The Merchants' Exchange is not so devoted to absolute betting; yet its largest business partakes of that vice. One buys a cargo at sea; another agrees to deliver a cargo three months hence. One sells what he has not, for a future delivery. Another buys what he never intends to receive, deliverable to him in the future. No money is paid, nor received. The buyers and sellers are merely gambling--betting (as in the Stock Exchange) upon the _rise or fall_ of prices! And are interested--the one to advance the price, and the other to lower the price, of the thing dealt in! Consider the temptation to unfair practices, the inevitable tricks, false rumours, lies, and deviations from honourable conduct involved in such transactions! Reflect upon the consequences to the honest trader, who is, in his very honesty, all the more easily tricked by the unscrupulous! The stronghold of these various gambling Establishments, and the grand feature, in fact, of the English business life, is CREDIT--to which I will devote some space. We have nothing like it, nor had the ancient barbarians of the West. It is, perhaps, the most distinguishing thing in the Barbarian life. As already hinted, Credit means that a Promise shall stand for performance. It had its rise among the Barbarian tribes, not very long since, and grew out of their incessant wars. Particularly the English, finding they could not pay the armed bands, contrived to get the gold out of the hands of the people in exchange for the Bank-paper, and then, forcing the people to still accept the paper for gold, issued paper to such an amount as Government needed! From that period the people, especially the trading classes, making directly or indirectly nearly the whole, found an advantage in resorting to the same fiction--and the Government could do no other than give to the trader, who could not pay _his_ promise, the same relief which it took for itself--for the Bank. It allowed him to pay what he could, and go on as before! No matter that he paid only one-third part--unless he had been guilty of some extreme roguery, he received a discharge from all his promises, and could begin to make new ones and go on in trade as before! In this way, the Barbarian community is one wherein a false principle corrupts all. Boldness, recklessness, cunning, to say nothing of positive criminality, are encouraged; honour, delicacy, simple integrity, are driven into obscurity. Let him who would preserve his conscience smooth and clear, a mirror whence divinity be reflected, shun all the marts and ways of trade!