Is not this a pretty state of things?  Pray observe, Jack, the debt far exceeds the real full value of the whole kingdom, if there could be a purchaser found for it.  So that, you see, as to private property no man has any, as long as this debt hangs upon the country.  Your master, Farmer Gripe, for instance, calls his farm his.  It is none of his, according to the Boroughmongers’ law; for that law has pawned it for the payment of the interest of the Boroughmongers’ debt; and the pawn must remain as long as the Boroughmongers’ law remains.  Gripe is compelled to pay out of the yearly value of his farm a certain portion to the debt.  He may, indeed, sell the farm; but he can get only a part of the value; because the purchaser will have to pay a yearly sum on account of the pawn.  In short, the Boroughmongers have, in fact, passed laws to take every man’s private property away from him, in whatever portions their debt may demand such taking away; and a man who thinks himself an owner of land, is at best only a steward who manages it for the Boroughmongers.

This, however, is only a small part of the evil; for the whole of the rents of the houses and lands and mines and canals would not pay the interest of this debt; no, and not much more than the half of it.  The labour is therefore pawned too.  Every man’s labour is pawned for the payment of the interest of this debt.  Aye, Jack, you may think that you are working for yourself, and that, when on a Saturday night you take nine shillings from Farmer Gripe, the shillings are for your own use.  You are grievously deceived, for more than half the sum is paid to the Boroughmongers on account of the pawn.  You do not see this, but the fact is so.  Come, what are the things in which you expend the nine shillings?  Tea, sugar, tobacco, candles, salt, soap, shoes, beer, bread; for no meat do you ever taste.  On the articles taken together, except bread, you pay far more than half tax; and you will observe that your master’s taxes are, in part, pinched out of you.  There is an army employed in Ireland to go with the excisemen and other taxers to make the people pay.  If the taxers were to wait at the ale houses and grocers’ shops, and receive their portion from your own hands, you would then clearly see that the Boroughmongers take away more than the half of what you earn.  You would then clearly see what it is that makes you poor and ragged, and that makes your children cry for the want of a bellyful.  You would clearly see that what the hypocrites tell you about this being your lot, and about Providence placing you in such a state in order to try your patience and faith, is all a base falsehood.  Why does not Providence place the Boroughmongers and the parsons in a state to try their patience and faith?  Is Providence less anxious to save them than to save you?  If you could see clearly what you pay on account of the Boroughmongers’ pawn, you would see that your misery arises from the designs of a benevolent Providence being counteracted by the measures of the Borough-tyrants.