happy by political or economical changes, but as a rule they propose to do this by subjecting the individual to the community. For with the old optimism the old belief in liberty has also declined in strength.

The change in the tone of economic literature may be realised by comparing Smith's Wealth of Nations with J. S. MILL's Principles of Political Economy. Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century; Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy; Ritchie, Natural Law, may be consulted for information respecting the philosophical optimism of the 18th century.

F. C. M.

OPTIONS. An "option" is the right to conclude a bargain on a future date, at a certain price. A "buying option," called also "the call," is the right to demand a certain number of shares, or amount of stock, or quantity of some specified produce, within a given time, at a fixed price; and a "selling option" is the right to sell, or "put" stock shares or produce under the same conditions. A "put and call" is a right of either buying or selling at a fixed price. Upon this plan speculations may on one side be made with a small capital, and with only a certain limited risk. But the net profits of the speculation are diminished by the price given for the option; and the probability of any profit resulting is really very small, because the price demanded is sure to be large enough to cover all the chances which the dealer can foresee.

Options are chiefly dealt in on the Stock Exchange, but are also frequently used in the United States in transactions in wheat and other produce (see PUT AND CALL).

R. W. B.

ORA (Anglo-Saxon). The ora was a money of account introduced into England by the Danes, and does not appear at any time to have been a coin in use in this country.

In the reign of Edward the Elder (901-924), fines imposed upon the English population were reckoned in shillings, while sums due from the Danes were calculated in ora. The Danes used the term to designate both a weight and a cash value. The weight is alluded to in one version of the Laws of Ethelred as one-fifteenth of a pound, and the value is frequently referred to in DOMESDAY BOOK (q.v.) as that of twenty shillings. Subsequently, however, record exists of a lower rating of sixteen shillings being also used. The modern Scandinavian ÖRE is doubtless the lineal descendant of this ancient money of account. [R. Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Great Britain, 1840.]

F. E. A.

ORDER (bill or note payable to). At common law a bill or note could not be negotiated by indorsement unless it contained words expressly authorising transfer. But § 8 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 has adopted the Scotch rule, and now provides that a bill is payable to order which is expressed to be so payable, or which is expressed to be

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ORDER AND DISPOSITION. The ownership of personal property, as a rule, can be transferred by delivery of possession. Possession of property is therefore evidence of ownership. Where a purchaser or a mortgagee of chattels permits them to remain in the possession of the vendor or mortgagor, the latter appears to the world at large as owner, and is therefore able to obtain credit as such. In order to protect creditors, successive bankruptcy acts have made all goods that are in the "possession, order, and disposition" of a bankrupt, in his trade or business, by permission of the owner, and of which the bankrupt is the reputed owner, liable for payment of his debts, even though such goods belong to some one else.

[Robson on Bankruptcy, 1894.] J. E. C. M. ORDERS IN COUNCIL (retaliatory against France). The battle of Trafalgar (21st October 1805) annihilated the French fleet, put an end to all schemes for an invasion of England, and secured English supremacy at sea for the remainder of the war. Soon afterwards the battle of Austerlitz (2nd December 1805) broke up the great coalition which PITT had formed, and gave to France an ascendency in Europe such as no power had obtained for centuries. From this time the two great belligerents, England and France, unable to strike each other directly, were forced to resort to the destruction of each other's commerce, and began a struggle limited only by their respective powers of endurance. The peculiar difficulty of this warfare against commerce, which now became the main object of both states, lay in the injury which it must necessarily inflict upon neutral powers, whose interests in time of war are always opposed to those of belligerents. Both in 1780 and in 1800 the Baltic states had shown their hostility to any infringement of their trading rights by forming an ARMED NEUTRALITY (q.v.). And there was now another neutral power to be reckoned with. The United States had become independent in 1783; since the outbreak of the war they had developed a considerable mercantile marine, and their geographical position gave them peculiar advantages for carrying on trade between the West Indies and Europe. The attitude of the United States becomes a factor of first importance in the relations between England and France after 1805.

England took the first step when the Grenville ministry, which had been formed on Pitt's death, issued an order in council on 16th May 1806. This decreed a general blockade

of the whole coast from the Elbe to Brest, and a rigorous blockade from Ostend to the Seine. No neutral vessels could enter a port on the latter coast, and outside the narrower limits they were only admitted provided they "had not been laden at any port belonging to his Majesty's enemies." This order, which was not for the time an excessive straining of the maritime ascendency of England, gave Napoleon a pretext for issuing the famous Berlin decree (21st November 1806), which laid the foundation of what is known as the CONTINENTAL SYSTEM (q.v.). By this he declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade, prohibited all trade with them, and decreed that all goods exported from them were lawful prize. This decree, which France would have found it extremely difficult to enforce, provoked the whig ministers to draw up the first of the great orders in council, which was issued on 7th January 1807. This document, which was condemned by the opposition as a very inadequate measure of retaliation, ordered "that no vessel shall be permitted to trade from one port to another, both which ports shall belong to or be in the possession of France or her allies, or shall be so far under their control as that British vessels may not freely trade thereat." This prohibition of the coasting trade went beyond any previous claim of England, which had hitherto aimed mainly at preventing the carriage of goods from French colonies to the mother country. It was bitterly resented by the Americans, who had discovered a lucrative business along the Mediterranean coasts from which they were suddenly excluded under penalty of capture and confiscation.

In March 1807 the Grenville ministry was driven from office and their places were filled by tories, who were more resolutely anti-French and less scrupulous in the choice of expedients. Soon afterwards Napoleon ended the northern war by the treaty of Tilsit (8th July 1807), by the secret articles of which France and Russia pledged themselves to effect the complete exclusion of England from trade with Europe. Napoleon now returned to Paris, and devoted all his energies to the carrying out of his continental system, which he had been compelled to neglect during the campaigns of Eylau and Friedland. Denmark, Portugal, Prussia, Austria, and Turkey were all coerced or induced to prohibit the entrance not only of English vessels but of all English products. French ships were instructed to seize the vessels of any power if they carried any goods of British origin, and French courts were instructed to declare the cargoes of such vessels to be lawful prize.

These vigorous measures gave the tories a pretext for that energetic retaliation which they had demanded when in opposition. On 11th November 1807 they issued another order in

council which asserted that the "order of 7th January has not answered the desired purpose, either of compelling the enemy to recall his orders or of inducing neutral nations to interfere with effect to obtain their revocation, but, on the contrary, the same have recently been enforced with extreme rigour." The main provision of the order is that "all the ports and places of France and her allies, or of any country at war with his Majesty, and all other ports or places from which, although not at war with his Majesty, the British flag is excluded, and all ports or places in the colonies belonging to his Majesty's enemies, shall from henceforth be subject to the same restrictions in point of trade and navigation as if the same were actually blockaded by his Majesty's naval forces in the most strict and rigorous manner." Further "all trade in articles which are of the produce or manufacture of the said countries or colonies shall be deemed and condemned to be unlawful, and every vessel trading from or to the said countries or colonies, together with all goods or merchandise on board, and all articles of the produce or manufacture of the said countries or colonies, shall be captured and condemned as prize to the captors." is obviously the direct and complete reply to the Berlin decree, and though the scope of the English prohibition is the more vast and comprehensive in proportion to the magnitude and number of her enemies, yet this difference was by no means out of proportion to the differing naval power of the two countries. The French men-of-war were closely confined to their harbours, so that the blockade of the British islands was purely verbal. England, on the other hand, though of course unable to enforce a blockade on the scale of the order, had such an overwhelming naval force at sea as to make the prohibited trade extremely difficult and dangerous.

This

To the sweeping prohibitions of its main clause, the order of 11th November made two important exceptions in favour of bona fide neutrals: (1) they might trade to or from the colonies of hostile powers provided their port of departure or destination was in their own country or in a British colony: (2) they might clear out from some British port, or from Gibraltar or Malta, or from the port of an allied state, to any hostile port, or back from such port to a British or allied port, so long as the hostile port were not actually blockaded by the fleet. In these exceptions, and especially in the second, lies the subtlety of the English policy of retaliation. Napoleon had prohibited the exportation of goods from the British Islands; the English government replied that France and her allies should not receive any goods whatever except from the British islands, and no goods were to leave France unless in the first place they went to Britain. Thus

not only was France to be weakened and humiliated, but all her imports and exports were to pay toll to the enemy, who would use the wealth thus obtained in strengthening her own forces and in subsidising the continental enemies of France. Napoleon was not slow to reply to a measure which was as insulting as it was damaging to his subjects and allies. On 17th December 1807 the Milan decree declared that every ship which suffered the search of an English vessel, or submitted to a voyage to England, or paid any tax to the English government, was by that act denationalised and deprived of the guarantee of her flag. Any ship, whatever its nationality or its cargo, was declared to be lawful prize if it was on its way to or from Britain, British colonies, or places occupied by British troops.

By these measures the two belligerents stood committed to a struggle for life or death, and also to a policy which imposed greater loss and restrictions upon neutral powers than the latter had undergone in any previous war. For Europe this was a small matter, as Napoleon would not allow any neutrals within reach of his military forces. The United States were the chief sufferers; and they hastened to retaliate by closing their market to both the belligerent powers, and by depriving both of the benefit of American goods and carriers. An act of embargo (22nd December 1807) forbade American vessels to leave their ports except for another port in their own country. When this was repealed on 1st March 1809, it was succeeded by a non-intercourse act which prohibited all trade with Great Britain, France, and their respective colonies.

The policy and the morality both of the French decrees and of the English orders were hotly debated at the time, and have been a subject of much subsequent discussion. As regards morals, the measures were essentially military in character, and can be justified only on the grounds of advantage or necessity. From the point of view of policy, there can be little doubt that Napoleon's conduct was ill-considered and reckless, and the result justified England in imposing temporary hardship on herself, and in incurring the hostility of neutral states, in order to secure an ultimate victory. France, absolutely unable to defend her own shipping, was really dependent for important supplies upon neutral carriers, and ought to have done all in her power to aid and encourage them. Moreover the hardships imposed upon Europe by the exclusion of necessaries, or by the enormous increase of their price, raised a spirit of resistance to French domination, as an intolerable burden, which even Napoleon could not quell. The necessity of forcing reluctant subjects and allies to carry out measures which he deemed necessary for the destruction of his inveterate opponent compelled him to undertake

41

those enterprises in the Peninsula and in Russia which first sapped and then overthrew his power.

One of the most curious features of the great struggle, which began in 1807 and practically ended in 1812, was that neither state could afford strictly to enforce its own decrees. England was determined to force its manufactures upon Europe in spite of Napoleon, and was aided in doing this by the reluctance of the northern states to obey the orders received from Paris. To facilitate the vast smuggling trade which went on on the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea, England resorted to a system of licenses by which merchants were allowed to carry on trade prohibited by the orders without running the risk of capture by English cruisers. From 2006 in 1807 these licenses increased to over 15,000 in 1809 and over 18,000 in 1810. Napoleon, on his side, found it impossible to dispense with the supplies which his decrees prohibited, and large sums were made by the French government by selling licenses. During the war with Austria in 1809 the evasion of the continental system was so general that its results were mainly seen in the height of prices and the heavy charges for marine insurance. England was so much the gainer by this relaxation that she endeavoured to conciliate the United States by a third order in council (26th April 1809), which narrowed the general blockade ordered in November 1807 to the coasts of Holland, France, and the Italian kingdom of Napoleon.

If he

After his victory at Wagram (6th July 1809), and the conclusion of peace with Austria, Napoleon returned to France determined to draw tighter than ever the restrictions which the recent war had allowed to slacken. was powerless at sea, he was absolute on land, and instead of sending his veteran troops to Spain, where they might have ended the war, he employed them as a gigantic coast-guard along the northern and western coasts of Europe. As Holland had proved recalcitrant under his brother Louis, the latter was deposed and his kingdom annexed to the French empire. Other annexations, including the duchy of Oldenburg, followed, until the cordon of troops was complete from France to Russia. When all preparations were made, Napoleon issued a decree of Fontainebleau (19th October 1810), by which all English merchandise in the countries dominated by France was to be taken and burnt. This edict was ruthlessly carried out by the French soldiery.

Now for the first time England felt the full strain of the continental system. Licenses became useless when the exported goods were liable to prompt seizure and destruction; and their number fell from 18,000 in 1810 to 7500 in 1811. It was calculated that "60,000 tong of coffee lay in the London warehouses, unsaleable at sixpence the pound, while the price or

the continent was from four to five shillings, and in some places even seven shillings." The closure of the American market and a series of bad seasons made matters worse, and the general depression resulted in the bankruptcy of many firms. The orders in council, which had been popular at first, were now objects of general detestation. The opposition denounced them in parliament, the great towns petitioned for their repeal, and the United States threatened

war.

The government could hardly hold out for long against the general clamour. Fortunately the strain was relaxed at the moment when it seemed to have reached the stage of cracking. The sufferings of France had been even greater than those of England, and she had far less capacity of endurance. The resources of credit taxation and conscription | were alike exhausted by the demands which the emperor had made upon them. At this moment the chief French ally found it necessary to make a change of front. Russia was peculiarly dependent upon the English market for its produce, and Alexander I. refused to bring material ruin on his subjects as well as to endure the personal slights put upon him by Napoleon. In December 1810 he struck the first blow at the agreement of Tilsit by allowing neutrals to import to Russia a number of articles of British manufacture. In 1811 Russia abandoned the French system altogether, and entered into negotiations with England and Sweden. Napoleon had no alternative but to acknowledge defeat or to compel submission to his will. He chose the latter alternative, and in 1812 he started on that eastern campaign which led directly to his downfall. In the same year Wellington began the brilliant series of aggressive campaigns which ended in the expulsion of the French from the Peninsula. The warfare against commerce had ended in the defeat of France, and the orders in council had done their work. On 23rd June 1812 the orders of 1807 and 1809 were formally repealed. Unfortunately the repeal came too late to avoid a rupture with the United States, which had declared war against England on 18th June.

[See articles on CONTINENTAL SYSTEM; LICENSES (Continental War), and authorities there referred

.to. For fullest and best account of the warfare against commerce see Mahan, The influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire (1892), vol. ii. chs. 17 and 18. It is noteworthy that Captain Mahan, though an American, approves on the whole of the policy of the orders in council.]

R. L.

ÖRE. By the provisions of the Scandinavian monetary convention of 1872 the standard of value in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the CROWN (q.v.), value 1s. 1·215d., is divided into 100 öre.

Token silver coins of fifty, forty, twenty-five, and ten öre are in circulation.

F. E. A.

ORESME, NICHOLAS (c. 1320-1382), the author of a treatise on the currency, was one of the most distinguished of the French scholars of the 14th century. In 1356 he became grand master of the College of Navarre at Paris; in 1361 he was elected dean of the church of Rouen; and in 1377 he was appointed Bishop of Lisieux. Without deserving a place in the line of great schoolmen, he was a man of interests as wide as the science of the time, and wrote upon many subjects with facility and force. In 1363 he preached before pope Urban V. at Avignon a vigorous sermon, on the evils in the church, which was in great repute towards the end of the middle ages, and was several times reprinted during the reformation. In 1370 he translated the Ethics of Aristotle from Latin into French at the request of Charles V., and was appointed in recompense one of the royal chaplains; and in 1371, at the same prompting, he translated the Politics and Economics. One at least of his theological works enjoyed a high reputation in the schools of Paris; and his numerous writings on mathematics deserve recognition in the history of that science. The date of the composition of his Tractatus de Origine, Natura, Jure, et Mutationibus Monetarum is unknown, but it was probably toward the middle or end of the reign of John II. (1350-1364); the translation into French, which was made by Oresme himself, appears from internal evidence to have been made after 1356.

[The data for the life of Oresme have been carefully gathered by F. Meunier, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicole Oresme (Paris, 1857), where will be found a list both of his undoubted and dubious works with some illustrative excerpts. Meunier shows that there is no evidence for the assertion, in itself difficult to reconcile with chronology, that Oresme was the preceptor of Charles V. of France. For his mathematical writings, see M. Curtze, Die math. Schriften des Nicolaus Oresmius (Berlin, 1870).

His Tractatus de Origine, etc., Monetarum occuIt is composed of pies some thirty octavo pages. twenty-six brief chapters and a prologue. In the prologue he states that some are of opinion that the prince has a right to change the currency at pleasure, and make profit thereby. His intention, accordingly, is to set down what seems to him most necessary to be said according to the bring about a common agreement. He begins by philosophy of Aristotle; and his hope is to explaining the invention of money (ch. i.); the use for that purpose of the precious metals (ch. ii.); the use of more than one metal and of alloy for the smaller values (ch. iii.); and the necessity for a stamp (ch. iv.). Since money is instituted for the good of the community, it ought to be coined by 66 a public person"; and as the prince is "a person more public" than any other individual, he alone ought to undertake the work (ch. v.). This, however, does not make the prince "the lord or proprietor of the currency" (ch. vi.),

:

The expense of coinage is best met by a proper seigniorage (ch. vii.). The discussion of the main theme then opens with the general proposition that laws or customs affecting the community, including therein the currency, are never to be changed without evident necessity; and this is especially the case with money, on account of the common practice of fixed rents, etc. (ch. viii.). An alteration of the stamp may be sometimes desirable (ch. ix. ), and also of the ratio of exchange between the metals, when any notable change takes place in their relative value as commodities ("Verumtamen ista proportio debet sequi naturalem habitudinem auri ad argentum in pretiositate" ch. x.). A change in the denomination of coins is only justified on such exceedingly rare occasions as not to be worth considering (ch. xi.). A change in the weight without a change of denomination is absolutely wrong and fraudulent (ch. xii.); and the same is true of a debasement of the material (c. xiii.); in both these ways the prince unduly draws to himself the substance of his people. The gain to the prince from the alteration of the currency is unjust (ch. xv.), unnatural (ch. xvi.), worse than usury (ch. xvii.), and such evils are of their very nature intolerable (ch. xviii.). Debasement of the currency involves much dishonourable embarrassment to the prince (ch. xix.); impoverishes the subjects, leads to the withdrawal of the precious metals from the country, and disturbs trade (ch. xx.); it benefits chiefly those who follow base occupations, such as moneydealers; and in divers ways it demoralises the people (ch. xxi.). It might seem that as the currency belongs to the community, the community has a right to raise money by an alteration of the currency, especially as such a method satisfied "quasi omnes bonas conditiones requisitas in aliqua tallia" (which are much the same as Adam SMITH'S canons of taxation). But unless the need of money is very great and the sum raised is to be expended in a far country, so many evils will follow therefrom that to do so will be an abuse of power (ch. xxii.). The prince cannot plead necessity or the grant of the community; the necessity of the community itself should decide, and the community cannot transfer its rights (ch. xxiii. xxiv.). A tyrant cannot long endure (ch. xxv.); and to make gain from a debasement of the currency is prejudicial to the royal power itself (ch. xxvi.).

This

The reputation of Oresme among modern economists is chiefly due to the enthusiastic praise of W. Roscher in his paper "Un grand économiste français du xiv. siècle' in Comptes Rendus de Acad. des Sc. morales et politiques (1862). led L. WOLOWSKI to bring out an edition of the treatise in both its Latin and French forms, with an introduction, in 1864. Ten years later ROSCHER described Oresme as "the greatest economist among the scholastic writers, for two reasons: first, the truth of his views, and secondly, his freedom from pseudo-theological system and pseudo-philosophical argumentation" (Gesch. der N. O., p. 25). Professor CUNNINGHAM has more recently spoken of Oresme as the earliest economic writer to explicitly adopt national wealth and national power as the very basis of his argument

43

(Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. (1890), 322), and has reprinted the Tractatus as an appendix to his history.

On the other hand, as early as 1863 W. Endemann (Die nationalökonomischen Grundsätze der canonistischen Lehre, 1863, in HILDEBRAND'S Jahrbücher, i., and separate; n. 331) declared that Roscher's "discovery" only showed how ignorant economists were of the older juristic literature; that the tractate was neither 66 source" for later times, nor anything wonderful for its own; and that the ideas were not at all original, but taken from Azo and Accursius and the glossators. In his Studien in der romanisch-kanonistischen Wirthschafts- und Rechtslehre, ii. pp. 164-189, (1883), Endemann returns to the charge, and asserts that Oresme's ideas were essentially the same as those of Aquinas and many who followed him, and that there is no reason whatever to regard him as an economic writer of the first rank.

It were unwise to attempt a final judgment until the literature of the 14th century has been more carefully examined. It seems, however, clear that Oresme's general ideas were common to the theologians, canonists, or legists of his time; it is probable also that the special feature of his argument, the insistence upon the right of the community to control the currency, was common to him with other representatives of the constitutionalist party in France. The currency had been again and again debased during the century; the states-general had repeatedly protested against such measures, and demanded that the currency should be restored to purity, e.g. in the Grande Ordonnance of 1357. These considerations need not, however, prevent our recognising the vigour and (on the whole) the clearness of Oresme's tractate, and the courage which was probably required for so unmistakable a declaration. It is not impossible that the treatise was itself composed during the constitutional agitation of the years 1355-1357: Oresme was then residing at Paris, where the states-general assembled; and we know that on the general subject of taxation he agreed with the constitutional party. If this be so, Oresme's place is not in the history of the theory of currency, but in the history of the theory of constitutional government.]

W. J. A.

a

ORTES, GIAMMARIA (1713-1790), Venetian monk, left his cloister on the entreaties of his mother after his father's death, but remained in holy orders and was ever a strenuous defender of the clergy. It is with this purpose that he wrote his Errori popolari intorno all'Economia nazionale, his Lettere sulla Religione and his treatise Dei Fide-commessi a famiglie e a chiese, with the scope of upholding the existence of clerical property in MORTMAIN.

In his Economia Nazionale (vols. xxi. xxii. and xxiii. of CUSTODI's Scrittori classici italiani di Economia Politica, Milan, 1802-1816) Ortes endeavours to demonstrate that as "the wealth of a nation is determined by the (previous) wants of its members, the riches of one of them