66 given distance, and thus facilitate the exertions of commerce and quicken the operations of Government. The South of Ireland also is to have its communication with Wales rendered more easy and speedy. For further particulars on this important subject, see Literary Panorama," Vol. 6th, pp. 799-801. And in the 8th vol. pp. 573-575 of the same work, it is stated, that during the session of 1809-10, were passed 120 acts for renewing expiring laws, for enforcing the better collection of the revenue and its due application, for ameliorating or explaining the existing laws, for making local improvements, for the encouragement of manufactures, and for the permanent good of the people; 250 acts for the inclosing and draining of lands, making turnpike roads, internal navigation, and tram-roads; and 60 acts for miscellaneous purposes; making a total of 430 new acts of Parliament passed in one session for the public service. But the National Debt of Britain, say M. Hauterive, Arthur O'Connor, and all the multitude of French writers who are ordered to lavish incessant abuse upon the British nation, and whose assertions are re-echoed by many millions of tongues throughout the globe; the National Debt of Britain is so enormous that having no means of ever paying it off, nay, not even of meeting the interest of its present amount, nor of preventing its future rapid increase, she must speedily take the sponge and wipe the whole away; exhibiting to the deluded world an awful spectacle of universal bankruptcy. Doubtless, using the sponge, or in plain English cheating their creditors, is a much more palatable measure to all the jacobins of France and of every other country, than is the payment of their just debts. But such a proceeding does not comport with either the policy or the inclination of the British government, who have hitherto found no difficul ty in regularly paying the annual interest of the public debt; and who cannot be induced hastily to adopt so revolutionary a measure as that of falsifying the national faith; and descending from their present elevated station as the champions of justice, law, order, religion, and morality, to become in fact the imitators and rivals of the fraudulent and profligate policy of France. For what, as the late justly celebrated Fisher Ames emphatically observes,-what is revolution? what is jacobinism? what is their favorite work; but first and with most malignant ardor to destroy what faith, and law, and morals, and religion have established and guarded? The British national debt is spread over all the empire, it has taken wide and deep root for more than a century, and rudely to tear up that root from the soil would shake the security of all property, and perhaps overturn the constitution of England itself. If such a nefarious step be taken, where will the British government stop? Will it not proceed as well as begin in imitation of its Gallic neighbor, and go onward to proscribe the property of its clergy, its nobles, its merchants, its manufacturers, its farmers, and eventually involve the whole nation in all the horrors of anarchy and blood? The national debt is as much private property as are the possessions landed or personal of any gentleman in Britain. And if that sheet-anchor of society, the security of private property, be cut away in one instance, why not in every other? If the British government sponge the public debt, what is to prevent it from plundering the vessels and the ware-houses of the merchants, from seizing on the farms of the landed gentry, and from confiscating the stock in trade of the manufacturers? So much for the justice of a government's cheating its creditors. Is the temporary gain of such a measure a counter-balance for its iniquity? Suppose the debt were sponged away, and that new loans were required to carry on the vast annual expenditure of the British nation; standing, as she does, between the dead and the living to stay the plague; standing, as she does, in the gap to defend the whole civilized world from the most atrocious oppression, could the government of Britain hope again to erect the superstructure of national credit upon the ruins of public faith? Would the British people willingly lend their money for the pleasure of seeing both principal and interest annihilated at the will of any chancellor of the exchequer who might think fit to flourish the sponge? Add to this the incalculable evils which would be produced by the subversion of public credit in all classes of the community, in causing the ruin of so many individual stockholders and their dependants, in palsying the arm of private industry, in disarranging the whole state of commerce, in drying up the sources of manufactures, in crippling the progress of agriculture, in tarnishing the national honor, in depraving the morals of the people, and in rendering Britain less able to cope with the common enemy of human kind. Nor should we forget the effect which a bankruptcy of the British public funds would produce upon other nations; for foreigners are her stockholders to the amount of nearly fifty millions: and the ruin which the total loss of all this money must entail upon a vast number of individuals dispersed through different countries would be very grievously felt, and most effectually extinguish all future faith on their part in the credit of the British government. And independently of her foreign stockholders, the most unshaken faith in the credit of her government pervades at present all the civilized nations of the world; and a bill drawn on it would find as ready a sale and command as high a price in Paris, in St. Petersburgh, in Vienna, in Berlin, in Madrid, or in Washington as would bills drawn upon the respective governments of France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, or the United States. But, if the British government should commit so flagrant a breach of national faith as to sponge the public debt, it would justify the suspicion that no great prudishness would be observed as to any other violation of solemn engagements, and the consequent want of all confidence in her truth and honor would come back from other nations, like a protested bill which returns to embarrass and to disgrace an individnal merchant. And although her own subjects might after a while be induced again to repose confidence in her promises, and to purchase public stock when fresh loans should be raised; yet her bills in all foreign money-markets would be worth no more than French government bills are now; that is to say, would be just good for nothing. How very dreadfully this loss of credit would impede all the foreign, commercial, and political operations of Britain it is quite needless minutely to investigate. But there is no occasion for alarm on this head. The British government will never be under any necessity or temptation to sponge the public debt. A plain statement of the Funding System in Britain will show that her national debt is not so great as people generally imagine; and also that the operation of the Sinking Fund is gradually and certainly liquidating the whole amount of the capital borrowed; without taking a single cent out of the pockets of the stockholders. A very general mistake prevails as to the real magnitude of Britain's public debt. It is commonly believed in this country that she owes eight hundred millions sterling for which she pays an annual interest of £40,000,000. But in point of fact the real dimensions of this debt are far below its apparent size. The gradual depreciation in the value of money ren ders the debt much less burdensome than it would otherwise be. Fifty years since, £1,000,000 would go as far as double that sum would go now, and at the present period it is easier to acquire £2,000,000 than it was to obtain half that sum fifty years ago. That is to say, £1,000,000 then would put in motion twice the quantity of labor that it can now purchase, and was more difficult to raise than £2,000,000 now. Yet no more than the legal interest of 5 per cent. is annually paid now for the public stock which was borrowed fifty years since, although a given quantity of that stock then would really purchase double the amount of the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, that could be purchased by the same quantity now, and consequently if it were to be borrowed now would entail a double burden of capital and interest upon the community. Half a century ago, say £20,000,000 were borrowed, for which an annual interest of £1,000,000 is now paid, but if it were necessary now to borrow as much money as would put in motion precisely the same quantity of labor as £20,000,000 could then command, no less than £40,000,000 must be raised, and consequently an annual interest of £2,000,000 be entailed upon the public. So that in point of fact the British government is continually paying a very low rate of interest for the greater portion of its public debt, owing to the gradual but incessant depreciation in the value of money; and the rapid influx of wealth into the country from all quarters of the globe gives to her a perpetually increasing facility of raising large sums of money, at the shortest notice, and without oppressing her people. Hence the burden of taxation necessary to pay the interest of her national debt is always much less in reality than in appear ance. But independently of this consideration the national debt of Britain falls far short of £800,000,000. |