grand cause of prosperity to all states. In this natural, this
reasonable, this powerful, this prolific principle, it is for the
satirist to expose the ridiculous,--it is for the moralist to censure
the vicious,--it is for the sympathetic heart to reprobate the hard and
cruel,--it is for the judge to animadvert on the fraud, the extortion,
and the oppression; but it is for the statesman to employ it as he finds
it, with all its concomitant excellencies, with all its imperfections on
its head. It is his part, in this case, as it is in all other cases,
where he is to make use of the general energies of Nature, to take them
as he finds them.

After all, it is a great mistake to imagine, as too commonly, almost
indeed generally, it is imagined, that the public borrower and the
private lender are two adverse parties, with different and contending
interests, and that what is given to the one is wholly taken from the
other. Constituted as our system of finance and taxation is, the
interests of the contracting parties cannot well be separated, whatever
they may reciprocally intend. He who is the hard lender of to-day
to-morrow is the generous contributor to his own payment. For example,
the last loan is raised on public taxes, which are designed to produce
annually two millions sterling. At first view, this is an annuity of two
millions dead charge upon the public in favor of certain moneyed men;
but inspect the thing more nearly, follow the stream in its meanders,
and you will find that there is a good deal of fallacy in this state of
things.

I take it, that whoever considers any man's expenditure of his income,
old or new, (I speak of certain classes in life,) will find a full third
of it to go in taxes, direct or indirect. If so, this new-created income
of two millions will probably furnish 665,000_l._ (I avoid broken
numbers) towards the payment of its own interest, or to the sinking of
its own capital. So it is with the whole of the public debt. Suppose it
any given sum, it is a fallacious estimate of the affairs of a nation to
consider it as a mere burden. To a degree it is so without question, but
not wholly so, nor anything like it. If the income from the interest be
spent, the above proportion returns again into the public stock;
insomuch that, taking the interest of the whole debt to be twelve
million three hundred thousand pound, (it is something more,) not less
than a sum of four million one hundred thousand poun