We are ruined if we do not over-rule the principles that 'the more we owe, the more prosperous we shall be,' 'that a public debt furnishes the best means of enterprise,' 'that if ours should once be paid off, we should incur another by all means however extravagant' &c. &c.


Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 17 April 1791, 20 as found in Understanding Thomas Jefferson by E.M. Halliday, 2001. p.131