our own—-vegetables,—what cup has ever been
filled high with it in delirious delight? what
Anacreon has ever ventured to sing its praise?
The Samian wine, a liquor almost as medicinal
as the Harrogate waters, has been immortalised
in glowing verse; but Britannia's vintage is
nowhere on the roll of fame. The most patriotic
of our convivial countrymen decline to rally
round it; and they drink destruction to the
perfidious foreigner in the generous fluid which
that foreigner makes and sells.

There is, or rather was, the British Bank, the
Royal British Bank. Its very name should have
been a guarantee for millions sterling. It ought
to have existed for ages, and its solid roots
should have struck as deeply into the earth as
Stonehenge or the peak of Teneriffe. What was
the fact? It withered in a night; it fell, a
crumbling mass of paper and dust; and those who
dug in the ruins found nothing but a few
well-thumbed prayer-books, and some worthless
mining shares in the bottomless pit.

These humiliations of the British name, it
seems, are not sufficient, so the British
merchant must strive to add another to the list.
He has succeeded to a marvel. He has been
accused, before now, of systematically defrauding
his creditors, but he was preying upon his
debtors, all the while, in a twofold degree. He
is double-edged, and cuts in both ways. He
has gathered with his right hand and with his
left. The traditional cunning of the Hebrew, the
reputed mendacity of the Greek, he unites and
outdoes. So bold and unscrupulous has he been,
and so notorious has he become, that a society
has, at last, been founded to improve his morals,
and lead him back into the right path. The
mission of the ragged school, combined with the
functions of the public prosecutor, have been
transferred to certain self-appointed guardians
of trade, and the result is the formation of a
society called the "Association for Suppressing
the Practice of Falsely Labelling Goods for
Sale." An influential committee has been
appointed, consisting of manufacturers and traders
from the principal manufacturing districts and
the most respectable wholesale houses in
London, and certain rules have been adopted to
help in converting the British merchant from
some of his evil ways. They wish to prevent
him from committing open, registered frauds
—from selling one hundred yards of thread,
for example, and labelling them as two
hundred—and yet they find a difficulty in
attempting even this. Several commercial
associations, upon being applied to for assistance,
have declared that the subject "could not be
entertained." Numerous influential traders
openly avow their determination to discourage
the whole scheme, and hundreds of shippers of
goods insist that the false labels shall be
continued to suit the wishes of foreign importers.
The existing law, it appears, if set in motion, is
sufficient to reach the offenders; but the
association is very anxious to work only with moral
forces. They will endeavour to convert the
British merchant by dissuasion and remonstrance,
and only in cases of positive necessity will they
resort to prosecutions. The mission they have
taken upon themselves is so simple, their
demands are so moderate, and so little
calculated to stir up the muddy depths of trading
immorality and selfishness, that their opponents
ought to feel how their true interest must lie in
at once allowing them to succeed. A little
virtue and a little preaching, if taken favourably
at the outset, will often prevent the moralist
and preacher from administering a stronger
dose.

First of all, then, the British merchant is
required by this very reasonable and almost timid
association, to return to his disconsolate and
neglected arithmetical tables; and to throw
off, at once, and for ever, those dangerous
but profitable heresies with regard to quantities
which lead him to label everything with highly
fanciful exaggerated weights and numbers. The
British merchant has been found guilty of selling
pieces of calico, nominally thirty-six yards in
length, never measuring more than thirty yards.
He is found guilty of selling thirty-six inches
of silk lace, and calling it fifty-four inches;
of selling grosses of tapes containing only sixty
yards, as if they represented the full quantity of
one hundred and forty-four yards. He is found
guilty, in selling French cotton braid, of so far
tampering with certain numbers that are
expected to record the widths of the article, that
five is turned into seven, seven into nine, and
nine into eleven. He is found guilty, in making
up fringes upon cards, of putting a width of two
inches where it will meet the eye of the buyer,
and a width of one inch all through the bulk
that is out of sight. He is found guilty of
increasing the weight of the hogshead, compared
with the sugar which it contains, from twelve
per cent. of the gross weight, to seventeen per
cent. He is found guilty of pirating designs, of
imitating the wrappers of well-known makers,
and of forging popular trade marks. He is
found guilty of selling ribbons in long lengths,
the first three yards of which (being the part
usually unrolled) are of a quality infinitely
superior to the bulk of the piece, he is found
guilty of reducing the weight of candles (sold in
bunches) until the buyer is defrauded of two
ounces in his pound. He is found guilty of
mixing cotton with silk, and adulterating
webbing; of mixing cotton with wool, and
adulterating cloth. In proportion as this
adulteration increases, the labels become more
prominent in asserting the purity of the articles;
and "All Wool" or "All Silk" are printed in
the largest of golden letters, on the purest of
cream-coloured cards. He is found guilty of
putting false fancy lengths upon costly linens
and cambrics, and false fancy quantities upon
costly packets of buttons, &c., because these
articles are generally made up for sale in such a
purposely artistic manner, that it would spoil
their appearance to subject them to the measuring
test. These frauds are all considered, by
those who practise and grow rich on them, as
allowable customs of the trade. The British