But, taken with these qualifications,
we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading
classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are
betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes.
Another question, here naturally arising, is--"Are not these evils
growing worse?" Many of the facts we have cited seem to imply that they
are. And yet there are many other facts which point as distinctly the
other way. In weighing the evidence, we must bear in mind, that the much
greater public attention at present paid to such matters, is itself a
source of error--is apt to generate the belief that evils now becoming
recognised, are evils that have recently arisen; when in truth they have
merely been hitherto disregarded, or less regarded. It has been clearly
thus with crime, with distress, with popular ignorance; and it is very
probably thus with trading-dishonesties. As it is true of individual
beings, that their height in the scale of creation may be measured by
the degree of their self-consciousness; so, in a sense, it is true of
societies.
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