precision, from which he always flies as from his most dangerous enemy, I have been at the trouble to search the Journals in the period between the two last wars: and I find that the peace establishment, consisting of the navy, the ordnance, and the several incidental expenses, amounted to £2,346,594. Now is this writer wild enough to imagine, that the peace establishment of 1764 and the subsequent years, made up for the same articles, is £3,800,000 and upwards? His assertion however goes to this. But I must take the liberty of correcting him in this gross mistake, and from an authority he cannot refuse, from his favourite work, and standing authority, the Considerations. We find there, p. 43, the peace establishment of 1764 and 1765 stated at £3,609,700. This is near two hundred thousand pounds less than that given in The State of the Nation. But even from this, in order to render the articles which compose the peace establishment in the two periods correspondent, (for otherwise they cannot be compared,) we must deduct first, his articles of the deficiency of land and malt, which amount to £300,000. They certainly are no part of the establishment; nor are they included in that sum, which I have stated above for the establishment in the time of the former peace. If they were proper to be stated at all, they ought to be stated in both accounts. We must also deduct the deficiencies of funds, £202,400. These deficiencies are the difference between the interest charged on the public for monies borrowed, and the produce of the taxes laid for the discharge of that interest. Annual provision is indeed to be made for them by parliament: but in the inquiry be fore us, which is only what charge is brought on the public by interest paid or to be paid for money borrowed, the utmost that the author should do, is to bring into the account the full interest for all that money. This he has done in p. 15; and he repeats it in p. 18, the very page I am now examining, £2,614,892. To comprehend afterwards in the peace establishment the deficiency of the fund created for payment of that interest, would be laying twice to the account of the war part of the same sum. Suppose ten millions borrowed at 4 per cent., and the fund for payment of the interest to produce no more than £200,000. The whole annual charge on the public is £400,000. It can be no more. But to charge the interest in one part of the account, and then the deficiency in the other, would be charging £600,000. The deficiency of funds must therefore be also deducted from the peace establishment in the Considerations; and then the peace establishment in that author will be reduced to the same articles with those included in the sum I have already mentioned for the peace establishment before the last war, in the year 1753, and 1754. Peace establishment in the Considerations £ 3,609,700 202,400 502,400 £ 3,107,300 Peace establishment before the late war, in which no deficiencies of land and malt, or funds, are included 2,346,594 Difference £ 760,706 Being about half the sum which our author has been pleased to suppose it. Let us put the whole together. The author states, Difference of peace establishment before and since the war Interest of debt contracted by the war £ 1,500,000 2,614,892 Increase of peace establishments, and interest of the new debt 3,236,348 Error of the author £ 878,544 It is true, the extraordinaries of the army have been found considerably greater than the author of the Considerations was pleased to foretell they would be. The author of The Present State avails himself of that increase, and, finding it suit his purpose, sets the whole down in the peace establishment of the present times. If this is allowed him, his error perhaps may be reduced to £700,000. But I doubt the author of the Considerations will not thank him for admitting £200,000 and upwards, as the peace establishment for extraordinaries, when that author has so much laboured to confine them within £35,000. These are some of the capital fallacies of the author. To break the thread of my discourse as little as possible, I have thrown into the margin many instances, though God knows far from the whole, of his inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and want of common care. I think myself obliged to take some notice of them, in order to take off from any authority this writer may have; and to put an end to the deference which careless men are apt to pay to one who boldly arrays his асcounts, and marshals his figures, in perfect confidence that their correctness will never be examined.1 1 Upon the money borrowed in 1760, the premium of one per cent was for twenty-one years, not for twenty; this annuity has been paid eight However, for argument, I am content to take his state of it. The debt was and is enormous. The war was expensive. The best economy had not perhaps been used. But I must observe, that war and economy are things not easily reconciled; and that the attempt of leaning towards parsimony in such a state may be the worst management, and in the end the worst economy in the world, hazarding the total loss of all the charge incurred, and of everything else along with it. But cui bono all this detail of our debt? Has the author given a single light towards any material reduction of it? Not a glimmering. We shall see in its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before he commences his operations, in order to scare the public imagination, he raises by art magic a thick mist before our eyes, through which glare the most ghastly and horrible phantoms: years instead of seven; the sum paid is therefore £640,000 instead of £560,000; the remaining term is worth ten years and a quarter instead of eleven years; its value is £820,000 instead of £880,000; and the whole value of that premium is £1,460,000 instead of £1,440,000. The like errors are observable in his computation on the additional capital of three per cent. on the loan of that year. In like manner, on the loan of 1762, the author computes on five years' payment instead of six; and says in express terms, that take 5 from 19, and there remains 13. These are not errors of the pen or the press; the several computations pursued in this part of the work with great diligence and earnestness prove them errors upon much deliberation. Thus the premiums in 1759 are cast up £90,000 too little, an error in the first rule of arithmetic. "The annuities borrowed in 1756 and 1758 are," says he, "to continue till redeemed by parliament.' He does not take notice that the first are irredeemable till February 1771, the other till July 1782. In this the amount of the premiums is computed on the time which they have run. Weakly and ignorantly; for he might have added to this, and strengthened his argument, such as it is, by charging also the value of the additional one per cent. from the day on which he wrote, to at least that day on which these annuities became redeemable. To make ample amends, however, he has added to the premiums of 15 per cent. in 1759, and 3 per cent. in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement; the fallacy of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can be neither more nor less than the additional capital for which the public stands engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred years' annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades himself that he has borrowed £200 because he happens to have paid twenty years' interest on a loan of £100. Sce Smart and Demoivre. Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est, Let us therefore calmly, if we can for the fright into which he has put us, appreciate those dreadful and deformed gorgons and hydras, which inhabit the joyless regions of an imagination fruitful in nothing but the production of monsters. His whole representation is founded on the supposed operation of our debt upon our manufactures and our trade. To this cause he attributes a certain supposed dearness of the necessaries of life, which must compel our manufacturers to emigrate to cheaper countries, particularly to France, and with them the manufacture. Thence consumption declining, and with it revenue. He will not permit the real balance of our trade to be estimated so high as £2,500,000; and the interest of the debt to foreigners carries off £1,500,000 of that balance, France is not in the same condition. Then follow his wailings and lamentings, which he renews over and over, according to his custom-a declining trade, and decreasing specie-on the point of becoming tributary to France-of losing Ireland—of having the colonies torn away from us. The first thing upon which I shall observe is,' what he takes for granted as the clearest of all propositions, the emigration of our manufacturers to France. I undertake to say that this assertion is totally groundless, and I challenge the author to bring any sort of proof of it. If living is cheaper in France, that is, to be had for less specie, wages are proportionably lower. No manufacturer, let the living be what it will, was ever known to fly for refuge to low wages. Money is the first thing which attracts him. Accordingly our wages attract artificers from all parts of the world. From two shillings to one shilling, is a fall, in all men's imaginations, which no calculation upon a difference in the price of the necessaries of life can compensate. But it will be hard to prove that a French artificer is better fed, clothed, lodged, and warmed, than one in England; for that is the sense, and the only sense, of living cheaper. If, in truth and fact, our artificer fares as well in all these respects as one in the same state in France-how stands the matter in point of opinion and prejudice, the springs by which people in that class of 1 P. 30-32. |