[The toast is drunk with enthusiasm.]
A lean but well-to-do Farmer: That’s all very well, but rents have to be paid.
Burns: Friends—another toast—‘To hell with all rents.’
[And again.]
Burns: Michael, you speak as a man the Lord prospers.
Michael: I speak as one who is diligent.
Burns: Diligent, quotha! A man left a fat inheritance and his croft all favoured by nature, and he talks diligence. Have you sweated, Michael, with your share always ringing on the stones, and your breeches letting in the cold blast behind you, and your boots full of March rain, and your belly empty, and a bare table to go home to when dark comes, and a gap in the roof above you as wide as a lassie’s embrace? Have you done these things, and kept the heart true steel within you, like Tam Laurie there?
Tam: I’ve to quit come Tuesday week.
Burns: To quit, Michael—do you hear that? Do you know what quitting means? You stand out there under the sky, and your steps may as well go this way as that, for you have no door in the world, and a ditch to starve in is all you can borrow. And rents must be paid. To hell with such rents I say!
Michael: I’ll not listen to such heresies in the state. Respectable houses are not safe when tongues are loose like this. But the Lord will look to his own.