The earliest reported case of an inland bill occurs in 1663. It
appears that the negotiability of promissory notes was a matter of doubt
with the Court of Queen's Bench as late as 1702. The court seem to have
felt very little confidence in their own opinion upon the question; for
Chief Justice Holt, after urging his opinion against the negotiability
of such instruments, took occasion to speak with two or three of the
most famous merchants in London, as to the consequences it was alleged
would follow from obstructing their negotiability; and on another day he
says that they had told him it was very frequent with them to make such
notes, and that they looked upon them as bills of exchange, and that
they had been used a matter of thirty years, and were frequently
transferred and indorsed as bills of exchange. In 1704 Parliament put an
end to the dispute between Lord Holt and the merchants by recognizing
the negotiable qualities of promissory notes which now belong to them.
The law of promissory notes and bills of exchange is thus seen to be of
very recent origin. In the early part of the seventeenth century there
was a single reported case in the English language in this department
of legal learning; now these volumes of Professor Parsons present us an
array of more than ten thousand oases decided in the highest courts of
England and America, and a great majority of these are cases that have
occurred within the present century, if not within the last quarter of a
century.
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