1. One allowed to trade without restriction.
1698. J. Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia, 86. Lest the New Company should be exclaimed against as too greedy Monopolizers, they permit Free Traders on their Island Bombaim.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 375. He [the pedlar] was, as it were, the first ‘free-trader’; increasing the facilities for the interchange of commodities, without regard to market dues or tolls.
b. (See quot.)
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Free Trader. Ships trading formerly under license to India independent of the old East India Company’s Charter. Also, a common woman.
2. A smuggler; also, a smuggling vessel.
1815. Scott, Guy M., v. There go the free-traders. Ibid. (1824), Redgauntlet, ch. xiv. As if a ship could go as straight to its port, as a horse to the stable, or a free-trader could sail the Solway as securely as a King’s cutter!
3. An advocate of free-trade.
1849. Cobden, Speeches, 34. If … there be free-traders who think that free-trade is only an experiment.
1878. N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 266. The members of the combination were hopelessly divided. They were tariff men and free-traders, conservative Whigs and radical Democrats, Know-Nothings, and anti-Know-Nothings, strict constructionists and Federalists.
