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 appoint
to be blessed by his presence, we will in time consider.

78. 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-proclamation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, as
much as the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance.

79. But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I
suppose to have joined voluntarily in carrying 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