ommand.

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 are always at the
head of everything which they think likely to support tyranny. The
depositors will b