And yet this is the simple and exact state of the business.  The whole of the debt embraced by the provisions of the funding system, consisted of the unextinguished principal and arrears of interest, of the debt which had been contracted by the United States in the course of the late war with Great Britain, and which remained uncancelled, and the principal and arrears of interest of the separate debts of the respective States contracted during the same period, which remained, outstanding, and unsatisfied, relating to services and supplies for carrying on the war.  Nothing more was done by that system, than to incorporate these two species of debt into the mass, and to make for the whole, one general, comprehensive provision.  There is therefore, no arithmetic, no logic, by which it can be shown that the funding system has augmented the aggregate debt of the country.  The sum total is manifestly the same; though the parts which were before divided are now united.  There is, consequently, no color for an assertion, that the system in question either created any new debt, or made any addition to the old.

And it follows, that the collective burthen upon the people of the United States must have been as great without as with the union of the different portions and descriptions of the debt.  The only difference can be, that without it that burthen would have been otherwise distributed, and would have fallen with unequal weight, instead of being equally borne as it now is.

These conclusions which have been drawn respecting the non-increase of the debt, proceed upon the presumption that every part of the public debt, as well that of the States individually, as that of the United States, was to have been honestly paid.  If there is any fallacy in this supposition, the inferences may be erroneous; but the error would imply the disgrace of the United States, or parts of them,—­a disgrace from which every man of true honor and genuine patriotism will be happy to see them rescued.

When we hear the epithets, “vile matter,” “corrupt mass,” bestowed upon the public debt, and the owners of it indiscriminately maligned as the harpies and vultures of the community, there is ground to suspect that those who hold the language, though they may not dare to avow it, contemplate a more summary process for getting rid of debts than that of paying them.  Charity itself cannot avoid concluding from the language and conduct of some men, (and some of them of no inconsiderable importance,) that in their vocabularies creditor and enemy are synonymous terms, and that they have a laudable antipathy against every man to whom they owe money, either as individuals or as members of the society.

* * * * *

From a “Letter to Lafayette,” October 6, 1789.

=_67._= THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.