not tended to make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifications,
we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading
classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are
betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes.

Another question, here naturally arising, is--"Are not these evils
growing worse?" Many of the facts we have cited seem to imply that they
are. And yet there are many other facts which point as distinctly the
other way. In weighing the evidence, we must bear in mind, that the much
greater public attention at present paid to such matters, is itself a
source of error--is apt to generate the belief that evils now becoming
recognised, are evils that have recently arisen; when in truth they have
merely been hitherto disregarded, or less regarded. It has been clearly
thus with crime, with distress, with popular ignorance; and it is very
probably thus with trading-dishonesties. As it is true of individual
beings, that their height in the scale of creation may be measured by
the degree of their self-consciousness; so, in a sense, it is true of
societies. Advanced and highly-organised societies are distinguished
from lower ones by the evolution of something that stands for a _social
self-consciousness_--a consciousness in each citizen, of the state of
the aggregate of citizens. Among ourselves there has, happily, been of
late years a remarkable growth of this social self-consciousness; and we
believe that to this is chiefly ascribable the impression that
commercial malpractices are increasing.

Such facts as have come down to us respecting the trade of past times,
confirm this view. In his "Complete English Tradesman," Defoe mentions,
among other manoeuvres of retailers, the false lights which they
introduced into their shops, for the purpose of giving delusive
appearances to their goods. He comments on the "shop rhetorick," the