hey do! How little
do they consider that they are committing a trading murder, and that, in
respect to the justice of it, they may with much more equity break open
the tradesman's house, and rob his cash-chest, or his shop; and what
they can carry away thence will not do him half the injury that robbing
his character of what is due to it from an upright and diligent conduct,
would do. The loss of his money or goods is easily made up, and may be
sometimes repaired with advantage, but the loss of credit is never
repaired; the one is breaking open his house, but the other is burning
it down; the one carries away some goods, but the other shuts goods out
from coming in; one is hurting the tradesman, but the other is undoing
him.

Credit is the tradesman's life; it is, as the wise man says, 'marrow to
his bones;' it is by this that all his affairs go on prosperously and
pleasantly; if this be hurt, wounded, or weakened, the tradesman is
sick, hangs his head, is dejected and discouraged; and if he does go on,
it is heavily and with difficulty, as well as with disadvantage; he is
beholding to his fund of cash, not his friends; and he may be truly said
to stand upon his own legs, for nothing else can do it.

And therefore, on the other hand, if such a man is any way beholding to
his credit, if he stood before upon the foundation of his credit, if he
owes any thing considerable, it is a thousand to one but he sinks under
the oppression of it; that is to say, it brings every body upon him--I
mean, every one that has any demand upon him--for in pushing for their
own, especially in such cases, men have so little mercy, and are so
universally persuaded that he that comes first is first served, that I
did not at all wonder, that in the story of the tradesman who so
foolishly exposed himself in the coffee-house, as above, his friend whom
he said the words to, began with him that very night, and before he went
out of the coffee-house; it was rather a wonder to me he did not go out
and bring in half-a-dozen more upon him the same evening.

It is very rarely that men are wanting to their own interest; and the
jealousy of its being but in danger, is enough to make men forget, not
friendship only, and generosity, but good manners, civility, and even
justice itself, and fall upon the best friends they have in the world,
if they think they are in the least danger of suffering by them.

On these accounts it is, and many more, that a trades