thes.

3. Expensive company, or keeping company above himself.

4. Expensive equipages, making a show and ostentation of
figure in the world.

I might take them all in bulk, and say, what has a young tradesman to do
with these? and yet where is there a tradesman now to be found, who is
not more or less guilty? It is, as I have said, the general vice of the
times; the whole nation are more or less in the crime; what with
necessity and inclination, where is the man or the family that lives as
such families used to live?

In short, good husbandry and frugality is quite out of fashion, and he
that goes about to set up for the practice of it, must mortify every
thing about him that has the least tincture of frugality; it is the mode
to live high, to spend more than we get, to neglect trade, contemn care
and concern, and go on without forecast, or without consideration; and,
in consequence, it is the mode to go on to extremity, to break, become
bankrupt and beggars, and so going off the trading stage, leave it open
for others to come after us, and do the same.[19]

To begin with house-keeping. I have already hinted, that every thing
belonging to the family subsistence bears a higher price than usual, I
may say, than ever; at the same time I can neither undertake to prove
that there is more got by selling, or more ways to get it, I mean to a
tradesman, than there was formerly; the consequence then must be, that
the tradesmen do not grow rich faster than formerly; at least we may
venture to say this of tradesmen and their families, comparing them with
former times, namely, that there is not more got, and I am satisfied
there is less laid up, than was then; or, if you will have it, that
tradesmen get less and spend more than they ever did. How they should be
richer than they were in those times, is very hard to say.

That all things are dearer than formerly to a house-keeper, needs little
demonstration; the taxes necessarily infer it from the weight of them,
and the many things charged; for, besides the things enumerated above,
we find all articles of foreign importation are increased by the high
duties laid on them; such as linen, especially fine linen; silk,
especially foreign wrought silk: every thing eatable, drinkable, and
wearable, are made heavy to us by high and exorbitant customs and
excises, as brandies, tobacco, sugar; deals and timber for building;
oil, wine, spice, raw silks, calico, chocolate,