though the latter had been confined within some reasonable bounds, and had ever, in any one instance, been attended with such frugality in time of peace as to discharge the debts incurred by an expensive war. For why should the case be so very different between the public and an individual as to make {p85} us establish such different maxims of conduct for each? If the funds of the former be greater, its necessary expenses are proportionably larger; if its resources be more numerous, they are not infinite; and as its frame should be calculated for a much longer duration than the date of a single life, or even of a family, it should embrace maxims, large, durable, and generous, agreeable to the supposed extent of its existence. To trust to chances and temporary expedients is indeed what the necessity of human affairs frequently reduces it to, but whoever voluntarily depend on such resources have not necessity but their own folly to accuse for their misfortunes when any such befall them.
If the abuses of treasures be dangerous, either by engaging the state in rash enterprises or making it neglect military discipline in confidence of its riches, the abuses of mortgaging are more certain and inevitable—poverty, impotence, and subjection to foreign powers.
According to modern policy, war is attended with every destructive circumstance: loss of men, increase of taxes, decay of commerce, dissipation of money, devastation by sea and land. According to ancient maxims, the opening of the public treasure, as it produced an uncommon affluence of gold and silver, served as a temporary encouragement to industry, and atoned in some degree for the inevitable calamities of war.
What then shall we say to the new paradox, that public encumbrances are, of themselves, advantageous, independent of the necessity of contracting them; and that any state, even though it were not pressed by a foreign enemy, could not possibly have embraced a wiser expedient for