h tradesman, that they understand how to
manage the credit they both give and take, better than any other
tradesmen in the world; indeed, they have a greater opportunity to
improve it, and make use of it, and therefore may be supposed to be more
ready in making the best of their credit, than any other nations are.

Hence it is that we frequently find tradesmen carrying on a prodigious
trade with but a middling stock of their own, the rest being all managed
by the force of their credit; for example, I have known a man in a
private warehouse in London trade for forty thousand pounds a-year
sterling, and carry on such a return for many years together, and not
have one thousand pounds' stock of his own, or not more--all the rest
has been carried on upon credit, being the stocks of other men running
continually through his hands; and this is not practised now and then,
as a great rarity, but is very frequent in trade, and may be seen every
day, as what in its degree runs through the whole body of the tradesmen
in England.[43]

Every tradesman both gives and takes credit, and the new mode of setting
it up over their shop and warehouse doors, in capital letters, _No trust
by retail_, is a presumption in trade; and though it may have been
attempted in some trades, was never yet brought to any perfection; and
most of those trades, who were the forwardest to set it up, have been
obliged to take it down again, or act contrary to it in their business,
or see some very good customers go away from them to other shops, who,
though they have not brought money with them, have yet good foundations
to make any tradesmen trust them, and who do at proper times make
payments punctual enough.

On the contrary, instead of giving no trust by retail, we see very
considerable families who buy nothing but on trust; even bread, beer,
butter, cheese, beef, and mutton, wine, groceries, &c, being the things
which even with the meanest families are generally sold for ready money.
Thus I have known a family, whose revenue has been some thousands
a-year, pay their butcher, and baker, and grocer, and cheesemonger, by a
hundred pounds at a time, and be generally a hundred more in each of
their debts, and yet the tradesmen have thought it well worth while to
trust them, and their pay has in the end been very honest and good.

This is what I say brings land so much in debt to trade, and obliges the
tradesman to take credit of one another; and yet they do