How the Exchange is a Constraint on despotic Power.
MUSCOVY would have descended from its despotic power, but could not. The establishment of commerce depended on that of the exchange, and the transactions were inconsistent with all its laws.
In 1745, the Czarina made a law to expel the Jews, because they remitted into foreign countries the specie of those who were banished into Siberia, as well as that of the foreigners entertained in her service. As all the subjects of the empire are slaves, they can neither go abroad themselves, nor send away their effects without permission. The exchange which gives them the means of remitting their specie from one country to another, is therefore entirely incompatible with the laws of Muscovy.
Commerce itself is inconsistent with the Russian laws. The people are composed only of slaves employed in agriculture, and of slaves called ecclesiastics or gentlemen, who are the lords of those slaves: there is then nobody left for the third estate, which ought to be composed of mechanics and merchants.