"National debt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this year included a proposal for the redemption of South Sea stock and an attempted operation on the national debt, by the creation of new stocks bearing a lower rate of interest, two options of conversion being given to the holders of old stock. The idea of the creation of a two-and-half-per-cent. stock, said Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Mr. Weller. 'Them things as is alvays a-fluctooatin', and gettin' theirselves inwolved somehow or another vith the national debt, and the chequers ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and almost the sovereignty, in the Mississippi region; it absorbed the privileges of the different companies for trading with the East; finally it took charge of the national mint and the issue of coin, and of the taxation of the kingdom, and it assumed the national debt. The temporary success of the gigantic financial scheme turned the heads of the people, and a fever of speculation ran through all ranks. The crash came, the shares in the bank sunk in value, the notes depreciated; and, in the wrath which ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget" with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance," suggests imposing schemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150,000,) and does it all for $4,000 a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ain't selling their silver now, they're storing it away in vaults, because they know in a little while all the nations in the world are going to be bidding for silver. And say, do you see that line of hills? There's silver enough buried underneath them to pay the national debt of the world." ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... duration—say seventy or eighty years—you will have iron enough in your stomach, from the filings, to make a ten-pound dumb-bell, and blistering stuff sufficient from the Spanish fly to draw all the interest of the National Debt. If the pepper happens to belong to the Cayenne persuasion, he magnifies it into a hod of bricks. It is his hod way of accounting for it. Keep using it daily for half-a-century, says he, and see if you don't wake up some fine ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... instance, was 20 percent of land value. These were taxes parliament had levied on residents in Great Britain but not on the colonists. Many taxes had been in effect since an earlier war in the 1740's (King George's War). With the national debt at a staggering L146,000,000, much of it the result of defending interests in the New World, and several million pounds owed to American colonies as reimbursement for maintaining troops during the war, British ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty and honour.' Farther on he adds that Clifford 'alone of the five had any claim to be regarded as an honest man.' Sir Thomas started a scheme which was practically the origin of the National Debt. Several statesmen who enjoyed the King's favour greatly desired the Lord Treasurer's office, and here Charles displayed his usual astuteness; for, being, as always, in want of money, he said to them that the man who should be Lord Treasurer ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... having attained this position may have lent a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which he paints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as their love—except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the first half of this century two million and a half of soldiers lost their lives in battle, and the country was impoverished to the extent of six billions eight hundred and fifty millions of dollars, while three millions of soldiers have perished in war since 1850. England's national debt was increased by the war of 1792 to nearly one billion and a half, and during the Napoleonic wars to the amount of one billion six hundred ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... thousands of British soldiers were killed or maimed, enormous material was lost with territory which other hundreds of thousands of brave men had died to win, the war was prolonged, thousands of millions were added to the National Debt, and half trained boys and elderly fathers of families were hurried into the firing line. At that time there were in hospitals or in depots, convalescent from venereal disease, enough fully-trained allied soldiers to furnish, not an army corps but a great army, complete ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... these principles,' he declares, 'prevailed from 1770 to 1820, the country would have avoided the American War and the first French Revolutionary War, the rebellion in Ireland in 1798, and the creation of three or four millions of national debt.'[3] Whenever opportunity allowed, Lord John sought in Parliament during the period under review to give practical effect to such convictions. He spoke in favour of the repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Bill, on the question of the evacuation of Spain by the French army, on the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... president of the appeal court at Belgrade not exceeding L300 a-year. But it is the financial department that presents the most striking contrast to other European states, in the unheard-of phenomenon of a national debt due not from but to the government; the revenue so much exceeding the expenditure, that a sum of a hundred thousand ducats has been lent to the people at six per cent, and forms an item on the credit side of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... but because she prisons herself in a pulpit. The sure evidence that woman is to become the preacher of the future is that woman is the only preacher men listen to. It is hard to imagine any bribe short of the National Debt that would have induced us to listen through the dog-days of the last few weeks to the panting rhetoric of Mr. Spurgeon. But it is harder to imagine the bribe that would have roused us to flight as we lay beneath the plane-tree, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... made a laughable comparison between the paying off or purification of the national debt and the purification of the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... but mentioned no definite boundaries, and added that the bargain could not be carried into effect until peace had been concluded. In return she claimed from Italy heavy financial contributions to the National Debt and to the provincial and communal loans, also full indemnity for all investments made in the ceded territory, for all ecclesiastical property and entailed estates, and for the pensions of State officials. To assign even ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... nations might disarm and live in peace with their neighbors. In France alone, of all the western nations, was there any clear idea of the Prussian plan. France, having learned the temper of the Prussian war lords in 1870, France, burdened by a national debt heaped high by the big indemnity collected by the Germans in '71, looked in apprehension to the east and leaped to arms at the first rattling of the ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... of Peace has not yet become the kingdom of this world. His attempts at invasion have been resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser's. Successful as that resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt that is not the less oppressive because we have no figures for it and do not intend to pay it. A blockade that cuts off "the grace of our Lord" is in the long run less bearable than the blockades which merely cut off raw materials; and against that blockade our Armada is impotent. In ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... since. When there wasn't a drought there was so much rain everything mildewed; there was a hail-storm that cut everything to pieces, and there was the caterpillar year. I just managed to pay the interest on the mortgage; as for paying the principal, I might as well have tried to pay the national debt. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bade fair to recover for France, Martinique, Tobago, and Santa Lucia, then in British hands, as well as the French stations in India. The only British gains, after nine years of warfare, fruitful in naval triumphs, but entailing an addition of L290,000,000 to the National Debt, were the islands of Trinidad and the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. And yet in the six months spent in negotiations the general course of events had been favourable to the northern Power. What then had been lacking? Certainly not valour to her ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... enter upon the new year without an obligation is accounted either very unfortunate or very regardless of the duties of life. This aversion to debt, perhaps, accounts for the fact that these four hundred millions of people had not a penny of national debt until four years ago. But they have just made a loan of $12,000,000, I believe, the first ever made by China in all its thousands of years' history. This may be taken, perhaps, as another proof that the empire is influenced by Western ideas, but one cannot help regretting that her long reign ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... and I had sung one of the "Irish melodies," somebody said, "Everything that's national, is delightful." "Except the National Debt, ma'am," says Poole. Took tea at Vilamil's, and danced to the piano-forte. Wrote thirteen or fourteen lines before I went out. In talking of the organs in Gall's craniological system, Poole said he supposed a drunkard had a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the coast-survey and lighthouse system, the marine hospitals, and life-saving service.[21] He sends reports to Congress, and suggests such measures as seem good to him. Since the Civil War his most weighty business has been the management of the national debt. He is aided by two assistant secretaries, six auditors, a register, a comptroller, a solicitor, a director of the mint, commissioner of internal revenue, chiefs of the bureau of statistics and bureau of engraving and printing, etc. The business of the treasury department ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... revenue from them. But, in its progress, it eventually involved us in a foreign war of great magnitude, and thus became the one subject of supreme interest to every statesman in Europe. England had not borne her share in the seven years' war without a considerable augmentation of the national debt, and a corresponding increase in the amount of yearly revenue which it had become necessary to raise;[33] and Mr. Grenville, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to devise the means of meeting the demand. A year before, he had supported with great warmth the proposal of ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... necessities require. The vast amount of vacant lands, the value of which daily augments, forms an additional resource of great extent and duration. These resources, besides accomplishing every other necessary purpose, put it completely in the power of the United States to discharge the national debt at an early period. Peace is the best time for improvement and preparation of every kind; it is in peace that our commerce flourishes most, that taxes are most easily paid, and that ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... involve an invasion of the upper house, for colonists won't take half a loaf now, I tell you; which would make some o' those gouty old lords fly round and scream like Mother Cary's chickens in a gale of wind; and then there would be the story of the national debt, and a participation in imperial taxes to adjust, and so on; but none of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... compared with the scientific and expeditious Marwood. The Horncastle shoemaker was saving, businesslike, pious and thoughtful. Like Peace, he had interests outside his ordinary profession. He had at one time propounded a scheme for the abolition of the National Debt, a man clearly determined to benefit his fellowmen in some way or other. A predilection for gin would seem to have been his only concession to the ordinary weakness of humanity. And now he had arrived in Armley Jail to exercise his happy ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... recollections now came forward to his discomfiture. "My official duty," said Wadsworth of Connecticut, "has led me often to attend at the Treasury of the United States, and, from my experience, I venture to pronounce that a Board of Treasury is the worst of all institutions. They have doubled our national debt." He contrasted the order and clearness of accounts while the Superintendent of Finance was in charge with the situation since then. If the committee had before them the transactions of the Treasury Board, "instead of system and responsibility ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... at the rate of fifteen hundred francs each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget, by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt, church funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances for washing, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... fiat-money advocates in the United States were the "Greenbackers," who wished to retain the greenbacks issued in the Civil War and to increase the amount greatly. They saw in paper money an unlimited source of income to the government. They proposed the payment of the national debt, the support of the government without taxes, and the loan of money without interest to citizens. All might live in luxury if the extreme fiat-money theorists could realize their dreams. The depreciation that ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... 'Speaking of the national debt, he said, it was an idle dream to suppose that the country could sink under it. Let the public creditors be ever so clamorous, the interest of millions must ever prevail over ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... by the world's affairs, and with the National Debt crushing down my weak shoulders, I sometimes allow my Thoughts an interlude of solace. From the jar in which I keep my vanity bottled, I remove the cork; out rushes that friendly Jinn and swells up and fills the sky. I walk on lightly through ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... of his mother's feelings as he looked forward into the blank and uncertain prospect of his college life. Like a good and dutiful son, however, his father's wishes were law; and he no more thought of opposing them, than he did of discovering the north pole, or paying off the national debt. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... which has attended the late sales of the public lands shews that with attention they may be made an important source of receipt. Among the payments those made in discharge of the principal and interest of the national debt will shew that the public faith has been exactly maintained. To these will be added an estimate of appropriations necessary for the ensuing year. This last will, of course, be affected by such modifications ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... War, with its enormous increase in the national debt and the volume of paper money, gold had gone to a high premium; and, as ever, by its fluctuations in price the value of all other commodities was determined. This led to the creation of a "Gold Room" in Wall Street, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in the first place by reducing expenditure, and, in the second, by increasing revenue, in view of the fact that the absolutely necessary expenditure will be enormously enhanced to meet the interest on the National Debt. Assuming that the War were to end in the spring of 1919, the debt will probably amount to about seven thousand millions after allowing for loans due from the Allies and Dominions so far as they are likely to be then recoverable. Taking interest at 5 per cent. with a sinking fund of only ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... life or low life reparation is made in such circumstances. But I shall not interfere further than (like Buonaparte) by dismembering Mr. B.'s kingdom, and erecting part of it into a principality for field-marshal Fletcher! I hope you govern my little empire and its sad load of national debt with a wary hand. To drop my metaphor, I beg leave to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... wreck; Greene had to not only assist in closing it up, but pay Radford's notes as well. Lincoln afterwards spoke of these notes, which he finally made good to Greene, as "the National Debt." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... thousands of small investors in their securities and as these small investors must not be injured, we are compelled to leave the railroads in the hands of private owners, as buying out even these small owners would cause a national debt such as we had better steer clear of. But it is not essential to the welfare of the people that the Government should own the railroads. The point we wish to bring out is, that the wealth and resources of the country has found lodgment in a few hands, ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... sides of politics (including the Court and even the King himself) felt the edge of his satire; while Lord Thurlow, the great Lord Chancellor, was in no way neglected. Thus we find a "New Way to pay the National Debt" (1786), "Ancient Music" (1787), "Monstrous Craws" (1787), "Frying Sprats" (1791) and "Anti-Saccharites, or John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of Sugar" (1792), are all directed against the reigning House, and allude frequently to the parsimonious habits of George III. and his Queen. ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... to give maddening little wounds through the joints of the harness. What is there with us to create the divergence necessary for debate but the pride of personal skill in the encounter? Who desires among us to put down the Queen, or to repudiate the National Debt, or to destroy religious worship, or even to disturb the ranks of society? When some small measure of reform has thoroughly recommended itself to the country,—so thoroughly that all men know that the country will have it,—then the question arises whether its details shall be arranged by the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of Napoleon's great upheaval of Europe left England feverish and exhausted. The prolonged financial strain of twenty years of war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... grape into notice as the greatest act of his life. "I have done my country a greater benefit in introducing this grape into public notice," said he, in after years, "than I would have done if I had paid the national debt." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... There was silence. Heavily steps ascended. Then the song began again, a little more insane than before; the laughter a little wilder.... "You can't stop her," Afrique said admiringly. "A great voice Mademoiselle has, eh? So, as I was saying, the national debt being conditioned—" ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... adulations of the British Government. The old gentleman held forth likewise in a long speech respecting the finances of England, in praise of the sinking fund, and when it was suggested to him that England from the immense national debt must one day become bankrupt: "Non, Monsieur," (he said),"la Caisse d'Amortissement empechera cela." In fine, the Caisse d'Amortissement was to work miracles. I replied that the principle of the Caisse d'Amortissement ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... noble fathers who fought and bled at Long Branch. I should say Nahant,—well, at some watering-place, I really forget precisely where,—we have no taxes, and know not what a revenue stamp is like! Thank fortune, we have no share in the national debt of Great Britain, and have no national debt of our own that is worth mention. Besides, we are going to found the little debt that we do owe, so that nobody will ever be bothered about ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... so struck with Bennet's exaggerated description of the buried treasure, that they imagined that, by a little trouble and outlay, gold and diamonds might be dug up at Saint James sufficient to enrich themselves and to pay off the national debt of Spain. The Swiss returned to Compostella "like a duke," to use his own words. The affair, which had at first been kept a profound secret, was speedily divulged. It was, indeed, resolved that the investigation, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in matters of finance. Every one knows that he ranks among the distinguished financiers of the world, and problems which he had to consider are still agitating the present generation. He was opposed alike to a national debt and to paper money. Had the metallic basis of the United States been adequate, he would have accepted no other circulating medium, and would have consented to the use of paper money only for purposes of exchange and remittance. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... 50,000 people. Snuff had been universally in use from the middle of the seventeenth century; and the sums spent on this filthy and foolish indulgence, the time wasted on it, and the injury done to health, if they could all have been thrown into the common form of money, would have paid the national debt of England. The common people have their full share in this general absurdity. The gin drunk in England and Wales annually amounts to nearly twenty millions of pounds sterling; a sum which would pay all the poor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... name of liberty! Don't you see that the whole movement is a movement of hucksters and traders and peddling vassals swollen by wealth into envy of the power that lies in birth alone? The money-changers in Paris who hold the bonds in the national debt, seeing the parlous financial condition of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a single man to cancel the debt by bankruptcy. To secure themselves they are burrowing underground to overthrow a state and build upon its ruins a new one in which they ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... to the extremity of crime against their country? The nation supports them: is not that enough? They appeal to the article of the constitution, which says, 'The salaries of the ministers of Catholic worship form a portion of the national debt.' Are they ministers of the Catholic worship? Does the state recognise any other Catholicity than its own? If they would attempt any other it is open to them and their sectarians! The nation allows all sorts ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... closed, and your stalwart six-feet men would have to find something else to do besides measuring tapes and ribbons. The whole country would undergo a transformation. But it would be better for the country. It would not take five years to pay the national debt, interest and all, if you will apply the money spent by men for tobacco and whisky—if men will learn to be decent. I think it is a great deal better to wear a pretty flower or ribbon than to smoke ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... esteem for the man who preferred the retirement of private life to the meanness of regal slavery. But Louis left a galling memento of misplaced magnificence, in an increase of ninety millions of florins (about nine millions sterling) to the already oppressive amount of the national debt of the country. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Office.%—Washington sees a great wagon or a white trolley car marked United States Mail, and on inquiry is told that the money now spent by the government each year for the support of the post offices would have more than paid the national debt when he was President. He hears with amazement that there are now 75,000 post offices, and recalls that in 1790 there were but seventy-five. He picks up from the sidewalk a piece of paper with a little ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... realises this better than the well-to-do Persian, and nothing would be more welcome to him than radical reform on the part of the Shah, and the establishment of the land of Iran on unshakable foundations. With a national debt so ridiculously small as Persia has at present, there is no reason why, with less maladministration, with her industries pushed, with her army reorganised and placed on a serviceable footing, she should not rank as one of the first and most powerful ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... by what it fed upon,—as the paper-money theory has generally done. Toward the close, in a burst of eloquence, he suggested that assignats be created to an amount sufficient to cover the national debt, and that all the national lands be exposed for sale immediately, predicting that thus prosperity would return to the nation and that an classes would find this additional issue of ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; at the same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua had repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and was about to declare war on the United States ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... number of its most vigorous men, who are taken from industrial pursuits and every kind of labor, as well as the enormous interest on the sums expended on military preparations without any return. The inevitable result of this expenditure on war and preparations for war is a continually growing national debt. The greater number of loans raised by the governments of Europe were with a view to war. Their total sum amounts to four hundred millions sterling, and these ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the public sector fiscal deficit probably remained near 10% of GDP. To some extent, Ankara is caught in a vicious fiscal circle because about half of all central government revenue is going to pay interest on the national debt. The government that took office in July 1997-headed by Prime Minister YILMAZ's Motherland Party-enacted a 1998 budget that includes substantial tax increases and cuts in non-interest spending but these gains will be offset by a jump in interest payments. ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the Treasury, exhibited through the three arduous years of that public service, no question has ever been made. The exactions of the place knew no limits. A people, wholly unaccustomed to the pressure of taxation, and with an absolute horror of a national debt, was to be rapidly subjected to the first without stint, and to be buried under a mountain of the last. Taxes which should support military operations on the largest scale, and yet not break the back of industry which alone could pay them; loans, in every form that financial skill could devise, and ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... country is, that they have no national debt, or that they shall have none in two years. This seems not very wonderful, considering their productive tariff, and that the income paid to their president is 6,000L. per annum; other government salaries being in proportion, and all internal ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... feeling. When it is recorded in history, who will believe that seven moral, well-meaning men agreed in condemning a poor lad of fifteen to a fine of five shillings, costs three-and-sixpence—a sum he could no more pay than I the National Debt, and with the alternative of three months' imprisonment, branding and contaminating for life, and destroying all self-respect? I paid the fine, so there is one act of destruction the less on the heads of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unexceptionable coat and accurate whisker might have effected in a fortnight. What were his gifts in this way, I am, alas, most deplorably ignorant of; it was not, heaven knows, that he possessed any conversational talent—of successful flattery he knew as much as a negro does of the national debt—and yet the "bon-hommie" of his character seemed to tell at once; and I never knew him fail in any one instance to establish an interest for himself before he had completed the ordinary period ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... will improve the condition of the whites, to get possession of those farms and rich lands, for one tenth of their saleable value. The profits that have accrued to the United States from the systematic plunder of the Indians, are immense, and a great portion of the national debt has been liquidated ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... wait. He's got to make his bread and butter out of that, and when it comes to growing nuts, we can't wait 40 or 50 years for a tree to come in. That might be all right for posterity, but we have got to be sure of it, or our posterity is not going to be able to pay the national debt. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... millions in which our national debt is set forth seem to have often confused the brains of our most practical arithmeticians and financiers. They seem to have felt as if these did not represent real money, but something ideal; or ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... for the printing, if I will advance for the paper, but this, you know, is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow rich! an epoch which I think will arrive at the payment of the British national debt. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... national debt couldn't calculate the number of children who are coming here on Twelfth Night, in honour of Charley's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... government nonetheless faces serious challenges in the economic arena. It has funded reconstruction by borrowing heavily - mostly from domestic banks. The re-installed HARIRI government has failed to rein in the ballooning national debt. Without large-scale international aid and rapid privatization of state-owned enterprises, markets may force a currency devaluation and debt default ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... in their desperation to perpetuate Negro Slavery created a national debt of more than three billions and stained every vale and hillside with the blood of freemen, point with ineffable horror at the extravagant financial legislation of the Reconstruction period. It may be that this much paraded extravagance amounts to more than ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... government in its executive branch. Is the President to be supported because he represents the principle of "no taxation without representation"? The object of Congress is to see to it that there shall not be a "representation" which, in respect to the national debt, shall endeavor to abolish "taxation" altogether,—which, in respect to the freedmen, shall tax permanently a population it misrepresents,—which, in respect to the balance of political power, shall use the black freemen as a basis of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... now in my one and twentieth year, and cannot command as many pounds. To Cambridge I cannot go without paying my bills, and at present I could as soon compass the National Debt; in London I must not remain, nor shall I, when I can procure a trifle to take me out of it. Home I have none; and if there was a possibility of getting out of the Country, I would gladly avail myself of it. But even that is denied me, my Debts amount to three thousand, three ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the present time, for every bicycle, omnibus and motor-lorry driving over the Philosopher Stone-paved street would instantly be changed automatically into pure gold, and the National Debt could be satisfactorily liquidated in this fashion ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... kept in pay, frightened the people with the pretended dangers of a return of the old king's family. The people were amused with this scarecrow, while the chains were silently forging to bind them with. But the great fraud, the cheat of all cheats, was what they call the national debt. And now, Jack, pray attend to me; for I am going to explain the chief cause of all the disgraces and sufferings of the labourers in England; and am also going to explain the reasons or motives which the Boroughmongers have for setting on foot this ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... of Ward's remarks and put in: "But the National debt, General—if you have all that money to spare, why don't you pay it off? Practise what you ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... was the law. If he wished to do a thing and could find the law for it, he asked for nothing more. His military advisers told him that an army must be kept in America for years. It was Grenville's business to find the money to support this army. Great Britain was burdened with a national debt. The army was to be maintained, partly, at least, for the protection of the colonists. Why should they not pay a part of the cost of maintaining it? Parliament was the supreme power in the British Empire. It controlled the king, the church, the army, and the navy. ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... the other hand, the possibility of a French invasion required the maintenance of an enormous army and militia in England, and prevented any great reduction in the expenses of the war, which had already added two hundred millions to the National Debt. Nothing was lost by making peace, except certain colonies and military positions which few were anxious to retain. The argument that England could at any moment recover what she now surrendered was indeed a far sounder one than ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... held to the reins. Had they used their power in the public interest, that would have been submitted to, but they did not—they abused their power for their own interests. They multiplied offices, increased salaries, grabbed the public lands, and laid the foundation of a national debt by borrowing money. There were instances of stealing of public funds, with no punishment following. Farmers became restless under an iniquitous administration of public lands. The discontent, which was as wide as the province, was taken ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... standing on the account to the credit of either Exchequer, and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid into that Exchequer, and where any sum so payable into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners, that sum may be paid to those Commissioners without being paid into the Exchequer. (5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... stem which swells into a bulbous form. Turnips have not been cultivated in England, in fields, more than a century; but this agricultural practice now yields an annual return which probably exceeds the interest of our national debt.—Sir Walter Scott. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... Whether the bank proposed to be established in Ireland, under the notion of a national bank, by the voluntary subscription of three hundred thousand pounds, to pay off the national debt, the interest of which sum to be paid the subscribers, subject to certain terms of redemption, be not in reality a private bank, as those of England and Scotland, which are national only in name, being in the hands of particular persons, and making dividends ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... loves the constitution, as he ought to do; for has it not done well for him and his forefathers? And has it not kept the mob in their places, spite of the French Revolution? And taken care of the National Debt? And has it not taught us all to "fear God and honor the king;" and given the family estate to him, the church to his brother Ned, and put Fred and George into the army and navy? Could there possibly be a better constitution, if the Whigs could but let it alone with their Reform Bills? And, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... insidious attacks upon whatever feature of the war-policy of the Administration chances at the moment to be uppermost in the public mind, a liberal collection of incidents illustrating the horrors of war, abundant abuse of army-contractors, appalling estimates of our probable national debt, enthusiastic commendation of the skill of Southern officers and the bravery of Southern soldiers, extravagant laudation of some Federal commander who has disobeyed the orders of his superior and conducted a campaign in such a manner as not to annoy or alarm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... is become of this Sinking Fund—these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... securities—obstacles, like mountains, lying in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country ask us for a scheme to pay off the national debt—there she has it; do you request us to have the kindness to leap over the moon—here we go; excellent Mr Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is in his hand, promotive of the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the question of what has been done with the taxes, it is sufficient to select one fact for comment—the enormous reduction in the National Debt. Here are the figures:— ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... extreme severity. In England, at the close of the great French war, the propertied classes, who were supreme in Parliament, at once rebelled against the Tory Government, and refused to prolong the income tax even for a single year. We talked big, both then and now, about the payment of our national debt; but sixty-three years have since elapsed, all of them except two called years of peace, and we have reduced the huge total by about one ninth; that is to say, by little over one hundred millions, or scarcely more than one million and a half ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... of the National Debt? Repudiation is no less dishonourable in a people than in an individual, and the penalty for failure to respect the sanctity of obligations is no different for a nation than for ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... Rights Vindicated," and pleaded for "a return to the ancient and constitutional practice of Edward III." and the election of annual Parliaments. Long Parliaments were the root of all social political evil, Cartwright argued. War, national debt, distress, depopulation, land out of cultivation, Parliamentary debate itself become a mockery—these calamities were all due to long Parliaments; and would be cured if once a year—on June 1st—a fresh ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... as to create an apprehension that the duties on imports could not without extensive mischief be reduced in season to prevent the accumulation of a considerable surplus after the payment of the national debt. In view of the dangers of such a surplus, and in preference to its application to internal improvements in derogation of the rights and powers of the States, the suggestion of an amendment of the Constitution to authorize its distribution was made. It was an alternative ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... which are necessary to turn to a good account the inherent bravery of its soldiers and frequent skill of its commanders, that is the cause of the long duration of our Continental wars, and of three-fourths of the national debt which now oppresses the empire, and, in its ultimate results, will endanger its existence. The national forces are, by the cry for economy and reduction which invariably is raised in peace, reduced to so low an ebb, that it is only by successive additions, made in many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... arrayed against State, while the world looked on aghast at the strange and bloody spectacle. The final result has been the emancipation of the slaves, and their endowment with all the rights and privileges of American citizens. But with this has come a frightful national debt, the destruction of that feeling of common interest and patriotism, which is the strongest security of a country; a contempt for the Constitution, the concentration of power in the hands of Congress, small regard for State rights, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... stomachs and pick their pockets: everything now is imposition; I really think the very pills are not what they were thirty years ago. How people with families continue to live is a mystery to me; and people still going on marrying, in the face of national debt, taxes, a new war, a starving population, ruined commerce, and no outlet for young men in any quarter—God only knows what is to be the end of all this! In spite of all this, these thoughtless young creatures, the Truemans, have thought proper to make out their marriage; ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... collected tracts, Spence observes that the high price of corn was the cause of 'all our wealth and prosperity during the war.' The causes of the high price ('assisted,' he admits, 'by occasional bad seasons') were the 'national debt, in other words, taxation,' which raised the price, first, of necessaries, and then of luxuries (thus, he says, 'neutralising its otherwise injurious effects'), and the virtual monopoly by the agriculturist ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... that gold dust twin with his swell bathing suit and his waterproof mackinaw was going to lose his roll in the water. He carried it loose in his mackinaw pocket—a camper, mind you. He had a wad big enough to pay off the national debt, and I knew it would tumble out and it did. Skinny's one of those poor little codgers that's always unlucky. He happened to be there. He happened to have a key. He happened to go to the house-boat. I got hold of his tracks just because I ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... pounds, which is now annually wasted, is a sum as great as was spent in seven years upon all the railways of the kingdom—in the very heyday of railway projects; a sum so vast, that if saved annually, for seven years, would blot out the national debt!" Another writer says, "that in the year 1865, over L6,000,000, or a tenth part of the whole national revenue, was required to support her paupers." Dr. Lees, of London, in speaking of Ireland, says: "Ireland has been a poor nation from want of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... increases in wealth much more rapidly than any other country of Europe, the value of these statistics may be estimated, as proving how readily our national debt can be extinguished without ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... would be ready, when the final pressure came, to repudiate her heavy public debt. Another equally vivacious informant stated that, besides the 32 million pounds of colonial borrowing, "the municipal debts were at least as much more as the national debt." Now this is six times overstated for municipal and harbour debts together. No doubt the actual case is bad enough, for New Zealand has far over-borrowed. But as to repudiation, there is not a hint or notion of it in any responsible ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... The progress of the nation was wonderful. Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. Though the war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, the burden was hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that country, and industry, as we have seen, had begun that great career which was to make England the workshop of the world. To deal wisely with such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... one of the Powers of Europe give for this favored section? The treasures of the continent would be opened. Nations would unlock the caskets of their crown jewels to secure it. England would double her national debt to have it; so would France; so would Russia. And yet we stand here higgling over these little differences which alone have caused our separation. Is it not better that we should rise to the level of the occasion, and meet the requisition of the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Wiltshire, Somersetshire, Hampshire and Surrey, besides having the Customs of England mortgaged to him, and the cocket of the Port of Southampton with its dependencies,—an indebtedness of the State which is so far interesting as being the foundation of our National Debt. ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and object of the organizations," he said, "are the embarrassment of the Government of the United States in the proper administration of the affairs of the county, and if possible, to repudiate the national debt, or to gain such an ascendency in Congress as to make provision for the assumption by Congress of the debt incurred by the rebel government; also, in case the United States Government can be involved in a foreign war to watch their opportunity and take advantage of the first that ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Horton says that on the basis of prices "The national debt, regarded as a principal sum, has increased its weight upon the shoulders of the British taxpayer between 1875 and 1885 by nearly two hundred millions sterling, an amount nearly equal ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... bad Ministers have contracted the National Debt. This cannot be; for instead of contracting it at all, bad Ministers have most materially ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... has his scheme for the relief of the general distress, agricultural and all. Baring hints, but he only hints, at something tangible, he hints that rents should be lowered, and his brother stock-jobber, Ricardo, proposes then to pay off the national debt, by making the land-holders pay down at once 15 per cent. upon the value of their estates. The Honourable Members stare with astonishment at the propositions of these wise law-givers—and well they may. Although the "game may be up;" although ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... find that this is a gross misrepresentation. What happened was essentially this. England, under the guidance of the elder Pitt, had been waging a great and most successful war, which left her with an enormously extended Empire, but also with an addition of more than seventy millions to her National Debt. That debt was now nearly one hundred and forty millions, and England was reeling under the taxation it required. The war had been waged largely in America, and its most brilliant result was the conquest ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of Representatives, and as Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant's Administration, he had, of course, a large influence upon our financial history. He saw very early the importance of devoting every resource of the country to the reduction of the National debt. It was not with him, as I understand it, a question whether a little saving could be made in the way of taxes by postponing the payment until the rate of interest should be less or the National resources greater. He saw that it was ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... wasted in trying to teach music to unmusical people would pay our national debt twice over, and leave a competency for every ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
