Continual dependence on the law and the man of law, and an extra respect for paper because it is legal, have--they surely cannot fail to have--a tendency to breed in the mind a disregard for what is not of a strictly legal or actionable character. It is Utopian to dream of a state of society where no law will be needed but every man's written and spoken word will be a law to him; but it is not difficult to imagine a state of society in which there is such universal dependence on the law in all emergencies that the individual conscience will become weakened--pauperised--atrophied--and unable to stand alone. That is, as I have said, the last point that I wish to make on this subject; and the reader will please notice that I have nowhere said that I consider American commercial morality at the present day to be higher than English. Nor do I think that it is. Incontestably it is but a little while since the English standard was appreciably the higher of the two. I have cited from my own memory instances of conditions which existed in America only twenty years ago in support of the fact--though no proof is needed--that this is so. I by no means underestimate the fineness of the traditions of British commerce or the number of men still living who hold to those traditions. On the other hand, better judges than I believe that the standard of morality in English business circles is declining. In America it is certainly and rapidly improving. Present English ideas about American commercial ethics are founded on a knowledge of facts, correct enough at the time, which existed before the improvement had made anything like the headway that it has, which facts no longer exist. I have roughly compared in outline some of the essential qualities of the atmosphere in which, and some of the conditions under which, the business men in the two countries live and do their business, showing that in the United States there is a much more marked tendency to insist on the character of the individual and a much larger opportunity for the individuality to develop itself; and that in certain particulars there are in England inherited social conditions and institutions which it would appear cannot fail to hamper the spirit of self-reliance, on which self-respect is ultimately dependent. * * * * * And the conclusion? For the most part my readers must draw it for themselves. My own opinion is that, whatever the relative standing of the two countries may be to-day, it is hardly conceivable that, by the course on which each is travelling, in another generation American commercial integrity will not stand the higher of the two. The conditions in America are making for the shaping of a sterner type of man. * * * * *