Hor.??Is it a custom?
Hamlet. Ay, marry, is\'t:
But, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
Hamlet, Act I, Sc. IV.

If a moralist were to divide his catalogue of immoralities into such as were of general commission, and such as occurred in the conduct of the various trades and professions, we fear the latter division would suggest no flattering position to humanity. An elevation somewhat above gifted creatures it might be; but still we fear it would be at so low a level as to afford Man but a humiliating indication of the height from which he had fallen. He would, in too many instances, perhaps, find his real claims to his high destiny about equal to the shadowy difference between a creature who fulfils some only of his responsibilities, and one who has no responsibilities to fulfil. We should like to hear some grave philosopher discourse on Fashion: it is surely a curious thing, for there is a fashion in everything. It is very like habit; but it is not habit neither. Habit is a garment, which takes some time to fit easily, and is then not abandoned without difficulty. Fashion is a good fit instanter, but is thrown aside at once without the smallest trouble. The most grotesque or absurd custom which slowly-paced habit bores us with examining, is at once adopted by fashion with a characteristic assentation.

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Morals are by no means free from this kind of conventionalism: so much the contrary, that few things evince more strongly the power of fashion. It might be imagined that the multiplication of examples would tend to teach the true nature of the thing exemplified; but it would not seem so with error; "tout au contraire." Arts or acts, which are tabooed as vicious in the singular number, become, in the plasticity of our moral grammars, very tolerable in the plural. Things that the most hardy shrink from perpetrating single-handed, are regarded as easy "compliances with custom" when "joint-stock" vices; practices which, when partial, men are penetrating enough to discover to be unchristian, or sufficiently sensitive to regard as ungentlemanly, pass muster with marvellous lubricity when they become universal. We can anathemize, with self-complacent indignation, vices in which we have no share; but we are abundantly charitable when we discuss those in which we have a common property; and, finally, moral accounts are settled very much to our own satisfaction, as Butler says, by compounding
"For sins we are inclined to,
By damning those we have no mind to."

After all, society keeps a pretty good "look-out" after offences distributed in common. The law is tolerably comprehensive of things which are of general commission; and mankind, sooner or later, contrive to catch, or successfully oppose, the numerous little enormities which slip through the finest of our legal meshes.
"Raro antecedentem scelestum,
Deseruit pede p?na claudo."

From all this it results that moral obliquities, which fall within the observation of society, make but an up-hill game; that which is felt to be prejudicial to the interests of all men, is easily determined to be vicious. But here again there is much in fashion. Society has often determined that the immorality of a thing is not to be measured by the nature of the act, nor the motive even on which it has been founded, so much as by the more refined test afforded by the position of the actor. One242 man may, like a sort of commercial megatherium, gorge, with railway velocity, provisions which a once-breathing, fond affection and a cold world had alike determined to be the life-blood of widows and orphans, and yet have noblemen and others for his associate! he may perhaps be a legislator in a great nation; whilst the poor starveling, who steals for the vulgar purpose of satisfying hunger, may be sent to the treadmill, where he may solve at leisure the problem thus set him, by "the most enlightened nation on earth."

Again, vices which have a known influence in disturbing the relations of society are in various ways opposed by the more public influence of religion. So that in the end a man finds—although he may arrive at the conclusion, only by exhausting all other views before he hits on those which lead to it—that honesty is as good a way of getting on as any other; or he may advance perhaps even on this utilitarian creed so far as to agree with Tillotson: that people take more trouble to get to Hell, than would suffice to carry them to Heaven. The immoralities of trades and professions lie in a very different position, and involve peculiarities which favour their growth and perpetuity.

They are committed in secret;—people are proverbially cautious of attacking the weak positions of others, who feel that their own are ill-defended. This, and the established man?uvres of each calling, enable an individual to do a good deal "off his own bat," without, as one of our bishops happily expressed it, "being caught out." In trade we are sometimes informed that a thing cannot be sold cheaper; that the price asked is already less than the cost; and people are appropriately addressed as idiots, who every day appear to believe that which common sense shows to be impossible.

Your purveyors will sometimes tell you that they are not living by the prices they charge; although you have just ascertained that the same article may be bought at infinitely less cost in the next market. The other day, a watchmaker told us that our watch wanted a good deal of looking to, and, amongst other things, "no doubt cleaning;" but this he discovered, we suppose, by some recondite mesmeric process in a book, which recorded243 when it had been cleaned last, without looking at the watch at all.

As regards professions, lawyers are said to defend right and wrong with indiscriminate avidity, with the encouraging prospect of obtaining more fruit in maintaining one wrong cause, than establishing twenty right.

Then the real nature of these things is, like too many in other sciences, obscured by a cloudy nomenclature. We hear of "customs of the trade," "secrets of the trade," or "profession," applied to things which the moralist only recognizes under very different designations. Sophisms thus secured, and which appear to minister to a man\'s interests, have their true colours developed with difficulty; to say nothing of it not being easy to discover that which there is no desire to examine.

If any man should be so "peculiar," or "crotchety," as to consider that names are of little import, and that "Vice is vice, for a\............