king, and making merry in their day;
or, if you please, in quarrelling and fighting with their unoffending
neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months, one half of the adult
citizens were dead. Till then, being the majority, they might rightfully
levy the interest of their debt annually on themselves and their
fellow-revellers, or fellow-champions. But at that period, say at this
moment, 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 will 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 burthens 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. Our 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
a fixed term, less than nineteen years. And I hope yourself and your
committee will render the immortal service of introducing this practice.
Not that it is expected that Congress should f