'til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
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 sixteen 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 society is
reduced to 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
