His neighbours, who easily foresee his approaching misery, retire from
him by degrees, disunite their business from his, and leave him to fall,
without involving others in his ruin.
Such must be the fate of a trader whom idleness, or a blind confidence
in the integrity of others, hinders from attending to his own affairs,
unless he rouses from his slumber, and recovers from his infatuation.
And what is to be done by the man who, having for more than twenty years
neglected so necessary an employment, finds, what must necessarily be
found in much less time, his accounts perplexed, his credit depressed,
and his affairs disordered? What remains, but that he suffer that
disorder to proceed no farther, that he resolutely examine all the
transactions which he has hitherto overlooked, that he repair those
errours which are yet retrievable, and reduce his trade into method;
that he doom those servants, by whom he has been robbed or deceived, to
the punishment which they deserve, and recover from them that wealth
which they have accumulated by rapacity and fraud.
By this method only can the credit of the trader or the nation be
repaired, and this is the method which the motion recommends; a motion
with which, therefore, every man may be expected to comply, who desires
that his country should once more recover its influence and power, who
wishes to see Britain again courted and feared, and her monarch
considered as the arbiter of the world, the protector of the true
religion, and the defender of the liberties of mankind.
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