And they are not
the mere projects of enthusiasts and theoretic dreamers. They were put
in practice on a large scale; they involved the disposal of millions
of money; and they were in operation at so late a period, that the
present generation paid heavy taxes for the purpose of carrying them
out--taxes paid for nothing better than the success of a practical
hoax.
The round hundreds of 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 perhaps we might
say, they have treated them like certain results of the operation of
figures which might be neutralised by others, as the equivalents on
the two sides of an equation exhaust each other. We never hear of a
man trying to pay his own personal debts otherwise than with money,
but we have had hundreds of projects for paying the national debt
without money, and generally through some curious and ingenious
arithmetical process. We might perhaps amuse our readers by an account
of some of these, for to their absurdity there are no bounds; but we
adhere in the meantime to our engagement, to shew that on this subject
even the practical projects of statesmen of our own day have been
ridiculous.
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