"THE JEWS ARE A SORT OF PERSON ADMIRED AT, BY MOST TRADING PEOPLE ALL THE WORLD OVER, AS WELL AS HERE IN ENGLAND, FOR THEIR GREAT WEALTH AND THAT THEY ALL KNOW IT FLOWS FROM THE ABUNDANCE OF THEIR TRADE AND COMMERCE": RARE FIRST EDITION OF HAYNE'S 1685 ABSTRACT OF ALL THE STATUTES, WITH AN EARLY MENTION OF JEWISH COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN THE NEW WORLD

HAYNE, Samuel. An Abstract of all the Statutes Made Concerning Aliens Trading in England From the first year of K. Henry the VII. Also, Of all the Laws made for Securing our Plantation Trade to our Selves, with Observations thereon, proving that the Jews (in their practical way of Trade at this time) Break them all, to the great Damage of the King in His Customs, the Merchants in their Trade, the whole Kingdom, and His Majesties Plantations in America in their Staple. (London): N.T. for the Author, and are to be Sold by Walter Davis in Amen-Corner, 1685. Small quarto, modern brown paper boards; pp. (4), 38. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $6800.

First edition of this pamphlet arguing against allowing Jews to trade with England's American colonies on the same terms as Englishmen do, one of the earliest documents in English discussing Jewish commercial activity in America.

Hayne addressed his pamphlet to King James II, not with the goal of "a total extirpation of the Jews, or their trade (as some have aimed)," but to have the Alien Duty reimposed on some Jewish merchants. Under Charles II, a number of Jewish merchants of Dutch extraction were granted Letters Patent of Denization that specified they should pay no more Customs than the English. Haynes argues in his pamphlet that this exemption rightly came to an end with the death of Charles II, and that these merchants should again pay Customs. Specifically, Hayne alleges that "the Jews conspired with Sir Peter Killigrew and Brian Rogers, a Falmouth merchant, to defraud the Customs. Their method, he claimed, was to send Dutch cargo to Falmouth in an English vessel so that it could be sent on to Barbados as an English export, thus avoiding the duty that Dutch goods would have attracted… The local Cornish population was well disposed towards the Jewish merchants and at the trial of Gomasero and Losado, two London Jews, the jury found against Hayne's allegations… The real reasons why the Cornish favoured the Jews' case are apparent from Hayne's pamphlet. The first, discreditable if true, was that the Jews bribed the jurymen and their families. The second and more important was that the Cornish merchants were anxious about the effects of driving away Jewish capital and trade" (Bernard Susser, The Jews of South-West England, Chapter Two). Hayne accusations involve the New World outposts of Barbados, Jamaica, New York along with the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam in Europe, and constitute one of the earliest discussions in English of Jewish commercial activity in the New World. Wing H1216. Goldsmith 2587.

Repair to title page, scattered foxing to text; text trimmed a bit close, affecting page numbers and headers but not text block proper. Toning to modern binding. Quite rare.