again, and the like, a third time, I think
merits to be hanged, if he pretends to venture any more.

Most of those crimes against which any laws are published in particular,
and which are not capital, have generally an addition of punishment upon
a repetition of the crime, and so on--a further punishment to a further
repetition. I do not see why it should not be so here; and I doubt not
but it would have a good effect upon tradesmen, to make them cautious,
and to warn them to avoid such scandalous doings as we see daily
practised, breaking three or four, or five times over; and we see
instances of some such while I am writing this very chapter.

To such, therefore, I am so far from moving for any favour, either from
the law, or from their creditors, that I think the only deficiency of
the law at this time is, that it does not reach to inflict a corporal
punishment in such a case, but leaves such insolvents to fare well, in
common with those whose disasters are greater, and who, being honest and
conscientious, merit more favour, but do not often find it.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] [This event took place in 1671, Charles II. finding it necessary to
suspend the national payments for a year.]

[24] [The truth of this continues to be matter of daily observation in
our own times.]

[25] [A name applied, in the seventeenth century, to a certain class of
robbers in Ireland.]

CHAPTER XIV

OF THE UNFORTUNATE TRADESMAN COMPOUNDING WITH HIS CREDITORS

This is what in the last chapter I called an alternative to that of the
fortunate tradesman yielding to accept the composition of his insolvent
debtor.

The poor unhappy tradesman, having long laboured in the fire, and
finding it is in vain to struggle, but that whether he strives or not
strives, he must break; that he does but go backward more and more, and
that the longer he holds out, he shall have the less to offer, and be
the harder thought of, as well as the harder dealt with--resolves to
call his creditors together in time, while there is something
considerable to offer them, and while he may have some just account to
give of himself, and of his conduct, and that he may not be reproached
with having lived on the spoil, and consumed their estates; and thus,
being satisfied that the longer he puts the evil day from him, the
heavier it will fall when it comes; I say, he resolves to go no farther,
and so gets a friend to discourse with and prepare them, and then draws