62 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
sixty-guinea article to be intrinsically worth its value 
above that which they can buy for forty. ~~ 
Generally, it may be assumed that the sixty-guinea 
maker pays higher wages than his competitor who sells 
for forty. It may be answered the price is sustained by 
the name. Be it so; the name must have been originally 
gained by something beyond luck—for luck never made a 
fowling-piece ; and by that something which gained it, the 
name must be sustained. That something is superior 
workmanship—in all such houses the best of material may 
be assumed—and I believe fully that the workmanship of 
the highest priced is superior to that of the lower priced 
London maker, in full proportion to the superiority of his 
charges; and I believe the same thing to be yet more 
clearly the case, as between the London and the provincial 
maker. 
I perceive that this opinion is not likely to be the 
popular one, for there are of course fifty men, especially in 
this country, who will buy a Westley Richards gun for 
two hundred dollars, where there is one who will buy a 
London gun for twice that sum. And as every man who 
owns a gun, believes it, and is prepared to maintain it, to 
be the best gun in the world; therefore there are always 
fifty best Westley Richards guns, where there is one best 
London gun. Again, every gunmaker so soon as he ascer- 
tains that his customer will go as high as the price of a 
Westley Richards’, but cannot be possibly induced to rise 
to a London value, assures him, in the most positive man- 
ner, that Westley Richards’ guns are in every respect equal 
to Purday’s, or whose you will; and that the difference is 
