‘How will our courage in the exercise of the functions, you have confided to us, be renewed! With what vigour shall we labour in forming the constitution, when secured from interruption! We have sworn to save our country—judge of our anguish, whilst it trembles on the verge of destruction. A momentary sacrifice is sufficient; a sacrifice offered to the public good, and not to the encroachments of covetousness. And is this easy expiation of the faults and blunders of a period, stigmatized by political servitude, above our strength? Think of the price which has been paid for liberty by other nations, who have shown themselves worthy of it:—for this, rivers of blood have streamed—long years of woe, and horrid civil wars, have every where preceded the glorious birth!—Of us nothing is required, but a pecuniary sacrifice—and even this vulgar offering is not an impoverishing gift:—it will return into our bosom, to enrich our cities, our fields; augmenting our national glory and prosperity.’ CHAPTER III. REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW MODE OF RAISING SUPPLIES. NO JUST SYSTEM OF TAXATION YET ESTABLISHED. PAPER MONEY. NECESSITY OF GRADUAL REFORM. The task certainly was very difficult, at this crisis, for a minister to give satisfaction to the people, and yet supply the wants of the state; for it was not very likely that the public, who had been exclaiming against the incessant demands of the old government, would have been pleased with new burdens, or patiently endured them. Still it is always the height of folly in a financier, to attempt to supply the exigencies of government by any but specific and certain means: for such vague measures will ever produce a _deficit_, the consequences of which are most pernicious to public credit and private comfort. A man, who has a precise sum to live upon, generally takes into his estimate of expences a certain part of his income as due to the government, for the protection and social advantages it secures him. This proportion of his income being commonly the same from period to period, he lays it by for that particular purpose, and contentedly enjoys the remainder. But, should a weak minister, or a capricious government, call on him for an additional sum, because the taxes have proved unproductive, either through the inability of some of the members of the state, or that they were laid on articles of consumption, and the consumption has not been equal to the calculation; it not only deranges his schemes of domestic economy, but may be the cause of the most serious inconvenience.