Notes

1 It seems to have been unfortunate for the Romans, that in the age of the Gracchi the practice of granting leases for any considerable term of years was not familiar, and the alienation of land under a reserved rent wholly unknown. Had Tiberius Gracchus proposed to the Patricians either of these plans for accommodating the poor citizens with lands, a compromise might probably have taken place, to the great advantage of both. He would not have encountered such determined opposition at first, nor would he have been forced into the violent measures he afterwards adopted.

In the history of this illustrious citizen of Rome, thosemen who may hereafter undertake the patronage of general rights, and of the lower classes of mankind, may find an instructive example, how necessary it is to adhere to moderation, even in the noblest pursuits, and not to suffer the insolent and unreasonable obstinacy of opponents to provoke any passionate retaliation. Had Gracchus persevered in maintaining his first temperate and liberal proposal, -- had he not impetuously, it cannot be said unjustly, hurried into the extreme opposite to that which his antagonists held, it cannot be doubted that his great endeavours might have proved fortunate for himself and his country.

2 The accumulation of a national debt must be acknowledged to be a great evil; yet it is possible that the nature of that evil may be in some degree mistaken, and its# distant terrors exaggerated.

The comparison which offers itself at first between the incumbrances of a nation and those of an individual's fortune, is just only in a few particulars. Money borrowed by a nation is chiefly furnished by its own subjects, into whose hands it is chiefly paid back for services performed; and the stock of the community, compared with that of its neighbours, is lessened only by the amount of what is borrowed from*subjects of a foreign State.

Taxes imposed for defraying the interest of a large debt must, in some degree, endanger the suppression of manufactures, and the loss of foreign commerce. This is, perhaps, the only evil which may not be separated from this accumulation of national debt; nor ought this to be accounted very formidable by a nation abounding with men, and possessing wide tracts of waste or half cultivated land, in the improvement of which the industry of these men may be employed. In such a situation, a nation well informed of its true interests might despise the loss.

But if it is the established opinion of any people, that the public prosperity depends on the nourishing state of their commerce with other nations, that people ought, in consistency, to avoid the occasions of contracting debt.

If a nation already encumbered with a great load of debt foresees rather the necessity of augmenting than any possibility of diminishing the load, that nation ought, beforehand, gradually to prepare those resources by which the public opulence and the industry of the subjects may be sustained, when foreign commerce shall have failed.

Whatever national advantages are aimed at by efforts requiring the accumulation of public debt; whatever evils are to be guarded against, as proceeding from such accumulation, a minute partition of property in land must be favourable to the measures of the legislature in either pursuit.