milies, or the better sort of
tradesmen, and such as have any regard to it, will keep chaplains, as
other persons of quality do. It is confessed, the first is most
probable, though the last, as I am informed, is already begun in the
city, in some houses, where the reader of the parish is allowed a small
additional salary to come once a-day, namely, every evening, to read
prayers in the house.

But I am not talking on this subject; I am not directing myself to
citizens or townsmen, as masters of families, but as heads of trade, and
masters in their business; the other part would indeed require a whole
book by itself, and would insensibly run me into a long satirical
discourse upon the loss of all family government among us; in which,
indeed, the practice of house-keepers and heads of families is grown not
remiss only in all serious things, but even scandalous in their own
morals, and in the personal examples they show to their servants, and
all about them.

But to come back to my subject, namely, that the case of tradesmen
differs extremely from what it was formerly: the second head of
difference is this; that whereas, in former times, the servants were
better and humbler than they are now, submitted more to family
government, and to the regulations made by their masters, and masters
were more moral, set better examples, and kept better order in their
houses, and, by consequence of it, all servants were soberer, and fitter
to be trusted, than they are now; yet, on the other hand,
notwithstanding all their sobriety, masters did not then so much depend
upon them, leave business to them, and commit the management of their
affairs so entirely to their servants, as they do now.

All that I meet with, which masters have to say to this, is contained in
two heads, and these, in my opinion, amount to very little.

I. That they have security for their servants' honesty, which in former
times they had not.

II. That they receive greater premiums, or present-money, now with their
apprentices, than they did formerly.

The first of these is of no moment; for, first, it does not appear that
apprentices in those former days gave no security to their masters for
their integrity, which, though perhaps not so generally as now, yet I
have good reason to know was then practised among tradesmen of note,
and is not now among inferior tradesmen: but, secondly, this security
extends to nothing, but to make the master satisfaction for any