Honesty.
I have dwelt upon the first; the last I have but a few words to say to, but they will be very significant; indeed, that head requires no comment, no explanations or enlargements: nothing can support credit, be it public or private, but honesty; a punctual dealing, a general probity in every transaction.

He that once breaks through his honesty, violates his credit--once denominate a man a knave, and you need not forbid any man to trust him.
Even in the public it appears to be the same thing.

Let any man view the public credit in its present flourishing circumstances, and compare it with the latter end of the years of King Charles II.

after the Exchequer had been shut up, parliamentary appropriations misapplied, and, in a word, the public faith broken; who would lend?
Seven or eight per cent, was given for anticipations in King William's time, though no new fraud had been offered, only because the old debts were unpaid; and how hard was it to get any one to lend money at all! But, after by a long series of just and punctual dealing, the Parliament making good all the deficient funds, and paying even those debts for which no provision was made, and the like, how is the credit restored, the public faith made sacred again, and how money flows into the Exchequer without calling for, and that at three or four per cent.
interest, even from foreign countries as well as from our own people! They that have credit can never want money; and this credit is to be raised by no other method, whether by private tradesmen, or public bodies of men, by nations and governments, but by a general probity and an honest punctual dealing.
The reason of this case is as plain as the assertion; the cause is in itself; no man lends his money but with an expectation of receiving it again with the interest.

If the borrower pays it punctually without hesitations and defalcations, without difficulties, and, above all, without compulsion, what is the consequence ?--he is called an honest man, he has the reputation of a punctual fair dealer.