all
kinds of persons and professions are handled in the most merciless
manner, where reproach triumphs, and we seem to give ourselves a loose
to fall upon one another in the most unchristian and unfriendly manner
in the world.

It seems a little hard that the reputation of a young lady, or of a
new-married couple, or of people in the most critical season of
establishing the characters of their persons and families, should lie at
the mercy of the tea-table; nor is it less hard, that the credit of a
tradesman, which is the same thing in its nature as the virtue of a
lady, should be tossed about, shuttle-cock-like, from one table to
another, in the coffee-house, till they shall talk all his creditors
about his ears, and bring him to the very misfortune which they reported
him to be near, when at the same time he owed them nothing who raised
the clamour, and owed nothing to all the world, but what he was able to
pay.

And yet how many tradesmen have been thus undone, and how many more have
been put to the full trial of their strength in trade, and have stood by
the mere force of their good circumstances; whereas, had they been
unfurnished with cash to have answered their whole debts, they must have
fallen with the rest.

We need go no farther than Lombard Street for an exemplification of this
truth. There was a time when Lombard Street was the only bank, and the
goldsmiths there were all called bankers. The credit of their business
was such, that the like has not been seen in England since, in private
hands: some of those bankers, as I have had from their own mouths, have
had near two millions of paper credit upon them at a time; that is to
say, have had bills under their hands running abroad for so much at a
time.

On a sudden, like a clap of thunder, King Charles II. shut up the
Exchequer, which was the common centre of the overplus cash these great
bankers had in their hands. What was the consequence? Not only the
bankers who had the bulk of their cash there, but all Lombard Street,
stood still. The very report of having money in the Exchequer brought a
run upon the goldsmiths that had no money there, as well as upon those
that had, and not only Sir Robert Viner, Alderman Backwell, Farringdon,
Forth, and others, broke and failed, but several were ruined who had not
a penny of money in the Exchequer, and only sunk by the rumour of it;
that rumour bringing a run upon the whole street, and giving a check to
the paper