XI. Snur at the of business, than about that of the fociety, their CHA P. judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occafion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their fuperiority over the country gentleman is, not fo much in their knowledge of the public intereft, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this fuperior knowledge of their own intereft that they have frequently impofed upon his generosity, and perfuaded him to give up both his own intereft and that of the public, from a very fimple but honest conviction, that their intereft, and not his, was the intereft of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branchfective d of trade or manufactures, is always in fome refpects different from, and even oppofite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the intereft of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the intereft of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can ferve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an abfurd tax upon the reft of their fellow-citizens. The propofal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be liftened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted BOOK till after having been long and carefully examined, I. not only with the moft fcrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whofe intereft is never exactly the fame with that of the public, who have generally an intereft to deceive and even to opprefs the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occafions, both deceived and oppreffed it. |