light weights and false measures, or for proved adulteration or dishonest manufacture of article, the penalty should be simply confiscation of goods and sending out of the country. The kind of person who desires prosperity by such practices, could not be made to "emigrate' too speedily. What to do with him in the place you appointed to be blessed by his presence, we will in time consider.

Under such penalty, however, and yet more under the pressure of such a right public opinion as could pronounce and enforce such penalty, I imagine that sham articles would become speedily as rare as sound ones are now. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to

fix

your standard. This would have to be done by the guild of every trade in its own manner, and within certain easily recognizable limits; and this fixing of standard would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties in manufacture would have to be examined and accepted by the trade guild: when so accepted, they would be announced in public reports; and all puffery and self-procla mation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden,

as much as the making of any other kind of noise or dis

turbance.

But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I suppose to have joined voluntarily in carry. ing out a better system of commerce. Outside of their guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they chose. All that is necessary is that the said public should clearly know the shops in which they could get warranted articles; and, as clearly, those in which they bought at their own risk.

And the above-named penalty of confiscation of goods should of course be enforced only against dishonest members of the trade guild. If people chose to buy of those who had openly refused to join an honest society, they should be permitted to do so at their pleasure and peril: and this for two reasons; the first, that it is always necessary, in enacting strict law, to leave some safety valve for outlet of irrepressible vice (nearly all the stern lawgivers of old time erred by oversight in this; so that the morbid elements of the State, which it should be allowed to get rid of in a cutaneous and openly curable manner, were thrown inwards, and corrupted its constitution, and broke all down); the second, that operations of trade and manufacture conducted under and guarded by

severe law, ought always to be subject to the stimulus of such erratic external ingenuity as cannot be tested by law, or would be hindered from its full exercise by the dread of it; not to speak of the farther need of extending all possible indulgence to foreign traders who might wish to exercise their industries here without liability to the surveillance of our trade guilds.

Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild (as above supposed) the prices should be annually fixed for the trade throughout the kingdom; and the producing workmen's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits within limits admitting only such variation as the nature of the given article of sale rendered inevitable; yet, in the production of other classes of articles, whether by skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free tr make its own independent efforts and arrangements with its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it could be proved to have consistently described or offered anything to the public for what it was not: and finally, the state of the affairs of every firm should be annually reported to the guild, and its books laid open to inspec tion, for guidance in the regulation of prices in the subsequent year; and any firm whose liabilities exceeded it

assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared bankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in succeeding letters so far as to tell you that I would have this condition extend to every firm in the country, large or small, and of whatever rank in business. And thus you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to trouble you or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial "panics," nor to propose legislative cures for them, by any laxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any other change of pecuniary diet.

Letter 15.

The Nure of Theft by Unjust Profits.-Crime can finally be arrested only by Education.

29th March.

THE first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest manufacture, and by debt, of which we have been hitherto speaking, are easily enough to be dealt with and ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But the third method of polite robbery, by dishonest acquisi tion, has many branches, and is involved among honest arts of acquisition, so that it is difficult to repress the one without restraining the other.

Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of one man's hands or head. If his work benefits multitudes, and involves position of high trust,

it

may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to reward him with great wealth or estate; but fortune of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not. as repayment for labour. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, it the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set