 Hume took up the matter of forging an honorable character in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Although the sphere for exercising one’s free will to reform one’s character was very limited, Hume adhered to the gradual evolution of behavioral norms, forged by material conditions, particularly commerce and trade. Monkish virtues of the medieval period had given way to commercial virtues of the modern period, honesty, probity and industry. For Adam Smith, self-command, prudence, and courage were virtues ranked more highly than others. For these reasons, those in the middling ranks, merchants and bankers, were more likely to happen onto the road to virtue than those in the lower or upper classes. And because the nouveau riches were the ones to safeguard contractual settlements, this meant that the core institutions of property and commerce would, ceteris paribus, be sustained in the centuries ahead. The merchant or banker, not the knight, had become the paragon of honor, serving the national interests as much as themselves.