THE CORRUPTION MACHINE
John Taylor of Caroline exposed how a national debt creates a self-perpetuating system of corruption.
“A spell is put upon our understandings by the words ‘publick faith and national credit,’ which fascinates us into an opinion, that fraud, corruption and oppression, constitute national credit; and debt and slavery, publick faith.”
Taylor then revealed how debt corrupts the entire legislative process.
“A legislature, in a nation where the system of paper and patronage prevails, will be governed by that interest, and legislate in its favour.”
Once captured by creditors, legislators turn government into a jobs program for themselves and their cronies.
“Such a legislature will create unnecessary offices, that themselves or their relations may be endowed with them. They will lavish the revenue, to enrich themselves.”
Most insidious of all, they make themselves the middlemen in their own debt scheme:
“They will borrow for the nation, that they may lend. They will offer lenders great profits, that they may share in them.”
Benjamin Rush, in a letter to James Madison, laid out the true consequences of public debt
“Nothing fundamentally unjust can ever produce happiness in its issue. It will lay the foundation of an aristocracy in our country.”
Rush warned that the debt-based system would make a mockery of every principle that built the young Republic.
“It will change the property of nine-tenths of the freeholders of the States, and it will be a lasting monument of the efficacy of idleness, speculation, and fraud above industry, economy, and integrity in obtaining wealth.”
THE FINAL STAGE
When the people finally recognize the scam, Taylor warned, the political class doesn’t surrender – it tightens the grip.
“As grievances gradually excite national discontent, they will fix the yoke more securely, by making it gradually heavier.”
But gradual oppression has limits. When the people can no longer bear the weight, when they prepare to throw off the yoke entirely, only one option remains for government.
“And they will finally avow and maintain their corruption, by establishing an irresistible standing army, not to defend the nation, but to defend a system for plundering the nation.”
The corrupt system needs fuel. And that fuel is you. Mercy Otis Warren warned where this leads.
“The artificial creation of expenses by those who deem a public debt a public blessing, will easily suggest plausible pretences for taxation, until every class is burdened to the utmost stretch of forbearance, and the great body of the people reduced to penury and slavery.”
UNLIMITED POWER
There’s no limit to how far they’ll push it. Destutt de Tracy saw exactly what happens.
“Now history teaches us that it is in fact since governments have had what is called credit, that is to say the possibility of employing in an instant the funds of several years, that they have no longer set bounds either to their prodigality, or their ambition, or their projects.”
Jefferson understood this well. Debt is the most corruptive force – worse than any external threat.
“There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us.”
That’s why in a letter to Pres. Washington, Jefferson explained how the battle lines are drawn. Between those of us who want the debt gone and those who want to use it as a tool of manipulation and control.
“This exactly marks the difference between Colo. Hamilton’s views and mine, that I would wish the debt paid tomorrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the legislature.”
Madison understood this as well. He named debt as one of the three known instruments of domination.
“Armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
THE WAR MACHINE
They rob people. They destroy liberty. But, as John Taylor warned, with a national debt, the damage doesn’t end there. It’s also a massive national security threat.
“Hence it is obvious, that debt, so far from being either strength or credit, is a diminution of both; and that freedom from debt, is the only genuine source of national strength depending on revenue.”
De Tracy called it out: debt is the engine that drives and perpetuates endless wars.
“The end answered by credit is the maintenance of distant wars, that is to say their prolongation.”
Jefferson went even further. He didn’t just call paying off debt a moral duty – he spelled out the cost of ignoring it. Refuse to pay, and you guarantee bloodshed for generations.
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted on, would save one half the wars of the world.”
