If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our
meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our
labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the
people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor
sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of
these to the government for their debts and daily expenses;
And the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must
live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think,
no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain
subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the
necks of our fellow sufferers;
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from
principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that
second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of the society is reduced
to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for
sinning and suffering...
And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation
follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
~Thomas Jefferson
