se goods to be what they really
are not, and deceive the buyer, so far it is a trading fraud, which is
an unjustifiable practice in business, and which, like coining of
counterfeit money, is making goods to pass for what they really are not;
and is done for the advantage of the person who puts them off, and to
the loss of the buyer, who is cheated and deceived by the fraud.

The making false lights, sky-lights, trunks, and other contrivances, to
make goods look to be what they are not, and to deceive the eye of the
buyer, these are all so many brass shillings washed over, in order to
deceive the person who is to take them, and cheat him of his money; and
so far these false lights are really criminal, they are cheats in trade,
and made to deceive the world; to make deformity look like beauty, and
to varnish over deficiencies; to make goods which are ordinary in
themselves appear fine; to make things which are ill made look well; in
a word, they are cheats in themselves, but being legitimated by custom,
are become a general practice; the honestest tradesmen have them, and
make use of them; the buyer knows of it, and suffers himself to be so
imposed upon; and, in a word, if it be a cheat, as no doubt it is, they
tell us that yet it is a universal cheat, and nobody trades without it;
so custom and usage make it lawful, and there is little to be said but
this, _Si populus vult decepi, decipiatur_--if the people will be
cheated, let them be cheated, or they shall be cheated.

I come next to the setting out their goods to the buyer by the help of
their tongue; and here I must confess our _shop rhetoric_ is a strange
kind of speech; it is to be understood in a manner by itself; it is to
be taken, not in a latitude only, but in such a latitude as indeed
requires as many flourishes to excuse it, as it contains flourishes in
itself.

The end of it, indeed, is corrupt, and it is also made up of a corrupt
composition; it is composed of a mass of rattling flattery to the buyer,
and that filled with hypocrisy, compliment, self-praises, falsehood,
and, in short, a complication of wickedness; it is a corrupt means to a
vicious end: and I cannot see any thing in it but what a wise man laughs
at, a good man abhors, and any man of honesty avoids as much as
possible.

The shopkeeper ought, indeed, to have a good tongue, but he should not
make a common prostitute of his tongue, and employ it to the wicked
purpose of abusing and imposing