that he should delight in it: to follow a trade, and not to love and
delight in it, is a slavery, a bondage, not a business: the shop is a
bridewell, and the warehouse a house of correction to the tradesman, if
he does not delight in his trade. While he is bound, as we say, to keep
his shop, he is like the galley-slave chained down to the oar; he tugs
and labours indeed, and exerts the utmost of his strength, for fear of
the strapado, and because he is obliged to do it; but when he is on
shore, and is out from the bank, he abhors the labour, and hates to come
to it again.

To delight in business is making business pleasant and agreeable; and
such a tradesman cannot but be diligent in it, which, according to
Solomon, makes him certainly rich, and in time raises him above the
world and able to instruct and encourage those who come after him.

CHAPTER VI

OVER-TRADING

It is an observation, indeed, of my own, but I believe it will hold true
almost in all the chief trading towns in England, that there are more
tradesmen undone by having too much trade, than for want of trade.
Over-trading is among tradesmen as over-lifting is among strong men:
such people, vain of the strengh, and their pride prompting them to put
it to the utmost trial, at last lift at something too heavy for them,
over-strain their sinews, break some of nature's bands, and are cripples
ever after.

I take over-trading to be to a shopkeeper as ambition is to a prince.
The late king of France, the great king Louis, ambition led him to
invade the dominions of his neighbours; and while upon the empire here,
or the states-general there, or the Spanish Netherlands on another
quarter, he was an over-match for every one, and, in their single
capacity, he gained from them all; but at last pride made him think
himself a match for them all together, and he entered into a declared
war against the emperor and the empire, the kings of Spain and Great
Britain, and the states of Holland, all at once. And what was the
consequence? They reduced him to the utmost distress, he lost all his
conquests, was obliged, by a dishonourable peace, to quit what he had
got by encroachment, to demolish his invincible towns, such as Pignerol,
Dunkirk, &c., the two strongest fortresses in Europe; and, in a word,
like a bankrupt monarch, he may, in many cases, be said to have died a
beggar.

Thus the strong man in the fable, who by main strength used to rive a
tree, undert