But still these nations are always upon the verge and margin of our
world, and wait but an opportunity to rush in upon it. Our countrymen
groan under their yoke, and I say again that infamy should be the
portion of those rulers among us who have filled their fortified places
with mercenaries derived from such sources.

The land, too, is weak, because of the multitude of bondsmen. In the
provinces and kingdoms round about the Lake there is hardly a town where
the slaves do not outnumber the free as ten to one. The laws are framed
for the object of reducing the greater part of the people to servitude.
For every offence the punishment is slavery, and the offences are daily
artificially increased, that the wealth of the few in human beings may
grow with them. If a man in his hunger steal a loaf, he becomes a slave;
that is, it is proclaimed he must make good to the State the injury he
has done it, and must work out his trespass. This is not assessed as the
value of the loaf, nor supposed to be confined to the individual from
whom it was taken.

The theft is said to damage the State at large, because it corrupts the
morality of the commonwealth; it is as if the thief had stolen a loaf,
not from one, but from every member of the State. Restitution must,
therefore, be made to all, and the value of the loaf returned in labour
a thousandfold. The thief is the bondsman of the State. But as the State
cannot employ him, he is leased out to those who will pay into the
treasury of the prince the money equivalent to the labour he is capable
of performing. Thus, under cover of the highest morality, the greatest
iniquity is perpetrated. For the theft of a loaf, the man is reduced to
a slave; then his wife and children, unable to support themselves,
become a charge to the State, that is, they beg in the public ways.