GEE, JOSHUA, was an eminent London merchant of the earlier part of the 18th century, but we have not been able to discover any particulars of his personal history. He was one of the authors of the work called 'The British Merchant,' originally published in ntunbers twice a week in 1713, and afterwards collected and reprinted in 3 volts 8vo, 1721, and again In 1743. It was set up in opposition to the commercial treaty with France which was piroposed by ministers after the peace of Utrecht, and to Defoe's thrice a week paper, entitled ' Mercator, or Commerce Retrieved,' in which the treaty was defended. The British Merchant' contains perhaps the most complete exposition that has been given of what is called the Mercantile or Balance of Trade theory; bib independently of their systematic notions, many of the facts collected by the writers are clarions and valuable, and their publication forms a record of the state of many branches of our commerce at the period when it appeared. (See a full account of it in the 'Pictorial History of England,' vol. iv. pp. 207.13.) In the preface to the republication it is stated by the editor, Mr. Charles King, that "Mr. Joshua Gee, merchant, was a very great assistant, and laboured with much indus try in these papers." Gee however is best known by his separate work, entitled The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain con sidered,' which originally appeared at London iu Svo, in 1729 or 1730 (for copies of the first edition seem to have sometimes one, sometimes the other of these dates). It was reprinted at London in 8vo in 1731, and in 12mo in 1738 ; and there is a Glasgow edition of 1760, called on the title-page the sixth, and another in 12mo of 1767, professing to contain "many interesting Note% and Additions, by a Merchant."
The book is divided into thirty-four chapters, and, besides the general principles of trade, discuses the particular commerce carried on by England with every part of the world. The two main propositions which the author attempts to make out are, " That the surest way for a nation to increase in riches is to prevent the importation of such foreign commodities as may be raised at home," and "That this king dom is capable of raising within itself and its colonies materials for employing all our poor in those manufactures which we now import from such of our neighbours who refuse the admission of ours." In his advertisement Gee informs us that the poverty and necessity in which be bad seen the poor in several parts of the kingdom had touched him very sensibly, and ho bad spent a great deal of time from the service.of his family " to find out methods for promoting so public a blessing as turning the employment we give the poor of foreign nations to our own." His scheme however is merely to put down begging in the streets, and to employ the poor in workhouses. On the whole, the book, though it was formerly popular, is not one of any remarkable ability or value, except as giving a clear account in small space of what the trade of the country then was.