We preserve the
faculty from the expense. Our taxes, for the far greater portion, fly
over the heads of the lowest classes. They escape too, who, with better
ability, voluntarily subject themselves to the harsh discipline of a
rigid necessity. With us, labor and frugality, the parents of riches,
are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common
stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their
self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay
contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but
because they are unproductive. If, in fact, the interest paid by the
public had not thus revolved again into its own fund, if this secretion
had not again been absorbed into the mass of blood, it would have been
impossible for the nation to have existed to this time under such a
debt. But under the debt it does exist and flourish; and this
flourishing state of existence in no small degree is owing to the
contribution from the debt to the payment. Whatever, therefore, is taken
from that capital by too close a bargain is but a delusive advantage: it
is so much lost to the public in another way. This matter cannot, on the
one side or the other, be metaphysically pursued to the extreme; but it
is a consideration of which, in all discussions of this kind, we ought
never wholly to lose sight.
It is never, therefore, wise to quarrel with the interested views of
men, whilst they are combined with the public interest and promote it:
it is our business to tie the knot, if possible, closer.
Pages:
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487