which, as the world now goes, is a very hazardous one, how few trades are there where a great part of the seven years is not gone before the youth can be very useful to his master; and how few young men are there who begin to think before they are drawing towards the expiration of their time, if then, when self, and their approaching prospects, may perhaps awaken their thoughtfulness, and rouse a reflection in them which their master's interests never had force enough with them to inspire. So that it may be very often said, that in many trades, half of the seven years are the years of boyhood and inconsideration, and spent as a time of preparation, as it were, to the other half, or perhaps to only the last two of the seven.

As to the large sums now required by masters with apprentices, it is certain that the demand is greatly more than used formerly to be given; and many inconveniences, no doubt, such as our author has enumerated, may have flowed from this source, but then these are chiefly in the top trades, as they are called; and I will venture to say that the rise of this demand is owing more to the unreasonable fondness and partiality of parents for their children, than from any other consideration; for who does not know that many persons have been so weak, as when they have put out a child, to insist that he shall be exempted from such and such servile offices, which were wont to be required of younger apprentices, and that frequently as so many marks of their subjection and humility? Nay, not so satisfied, how common a thing has it been that they have stipulated that their sons shall not eat with the other servants, but be allowed to sit at table with their masters and mistresses? For this indulgence a larger premium has been given, as indeed it ought; and this by degrees became more and

more practised, and so enhanced the demand of the masters, who having conditioned that their apprentices should the first day commence a sort of gentlemen, were obliged to take servants of lower degree to do those servile things, and even to wait upon the young master too, in points which were always wont to be done by the youngest apprentice. This has been a very pregnant mischief, and attended with the most obvious ill consequences, and I wonder how it escaped our author's animadversion. But let us return to our author.

Upon the whole, the present state of things between masters and servants is such, that now, more than ever, the caution is needful and just, that he that leaves his business to the management of his servants, it is ten to one but he ruins his business and his servants too.

The former, viz., ruining his business, is indeed my present subject; but ruining his servants is also a consideration that an honest conscientious master ought to think of great weight, and what he ought to concern himself about. Servants out of government are like soldiers without an officer, fit for nothing but to rob and plunder.

Besides, it is letting loose his apprentices to levity and liberty in that particular critical time of life when they have the most need of government and restraint. When should laws and limits be useful to mankind but in their youth, when unlimited liberty is most fatal to them, and when they are least capable of governing themselves?

If there is any duty on the side of a master to his servant, any obligation on him as a Christian, and as a trustee for his parents, it lies here, to limit and restrain them, if possible, in the liberty of doing evil; and this is certainly a debt due to the trust reposed in masters by the parents of the youth

committed to them. If he is let loose here he is undone of course, and it may be said indeed he was ruined by his master; and if the master is afterwards ruined by such a servant, what can be said for it but this, he could expect no other.

To leave a youth without government is indeed unworthy of any honest master; he cannot discharge himself as a master; for instead of taking care of him, he indeed casts him off, abandons him; and to put it into scripture words, he leads him into temptation; nay, he goes further, to use another scripture expression, he delivers him over to Satan.

It is confessed, and it is fatal both to masters and servants at this time, that not only servants are made haughty, and above the government of their masters, and think it below them to submit to any family government, or any restraints of their masters, as to their morals and religion, but masters also seem to have given up all family government, and all care or concern for the morals and manners, as well as for the religion of their servants, thinking themselves under no obligation to meddle with those things, or to think anything about them, so that their business be but done, and their shop or warehouse duly looked after.

But to bring it all home to the point in hand. If it is so with the master and servant, there is the less room still for the master of such servants to leave any considerable trust in the hands of such apprentices, or to expect much from them, to leave the weight of their affairs with them, and living at their country lodgings, and taking their own diversions, depend upon such servants for the success of their business; this is indeed abandoning their business, throwing it away, and committing themselves, families, and fortunes, to the conduct of those

who they have all the reason in the world to believe have no concern upon them for their good, or care one farthing what becomes of them.

CHAP. XIV.

Of tradesmen making composition with debtors or with creditors. That they, of all men, from the contingent nature of trade, have reason to compassionate the unfortunate. The justice of making a bankrupt's wilful concealment of his effects felony. Benefit from the late acts of bankruptcy, both to debtor and creditor, to what it was formerly. That the first proposal is always the best. Reasons for it. In what cases the debtor does and does not deserve compassion. Of statutes taken out with a fraudulent intention. Clause in the new act of 5 Geo. II. which seems framed to cure an evil complained of by our author.

THERE is an alternative in the subject of this chapter, which places the discourse in the two extremes of a tradesman's fortune.

I. The fortunate tradesman, called upon by his poor unfortunate neighbour, who is his debtor, and is become insolvent, to have compassion on him, and to compound with him for part of his debt, and accept his offer in discharge of the whole.

II. The unfortunate tradesman, become insolvent and bankrupt himself, and applying himself to his creditor to accept of a composition, in discharge

of his debt.

I shall, in this chapter, speak of the former article, referring the second to the next.

And, first, it is certain, that a tradesman, let his circumstances be what they will, has the most reason to compassionate the disasters of the unfortunate, of any other men, because the most prosperous of them know not what may be their own fate in the world. There is a scripture proverb, if I may call it so, very necessary to a tradesman in this case, Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; for men in trade can but think they stand, since there are so many incidents attending a tradesman, that sometimes when he thinks himself most secure of standing, he is in most danger of falling.

If then the contingent nature of trade renders every tradesman liable to disaster, it seems strange that tradesmen should be unmerciful to one another when they fall; and yet so it is, that no creditor is so furious upon an unhappy insolvent tradesman, as a brother tradesman of his own class; and who is so equally liable to the same disaster in the common event of his business, that I have often seen the outrageous creditor become bankrupt himself in a little time, and begging the same mercy of others, which, just before, he had denied to his own debtor, and making the same fruitless exclamations at the cruelty and hard-heartedness of others to him. Must not such an one's heart reproach him on this occasion, and make him see the justice of that dispensation which has meted to him the same measure which he meted to others in the like distress?

Compassion to the miserable is a debt of charity due from all mankind to their fellow-creatures; and though the purse-proud tradesman may think he is above the fear of being in the like circumstances, yet even then he might reflect that, perhaps, there was a time when he was not so; and he ought to