The credit usually given by one tradesman to another, as particularly by the merchant to the wholesale-man, and by the wholesale-man to the retailer, is such, that, without tying the buyer up to a particular day of payment, they go on buying and selling, and the buyer pays money upon account, as his convenience admits, and as the seller is content to take it.  This occasions the merchant, or the wholesale-man, to go about, as they call it, a-dunning among their dealers, and which is generally the work of every Saturday.  When the merchant comes to his customer the wholesale-man, or warehouse-keeper, 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 is, must fail him too.