When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House of Commons for amending the law of copyright, he was guided by self- interest, but it was not a counsel of despair.

The City Companies, says Froude, "are all which now remain of a vast organisation which once penetrated the entire trading life of England--an organisation set on foot to realise that impossible condition of commercial excellence under which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and all wares offered for sale, of whatever kind, should honestly be what they pretend to be." For "impossible" Carlyle proposed "highly necessary, if highly difficult," and a similar change was made.

But why people who do not understand political economy should be more honest than those who do neither master nor disciple condescended to explain.

It is much easier to preach than to argue.

More valuable than these gibes is Carlyle's reminder that guilds were not peculiar to England.
"In Lubeck, Augsburg, Nurnberg, Dantzig, not to speak of Venice, Genoa, Pisa,--George Hudson and the Gospel of Cheap and Nasty were totally unknown entities.