1mo, In the difficulty of establishing and supporting them.
Private credit is inseparable, in some degree, from human society. We find it subsisting in all ages: the security is palpable, and the principles on which it is built are simple and easy to be comprehended. Public credit is but a late invention: it is the infant of commerce, and of extensive circulation. It has supplied the place of the treasures of old, which were constant and ready resources to statesmen in cases of public distress: the security is not palpable, nor readily understood, by the multitude; as it rests upon the liability of certain fundamental maxims of government. Mercantile credit is still more difficult to establish; because the security is the most precarious of any: it depends upon opinion and speculation, more than upon a fund provided for repayment of either capital or interest.
2do, They differ in the nature of the security and object of confidence.
Private credit has a determinate object of confidence, viz. the real existence of value in the hands of the debtor, sufficient to satisfy both capital and interest. Public credit has the visible security of a fund appropriated for the perpetual payment of the interest. Mercantile credit depends wholly upon the integrity, capacity, and good fortune of the debtor.
3tio, The third difference is with regard to the ease[ease] of transfer.
Public debts stand generally on the same bottom. No part of the same fund is better than another: the price of them is publicly known, and the securities are laid in the most convenient way for transfer, that is, circulation, without consent of the debtor. This is far from being the case in private securities. Nor is it the case in the mercantile, except in bills payable to order, in which case alone, the creditor can effectually transfer without the consent of the debtor.
4to, The fourth difference is discovered in the stability of the confidence.
Nothing can shake private credit, but an appearance of insolvency in the very debtor. But the bankruptcy of one considerable merchant, will give a very great shock to mercantile credit over all Europe: and nothing will hurt public credit, so long as the stipulated interest continues regularly to be paid, and so long as the funds appropriated for that payment remain entire.
From what has been said, I hope the three species of credit have been sufficiently explained; and from what is to follow, we shall feel the utility of this distribution.