ever tradesmen of his class used to do;
for every necessary thing being, as I have said, grown dearer than
before, he must entirely omit all the enjoyment of the unnecessaries
which he might have allowed himself before, or perhaps be obliged to an
expense beyond the income of his trade: and in either of these cases he
has a great hardship upon him.

When I talk of immoderate expenses, I must be understood not yet to mean
the extravagances of wickedness and debaucheries; there are so many
sober extravagances, and so many grave sedate ways for a tradesman's
ruin, and they are so much more dangerous than those hair-brained
desperate ways of gaming and debauchery, that I think it is the best
service I can do the tradesmen to lay before them those sunk rocks (as
the seamen call them), those secret dangers in the first place, that
they may know how to avoid them; and as for the other common ways,
common discretion will supply them with caution for those, and their
senses will be their protection.

The dangers to the tradesmen whom I am directing myself to, are from
lawful things, and such as before are called innocent; for I am speaking
to the sober part of tradesmen, who yet are often ruined and overthrown
in trade; and perhaps as many such miscarry, as of the mad and
extravagant, particularly because their number far exceeds them.
Expensive living is a kind of slow fever; it is not so open, so
threatening and dangerous, as the ordinary distemper which goes by that
name, but it preys upon the spirits, and, when its degrees are increased
to a height, is as fatal and as sure to kill as the other: it is a
secret enemy, that feeds upon the vitals; and when it has gone its full
length, and the languishing tradesman is weakened in his solid part, I
mean his stock, then it overwhelms him at once.

Expensive living feeds upon the life and blood of the tradesman, for it
eats into the two most essential branches of his trade, namely, his
credit and his cash; the first is its triumph, and the last is its food:
nothing goes out to cherish the exorbitance, but the immediate money;
expenses seldom go on trust, they are generally supplied and supported
with ready money, whatever are not.

This expensive way of living consists in several things, which are all
indeed in their degree ruinous to the tradesman; such as

1. Expensive house-keeping, or family extravagance.

2. Expensive dressing, or the extravagance of fine clo