CHAPTER XIV.

PERMANENT FUNDED DEBTS.

We have been so long under the dominion of errorhave become so familiar with it, and look upon it with such complacency, that the simple announcement of the truth startles us almost with affright. But the time has now arrived when it must be told; suffering humanity imperiously demands it. Let this be our apology.

Some political wise acres have told us, that public debts are public blessings; but they have never explained the subject, nor told us why, nor who were the receivers of the blessings, and at whose cost and suffering these blessings were paid; or, rather, who they are forcibly filched from. There is, perhaps, among all the schemes invented for the purpose of enabling the few to live at the expense of the many, none better calculated to work this end than the establishinent of permanently funded debts; because, every body knows that interest, at six per cent., in less than seventeen years, will equal the capital invested. Now, we should like to know by what rule of right, justice or equity, when the original sum borrowed has once been honestly paid, why it should be paid again, and that, too, many times over, and by those who never borrowed it, nor ever had the use of it? How can a man owe anything to another previous to his own birth? or, to another, from whom he has never received anything? Producers of wealth, it is for us to look into this matter.

The fact, that if only one dollar being invested permanently, and so continued long enough, would require all the money in the world to pay the interest, is proof that there is something fundamentally wrong in the principle. When we purchase a coat, a hat, or a pair of shoes, we pay for them but once; and if the seller should demand pay a second time, he would only be laughed at-every body at once perceiving the absurdity of the demand. Yet, if we purchase a large sum of money, or even only promises of money—(on time, as the money jugglers say)→→

purchase a canal, a rail road, gas works, water works, or other public improvement, or purchase an expensive war. they are required to be paid for many times over, and the obligations transmitted to future generations; by which means, the members of society are born into the world in two distinct classes, possessing unequal rights at birth, namely, debtors and creditors, though no transactions have yet occurred between the parties. In other words, the greatest portion of mankind are born with saddles on their backs, and a lordly few, ready booted and spurred, to ride them.

We ask, now, is there any justice in such operations? Surely, there is not. But, producers of wealth, this is a question for you to decide; for it is you who are born with saddles on your backs, and you alone foot up and pay all these bills of expense. We do contend, that when a debt has been once paid back by the interest, that it is, and ought in justice to be, cancelled; for, whatever the debtor pays beyond this, he receives no equivalent for; neither is there any justice in forcing the payment of it.

There has been no scheme yet invented, by the money lords of the world, that consummates and brings to perfection, with more certainty, that perplexing paradox, observable in all civilized countries, (where the people suffer from over-production-where the scarcity of consumers is owing to an excess of population, and the power of a country to create unbounded wealth is the cause of the poverty and destitution of its inhabitants,) than the establishment of funded permanent debts. Nothing has a more certain tendency to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer; and if the practice is persisted in, a time must come when there will not be money enough in the world to pay the interest on the investments.

The public debt of Great Britain has been paid and repaid to the original creditors, or their successors, several times over why, then, in the name of justice, should it be paid again? Let the producers of wealth answer, as they alone are the sufferers. In our view of the matter, the wisest, the most just and virtuous act the British gov ernment could do would be to wipe out at a stroke, as it were with a sponge, the whole stupendous pauper-making contrivance "get rid of such excrescences-cast off such burdens" abolish such blighting, withering curses. How

many hearts it would make glad, no tongue can tell. It would be worthy of a universal jubilee.

We shall, no doubt, be told that, to abolish such debts, would be gross injustice, inasmuch as it would reduce to want and beggary many widows and orphans. There is some weight, to be sure, in this argument; but it is transcendently outweighed by the consideration that a much greater number, not only of widows and orphans, but the great mass of the industrious classes are continually being reduced, not only to want and beggary, but also to pauperism, starvation and untimely death, by their continuance. Surely, such an objector must be one of those characters described in the gospel, with a beam in his own eye, looking for a mote in that of his brother's-can strain at a gnat, and yet swallow a camel, when the case requires it.

We shall now quote Thomas Jefferson (that firm, unflinching advocate of the people's rights) on the subject of funded debts. Vol. 4, page 196, in his letter to John W. Eppes, he says:

"It is wise, and should be fundamental, in a government dis posed to cherish its credit and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, 'never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith. On such a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a government may always command, on a reasonable interest, all the lendable money of their citizens, while the necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary warning to them and their constituents against oppressions, bankruptcy and, its inevitable consequence, revolution. But the term of redemption must be moderate, and, at any rate, within their rightful powers. But what limits, it will be asked, does this prescribe to their rightful powers? What is to hinder them from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature answer. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The will and power of man expire with his life by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial continuance, for the encouragement of industry;] or, rather, for the encouragement of speculation and injustice;] some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians. The generations of men may be considered as bodies, or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation free and unincumbered, and so on suc

cessively from one generation to another forever. We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

"The period of a generation, or the term of its life, is determined by the laws of mortality, which, varying a little only in different climates, offer a general average, to be found by observation. I turn, for instance, to Buffon's tables, of 23,994 deaths, and the ages at which they happened, and I find, of the numbers of all ages living at one moment, half will be dead in twenty-four years and eight months. But (leaving out minors, who have not the power of self-government,) of the adults (of twenty-one years of age) living at one moment, a majority of whom act for society, onehalf will be dead in eighteen years and eight months. At nineteen years, then, from the date of a contract, the majority of the contractors are dead, and their contract with them. Let this general theory be applied to a particular case. Suppose the annual births of the State of New York to be 23,994: the whole number of its inhabitants, according to Buffon, will be 617,703, of all ages. Of these, there would constantly be 269,286 minors and 348,417 adults; of which last, 174,290 will be a majority. Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794, had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee simple value of the State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking, and making merry in their day; or, if you please, in quarreling and fighting with their unoffending neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months, one-half of the adult citizens are dead. Till then, being the majority, they might rightfully levy the interest of their debts on themselves and their fellow revelers, or fellow champions. But, at that period, a new majority have come into place, in their own right, and not under the rights, the conditions, or laws of their predecessors. Are they bound to acknowledge the debt-to consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country in the course of a life-to alienate it from them; (for it would be an alienation to the creditors;) and would they think themselves either legally or morally bound to give up their country and emigrate to another for subsistence? Every one would say, no: that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation; and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to PAY THIS DEBT. And although, like some other natural rights, this has not yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, and ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is, at the same time, a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating,

"Had this principle been declared in the British Bill of Rights, England would have been placed under the happy disability of waging eternal war, and of contracting her thousand millions of public debt. In seeking then for an ultimate term for the redemption of our debts, let us rally to this principle, and provide for their payment within the term of nineteen years at the farthest. Qur government has not, as yet, begun to act on the rule of loans and taxation going hand in hand. Had any loan taken place in my time, I should have strongly urged a redeeming tax. For the loan which has been made since the last session of Congress, we should now set the example of appropriating some particular tax sufficient to pay the interest annually, and the principal within the fixed term, less than nineteen years. And I hope yourself and your committee will render the immortal service of introducing this practice."

So hoped Thomas Jefferson. But those honorable gentlemen never rendered their fellow-citizens that immortal service: it remains yet to be consummated, and is one of the great duties incumbent on the National Reformers. It cannot be expected that our legislators will abolish the present pernicious practice of funding debts, until driven into the measure by the people: then they must do it. Let us 66 cast off such burdens, get rid of such excrescences." According to Mr. Jefferson's principle, a debt ought to be extinguished in less than nineteen years, by the payment of principal and interest, on the ground that one generation has no right to tax a future. Now this would be a great improvement on the present practices of governments, and, we believe, is a principle that has not yet been recognised by any. But, by this principle, it appears that the original sum would be more than twice paid: why should it? If the original sum borrowed ought, in justice, to be paid twice over, why not three times, four times, or ad infinitum? Why not?

Cannot some of our men of talent and learning, some of the "business community," answer these questions? They must be answered, and that, too, satisfactorily, because the producers of the wealth of the world want to know why, or wherefore, that those who produce nothing, should claim the ownership of everything? Producers of wealth, ask yourselves why? Not only why should one generation be allowed to saddle another with their own debts, but why the same generation should be compelled to pay the same debt twice over? Producers of wealth,