Perhaps every tradesman can furnish out numberless instances of small deceit.  His conduct is marked with a littleness, which though allowed by general consent, is not strictly just.  A person with whom I have long been connected in business, asked, if I had dealt with his relation, whom he had brought up, and who had lately entered into commercial life.  I answered in the affirmative.  He replied, “He is a very honest fellow.”  I told him I saw all the finesse of a tradesman about him.  “Oh, rejoined my friend, a man has a right to say all he can in favour of his own goods.”  Nor is the seller alone culpable.  The buyer takes an equal share in the deception.  Though neither of them speak their sentiments, they well understand each other.  Whilst the treaty is agitating, the profit of the tradesman vanishes, yet the buyer pronounces against the article; but when finished, the seller whispers his friend, “It is well sold,” and the buyer smiles if a bargain.

Thus is the commercial track a line of minute deceits.

But, on the other hand, it does not seem possible for a man in trade to pass this line, without wrecking his reputation; which, if once broken, can never be made whole.  The character of a tradesman is valuable, it is his all; therefore, whatever seeds of the vicious kind shoot forth in the mind, are carefully watched and nipped in the bud, that they may never blossom into action.

Thus having slated the accounts between morality and trade, I shall leave the reader to draw the ballance.  I shall not pronounce after so great a master, and upon so delicate a subject, but shall only ask, “Whether the people in trade are more corrupt than those out?”

If the curious reader will lend an attentive ear to a pair of farmers in the market, bartering for a cow, he will find as much dissimulation as at St. James’s, or at any other saint’s, but couched in homelier phrase.  The man of well-bred deceit is ’infinitely your friend—­It would give him immense pleasure to serve you!’ while the man in the frock ’Will be ——­ if he tells you a word of a lye!’ Deception is an innate principle of the human heart, not peculiar to one man, or one profession.

Having occasion for a horse, in 1759, I mentioned it to an acquaintance, and informed him of the uses:  he assured me, he had one that would exactly suit; which he showed in the stable, and held the candle pretty high, for fear of affecting the straw.  I told him it was needless to examine him, for I should rely upon his word, being conscious he was too much my friend to deceive me; therefore bargained, and caused him to be sent home.  But by the light of the sun, which next morning illumined the heavens, I perceived the horse was greased on all fours.  I therefore, in gentle terms, upbraided my friend with duplicity, when he replied with some warmth, “I would cheat my own brother in a horse.”  Had this honourable friend stood a chance of selling me a horse once a week, his own interest would have prevented him from deceiving me.