[3] Cocoa-nuts of the sea--the French appellation of the nut.

FALSE POLITICAL ECONOMY.

LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION AGAINST FRAUDS.

There is a proverb full of wisdom--as these brief embodiments of
experience often are--to the effect that in commerce 'the buyer's eye
is his merchant.' It has found its way into our legal text-books, to
express a principle which modern law has had much in view--that people
should look to their own skill and knowledge in making their
purchases, and should not trust to the legislature to protect them, by
interference and penalties, from purchasing unworthy commodities.
Undoubtedly, fraud, when it occurs, must be punished. If a merchant
sell by sample, and intentionally give a different article--if a
dog-dealer clothe a cur in the skin of a departed lap-dog, and sell
him warranted an undoubted Blenheim spaniel--there should be some
punishment for the fraud. It will not be found expedient, however, to
go far, even in such clear cases. In too entirely superseding the
buyer's eye, and substituting the judge's, we remove a very vigilant
check on fraud. If people never bought Blenheim spaniels without an
ample knowledge of the animal's character and appearance, followed by
minute observation, it would do more to prevent fraud in this small
by-article of commerce than a host of penal statutes.

And when we come to less palpable imperfections in goods, it will be
seen that legislation is quite incapable of coping with them. If every
thrifty housewife, whose last bought bushel of potatoes is more waxy
than they ought to be--if every shabby dandy, who has bought a glossy
satin hat, 'warranted superfine, price only 5s.,' and who finds it
washed into a kind of dingy serge by the next shower--had his action
for the infliction of penalties, it would be a more litigious world
even than it is. With thimble-riggers, chain-droppers, fortune-telling
gipsies, and the like, the law wages a most unproductive war. Penal
statutes and the police do little to put them down, while there are
fools whose silly selfishness or vanity makes them ready dupes: if
these fools would become wise and prudent, all the penalties might be
at once dispensed with. But only imagine the state of litigational
confusion in which this country would be plunged, if every tradesman
who sold 'an inferior article,' which had a fair and attractive
appearance, could be subject to penal proceedings!

Yet our ancestors made this attempt;