was continued till the 29th of September, 1743, and from thence to the end of the then next session of parliament.

CHAP. XVII.

Of the peculiar value of credit and a good name among tradesmen, illustrated by two remarkable instances. How careful men in trade, of all people, should be of raising or propagating slander against one another. A tradesman in con

tinual danger from evil tongues, as well from the ladies as his own sex. A remarkable instance of it. How persons should act when others inquire of them concerning their neighbour's characters. Inference from the tradesman's liableness to ruin from rumour, that it behoves him to be modest and humble, and make no enemies. An insidious way of wounding a neighbour's reputation. How the person using it should be treated by mankind.

I HAVE dwelt long upon the tradesman's management of himself, in order to his due preserving both his business and his reputation; let me bestow one chapter upon the tradesman, for his conduct among his neighbours and fellow-tradesmen.

Credit is so much a tradesman's blessing, that it is the choicest ware he deals in, and he cannot be too chary of it, when he has it, or buy it too dear when he wants it; it is a stock to his warehouse; it is current money in his cash-chest; it accepts all his bills; for it is on the fund of his credit that he

has any bills to accept; demands would else be all made upon the spot, and he must pay for his goods before he has them; therefore I say it accepts all his bills, and oftentimes pays them too. In a word, it is the life and soul of his trade, and it requires his utmost vigilance to preserve it.

If, then, his own credit should be of so much value to him, and he should be so nice in his concern about it, he ought, in some degree, to have the same care of his neighbour's. Religion teaches us not to defame our neighbour or to propagate any slander upon his good name. As a good name is to another man, and which the wise man says is better than life, the same is credit to a tradesman; it is the life of his trade; and he that wounds a tradesman's credit without cause, is as much a murderer in trade as he that kills a man in the dark is a murderer in matters of blood.

Besides, there is a particular nicety in the credit of a tradesman, which does not reach to many other cases; a man is slandered in his character or reputation, and it is injurious; and if it comes in the way of a marriage, or of a preferment, or post, it may disappoint and ruin him; but if this happens to a tradesman, he is immediately and unavoidably blasted and undone. A tradesman has but two sorts of enemies to encounter with; viz. thieves breaking open his shop, and ill neighbours blasting his reputation; and the latter are the worse thieves of the two, by a great deal; and therefore people should indeed be more chary of their discourse of tradesmen than of other men.

A tradesman's credit and a maid's virtue ought to be equally sacred from evil tongues; and it is a very unhappy truth that, as times now go, they are neither of them regarded among us as they ought

to be.

The tea-table among the ladies, and the coffeehouse among men, seem to be places devoted to scandal; and where the characters of all kinds of persons and professions are handled in the most merciless manner; where reproach triumphs, and we seem to give ourselves a loose to fall upon one another, in the most unchristian manner in the world.

It seems a little hard that the reputation of a young lady, or of a new married couple, or of people in the most critical season of establishing the characters of their persons and families, should lie at the mercy of the tea-table; nor is it less hard that the credit of a tradesman, which is the same thing in its nature as the virtue of a lady, should be tossed about, shuttlecock-like, from one table to another in the coffee-house, till they shall talk all his creditors about his ears, and bring him to the very misfortune which they reported him to be near, when at the same time he owed them nothing who raised the clamour, and nothing to all the world but what he was able to pay.

And yet how many tradesman have been thus undone; and how many more have been put to the full trial of their strength in trade, and have stood by the mere force of their good circumstances, whereas had they been unfurnished with cash to have answered their whole debts, they must have fallen with the rest.

We need go no further than Lombard-street for an exemplification of this truth. There was a time when Lombard-street was the only bank, and the goldsmiths there were all called bankers; the credit of their business was such, that the like has not been seen in England since; I mean, not in private hands. Some of those bankers, as I have heard from their own mouths, have had near two millions

of paper credit in bills, under their hands, running abroad at a time.

On a sudden, like a clap of thunder, king Charles II. shut up the Exchequer, which was the common centre of the overplus cash these great bankers had in their hands. What was the consequence? Not only the bankers who had the bulk of their cash there, but all Lombard-street stood still, as if they had been thunderstruck; the very report of having money in the Exchequer brought a run upon the goldsmiths that had no money there, as well as upon those that had; and not only sir Robert Viner, alderman Backwell, Faringdon, Forth, and others, broke and failed, but several were ruined who had not a penny of money in the Exchequer, and only sunk by the rumour of it; that rumour bringing a run upon the whole street, and giving a check to the paper credit that was run up to such a surprising height before.

I remember a shopkeeper, wanton in his good circumstances, who one time took the foolish liberty with himself, in public company in a coffee-house, to say that he was broke; I assure you, says he, that I am; and to-morrow I resolve to shut up my shop and call my creditors together. It seems he had a brother just dead in his house, who the next day was to be buried, when, in decency, he kept his shop shut; and several people whom he dealt with, and owed money to, were the next day invited to the funeral; so that he did actually shut up his shop and call some of his creditors together.

But he sorely repented the jest which he put upon himself. Are you broke? says one of his friends to him, who was in the coffee-house at the same time; then I wish I had the little money you owe me; which, however, it seems was not much. Says the other, still carrying on his jest,

I shall pay nobody at all till, as I told you, I have called my people together. The other did not reach his dull jest, but he reached that part of it which concerned himself; and seeing him continue carelessly sitting in the shop, slipped out and fetched a couple of serjeants, and arrested him. The other was a little surprised; but, however, the debt being no great sum, he paid it; and when he found his mistake, told his friends what he meant by his being broke.

But it did not end there; for other people who were then in the coffee-house, and heard his discourse, and had thought nothing more of it, yet in the morning, seeing his shop shut, concluded the thing was so indeed; and immediately it went over the whole street that such a one was broke; from thence it went to the Exchange, and from thence into the country, among all his dealers, who came up in a throng and fright to look after him. In a word, he had much ado to prevent his breaking in good earnest; and if he had not had very good friends, as well as a very good bottom, he had inevitably been ruined and undone.

So small a rumour will overset a tradesman if he is not very careful of himself, and if a word in jest from himself (which though indeed no man that had considered things, or thought before he spoke, would have said) could be so fatal, and run such a dangerous length, what may not words spoken slily, and secretly, and maliciously, be made to do?

A tradesman's reputation is of the nicest nature imaginable; like a blight upon a fine flower, if it is but touched, the beauty, or the flavour, or the seed of it is lost, though the noxious breath which touched it might not reach to blast the leaf or hurt the root. The credit of a tradesman, at least in his beginning, is too much at the mercy of every enemy he has,