But if there be any among us dead to all sense of honor and love of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity have any effect upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or displeasure of the great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent upon their conduct, in this and a future state can move them,--then let them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to nothing but anguish and tribulation.... Let them forget every duty, human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being. * * * * * =_Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) From "Vindication of the Funding System." =_66._= CHARACTER OF THE DEBT. A person who, unacquainted with the fact, should learn the history of our debt from the declamations with which certain newspapers are perpetually charged, would be led to suppose that it is the mere creature of the _present_ government, for the purpose of burthening the people with taxes, and producing an artificial and corrupt influence over them; he would, at least, take it for granted that it had been contracted in the pursuit of some wanton or vain project of ambition or glory; he would scarcely be able to conceive that every part of it was the relict of a war which had given independence, and preserved liberty to the country; that the present government found it as it is, in point of magnitude (except as to the diminutions made by itself), and has done nothing more than to bring under a regular regimen and provision, what was before a scattered and heterogeneous mass.