Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/120

112 and difficulties of trade, lay dead upon their hands; and whoever were lenders to the government, would, by surest principle, be obliged to support it. Besides, the men of estates could not be persuaded, without time and difficulty, to have those taxes laid on their lands, which custom has since made so familiar: and it was the business of such as were then in power, to cultivate a monied interest; because the gentry of the kingdom did not very much relish those new notions in government, to which the king, who had imbibed his politicks in his own country, was thought to give too much way. Neither, perhaps, did that prince think national incumbrances to be any evil at all; since the flourishing republick where he was born, is thought to owe more than ever it will be able, or willing to pay. And I remember, when I mentioned to mons. Buys the many millions we owed, he would advance it as a maxim, "That it was for the interest of the publick to be in debt;" which, perhaps, may be true in a commonwealth so crazily instituted, where the governors cannot have too many pledges of their subjects fidelity, and where a great majority must inevitably be undone by any revolution, however brought about. But to prescribe the same rules to a monarch, whose wealth arises from the rents and improvements of lands, as well as trade and manufactures, is the mark of a confined and cramped understanding.

I was moved to speak thus, because I am very well satisfied that the pernicious counsels of borrowing money upon publick funds of interest, as well as some other state lessons, were taken indigested from the like practices among the Dutch, without allowing