e law for more
money, and no composition. More money for more law was plain to a
demonstration, for who can go to law without money? and it was plain
that any man that has money may have law for it. The third was as
evident as the other two; for what composition could be made with a
rogue that never kept a word he said?

MRS. BULL.--I think you are most likely to get out of this labyrinth
by the second door, by want of ready money to purchase this precious
commodity. But you seem not only to have bought too much of it, but have
paid too dear for what you bought, else how was it possible to run
so much in debt when at 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 cypher; I
wonder you never used your pen and ink.

JOHN BULL.--Now you urge me too far; prithee, dear wife, hold thy
tongue. Suppose a young heir, heedless, raw, and inexperienced, full
of spirit and vigour, with a favourite passion, in the hands of money
scriveners. Such fellows are like your wire-drawing 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 ante-chamber
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.

* Methods of preying upon the necessities of the Government.

MRS. BULL.--No clause of redemption, say you? That's hard.

JOHN BULL.--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,
brewer and butler, cook and poulterer. There is something still worse
than all this. There came twenty bills upon me at once, which I had
given money to discharge. I was like to be pull