ances of
it; but how hazardous and how fatal is it in other cases! And how many
an honest and industrious tradesman has been prevailed with to take in a
partner to ease himself in the weight of the business, or on several
other accounts, some perhaps reasonable and prudent enough, but has
found himself immediately involved in a sea of trouble, is brought into
innumerable difficulties, concealed debts, and unknown incumbrances,
such as he could no ways extricate himself out of, and so both have been
unavoidably ruined together!

These cases are so various and so uncertain, that it is not easy to
enumerate them: but we may include the particulars in a general or two.

1. One partner may contract debts, even in the partnership itself, so
far unknown to the other, as that the other may be involved in the
danger of them, though he was not at all concerned in, or acquainted
with, them at the same time they were contracted.

2. One partner may discharge debts for both partners; and so, having a
design to be knavish, may go and receive money, and give receipts for
it, and not bringing it to account, or not bringing the money into cash,
may wrong the stock to so considerable a sum as may be to the ruin of
the other partner.

3. One partner may confess judgment, or give bonds, or current notes in
the name, and as for the account of the company, and yet convert the
effects to his own private use, leaving the stock to be answerable for
the value.

4. One partner may sell and give credit, and deliver parcels of goods to
what sum, or what quantity, he thinks fit, and to whom, and so, by his
indiscretion, or perhaps by connivance and knavery, lose to the stock
what parcel of goods he pleases, to the ruin of the other partner, and
bring themselves to be both bankrupt together.

5. Nay, to sum up all, one partner may commit acts of bankruptcy without
the knowledge of the other, and thereby subject the united stock, and
both or all the partners, to the danger of a commission, when they may
themselves know nothing of it till the blow is given, and given so as to
be too late to be retrieved.

All these, and many more, being the ill consequences and dangers of
partnership in trade, I cannot but seriously warn the honest industrious
tradesman, if possible, to stand upon his own legs, and go on upon his
own bottom; to pursue his business diligently, but cautiously, and what
we call fair and softly; not eagerly pushing to drive a vast