Noun
the debt of the national government (as distinguished from the debts of individuals and businesses and political subdivisions)
Source: WordNetBlessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. Herbert Hoover
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt. William Cobbett
The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing. Daniel Webster
What our Republican friends are doing, if we look at what they do and not what they say, they have decided that the most important thing in this country is to increase payments for interest on the national debt. Tom Allen
The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy . Karl Marx
I would suggest to my honourable Friend that the foreign investor is at least as discouraged by high national debt for that, as all example shows, is the surest precursor of high taxation. John James Cowperthwaite