POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



69 



I'oiiiicai riority of their nation does not yet appear sufficiently 

 Economy, established, their enemy is not yet sufficiently humbled, 

 ""'~*" r the work which they thought accomplished has been 

 overturned, it must be re-established at any price. 

 Present resources, however, are exhausted, and re- 

 course is boldly had to borrowing: credit is still entire ; 

 the national capitals are drained away front commerce, 

 Mini placed one after another st the disposal of a minister 

 who dissipates them, and replaces them by assignments 

 on the future ; and the passion which blinded men 

 lor a few months, condemns their posterity to suffering 

 for ages. 



Perhaps no invention was ever more fatal to men 

 than that of public loans: none is yet enveloped with 

 more illusions. The passions excited by politics are 

 so violent ; the questions to be decided by negociations 

 or by arms so important ; all sacrifices become so na- 

 tural, when the prosperity, the existence, the honour 

 of all are at stake, that governments and the people, 

 before yielding, are to exhaust every resource to the 

 very uttermost. They will send out the last man to 

 battle, they will expend their last shilling, if they can 

 possibly dispose of either ; and they will do this not 

 alone for the safety of the people, but for any war, any 

 quarrel in which they happen to engage, because there 

 is no one in which their offended pride may not be 

 confounded with honour, in which they cannot honestly 

 say what is true only in extreme cases, that a nation 

 had better cease to exist than exist dishonoured. 



If the possibility of making such preternatural exer- 

 tions could be furnished to nations, and reserved at the 

 same time for an extraordinary necessity, no doubt a 

 great service would be done to human society, which 

 is shaken to its foundation every time that one of its 

 members is overthrown. But each mean of defence 

 becomes in its turn a mean of attack. The invention 

 of artillery, happy for society if it could have been em- 

 ployed only in the defence of towns, has served to over- 

 throw them : the invention of standing armies has op- 

 posed discipline to discipline, and talent to talent; the 

 invention of conscriptions has opposed all the youth of 

 one nation to all the youth of another ; the invention of 

 landslhurms and Levees en masse, has made even women 

 and old men descend to the field of battle to assist re- 

 gular troops : the invention of loans has attacked and 

 defended the present generation, with all the hope and 

 all the labour of posterity. The strength of nations, 

 though becoming still more formidable, has continued 

 still in the same proportion. The state, in danger, has 

 not found deliverance more easily ; but humanity her- 

 self has been sacrificed, and, amid those gigantic com- 

 bats, it is she that must perish. 



As, after those destructive expences rendered possi- 

 ble by loans, there remains an apparent wealth, which 

 has been named the public funds, and which figures as 

 an immense capital, the different portions of which con- 

 stitute the fortunes of opulent individuals, some have 

 believed, or affected to believe, that this dissipation of 

 national capital was not so great an evil, but rather a 

 circulation, which caused wealth to spring up again 

 under another shape ; and that mysterious advantages 

 existed for great states in this immaterial opulence, 

 which was seen to pass from hand to hand on the mar- 

 ket of the public stocks. 



No very powerful logic was needed, to persuade mi- 

 nisters of the advantages arising from dissipation ; 

 stock-jobbers, of the national profit attached to their 

 commerce ; state creditors, of the importance of their 

 rank in society ; capitalists, eager to lend, of the service 



they did to the public, by taking from it an interest Political 

 superior to that of trade. Thus all appeared amply 

 satisfied with regard to the unintelligible doctrine, by ^ 

 which it was pretended to demonstrate the advantage 

 of public funds. 



In place of following this subtle reasoning, we thall 

 endeavour to show that stocks are nothing else but the 

 imaginary capital, which represents that portion of the 

 annual revenue set apart for paying the debt. An equi- 

 valent capital has been dissipated ; it is this which gives 

 name to the loan ; but it i not this, which stocks re- 

 present, for this does not any where exist. New wealth, 

 however, must spring from labour and industry. A 

 yearly portion of this wealth is assigned beforehand to 

 those who have lent the wealth already destroyed ; the 

 loan will abstract this portion from its producer, to be- 

 stow it on the state creditor, according to the propor- 

 tion between capital and interest usual in the country : 

 and an imaginary capital is conceived to exist, equiva- 

 lent to what would yield the annual revenue which the 

 creditors are to receive. 



As, in lendinglo a merchant or a landed proprietor, 

 we acquire a right to part of the revenue which arises 

 from the merchant's trade, or from the proprietor's 

 land, but diminish their revenue by the precise sum 

 which increases our own ; so in lending to government 

 we acquire a right to that part of the merchant's or 

 proprietor's revenue, which government will seize by 

 taxation to pay us. We are enriched only as contri- 

 butors are impoverished. Private and public credit are 

 a part of individual, but not of national wealth ; for no- 

 thing is wealth but what gives a revenue, and credit 

 gives none to the nation. If all public and private debts 

 were abolished in a day, there would be a frightful 

 overturning of property ; one family would be ruined 

 for the profit of another, but the nation would neither 

 be richer nor poorer, and the one party would have 

 gained what the other had lost. This has not, how- 

 ever, in any case, been the result of public bankrupt- 

 cies ; because governments, whilst suppressing their 

 debts, have maintained the taxation which belonged to 

 their creditors ; or rather they have broken their faith 

 to the latter, and have continued notwithstanding to 

 encroach on the property of contributors. 



A government which borrows, after having dissipat- 

 ed its capital, makes posterity perpetually debtor in the 

 clearest part of the profit arising from its work. An 

 overwhelming burden is cast upon it, to bow down one 

 generation after another. Public calamities may occur, 

 trade may take a new direction, rivals may supplant 

 us. The reproduction which is sold beforehand may 

 never reappear : yet notwithstanding we are loaded 

 with a debt above our strength, with a dbt hypothe- 

 cating our future labour, which we shall not perhaps be 

 able to accomplish. 



The necessity of paying this debt begets oppressive 

 imposts of one kind or another ; all become equally 

 fatal when too much multiplied. They overwhelm in- 

 dustry, and destroy that reproduction which is already 

 sold beforehand. The more that it has paid already, 

 the less capable does the nation become of paying far- 

 ther. One part of the revenue was to spring from agri- 

 culture, but taxation has ruined agriculture; another 

 proceeded from manufactures, but taxation has closed 

 up those establishments ; another yet from trade, but 

 taxation has banished trade. The suffering continues 

 to increase, all the resources to diminish. The moment 

 arrives at last, when a frightful bankruptcy becomes 

 inevitable. And doubts are entertained whether it 

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