also worth £20,000. Without the use of bills of exchange, B would have been obliged to send £20,000 in gold across the Atlantic, and so would D, at the risk of loss to both. By the device of bills of exchange the goods are really bartered against each other, and all transmission of money saved.
A has money due to him in Liverpool, and he sells his claim to this money to any one who wants to make a payment in Liverpool. Going to his banker (the middle-man between exporters and importers and the one who deals in such bills) he finds there D, inquiring for some one who has a claim to money in Liverpool, since D owes C in Liverpool for his cargo of steel rails. A makes out a paper title to the £20,000 which B owes him (i.e., a bill of exchange) and by selling it to D gets immediately his £20,000 there in New York. The form in which this