nd faithfully, they
should be entitled to a certificate, as is practised at present in the
wool-combing trade; nor should any person hire a servant without a
certificate or other proper security. A servant without a certificate
should be deemed a vagrant; and a master or mistress ought to assign very
good reasons indeed when they object against giving a servant his or her
certificate.

And though, to avoid prolixity, I have not mentioned footmen particularly
in the foregoing discourse, yet the complaints alleged against the maids
are as well masculine as feminine, and very applicable to our gentlemen's
gentlemen; I would, therefore, have them under the very same regulations,
and, as they are fellow-servants, would not make fish of one and flesh of
the other, since daily experience teaches us, that "never a barrel the
better herring."

The next great abuse among us is, that under the notion of cleaning our
shoes, above ten thousand wicked, idle, pilfering vagrants are permitted
to patrol about our city and suburbs. These are called the black-guard,
who black your honour's shoes, and incorporate themselves under the title
of the Worshipful Company of Japanners.

Were this all, there were no hurt in it, and the whole might terminate in
a jest; but the mischief ends not here, they corrupt our youth,
especially our men-servants; oaths and impudence are their only flowers
of rhetoric; gaming and thieving are the principal parts of their
profession; japanning but the pretence. For example, a gentleman keeps a
servant, who among other things is to clean his master's shoes; but our
gentlemen's gentlemen are above it nowadays, and your man's man performs
the office, for which piece of service you pay double and treble,
especially if you keep a table, nay, you are well off if the japanner has
no more than his own diet from it.

I have often observed these rascals sneaking from gentlemen's doors with
wallets or hats' full of good victuals, which they either carry to their
trulls, or sell for a trifle. By this means, our butcher's, our baker's,
our poulterer's, and cheesemonger's bills are monstrously exaggerated;
not to mention candles just lighted, which sell for fivepence a pound,
and many other perquisites best known to themselves and the pilfering
villains their confederates.

Add to this, that their continual gaming sets servants upon their wits to
supply this extravagance, though at the same time the master's pocket