Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/259

Rh It would be superfluous to prove that unborn generations are injured by anticipation; it is taxation, by persons, not elected by the payers, nor participating in the tax, but enriched by it. If the laws of nature are so partial and unjust, as to allow one generation to rob another with impunity, the crime will be perpetrated. It will only be prevent- ed by a conviction that punishment follows vice, in this as in other cases; and that the malice of the attempt regularly receives its due vengeance, without a possibility of obtaining a benefit; or by the same disregard of the living to the mandates of the dead, as to the happiness and liberty of the unborn.

Let us consider how anticipation bestows wealth. It does not conjure into real existence, the commercial, agricultural or manufactural products of futurity. It does not add to the corn or to the coin. It only conjures the wealth of existing people out of some hands into others; and the credit with which to buy property of the living given by the certificate, constitutes all the solid wealth gained by anticipation. It is a pretext for taxation, and a mode of changing property among individuals, but produces nothing for nations.

War is among the most plausible means used to delude a nation into the errour of anticipation. Yet it cannot bring up from futurity a gun, a soldier, a ration, or a cartridge. The present generation suffers every hardship and cost of war, although anticipation pretends that it is suffered by future generations. And this delusion is used to involve nations in wars, which they would never commence, if they knew that all the expense would fall upon themselves. It is twice suffered; by the living, who supply all the expenses of war; and by the unborn, who supply an equivalent sum, to take up certificates of the expenses paid by the living.

No item of the expense of war is more transferable from the living to the unborn, than the blood it sheds. Money buys this blood and every other expense of war; but it is