Page:Federalist, Dawson edition, 1863.djvu/336

  there may be, can without difficulty be supplied by loans.

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the National Government to borrow, as far as its necessities might require. Foreigners, as well as the citizens of America, could then reasonably repose confidence in its engagements: but to depend upon a Government that must itself depend upon thirteen other Governments for the means of fulfiling its contracts, when once its situation is clearly understood, would require a degree of credulity not often to be met with in the pecuniary transactions of mankind, and little reconcilable with the usual sharp-sightedness of avarice.

Reflections of this kind may have trifling weight with men who hope to see realized in America the halcyon scenes of the poetic or fabulous age; but to those who believe we are likely to experience a common portion of the vicissitudes and calamities which have fallen to the lot of other nations, they must appear entitled to serious attention. Such men must behold the actual situation of their country with painful solicitude, and deprecate the evils which ambition or revenge might, with too much facility, inflict upon it. PUBLIUS. 

[From the New York Packet, Tuesday, January 1, 1788.]

THE FŒDERALIST. No. XXX.

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N disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an 