Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/217

Rh this very time, the yearly income of what is mortgaged to those usurers, would discharge Hocus's bills, and give you your bellyfull of law for all your life, without running one sixpence in debt? You have been bred up to business; I suppose you can cipher: I wonder you never used your pen and ink.

J. B. Now you urge me too far; prithee, dear wife, hold thy tongue. Suppose a young heir, heedless, raw, and unexperienced, full of spirit and vigour, with a favourite passion, in the hands of moneyscriveners: such fellows are like your wiredrawing mills; if they get hold of a man's finger, they will pull in his whole body at last, till they squeeze the heart, blood, and guts out of him. When I wanted money, half a dozen of these fellows were always waiting in my antichamber with their securities ready drawn. I was tempted with the ready; some farm or other went to pot. I received with one hand, and paid it away with the other to lawyers, that, like so many hell-hounds, were ready to devour me. Then the rogues would plead poverty, and scarcity of money, which always ended in receiving ninety for the hundred. After they had got possession of my best rents, they were able to supply me with my own money. But what was worse, when I looked into the securities, there was no clause of redemption.

Mrs. B. No clause of redemption, say you? that's hard.

J. B. No great matter, for I cannot pay them. They had got a worse trick than that; the same man bought and sold to himself, paid the money, and gave the acquittance; the same man was butcher and grazier, Rh