own terms. Now comes your turn, my
simple friend, and the rich full stream of
commerce does not flow so freely at your
feet. Will you be kind enough to give your
name? They cannot find exactly what you
want, although your desires are not
extravagant. You fancy, you heard your name
going down a pipe, and you were right.
Will you have the goodness to step down to
the counting-house? You step down, and
see a managing clerk. Another time they
will be most happy, &c. You have learnt
the difference, my simple friend, between
paying ten shillings for a pound, and buying
a pound for ten shillings.

Messrs. Petty, Larceny and Co. thrive
apace, and suck up in their vortex many
spiritless businesses of the same kind in the
neighbourhood. They buy up a pile of buildings;
they cover with their warehouses
half a street. Sometimes it happens in the
course of trade that complications arise
between principal and agent, consignor and
consignee, buyer and seller; the money-
market is tight, cash is scarce, and a few
thousand pounds' worth of goods is sold, in
consequence, at a sacrifice much more alarming
than usual. What makes matters worse
is, that Messrs. Petty, Larceny's cheque,—
which though dishonourable was never
dishonoured,—does not find its way to the
rightful owner, the agent employed in the
matter having put a finish to dishonest
proceedings by an act of embezzlement. This
brings the transaction into open court, and
some virtuous counsel, whose wholesome
indignation has been paid for as per brief
delivered, does not hesitate to stigmatise the
conduct of Messrs. Petty, Larceny and Co. as
immoral and dishonest, to call a sacrifice a
downright robbery; job-lots nothing but stolen
goods, and to say that the receiver is as bad
as the thief. Poor fellow! he knows when
he utters the last sentiment, that his law is
the reverse of sound, and that he is the
veriest stump-orator 'that ever stood in a
Court of Justice. Perhaps he is thinking of
some miserable fence, or marine-store dealer,
whose limited capital, want of enterprise,
and wretched habitation, under the constant
surveillance of the police, render him in the
eyes of the law a receiver in every respect
as bad as the thief; but the splendid pile of
warehouses that bears the names of Messrs.
Petty, Larceny and Co. can never be the
receptacle of any goods, but what have been
bought in a respectable manner, and under the
laws of supply and demand. When Mr.
Larceny leaves his business, about five in the
afternoon, the policeman on the beat runs
to open the door of his carriage, which he
certainly would not do for a man that was
obnoxious to the law.

Some people there may be, who gossip
about the story in the City, and, like good
members of society as they are, profess a
moral repugnance to any man who stoops to
make money by such dishonest practices; but
their words lose something of their weight
when we find them, in a few days afterwards,
in Mr. Larceny's private counting-house, with
a piece of coloured paper in their hands,
evidently torn from a banker's cheque-book.
Sundry old ladies and highly respectable
mothers of families profess to be greatly
shocked when they read the account in the
newspapers, and exclaim. "What an immoral
place Messrs. Petty, Larceny's shop must be
for the young men!" But if we lounge towards
the shop in question, about three o'clock on
a July afternoon, we shall find the same
ladies in great force, seated on the short-
backed chairs, and asking the attendants to
show them "some of those stolen—ahem,
that is, remarkably cheap goods that they
have to sell." When Mr. Larceny goes into
the markets on the next occasion, his friends
cluster round him more attentive than ever,
probably from joy that so dear a friend has
not been rudely snatched from them. Society
does not turn its back upon Mr. Larceny; far
from it, its doors are always open to any
man who can send his own footman to knock
at them. Prisons of all kinds, Houses of
Correction, Silent Systems, Penal Servitudes,
Hulks, Queen's Benches, Old Baileys,
Bankruptcy Courts, and lastly, Workhouses, were
never built or organised for men like Mr.
Larceny. It is the fools who suffer, while
the rogues thrive.

Third-class bankrupts, with certificates
suspended for two years, with protection
refused for six months; transported felons
and oakum-pickers of various degrees, become
what they are, that Larceny House may have
its much-admired stone façade, designed by
Bubble Walling, Esq., F.S.A., that Mr.
Larceny's mansion in Huckaback Square may
be adorned with the latest Rubenses,
Raffaelles, and Correggios, and that Larceny
Park, Richmond, Surrey, may be one of the
great landscape features of the county.

Such is the brazen image of twenty shillings
in the pound, before which men fall
down and worship. If any one doubts
how much better it is to sin than to be
sinned against, let him look at a commercial
adventurer of a different stamp.

We have heard a good deal of the fraudulent
debtor. We know his picture pretty
well by this time. He never keeps a cashbook.
He makes away with stock in a
mysterious manner, and his furniture is always
settled on his wife. He has been insolvent
once—a bankrupt once, and he has
compounded with his creditors several times.
He is, of course, a great scamp, because—he
cannot pay twenty shillings in the pound.
But has ever any one looked calmly and
dispassionately into his conduct, to see whether
there is any substratum of honesty
underlying the surface of his character? Has
anyone ever tried to discover the original
character of his misfortunes—I beg pardon,