at so low a rate of interest as three per cent., they absorb the energies of the people, and, like a glacier grinding over the earth, crush all beneath them.
Public debts are incurred to relieve the present wealth of the burden of present duty. Debts place the whole burden on producers of the future. They relieve those who hold the wealth now, but are a draft upon those who make the wealth that is to be.
An individual incurring debt places a mortgage upon his productions; by a pledge of future production he relieves himself of the strain of the present.