Tea, sugar, wine, &c., or any such trifling commodities, are reckoned no
thefts, if they do not directly take your pewter from your shelf, or your
linen from your drawers, they are very honest: What harm is there, say
they, in cribbing a little matter for a junket, a merry bout or so? Nay,
there are those that when they are sent to market for one joint of meat,
shall take up two on their master's account, and leave one by the way,
for some of these maids are mighty charitable, and can make a shift to
maintain a small family with what they can purloin from their masters and
mistresses.
If you send them with ready money, they turn factors, and take threepence
or fourpence in the shilling brokerage. And here let me take notice of
one very heinous abuse, not to say petty felony, which is practised in
most of the great families about town, which is, when the tradesman gives
the house-keeper or other commanding servant a penny or twopence in the
shilling, or so much in the pound, for everything they send in, and
which, from thence, is called poundage.
This, in my opinion, is the greatest of villanies, and ought to incur
some punishment, yet nothing is more common, and our topping tradesmen,
who seem otherwise to stand mightily on their credit, make this but a
matter of course and custom.
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