Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/119

Rh answers to them. As to equality. "Suppose in the general division our new rulers should give us half an acre of ground apiece, we could, to be sure, raise potatoes on it for the use of our families; but as every man would be equally busy in raising potatoes for his family, why, then, you see, if thou was to break thy spade, I, whose trade it is, should no longer be able to mend it. Neighbour Snip would have no time to make us a suit of clothes, nor the clothier to receive the cloth, for all the world would be gone a-digging."

.—"But still I should have no one over my head."

.—"That's a mistake. I'm stronger than thee, and Standish the exciseman is a better scholar, and we should not remain equal a minute."

Jack condemns the original French constitution, explaining how there the poor paid the taxes, and the quality nothing, and that ours is "no more like what the French one was, than a mug of our Taunton beer is like a platter of their soup maigre." So "because my neighbour Farrow t'other day, pulled down a crazy old barn, is that a reason why I must set fire to my tight cottage?"... "Those poor French fellows used to be the merriest dogs in the whole world, but since equality came in I don't believe a Frenchman has ever laughed."

.—"What, then, dost take French liberty to be?"