A Speech on the Principles of Finance

The superficial student of history cares only for the results of the evolution of nations—for the fact that Sesostris was the greatest of Egyptian kings; or that Semiramis rose by her military sagacity from the rank of a mean official’s wife to be, first, the Queen of Ninas, and afterward, to be the Assyrian Queen, who should march an army of three millions men across the Indus to conquer the Indian King. Running down the course of events, he traces the rise and fall of nations—after Assyria then Egypt, next Persia, Greece, Rome and then the Dark Ages, out of whose womb was evolved modern Europe; and, lastly, the birth, development, struggle and recovery of the most remarkable nation which has yet arisen in the world.