The scales of commerce and trade: ballancing betwixt the buyer and seller, artificer and manufacture, debitor and creditor, the most general questions, artificiall rules, and usefull conclusions incident to traffique: comprehended in two books. The first states the ponderates to equity and custome, all usuall rules, legall bargains and contracts, in wholesale ot [sic] retaile, with factorage, returnes, and exchanges of forraign coyn, of interest-money, both simple and compounded, with solutions from naturall and artificiall arithmetick. The second book treats of geometricall problems and arithmeticall solutions, in dimensions of lines, superficies and bodies, both solid and concave, viz. land, wainscot, hangings, board, timber, stone, gaging of casks, military propositions, merchants accounts by debitor and creditor; architectonice, or the art of building. / By Thomas Willsford Gent.

QUESTION XXI. A Tenant took a Lease of a House and Land for a term of 21 years, paying 160 L Fine, and 16 L Rent per ann. at 7 yeares end the Lessee was resolved to put it off: What annual Rent or Annuity must he set the Tenement at, to with∣draw his former Fine, or reserving the same Rent, impose another proportionall for the years to come? Interest at the rate of 6 L per cent. per ann.

	Rent		Fine
1	.08500	5	9.2949••
51000	13.6
2	13.60000	6	5576988
		2788494
3	13 L 12 ss	929498
4	29 L 12 ss	7	126.411728

First to impose a proportional Rent, find by the first Table (of Annuities to be purchased) what 160 L will buy for the full term of 21 years, whose Decimal is .08500, which multiplied by 160 L, or 16, as in the first row of this marginal table, the product in the second is 13.60000. in the third is reduced to 13 L 12 ss. & this annual Pension 160 L will purchase for 21 years; which added to 16 L

per ann. (the Rent of the Tenement) does evident∣ly shew the nature of the Lease, as in the fourth row 29 L 12 sh. and setting of it at that rate the re∣maining years, the Tenant saves himself.

To discover what Fine must be imposed, the old Rent reserved, and yet a ••roportional part for the first Fine. The term of years remaining are 14, whose Decimal in the fourth table of Discount is 9.29498, which multiplied by the Decimal of 13 L 12 sh last found, viz. 13.6, as in the fifth row, in the s••xth stand their several products, and in the seventh row the totall summe, as 1••6.411728, from whence strike off 6 places, which are fractions (according to the Rules of Mul∣tiplication in Decimals) and reduce the test, the Fine will be discovered 126 L 8 sh 2 ¾ D, which saves the Tenant harmless, the old Rent still re∣served, without gain or loss; the thing required. As for the Decimal of 12 sh. find the fraction, or see lib. 3. ca••. 7. table 1.

Rules I have here delivered, equally ballanc'd betwixt the Buyer and Seller, Debitor and Cre∣ditor, whereby neither side might deceive, non yet be deceiv'd by falacious or ambiguous cont••••cts. As for Interest Money, here are composed rules both according to Custome, prescriptions of Art, and the precepts of humane Institutions, which tolerates Usury, confined to a Loan of 6 L per centum per annum. I cordially wish the frugality of the people would lessen the trade of money, and sink the Im∣post to a Land rate; yet there would be ma∣ny Money-corm••rants, and their pro••it great, because such Estates lye dormant in Banks,

obscured from the inquisition of a sax; and rare∣ly appea o•• wake but with the noyse of a Forfei∣ture o•• the Owners Land, or the liberty of his per∣son. The Interest, like a Monster, by an unlawfull conception, and a prodigious birth (grown greater then the Principal) makes appeal to the rigor of the Laws, against those who bore too prodigal a Saile, and now like to suffer wr••ck betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, or swallowed by those yawning waves.

Usury is like a Cancer, which by an unperce∣ptible Consumption ingratefully wasts that body where by Corruption it took a being; I wish none to adore the Golden Calf, nor yet slight the ma∣terials, their use being good and laudable, where Vertue is Treasurer, Discretion Controller, and Charity Purse-bea••er: but if abused by being cast in another mould, or the three adverse parties in office, it will as e•• ly catch those (who make worldly wealth their Mammon) as lime does Birds; so the danger is great, and the more, when usually the love of Money multi••lies, as their Stocks and Magazines encrease; and those who have most are often most miserable in want, ignorant in the use of temporall blessings, and glutted with ex∣cesse, become immedicable by those surfeits; like men in Dropsies, the more waterish they grow, the more they desire drink, with an unsatiable thirst, so feeds the humours, and that the di∣sease. And thus I will conclude with the ingenu∣ous Poet, Ovid.

Sic quibus in••umui suff••sa venter ab unda, Quò plus s••n potae, plus sitiuntur aquae.

In English thus,

Men s••ell'd with Dropsies grow excessive dry, And drinking, covet more untill they die.