"National debt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intermediate 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
... the butt of unjust insinuations by some unscrupulous barrister, or the object of the lofty, moral indignation of the bench! Yet he felt bound, by every law of honor, to pay these men two hundred pounds. He might as well be asked to clear off the national debt. Now and again he paused in his walk, and, leaning on his umbrella, scrutinized the ground in anxious reverie; then he lifted up his eyes to the far horizon, beneath whose thin and misty line boat and captain were sleeping. Then he went on, trying in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... years the sum of L4,750,000 had been allotted to the Sinking Fund for the payment of the National Debt; and a further sum of L674,592, accruing from the interest of stock and expired annuities, had gone towards the same object—a crushing retort to the taunts of Fox and Sheridan, that the Sinking Fund was ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... merely on the charity of the remainder, who were, for the most part, unable to engage in any profitable business, all foreign commerce being at an end, and supported themselves therefore on the capital which they had previously acquired; and, lest that capital should escape, two-thirds of the national debt of Holland were struck off by a single decree of Napoleon. The population of the town fell off about 20,000 during the time of its connection with France; the taxes, while the two countries were incorporated, were enormous; the income-tax, which was independent of the droits reunis, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... beyond it; for if we suppose ten millions of dollars, in specie, a year, to be necessary for their support, then the expense, till the close of the campaign of 1779, must have amounted to upwards of fifty millions, exclusive of the supplies from Europe; and yet, in March, 1780, the whole national debt contracted in America did not, in fact, amount to five millions; so that forty five millions were paid by the United States in those five years of the war, when they had the least commerce and agriculture, and when they were most distressed ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... confiscation is a boon only for the clergy: to the lawyers some appearances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receive compensation to an immense amount. Their compensation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhaustless fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation in the new Church paper, which is to march with the new principles of judicature and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... Hamilton's statement of his case to the world. The debt exceeded $76,000,000, a sum that bore as great a proportion to the revenues of the country seventy years since as the debt of to-day bears to our present resources. As Hamilton was no believer in the absurd doctrine that "a national debt is a national blessing," we need say no more than that he dwelt with emphasis on the necessity of providing for the debt's payment. It is important to mention that he declared government could not rightfully tax its promises ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... satisfactory reports, and time passed on quietly enough in spite of certain manifestations of discontent among the population. These disturbing phenomena were first brought prominently to my notice at the time when I became involved in the fortunes of the Aureataland national debt, and as all my story turns on this incident, it perhaps is a fit subject for a ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... and am not yet cured of my prejudice on that subject. How many projectors have gone mad in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea: the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off the national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis; but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking as usual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to control or ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... 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 paper money ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... tide began to set towards reform. The renewed oppression of the Continent by the old reigning families, the countenance apparently given by the English Government to the conspiracy against liberty called the Holy Alliance, and the enormous weight of the national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and costly a war, rendered the government and parliament very unpopular. Radicalism, under the leadership of the Burdetts and Cobbetts, had assumed a character and importance which seriously alarmed ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... states was in debt for money and supplies used in the war; and over the whole country hung a great debt contracted by the old Congress. Part of this national debt was represented by bills of credit, loan-office certificates, lottery certificates, and many other sorts of promises to pay, which had become almost worthless. This was strictly true of the bills of credit ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... our superior position might not be compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf, in to which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were dropped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of any personal ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... by kings or demagogues. One of the most popular commonplaces of the day was the mischief of luxury. That we were all on the high road to ruin on account of our wealth, our corruption, and the growth of the national debt, was the text of any number of political agitators. The whole of this talk was, to his mind, so much whining and cant. Luxury did no harm, and the mass of the people, as indeed was in one sense obvious enough, had only too little ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... National Debt. He wondered if a million more or less would make any real difference. There would be questions asked in committees about it. He tried to imagine himself explaining the evening to a group of Congressmen. "Well, you see, gentlemen, there ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... 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 to the Franco-German ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... not be good policy for the general government to assume all the wild lands in the rebellious States, and to devote the proceeds of their sale to actual settlers to the payment of the national debt, is worth consideration. Texas alone, on whose public lands our assumption of her indebtedness gives us an equitable claim, would suffice to secure our liabilities and to lighten our taxation, and in all cases of land granted to freedmen no title should vest till a fair price ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... like an ossified man or a turtle-boy," said the Emperor to Bertrand, as the curious visitors gaped awe-stricken at the caged lion. "If I only had a few pictures of myself to sell these people I could buy up the national debt, foreclose the mortgage, and go back to France ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... effective in Brazil. It has been said that that republic is become a dependency of Germany. What cannot be gainsaid is that about one-third of Brazil's national debt[5] is owing to German bankers, and the whole financial and industrial movement of the country is swayed by the Society of Colonization which is German, by the German Society for Mutual Protection, by the German-Brazilian ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that the 'Baronet' will be 'California without cholera, and gold without danger'; while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his 'tongue is not for falsehood framed,' though we should think it was framed for nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the national debt. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... of this morning demand me. If it had not been for our chase, I should have quitted immediately. The minister cannot pay the interest on the national debt; not an unprecedented circumstance, and has applied to us. I never permit any business of State to be transacted without my personal interposition; and so I must ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister. Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... move the man of blood and iron. For five fearful days they had wrestled with the problem of the 5,000,000,000—and had lost! Bismarck had his own banker, the Jew Bleichroder, to show that after all the indemnity would be adding 'only about one-fourth' to France's national debt." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Plato would cost you fivepence, Aristotle would be shocking; and in decency you must put him into Latin, which would add twopence more to every volume. On a library like that of Dresden or the Vatican, it would raise a national debt to letter the books. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... National Bank was rapidly passing from the political stage; and the tariff was no longer a troublesome factor in public life. The receipts of the Treasury had steadily outrun the expenses, and in 1834 the last of the national debt was paid. Since the income was almost certain to continue great, Jackson was at a loss what to do. Henry Clay urged a simple distribution among the States. The President feared the effect of this, and vetoed a bill to that effect; he even proposed that the Federal Government should buy ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... that we should go on increasing the national debt to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government. This would be a most ruinous policy. In case of war our credit must be our chief resource, at least for the first year, and this would be greatly impaired by having contracted a large debt ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... war-torn physical and financial infrastructure. The 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
... independence. Nobody would accept office in the new courts, and the administration of justice was at a standstill. A loan was thrown upon the market, but the public could not be persuaded to take it up. It was impossible to collect the taxes. The interest on the national debt was unpaid, and the fundholder was dismayed and exasperated by an announcement that only two-fifths would be discharged in cash. A very large part of the national debt was held in the form of annuities for lives, and men who had invested their savings on the credit of the government, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... 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
... too sure of that. They haven't even got a national debt. That's one of the first things we'll provide for. They're a most primitive people. Just think of their existing up to the present time without a national debt! They're ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... that the business "winked out," as Lincoln whimsically expressed it, leaving the conscientious junior partner saddled with the obligations of the former owners of two country stores, and owing an amount so large that Lincoln often referred to it as "the national debt." William Berry, the senior partner, who was equally responsible, "drank himself to death," leaving Lincoln alone to ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... luke-warmly, interested in politics. He liked to talk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that his condition would somehow be improved if we could get to a specie basis. He was, in fact, a little troubled by the national debt; it seemed to press on him somehow, while his own never did. He exhibited more animation over the affairs of the government than he did over his own,—an evidence at once of his disinterestedness and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... legislation favoring the English tenant-farmers, and improving the condition of workingmen in towns. Even after Disraeli's death, Lord Salisbury continued his domestic policy, instituting local government by means of county councils in 1888, making the schools free in 1891, and refunding the national debt in 1888. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... formed the standing armies of each clan. The central government assumed all the payments to the samurai for services of whatever kind. This heavy charge of the government was met by borrowing $165,000,000,(334) which was added to the national debt. With this sum they undertook to capitalize the pensions, which was finally accomplished by a compulsory enactment. Each claimant received from the government interest-bearing bonds for the amount of his income reckoned at from five to fourteen years' purchase according ...
— Japan • David Murray
... charges of the national debt, including the sinking fund, are now little short of L40 millions a year; and these L40 millions, if we completely succeed in the reduction of the price of corn and labour, are to be paid in future from a revenue of about half the nominal value ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus
... The Commission would abolish congressional limitations on the size of the national debt—so that the debt could go as high as the President pleased, without ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... a government charge. Only a certain number of mature trees may be removed each year, and many are planted for each one removed—in the aggregate, several million each year. In the United States, where the value of the growing timber destroyed by fire each year nearly equals the national debt, not very much has been done to either check the ravage or to reforest the denuded areas. Many of the States, however, encourage tree-planting. In several, Arbor Day is ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... 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, where the precious metal could be dealt in; while for dealings ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 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 ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the triumphant manner in which she uttered "cash down," it was as if she had said, I paid the national debt. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... issued huge loans which will impose heavy burdens on future generations; and the yield of the first loans has already been spent or pledged. The first loan issued by the British Government was nearly twice the national debt of the United States; and it is supposed that its proceeds will be all spent before next Summer. Germany has already spent $1,600,000,000 since the war broke out—all unproductively and most of it for destruction. She will soon have to issue her second great loan. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... success. His skill and tenacity 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 warriors, nor good ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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 ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... taken down. His soul was engrossed by the contemplation of the wonderful event which was daily developing itself in France. Bankruptcy had brought on the crisis. In August, 1788, the interest was not paid on the national debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Siyes, who well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... it will effect a great impetus to our petroleum trade. Pit-Hole, Tack, and Oil Creek stock will go up exceedingly, and an immense revenue will thereby accrue to the numerous possessors of oil lands, who will be able to pay such a large tax that the national debt can be paid off at once. Besides that, the patent hermetical barrel trade, and numerous other industries connected with the oil trade, will prosper at an unprecedented rate, to the great benefit ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... in the world was the American refusal to accept any responsibility, for themselves or for the Cubans, on account of the so-called Cuban debt. The principle asserted from the outset by the American Commissioners, and finally maintained, in negotiating the Peace of Paris, was that a national debt incurred in efforts to subdue a colony, even if called a colonial debt, or secured by a pledge of colonial revenues, cannot be attached in the nature of a mortgage to the territory of that colony, so that when the colony gains its independence ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... 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, ...
— 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 Sir Francis Dashwood, his ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... 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, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Imperial Government to settle itself. The debts discharged for them and the outlays incurred might, it is true, be charged to them. They could not be repaid, of course, for the same reason that you cannot get blood from stone; and the amount would, therefore, be a National Debt, which was exactly what they had been trying for years to incur, and the condition of their credit had made it impossible ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... reorganization of Anglo-Irish finances which should provide for a large reduction of Irish Civil expenditure, the saving to be devoted, on Sir David Barbour's principle, to Irish purposes, and for a fixed contribution from Ireland to the Army, Navy, National Debt, etc. How Lord Welby, consistently with his previous argument, could count upon any reduction of expenditure in Ireland under the existing political system it is difficult to see. At any rate, subsequent events proved both him and Sir David Barbour signally ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... would pay into the English sinking fund L100,000 annually for one hundred years; which would be more than sufficient, if "faithfully and inviolably applied for that purpose, ... to extinguish all her present national debt." ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... 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 the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... a laughable comparison between the paying off or purification of the national debt and the purification of ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... views being to the effect that New Zealand 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 quarter whatever, any more than with regard to our British ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... 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 ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... 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 year and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a long 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 morning and find yourself a brick ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... multi- millionaire. He was a hard, determined, shrewd man of affairs, the last man in the world to show anything like sentimentalism, and as he said something advising an investment in the newly created National debt, I answered, "You are not, then, one of those who believe that our new debt will be repudiated?'' He answered: "Repudia- tion or no repudiation, I am putting everything I can rake and scrape together into National bonds, to help ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... a 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
... this famous scheme for reducing the National Debt, projected by Sir John Blunt, who became one of the Directors of it, and ultimately one of the greatest sufferers by it, when the Bubble burst, see Smollett's "History of England," vol. ii; Pope's "Moral Essays," Epist. iii, and notes; and Gibbon's "Memoirs," for the violent and ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... of 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 in later years, though in those ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... patterns, originally excellent, deteriorate continually, till little or no likeness to their living prototype remains, being tied by town girls, who have no more understanding of what the feathers and mohair in their hands represent than they have of what the National Debt represents. Hence follows many a failure at the stream-side; because the "Caperer," or "Dun," or "Yellow Sally," which is produced from the fly-book, though, possibly, like the brood which came out three years since on some stream a hundred miles away, is quite unlike the brood which ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... country—one hears different per cents discussed; some declare that ten per cent is enough, while others hold that it will require 25 per cent. This confiscatory tax is to be collected when any piece of property changes hands, and the accruing sum is to be used for paying off the national debt, or a considerable portion of it at once. The situation is completely changed from that which followed the Napoleonic wars, where war taxes fell largely upon labour. So in self-preservation, capital is considering turning over a part of its ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... was won in India by Clive; the victory of Minden (1759) was gained in the Seven Years' War; Methodism sprang up under Wesley and Whitfield; while a great development in literature and art took place; against these, however, must be set the doubling of the National Debt, mainly due to the Seven Years' War, and a defeat by the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... kept in fee like Sayer, and all 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 Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... on the Shores of Lake Superior Albert D. Hagar 308 Modern Improvements and our National Debt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the spirited administration of Adams came to an end. He had favored the payment of the national debt; he had dared to anticipate the future, to impose taxes and provide ships; he had aided the formation of a military academy and advocated a system of coast-defence, and had boldly asserted our national rights against the French Republic; and yet he loved peace so well, that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Annuities[466] (4to, 726 pages, 1783) is a strange paradox. Its size, the heavy dissertations on the national debt, and the depth of algebra supposed known, put it out of the question as an elementary work, and it is unfitted for the higher student by its elaborate attempt at elementary character, shown in its ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... 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
... which men rarely think except when it is impaired, and much that has been written on the subject has been written under the stress of some great depression. Such writers are like the man in Hogarth's picture occupying himself in the debtors' prison with plans for the payment of the National Debt. There are moments when all of us feel the force of the words of Voltaire: 'Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... thought): The moment you allow the national debt to mount, you entail burdens on posterity and augment the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... wasted in trying to teach music to unmusical people would pay our national debt twice over, and leave a competency for every orphan ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... minimum not exceeding 500l. a year. State appropriation of railways with or without compensation. The establishment of national banks which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. Rapid extinction of the National Debt. Nationalisation of the land and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on co-operative principles. By these measures a healthy, independent, and thoroughly educated people will steadily grow up around us, ready ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... rules of Westminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been applied to the titles by which flourishing cities and provinces are held, or the maxims of the law merchant to those promissory notes which are the securities for a great National Debt, raised for the purpose of exterminating the Pindarrees and humbling ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to that of a pound sterling; the person who, under the old denomination, had borrowed twenty shillings, or near four ounces of silver, would, under the new, pay with twenty sixpences, or with something less than two ounces. A national debt of about a hundred and twenty-eight millions, near the capital of the funded and unfunded debt of Great Britain, might, in this manner, be paid with about sixty-four millions of our present money. It would, indeed, be ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Contagious Diseases Act, Army Reform on a vast scale, Female Equality with Men in the Eye of the Law, overthrow of Landlords' predominance.... I wonder whether abolition of Foreign Embassies must precede a serious grapple with the National Debt. I doubt whether any nominally free State ever had such an Augean Stable left to it by forty years' eminently active legislation. "In corruptissima Republica plurimae leges," sounds like it. Without carving England and Ireland into States, I do not ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... 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
... basis of their loan of ten million pounds to the Government and conferred upon them the monopoly of the English trade with the Indies. In spite of these advantages, however, the South Sea Company found itself so hampered and limited in credit that it offered to convert the national debt into a "single redeemable obligation" to the company in return for a monopoly of British foreign trade outside England. The immediate and spectacular effect of that offer is reflected in the many descriptions, both serious and satiric, of an era of speculation which to many generations might ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... true of the interest and principal of the national debt. The revenue is raised from a levy upon importations, as, for example, tea, the tax on which is ten cents per pound. The tax is collected from the importer and by him attached to the price for which it is sold to the wholesale dealer and by him attached ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... things as is alvays a-fluctooatin', and gettin' theirselves inwolved somehow or another vith the national debt, and the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... rich as Scipio; Scipio was not so rich as Crassus; and Crassus was not so rich—as he wished to be!" If John Bull were once contented, Manchester might shut up its mills. It is the "little more" that makes a mere trifle of the National Debt!—Long life ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... agitation for a still more daring purpose. It will be asked why must the system of English life be artificial?—Because we have twenty-eight millions sterling of interest to pay, and for this we must have taxes. But, why not sweep the national debt away, as France did in her day of royal overthrow? A single sitting of the Convention settled that question. Why not follow the example? Then will come the desperate expedient, and all will be ruin on the heads of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... be lulling 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 sale of countless numbers of "my ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... not surpass, those of Peel, and are not tarnished, as in the case of Pitt, by the recollection of burdensome wars. To no minister can so large a share in promoting the commercial and industrial prosperity of modern England, and in the reduction of her national debt, be ascribed. ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... trade, as a branch of it is called, is just the portion of it which is indebted to them the most. But Clara had not patience to hear any more of the unintelligible jargon which has got possession of the world to-day, much as Mr. Pitt's celebrated sinking-fund scheme for paying off the national debt of Great Britain did, half a century since, and under very much the same influences; and she desired her friend to come at once to the point, as connected with ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a million francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy bread for the starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in writing, that this "national debt of France" ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... a sop cleverly pushed into the jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt republic or monarchy down their throats; even if the loan has been floated, as Couture says, to pay the interest on that very same national debt. Nobody can complain. These are the real principles of the present ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... 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, ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... condition of the country. On that old problem of the economists, "What is a pound?" Lord D'ABERNON delivered an erudite discourse, from which I gathered that it was at present about ten shillings and still shrinking. The only comfort is that at that rate the National Debt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... in Honolulu that the building of this hotel cost two of the late king's cabinet, Mr. Harris and Dr. Smith, their places. The Hawaiian people are economical, and not very enterprising; they dislike debt, and a considerable part of the Hawaiian national debt was contracted to build this hotel. You will feel sorry for Messrs. Harris and Smith, who were for many years two of the ablest members of the Hawaiian cabinet, but you will feel grateful for their enterprise also, when you hear that before this hotel ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... of France, Holland and England is unfit for publication. Looking over the diary, it is instructive to observe how little reference is made to music. One or two of the entries are plainly memoranda of purchases to be made for friends. There is one note about the National Debt of England, another about the trial of Warren Hastings. London, we learn, has 4000 carts for cleaning the streets, and consumes annually 800,000 cartloads of coals. That scandalous book, the Memoirs of Mrs Billington, which had just been published, forms the subject of a long entry. "It is said ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... 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 ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... will continue; if, afterwards, he thinks of making an alteration, he requires a report on that too. If he has to renew Exchequer bills, or operate anyhow in the City, he takes the opinion, oral or written, of the ablest and most responsible person at the National Debt Office, and the ablest and most responsible at the Treasury. Mr. Gladstone, by far the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer of this generation, one of the very greatest of any generation, has often gone out of his way to express ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... things were all along, they could not deceive him. "I can see if other people can't; I can see, if the ministry take the lead, they won't be behind hand." This man found out the only scheme that ever could be invented for paying off the national debt; the scheme that he found out, he discovered to ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... in his bold and honest address, has stated that the expenditures of the government for twenty years, ending 1836, have been four hundred and twenty millions of dollars; of which one hundred and thirty were dedicated to the payment of the national debt. Of the remainder, two hundred and ten millions were expended in the northern, and eighty millions in the southern states. Suppose this Union to be severed, I rather guess the government expenditure of what is now about fifteen ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... good and useful speech from Lord Goderich on the funded and expended debt. He showed that the receipt from taxes was about the same as in 1816, although 9 millions had been taken off, and that the interest of the National Debt would, in 1831, be reduced 44 millions below its amount ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... the year, but fresh disturbances in Yucatan prevented Santa Anna from executing his projects. Texas is, therefore, by no means secure, its population is decreasing, and those who had respectability attached to their character have left it. I hardly need observe that the Texian national debt, now amounting to thirteen millions of dollars, may, for many reasons, turn out to be not a very profitable ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... touching their hats and saying "Sir." Also stations are of all sizes, and the man who is considered quite a big squatter in the settled districts is thought small potatoes by the magnate "out back," who shears a hundred and fifty thousand sheep, and has an overdraft like the National Debt. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... United States entered the war, she entered it as an ally of powers that were economically winded. She herself was fresh. With the greatest estimated wealth of any of the warring countries, she had a public national debt of less than one half of one percent of her total wealth. She had larger quantities of liquid capital and a vast economic surplus. As a consequence, she held the purse strings and was able, during the next two years, to lend to the Allied nations nearly ten billion dollars without straining ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... commerce is known. What would not 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 times, instead ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... I should prefer, however, to do it after my own death, as anything in the shape of publicity and honour is very offensive to me. I have, therefore, put by eight hundred million in a place which shall be duly mentioned in my will, which I propose to devote to paying off the National Debt. I cannot see that any harm could arise from ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... conversed a short time upon indifferent matters, which I observed the good Bishop took especial pains to preserve clear from French politics. He asked me, however, two or three questions about the state of parties in England,—about finance and the national debt, about Ormond and Oxford; and appeared to give the most close attention to my replies. He smiled once or twice, when his relation, Madame de Balzac, broke out into sarcasms against the Jesuits, which had nothing to do ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it? At all events it is clear that the kingdom of the Prince 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 ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... for me, in a state of insolvency for the present, to be battling about gold and paper currency. It is something like the humorous touch in Hogarth's Distressed Poet, where the poor starveling of the Muses is engaged, when in the abyss of poverty, in writing an Essay on payment of the National Debt; and his wall is adorned with a plan of the mines of Peru. Nevertheless, even these fugitive attempts, from the success which they have had, and the noise they are making, serve to show the truth ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... kind, working out arithmetical calculations by means of trains of wheels and other arrangements; and that contrived by Lord Stanhope for the purpose of verifying his calculations with respect to the National Debt was of like character. But none of these will bear for a moment to be compared with the machine designed by Mr. Babbage for performing arithmetical calculations and mathematical analyses, as well as for recording the calculations when made, thereby getting rid entirely of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... 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 among Asiatic ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... England 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 ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... famous battle of the Boyne. England obtained thereby a new governor and a national debt; Ireland, fresh oppression, and an intensification of religious and political animosity, unparalleled ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... this interesting subject was referred, reported sundry resolutions, recommending it to the several states, to vest in congress permanent and productive funds adequate to the immediate payment of the interest on the national debt, and to the gradual extinction of the principal. A change in the rule by which the proportions of the different states were to be ascertained, was also recommended. In lieu of that article of the confederation which apportions ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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 subscribe myself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... no abatement. He had been very cautious in advising Englishmen about investments, but had imparted to some of them the assurance that United States Bonds were as sound as the English investment of national debt, and they profited by accepting his judgment. He insisted upon popularizing the elevated roads by a uniform fare of five cents, and had it done against strong opposition, and was more confident than ever in the stock, of which he had an enormous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... ten; and I'll give you twenty if you'll pay me at once;" added Mr Ireton—knowing very well that his victim could as easily have paid off the national debt. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... street with—a most useful asset, by the way, to 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 in ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... party in this country who is advocating repudiation, but it is not the Democratic party; it is the Republican party that is advocating it. Webster says repudiation is the act of rejecting or refusing. If a party desires to pay the national debt according to contract it certainly is not advocating repudiation, but if a party desires to violate the contract it desires to repudiate. Now, my friends, let us get right at the facts, before we can tell who the repudiators ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... other European powers, Portugal and Spain still preserved colonial empires in the West; but Spain was decaying. Great Britain had not only gained territory and prestige from the war, she had risen rich and prosperous, and a national debt of one hundred and forty million pounds ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... pauper who was kicked out of a cheap boarding-house because he could not pay his bill, but he had a roll of papers sticking out of his coat pocket, which, upon examination, proved to be his plan for paying off the national debt of England without the aid of a penny. People have got to do as Cromwell said: "not only trust in Providence, but keep the powder dry." Do your part of the work, or you cannot succeed. Mahomet, one night, ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... Trevenna. "The only difference is the scale they are on; one talks from the bench, and the other from the benches; one cheapens tins, and the other cheapens taxes; one has a salve for an incurable disease, and the other a salve for the national debt; one rounds his periods to put off a watch that won't go, and the other to cover a deficit that won't close; but they radically drive the same trade, and both are successful if the spavined mare trots out looking sound, and the people pay up. 'Look what I save you,' cry Cheap John and Chancellor; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... only in order to save their benefices. A large proportion of the country gentlemen belonged to the same party. The whole body of agricultural proprietors was hostile to that interest which the creation of the national debt had brought into notice, and which was believed to be peculiarly favoured by the Court, the monied interest. The middle classes were fully determined to keep out James and his family. But they regarded William only as the less of two evils; and, as ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... parliamentary reform, and the unrestricted liberty of the press. 'Had 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 ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... sought for in the very extensive diffusion of commercial confidence and credit. The funding system, which took place about the same, time that the Bank of England was established, may be regarded as another powerful cause of the increase of our commerce: we do not mean to contend that the national debt is a national blessing, but it is certain that the necessity of paying the interest of that debt produced exertions of industry, and improvements in manufactures, which would not otherwise, have been called ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... somewhat 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
... greatest prosperity and improvement of Great Britain has been posterior to that system of laws which is connected with the bounty, we must not upon that account, impute it to those laws. It has been posterior likewise to the national debt; but the national debt has most assuredly not been the cause ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... cheated Sally of half an hour, and spent it in rank mutiny; he compared the rose-star to the remotest of the asteroids, as seen through Lord Rosse's telescope, and instituted facetious comparisons between Miss Wimple's honorable fund and the national debt of England. It was near closing-time; Miss Wimple said, "Now, Simon, will you go?" —she had said that three times already. Some one entered. O, ho! Miss Wimple snatched away her hand:—"Now go, or never come again!" Simon glanced at the visitor,—a woman,—a stranger ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the government a loan of L1,200,000, the management of the British national debt has been confided to the Bank of England from the date of its foundation, and it has remained the banker of the government ever since. The interest on the stock in which the debt is inscribed has always been paid by the bank, originally half-yearly, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... trait in his character. Two British Regulars, it seems, a good deal muddled, one night, by liberal potations, became greatly concerned lest their beloved country should suffer dishonor in consequence of inability to discharge its national debt, and their loyal forebodings had, at length, become painful. The good-natured Captain, encountering them in their distress, at once relieved them by the remark: "I appreciate the gravity of your trouble, my dear fellows. It is, indeed, a serious one. But, happily, I can ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... a butcher shop. The people up there talk of running Hon. J.N. Brundage for Congress, on the head cheese ticket, in order that he may use his influence to get head cheese adopted as an army ration, and also as currency with which to wipe out the national debt. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... thousand payees, 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Lebanon has rebuilt much of its war-torn physical and financial infrastructure. The government nonetheless faces serious challenges in the economic arena. It has funded reconstruction by borrowing heavily - mostly from domestic banks. In order to reduce the ballooning national debt, the re-installed HARIRI government began an economic austerity program to rein in government expenditures, increase revenue collection, and privatize state enterprises. The HARIRI government met ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... one quarter. A recurrence to general indirect taxes is not to be thought of in these days of restricted currency and unrestricted importation. The only alternative is, either a reduction of the interest of the national debt, or a great increase ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... he used sometimes to conjure for us, the equally "noble art" of the prestidigitateur being among his accomplishments. He writes of this, which he included in the list of our Twelfth Night amusements, to another American friend: "The actuary of the national debt couldn't calculate the number of children who are coming here on Twelfth Night, in honor of Charlie's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the best of it is that Forster ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... with an 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)
... 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 debts ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Englishman that has the least notion, or seeks for any? The Austrian-Succession War did veritably rage for eight years, at a terrific rate, deforming the face of Earth and Heaven; the English paying the piper always, and founding their National Debt thereby:—but not even that could prove mnemonic to them; and they have dropped the Austrian-Succession War, with one accord, into the general dustbin, and are content it should lie there. They have not, in their language, the least approach to an intelligible account of it: How it went on, whitherward, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... carefully thought out. The scarlet and gold of the Troopers of the Body-guard, standing motionless as brown statues, the mace-men with their gilt standards, the entry of the Rajahs, all in full gala costume, with half the amount of our pre-war National Debt hanging round their necks in the shape of diamonds and of uncut rubies and emeralds, the Knights of the Star of India in their pale-blue mantles, the Viceroy seated on his silver-gilt throne at the top of a flight of steps, on which all the Durbar carpets of woven gold were displayed, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the company continued to flourish, while the ill success of its trading operations was concealed. Even the Spanish War of 1718 did not shake the popular confidence. Then in April, 1720, Parliament, by large majorities in both Houses, accepted the company's plan for paying the national debt, and after that a frenzy of speculation seized the nation, and the stock rose to L300 a share, and by August had reached L1,000 a share. Then Sir John Blunt, one of the leaders, sold out, others followed, and the stock began to fall. By the close of September the company stopped payment and thousands ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... 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 didn't want him ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh |
