I have been asked to keep this brief. I have therefore removed the tables, which were the best part of it, and I want that noted.

A nation is not judged by what it owns. It is judged by whether, when it says it will pay, it pays. That is the whole of public credit, and every other question of finance is a footnote to it. A state that honours its obligations may borrow at four per centum in a crisis. A state that has once failed to may not borrow at all, at any rate, from anybody, at the exact moment it most needs to, and it will discover this on the worst morning of its existence.

So we require a revenue that is steady, that arrives without a fresh vote every spring, and that does not depend upon the enthusiasm of thirteen separate legislatures, an enthusiasm I have measured and would not lend money against.

The impost answers. It is collected at the ports, which are few and countable. It grows as trade grows, which means it grows precisely when we are best able to pay it. It requires no assessor to walk into a man’s parlour and value his furniture, which is the sort of tax that makes revolutions and I have already attended one.

Now I will say the thing my colleagues will quote back at me, so I may as well phrase it myself and get the phrasing right.

The impost is a tax. It is paid by the buyer. I have never pretended otherwise, and I part company entirely with any man who tells the country a foreigner is paying it. That is not an argument for the duty; it is an insult offered in place of one. If a measure cannot be defended in its own true description, it should not be carried, and the man who defends it falsely has told you what he thinks of your understanding.

What I will defend, in its true description, is this: that a duty upon imported goods, honestly named, funded to a stated purpose, and applied to the extinguishment of the debt rather than to the amusement of a court, is the cheapest revenue a commercial republic can raise. Cheapest not in shillings. Cheapest in liberty surrendered per shilling obtained, which is the only exchange rate that finally matters.

As to the proposed bounty, the returning of the revenue to the people in coin: I have read the proposal three times to be certain I had not mistaken it. A duty is laid in order to fund the debt. The money is then handed back, so that the debt is not funded. We are then obliged to lay a further duty. I am told this is generosity. It is a man bailing a boat with a bucket that has been thoughtfully drilled.

I have more to say. I am told there is no more column. There is more column; there is simply less courage.