PREFACE. THE work of Mr. Freedley, of which the present is in a great measure a reprint, entitled "A Practical Treatise on Business; or how to get, save, spend, give, lend, and bequeath Money, &c.," published first at Philadelphia, in 1848, and which reached in 1852 a fifth edition, will fulfil the author's intention of doing service to active, intelligent business men, and to men who are fitting themselves for business. He has gathered information from various sources, and has adapted it to the wants of his age and his countrymen. He has done to a great extent what Bacon regretted was not, and wished to have done,-collected into writing "the wisdom touching negotiation or business," or the great art of making money, and has helped to teach men "of mean experience how to excel men of long experience without learning, and outshoot them with their own bow." He instructs men how to make money, and stimulates them to make it as an honourable task. He has done more; he has given to business a dignity with which it is rarely invested, but which it well deserves. Journalism, now the popular literature to which the public mind responds, is more critical than descriptive, more intent on reforming than on recording the usages of society; and hence the blemishes and defects of all the daily business of life are much more noticed than its utility. The newspapers are continually |