in London, Amory was happy to discount the two bills for cash, judging this a better option at the current rate of exchange than sending specie or merchandise across the Atlantic. And cash is what Mumford would have needed to pay his crew members.
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Footnotes
The author is grateful to Natasha Glaisyer and Douglas Hamilton for their comments on an early draft of this paper, while absolving them from any responsibility for remaining errors of fact or interpretation.