The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) by Daniel Defoe

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By losses by bad debts in trade, in the year 1715 L 50 0 0
By do. 1716 66 10 0
By do. 1717 234 15 0
By do. 1718 43 0 0
By do. 1719 25 0 0
By do. by the South Sea stock, 1720 1280 0 0
By do. in trade, 1721 42 0 0
By do. 1722 106 0 0
By do. 1723 302 0 0
By do. 1724 86 15 0
By house-keeping and expenses, taxes included, as by the
cash-book appears, for ten years 1836 12 0
By house-rents at L50 per annum 500 0 0
By credits now owing to sundry persons, as by the ledger
appears 2536 0 0
----------------
L7108 12 0
================

This account is drawn out to satisfy himself how his condition stands,
and what it is he ought to do: upon the stating which account he sees to
his affliction that he has sunk all his own fortune and his wife's, and
is a thousand pounds worse than nothing in the world; and that, being
obliged to live in the same house for the sake of his business and
warehouse, though the rent is too great for him, his trade being
declined, his credit sunk, and his family being large, he sees evidently
he cannot go on, and that it will only be bringing things from bad to
worse; and, above all the rest, being greatly perplexed in his mind that
he is spending other people's estates, and that the bread he eats is not
his own, he resolves to call his creditors all together, lay before them
the true state of his case, and lie at their mercy for the rest.

The account of his present and past fortune standing as it did, and as
appears above, the result is as follows, namely, that he has not
sufficient to pay all his creditors, though his debts should prove to be
all good, and the goods in his warehouse should be fully worth the price
they cost, which, being liable to daily contingencies, add to the
reasons which pressed him before to make an offer of surrender to his
creditors both of his goods and debts, and to give up all into their
hands.

The state of his case, as to his debts and credits, stands as follows:--

His debts esteemed good, as by the ledger, are L1357 8 0
His goods in the warehouse 672 12 0
---------------
L2030 0 0

His creditors demands, as by the same ledger
appears, are L3036 0 0

This amounts to fifteen shillings in the pound upon all his debts,
which, if the creditors please to appoint an assignee or trustee to sell
the goods, and collect the debts, he is willing to surrender wholly into
their hands, hoping they will, as a favour, give him his household
goods, as in the account, for his family use, and his liberty, that he
may seek out for some employment to get his bread.

The account being thus clear, the books exactly agreeing, and the man
appearing to have acted openly and fairly, the creditors meet, and,
after a few consultations, agree to accept his proposals, and the man is
a free man immediately, gets fresh credit, opens his shop again, and,
doubling his vigilance and application in business, he recovers in a few
years, grows rich; then, like an honest man still, he calls all his
creditors together again, tells them he does not call them now to a
second composition, but to tell them, that having, with God's blessing
and his own industry, gotten enough to enable him, he was resolved to
pay them the remainder of his old debt; and accordingly does so, to the
great joy of his creditors, to his own very great honour, and to the
encouragement of all honest men to take the same measures. It is true,
this does not often happen, but there have been instances of it, and I
could name several within my own knowledge.

But here comes an objection in the way, as follows: It is true this man
did very honestly, and his creditors had a great deal of reason to be
satisfied with his just dealing with them; but is every man bound thus
to strip himself naked? Perhaps this man at the same time had a family
to maintain, and had he no debt of justice to them, but to beg his
household goods back of them for his poor family, and that as an
alms?-and would he not have fared as well, if he had offered his
creditors ten shillings in the pound, and took all the rest upon
himself, and then he had reserved to himself sufficient to have
supported himself in any new undertaking?

The answer to this is short and plain, and no debtor can be at a loss to
know his way in it, for otherwise people may make difficulties where
there are none; the observing the strict rules of justice and honesty
will chalk out his way for him.

The man being deficient in stock, and his estate run out to a thousand
pounds worse than nothing by his losses, &c, it is evident all he has
left is the proper estate of his creditors, and he has no right to one
shilling of it; he owes it them, it is a just debt to them, and he ought
to discharge it fairly, by giving up all into their hands, or at least
to offer to do so.

But to put the case upon a new foot; as he is obliged to make an offer,
as above, to put all his effects, books, and goods into their power, so
he may add an alternative to them thus, namely--that if, on the other
hand, they do not think proper to take the trouble, or run the risk, of
collecting the debts, and selling the goods, which may be difficult, if
they will leave it to him to do it, he will undertake to pay
them--shillings in the pound, and stand to the hazard both of debts and
goods.

Having thus offered the creditors their choice, if they accept the
proposal of a certain sum, as sometimes I know they have chosen to do,
rather than to have the trouble of making assignees, and run the hazard
of the debts, when put into lawyers' hands to collect, and of the goods,
to sell them by appraisement; if, I say, they choose this, and offer to
discharge the debtor upon payment, suppose it be of ten or twelve
shillings in the pound in money, within a certain time, or on giving
security for the payment; then, indeed, the debtor is discharged in
conscience, and may lawfully and honestly take the remainder as a gift
given him by his creditors for undertaking their business, or securing
the remainder of their debt to them--I say, the debtor may do this with
the utmost satisfaction to his conscience.

But without thus putting it into the creditors' choice, it is a force
upon them to offer them any thing less than the utmost farthing that he
is able to pay; and particularly to pretend to make an offer as if it
were his utmost, and, as is usual, make protestations that it is the
most he is able to pay (indeed, every offer of a composition is a kind
of protestation that the debtor is not able to pay any more)--I say, to
offer thus, and declare he offers as much as possible, and as much as
the effects he has left will produce, if his effects are able to produce
more, he is then a cheat; for he acts then like one that stands at bay
with his creditors, make an offer, and if the creditors do not think fit
to accept of it, they must take what methods they think they can take to
get more; that is to say, he bids open defiance to their statutes and
commissions of bankrupt, and any other proceedings: like a town
besieged, which offers to capitulate and to yield upon such and such
articles; which implies, that if those articles are not accepted, the
garrison will defend themselves to the last extremity, and do all the
mischief to the assailants that they can.

Now, this in a garrison-town, I say, may be lawful and fair, but in a
debtor to his creditor it is quite another thing: for, as I have said
above, the debtor has no property in the effects which he has in his
hands; they are the goods and the estate of the creditor; and to hold
out against the creditor, keep his estate by violence, and make him
accept of a small part of it, when the debtor has a larger part in his
power, and is able to give it--this is not fair, much less is it honest
and conscientious; but it is still worse to do this, and at the same
time to declare that it is the utmost the debtor can do; this, I say, is
still more dishonest, because it is not true, and is adding falsehood to
the other injustice.

Thus, I think, I have stated the case clearly, for the conduct of the
debtor; and, indeed, this way of laying all before the creditors, and
putting it into their choice, seems a very happy method for the comfort
of the debtor, cast down and dejected with the weight of his
circumstances; and, it may be, with the reproaches of his own conscience
too, that he has not done honestly in running out the effects of his
creditors, and making other families suffer by him, and perhaps poor
families too--I say, this way of giving up all with an honest and single
desire to make all the satisfaction he is able to his creditors, greatly
heals the breach in his peace, which his circumstances had made before;
for, by now doing all that is in his power, he makes all possible amends
for what is past, I mean as to men; and they are induced, by this open,
frank usage, to give him the reward of his honesty, and freely forgive
him the rest of the debt.

There is a manifest difference to the debtor, in point of conscience,
between surrendering his whole effects, or estate, to his creditors for
satisfaction of their debts, and offering them a composition, unless, as
I have said, the composition is offered, as above, to the choice of the
creditor. By surrendering the whole estate, the debtor acknowledges the
creditors' right to all he has in his possession, and gives it up to
them as their own, putting it in their full power to dispose of it as
they please.

But, by a composition, the debtor, as I have said above, stands at bay
with the creditors, and, keeping their estates in his hands, capitulates
with them, as it were, sword in hand, telling them he can give them no
more, when perhaps, and too often it is the case, it is apparent that he
is in condition to offer more. Now, let the creditors consent to these
proposals, be what it will; and, however voluntary it may be pretended
to be, it is evident that a force is the occasion of it, and the
creditor complies, and accepts the proposal, upon the supposition that
no better conditions can be had. It is the plain language of the thing,
for no man accepts of less than he thinks he can get: if he believed he
could have more, he would certainly get it if he could.

And if the debtor is able to pay one shilling more than he offers, it is
a cheat, a palpable fraud, and of so much he actually robs his creditor.
But in a surrender the case is altered in all its parts; the debtor says
to his creditors, 'Gentlemen, there is a full and faithful account of
all I have left; it is your own, and there it is; I am ready to put it
into your hands, or into the hands of whomsoever you shall appoint to
receive it, and to lie at your mercy.' This is all the man is able to
do, and therefore is so far honest; whether the methods that reduced him
were honest or no, that is a question by itself. If on this surrender he
finds the creditors desirous rather to have it digested into a
composition, and that they will voluntarily come into such a proposal,
then, as above, they being judges of the equity of the composition, and
of what ability the debtor is to perform it, and, above all, of what he
may or may not gain by it, if they accept of such a composition, instead
of the surrender of his effects, then the case alters entirely, and the
debtor is acquitted in conscience, because the creditor had a fair
choice, and the composition is rather their proposal to the debtor, than
the debtor's proposal to them.

Thus, I think, I have stated the case of justice and conscience on the
debtor's behalf, and cleared up his way, in case of a necessity, to stop
trading, that he may break without wounding his conscience, as well as
his fortunes; and he that thinks fit to act thus, will come off with the
reputation of an honest man, and will have the favour of his creditors
to begin again, with whatever he may have as to stock; and sometimes
that favour is better to him than a stock, and has been the raising of
many a broken tradesman, so that his latter end has been better than his
beginning.

CHAPTER XV

OF TRADESMEN RUINING ONE ANOTHER BY RUMOUR AND CLAMOUR, BY SCANDAL AND
REPROACH

I have dwelt long upon the tradesman's management of himself, in order
to his due preserving both his business and his reputation: let me
bestow one chapter upon the tradesman for his conduct among his
neighbours and fellow-tradesmen.

Credit is so much a tradesman's blessing that it is the choicest ware he
deals in, and he cannot be too chary of it when he has it, or buy it too
dear when he wants it; it is a stock to his warehouse, it is current
money in his cash-chest, it accepts all his bills, for it is on the fund
of his credit that he has any bills to accept; demands would else be
made upon the spot, and he must pay for his goods before he has
them--therefore, I say, it accepts all his bills, and oftentimes pays
them too; in a word, it is the life and soul of his trade, and it
requires his utmost vigilance to preserve it.

If, then, his own credit should be of so much value to him, and he
should be so nice in his concern about it, he ought in some degree to
have the same care of his neighbour's. Religion teaches us not to
slander and defame our neighbour, that is to say, not to raise or
promote any slander or scandal upon his good name. As a good name is to
another man, and which the wise man says, 'is better than life,' the
same is credit to a tradesman--it is the life of his trade; and he that
wounds a tradesman's credit without cause, is as much a murderer in
trade, as he that kills a man in the dark is a murderer in matters of
blood.

Besides, there is a particular nicety in the credit of a tradesman,
which does not reach in other cases: a man is slandered in his
character, or reputation, and it is injurious; and if it comes in the
way of a marriage, or of a preferment, or post, it may disappoint and
ruin him; but if this happens to a tradesman, he is immediately and
unavoidably blasted and undone; a tradesman has but two sorts of enemies
to encounter with, namely, thieves breaking open his shop, and ill
neighbours blackening and blasting his reputation; and the latter are
the worst thieves of the two, by a great deal; and, therefore, people
should indeed be more chary of their discourse of tradesmen, than of
other men, and that as they would not be guilty of murder. I knew an
author of a book, who was drawn in unwarily, and without design, to
publish a scandalous story of a tradesman in London. He (the author) was
imposed upon by a set of men, who did it maliciously, and he was utterly
ignorant of the wicked design; nor did he know the person, but rashly
published the thing, being himself too fond of a piece of news, which he
thought would be grateful to his readers; nor yet did he publish the
person's name, so cautious he was, though that was not enough, as it
proved, for the person was presently published by those who had
maliciously done it.

The scandal spread; the tradesman, a flourishing man, and a considerable
dealer, was run upon by it with a torrent of malice; a match which he
was about with a considerable fortune was blasted and prevented, and
that indeed was the malicious end of the people that did it; nor did it
stop there--it brought his creditors upon him, it ruined him, it brought
out a commission of bankrupt against him, it broke his heart, and killed
him; and after his death, his debts and effects coming in, there
appeared to be seven shillings in the pound estate, clear and good over
and above all demands, all his debts discharged, and all the expenses of
the statute paid.

It was to no purpose that the man purged himself of the crime laid to
his charge--that the author, who had ignorantly and rashly published the
scandal, declared himself ignorant; the man was run down by a torrent of
reproach; scandal oppressed him; he was buried alive in the noise and
dust raised both against his morals and his credit, and yet his
character was proved good, and his bottom in trade was so too, as I have
said above.

It is not the least reason of my publishing this to add, that even the
person who was ignorantly made the instrument of publishing the scandal,
was not able to retrieve it, or to prevent the man's ruin by all the
public reparation he could make in print, and by all the acknowledgement
he could make of his having been ignorantly drawn in to do it. And this
I mention for the honest tradesman's caution, and to put him in mind,
that when he has unwarily let slip anything to the wounding the
reputation of his neighbour tradesman, whether in his trading credit, or
the credit of his morals, it may not be in his power to unsay it again,
that is, so as to prevent the ruin of the person; and though it may
grieve him as long as he lives, as the like did the author I mention,
yet it is not in his power to recall it, or to heal the wound he has
given; and that he should consider very well of beforehand.

A tradesman's credit and a virgin's virtue ought to be equally sacred
from the tongues of men; and it is a very unhappy truth, that as times
now go, they are neither of them regarded among us as they ought to be.

The tea-table among the ladies, and the coffee-house among the men, seem
to be places of new invention for a depravation of our manners and
morals, places devoted to scandal, and where the characters of all
kinds of persons and professions are handled in the most merciless
manner, where reproach triumphs, and we seem to give ourselves a loose
to fall upon one another in the most unchristian and unfriendly manner
in the world.

It seems a little hard that the reputation of a young lady, or of a
new-married couple, or of people in the most critical season of
establishing the characters of their persons and families, should lie at
the mercy of the tea-table; nor is it less hard, that the credit of a
tradesman, which is the same thing in its nature as the virtue of a
lady, should be tossed about, shuttle-cock-like, from one table to
another, in the coffee-house, till they shall talk all his creditors
about his ears, and bring him to the very misfortune which they reported
him to be near, when at the same time he owed them nothing who raised
the clamour, and owed nothing to all the world, but what he was able to
pay.

And yet how many tradesmen have been thus undone, and how many more have
been put to the full trial of their strength in trade, and have stood by
the mere force of their good circumstances; whereas, had they been
unfurnished with cash to have answered their whole debts, they must have
fallen with the rest.

We need go no farther than Lombard Street for an exemplification of this
truth. There was a time when Lombard Street was the only bank, and the
goldsmiths there were all called bankers. The credit of their business
was such, that the like has not been seen in England since, in private
hands: some of those bankers, as I have had from their own mouths, have
had near two millions of paper credit upon them at a time; that is to
say, have had bills under their hands running abroad for so much at a
time.

On a sudden, like a clap of thunder, King Charles II. shut up the
Exchequer, which was the common centre of the overplus cash these great
bankers had in their hands. What was the consequence? Not only the
bankers who had the bulk of their cash there, but all Lombard Street,
stood still. The very report of having money in the Exchequer brought a
run upon the goldsmiths that had no money there, as well as upon those
that had, and not only Sir Robert Viner, Alderman Backwell, Farringdon,
Forth, and others, broke and failed, but several were ruined who had not
a penny of money in the Exchequer, and only sunk by the rumour of it;
that rumour bringing a run upon the whole street, and giving a check to
the paper credit that was run up to such an exorbitant height.

I remember a shopkeeper who one time took the liberty (foolish liberty!)
with himself, in public company in a coffee-house, to say that he was
broke. 'I assure you,' says he, 'that I am broke, and to-morrow I
resolve to shut up my shop, and call my creditors together.' His meaning
was, that he had a brother just dead in his house, and the next day was
to be buried, when, in civility to the deceased, he kept his shop shut;
and several people whom he dealt with, and owed money to, were the next
day invited to the funeral, so that he did actually shut up his shop,
and call some of his creditors together.

But he sorely repented the jest which he put upon himself. 'Are you
broke?' says one of his friends to him, that was in the coffee-house;
'then I wish I had the little money you owe me' (which however, it
seems, was not much). Says the other, still carrying on his jest, 'I
shall pay nobody, till, as I told you, I have called my people
together.' The other did not reach his jest, which at best was but a
dull one, but he reached that part of it that concerned himself, and
seeing him continue carelessly sitting in the shop, slipped out, and,
fetching a couple of sergeants, arrested him. The other was a little
surprised; but however, the debt being no great sum, he paid it, and
when he found his mistake, told his friends what he meant by his being
broke.

But it did not end there; for other people of his neighbours, who were
then in the coffee-house, and heard his discourse, and had thought
nothing more of it, yet in the morning seeing his shop shut, concluded
the thing was so indeed, and immediately it went over the whole street
that such a one was broke; from thence it went to the Exchange, and from
thence into the country, among all his dealers, who came up in a throng
and a fright to look after him. In a word, he had as much to do to
prevent his breaking as any man need to desire, and if he had not had
very good friends as well as a very good bottom, he had inevitably been
ruined and undone.

So small a rumour will overset a tradesman, if he is not very careful of
himself; and if a word in jest from himself, which though indeed no man
that had considered things, or thought before he spoke, would have said
(and, on the other hand, no man who had been wise and thinking would
have taken as it was taken)--I say, if a word taken from the tradesman's
own mouth could be so fatal, and run such a dangerous length, what may
not words spoken slyly, and secretly, and maliciously, be made to do?

A tradesman's reputation is of the nicest nature imaginable; like a
blight upon a fine flower, if it is but touched, the beauty of it, or
the flavour of it, or the seed of it, is lost, though the noxious breath
which touched it might not reach to blast the leaf, or hurt the root;
the credit of a tradesman, at least in his beginning, is too much at the
mercy of every enemy he has, till it has taken root, and is established
on a solid foundation of good conduct and success. It is a sad truth,
that every idle tongue can blast a young shopkeeper; and therefore,
though I would not discourage any young beginner, yet it is highly
beneficial to alarm them, and to let them know that they must expect a
storm of scandal and reproach upon the least slip they make: if they but
stumble, fame will throw them down; it is true, if they recover, she
will set them up as fast; but malice generally runs before, and bears
down all with it; and there are ten tradesmen who fall under the weight
of slander and an ill tongue, to one that is lifted up again by the
common hurry of report.

To say I am broke, or in danger of breaking, is to break me: and though
sometimes the malicious occasion is discovered, and the author detected
and exposed, yet how seldom is it so; and how much oftener are ill
reports raised to ruin and run down a tradesman, and the credit of a
shop; and like an arrow that flies in the dark, it wounds unseen. The
authors, no nor the occasion of these reports, are never discovered
perhaps, or so much as rightly guessed at; and the poor tradesman feels
the wound, receives the deadly blow, and is perhaps mortally stabbed in
the vitals of his trade, I mean his trading credit, and never knows who
hurt him.

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