bankrupts and broken
tradesmen now among us, more than ever were known before? I make no
doubt but there is as much trade now, and as much gotten by trading, as
there ever was in this nation, at least in our memory; and if we will
allow other people to judge, they will tell us there is much more trade,
and trade is much more gainful; what, then, must be the reason that the
tradesmen cannot live on their trades, cannot keep open their shops,
cannot maintain themselves and families, as well now as they could
before? Something extraordinary must be the case.

There must be some failure in the tradesman--it can be nowhere
else--either he is less sober and less frugal, less cautious of what he
does, whom he trusts, how he lives, and how he behaves, than tradesmen
used to be, or he is less industrious, less diligent, and takes less
care and pains in his business, or something is the matter; it cannot be
but if he had the same gain, and but the same expense which the former
ages suffered tradesmen to thrive with, he would certainly thrive as
they did. There must be something out of order in the foundation; he
must fail in the essential part, or he would not fail in his trade. The
same causes would have the same effects in all ages; the same gain, and
but the same expense, would just leave him in the same place as it would
have left his predecessor in the same shop; and yet we see one grow
rich, and the other starve, under the very same circumstances.

The temper of the times explains the case to every body that pleases but
to look into it. The expenses of a family are quite different now from
what they have been. Tradesmen cannot live as tradesmen in the same
class used to live; custom, and the manner of all the tradesmen round
them, command a difference; and he that will not do as others do, is
esteemed as nobody among them, and the tradesman is doomed to ruin by
the fate of the times.

In short, there is a fate upon a tradesman; either he must yield to the
snare of the times, or be the jest of the times; the young tradesman
cannot resist it; he must live as others do, or lose the credit of
living, and be run down as if he were bankrupt. In a word, he must spend
more than he can afford to spend, and so be undone; or not spend it, and
so be undone.

If he lives as others do, he breaks, because he spends more than he
gets; if he does not, he breaks too, because he loses his credit, and
that is to lose his trade. What must h