National debt

“ I will, however, take upon me to affirm, that, if you mean, as by the whole strain of your reasoning you seem to mean, that the increase of our national debt increases the wealth of the nation in general, you mean a most glaring absurdity; as the transferring of property from one person to another, and still more the transferring it from the laborious and the poor to the idle and the rich, can never increase the general wealth of the kingdom. ”

“ By honest and strenuous effort we have paid off the bulk of the heavy National debt left by the civil war, and we have been very proud of that achievement. We are now in the way of running up a new National debt, of which, if we go on with the new policy, nobody can foretell to what figures it will rise. ”

“ In spite of dishonest and subtle counsel, and in spite of great temptation, we have dealt with the public debt on the simple and honest principle that the only thing to do with a debt is to pay it. The National credit is the best in the world, and the National debt has ceased to be an object either of anxiety or consideration. ”

“ After meeting these national priorities, my budget pays down a record amount of national debt. We will pay off $2 trillion of debt over the next decade. That will be the largest debt reduction of any country, ever. Future generations shouldn't be forced to pay back money that we have borrowed. ”

“ But while we have the National debt will it not be well to put it to the best use we can? When at last, after twenty-five or thirty years, we have paid it off until we come down to the last four hundred millions, will it not then be time enough to discuss whether it may be best to pay off that little amount too, or to keep it as a basis for bank circulation? ”

“ If we had allowed our old national debt to run at 6 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 6 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. ”

“ By the present measures, while retaining the privilege of paying the debt within twenty years, we shall secure the alternative of sixty years, and at a largely reduced interest,—leaving the opportunity of paying it at any intermediate time, according to the best advantage of the country. With diminished taxation and resources increasing immeasurably, the national debt will cease to be a burden,—becoming “fine by degrees and beautifully less” until it gradually ceases to exist. ”

“ I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing. ”

“ The national debt, contracted as it has been for the preservation of the Union for all time to come, should be extended over a fair period for redemption; and it is the duty of Congress to reduce the rate of interest thereon whenever it can be honestly done. ”

“ Every augmentation of our National debt will proportionately diminish the value of our securities. The assumption of the rebel debt will be equivalent to the repudiation of at least half of our National obligations; our National creditors will be robbed of their just dues; our National faith will be broken ”

“ A national debt, then, is a foul disgrace, at the best. But it is, as now constituted, also a foul crime. National debts paying interest are simply the purchase, by the rich, of power to tax the poor. Read carefully the analysis given of them above, Letter VIII., p. 7.
The financial operations of the St. George’s Company will be the direct reverse of these hitherto approved arrangements. They will consist in the accumulation of national wealth and store, and therefore in distribution to the poor, instead of taxation of them ”

“ It was the great increase of the Government expenses that had caused the augmentation of the National Debt, and afforded another illustration of the infallible principle, that nothing good can be had without liberally paying for. ”

“ In 1780 he wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘The National Debt productive of National Prosperity,’ in which he argued that a domestic public debt owed by the community to itself cannot impair the aggregate wealth of the community. ”

“ The accompanying chart shows the distribution of this debt, the most striking fact being the steady decrease in the debt of the national government and the increase in municipal debts. This is of course a gratifying change, the national debt being due to the cost of war, and municipal debt in the main to improvements of lasting value. The per capita national debt has decreased from $60.46 in 1870 to $11.77 in 1902. As the rate of interest has very greatly decreased, the burden of the national debt on each individual is now comparatively slight. ”

“ A penultimate Disadvantage of Credit may be noted in the facility which it offers for contracting great national Debts. There are certain aspects, under which a Nation may be properly regarded as a moral person, and as such person may pledge the public faith for the present and the future, becoming a debtor to its own people or to foreigners, and thus a public debt may be made a sort of mortgage on the national property and income. ”

“ We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. ”

“ It has, I know, been argued that the circumstances under which our national debt has extended itself to its present magnificent dimensions cannot be quoted as parallel to those of the present American debt, because we, while we were creating the debt, were taxing ourselves very heavily, whereas the Americans have gone a-head with the creation of their debt before they have levied a shilling on themselves towards the payment of those expenses for which the debt has been encountered. ”

“ The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing. ”

“ They know that our national debt is considerable; the interest on our foreign loans, and the instalments due, amount to two millions of dollars. This arrearage, together with the domestic debt, is of great magnitude, and it will be attended with the most dreadful consequences to let these affairs run into confusion and ruin, for want of proper regulations to keep them in order. ”

“ That the national debt should be paid in good faith, according to the original contract, at the earliest option of the government, without mortgaging the property of the people or the future exigencies of labor to enrich a few capitalists at home and abroad. ”

“ A debt guaranteed by the nation, differs in no respect from the above transaction. Justice and good faith demand that the interest of the national debt should continue to be paid, and that those who have advanced their capitals for the general benefit, should not be required to forego their equitable claims, on the plea of expediency. ”

“ All modern states, it may be said, have been compelled to have recourse to loans, either to meet war expenses, to carry out great public undertakings or to make up the recurrent deficits of a mismanaged revenue. Resources obtained in this way are what constitute national debt proper. ”

“ It requires no great perspicacity to realize that our total national debt will be a sum which rolls so easily on its ciphers that it eludes the grasp of the average mind. It is going to cost a lot even to keep the wheels greased at five and one-half per cent. ”

“ The burden of paying the interest on this mortgage, and the final payment of the principal, is wholly on the capable and industrious members of the family.
National debts are incurred to relieve the present wealth of the burden of present government calls and obligations, and to roll it upon those who shall produce wealth in the future. So the debt of a city, state, or nation is a present relief to property holders, by placing the producers under future obligations.
A street in a city is to be paved; no additional tax is levied; but bonds are issued running twenty years. ”

“ National debt, again, is divided into external and internal, according as the loans have been raised within or without the country—some states, generally the smaller ones, having a considerable amount of exclusively internal debt, though it is obvious that the bulk of national debts are both external and internal. ”

“ The annual interest on the national debt at this time amounted to one hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet the Treasury paid this, together with the expenses of government, and reduced the debt seventy-one million dollars before the volunteer army had been fully discharged in 1866.
Comment on such recuperative power as that is unnecessary; for the generation that fights a four-years war costing over two billions of dollars generally leaves the debt for another generation or another century to pay. ”

“ In new and undeveloped countries also the national debt takes an unusual prominence in discussions of national finance because it is regularly a foreign debt, at least in majority, and carries with it, therefore, possible complications with other powers. ”

“ It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions. ”

“ Suppose the Government should issue an equal sum in its own notes to take the place of the National Bank notes—how could the Government put its own notes into circulation?
(1) It could immediately put the entire [119] amount in circulation by applying it to the part payment of the public debt. We are the richest nation on earth: the richest that history knows anything about—yet we keep ourselves mortgaged with a perpetual National Debt because the favored few demand bonds to bank on. ”

“ At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing;" that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. ”

“ Failure to cope with this problem now could mean as much as a trillion dollars more in national debt in the next 4 years alone. That would average $4,300 in additional debt for every man, woman, child, and baby in our nation. ”

“ The Socialists say that there are a few thousand persons who own the National Debt, and they recommend its extinction; usually leaving it in doubt as to whether this is to be by wholesale or by partial repudiation. ”

“ It is not, however, advisable in all cases to maintain a surplus revenue for the extinction of debt. The advantage of paying off the national debt of Great Britain, for instance, is that it would enable us to get rid of the worse half of our taxation. ”

“ National debt has become a marked feature in the finances of modern States. In any strict sense the public debt designates all of the outstanding obligations of the government. These are of many kinds. ”

“ A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing. ”

“ For the modern expedient of raising money for national emergencies by way of loan he has a profound distrust. He was convinced that what is bad for the individual credit must be bad for the state also. A national debt, he maintains, enriches the capital at the expense of the provinces ”

“ As soon as the national debt of the United States shall be discharged by the sale of one portion of those lands, we shall then see the Confederate Republic in a new character, as a proprietor of lands, either for sale or to let upon rents, while other nations may be struggling under debts too enormous to be discharged either by economy or taxation, and while they may be laboring to raise ordinary and necessary supplies by burdensome impositions upon their own persons and properties. ”

“ Whether the nation be healthy, or in unwholesome degradation of body and mind; wealthy, or in continual and shameful distress; strong, or in rapid decline of political power and authority,—the reader will find debated throughout the various contents of the preceding five volumes of Fors. But there is one public fact, which cannot be debated—that the nation is in debt. And the St. George’s Company do practically make it their first, though not their principal, object, to bring that state of things to an end; and to establish, instead of a National Debt, a National Store. ”

“ If we take the expenditures of all the governments of the United States, Federal, State, municipal, county, and town, for a similar period of two years, they reach the enormous total of two billion dollars, equal to more than two thirds of the national debt at the close of the civil war. ”