These two events supposed above are calamitous, but not the most calamitous. Thousands are hereby sacrificed to the safety of millions; but we are not without danger that the contrary event may take place, and that millions may be sacrificed for ever to the temporary safety of thousands.​[33] Our popular government perhaps will render it difficult or dangerous for a minister to venture on so desperate an expedient as that of a voluntary bankruptcy; and though the House of Lords be altogether composed of the proprietors of lands, and the House of Commons chiefly, and consequently neither of them can be supposed to have great property in the funds, yet the connections of the members may be so great with the proprietors as to render them more tenacious of public faith than prudence, policy, or even justice, strictly speaking, requires. And perhaps, too, our foreign enemies, or rather enemy (for we have but one to dread) may be so politic as to discover that our safety lies in despair, and may not therefore show the danger open and barefaced till it be inevitable. The balance of power in Europe, our grandfathers, our fathers, and we, have all justly esteemed too unequal to be preserved without our attention and assistance. But our children, weary with the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure and see their neighbours oppressed and conquered, till at last they themselves and their creditors lie both at the mercy of the conqueror. And this may properly enough be denominated the violent death of our public credit. These seem to be the events which are not very remote, and which reason foresees as clearly almost as she can do anything that lies in the womb of time. And though the ancients maintained that, in order to reach the gift of prophecy, a certain divine fury or madness was requisite, one may safely affirm that, in order to deliver such prophecies as these, no more is necessary than merely to be in one’s senses, free from the influence of popular madness and delusion. NOTES, OF PUBLIC CREDIT. [27] Essay _Of the Balance of Trade_. [28] Plut. in _Vita Alex_. He makes these treasures amount to 80,000 talents, or about 15 millions sterling. Quintus Curtius (lib. 5, cap. 2) says that Alexander found in Susa above 50,000 talents. [29] Melon, Du Tot, Law, in the pamphlets published in France.