sales, and not in any private yard or stable, and
unless afterwards brought by the buyer and the
seller to the bookkeeper of the fair and the toll
paid, or, if there be no toll, the sum of one
penny paid to that functionary, who should
enter down the price, colour, and marks of such
horse, with the name, additions, and abode of
such buyer and seller, the latter being properly
attested.'"

Not that a compliance vith these formalities
will be sufficient to establish an incontrovertible
right to a stolen horse; for, if the
true owner be fortunate enough to discover the
animal within forty days, and prove to the satisfaction
of a magistrate, by the oaths of two witnesses,
that it is, in fact, his property, he can
recover it by tendering to the purchaser such
price as he bona fide paid for it in market
overt.

Not entirely unconnected with his recently-acquired
familiarity with "shopping," a strange
suspicion has arisen (we are informed) in the mind
of our illustrative Mr. Blank. Having already,
as a dutiful reader of this periodical, discovered
that the British merchant is not altogether to be
trusted in the matter of quantity, he has been
driven to the supposition that he is as little to
be trusted when quality is in question.

"How is it," he inquires of us, " that I find my
tradesmen compelled to be constantly proclaiming,
in the very largest type, that they are —
honest? Will nobody believe them unless they
arc incessantly reiterating this extraordinary
assertion through the medium of an advertisement?
It would not enhance the estimation in
which you hold your personal friend, I suppose,
if he were everlastingly informing you that he
really was an honest fellow: and if not your
friend, why your grocer?

"What a terribly suggestive picture of
commercial depravity," continues Mr. Blank, "does
the advertisement sheet of the Times present
to Mrs. Blank and myself every moming! Do
we not there find the tea-dealer from whom we
purchase the beverage with which our breakfast-table
is supplied, informing the public, at
a considerable expense, that he actually sells
'tea,' and not sloe-leaves, or other British produce?
Do we not there discover our fish-sauce
manufacturer imploring us to observe that the
labels upon his precious bottles are signed so
and so, coloured so and so, or illustrated in
some outrageous fashion, because the whole
world are in a conspiracy to defraud him, and
'none other are genuine' unless so distinguished?
Do not one hundred thousand British
shopkeepers peremptorily command us to 'beware
of imitations,' and threaten the universe
(every individual member of whivh is apparently
bent upon imitating) with all the horrors of
Chancery? Do we not discover, to our infinite
perplexity, that four hundred individual tradesmen
are each in the habit of preparing the only
genuine Revalenta, and that as many more are
the sole manufacturers of any earthly commodity
you choose to name? Do the distinguished members
of the medical profession whose names we
see attached to all manner of wonderful pills
and nostrums, really and truly claim the honour
of discovering these miraculous specifics?
What portion of our daily supplement are we to
believe, and what, to look upon as the fungi of a
commercially rotten system of trade?" Thus,

Mr. BIank, with an excusable irritability: adding,
"If there is such a natural predisposition in the
commercial mind to act disingenuously— not to
put too fine a point upon it— why cannot the law
correct the failing?"

Of course we make it our business to vindicate
this very common law from any laxity in
the matter, although we may not be "in a position
to assert that it is sufficiently powerful to
keep the British merchant always on the rails.
"No man," says Lord Langdale— and we quote
his words as a general exposition of the law,
bearing on our portion at least of his question —
"has a right to see his goods as the goods of
another. You may express the same principle,"
he continues, "and say that no man has a right
to dress himself in colours, or adopt and bear
symbols to which he has no peculiar or exclusive
right, and thereby personate another person for
the purpose of inducing the public to suppose
either that he is that other person, or that he is
connected with, and selling the manufacture of,
that other person, when he is in reality selling
his own. It is perfectly manifest that to do
these things is a fraud, and a very gross fraud."
So far the law; but to claim its protection, we
find it is necessary that the claimant petition
with perfectly clean hands. As to how far the
majority of advertisers are in this condition we
leave our readers to judge. In the following
cases we observe that the British merchant was
not in an immaculate condition:

A London tradesman once upon a time
furnished his customers with a black tea which
he called "Howqua's Mixture." A rival tea-merchant,
not to be outdone, immediately advertised
a similar tea, and sold it in wrappers precisely
similar to those used by tea-merchant
number one.

On an application to the Court of Chancery
by the original Howqua's Mixture dispenser, that
ingenious gentleman stated that the tea was
made by Howqua for his own use; that whilst
in China he had frequently taken tea with Howqua,
and under the influence of its soothing
fragrance had extracted the secret of its manufacture
from that too communicative Chinaman;
that having brought a quantity of tea from
China, he had subsequently succeeded in making
Howqua's Mixture, and selling quantities of it.

So far, good; but it unfortunately appears that
by his labels and advertisements this recipient
of Chinese secrets had stated that the mixture
was made by his friend Howqua in Canton, and
imported into this country in the packages in
which it was sold. Also, that it was very rare in
China, and only grown in one province of the
Celestial Empire called Kyiang Nan.

Now, unfortunately for the cleanliness of the
petitioner's hands, it turned out that Kyiang Nan
did not produce "black" tea at all, but only