“When people are careless of their heirs, love, as rulers are of the people’s posterity, they find it easier to borrow and spend, than to make their spendings and their levies agree. When rulers are afraid to ask for so much as they desire to spend, they escape, by proposing loans, the unpleasantness of taxing. Heavily as our governments have taxed us, they have been actually afraid to tax us enough;—enough for the purposes proposed to the nation.” “They were afraid of making the people impatient.” “Just so; and the people have shown what the rulers of many centuries have considered an ‘ignorant impatience of taxation.’ That is, the nominal representatives of the people have encouraged expensive projects for which the people have shown themselves unwilling to pay. The rulers and the people thus appear unreasonable to each other; while the blame chiefly rests in calling those the representatives of the people who are really not so. Mr. Grey and the friends of the people are doing what they can to bring the two parties to an understanding. When this is done, I trust there will be no going to war at the expense of future generations,—no running into expenses for which the means are not already provided.” “They who first devised these public loans could not have guessed what they were doing, Henry.” “They never imagined that any one would so improve upon their practice of borrowing, as not to provide for the payment at some definite time. If,—as may happen on the unexpected breaking out of a war when the nation is not in very favourable circumstances,—it is perilous to tax it heavily and suddenly, it may be expedient to raise the supplies in a way which will enable the people to pay more conveniently, at their own leisure. But the period should be fixed when the money is raised. The money should be raised upon terminable annuities; so that, at least, every one may know how long the burden is to endure. This is a plain rule; and happy would it have been for the country if it had been observed from the day when——” “When its system of loans began?” “I would hardly say that; for I do not see how the rulers in the troubled times of the Revolution could have governed the country without loans. The tax-payers were so divided in their loyalty at the time, that King William and his councillors would not have been able to raise money enough for the struggle by taxation, and would only have made themselves hated for the attempt. But a foreign war, undertaken by an undivided people, is a wholly different affair; and the advisers of George II. had no business to carry on the borrowing system.” “They found the debt large, I suppose, and left it larger; according to the methods of borrowers from posterity.” “Yes; it amounted, when it came into their hands, to fifty-two millions, having grown to this since the Revolution, when it was only 664,000_l._ It is now five times fifty-two millions.”