of several trades, agree together to buy whatever they want of one
another, and nowhere else, prices and payments to be settled among
themselves; whereby every man is sure to have ninety-nine customers,
and can never want a trade; and I could have filled up the book with
instances of like nature, but I never designed to fire the reader
with particulars.

The proposal of the pension office you will soon see offered to the
public as an attempt for the relief of the poor; which, if it meets
with encouragement, will every way answer all the great things I
have said of it.

I had wrote a great many sheets about the coin, about bringing in
plate to the Mint, and about our standard; but so many great heads
being upon it, with some of whom my opinion does not agree, I would
not adventure to appear in print upon that subject.

Ways and means also I have laid by on the same score: only adhering
to this one point, that be it by taxing the wares they sell, be it
by taxing them in stock, be it by composition--which, by the way, I
believe is the best--be it by what way soever the Parliament please,
the retailers are the men who seem to call upon us to be taxed; if
not by their own extraordinary good circumstances, though that might
bear it, yet by the contrary in all other degrees of the kingdom.

Besides, the retailers are the only men who could pay it with least
damage, because it is in their power to levy it again upon their
customers in the prices of their goods, and is no more than paying a
higher rent for their shops.