ABSTRACT
T HE burthensomeness of the national debt is a truth but too generally felt: but as neither good nor evil is ever pure, even this burthen, grievous as it is upon the whole, is not altogether destitute of compensation. A circumstance that has often been noticed as such, and with great justice, is the convenience it affords to individuals of purchasing an income to any amount, free from all trouble as well as from all risk: properties, in respect of which it is impossible that any individual fund can approach to a public one. If to individuals in general the advantage is considerable, to the helpless classes, the orphan and the widow, to the tender sex in general, and to the antient of both sexes it is unspeakable. In short, where there is property, there is no such thing as orphanage in this age and country: government is the guardian-and there can not be a more faithful [one ]-of every infant who has money: from what we see of orphanage now and here, we can have no idea of what it is, in its natural state, in many countries still, and every where in all former times. It is from the sense of this convenience that it has been often doubted whether, were it even in the power of government, a danger in no great likely hood of being realized, to payoff the whole of the public debt, there might not be a part of the burthen, and that no inconsiderable one, in respect of which it were better that the exercise of such a power were forborn.
