Pagina 343 di 2651

The interests, prejudices, laws, and customs, which have given

occasion to it, I shall endeavour to explain as fully and

distinctly as I can in the third and fourth books of this

Inquiry.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment

and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against

the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is

impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which

either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and

justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same

trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing

to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them

necessary.