You have heard, I daresay, a great deal about the national debt; and now I will tell you what this thing is, and how it came, and then you will see what an imposture it is, and how shamefully the people of England have been duped and robbed.

The Boroughmongers having usurped all the powers of government, and having begun to pocket the public money at a great rate, the people grew discontented.  They began to think that they had done wrong in driving King James away.  In a pretty little fable-book, there is a fable which says that the frogs, who had a log of wood for king, prayed to Jupiter to send them something more active.  He sent them a stork, or heron, which gobbled them up alive by scores!  The people of England found in the Boroughmongers what the poor frogs found in the stork; and they began to cry out against them and to wish for the old king back again.

The Boroughmongers saw their danger, and they adopted measures to prevent it.  They saw that if they could make it the interest of a great many rich people to uphold them and their system they should be able to get along.  They therefore passed a law to enable themselves to borrow money of rich people; and by the same law they imposed it on the people at large to pay, for ever, the interest of the money so by them borrowed.

The money which they thus borrowed they spent in wars, or divided amongst themselves, in one shape or another.  Indeed the money spent in wars was pocketed, for the greater part, by themselves.  Thus they owed, in time, immense sums of money; and as they continued to pass laws to compel the nation at large to pay the interest of what they borrowed, spent and pocketed, they called and still call this debt, the debt of the nation; or, in the usual words, the national debt.

It is curious to observe that there has seldom been known in the world any very wicked and mischievous scheme of which a priest of some description or other was not at the bottom.  This scheme, certainly as wicked in itself as any that was ever known, and far more mischievous in its consequences than any other, was the offspring of a Bishop of Salisbury, whose name was Burnet; a name that we ought to teach our very children to execrate.  This crafty priest was made a Bishop for his invention of this scheme; a fit reward for such a service.

The Boroughmongers began this debt one hundred and twenty-four years ago.  They have gone on borrowing ever since; and have never paid off one farthing, and never can.  They have continued to pass Acts to make the people pay the interest of what has been borrowed; till, at last, the debt itself amounts to more than all the lands, all the houses, all the trees, all the canals and all the mines would sell for at their full sterling value; and the money to pay the interest is taken out of men’s rents and out of their earnings; and you, Jack, as I shall by and by prove to you, pay to the Boroughmongers more than the half of what you receive in weekly wages from your master.