Should there be any general failure or declension in any of these things, the produce of the different taxes might no longer be sufficient to pay him the annuity or interest which is due to him.But a creditor of the public, considered merely as such, has no interest in the good condition of any particular portion of land, or in the good management of any particular portion of capital stock.As a creditor of the public he has no knowledge of any such particular portion.He has no inspection of it.He can have no care about it.Its ruin may in some cases be unknown to him, and cannot directly affect him.
The practice of funding has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it.The Italian republics seem to have begun it.Genoa and Venice, the only two remaining which can pretend to an independent existence, have both been enfeebled by it.Spain seems to have learned the practice from the Italian republics, and (its taxes being probably less judicious than theirs) it has, in proportion to its natural strength, been still more enfeebled.
The debts of Spain are of very old standing.It was deeply in debt before the end of the sixteenth century, about a hundred years before England owed a shilling.France, notwithstanding all its natural resources, languishes under an oppressive load of the same kind.The republic of the United Provinces is as much enfeebled by its debts as either Genoa or Venice.Is it likely that in Great Britain alone a practice which has brought either weakness or desolation into every other country should prove altogether innocent?
The system of taxation established in those different countries, it may be said, is inferior to that of England.Ibelieve it is so.But it ought to be remembered that, when the wisest government has exhausted all the proper subjects of taxation, it must, in cases of urgent necessity, have recourse to improper ones.The wise republic of Holland has upon some occasions been obliged to have recourse to taxes as inconvenient as the greater part of those of Spain.Another war begun before any considerable liberation of the public revenue had been brought about, and growing in its progress as expensive as the last war, may, from irresistible necessity, render the British system of taxation as oppressive as that of Holland, or even as that of Spain.To the honour of our present system of taxation, indeed, it has hitherto given so little embarrassment to industry that, during the course even of the most expensive wars, the frugality and good conduct of individuals seem to have been able, by saving and accumulation, to repair all the breaches which the waste and extravagance of government had made in the general capital of the society.At the conclusion of the late war, the most expensive that Great Britain ever waged, her agriculture was as flourishing, her manufacturers as numerous and as fully employed, and her commerce as extensive as they had ever been before.The capital, therefore, which supported all those different branches of industry must have been equal to what it had ever been before.Since the peace, agriculture has been still further improved, the rents of houses have risen in every town and village of the country- a proof of the increasing wealth and revenue of the people; and the annual amount the greater part of the old taxes, of the principal branches of the excise and customs in particular, has been continually increasing- an equally clear proof of an increasing consumption, and consequently of an increasing produce which could alone support that consumption.Great Britain seems to support with ease a burden which, half a century ago, nobody believed her capable of supporting.Let us not, however, upon this account rashly conclude that she is capable of supporting any burden, nor even be too confident that she could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than what has already been laid upon her.
When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid.The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about by bankruptcy;sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment.
