And as the servant knows this, so he fails not to take the advantage of it, and to pay no more service than he thinks is due; and the hours of his shop business being run out, he claims all the rest for himself, without the above restraint.  Nor will the servants, in these times, bear any examinations with respect to the disposing of their waste time, or with respect to the company they keep, or the houses or places they go to.

The use I make of it is this, and herein it is justly applicable to the case in hand; by how much the apprentices and servants in this age are loose, wild, and ungovernable, by so much the more should a master think himself obliged not to depend upon them, much less to leave his business to them, and dispense with his own attendance in it.  If he does, he must have much better luck then his neighbours, if he does not find himself very much wronged and abused, seeing, as I said above, the servants and apprentices of this age do very rarely act from a principle of conscience in serving their master’s interest, which, however, I do not see they can be good Christians without.

I knew one very considerable tradesman in this city, and who had always five or six servants in his business, apprentices and journeymen, who lodged in his house; and having a little more the spirit of government in him than most masters I now meet with, he took this method with them.  When he took apprentices, he told them beforehand the orders of his family, and which he should oblige them to; particularly, that they should none be absent from his business without leave, nor out of the house after nine o’clock at night; and that he would not have it thought hard, if he exacted three things of them:—­

1.  That, if they had been out, he should ask them where they had been, and in what company? and that they should give him a true and direct answer.

2.  That, if he found reason to forbid them keeping company with any particular person, or in any particular house or family, they should be obliged to refrain from such company.

3.  That, in breach of any of those two, after being positively charged with it, he would, on their promising to amend it, forgive them, only acquainting their friends of it; but the second time, he would dismiss them his service, and not be obliged to return any of the money he had with them.  And to these he made their parents consent when they were bound; and yet he had large sums of money with them too, not less than L200 each, and sometimes more.

As to his journeymen, he conditioned with them as follows:—­

1.  They should never dine from home without leave asked and obtained, and telling where, if required.

2.  After the shutting in of the shop, they were at liberty to go where they pleased, only not to be out of the house after nine o’clock at night.

3.  Never to be in drink, or to swear, on pain of being immediately dismissed without the courtesy usual with such servants, namely, of a month’s warning.