PREFACE
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 he do?[2]
The following directions are calculated for this exigency, and to
prepare the young tradesman to stem the attacks of those fatal customs,
which otherwise, if he yields to them, will inevitably send him the way
of all the thoughtless tradesmen that have gone before him.
Here he will be effectually, we hope, encouraged to set out well; to
begin wisely and prudently; and to avoid all those rocks which the gay
race of tradesmen so frequently suffer shipwreck upon. And here he will
have a true plan of his own prosperity drawn out for him, by which, if
it be not his own fault, he may square his conduct in an unerring
manner, and fear neither bad fortune nor bad friends. I had purposed to
give a great many other cautions and directions in this work, but it
would have spun it out too far, and have made it tedious. I would indeed
have discoursed of some branches of home trade, which necessarily
embarks the inland tradesman in some parts of foreign business, and so
makes a merchant of the shopkeeper almost whether he will or no. For
example, almost all the shopkeepers and inland traders in seaport towns,
or even in the water-side part of London itself, are necessarily brought
in to be owners of ships, and concerned at least in the vessel, if not
in the voyage. Some of their trades, perhaps, relate to, or are employed
in, the building, or fitting, or furnishing out ships, as is the case at
Shoreham, at Ipswich, Yarmouth, Hull, Whitby, Newcastle, and the like.
Others are concerned in the cargoes, as in the herring fishery at
Yarmouth and the adjacent ports, the colliery at Newcastle, Sunderland,
&c., and the like in many other cases.
In this case, the shopkeeper is sometimes a merchant adventurer, whether
he will or not, and some of his business runs into sea-adventures, as in
the salt trade at Sheffield, in Northumberland, and Durham, and again at
Limington; and again in the coal trade, from Whitehaven in Cumberland to
Ireland, and the like.
These considerations urged me to direct due cautions to such tradesmen,