r, for money, he tells him, 'I have no
money, Sir; I cannot pay you now; if you call next week, I will pay
you.' Next week comes, and the merchant calls again; but it is the same
thing, only the warehouseman adds, 'Well, I will pay you next week,
_without fail.'_ When the week comes, he tells him he has met with great
disappointments, and he knows not what to do, but desires his patience
another week: and when the other week comes, perhaps he pays him, and so
they go on.

Now, what is to be said for this? In the first place, let us look back
to the occasion. This warehouse-keeper, or wholesale-man, sells the
goods which he buys of the merchant--I say, he sells them to the
retailers, and it is for that reason I place it first there. Now, as
they buy in smaller quantities than he did of the merchant, so he deals
with more of them in number, and he goes about among them the same
Saturday, to get in money that he may pay his merchant, and he receives
his bag full of promises, too, every where instead of money, and is put
off from week to week, perhaps by fifty shopkeepers in a day; and their
serving him thus obliges him to do the same to the merchant.

Again, come to the merchant. Except some, whose circumstances are above
it, they are by this very usage obliged to put off the Blackwell-hall
factor, or the packer, or the clothier, or whoever they deal with, in
proportion; and thus promises go round for payment, and those promises
are kept or broken as money comes in, or as disappointments happen; and
all this while there is no breach of honesty, or parole; no lying, or
supposition of it, among the tradesmen, either on one side or other.

But let us come, I say, to the morality of it. To break a solemn promise
is a kind of prevarication; that is certain, there is no coming off of
it; and I might enlarge here upon the first fault, namely, of making the
promise, which, say the strict objectors, they should not do. But the
tradesman's answer is this: all those promises ought to be taken as they
are made--namely, with a contingent dependence upon the circumstances of
trade, such as promises made them by others who owe them money, or the
supposition of a week's trade bringing in money by retail, as usual,
both of which are liable to fail, or at least to fall short; and this
the person who calls for the money knows, and takes the promise with
those attending casualties; which if they fail, he knows the shopkeeper,
or whoever he