This section of the book is from the "Introduction To Public Finance" book, by Carl Copping Plehn.
Public credit was necessarily later in development than private credit. General habits of lending on a large scale had to be established before nations could borrow.The bankers and brokers of the worldhad to develop the machinery for handling evidences of debt before large public loans could be placed. Then, too, inasmuch as the objective evidences of debt in the case of the government were nothing but the unsupported promises of the government, confidence that these promises would be kept had to grow. At first the assurance rested on the honour of the monarch, or upon some pledge or security given by him, such as the crown jewels, crown lands, a lease of the revenues, and the like. But later, as Bastable so ably shows,1 the development of public credit goes hand in hand with the development of constitutional government. It would seem that the control of the purse by the very persons who were to pay the taxes gave a steadiness and security to the financial administration that aroused the confidence of money owners.
 
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