Hence the embarrassments of private fortunes, and the daily bankruptcies, arising from a universal fondness for appearance and expensive pleasures; and hence, in some degree, the mismanagement of public business; for habits of business, and ability in it, are acquired only by practice; and, where universal dissipation and the perpetual pursuit of amusement are the mode, the youth educated in it can rarely afterwards acquire that patient attention and close application to affairs, which are so necessary to a statesman charged with the care of national welfare. Hence their frequent errors in policy, and hence the weariness at public councils, and backwardness in going to them, the constant unwillingness to engage in any measure that requires thought and consideration, and the readi ness for postponing every new proposition; which postponing is therefore the only part of business they come to be expert in, an expertness produced necessarily by so much daily practice. Whereas, in America, men bred to close employment in their private affairs attend with ease to those of the public when engaged in them, and nothing fails through negligence.

3. Respecting frugality; the manner of living in America is more simple and less expensive than in England; plain tables, plain clothing, and plain furniture in houses prevail, with few carriages of pleasure. There an expensive appearance hurts credit, and is avoided; in England it is often assumed to gain credit, and continued to ruin. Respecting public affairs, the dif ference is still greater. In England the salaries of officers and emoluments of office are enormous. The King has a million sterling per annum, and yet cannot maintain his family free of debt; secretaries of state, lords of the treasury, admiralty, &c., have vast appointments; an auditor of the exchequer has sixpence in the pound,

or a fortieth part, of all the public money expended by the nation, so that, when a war costs forty millions, one million is paid to him; an inspector of the mint, in the last new coinage, received as his fee £65,000 sterling per annum; to all which rewards no service these gentlemen can render the public is by any means equivalent. All this is paid by the people, who are oppressed by taxes so occasioned, and thereby rendered less able to contribute to the payment of necessary national debts. In America, salaries, where indispensable, are extremely low; but much of the public business is done gratis. The honor of serving the public ably and faithfully is deemed sufficient. Public spirit really exists there, and has great effects. In England it is universally deemed a nonentity, and whoever pretends to it is laughed at as a fool, or suspected as a knave. The committees of Congress, which form the board of war, the board of treasury, the board of foreign affairs, the naval board, that for accounts, &c., all attend the business of their respective functions without any salary or emolument whatever, though they spend in it much more of their time, than any lord of the treasury or admiralty in England can spare from his amusements. A British minister lately computed, that the whole expense of the Americans in their civil government, over three millions of people, amounted to but £70,000 sterling, and drew from thence a conclusion, that they ought to be taxed, until their expense was equal in proportion to that which it costs Great Britain to govern eight millions. He had no idea of a contrary conclusion, that, if three millions may be well governed for £70,000, eight millons may be as well governed for three times that sum, and that therefore the expense of his own government should

be diminished. In that corrupted nation, no man is ashamed of being concerned in lucrative government jobs, in which the public money is egregiously misapplied and squandered, the treasury pillaged, and more numerous and heavy taxes accumulated, to the great oppression of the people. But the prospect of a greater number of such jobs by a war is an inducement with many to cry out for war upon all occasions, and to oppose every proposition of peace. Hence the constant increase of the national debt, and the absolute improbability of its ever being discharged.

4. Respecting the amount and certainty of income, and solidity of security; the whole thirteen States of America are engaged for the payment of every debt contracted by the Congress, and the debt to be contracted by the present war is the only debt they will have to pay; all, or nearly all, the former debts of particular colonies being already discharged. Whereas England will have to pay, not only the enormous debt this war must occasion, but all their vast preceding debt, or the interest of it; and, while America is enriching itself by prizes made upon the British commerce, more than it ever did by any commerce of its own, under the restraints of a British monopoly, Britain is growing poorer by the diminution of its revenues, and of course less able to discharge the present indiscreet increase of its expenses.

5. Respecting prospects of greater future ability, Britain has none such. Her islands are circumscribed by the ocean; and, excepting a few parks or forests, she has no new land to cultivate, and cannot therefore extend her improvements. Her numbers, too, instead of increasing from increased subsistence, are continually diminishing from growing luxury, and the in

creasing difficulties of maintaining families, which of course discourage early marriages. Thus she will have fewer people to assist in paying her debts, and that diminishing number will be poorer. America, on the contrary, has, besides her lands already cultivated, a vast territory yet to be cultivated; which, being cultivated, continually increases in value with the increase of people; and the people, who double themselves by a natural propagation every twenty-five years, will double yet faster by the accession of strangers, as long as lands are to be had for new families; so that every twenty years there will be a double number of inhabitants obliged to discharge the public debts; and those inhabitants, being more opulent, may pay their shares with greater ease.

6. Respecting prudence in general affairs, and the advantages to be expected from the loan desired, the Americans are cultivators of land; those engaged in fishery and commerce are few, compared with the others. They have ever conducted their several governments with wisdom, avoiding wars and vain, expensive projects, delighting only in their peaceable occupations, which must, considering the extent of their uncultivated territory, find them employment still for ages. Whereas England, ever unquiet, ambitious, avaricious, imprudent, and quarrelsome, is half of the time engaged in war, always at an expense infinitely greater than the advantages to be obtained by it, if successful. Thus they made war against Spain in 1739, for a claim of about £ 95,000, (scarce a groat for each individual of the nation), and spent forty millions sterling in the war, and the lives of fifty thousand men; and finally made peace without obtaining satisfaction for the sum claimed. Indeed, there is

scarce a nation in Europe, against which she has not made war on some frivolous pretext or other, and thereby imprudently accumulated a debt, that has brought her on the verge of bankruptcy. But the most indiscreet of all her wars is the present against America, with whom she might for ages have preserved her profitable connexion only by a just and equitable conduct. She is now acting like a mad shop-keeper, who, by beating those that pass his doors, attempts to make them come in and be his customers. America cannot submit to such treatment, without being first ruined, and, being ruined, her custom will be worth nothing. England, to effect this, is increasing her debt, and irretrievably ruining herself. America, on the other hand, aims only to establish her liberty, and that freedom of commerce which will be advantageous to all Europe; and, by abolishing that monopoly which she labored under, she will profit infinitely more than enough to repay any debt, which she may contract to accomplish it.

7. Respecting character in the honest payment of debts, the punctuality with which America has discharged her public debts was shown under the first head. And the general good disposition of the people to such punctuality has been manifested in their faithful payment of private debts to England, since the commencement of this war. There were not wanting some politicians (in America), who proposed stopping that payment, until peace should be restored, alleging, that in the usual course of commerce, and of the credit given, there was always a debt existing equal to the trade of eighteen months; that, the trade amounting to five millions sterling per annum, the debt must be seven millions and a half; that this sum paid to the