THE AUSTIN PAPERS. 297 them beneath its weight ·and rear up the Bill tryumphant amid the ruins-.Sir when this Territ-0ry shall have become so impoverished that it can not afford to defray the necessary expences of its Govern- ment, or the People shall have [become] so penurious so debased so lost to virtue as to slumber in the icy arms of Averice regardless of their political rights-regardless of those previleges and blessings which are guaranteed to them by the constitution, of that invaluable that heavenly patrimony which was earned by their fathers on the bloody fields of Saratoga and Yorktown, when I say the people shall have arrived at this stage of depression of degradation then Sir and not till then [will] such arguments have any weight when coun- terpoised by the best Interests of the people. for the paltry sum of two Thousand 400 Dolls. we are called upon to distroy a system t-0 which the touch-stone of experience and of experiment has been suc- cessfully and satisfactor[il]y applied and to substitute in its place one which the plainest deductions of reason and of common sense must decided is not equal to it. One which will not insure those ad- vantages which experience has proved are to be .derived from the present one, I am Sir as great an _advocate of Economy as any man and conceive it to be one of the first duties of Legislators to havi the strictest eye to economy in administration of the Government! true and genuine economy Sir is one of the cardinal virtues in do- mestic as well [as] public Jife. but Sir there is species of miserly economy a hideous monster it may be justly termed which 'too often creeps into the cabinets of Republican Rulers and penetrates into the Hall of Legislators and infusing its subtle and deceptive poison into their Hearts through the medium of ambition and a thirst for popularity or bewildering their faculties and missleading their understanding [by] the plausibilty and pleasing sophistry of its theories involves them in error and confusion, blasts every measure in its bud which originates in liberal policy, and cloging and em- barrassing the opperation of Government extends its baneful effects to every part of the system to the great inquiry a.nd eminent danger \1f the whole-it is a species of Economy Sir which would force the accomplishment of great objects with little and inadequate means the sure consequence of which almost invariably is a total failure of success and a loss and waste of the means employed It is a Species of Economy Sir which would with hold from an object or system the necessary means of support and yet expect from it everything t.hat the most ample means would enable it to accomplish-this Sir is the species of Economy which I dread and which I hope will never [enter] into the Bosoms of the rulers or Legislators of this Terri- tory-let us consider Sir whether this 2400 Doll. [hns] been or is likely to be a grevious burden t1pon the ·people-what Sir is the 25067°-24-VOL 2, PT 1--20
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