Such are the inconveniences which may reasonably be foreseen of this situation to which Great Britain is visibly tending, not to mention the numberless inconveniences which cannot be foreseen, and which must result from so monstrous a situation as that of making the public the sole proprietor of land, besides investing it with every branch of customs and excise which the fertile imagination of ministers and projectors have been able to invent.
I must confess that there is a strange supineness, from long custom, crept into all ranks of men with regard to public debts, not unlike what divines so vehemently complain of with regard to their religious doctrines. We all own that the most sanguine imagination cannot hope either that this or any future ministry will be possessed of such rigid and steady frugality as to make any considerable progress in the payment of our debts, or that the situation of foreign affairs will, for any long time, allow them leisure and tranquillity for such an undertaking.[30] What then is to become of us? Were we ever so good Christians and ever so resigned to Providence, this, methinks, were a curious question, even considered as a speculative one, and what it might not be altogether impossible to form some conjectural solution of. The events here will depend little upon the contingencies of battles, negotiations, intrigues, and factions. There seems to be a natural progress of things which may guide our reasoning. As it would have required but a moderate share of prudence when we first began this practice of mortgaging to have foretold, from the nature of men and of ministers, that things would necessarily be carried to the length we see, so now that they have at last happily reached it, it may not be difficult to guess at the consequences. It must, indeed, be one of these two events—either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. It is impossible they can both subsist after the manner they have been hitherto managed, in this as well as in some other nations.
There was indeed a scheme for the payment of our debts which was proposed by an excellent citizen, Mr. Hutchinson, above thirty years ago, and which was much approved of by some men of sense, but never was likely to take effect. He asserted that there was a fallacy in imagining that the public owed this debt, for that really every individual owed a proportional share of it, and paid, in his taxes, a proportional share of the interest, beside the expenses of levying these taxes. Had we not better, then, says he, make a proportional distribution of the debt among us, and each of us contribute a sum suitable to his property, and by that means discharge at once all our funds and public mortgages? He seems not to have considered that the laborious poor pay a considerable part of the taxes by their annual consumptions, though they could not advance at once a proportional part of the sum required; not to mention that property in money and stock in trade might easily be concealed or disguised, and that visible property in lands and houses would really at last answer for the whole—an inequality and oppression which never would be submitted to. But though this project is never likely to take place, it is not altogether improbable that when the nation become heartily sick of their debts, and are cruelly oppressed by them, some daring projector may arise with visionary schemes for their discharge. And as public credit will begin, by that time, to be a little frail, the least touch will destroy it, as happened in France; and in this manner it will die of the doctor.[31]