What are the chief sources of expense in every government? What has
occasioned that enormous accumulation of debts with which several of the
European nations are oppressed? The answers plainly is, wars and
rebellions; the support of those institutions which are necessary to
guard the body politic against these two most mortal diseases of
society. The expenses arising from those institutions which are relative
to the mere domestic police of a state, to the support of its
legislative, executive, and judicial departments, with their different
appendages, and to the encouragement of agriculture and manufactures
(which will comprehend almost all the objects of state expenditure), are
insignificant in comparison with those which relate to the national
defense.
In the kingdom of Great Britain, where all the ostentatious apparatus of
monarchy is to be provided for, not above a fifteenth part of the annual
income of the nation is appropriated to the class of expenses last
mentioned; the other fourteen fifteenths are absorbed in the payment of
the interest of debts contracted for carrying on the wars in which that
country has been engaged, and in the maintenance of fleets and armies.
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