I say the public purse, I do not say the public simply. Far from the pen of the legislator be that stale sophistry of declaiming moralizers, which consists in giving to one species of misbehaviour the name and reproach of another species of a higher class, confounding in men's minds the characters of vice and virtue. Pure from all taint of falsehood should the legislator keep his pen, nor think to promote the cause of utility and truth by means which only tyranny and imposture can stand in need of. In what I have said above there is nothing but what is rigorously and simply true. But it were not true to say that a theft upon the public were as mischievous as a theft upon an individual; from this there results no alarm, and the more the loss is divided the lighter it falls upon each.