and expenditure (which, for the year 1810, was £12,000,000 sterling,) is replaced by a £20,000,000 sterling to the national debt, deducting what is purchased by the sinking-fund. he collection of this prodigious revenue is detailed in a very curious pamphlet, published one of the present ministers, Mr Rose, page 50 to 52. 1427 8,797,000 ditto 4817 ditto. 4,512,000 ditto 358 ditto. 1,076,000 ditto 339 ditto. 53,916,000 10,495 N. B. This was in 1808. The revenue is now greater, and the number of persons employed,-although, no doubt, in a smaller proportion. he national debt of Great Britain agrees nearly with Sir John Sinclair, on whose authority the debt at the 640. Mr Hamilton states it to have been at that period £567,008,978 Feb. 1813, to £812,013,135 ned since 1801, 212,422,938 Of which redeemed, 67,225,915 499,753,063. The debt had increased The final amount of the debt, deducting what had been extinguished by the £599,590,197; a calculation more likely to be correct than the foregoing statement, making Edition. powerful, able, and ambitious, than the great monarch of that time; and although England may not say altogether the same thing of her sovereigns of the two respective periods, it possesses now means of defence far greater than it did then; and whatever the gain may be on one side, it is at least as great on the other. I annex a statement of the present national debt of Great Britain, embracing its progress from the begin, ning.* During the course of the last century, we find every writer on the subject inveighing against the debt. Hume declares, that if the nation does not destroy credit, credit will destroy it. Dr Price says, that the evils and dangers of an exorbitant debt are so great, that it is impossible to exaggerate them. "A sinking fund might save us in time, but we are come so near the end of our resources, (1790) that there is no time left for us." Since that the debt has quadrupled! "An exorbitant debt," he says again, "leads to despotism, the natural tendency of all governments, if not arrested by the watchfulness of a permanent opposition, and ultimately by resist * The sum of gold and silver in circulation under William the Third did not exceed eight millions sterling, including the plate which was carried to the mint, equal to 32 millions now. Dr Price stated in 1793, that the sum of gold in circulation in the kingdom did not exceed 16 millions sterling. 1786 - p. 4 erest nd ex 20,00 e coll le of dem; ditte ditt ditt. di natior 0. Mr eb. ' d sin ance; but resistance is necessarily attended by troubles, confusion, and danger for the public funds, therefore passive submission is preferred. The advance in price of all things destroys commerce and manufactures, and even popula tion; and stock-jobbing corrupts public morals." Lord Kames, Adam Smith, Blackstone, all hold in some degree the same language. Dr Price, however, did not confine himself to pointing out the danger of this fatal progress, but he undertook, at the invitation of Mr Pitt, to devise means to stop it. He suggested several schemes of redemption, one of which was adopted by Mr Pitt, without, as the editor of Dr Price asserts, ever acknowledging the obligation. The first invention of the sinking-fund is not due, however, to Dr Price. He says himself, that Sir Robert Walpole had established one, or rather Earl Stanhope, in 1716. This first institution was, in fact, violated by Walpole himself some years after, in order to give himself the credit of having reduced the taxes. The sinking fund, as orga nized at present, and proposed by Dr Price, was instituted, by act of Parliament, in 1786. It provided that the sum of L. 250,000 sterling should be paid every three months to certain commissioners, (one million a-year,) to be employed by them in the purchase of stock at the market-price; the interest of the stock thus pur chased continuing to be paid to the commissioners, to be applied to new purchases of stock until the interest of this accumulation formed, including the annual million, a revenue of four millions sterling. The interest of their future purchases is then no longer to be paid to them, and their purchases are limited, after that period, to four millions a-year,-this was to happen in 1808. The government added new funds in 1792; and, finally, a late act of Parliament (1802) decreed the continuation of the payment of the interest to the commissioners until the entire redemption of the national debt existing in 1802, (580 millions.) This accumulation amounts already to 160 millions, and is to pay the old debt in 38 years from the beginning. No debt will then be extant but for loans made since 1802, amounting now to about 200 millions; but even these new loans, having each an excess of tax beyond the annual interest, carry in fact with them a principle of extinction, increasing in a geometrical ratio.* A sum equal to one per cent. on the principal of each loan is raised annually by taxes, over and above the sum necessary to pay the interest; being a sinking-fund for the redemption of the loan. And as it takes about 45 years for the yearly one per cent. to work the extinguishment of the sum borrowed, therefore the national debt in future will never exceed at any period what may have been borrowed in the preceding 45 years.HAMILTON'S National Debt, p. 103.-Note to Second Edition. |