CHAP. III.

Of the trading style.

EASY, plain, and familiar language, is the beauty of speech in general, and is the excellency of all writing, on whatever subject, or to whatever persons they are that we write to, or speak. The end of speech is, that men may understand one another's meaning; certainly then, that speech, or that way of speaking, which is most easily understood, is the best. If any man were to ask me, what I would suppose to be a perfect style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five hundred people, all of common and various capacities, should be understood by them all, in the same sense which the speaker intended to be understood.

The nicety of writing in business consists chiefly in giving every species of goods their trading names; for there are certain peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not understand you. For example; if you write to your factor at Lisbon, or at Cadiz, to make your returns in hard-ware, he understands you, and sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. So, if a merchant comes to me to hire a small ship of me, and tells me it is for the pippin-trade; or to buy a vessel, and tells me he intends to make a pippiner of her; the meaning is, that she is to run to Seville for oranges, or to Malaga for lemons: if he says he intends to send her for a

lading of fruit, the meaning is, she is to go to Alicant, Denia, or Xavia, on the coast of Spain, for raisins of the sun, or to Malaga for Malaga raisins. In a word, there is a kind of cant in trade, which a tradesman ought to know; and this in letters of business is allowable, and indeed they cannot understand one another without it. Take an example to the purpose for explaining this:

A brickmaker being hired by a brewer to make some bricks for him at his country-house, wrote to the brewer, that he could not go forward unless he had two or three load of Spanish; that otherwise his brick would cost him six or seven chaldron of coals extraordinary, and the bricks would not be so good and hard neither, by a great deal, when they were burnt.

The brewer hereupon sends him down two carts loaded with about twelve hogsheads or casks of molasses; which frighted the brickmaker almost out of his senses. The case was this; the brewers formerly mixed molasses with their ale, to sweeten it, and abate the quantity of malt, molasses being at that time much cheaper in proportion; and this they called Spanish, not being willing their customers should know it. Again; the brickmakers all about London mix seacoal-ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with their clay, of which they make brick, and by that shift save eight chaldron of coals out of eleven, to the burning a hundred thousand of bricks, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with; and these ashes they call Spanish: but this neither the brewer on one hand, nor the brickmaker on the other, understood any other of than as it related to their separate business.

Thus the received terms of art, in every particular business, are always to be observed. And when I am speaking of plain writing in matters of business,

it must be understood with an allowance for all these things; for a tradesman cannot write or speak proper without being able to write or speak to any particular handicraft or manufacturer in his own dialect; and this is as necessary as it is for a seaman to understand the names of all the several things belonging to a ship.

But even these terms of art, or customary expressions, are not to be used with affectation, and with a needless repetition where they not called for, or to persons who are not to be supposed to know them as well as himself. For how must that sailor appear to a surgeon, whom he had occasion to consult on a swelled face and a bruised leg, when he tells him, that he had a swelling on the north-east side of his face; that his windward leg being hurt by a bruise, it so put him out of trim that he always heeled to starboard when he made fresh way, and so run to leeward till he was often forced aground; and then desired him to give him some directions how to put himself into a sailing posture again.

There are many advantages to tradesmen in having a general knowledge of the terms of art of every business; and particularly this, that they are not to be imposed upon so easily by other tradesmen when they come to deal with them. To give an instance or two of this, that shall be plain to every understanding :

What trade has more hard words and peculiarities attending it than that of a jockey, or horsecourser, as we call them? They have all the parts of the horse, and all the diseases attending him, necessary to be mentioned in the market, upon every occasion of buying or bargaining. A jockey will know you at first sight when you do but go round a horse, or at the first word you say about him, whether you are a dealer, as they call them

selves, or a stranger. If you take up the horse's foot right; if you handle him in the proper places; if you bid his servant open his mouth, or go dexterously about it yourself; if you speak of his shapes or his goings, in proper words; O, says the jockey to his fellow, he understands a horse, he speaks the language; then he knows you are not to be cheated, or at least, not so easily. But if you go awkwardly to work, whisper to your man you bring with you to ask everything for you; cannot handle the horse yourself, or speak the language of the trade, he falls upon you with his flourishes, and with a flux of horse-rhetoric, imposes upon you with oaths and asseverations, and, in a word, conquers you with the mere clamour of his trade.

Thus, if you go to a garden to buy flowers, plants, trees, and greens; if you know the names of flowers, or simples, or greens, their particular beauties, when fit to remove, and when to slip and draw; what colour is common, and what rare; when a flower is good, and when ordinary; the gardener presently talks to you as a man of art; shows you his exotics, his greenhouse, and his stores; what he has set out, and what he has budded or enarched, and the like. But if he finds you have none of the terms of art, know little or nothing of the names of plants, or the nature of planting, he picks your pocket instantly; shows you a fine trimmed furze bush for a juniper; sells you common pinks for painted ladies, an ordinary tulip for a rarity, a runaway for a curious flower; and the like.

A person goes into a brickmaker's field to view his clamp, and buy a load of bricks; he resolves to see them loaded, because he would have good ones; but not understanding the goods, and seeing the workmen loading them where they were hard and well burnt, but looked white and grey, which

to be sure were the best of the bricks, and which perhaps they would not have done if he had not been there to look on them, they supposing he understood which were the best, he, in the abundance of his ignorance, finds fault with them, because they were not of a good colour, and did not look red. The brickmaker's men took the hint immediately, and telling the buyer they would give him red bricks to oblige him, turned their hands from the grey, hard, well-burnt bricks, to the soft, sammel, half-burnt bricks, which they were glad to dispose of; and which nobody that had understood bricks would have taken off their hands.

It is the like in almost all the goods a tradesmen can deal in. If you go to Warwickshire to buy cheese, you demand the cheese of the first make, because that is the best. If you go to Suffolk to buy butter, you refuse the butter of the first make, because that is not the best; but you bargain for the right rowing butter, which is the butter that is made when the cows are turned into the grounds which have been moved, where the hay has been carried off, and the grass is grown again : and so in many other cases. These things demonstrate the advantages there are to a tradesman in his being thoroughly informed of the terms of art, and the peculiarities belonging to every particular business, which therefore I call the language of trade.

As a merchant should understand at least the languages of those countries which he trades to, or corresponds with, and the customs and usages of those countries as to their commerce, so an English tradesman ought to understand all the languages of trade, within the circumference of his own country at least, and particularly of such as he