CHAP. XVIII.

Of partnership in trade. What trades are generally carried on in partnership. Partnerships, in what instances most dangerous. At what time a man should take a partner to ease himself. Mutual diligence and application, in general, the only safe partnership. How one partner may honestly ruin another. The honester and more diligent the one partner, the more dangerous; especially if the other relaxes in his care and industry. Further instances of the danger of partnerships. Particulars in which one partner may greatly damage another. Partnerships, upon the whole, to be generally avoided; but, if they are entered into, in what cases most, and in what cases least eligible.

THERE are some businesses which are more particularly accustomed to partnerships than others, and are very seldom managed without; and others, in which they rarely join in partnership.

Mercers, linendrapers, banking goldsmiths, and such considerable trades, are generally carried on in partnership; but trades of less business are carried on, generally speaking, single handed.

Some merchants, who carry on great business in foreign ports, have what they call houses in those ports, where they plant and breed up their sons and apprentices; but these are not of the number of the tradesmen to whom I am at this time addressing myself.

The trading in partnership is not only liable to more hazards and difficulties, but it exposes the

tradesman to more snares and disadvantages, by a great deal, than the trading with a single hand does; and some of those snares are these:

1. If the partner is a stirring, diligent, capable man, there is danger of his slipping into the whole trade, by his application; so that you bring in a snake into your chimney-corner, which, when it is warmed and grown vigorous, turns about at you, and hisses you out of the house. It is with the tradesman, in the case of a diligent and active partner, as I have already observed it was in the case of a trusty and diligent apprentice; namely, that if the master does not appear constantly at the head of the business, and make himself known by his own application and diligence, he will soon find the fatal effects of his remissness.

He who is most constantly found in the shop, will never fail to be esteemed the principal person concerned in it; and, be it a servant or a partner, the chief loses himself extremely by the advances the other makes of that kind; for whenever they part again, either the apprentice, by being out of his time; or the partner, by the expiration of the articles, or by any other determination of their agreement; the customers most certainly desire to deal with the man whom they have so often been served by; and if they miss him, inquire after and follow him.

It is true, the apprentice is the more dangerous of the two, because his separation is supposed to be more certain, and generally sooner than the partner. The apprentice is not known, and cannot have made his interest among the buyers, but for perhaps a year, or a year-and-half before his time expired; and then, when his time is out, he certainly removes, if he can set up for himself, unless he is taken into the shop as a partner; and that indeed prolongs the

time, and places the injury at a greater distance, but still it makes it the more influencing when it comes, and unless he is brought some how or other into the family, and becomes one of the house, perhaps by marriage, or some other settled union with the master, he never goes off without making a great chasm in the master's affairs; and the more, by how much he has been more diligent and useful in the trade.

If the partner was not an apprentice, but that they either came out of their times together, or near it ; or had a shop and business before, but quitted it to come in; it may then be said that he brought part of the trade with him, and so increased the trade, when he joined with the other, in proportion to what he may be said to carry away when he went off. This is the best thing that can be said of a partnership; and then I have this to add, first, that the tradesman who took the partner in, has a fair field indeed to act with his partner; and must take care, by his constant attendance, due acquaintance with the customers, and appearing in every part of the business, to maintain not his interest only, but the appearance of his interest, in the shop or warehouse, that he may on every occasion, and to every customer, be known to be what he is; and that the other is at best but a partner.

He that takes a partner only to ease him of the toil of his business, that he may take his pleasure, and leave the drudgery, as he calls it, to the partner, should take care not to do it till about seven years before he resolves to leave off trade; that, at the end of the partnership, he may be satisfied to give up the trade to his partner, or see him run away with it, and not trouble himself about it.

But if he takes a partner at his beginning, with an intent, by their joint enlarged stock, to enlarge

their business, and so to carry on a capital trade, which perhaps neither of them were able to do by themselves, and which is the only justifiable reason for taking a partner at all, he must resolve then to join with his partner, not only in stock, but in diligence and application, that the trade may flourish by their joint assistance and constant labour, like two oxen yoked together in the same draught; and this indeed is the only safe circumstance of a partnership; then indeed they are properly partners, when they are assistants to one another; whereas otherwise they are like two gamesters, striving to worm one another out, and to get the mastery in the play they are engaged in.

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The very word 'partner' imports the substance of the thing, and they are, as such, engaged to a mutual application, or they are no more partners, but rather one is the trading gentleman, and the other is the trading drudge. But even then let them depend, the drudge will carry away the trade, and the profit too, at last and this is the way how one partner may honestly ruin another; and, for aught I know, it is the only one; for it cannot be said but that the diligent partner acts honestly in acting diligently, and if the other did the same, they would both thrive alike; but if one is negligent and the other diligent, one extravagant and expensive, the other frugal and prudent, it cannot be said to be his fault that one is rich and the other poor; that one increases in the stock, and the other is lessened, and at last worked quite out of it.

As a partner then is taken in only for ease, to abate the first tradesman's diligence, and take off the too intense edge of his application, so far a partner, let him be as honest and diligent as he will, is dangerous to the tradesman; nay, the more honest

is ;

and the more diligent he is, the more dangerous he and a tradesman ought to be very cautious in the adventure (for indeed it is an adventure), that he be not brought in time to relax his diligence by having a partner, even contrary to his first intention; for laziness is a subtle insinuating thing, and it is a sore temptation to a man of ease and indolence, to see his work done for him, and less need of him in the business than used to be, and yet the business to go on well too. And this danger is dormant, and lies unseen, till, after several years, it rises as it were out of its ambuscade, and surprises the tradesman, letting him see, to his loss, what his neglect has cost him.

2. But there are other dangers in partnership, and those not a few; for you may not only be remiss and negligent, remitting the weight of the business upon him, and depending upon him for its being carried on, by which he makes himself master, and brings you to be forgot in the business ; but he may be crafty too, and designing in all this, and then he by degrees gets the capital interest, as well as stock in the trade; while the true original of the shop, who laid the foundation of the whole business, brought a trade to the shop, or brought commissions to the house, and whose the business more particularly is, is secretly supplanted ; and, with the concurrence of his own negligence (for without that it cannot be), is, as it were, laid aside, and at last quite thrust out.

Thus, whether honest or dishonest, the tradesman is circumvented, and the partnership is made fatal to him; for it was all owing to that; the tradesman was diligent before, understood his business, and kept close to it, gave up his time to it, and by employing himself, prevented the indolence which he