THE

COMMERCIAL CLASS-BOOK;

OR,

YOUNG MERCHANT'S COMPENDIUM.

En Three Parts.

PART I.

Showing, theoretically and practically, the nature of Commerce, with its various kinds and
sub-divisions; the duties of the several persons engaged in it; and the nature and forms
of Bills of Exchange, Bills of Lading, Charter-parties, Invoices, Account Sales,
Accounts-current, Insurance-accounts, Average-statements, &c. &c.

PART II.

Containing a practical Treatise on Foreign Exchanges, and Operations in Specie and Bullion,
and teaching how calculations thereof are performed by the Chain-Rule.

PART III.

Being an introduction to Book-keeping by Single-Entry and Double-Entry, both on the
Italian and English Systems.

STHES

BY

JOHN HENRY FREESE,

Formerly a Merchant in London and Rio de Janeiro, and now Director of the Collegiate Institution at Nova Friburgo,
Brazil; Author of "The Cambist's Compendium," "Rio Circular," " Elements of Conversation in Four
Languages,"
," "Compendio de Geographia e Historia," "1° Livro d'Arithmetica," and
"Instrucçoes Innocentes e Doutrinæs," &c.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER ROW.

1849.

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF OUR FRIENDSHIP AND HIS KINDNESS,

WHEN, ALTHOUGH IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES,

MUTUALLY PLOUGHING THE COMMERCIAL FIELDS OF BRAZIL:

AND IN TOKEN OF THE HIGH ESTIMATION

IN WHICH I HOLD HIS EXTENSIVE AND DISTINGUISHED

COMMERCIAL ATTAINMENTS.

PREFACE.

THE great success I have experienced in preparing youths for commercial life, at my Classical and Commercial Collegiate Institution, founded in the year 1841 at Nova Friburgo, in the province of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has induced me to publish the course of instruction I there pursue in the "Commercial-Class ;" hoping that it may thereby become, more generally useful.

It is notorious that youths—I believe I may say in all countries-when they leave school to enter on a mercantile career, are totally ignorant of the most common elements of commerce: the utmost extent of their acquirements being perhaps, a fair handwriting, an acquaintance, and that mechanical, with the common rules of arithmetic, and an imperfect, and often from the manner in which it is but too generally taught, an unprofitable knowledge of geography; consequently rendering considerable time and trouble necessary, ere they can become useful to their employers, or beneficial to themselves.

Knowing such to be the case, from an experience of more than thirty years, whilst myself engaged in commercial pursuits in different parts of the globe, I determined when I established my College, to supply the deficiency; and not aware of the existence of any work that would answer my purpose, I prepared that which I now venture to publish.