Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. POLITICAL TENDENCIES OF PUBLIC DEBTS. It seems necessary to recognize the funding system as an established fact. Nut only among the great powers has it made its appearance, bnt those nations wanting in every essential element of strength have accepted it with equal willingness. Evolved from the same conditions that have given form to modern history, it stands as an essential part of modern life. But in the development of society, every established fact comes itself to be the center of new influences, which, in their turn, give direction to further growth. We may, therefore, fitly inquire what influence this new policy of financial control is likely to exert upon the future development of society. The study presented by this inquiry falls naturally into three parts—calling attention to the political, the social, and the industrial workings of deficit financiering. The present chapter confines itself to a consideration of the first of these classes of influences, and undertakes to discover the political tendencies bound up in the use of public credit as a source of revenue. The most obvious, as perhaps the most serious, of the political tendencies that accompany credit financiering, is found in the relation it bears to constitutional government. Its workings in this regard may be very shortly and very definitely stated. The funding system stands opposed to the full realization of self-government. This is not at all difficult to understand. As self-government was secured through a struggle for mastery over the public purse, so must i bemaintained through the exercise by the people of complete control over public expenditure. Money is the vital principle of the body politic; the public treasury is the heart of the state; control over public supplies means control ...