The aims in life of Defoe’s thieves and pirates are at bottom very little different from the ambition which he undertakes to direct in the Complete English Tradesman, and their maxims of conduct have much in common with this ideal.  Self-interest is on the look-out, and Self-reliance at the helm.

“A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no passions, no resentment; he must never be angry—­no, not so much as seem to be so, if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds’ worth of goods, and scarce bids money for anything; nay, though they really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows they cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop where they intend to buy, ’tis all one; the tradesman must take it, he must place it to the account of his calling, that ’tis his business to be ill-used, and resent nothing; and so must answer as obligingly to those who give him an hour or two’s trouble, and buy nothing, as he does to those who, in half the time, lay out ten or twenty pounds.  The case is plain; and if some do give him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends and do buy; and as for the trouble, ’tis the business of the shop.”

All Defoe’s heroes and heroines are animated by this practical spirit, this thorough-going subordination of means to ends.  When they have an end in view, the plunder of a house, the capture of a ship, the ensnaring of a dupe, they allow neither passion, nor resentment, nor sentiment in any shape or form to stand in their way.  Every other consideration is put on one side when the business of the shop has to be attended to.  They are all tradesmen who have strayed into unlawful courses.  They have nothing about them of the heroism of sin; their crimes are not the result of ungovernable passion, or even of antipathy to conventional restraints; circumstances and not any law-defying bias of disposition have made them criminals.  How is it that the novelist contrives to make them so interesting?  Is it because we are a nation of shopkeepers, and enjoy following lines of business which are a little out of our ordinary routine?  Or is it simply that he makes us enjoy their courage and cleverness without thinking of the purposes with which these qualities are displayed?  Defoe takes such delight in tracing their bold expedients, their dexterous intriguing and manoeuvring, that he seldom allows us to think of anything but the success or failure of their enterprises.  Our attention is concentrated on the game, and we pay no heed for the moment to the players or the stakes.  Charles Lamb says of The Complete English Tradesman that “such is the bent of the book to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching and infectious as those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have recommended to the grand jury of Middlesex, who presented The Fable