e Ends mentioned in the
above Verse of _Denham,_ I cannot much wonder at the Endeavour after
Gain, but am extremely astonished that Men can be so insensible of the
Danger of running into Debt. One would think it impossible a Man who is
given to contract Debts should know, that his Creditor has, from that
Moment in which he transgresses Payment, so much as that Demand comes to
in his Debtor's Honour, Liberty, and Fortune. One would think he did not
know, that his Creditor can say the worst thing imaginable of him, to
wit, _That he is unjust_, without Defamation; and can seize his Person,
without being guilty of an Assault. Yet such is the loose and abandoned
Turn of some Men's Minds, that they can live under these constant
Apprehensions, and still go on to encrease the Cause of them. Can there
be a more low and servile Condition, than to be ashamed, or afraid, to
see any one Man breathing? Yet he that is much in Debt, is in that
Condition with relation to twenty different People. There are indeed
Circumstances wherein Men of honest Natures may become liable to Debts,
by some unadvised Behaviour in any great Point of their Life, or
mortgaging a Man's Honesty as a Security for that of another, and the
like; but these Instances are so particular and circumstantiated, that
they cannot come within general Considerations: For one such Case as one
of these, there are ten, where a Man, to keep up a Farce of Retinue and
Grandeur within his own House, shall shrink at the Expectation of surly
Demands at his Doors. The Debtor is the Creditor's Criminal, and all the
Officers of Power and State, whom we behold make so great a Figure, are
no other than so many Persons in Authority to make good his Charge
against him. Human Society depends upon his having the Vengeance Law
allots him; and the Debtor owes his Liberty to his Neighbour, as much as
the Murderer does his Life to his Prince.

Our Gentry are, generally speaking, in Debt; and many Families have put
it into a kind of Method of being so from Generation to Generation. The
Father mortgages when his Son is very young: and the Boy is to marry as
soon as he is at Age, to redeem it, and find Portions for his Sisters.
This, forsooth, is no great Inconvenience to him; for he may wench, keep
a publick Table or feed Dogs, like a worthy _English_ Gentleman, till he
has out-run half his Estate, and leave the same Incumbrance upon his
First-born, and so on, till one Man of more Vigour than ord