generally sooner than the
partner; the apprentice is not known, and cannot have made his interest
among the buyers, but for perhaps a year, or a year and a half, before
his time expired: sooner than that he could not put himself in the way
of being known and observed; and then, when his time is out, he
certainly removes, unless he is taken into the shop as a partner, and
that, indeed, prolongs the time, and places the injury at a greater
distance, but still it makes it the more influencing when it comes; and
unless he is brought some how or other into the family, and becomes one
of the house, perhaps by marriage, or some other settled union with the
master, he never goes off without making a great chasm in the master's
affairs, and the more, by how much he has been more diligent and useful
in the trade, the wounds of which the master seldom if ever recovers.

If the partner were not an apprentice, but that they either came out of
their times together, or near it, or had a shop and business before, but
quitted it to come in, it may then be said that he brought part of the
trade with him, and so increased the trade when he joined with the other
in proportion to what he may be said to carry away when he went off;
this is the best thing that can be said of a partnership; and then I
have this to add, first, that the tradesman who took the partner in has
a fair field, indeed, to act in with his partner, and must take care, by
his constant attendance, due acquaintance with the customers, and
appearing in every part of the business, to maintain not his interest
only, but the appearance of his interest, in the shop or warehouse, that
he may, on every occasion, and to every customer, not only be, but be
known to be, the master and head of the business; and that the other is
at best but a partner, and not a chief partner, as, in case of his
absence and negligence, will presently be suggested; for he that chiefly
appears will be always chief partner in the eye of the customers,
whatever he is in the substance of the thing.

This, indeed, is much the same case with what is said before of a
diligent servant, and a negligent master, and therefore I forbear to
enlarge upon it; but it is so important in both cases, that indeed it
cannot well be mentioned too often: the master's full application, in
his own person, is the only answer to both. He that takes a partner only
to ease him of the toil of his business, that he may take his pleas