less actively mischievous, but not less contrary to principle. These very improvements in industry made room for a larger amount of capital; and the Government, by draining away a great part of the annual accumulations, did not indeed prevent that capital from existing ultimately (for it started into existence with great rapidity after the peace), but prevented it from existing at the time, and subtracted just so much, while the war lasted, from distribution among productive laborers. If the Government had abstained from taking this capital by loan, and had allowed it to reach the laborers, but had raised the supplies which it required by a direct tax on the laboring-classes, it would have produced (in every respect but the expense and inconvenience of collecting the tax) the very same economical effects which it did produce, except that we should not now have had the debt. The course it actually took was therefore worse than the very worst mode which it could possibly have adopted of raising the supplies within the year; and the only excuse, or justification, which it admits of (so far as that excuse could be truly pleaded) was hard necessity; the impossibility of raising so enormous an annual sum by taxation, without resorting to taxes which from their odiousness, or from the facility of evasion, it would have been found impracticable to enforce.356
When government loans are limited to the overflowings of the national capital, or to those accumulations which would not take place at all unless suffered to overflow, they are at least not liable to this grave condemnation. In this case, therefore, the question really is, what it is commonly supposed to be in all cases—namely, a choice between a great sacrifice at once, and a small one indefinitely prolonged. On this matter it seems rational to think that the prudence of a nation will dictate the same conduct as the prudence of an individual; to submit to