THE DIGNITY OF TRADE.
We were going to say that the fact of a noble Lord having passed the Bankruptcy Court the other day as a horse-dealer, gives strong confirmation to the saying that we are a nation of shop-keepers. But perhaps a horse-bazaar or repository cannot be properly called a shop; and though the horse may be taken over a bar, that noble animal cannot very well be handed across a counter; thus, whatever leaps the noble lord in question may have taken, it is clear that it would be incorrect to call him a counter-jumper. His case, however, certainly tends to show that we are a highly mercantile community, since it exhibits a member of one of our principal families as a dealer in horseflesh. But the fact is, that business is practised by the aristocracy in general to a very considerable extent. Not only do some of them trade in boroughs, but also in rabbits, together with hares, pheasants, and partridges, inasmuch as they sell game. They are not ashamed of this, either: for they will converse about shooting, and not one of them ever calls on the other to sink the shop. Indeed, to sink the shop would be to sink the Island, and swamp the whole concern conducted by Aberdeen and Co.