Debt

“ Property has been long set aside for the payment of that debt to its utmost farthing. My father felt that while that money remained unpaid there was a brand on himself and his family, and he has wrought, wrought as few men have wrought, to pay off, not only that, but other obligations of a sacred character. Many a bill of exchange, the proceeds of his labour, has he sent to old creditors who were in need of what he owed. ”

“ This debt, dear brethren, is in general obvious enough; but, while we recognize it, How often do we find in our experience that men neglect, and shamefully neglect, debts that are dependent on and derived from the debt they owe Almighty God; men who neglect debts that are as grave and binding as those which are due to the God from whom they are derived! ”

“ That, whether our debt be more or less, it is more than we are able to pay: They had nothing to pay, nothing at all to make a composition with; for the debt is great, and we have nothing at all to pay it with. ”

“ The funded debt was not heard of; it seemed to have floated off, nobody knew whither. But the public debt, now augmented to over seven million dollars, hung like a black cloud of evil portent over the country. ”

“ You took that old sideboard for a debt—yes, a debt at eighteen per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and bag your trousers with kneeling on the platforms at prayer meetings and then loan out the church's money to yourself on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. ”

“ Living beyond one's income: running in debt.—Income is limited; while the things we would like to have are infinite. We must draw the line somewhere. Duty says, draw it well inside of income. Temptation says, draw it at income, or a trifle outside of income. Yield to this temptation, and our earnings are gone before we know it, and debt stares us in the face. Debts are easy to contract, but hard to pay. ”

“ Hence it is obvious, that debt, so far from being either strength or credit, is a diminution of both ; and that freedom from debt, is the only genuine source of national strength depending on revenue. ”

“ The debt is property in his hands constituting a portion of his wealth, from which he is under the highest obligation, in common with his fellow-citizens of the same State, to contribute for the support of the government whose protection he enjoys.
That debt, although a species of intangible property, may, for purposes of taxation, if not for all others, be regarded as situated at the domicile of the creditor. It is none the less property because its amount and maturity are set forth in a bond. ”

“ The laborer may say at the end of the day, “I have paid yesterday’s expenses; to-morrow I shall pay those of today.” At every moment of his life, the member of society is in debt; he dies with the debt unpaid:—how is it possible for him to accumulate? ”

“ You are interested in the debt?”
“Somewhat,” said I. “A banker generally is interested in a debt.”
“I thought so,” said the colonel. “A time may come when we can act together. Meanwhile, keep your eye on the debt. Good-night!”
We parted at the door of his chambers in the Piazza, and I went on to my lodgings.
As I got into bed, rather puzzled and very uneasy, I damned the debt. Then, remembering that the debt was, as it seemed, for some reason a common interest to the signorina and myself, I apologized to it, and fell asleep. ”

“ If the currency be greatly diminished, as beyond all example it has been, how is this debt to be extinguished? Property, the resource on which the debtor relied for his payment, will decline in value, and it may happen that a man, who honestly contracted debt, on the faith of property which had a value at the time fully adequate to warrant the debt, will find himself stripped of all his property, and his debt remain unextinguished. ”

“ Debts place the whole burden on producers of the future. They [191] relieve those who hold the wealth now, but are a draft upon those who make the wealth that is to be.
An individual incurring debt places a mortgage upon his productions; by a pledge of future production he relieves himself of the strain of the present.
A family incurs debt; a part of the members of the house are strong and capable of productive labor, and a part are not; the whole burden of the payment comes upon the productive members of the home. ”

“ In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors. But, Mr. President, debt is the distinguishing characteristic of modern society. It is through debt that the marvelous developments of nineteenth century civilization have been effected. Who are the debtors in this country? Who are the borrowers of money? The men of enterprise, of energy, of skill, the men of industry, of foresight, of calculation, of daring. In the ranks of the debtors will be found a large preponderance of the constructive energy of every country. ”

“ For the great debt to the slave, who was robbed of his honest wage, we go behind the slave-holder, who had been invited by the government to invest his money in blood; we go to the head of the firm for the payment of debts contracted by the firm, for each member of the government is, measurably, an agent of the government, contracting and paying debts by its delegated authority. ”

“ Let it not be boasted that nine millions are paid, when a new debt of seven millions appears to be contracted; nothing is more easy than to clear debts by borrowing, or to borrow when a nation is mortgaged for the payment. ”

“ Even among men who appear upon the books of the merchant with whom they deal to be in his debt to some extent?- I have known several cases of men who have allowed balances to stand over against them year after year, when I knew perfectly well that they had more than sufficient money in their possession to have paid off the debt. ”

“ As she had been visibly more prosperous with a debt of a hundred and forty millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she, as visibly more prosperous with a debt of two hundred and forty millions than with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. ”

“ The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of money arise more from the disputants examining its functions on different sides, than from any real dissent in their opinions. All money, properly so called, is an acknowledgment of debt; but as such, it may either be considered to represent the labour and property of the creditor, or the idleness and penury of the debtor. ”

“ The hearty interest manifested by all the colored people in the payment of your debt is encouraging. If the wealthier people would do as much in proportion as these poor people do, your debt would not long be a burden. The Sabbath-school has caught the fever, and, last Sunday, the proposition was made to send you all the money in the treasury (about $15) ”

“ In Latin, a true debt is called a Mutuum, because it lies between two persons, a creditor, and a debtor, and is a credit-right independent of the question of fact whether the debtor has now the thing rendered to him or not, indeed whether he has anything at all to pay with or not; on the other hand, a thing merely lent, when the very thing lent is to be returned to its owner, who has not in the meantime parted with his property to the other, is called in Latin a Commodatum. ”

“ O call not to my Mind what you have done,
It sets a Debt of that Account before me,
Which shews me Bankrupt even in Hopes. ”

“ You will go off with your six bushels of money, to the kingdom that I have told you of, and there enter the service of the king. When the time comes near for his debt becoming due you will be able to notice by his manner that he is ill at ease. You shall then say to him that you know well enough what it is that is weighing upon him—that it is the debt which he owes to the troll and cannot pay, but that you can lend him the money. ”

“ In pleas of debt it is required that the reality of the debt be first manifest, which being done before the Alcaldee, he signifies it to the Almocadem of the cavila where the debtor lives, who, upon his signification, commands a present payment to be made ”

“ But let us look at this principle in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood. "A public debt is a public blessing." That our debt was juggled from forty-three up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this opinion was a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created. ”

“ The better way, in my opinion, is to keep clear of debt; whether times are prosperous or tight, keep clear of debt if possible.
Some will run into debt to gratify pride, and they will really rob themselves and their creditors just to keep up with this fanciful thing called fashion. ”

“ But did you not find that when a man's debt got so large that you had to refuse him supplies, and he was not likely to pay it, he went away to another merchant instead of continuing to fish for you?-Sometimes; but most of the men, when they are in debt in that way, save as much as possible, and keep under expenses, in order to assist in getting the debt cleared off.
8646. You see when a man is trying to keep down expenses, and you help him as far as possible?-Yes. ”

“ When a debt becomes due and the debtor is unable to pay his creditors, or has no effects to deposit, he shall himself, or his wife, or his children, live with the creditor as a bond-slave or slaves until redeemed by the payment of the debt. ”

“ The unfortunate use by some countries of a paper money, which is indeed a form of debt, gives some plausibility to the notion that Money is a representative of Debt; and perhaps the fact that Money is often used to pay debts previously contracted, and that debts are almost always contracted in the terms of Money, may give some additional plausibility to this view ”

“ In cases of debt, a man can either pay the debt, the interest of the debt, or serve his creditor in lieu of the interest. It is optional for a man to serve or pay the interest, unless a special agreement has been made. ”

“ A credit had been established for the country, whose soundness no capitalist doubted—an immense floating debt had been funded in a manner perfectly satisfactory to the creditors, and a revenue had been secured sufficiently ample for the national demands. ”

“ Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill. ”

“ If your revenue is nine millions of dollars and your expenditure fourteen, you must borrow, you must create a new debt of five millions. But if two millions of that revenue are, under the name of sinking fund, applicable to the payment of the principal of an old debt, and pledged for it, then the portion of your revenue applicable to discharging your current expenditures of fourteen millions is reduced to seven millions; and instead of borrowing five millions you must borrow seven; you create a new debt of seven millions, and you pay an old debt of two. ”

“ If we had allowed our old National debt to run at six per cent. per annum, simple interest, from the end of our Revolutionary Struggle until to-day, without paying anything on either principal or interest, each man of us would owe less upon that debt now than each man owed upon it then; and this because our increase of men through the whole period has been greater than six per cent.; has run faster than the interest upon the debt. Thus, time alone, relieves a debtor Nation, so long as its population increases faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its debt. ”

“ Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best --
God! but the interest!
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ If the value of the metal declined, the creditor would suffer a loss upon the quantity he had received, if, on the contrary, it rose, the debtor would have to pay more than he calculated upon.
I am on sound and scientific ground, therefore, when I say that a dollar approaches honesty as its purchasing power approaches stability. If I borrow a thousand dollars today and next year pay the debt with a thousand dollars which will secure exactly as much of all things desirable as the one thousand which I borrowed, I have paid in honest dollars. ”

“ Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "if you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" ”

“ Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. ”

“ It is in the examination of this problem that we may discover how great a debt the last century owed to nature—a debt which demanded an immediate liquidation, and was often only paid at the expense of violence. ”

“ Conflicting as some of these answers are, they all tend to show one thing, that the debt counts for nothing after the debtor passes into the hands of the planter. Whatever the debt, it takes the market price to get the debtor free again! ”

“ The natural concomitant of such a system of industry is the elaborate system of debt and credit which has grown up with it, and is indispensable to it. Any serious enhancement in the value of the unit of money between the time of making a contract or incurring a debt and the date of fulfillment or maturity always works hardship and frequently ruin to the contractor or debtor. ”

“ We should remember that this country is now almost crushed into the very earth with its accumulated burden of public debt, of State debts, of county debts, of city debts, of township debts, of individual debts. ”