The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of existing commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the preceding analysis. It will be proper, however, before dismissing the consideration of the Value Principle, to trace out a little more in detail some of its specific results. The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, all the fruits of the principle are necessarily pernicious. Among the consequences which flow from it are the following: I. _It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of trade._ Where the object is to buy cheap and sell dear, the parties find their interest in mutual deception. It is taught, in theory, that "honesty is the best policy," in the long run; but in practice the merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts upon the precept--in the short run. Honesty--even as much honesty as can be arrived at--is _not_ the best policy under the present unscientific system of commerce; if by the best policy is meant that which tends to success in business. Professional merchants are sharp to distinguish their true policy for that end, and they do not find it in a full exposition of the truth. Intelligent merchants know the fact well, and conscientious merchants deplore it; but they see no remedy. The theory of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a fortnight. Hence it is uniformly abandoned, and a new system of morality acquired the moment a practical application is to be made of the instruction. A frank disclosure, by the merchant, of all the secret advantages in his possession, would destroy his reputation for sagacity as effectually as it would that of the gambler among his associates. Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of strategy. It is the business of both parties to a trade to over-reach each other--a fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common Law, _Caveat emptor_, (let the purchaser take care.) II. _It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer._--Trade being, under this system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the cut-throat or conqueror under the reign of physical force--the stronger consequently accumulating more than his share at the cost of the destruction of the weaker--the consequence of the principle is that the occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual superiority, with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than their share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual development--of the precise kind requisite for this species of contest--and whose material conditions are less favorable--to wretchedness and poverty.