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 mutual diligence and application, that the trade may
flourish by their joint assistance and constant labour, as two oxen
yoked together in the same draught, by their joint assistance, draw much
more than double what they could either of them draw by their single
strength; 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.

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 ought 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 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 and the more diligent he is, the