For my own part, when I consider the several societies of handicraftsmen in all kinds, as well as shopkeepers, in this city, after eighteen years’ experience of their dealings, I am at a loss to know in which of these societies the most or least honesty is to be found.  For instance, when any trade comes first into my head, upon examination I determine it exceeds all others in fraud.  But after I have considered them all round, as far as my knowledge or experience reacheth, I am at a loss to determine, and to save trouble I put them all upon a par.  This I chiefly apply to those societies of men who get their livelihood by the labour of their hands.  For, as to shopkeepers, I cannot deny that I have found some few honest men among them, taking the word honest in the largest and most charitable sense.  But as to handicraftsmen, although I shall endeavour to believe it possible to find a fair dealer among their clans, yet I confess it hath never been once my good fortune to employ one single workman, who did not cheat me at all times to the utmost of his power in the materials, the work, and the price.  One universal maxim I have constantly observed among them, that they would rather gain a shilling by cheating you, than twenty in the honest way of dealing, although they were sure to lose your custom, as well as that of others, whom you might probably recommend to them.

This, I must own, is the natural consequence of poverty and oppression.  These wretched people catch at any thing to save them a minute longer from drowning.  Thus Ireland is the poorest of all civilized countries in Europe, with every natural advantage to make it one of the richest.

As to the grand objection, which this writer slubbers over in so careless a manner, because indeed it was impossible to find a satisfactory answer, I mean the knavery of our woollen manufacturers in general, I shall relate some facts, which I had more opportunities to observe than usually fall in the way of men who are not of the trade.  For some years, the masters and wardens, with many of their principal workmen and shopkeepers, came often to the Deanery to relate their grievances, and to desire my advice as well as my assistance.  What reasons might move them to this proceeding, I leave to public conjecture.  The truth is, that the woollen manufacture of this kingdom sate always nearest my heart.  But the greatest difficulty lay in these perpetual differences between the shopkeepers and workmen they employed.  Ten or a dozen of these latter often came to the Deanery with their complaints, which I often repeated to the shopkeepers.  As, that they brought their prices too low for a poor weaver to get his bread by; and instead of ready money for their labour on Saturdays, they gave them only such a quantity of cloth or stuff, at the highest rate, which the poor men were often forced to sell one-third below the rate, to supply their urgent necessities.  On the other side, the shopkeepers complained of idleness, and want of skill, or care, or honesty, in their workmen; and probably their accusations on both sides were just.