ee 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.

Your lot, indeed! Your lot assigned by Providence! This is real
blasphemy! Just as if Providence, which sends the salt on shore all
round our coast, had ordained that you should not have any of it
unless you would pay the Boroughmongers fifteen shillings a bushel tax
upon it! But what a Providence must that be which would ordain that an
Englishman should pay fifteen shillings tax on a bushel of English
salt, while a Long Islander pays only two shillings and sixpence for a
bushel of the same salt, after it is brought to America from England?
What an idea must we have of such a Providence as this? Oh no, Jack;
this is not the work of Providence. It is the work of the
Boroughmongers; the pretext about Providence has been invented to
deceive and cheat you, and to perpetuate your slavery.

Well: all is pawned then. The land, the houses, the canals, the mines,
and the labour are pawned for the payment of the interest of the
Boroughmongers debt. Your labour, mind, Jack, is pawned for the
one-half of its worth. But you will naturally ask, how is it that the
nation, that everybo