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.

80. 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 workman'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 to 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 inspection, for guidance in the regulation
of prices in the subsequent year; and any firm whose liabilities
exceeded its 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 XV.

THE NATURE OF THEFT BY UNJUST PROFITS.--CRIME CAN FINALLY BE ARRESTED
ONLY BY EDUCATION.

_29th March._

81. 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 di