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Public debt   /pˈəblɪk dɛt/   Listen
Public debt

noun
1.
The total of the nation's debts: debts of local and state and national governments; an indicator of how much public spending is financed by borrowing instead of taxation.






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"Public debt" Quotes from Famous Books



... friction between the king and the Norwegian Storthing. At the treaty of Kiel the king had promised that Norway would assume a part of the Norwegian-Danish public debt; but as the Norwegians had never acknowledged this treaty, they held that it was not their duty to pay any part of the debt, and declared besides that Norway was not able to do so. But as the powers had agreed to help Denmark to enforce her claims, a compromise was effected in 1821, by ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... Czecho-Slovak nation will carry out far-reaching social and economic reforms. The large estates will be redeemed for home colonisation, and patents of nobility will be abolished. Our nation will assume responsibility for its part of the Austro-Hungarian pre-war public debt. The debts for this war we leave to those who ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... Hungary has no public debt, it has fifteen millions of population, a territory of more than one hundred thousand square English miles, abundant in the greatest variety of nature's blessings, if the doom of oppression be taken from it. The ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... wealth and of her power, saw, with wonder and vexation, that she was more wealthy and more powerful than ever. Her trade increased. Her manufactures flourished. Her exchequer was full to overflowing. Very idle apprehensions were generally entertained, that the public debt, though much less than a third of the debt which we now bear with ease, would be found too heavy for the strength of the nation. Those apprehensions might not perhaps have been easily quieted by reason. But Pitt quieted them by a juggle. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to be economy. But just how economies were actually to be effected was not so clear. For months Gallatin had been toiling over masses of statistics, trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to satisfy the demands of the party, with the discharge of the public debt. By laborious calculation he found that if $7,300,000 were set aside each year, the debt—principal and interest—could be discharged within sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, where was the needed revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be thought of. The alternative, then, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... claim on the precedents of the New World. They were, indeed, betrayed into some curious errors. One was that the thirteen original States, at the close of the Revolutionary War, paid over to Great Britain fifteen million pounds as their share of the public debt. Another was that the payment of the Texas debt by the United States must be a precedent now for its payment of the Cuban debt—whereas the Texas debt was incurred by the Texas insurgents in their ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States or any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... allowed to enjoy the benefits of English trade, taking at the same time a proportionate share of the common burdens. Adam Smith had shown that there was nothing incompatible with justice in a contribution by Ireland to the public debt of Great Britain. That debt, he argued, had been contracted in support of the government established by the Revolution; a government to which the Protestants of Ireland owed not only the whole authority which they enjoyed in their own country, but every ...
— Burke • John Morley

... as for railing at human follies, it would have been rank ingratitude in one who so very unequivocally got his bread by them. About this time, his remarks on the subject of taxation, however, were singularly caustic, and well applied. He railed at the public debt, as a public curse, and ominously predicted the dissolution of society, in consequence of the burdens and incumbrances it was hourly accumulating on the already overloaded shoulders ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... from this fund, is a point of the utmost importance, and well worthy the serious attention of parliament; which has thereby been enabled, in this present year 1765, to reduce above two millions sterling of the public debt. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... all the revenues to itself, having no public debt and paying no tribute to any one, while the country receives from the British Government alone fifty lacs, or half a million a-year; first, in the incomes of guaranteed pensioners, whose stipends are the interest of loans received by our Government ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... revenues of governments. The costs of government at any stage are met in varying degrees in one of three ways: (1) from industrial sources, (2) by borrowing and thus creating a public debt, (3) from taxation. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... Virginia[496] the legislature "may make suitable provision for the blind, mute and insane whenever it may be practicable," while in North Carolina[497] the matter seems also optional. In the Minnesota constitution[498] there is an amendment by which the public debt is increased for the purpose of establishing certain public institutions, including the school for the deaf. In the South Dakota constitution[499] the several charitable and penal institutions are enumerated, among which is the ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... Republicans,' who were thus adding hundreds of millions yearly to the public debt, struck hundreds of thousands out of the lawful income of the clergy of France. They ordered the dispersion by Executive decrees, and 'if necessary by military force,' of all religious orders and communities not ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... designed by native genius. A standing army of about 50,000 men is maintained. Gas has been introduced in some places, and railroads and telegraphs are in operation; and, not to be behind their neighbors, a public debt and irredeemable currency (based upon the property of the nation, of course,) have been created. The currency is now at 22 per cent. discount as compared with gold, and further depreciation is apprehended. (It has since reached 50 per cent. discount.) It is modelled on our ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... all the public lands within their borders be given to them or sold to them for a small sum. After 1824 efforts were made by Benton and others to reduce the price of land to actual settlers. [5] But Congress did not adopt any of these measures. After 1830, when the public debt was nearly paid, Clay attempted to have the money derived from land sales distributed among all the states. The question what to do with the lands was discussed year after year. At last in 1841 (while Tyler was President) Clay's bill became a law with the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... miserable expedient of continued loans? Shall we try issues of Exchequer bills? Shall we resort to Savings' banks?—in short, to any of those expedients which, call them by what name you please, are neither more nor less than a permanent addition to the public debt? We have a deficiency of nearly L.5,000,000 in the last two years: is there a prospect of reduced expenditure? Without entering into details, but looking at your extended empire, at the demands which are made for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... things if they please, but Connecticut has no public debt, or a very small one at most, and her people are industrious, educated, polite to strangers, jealous of their rights and brave enough to defend them. I remember hearing Mrs. Fanny Kemble say, some years ago, of the twelve hundred thousand people then inhabiting Massachusetts, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... great authors luminous, voluminous! Ye twice ten hundred thousand daily scribes! Whose pamphlets, volumes, newspapers, illumine us! Whether you're paid by government in bribes, To prove the public debt is not consuming us— Or, roughly treading on the "courtier's kibes" With clownish heel[501] your popular circulation Feeds you by printing half the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... great topic, urged on all occasions, as showing the necessity of a new and different government, was the state of trade and commerce. To benefit and improve these was a great object in itself; and it became greater when it was regarded as the only means of enabling the country to pay the public debt, and to do justice to those who had most effectually labored for its independence. The leading state papers of the time are full of this topic. The New Jersey resolutions[1] complain that the regulation of trade was in the power of the several States, within their separate ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire extinguishment of the public debt—the first and the last time this has occurred ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... Colombia were strengthening the credit of the country in London. The public debt was recognized and a system of payment was decided on. Colombia, whose freedom was not yet accepted by the world, had at the time better credit than that of some of the European countries. On the other hand, some diplomatic movements were ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell



Words linked to "Public debt" :   debt



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