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Title:  The decline & fall of the English system of finance: By Thomas Paine, author of Common sense, American crisis, Age of reason, &c. [One line of quotation]
Author: Paine, Thomas, 1737-1809.
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called the funded debt, the other is the debt due in bank notes.This second debt (that contained in the bank notes) has, in a great measure, been incurred to pay the interest of the first debt; so that in fact little or no real in∣terest has been paid by government. The whole has been delusion and fraud. Go∣vernment first contracted a debt in the form of loans with one class of people, and then run clandestinely into debt with another class, by means of bank notes, to pay the interest. Government acted of itself in contracting the first debt, and made a machine of the bank to contract the second.It is this second debt that changes the seat of power and the order of things; for it puts it in the power of even a small part of the holders of bank notes (had they no other motive than disgust at Pitt and Greenville's sedition bills to controul any measure of government they found to be injurious to their interest; and that not by popular meetings, or popular so∣cieties, but by the simple and easy opera∣on of with-holding their credit from 0