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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

Of Debts and Internal Wars. - Richard Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making it a Benefit to the World [1784]

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Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making it a Benefit to the World. To which is added, a Letter from M. Turgot, late Comptroller-General of the Finances of France: with an Appendix, containing a Translation of the Will of M. Fortuné Ricard, lately published in France (London: T. Cadell, 1785).

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OfDebtsandInternal Wars.

I HAVE observed in the introduction to this Address, that the American States have many dangers to shun. In what follows I shall give a brief recital of some of the chief of these dangers.

The danger from an endless increase of public debts has been already sufficiently noticed.

Particular notice has been likewise taken of the danger from internal wars.—Again and again, I would urge the necessity of pursuing every measure and using every precaution which can guard against this danger. It will be shocking to see in the new world a repetition of all the evils which have hitherto laid waste the old world—War raging where peace and liberty were thought to have taken their abodes—The points of bayonets and the mouths of cannon settling disputes, instead of the collected wisdom of the confederation—and perhaps one restless and ambitious State rising by bloody conquest above the rest, and becoming a sovereign State, claiming impiously (as Britain once did) “full authority to make laws that shall bind its sister States in all cases whatever,” and drawing to itself all advantages at their expence.—I deprecate this calamity. I shudder when I consider how possible it is; and hope those persons are mistaken who think that such are the jealousies which govern human nature, and such the imperfections of the best human arrangements, that it is not within the reach of any wisdom to discover any effectual means of preventing it, without encroaching too much on the liberty and independence of the States. I have mentioned an enlargement of the powers of Congress. Others have proposed a consolidation of the powers of government in one Parliament representing all the States, and superseding the particular parliaments by which they are now separately governed. But it is obvious, that this will be attended with greater inconveniencies, and encroach more on the liberty of the States, than the enlargement I have proposed of the powers of Congress.—If such a parliament is not to supersede any of the other parliaments, it will be the same with Congress as at present constituted.