University of Virginia Library

2014. DEBT, Running in.—

It is a miserable
arithmetic which makes any single privation
whatever so painful as a total privation
of everything which must necessarily follow
the living so far beyond our income.
What is to extricate us I know not, whether
law, or loss of credit. If the sources of the
former are corrupted, so as to prevent justice,
the latter must supply its place, leave us possessed
of our infamous gains, but prevent all
future ones of the same character.—
To William Hay. Washington ed. ii, 215.
(P. 1787)