Not Yours to Give

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Not Yours to Give​

Tags: Taxes and Spending, U.S. History
06/26/2020 • Articles of Interest • David Crockett

[From The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884). Included in Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader, compiled by Bettina B. Greaves (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975).]

One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Davy Crockett arose:

“Mr. Speaker—I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

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Not Yours to Give | Mises Institute

"The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man. You will very easily perceive what a wide

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[Casey Jones]

It's well to remember.

Even though the lesson, unfortunately, appears to be lost.