curity ottered; yet, if you have Bills at any reasonable date, he
could get them discounted. If you should suffer yourself to be trick'd
out of any Bills, he will contrive, in some way or other, to negotiate
them--not, as he professes, for you, but for himself and his colleagues;
and, very likely, after you have been at the additional expense of
commencing a suit at law against them, they have disappeared, and are
in the King's Bench or the Fleet, waiting there to defraud you of
every hope and expectation, by obtaining their liberty through the
White-washing Act.

"These gentry are for the most part Attorneys or Pettifoggers, or
closely connected with such; and notwithstanding all legal provisions
to preclude them from exacting large sums, either for their agency and
introduction, or for the bonds which they draw, yet they contrive to
bring themselves home, and escape detection, by some such means as the
following:

"They pretend that it is necessary to have a deed drawn up to explain
the uses of the Annuity-bond, which the grantor of the money, who is
some usurious villain, immediately acknowledges and accedes to; for

"The bond that signs the mortgage pays the shot; so that an Act which
is fraught with the best purposes for the protection of the honest, but
unfortunate, is in this manner subjected to the grossest chicanery of
pettifoggers and pretenders, and the vilest evasions of quirking low
villains of the law.

"There is also another species of money-lender, not inaptly termed
the Female Banker. These accommodate Barrow-women and others, who sell
fruit, vegetables, &c. in the public streets, with five shillings a day
(the usual diurnal stock in such cases;) for the use of which for twelve
hours they obtain the moderate premium of sixpence when the money is
returned in the evening, receiving at this rate about seven pounds
ten shillings per year for every five pounds they can so employ. It is
however very difficult to convince the borrowers of the correctness
of this calculation, and of the serious loss to which they subject
themselves by a continuation of the system, since it is evident that
this improvident and dissolute class of people have no other idea
than that of making the day and the way alike long. Their profits
~172~~(often considerably augmented by dealing in base money as well as
the articles which they sell) seldom last over the day; for they never
fail to have a luxurious dinner and a hot supper,