Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, And Words To Ponder..

Nothing can more interest the national credit and prosperity than a constant and
systematic attention to husband all the means previously possessed for extinguishing the present debt, and to avoid, as much as possible, the incurring any new debt.

Necessity alone, therefore, can justify the application of any of the public property, other than the annual revenues, to the current service, or to the temporary and casual exigencies of the country, or the contracting of an additional debt, by loans, to provide for those exigencies.

Great emergencies might exist in which loans would be indispensable. Taxes are never welcome to a community. They seldom fail to excite uneasy sensations more or less extensive; hence a too strong propensity in the Government of nations to anticipate and mortgage the resources of posterity, rather than encounter the inconveniences of a present increase of taxes.

But this policy when not dictated by very peculiar circumstances, is of the worst
kind. Its obvious tendency is, by enhancing the permanent burthens of the people to produce lasting distress, and its natural issue is in national bankruptcy.

Alexander Hamilton, Fact For the National Gazette, Extract from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on Manufactures, 5th December, 1791