mited degree of risk, receiving for so doing an unlimited compensation.

Indeed I know not where the want of instances would stop me: for in what part of the magazine of events, about which human transactions are conversant, is certainty to be found? But to this head of argument, this argument ad hominem, as it may be called, the use of which is but subsidiary, and which has more of confutation in it than of persuasion or instruction, I willingly put an end.

LETTER IX.

Blackstone considered.

I Hope you are, by this time, at least, pretty much of my opinion, that there is just the same sort of harm, and no other, in making the best terms one can for one's self in a money loan, as there is in any other sort of bargain. If

you are not, Blackstone however is, whose opinion I hope you will allow to be worth something. In speaking of the rate of interest*, he starts a parallel between a bargain for the loan of money, and a bargain about a horse, and pronounces, without hesitation, that the harm of making too good a

B. ii. ch. 30.

bargain,

bargain, is just as great in the one case, as in the other. As money-lending, and not horse-dealing, was, what you lawyers call, the principal case, he drops the horse-business, as soon as it has answered the purpose of illustration, which it was brought to serve. But as, in my conception, as well the reasoning by which he supports the decision, as that by which any body else could have supported it, is just as applicable to the one sort of bargain as to the other, I will carry on the parallel a little farther, and give the same extent to the reasoning, as to the position which it is made use of to support. This extension will not be without its use; for if the position, when thus extended, should be found just, a practical inference will arise; which is, that the benefits of these restraints ought to be extended from

the

the money-trade to the horse-trade. That my own opinion is not favourable to such restraints in either case, has been sufficiently declared; but if more respectable opinions than mine are still to prevail, they will not be the less respectable for being consistent.

The sort of bargain which the learned commentator has happened to pitch upon for the illustration, is indeed, in the case illustrating, as in the case illustrated, a loan: but as, to my apprehension, loan or sale makes, in point of reasoning, no sort of difference, and as the utility of the conclusion will, in the latter case, be more extensive, I shall adapt the reasoning to the more important business of selling horses, instead of the less important one of lending them.

A circumstance, that would render the extension of these restraints to the horse

horse-trade more smooth and easy, is, that in the one track, as well as in the other, the public has already got the length of calling names. Jockey-ship, a term of reproach not less frequently applied to the arts of those who sell horses than to the arts of those who ride them, sounds, I take it, to the ear of many a worthy gentleman, nearly as bad as usury: and it is well. known to all those who put their trust. in proverbs, and not less to those who put their trust in party, that when we have got a dog to hang, who is troublesome and keeps us at bay, whoever can contrive to fasten a bad name to his tail, has gained more than half the battle. I now proceed with my application. The words in italics are my own all the rest are Sir William Blackstone's: and I restore, at bottom,