and power and happiness. Whence comes the interest; that part which is real, tangible, and regularly produced? MONTESINOS. It is raised by taxation, and that taxation it is which constitutes the great burthen of these kingdoms. SIR THOMAS MORE. It is raised then from the whole body of the nation, and distributed to that portion of them whose property is vested in this fiction. Is the country most impoverished by the extraction, or benefited by the distribution? MONTESINOS. You might as reasonably ask whether the fields are injured by evaporation, more than they are refreshed by rain and dew! SIR THOMAS MORE. It is not then a mere debt,.. a mere burthen? MONTESINOS. On the contrary, it is so much property vested in the manner most convenient to the owners. The effects of the funded system could as little have been foreseen when it was devised, as the extent to which it has been carried. It has not only supplied the necessities of the state from time to time, and enabled it to support the costs, ruinous as they then appeared, of the American war, and the still more enormous expenditure of the last contest, but by its operation the wars themselves became a cause of national prosperity,.. the funds, as they were increased, affording an advantageous and secure deposit for the new wealth created by that increased activity which the war expenditure called forth. And the wealth thus deposited being producible at a moment, to any amount, has supplied capital for speculations upon a scale unknown in other countries, or in other times. British machinery may be exported, or equalled; British ingenuity may be rivalled; but it is British capital that puts all in motion; and it will be long before any other nation can possess capital enough to render its rivalry effectual. SIR THOMAS MORE. Another and far more momentous benefit must not be overlooked,..the expenditure of an annual interest equalling, as you have stated, the present rental of all fixed property. MONTESINOS. That expenditure gives employment to half the industry in the kingdom, and feeds half the mouths. Take, indeed, the weight of the national debt from this great and complicated social machine, and the wheels must stop. The old apologue of the belly and members is as applicable to those reformers who are for ridding us of this debt, as it was to the Roman agitators in the days of Menenius Agrippa. SIR THOMAS MORE. Such being, according to this view of the subject, (and it is undeniable,) the effect of the national debt, is it the object of your government to extend, or to diminish it? MONTESINOS. To diminish it, of course. SIR THOMAS MORE. Why of course, if it be advantageous to the nation? MONTESINOS. For the purpose of diminishing the national burthens. SIR THOMAS MORE. Explain to me how that, which is a national advantage, can be at the same time a national burthen? how the same thing can at once be an evil and a good? MONTESINOS. I told you honestly, when you entered upon this discussion, that it led to subjects which I did not understand. SIR THOMAS MORE. You will understand them better, if you ex amine the state of your own knowledge. We shall come to something presently which is perfectly intelligible....In what manner will your government proceed to diminish this national burthen, (considering it now as a burthen,) when it shall have the means of so doing? MONTESINOS. By extinguishing that portion of it which bears the highest rate of interest, giving the holders, when the state of the funds shall admit of such a transaction, their option of being paid off, or having their stock converted into stock of a lower rate. If this were done, for example, with stock which produces at present an annual interest of five millions, an annual million of taxes might be remitted. SIR THOMAS MORE. And would this, think you, be a desirable measure? MONTESINOS. The minister will think himself fortunate who shall be able to effect it. But of all subjects, who would have expected that one from the dead should chuse to enter upon political economy, and the state of the stocks! SIR THOMAS MORE. You know I have visited the Limbo, and you do not suppose that books of poetry are the only tomes which are whirled away thither. ...The minister, you say, will think himself fortunate, who shall be able to remit a million yearly in taxation, by annihilating twenty millions of the five per cents, or, which is the same thing, withholding a fifth part of the interest paid upon an hundred millions of that stock? MONTESINOS. He will not only think himself so, but will be thought so by the nation, and applauded accordingly. SIR THOMAS MORE. But how will that part of the community feel from whose incomes this million is to be deducted? Will they think themselves fortunate? The measure which they will hear of as a public benefit, they will feel as an individual grievance: and it will be difficult to make them acknowledge, that a heavy and exclusive taxation imposed upon them, can be both a consequence and a cause of general prosperity. MONTESINOS. There it will fall heavily, and precisely upon persons on whom the burthens of the state have always borne with the severest pressure. The respectable provision which men of moderate fortune can make for their widows and unmarried daughters, has more generally been vested |