FINANCE ACCOUNTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, No, An Account of the Total Income of the Revenue of Great Britain and Repayments, Allowances, Discounts, Drawbacks, and Bounties of Expenditure of the United Kingdom, exclusive of the Sums applied 1 - Deduct Balances and Bills outstanding on 5th Total Ordinary Revenues OTHER RESOURCES. Money brought from the Civil List, on account of By the Commissioners for the Issue of Exchequer By the Trustees of Naval and Military Pensions from the Consolidated Fund, under various Acts Imprest and other Monies paid into the Exchequer IV. FOR THE YEAR 1825, ENDED 5TH JANUARY, 1826. Ireland, in the Year ended 5th January, 1825, after deducting the the nature of Drawbacks; together with an Account of the Public to the Reduction of the National Debt, within the same Period. At the end of this Article will be found a linear scale, with an explanation of the principles of its construction, which we have framed for the purpose of illustrating the subject with greater accuracy and facility.* It will be perceived that we have, in some degree, varied the classification of the items included in the quotation from the Financial Accounts; but we are prepared to show that, in making that variation, we are justified by adequate consi derations. This scale presents, in its centre column, No. 1. the total expenditure of the country, including both the national debt, which is not under the control of government, and for which the government are not more responsible than parliament and the nation at large; and the current expenditure of the country, including the maintenance of all its establishments, which is strictly under the control of the government, and for the amount of which they are strictly responsible. We have not complicated this subject with any consideration of the capital of the debt; we have considered it with reference to the permanent and temporary annuities which the country is called upon to discharge, and which may be considered as the practical representation of that capital. In this view the centre column represents a total expenditure of 60,154,135l. The remaining columns on the right furnish the various separate items of that total. The column No. 2. represents the whole of the national debt, with the different characters of its constituent parts, marginally noted, as so many various increments in its composition. It will be seen, therefore, that this column presents an amount of 39,801,031l., a sum which it is necessary to discharge annually out of the payments received from taxation, and for which, as already observed, the government is not responsible. The analysis of this sum, as exhibited in the scale, gives 27,230,790l.† as the amount of the national unredeemed funded debt of a permanent nature, including, as an inseparable part of it, the charge of management. Secondly, if the eye be carried up, it will be seen that, including the sinking-fund of 5,486,4751., the debt (that is, the annual expenditure made necessary by the debt) is raised to $2,717,265l. Thirdly, including part of the half-pay annuities sold to the Bank, which will require detailed and separate explanation, it is raised to 33,303,0051. Fourthly, including the unfunded debt, it is raised to 34,132,503l. Fifthly, including the naval and military * See Appendix A., p. 307. + It will be perceived, that in the Finance Accounts, the interest and management of the public debt amount to twenty-eight millions, whereas in our linear scale they are calculated only at twenty-seven millions. The reason is, that, in the Finance Accounts, the sum of twenty-eight millions comprehends the interest of the unfunded debt, which, in the scale, is represented in a separate item, half-pay half-pay and pensions, it is raised to 39,435,003l. Sixthly, including the pensions charged by act of parliament on the Consolidated Fund, it is raised to the sum of 39,801,0311. of annual payment. The column No. 3. represents the total current expenditure of the year, (including naval, military, and civil establishments,) for which the government are strictly responsible. This, it will be observed, amounts only to 16,369,8287., and is less than the sum of taxes actually remitted in 1816. The columns No. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, include the various increments of the column No. 3, according to the classification which we think ourselves justified in making. On the left of the central column, at the bottom of the scale, will be found, above the numbers 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, the relative linear proportion of that sort of reductions which may be expected to be moved in the ensuing session; and we hope that what is there exhibited will bring home to the distinct conviction of every person in this country, possessing the simplest elements of education, the true state of the case with reference to our public debt, and our expenditure-and enable every person to judge of the extent of personal advantage which he, as an individual member of the community, is likely to derive from the reduction of those items of establishment, the existence of which, he is assured by many writers of the present day, is the sole and exclusive cause of the poverty and misfortune to which he finds himself exposed. To hint, for one moment, that it is not the sacred duty of government and parliament to make all possible reductions compatible with the well-being of the state, would be to advance, not only an absurd, but a wicked proposition-yet not more absurd, nor more wicked, than are the propositions advanced by many writers, that this or that specific reduction would make a sensible difference in the condition and comforts of the labouring classes of the community; and it is not immaterial to observe, that the class of writers in question, who attempt to delude the people by telling them that the cause of all their calamities is the existence of sinecure places and pensions, or the circumstance of some government office having half-a-dozen superfluous clerks, are the most peremptory and dogmatical in maintaining that no conceivable advantage could be gained to any party, by any reduction of the interest of the national debt. We would fain hope that the fallacy and absurdity of such propositions may be so effectually demonstrated by an examination of this linear scale as to relieve the people from the influence of that jugglery which has been so adroitly practised upon them. Undoubtedly, nothing can be more intrinsically absurd than what is called a sinecure place; that is, a place bearing a name that carries with it a supposition of substantive duties to be executed, for which a salary is awarded, whereas, in fact, there are no such duties. The government and parliament have, therefore, taken a sound and judicious course, in abolishing for the future the maintenance of such anomalies ;-yet when analysed, they are neither more nor less than pensions. Now that unnecessary pensions ought to be discontinued, whenever circumstances admit of such discontinuance without personal injury to the party, and breach of public faith, is strictly a truism; but to suppose that a great state, like this of Great Britain, can be carried on without the principle of pension and retiring allowance, after a series of irreproachable public services, is to dream of an Utopian state of things, which no man of common sense and honesty will maintain to be practicable. With respect to the national debt, although it is scandalous to assure the people that it is not in the debt, but in the sinecurists that they may find the cause of whatever public pressure arises from taxation, yet he must be a bold man, and of very perverse and oblique morality, who would counsel any reduction of the interest of that debt, for which the nation is as much pledged as private debtors are for their own personal debts ;-a reduction which, should it ever take place, would be contemporaneous with the annulment of private, as well as of public, credit, and involve in its consequences the dissolution of all national honour and greatness. The effect, after all, of the national debt on the general internal circumstances of the country, and on the intercourse between man and man involved in all the transactions of business, is not, perhaps, as correctly understood as might be expected, in a country where a national debt has so long existed.If an individual has a rental of 5,000l. per annum, and pays, in direct or indirect taxes, 1,000l. per annum, which he would not pay but for the existence of the national debt, he is, in point of fact, not the possessor of 5,000l. per annum, but of 4,000l. If a servant receives twenty pounds wages, and pays, in direct or indirect taxation, twenty per cent., in point of fact his real wages are only sixteen pounds instead of twenty. If this illustration were pursued, it would be found that every person, the payer of direct or indirect taxes, must be so much the poorer in consequence of this national debt; but nevertheless that-admitting, for the sake of argument, that the debt could be so adjusted, that every man should only pay a certain amount, which should be exactly twenty per cent.,-all parties would remain in the same relative positions towards each other, as if no debt existed. Now, let the case be supposed-that, in a country where no taxes exist, |