Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/54

46 it can be created by a stock system. It consists of people and revenue. If by any means a nation was deprived of half its people, would this add to its strength? If by a paper system, it is deprived of lialf its revenue, can this either add to its strength? Revenue, like people, is subject to numerical limits. Suppose the people of Britain are able to pay a revenue of forty millions sterling, but that thirty are appropriated to the use of the system of paper and patronage: Are not three fourths of their strength gone, so far as it consists of revenue? But Great Britain with her ten millions of free revenue can borrow two hundred millions. If strength is to be measured by the power of borrowing, she could have borrowed four times as much, had her whole revenue been free, and consequently would have been four times as strong.

Strength arising from revenue, is relative. If the free revenue of Great Britain is ten millions, and the whole revenue of a rival nation fifteen, all of which is free, then the rival nation would possess more money and more credit, capable of being applied to national use, than Great Britain with an actual revenue of forty millions, thirty whereof were enslaved.

Hence it is obvious, that debt, so far from being either strength or credit, is a diminution of both ; and that freedom from debt, is the only genuine source of national strength depending on revenue.

England and France are rival nations. If England was bound to pay to France the whole amount of the annual interest of her debt, it would obviously increase the strength and credit of France, and diminish those of England. This proves, that it is the receiver and not the payer, who obtains an addition of strength and credit. And it also furnishes a complete illustration of the effect of the system of paper and patronage, upon the real productive interests of society. The unproductive but subsisting interests of this system, and the productive and taxed interests of society, may be called natural enemies, with more justice than France and