be found out.  If half the stories one hears are true, half the business people in the colonies must be more or less swindlers in small matters.  I don’t mean that they commit legal swindles, but merely what may be called dirty tricks.  On the other hand, I know many business men in whose probity I could put full confidence.  But you require to live in a place some time, and must probably buy your experience pretty dearly, before you find these out.  And even they in many trades cannot help contamination.  It is very difficult to mix thoroughly in business without dirtying your hands; it requires no ordinary moral courage to keep them clean when there is so much filthy lucre about.  A man who is determined never to diverge from the strict path of honour finds himself of necessity at a disadvantage in the commercial maze, and the best thing he can do is never to go into it.  His sense of what is right cannot but be dulled by the continual grating of petty trickery.  He is led almost before he knows it into things from which he recoils with disgust, perhaps too late to prevent them, and he has continually to be on the watch for and to combat the trickery of others.  I cannot say that, generally speaking, I have much sympathy with the somewhat smug self-righteousness of Young Men’s Christian Associations, but I must say that they have done a great deal of good in putting a leaven of honesty into the commercial lump.

The way in which a man changes his trade and occupation is remarkable.  One year he is a wine-merchant; the next he deals in soft goods; and the year after he becomes an auctioneer.  The consequence of this is, that, although colonists acquire a peculiar aptitude for turning their hand to anything, and a great deal of general commercial knowledge, that knowledge is for the most part very superficial.  This accounts for the phenomenal success which a newcomer who is a specialist occasionally meets with in a line of business in which he is an expert, and also for the failure which often attends the efforts of competent specialists, who become discredited because they are not able to do something properly, which in England would not be considered to come within their province.  To a man coming here to establish himself in any business I would always give the advice to take a subordinate position for a year in a similar business already established.  This will give him what is called ’colonial experience,’ for want of which many an able man fails at the threshold.

Amongst the peculiarities of colonial trade is a strong preference for local manufactures, with the exception of wine.  A large manufacturer of agricultural machinery, who has just been making a tour of the colonies, tells me that he finds merchants actually prefer an inferior and dearer article locally made, if it appears at all equal to the English one in appearance.  In a certain measure I believe this to be true.  It is not merely a patriotic or protective feeling