Soldiers would come and take him away to be tried and hanged.  Suppose you, Jack, were to dip your rushes into grease, till they came to farthing candles.  The Excise would prosecute you.  The sheriff would send men to drag you to jail.  You would fight in defence of your house and home.  You would beat off the sheriff’s men.  Soldiers would come and kill you, or would take you away to be hanged.

This is the thing by which the Boroughmongers govern.  There are enough who would gladly not submit to their tyranny; but there is nobody but themselves who has an army at command.

Nevertheless they are not altogether easy under these circumstances.  An army is a two-edged weapon.  It may cut the employer as well as the thing that it is employed upon.  It is made up of flesh and blood, and of English flesh and blood too.  It may not always be willing to move, or to strike when moved.  The Boroughmongers see that their titles and estates hang upon the army.  They would fain coax the people back again to feelings of reverence and love.  They would fain wheedle them into something that shall blunt their hostility.  They have been trying Bible-schemes, school-schemes, and soup-schemes.  And at last they are trying the Savings Banks scheme, upon which I shall now more particularly address you.

This thing is of the same nature, and its design is the same, as those of the grand scheme of Bishop Burnet.  The people are discontented.  They feel their oppressions; they seek a change; and some of them have decidedly protested against paying any longer any part of the interest of the debt, which they say ought to be paid, if at all, by those who have borrowed and spent, or pocketed, the money.  Now then, in order to enlist great numbers of labourers and artisans on their side, the Boroughmongers have fallen upon the scheme of coaxing them to put small sums into what they call banks.  These sums they pay large interest upon, and suffer the parties to take them out whenever they please.  By this scheme they think to bind great numbers to them and their tyranny.  They think that great numbers of labourers and artisans, seeing their little sums increase, as they will imagine, will begin to conceive the hopes of becoming rich by such means; and as these persons are to be told that their money is in the funds, they will soon imbibe the spirit of fundholders, and will not care who suffers, or whether freedom or slavery prevail, so that the funds be but safe.

Such is the scheme and such the motives.  It will fail of its object, though not unworthy the inventive powers of the servile knaves of Edinburgh.  It will fail, first because the men from whom alone the Borough-tyrants have anything to dread, will see through the scheme and despise it; and will, besides, well know that the funds are a mere bubble that may burst, or be bursted at any moment.  The parsons appear to be the main tools in this coaxing scheme.  They