XII - Bankruptcy Consequences

Nunes directly addresses the propertied classes, urging them to imagine the consequences of national bankruptcy given that they already suffer from the current state of the country.

The author explains that if the treasury fails, the collapse will cascade through credit institutions and reach all economic classes, from the wealthy to the poorest.

Nunes depicts a sequential degradation of living standards across all social strata: luxury yields to parsimony, parsimony to constraint, constraint to hunger.

The author asserts that much of the country's population depends on state employment or state debt payments for survival.

Nunes lists the various categories of people dependent on state income: public functionaries, military personnel, and holders of state debt securities.

The author characterizes bankruptcy as a uniquely destructive tax that penetrates all economic transactions through mysterious pathways, destroying capital itself.

Nunes raises the problem of how monetary scarcity would cause severe depreciation of all existing values.

The author questions how the modern economy can function without credit, which is already fragile and would collapse entirely during bankruptcy.

Nunes argues that contemporary society requires credit and financial fictions to sustain the feverish economic activity that moves the modern world.

The author shifts focus to ask whether his audience has considered what political upheaval would result from national bankruptcy.

Nunes claims that the already-weak social and political bonds would completely dissolve, opening space for vice and corruption to exploit public misery.

The author describes how speculation would hire revolt, mobilizing both cynical agitators and genuinely desperate people into tumultuous rebellion.

Beyond mercenary agitators, the truly impoverished would join the rebellion, forgetting family suffering and seeking radical change to cure their misery.

The logic of events during crisis would place power in the hands of the most audacious rather than the peaceful and educated, corrupting ideals through material cooperation with the unscrupulous.

Without constraints from superior forces, bold ambition would hold omnipotent sway over both reality and legality, creating tyranny.

The author asserts that national bankruptcy would bring serious attacks on moral principles and virtuous conduct.

Nunes describes how integrity would retreat before cunning and violence, and restraint would explode into destructive anger.

Force would supplant voluntary action, and family honor would yield to moral corruption through economic desperation.

Even charitable institutions would be unable to provide care because they would lack funds to support the sick and afflicted.

The author redefines bankruptcy as far worse than simple poverty or danger—it is the sale of national patrimony for a show of horrors.

Nunes argues that bankruptcy combines material loss with spiritual shock, producing consequences greater than the sum of its two components.

The author catalogs bankruptcy as encompassing and exceeding poverty, danger, discredit, barbarism, and sedition all together.

Most critically, bankruptcy represents the ultimate shame—dishonor of the nation's name in history.

The author directly appeals to all thinking, propertied, and working citizens to reject the possibility of national bankruptcy and dishonor.

Nunes emphasizes that it is not enough to actually avoid bankruptcy; it is necessary that it not even appear possible, since in such delicate matters appearance nearly equals reality.

The author issues a final command to intervene now while time remains, to save the country through their own effort and patriotic glory.

Nunes urges his audience to abandon their usual passivity and engage immediately in this effort, both for their own benefit and national glory.

The author concludes by reframing his warnings not as alarmism but as a voice of reason and sense calling the nation to action.