e enabled to trust the tailors who make the clothes, or even their
neighbours who wear them; and the manufacturers in the several counties
do the like by those wholesale dealers who supply the country shops.

Through so many hands do all the necessary things pass for the clothing
a poor plain countryman, though he lived as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed;
and this occasions, as I have said, a general circulation of trade, both
to and from London, from and to all the parts of England, so that every
manufacture is sold and removed five or six times, and perhaps more,
before it comes at the last consumer.

This method of trade brings another article in, which also is the great
foundation of the increase of commerce, and the prodigious magnitude of
our inland trade is much owing to it; and that is giving credit, by
which every tradesman is enabled to trade for a great deal more than he
otherwise could do. By this method a shopkeeper is able to stock his
shop, or warehouses, with two or three times as much goods in value, as
he has stock of his own to begin the world with, and by that means is
able to trust out his goods to others, and give them time, and so under
one another--nay, I may say, many a tradesman begins the world with
borrowed stocks, or with no stock at all, but that of credit, and yet
carries on a trade for several hundreds, nay, for several thousands, of
pounds a-year.

By this means the trade in general is infinitely increased--nay, the
stock of the kingdom in trade is doubled, or trebled, or more, and there
is infinitely more business carried on, than the real stock could be
able to manage, if no credit were to be given; for credit in this
particular is a stock, and that not an imaginary, but a real stock; for
the tradesman, that perhaps begins but with five hundred, or one
thousand pounds' stock, shall be able to furnish or stock his shop with
four times the sum in the value of goods; and as he gives credit again,
and trusts other tradesmen under him, so he launches out into a trade of
great magnitude; and yet, if he is a prudent manager of his business, he
finds himself able to answer his payments, and so continually supply
himself with goods, keeping up the reputation of his dealings, and the
credit of his shop, though his stock be not a fifth, nay, sometimes not
a tenth part, in proportion to the returns that he makes by the year: so
that credit is the foundation on which the trade of England is made so
con