ally
drapers, might point to the fact that the habitual demand for an
abatement of price, is made in utter disregard of their reasonable
profits; and that to protect themselves against attempts to gain by
their loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they
intend to take. They might also urge that the strait to which they are
often brought by the non-payment of accounts due from their wealthier
customers, is itself a cause of their malpractices: obliging them, as it
does, to use all means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting
the wherewith to meet their engagements. In proof of the wrongs
inflicted on them by the non-trading classes, they might instance the
well-known cases of large shopkeepers in the West-end, who have been
either ruined by the unpunctuality of their customers, or have been
obliged periodically to stop payment, as the only way of getting their
bills settled. And then, after proving that those without excuse show
this disregard of other men's claims, traders might ask whether they,
who have the excuse of having to contend with a merciless competition,
are alone to be blamed if they display a like disregard in other forms.

Nay, even to the guardians of social rectitude--members of the
legislature--they might use the _tu quoque_ argument: asking whether
bribery of a customer's servant, is any worse than bribery of an
elector? or whether the gaining of suffrages by claptrap
hustings-speeches, containing insincere professions adapted to the taste
of the constituency, is not as bad as getting an order for goods by
delusive representations respecting their quality? No; it seems probable
that close inquiry would show few if any classes to be free from
immoralities that are as great, _relatively to the temptations_, as
those which we have been exposing. Of course they will not be so petty
or so gross where the circumstances do not prompt pettiness or
grossness; nor so constant and organised where the class-conditions have
not tended to make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifications,
we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading
classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are
betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes.

Another question, here naturally arising, is--"Are not these evils
growing worse?" Many of the facts we have cited seem to imply that they
are. And yet there are many other facts which point as di