But still these nations are always upon the verge and margin of our world, and wait but an opportunity to rush in upon it.  Our countrymen groan under their yoke, and I say again that infamy should be the portion of those rulers among us who have filled their fortified places with mercenaries derived from such sources.

The land, too, is weak, because of the multitude of bondsmen.  In the provinces and kingdoms round about the Lake there is hardly a town where the slaves do not outnumber the free as ten to one.  The laws are framed for the object of reducing the greater part of the people to servitude.  For every offence the punishment is slavery, and the offences are daily artificially increased, that the wealth of the few in human beings may grow with them.  If a man in his hunger steal a loaf, he becomes a slave; that is, it is proclaimed he must make good to the State the injury he has done it, and must work out his trespass.  This is not assessed as the value of the loaf, nor supposed to be confined to the individual from whom it was taken.

The theft is said to damage the State at large, because it corrupts the morality of the commonwealth; it is as if the thief had stolen a loaf, not from one, but from every member of the State.  Restitution must, therefore, be made to all, and the value of the loaf returned in labour a thousandfold.  The thief is the bondsman of the State.  But as the State cannot employ him, he is leased out to those who will pay into the treasury of the prince the money equivalent to the labour he is capable of performing.  Thus, under cover of the highest morality, the greatest iniquity is perpetrated.  For the theft of a loaf, the man is reduced to a slave; then his wife and children, unable to support themselves, become a charge to the State, that is, they beg in the public ways.

This, too, forsooth, corrupts morality, and they likewise are seized and leased out to any who like to take them.  Nor can he or they ever become free again, for they must repay to their proprietor the sum he gave for them, and how can that be done, since they receive no wages?  For striking another, a man may be in the same way, as they term it, forfeited to the State, and be sold to the highest bidder.  A stout brass wire is then twisted around his left wrist loosely, and the ends soldered together.  Then a bar of iron being put through, a half turn is given to it, which forces the wire sharply against the arm, causing it to fit tightly, often painfully, and forms a smaller ring at the outside.  By this smaller ring a score of bondsmen may be seen strung together with a rope.

To speak disrespectfully of the prince or his council, or of the nobles, or of religion, to go out of the precincts without permission, to trade without license, to omit to salute the great, all these and a thousand others are crimes deserving of the brazen bracelet.  Were a man to study all day what he must do, and what he must not do, to escape servitude, it would not be possible for him to stir one step without becoming forfeit!  And yet they hypocritically say that these things are done for the sake of public morality, and that there are not slaves (not permitting the word to be used), and no man was ever sold.