erson intends to perform if he makes
the least reserve or condition in his promise, though, at the same time,
they know that even the nature of the promise and the reason of the
promise strongly implies the condition--I say, the importunity of the
creditor occasions the breach, which he reproaches the debtor with the
immorality of.[28]

Custom, indeed, has driven us beyond the limits of our morals in many
things, which trade makes necessary, and which we cannot now avoid; so
that if we must pretend to go back to the literal sense of the command;
if our yea must be yea, and our nay nay; if no man must go beyond, or
defraud his neighbour; if our conversation must be without covetousness,
and the like--why, then, it is impossible for tradesmen to be
Christians, and we must unhinge all business, act upon new principles in
trade, and go on by new rules--in short, we must shut up shop, and leave
off trade, and so in many things we must leave off living; for as
conversation is called life, we must leave off to converse: all the
ordinary communication of life is now full of lying; and what with
table-lies, salutation-lies, and trading-lies, there is no such thing as
every man speaking truth with his neighbour.

But this is a subject would launch me out beyond the bounds of a
chapter, and make a book by itself. I return to the case particularly in
hand--promises of payment of money. Men in trade, I say, are under this
unhappy necessity, they are forced to make them, and they are forced to
break them; the violent pressing and dunning, and perhaps threatening
too, of the creditor, when the poor shopkeeper cannot comply with his
demand, forces him to promise; in short, the importunate creditor will
not be otherwise put off, and the poor shopkeeper, almost worried, and
perhaps a little terrified too, and afraid of him, is glad to do and say
any thing to pacify him, and this extorts a promise, which, when the
time comes, he is no more able to perform than he was before, and this
multiplies promises, and consequently breaches, so much of which are to
be placed to the accounts of force, that I must acknowledge, though the
debtor is to blame, the creditor is too far concerned in the crime of it
to be excused, and it were to be wished some other method could be found
out to prevent the evil, and that tradesmen would resolve with more
courage to resist the importunities of the creditor, be the consequence
what it would, rather than break