Right and Wrong in Politics [pp. 265-293]

RIGHT AND WRONG IN POLITICS.
only to glance around at the actual practice of some states
otherwise enjoying a reputation for justice and public honesty,
and the language occasionally used in the legislative assemblies,
and even the diplomatic correspondence with other states, to
see that the current line drawn between justice and injustice,
truth and falsehood, right and wrong, in the case of such
financial topics as those adverted to, is far too often shamefully
flickering and indistinct.
There is indeed one special abuse in this direction which is a
peculiar growth of modern times, and is a product of the very
increase of stability and of moral reputation to which, on the
whole, modern states, as contrasted with ancient ones, have
attained. This is the disposition to meet financial emergencies,
deficits, or pressing and accidental claims by creating national
debts, involving indefinite charges on the remotest posterity.
The general principle is, indeed, publicly avowed, that a moral
rule does apply to determine the cases in which it is, and in
which it is not, legitimate to burden posterity. But the facility
of obtaining money in this way often presents a seductive
temptation to statesmen and political parties desirous of carrying out a policy of their own, and for a ready and persistent
adherence to which they cannot steadily rely on the bulk of the
population, nor expect to meet with all the sacrifices which the
policy-if paid for at once, as is said "within the year," that
is, by simple taxation-would involve. Yet not more in political
circles than elsewhere is the facility for obtaining money always
a moral justification of the means resorted to for obtaining it.
That state is most truly a state which carries to the highest
pitch the notions, so tardily and hardly acquired, of its own
integrity, continuity, and immortality. Where the state shows
itself reckless in regard to its future constituents, it not only
demolishes its own public credit at home and abroad, sets a pernicious example of reckless prodigality in the sight of its own
subjects, but to the extent that the financial operations go,
impairs its own existence by a sort of constitutional suicide.
A more perplexed topic is presented by a very universal
practice among modern Christian states, as well as among the
states of antiquity, of organizing sexual vice by providing a
special police machinery in the greater towns of a country, and
287