302 THE WEDGWOODS. 



or giving him a little credit when necessary is absolutely imprac- 

 ticable, as every one must perceive, upon considering the subject 

 with sufficient attention. 



" It is, I know, made a matter of complaint that these dealers 

 meet the farmers on the road, -with their butter, their eggs, fowls, 

 &c., and buy them up before they reach market. It is very pro- 

 bable that they do so. But if this is a real grievance, do not make 

 it worse by an ill-judged attempt to remedy it. Do not think that 

 diminishing the number of these dealers would cure it : for consider, 

 if you had only one dealer instead of ten, he would probably become 

 ten times as rich, and ten times as able to forestall the markets, as 

 those you now have ; and might not content himself with meeting 

 the farmers' baskets in the lanes near here, where you may do the 

 like if you please : he might go himself, or send his agents, to the 

 farm-houses at any distance, and thereby injure you much more 

 than the petty dealers now complained of have it in their power 

 to do. 



"If the huckster's profits are thought too large, let us examine 

 the particular circumstances of a number of other trades with which 

 we are acquainted ; and if from thence we can form a reasonable 

 conjecture of what their respective profits ought to be and if we 

 find they are in fact what we have from such circumstances sup- 

 posed them it will throw some light upon this matter. 



" In general, the professions or trades which require an expensive 

 education or a large capital, or where the articles they deal in are 

 liable to spoil or grow out of fashion, and in which, after all, the 

 return is small, in these professions the profits upon the sale must 

 necessarily be high; and so we find them to be in apothecaries, 

 toymen, &c. On the other hand, where very little education is 

 required, where even an apprenticeship is not necessary, where a 

 small capital is sufficient, where the articles are in constant and 

 most general use, and in no danger of going out of fashion, where 

 the return is quick, and the article bought in with little trouble, and 

 as readily disposed of again, it will appear at first sight that upon 

 a business so circumstanced the profits cannot be large ; and that if 

 they were so at any particular time, the interference of their neigh- 

 bours, who could almost any of them begin such a business as this, 

 would soon regulate and bring them to their proper level. Do I 

 need to tell you that this is the case with the hucksters ? or do I 

 need to say another word of the improbability of their injuring you 

 by their numbers, when those very numbers are your best security 

 against such injury ? 



