make use of them; the buyer knows of it, and suffers himself to be so
imposed upon; and, in a word, if it be a cheat, as no doubt it is, they
tell us that yet it is a universal cheat, and nobody trades without it;
so custom and usage make it lawful, and there is little to be said but
this, _Si populus vult decepi, decipiatur_--if the people will be
cheated, let them be cheated, or they shall be cheated.

I come next to the setting out their goods to the buyer by the help of
their tongue; and here I must confess our _shop rhetoric_ is a strange
kind of speech; it is to be understood in a manner by itself; it is to
be taken, not in a latitude only, but in such a latitude as indeed
requires as many flourishes to excuse it, as it contains flourishes in
itself.

The end of it, indeed, is corrupt, and it is also made up of a corrupt
composition; it is composed of a mass of rattling flattery to the buyer,
and that filled with hypocrisy, compliment, self-praises, falsehood,
and, in short, a complication of wickedness; it is a corrupt means to a
vicious end: and I cannot see any thing in it but what a wise man laughs
at, a good man abhors, and any man of honesty avoids as much as
possible.

The shopkeeper ought, indeed, to have a good tongue, but he should not
make a common prostitute of his tongue, and employ it to the wicked
purpose of abusing and imposing upon all that come to deal with him.
There is a modest liberty, which trading licence, like the poetic
licence, allows to all the tradesmen of every kind: but tradesmen ought
no more to lie behind the counter, than the parsons ought to talk
treason in the pulpit.