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 industry when it earns profits (as in the example of a well-administered income tax) the burden of a home debt, if it is not too big, is easily borne and the pages of our historians are full of prophecies of England's ruin made by distinguished statesmen and economists after great additions to her debt by wars, followed by the triumphant refusal of England to be anything but more prosperous than ever. Foreign loans, on the other hand, pour a flood of money, that has not been earned in the country, into the pockets of its citizens as they are spent by the borrowing Government and so produce a short-lived spell of artificial and unwholesome prosperity, and then are followed by a half-yearly drain (unless, as often happens, the drain is met by "another dose of the same") which means that the inhabitants as a whole have to consume so much less, because a sufficient value in their goods has to be sent abroad and so provide the foreign currency in which the debt charge has to be met.

Borrowing to meet Budget deficits, caused because the Government has spent too much and taxed too little, is evidently unsound finance and especially so when loans are raised abroad. When it is done at home, occasionally and on a small scale, there is no great harm in