coffee, tea; on some of
these the duties are more than doubled: and yet that which is most
observable is, that such is the expensive humour of the times, that not
a family, no, hardly of the meanest tradesman, but treat their friends
with wine, or punch, or fine ale; and have their parlours set off with
the tea-table and the chocolate-pot--treats and liquors all exotic,
foreign and new among tradesmen, and terrible articles in their modern
expenses; which have nothing to be said for them, either as to the
expense of them, or the helps to health which they boast of: on the
contrary, they procure us rheumatic bodies and consumptive purses, and
can no way pass with me for necessaries; but being needless, they add to
the expense, by sending us to the doctors and apothecaries to cure the
breaches which they make in our health, and are themselves the very
worst sort of superfluities.

But I come back to necessaries; and even in them, family-expenses are
extremely risen, provisions are higher rated--no provisions that I know
of, except only bread, mutton, and fish, but are made dearer than
ever--house-rent, in almost all the cities and towns of note in England,
is excessively and extremely dearer, and that in spite of such
innumerable buildings as we see almost everywhere raised up, as well in
the country as in London, and the parts adjacent.

Add to the rents of houses, the wages of servants. A tradesman, be he
ever so much inclined to good husbandry, cannot always do his
kitchen-work himself, suppose him a bachelor, or can his wife, suppose
him married, and suppose her to have brought him any portion, be his
bedfellow and his cook too. These maid-servants, then, are to be
considered, and are an exceeding tax upon house-keepers; those who were
formerly hired at three pounds to four pounds a-year wages, now demand
five, six and eight pounds a-year; nor do they double anything upon us
but their wages and their pride; for, instead of doing more work for
their advance of wages, they do less: and the ordinary work of families
cannot now be performed by the same number of maids, which, in short, is
a tax upon the upper sort of tradesmen, and contributes very often to
their disasters, by the extravagant keeping three or four maid-servants
in a house, nay, sometimes five, where two formerly were thought
sufficient. This very extravagance is such, that talking lately with a
man very well experienced in this matter, he told me he had