THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



jeerfcs. 



VOL. III.] APRIL, 1827. [No. 16. 



TRADE AND PROFESSION. 



" In nomine Domini, stude artes parcas et lucrosas : non est mundus pro artibus liberalibus, 

 jam." IGNORAMUS. 



THE distinction between trade and profession is one purely technical. 

 The former indicates the sale of wares, and the latter of wits; but they 

 are both alike a pure matter of barter and exchange. Money-getting is 

 the end of both; and this community of end very naturally induces a con- 

 siderable sameness in the means. Strictly, the term profession relates to 

 a professor; i. e. to one who professes or pretends to the possession of some 

 intellectual acquirements, of which the world cannot satisfactorily judge 

 for itself. The tradesman, on the contrary, exhibits his wares for public 

 inspection; and, if they be not good, his chances of a profitable sale are 

 not very great. " Which is the pleasantest," as Moore has sung on 

 another occasion, " no one need doubt." Excepting in this slight dif- 

 ference, the terms are evidently convertible. The physician, who paints 

 DR. in sesquiuncial letters on his street door, for those who run to read, 

 and who' sells prescriptions at a guinea a-piece, whenever he is not obliged, 

 by an overstocked market, to take less, is as intrinsically a " dealer and 

 chapman," as if he were entitled to the honours of the gazette, and sold 

 the paper on which he scrawls : while the man, who posts himself on the 

 rubrick of his shop as grocer, or linen-draper, may in some sense be styled 

 a professor of figs, or of sheeting. Professions are commonly designated 

 liberal, in allusion, I suppose, to the liberal arts, which were once deemed 

 essential to the attainment of an academical degree : for I can see no other 

 reason. Certainly there is nothing more liberal in passing off bad law, 

 physic, or divinity, for good, and retailing the commodities at the highest 

 prices, than in measuring out yards of tape, or selling beef and pudding in 

 a cook's shop. Custom, however, has declared otherwise; and the man 

 whose highest contemplation never, perhaps, extended beyond the dif- 

 ference between a pound and a guinea fee, ranks as a gentleman, on this 

 score of liberality ; while he who has once kept a shop, is for ever confined 

 to the society of the Dii minorum gentium, who cannot call themselves 



Al.M. New Series VOL. III. No. 16. 2 Y 





