Colonial Commerce

<plain_text><page sequence="1">7 Colonial Commerce. The Massachusetts Historical Society has recently issued as the ninth volume of the seventh series of its Collections, Part I. of the &lt;? Commerce of Rhode Island." This contains 445 mercantile letters and documents from December 4, 1726, to December 25, 1774?in other words, wholly within the period of the existence of Rhode Island as a British dependency. More than one-half of the items in the volume relate to Aaron Lopez, the Jewish merchant-prince of colonial Newport. He had commercial interests, as is proved by these letters, in England, Ireland, Jamaica, Barbados, Canada, and elsewhere. The book is reviewed in The American Hebreio, January 29, 1915, p. 348. There is a vast mass of inedited material concerning Lopez's commer? cial transactions ; some of it was presented by the writer at the twenty third annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society, and will, it is to be hoped, eventually see the light of print. Albert M. Friedenberg. April 1915.</page></plain_text>