The remarks upon speculation in the foregoing chapters may, perhaps, lead the reader to infer that our object has been to enter upon a crusade against all speculators, _guerre à mort_. Such an impression would not be a correct one, and this chapter is intended, just in conclusion, to show why. Speculation in the sense of buying for cash or on ordinary credit what the purchaser has very good reason for knowing is uncommonly cheap, and what he believes will, ere long, improve in price, does not come under the category of speculation such as that to which the foregoing remarks refer. There is hardly an individual who buys anything who is not at times more or less of a speculator, and he has a perfect right so to be under given conditions, and his being so under such conditions is a direct benefit also to the community. For instance, take a very homely article which will serve for an illustration, bacon. Supposing bacon, through some passing influence, were to fall considerably in price, very large purchases would at once be made on speculation, because it is an article almost certain to be directly consumed in a proportion greater than the production could be increased. Large quantities would be taken off the market by both retail and wholesale dealers, who would store it in anticipation of a recovery in value. They probably would not want it for immediate use, and would be induced to run the risk of the operation turning out profitable by reason of its being suddenly so much cheaper than they had been accustomed to buy it. They would, in one word, speculate in bacon, just as some people speculate in stocks after a heavy fall. Unless something had happened to permanently depreciate the value of bacon this rush of buyers, the great majority of whom would soon settle their operations by cash payments, would speedily cause at least a partial recovery in value, which might be followed by a further rise or relapse according to circumstances. Whether anything serious had been at work to depreciate value or not, the innumerable interests that would have suffered by the decline in value would thus be protected at least for a time by the speculative operations referred to. The price would be kept up above what it would have been in the absence of such speculative operations, while either the real or fictitious agency at work in causing a fall were discovered and analysed. So in a converse sense, if for some reason or other the price of corn were driven up very rapidly several shillings per quarter above the value ruling at a particular period, without holders of large stocks being able to discover sufficient cause, many of them would hurry to market and sell what was still even unthrashed. They would be so tempted by the very high price that they would speculate upon such a high quotation being followed by a low one, and they would sell all they could manage to deliver in a given time. The speculator in the bacon would be playing in a legitimate sense the