2051. DEBT (United States), Evils of.—
If we run into such debts, as that we must be
taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our
necessaries and our comforts, in our labors
and our amusements, for our callings and
our creeds, as the people of England are, our
people, like them, must come to labor sixteen
hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings
of fifteen of these to the government for their
debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth
being insufficient to afford us bread, we must
live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes;
have no time to think, no means of calling
the mismanagers to account; but be glad
to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves out
to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.—
To Samuel Kerchival. Washington ed. vii, 14.
Ford ed., x, 41.
(M.
1816)
