twopence in a day's labor as
an honest tradesman will to cheat his customers of the same sum in a
yard of cloth or silk.

It is a great pity then that this power, or rather this practice, was
not revived; but, this having been so long omitted that it is become
obsolete, will be best done by a new law, in which this power, as well
as the consequent power of forcing the poor to labor at a moderate
and reasonable rate, should be well considered and their execution
facilitated; for gentlemen who give their time and labor gratis, and
even voluntarily, to the public, have a right to expect that all their
business be made as easy as possible; and to enact laws without doing
this is to fill our statute-books, much too full already, still
fuller with dead letter, of no use but to the printer of the acts of
parliament. That the evil which I have here pointed at is of itself
worth redressing, is, I apprehend, no subject of dispute; for why
should any persons in distress be deprived of the assistance of their
fellow-subjects, when they are willing amply to reward them for their
labor? or, why should the lowest of the people be permitted to exact
ten times the value of their work? For those exactions increase with the
degrees of necessity in their object, insomuch that on the former side
many are horribly imposed upon, and that often in no trifling matters.
I was very well assured that at Deal no less than ten guineas was
required, and paid by the supercargo of an Indiaman, for carrying him on
board two miles from the shore when she was just ready to sail; so that
his necessity, as his pillager well understood, was absolute. Again,
many others, whose indignation will not submit to such plunder, are
forced to refuse the assistance, though they are often great sufferers
by so doing. On the latter side, the lowest of the people are encouraged
in laziness and idleness; while they live by a twentieth part of the
labor that ought to maintain them, which is diametrically opposite to
the interest of the public; for that requires a great deal to be done,
not to be paid, for a little. And moreover, they are confirmed in
habits of exaction, and are taught to consider the distresses of their
superiors as their own fair emolument. But enough of this matter, of
which I at first intended only to convey a hint to those who are alone
capable of applying the remedy, though they are the last to whom the
notice of those evils would occur, without some