and I remember a paper in the FREEHOLDER or the SPECTATOR, published just after the funding system had begun, representing ‘PUBLIC Credit’ as a GODDESS, enthroned in a temple dedicated to her by her votaries, amongst whom she is dispensing blessings of every description.  It must be more than forty years since I read this paper, which I read soon after the time when the late Mr. PITT uttered in Parliament an expression of his anxious hope, that his ’name would be inscribed on the monument which he should raise to ’public credit.’  Time has taught me, that PUBLIC CREDIT means, the contracting of debts which a nation never can pay; and I have lived to see this Goddess produce effects, in my country, which Satan himself never could have produced.  It is a very bewitching Goddess; and not less fatal in her influence in private than in public affairs.  It has been carried in this latter respect to such a pitch, that scarcely any transaction, however low and inconsiderable in amount, takes place in any other way.  There is a trade in London, called the ‘tally-trade,’ by which, household goods, coals, clothing, all sorts of things, are sold upon credit, the seller keeping a tally, and receiving payment for the goods, little by little; so that the income and the earnings of the buyers are always anticipated; are always gone, in fact, before they come in or are earned; the sellers receiving, of course, a great deal more than the proper profit.

61.  Without supposing you to descend to so low a grade as this, and even supposing you to be lawyer, doctor, parson, or merchant; it is still the same thing, if you purchase on credit, and not, perhaps, in a much less degree of disadvantage.  Besides the higher price that you pay there is the temptation to have what you really do not want.  The cost seems a trifle, when you have not to pay the money until a future time.  It has been observed, and very truly observed, that men used to lay out a one-pound note when they would not lay out a sovereign; a consciousness of the intrinsic value of the things produces a retentiveness in the latter case more than in the former:  the sight and the touch assist the mind in forming its conclusions, and the one-pound note was parted with, when the sovereign would have been kept.  Far greater is the difference between Credit and Ready money.  Innumerable things are not bought at all with ready money, which would be bought in case of trust:  it is so much easier to order a thing than to pay for it.  A future day; a day of payment must come, to be sure, but that is little thought of at the time; but if the money were to be drawn out, the moment the thing was received or offered, this question would arise, ‘Can I do without it?’ Is this thing indispensable; am I compelled to have it, or suffer a loss or injury greater in amount than the cost of the thing?  If this question were put, every time we make a purchase, seldom should we hear of those suicides which are such a disgrace to this country.