, and are as fatal. When rocks are apparent, and the pilot,
bold and wilful, runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know
the fate of the ship--it must perish, and all that are in it will
inevitably be lost; but in a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the
unseen rocks or shoals are the only dangers, and nothing can hazard them
but the skilfulness of the pilot: and thus it is in trade. Open
debaucheries and extravagances, and a profusion of expense, as well as a
general contempt of business, these are open and current roads to a
tradesman's destruction; but a silent going on, in pursuit of innocent
pleasures, a smooth and calm, but sure neglect of his shop, and time,
and business, will as effectually and as surely ruin the tradesman as
the other; and though the means are not so scandalous, the effect is as
certain. But I proceed to the other.

Next to immoderate pleasures, the tradesman ought to be warned against
immoderate expense. This is a terrible article, and more particularly so
to the tradesman, as custom has now, as it were on purpose for their
undoing, introduced a general habit of, and as it were a general
inclination among all sorts of people to, an expensive way of living; to
which might be added a kind of necessity of it; for that even with the
greatest prudence and frugality a man cannot now support a family with
the ordinary expense, which the same family might have been maintained
with some few years ago: there is now (1) a weight of taxes upon almost
all the necessaries of life, bread and flesh excepted, as coals, salt,
malt, candles, soap, leather, hops, wine, fruit, and all foreign
consumptions; (2) a load of pride upon the temper of the nation, which,
in spite of taxes and the unusual dearess of every thing, yet prompts
people to a profusion in their expenses.

This is not so properly called a _tax_ upon the tradesmen; I think
rather, it may be called _a plague_ upon them: for there is, first, the
dearness of every necessary thing to make living expensive; and
secondly, an unconquerable aversion to any restraint; so that the poor
will be like the rich, and the rich like the great, and the great like
the greatest--and thus the world runs on to a kind of distraction at
this time: where it will end, time must discover.

Now, the tradesman I speak of, if he will thrive, he must resolve to
begin as he can go on; and if he does so, in a word, he must resolve to
live more under restraint than