NATIONAL DEBT-(Sec. II.)

Long as to him that works for debt the day.

NEXT to vice and infamy, poverty is the greatest evil that a man can encounter in this world. The man is in poverty. No butcher or baker will feed him, and no body will clothe him; no body who knows the fact will let to him a house to shelter him. The physician, the man of the law, will avoid him. Nay, poverty is absolutely more infamous than many crimes in the statute book. Bribers, usurers, gamesters, whoremongers, are all received into the society of the great and the gay; but the man known to be poor is excluded. Surely he is a great criminal, and poverty is a great crime!

But the worst form of poverty is debt. It hangs about a man's neck like a millstone; he is the slave of the usurer; all his labours are unprofitable to himself and his children; the rents of his lands,

or the produce of his industry, are swallowed up by his creditor. If he go on in debt concealing his poverty, there is a canker-worm at his heart that sinks his spirit, or in his store that consumes his apparent wealth. He goes into the market at a disadvantage; he must sell when the term-day comes round, and he cannot compete in buying with the man who is unencumbered.

Britain, as a nation, is in debt. This means, that all her people are in debt-loaded with taxes, the payment of which consumes the fruits of their industry. The nation, as such, is thereby humbled. The people have also their private debts. Landed men have more rank and more credit than others, and so they suffer under the load of fine equipages and heavy debts. Other men, generally, are only not in debt because they have no credit. But, independent of private debts, the public debt, and the necessity of supporting the national establishments, embarrass the exertions of all men.

In other times men have been in debt. In ancient Rome, the debtors, being the majority of the people, repeatedly rose in insurrection, and sometimes left the town demanding novæ tabulæ, or a

diminution or discharge of their debts. Julius Cæsar contrived the cessio bonorum for the relief of debtors; and we have, in addition thereto, our discharges, under commissions of bankrupt and sequestrations. These give no general relief, and are shunned, because they infer infamy; that is to say, they convict a man of the crime of poverty.

What is to be done, or can be done, in tolerable consistency with justice, to the effect of finding employment for our labourers and mechanics, and to give relief to the community?

The answer is, Do what has been formerly done with success. To be sure, the wisdom and proceedings of our ancestors are held in sovereign contempt by the wise men of our days. But, after all, I presume to think, that our ancestors were sagacious people, who had about as much wisdom as their descendants; and certainly were, by wit or luck, very successful in their plans; which is more than can be said of our leaders in the present march of mind.

Our forefathers, when in difficulty, lowered the rate of interest of money, whereby, in the general case, debtors were in an instant made richer than

formerly. At the same time, the creditors generally did not suffer, because their security was greatly augmented. All debtors were relieved, and enabled to employ labourers, and to trade with advantage; proprietors improved their estates, and every thing instantly prospered.

Mr. Peel's bill, relative to cash payments, did the reverse of this. It augmented all men's debts and embarrassments. It augmented both the capital and the interest of their debts, and made them in effect pay seven per cent. instead of five. It no doubt tended to enrich money-lenders; but the money-lenders are not the industrious part of a community. The accumulations which they make are valuable, as affording the means of enterprise, but they themselves are not the enterprising men. On the contrary, they rest and fatten on the labours of others. The whole of the active part of the community were in an instant placed under oppression, because, by the augmentation of the value of money, their debts were increased.

It is at least a plausible suggestion, that the interest of money shall, in all private transactions, be reduced to four per cent., and that the interest of

the debt of the nation shall be reduced in the same proportion. The debt of the nation is the debt of each individual in the nation. The money is due from man to man, whether payable through the King's ministers, or through a private attorney.

Say not that national credit will be hurt; national credit, like private credit, will be thereby augmented.

Our great misfortune at present is, that there is not enough of money spent. We prospered during the war when an enormous expenditure was going on. To relieve us, you must make a market for labour. Merely to diminish taxes will not do. Taxes, after all, do some good; they accumulate capital in the hands of the monied aristocracy to be lent out. If the sums be small, and collected from many persons, they are little felt. Extinguish them, and in so far accumulation of wealth may be arrested. This explains how it happened, that when a large amount of four per cent. national debt was reduced to three per cent., and taxes to the amount of the difference repealed, the measure did no good. As formerly remarked, the salt tax was repealed, but nobody was sensibly the richer. No