Thoughts on the mechanism of societies

by marquis de Charles Casaux

It might be objected, that my reasoning derives its force from the bare supposition of a total reimbursement, the possibility of which no one can admit; but were it subjoined, that, by acknowledging the impracticability of the measure, we suppose its expediency;—were it farther said, that the public papers have often spoken of, and do still point out as the readiest and surest way to effect it, the application of the sponge;—were it added, that the first geniuses of England, France, nay, of all Europe, have advanced, and do still maintain, that such a measure will one day or other become unavoidable;—then we should be forced to acknowledge, that it would be no inconsiderable service to humanity, to spare no endeavours to convince the people, that no greater ease, power, or happiness, would accrue to them, were the nation to resolve upon its own disgrace.

Nor would it, in my opinion, be a more difficult talk to prove, that from a real and gradual reimbursement, no other advantage could result, than bringing about by degrees and more imperceptibly, an evil which would prove equally unprofitable to all.

I set aside the outcry against the interest yearly paid to foreigners, as the produce of the sums vested by them in the funds, because I think ruin impossible, where the money borrowed at 4 or 5, is laid out at an interest of 6, 7, or even 10 per cent. I likewise overlook the declamatory complaints on the fate of the handicraft and husbandman; because the laws of Lycurgus should be revived, or the government must confine itself to protect those two classes of men against every sort of private vexation, and to secure to them the trifling salary to which they are every where and forever doomed. In spite of avarice the salary must be raised, if the prices of every necessary should increase; and were these to fall in their value, mutiny itself could not prevent a diminution of wages.

That part of the people which truly deserves, and should engage the attention of government, is that crowd of dependents, in the other class, of which I have already spoken: like the cultivator and artificer, they have no other stock than the passions and wants of the capitalists. These would be much more wretched than the others, if the education they have received, carrying their thoughts constantly and in spite of themselves beyond the present moment, government should in a manner compel them to center them all within that narrow space. The merchant never has more in the funds than that portion of his capital, which, for the moment, is useless to his trade. The farmer, and the proprietor who manages his own estate, considered under these two heads, have at no time in the funds more than that portion of their capitals, the actual use of which upon the lands they cultivate, might turn rather to their prejudice than profit. The annihilating of the public funds, or, in other words, a partial reimbursement, a gradual discharge of the debt, could therefore affect those three orders of stockholders no farther than to deprive them of this way of increasing their capitals, without running any risk; and those are, undoubtedly, the smallest part of the sums which constitute the national debt. Which is, then, the order of citizens that receives the larger share of the interest funded for that debt? It is that multitude of dependents whom the political œconomy of society has doomed to toilsome occupations useful to that society, or to laborious studies, of which that very society daily reaps the benefit: it is to that multitude of widows and orphans of both sexes, whose future support the unfortunate class above-mentioned thought to have secured by means of the present privations which they had imposed on themselves: it is to those children whose elder brothers are in possession of all the family real estate, and whose parents hoped to have fixed their condition and settled their fortune by the only means that can effectually obviate, not the injustice of an unequal division, since it is admitted, but the inconvenience resulting from the indivisibility of the landed property, which devolves to the eldest.

Yet if, in a State, we must be father, brother, sister, widow, orphan, capitalist, in fine, or without a capital, but with the faculty of acquiring one; which, then, is the class of citizens interested in paying off, either totally, or in part and by degrees, the national debt, when once it is incurred? Besides, if the reimbursement cannot be effected but at the public expence, what advantage will the public derive from this operation?

Objections of another kind against paying off the National Debt.

The nominal amount of a loan which nothing obliges us to repay, is a matter of a very little importance; the interest agreed upon for the borrowed sum, is the only thing that deserves attention. The total of the interest in England is now about nine millions, three millions of which could not be procured but by laying taxes on those objects which had hitherto escaped the penetrating eye of the financiers, and by doubling or trebling the impost on those which appeared less liable to the inconveniences attending such an additional increase.

Before I examine in what mode the taxes operate, I shall suppose, for the satisfaction of the sensible and benevolent mind, that this formidable burden falls only on the consumer of such objects as are taxed. The only plausible aim of a reimbursement, is a diminution of the taxes which lie so heavy on that consumer; but the misfortune is, that the only means of refunding, is to devise new taxes, or increase the former ones. Besides, if this increase be trifling, the reimbursement cannot be effected in less than a century. I freely confess, that in this case, the proprietors of the public funds would be less aggrieved, having then sufficient time to think on the less disadvantageous modes of replacing their stock; yet, I repeat it, not less than a century would suffice to discharge that very debt; and the public being a little more burdened annually, than they would have been had not the project of paying off the debt been started, would have no other compensation for the additional burden, than the distant prospect of a general release in a hundred years.—If the intention is, to bring about that release within a period which, to the fiftieth part of the present generation, gives the hope of enjoying the effect of it, I agree, that by means of one million of additional taxes, and some financiering tricks, the whole debt may be liquidated within the space of 40 or 50 years; and then, that part of the present generation which may exist at that most gracious period, will, perhaps, bless the hand by which it shall have been relieved. But would that same hand be, till then, entitled to the like blessings from the unfortunate who should be reimbursed, and from those at whose expence this operation would be effected?