Now  you  will  probably  agree  with  me  that  laws  punishing  the
adulteration  of  goods  are  just.  I  have  already  explained  to  you
what  are  the  economical  relations  of  trader  and  purchaser,  and  if  I
am  right,  you  wiU  admit  that  the  customer  has  a  right  to  expect
truth  from  the  deialer.  If  I  buy  bread  I  mean  to  get  bread,  not
stones,  perhaps  not  potatoes  mashed.  If  I  buy  meat  I  want  meat,
not  carrion.  ,  And,  to  quote  a  recent  and  much-debated  topic,  if  I
buy  butter  I  do  not  mean  to  buy  butterine.  So  with  a  thousand,
articles.  There  are,  I  know,  people  in  high  position  who  have-
defended  these  tricks  of  trade,  on  the  somewhat  feeble  ground  that-
purchasers  prefer  adulterated  articles.  I  very  much  doubt  the  truth
of  this  statement  That  people  will  be  smart  in  shoddy  who  canuoi^
afford  to  be  smart  in  cloth,  I  know  to  be  a  fact.  That  a  dandy
whose  means  are  small  will  adorn  his  breast  with  Abyssinian  gold
when  he  cannot  buy  sterling  is  a  fact,  and  may  be  a  lesson,  by
disappointing  a  pickpocket.  But  I  doubt  whether  any  one  is  wUling-
to  pay  the  price  of  a  genuine  article  for  what  he  knows  to  be  a.
sham.  And  this  is  what  adulteration  means  to  make  him  do.
Besides,  ha  nugm  in  seria  ducunt.  Army  contractors  have  been^
known  to  ruin  a  campaign  by  frauds.  I  have  heard  it  said  that
the  collapse  of  the  French  armies  in  1870  was  due  as  much  to  the-
frauds  of  the  contractors  as  it  was  to  the  superior  discipline  of
Germany.  We,  too,  had  ova:  experiences  in  the  Crimea  and  Egypt.
