1999. DEBT, Fashion, Folly and.—
Everything I hear from my own country fills
me with despair as to their recovery from
their vassalage to Great Britain. Fashion
and folly are plunging them deeper and
deeper into distress; and the legislators of the
country becoming debtors also, there seems no
hope of applying the only possible remedy,
that of an immediate judgment and execution.
We should try whether the prodigal might
not be restrained from taking on credit the
gewgaw held out to him in one hand, by seeing
the keys of a prison in the other.—
To T. Pleasants. Washington ed. i, 564.
(P.
1786)
