The revenue of the state is the state. In effect all depends upon it,
whether for support or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation
wholly depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue that may be
exerted in it. As all great qualities of the mind which operate in
public, and are not merely suffering and passive, require force for
their display, I had almost said for their unequivocal existence, the
revenue, which is the spring of all power, becomes in its administration
the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature
magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant
about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot
spread and grow under confinement, and in circumstances straitened,
narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue alone the body politic can act
in its true genius and character, and therefore it will display just
as much of its collective virtue, and as much of that virtue which
may characterize those who move it, and are, as it were, its life and
guiding principle, as it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence
not only magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude,
and providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts, derive
their food, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and
self-denial, and labour, and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever else
there is in which the mind shows itself above the appetite, are nowhere
more in their proper element than in the provision and distribution of
the public wealth. It is therefore not without reason that the science
of speculative and practical finance, which must take to its aid so many
auxiliary branches of knowledge, stands high in the estimation, not
only of the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men; and as this
science has grown with the progress of its object, the prosperity and
improvement of nations has generally increased with the increase of
their revenues; and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as
long as the balance between what is left to strengthen the efforts of
individuals, and what is collected for the common efforts of the state,
bear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a close
correspondence and communication.