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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 387
AUTHOR: Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59)
QUOTATION: Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever.
ATTRIBUTION: THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, History of England, vol. 8 (The Complete Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 8), chapter 19, p. 70 (1899).
SUBJECTS: Debt