Public Debt Results in Oppressive Taxation

     "...Private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.  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, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.  Then begins indeed  the bellum omnium in omnia which some philosophers, observing it to be so general in this world, have mistaken...for the natural instead of the abusive state of man.  And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt.  Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

-Thomas Jefferson

---