*

and the landed interest, during 1824 and 1825, as they shared in the general prosperity, participated in the universal contentment.

9. Mr Wallace, the able President of the Board of Trade at this period, gave the following picture of the state of the country under the action of the monetary measures in progress, from 1815 to 1823. On 12th February 1823, he said in his place in Parliament: "The general export of the country, in the four years from 1815 to 1819, had decreased £14,000,000 in official value; and he took the lofficial value in preference to the declared, because it was from the quantity of goods produced that the best measure was derived of the employment afforded to the differ

ket, the exports and imports gave no arising from the extension of the curadequate indication of its real amount. rency, ere long extinguished these ill Yet, such as it was, it was very consi-humours, by removing their cause; derable; and the great increase of the imports, in particular, indicated the increased prosperity of the people. The revenue exhibited the same symptoms of elasticity; for, notwithstanding a reduction of taxation in the years 1822 and 1823, amounting to £7,000,000 sterling, it exhibited an increase of £4,000,000 in 1824 compared with 1822, and £5,000,000 compared with 1820. Agricultural distress, indeed, the sad bequest of the contracted currency of the three preceding years, was still very prevalent, especially in the commencement of 1823; and numerous county meetings were held, in which the general distress of the landed interest, and the necessity of the most unflinching reduction of expenditure, were emphatically urged. At one in Nor-ent classes of the community. In the wich, Mr Cobbett proposed, and carried against the united Whig aristocracy of the county, resolutions declaratory of the necessity of a great reduction of the standing army, a sale of the whole Crown-lands, an abolition of all sinecures, an equitable adjustment of the national debt, and a sweeping measure of parliamentary reform. But the rise in the value of agricultural produce,

year from 5th January 1819 to 5th January 1820, the export of the country fell off no less than £11,000,000; and in looking at that part of it which was more completely only of British or Irish manufacture, he found that the difference in four years was £8,414,711; and that in the year from 5th January 1820 to 5th January 1821, there was a decrease of £8,929,629. Nobody, there

* EXPORTS AND IMPORTS OF GREAT BRITAIN FROM 1820 TO 1825.

fore, could be surprised that, at that period, the industry of the country appeared to be in a state of the utmost depression; that our manufacturers were most of them unemployed; that our agriculturists were many of them embarrassed; and that the country, to use the phrase of a friend of his in presenting a petition from the merchants of London, exhibited all the appearances of a dying nation. Though the condition of the agricultural interest was not as favourable as he could wish, still it was most satisfactory for him to state, that not only did the exports of last year (1822) exceed those of all the years to which he had been alluding, but also those of the most flourishing year which had occurred during the continuance of the war. In all the material articles there had been a considerable increase. The export of cotton had increased 10 per cent, and hardware 17 per cent; of linens 12 per cent; and of woollens 13 per cent; and the aggregate exports of 1822 exceeded those of 1820 by 20 per cent, and of 1821 by 7 per cent-notwithstanding a deduction was to be made from the exports of one great article, sugar, owing to a prohibitory decree of Russia, amounting to 35 per

cent."

was estimated at £1,205,000; and on the whole assessed taxes, £2,200,000. The whole assessed taxes of Ireland, amounting to £100,000, were repealed, and the window-tax taken entirely away from the ground-floor of shops and warehouses, though connected with houses. The last reduction deserves to be noted, as the first indication of the growing influence of that numerous body, the shopkeepers, who, in the end, acquired a very powerful influence in the direction of the State. This budget, the most favourable which had been laid before Parliament for many years, was received with loud cheers from both sides of the House.

11. The budget of 1824 exhibited appearances not less favourable. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on this occasion, had the satisfaction of announcing the agreeable intelligence, that the Emperor of Austria had agreed to pay £2,500,000 in satisfaction of loans of £6,000,000 made to him in 1795 and 1797. This unexpected windfall, which was not inaptly called a "godsend," enabled Government to exhibit a more favourable statement of the public finances than could have been anticipated even from the very prosperous state of the nation. The total revenue was taken at £57,385,000, including the repayments to account of the Austrian loan, and the expenditure at £56,332,924; leav ing a surplus of £1,052,076, after applying £5,134,458 to the reduction of debt. This statement, however, was so far fallacious, as, by the arrangement regarding the Dead Weight, as it was called, or military and naval pensions, two millions now figured in the surplus which were in reality obtained by having made permanent, during forty-five years, an item of charge which otherwise would almost have disappeared by the progressive death of the recipients before that time; so that the surplus, but for that shifting of present burdens on poster

10. These favourable circumstances enabled Government to make considerable reductions of taxation during the years 1823 and 1824, and to exhibit a very flattering, though, as it proved in the end, fallacious view of the public finances to the nation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated the revenue of the nation, in 1823, at £57,000,000 in the first of these years, and the expenditure at £49,852,786; leaving a surplus of £7,147,214. Of this large surplus he proposed to set aside £5,000,000, conformably to the resolution of 1821, for the reduction of debt, and the residue was to be devoted to the remission of taxation. This reduction was, on truly wise principles, to be effected on the direct tax-ity, would only have been £3,000,000. ation; and the duties selected for remission were the assessed taxes. They were lowered at once 50 per cent-a reduction which, on the window-tax,

This surplus of £1,052,076 the Chancellor of the Exchequer took advantage of to remit to the nation part of the duty on rum, coals, wool, silk, and

law proceedings, amounting in all to £1,262,000.

on the debt, which was £28,000,000; but it was a step in the right direction, and illustrated the extreme improvidence of the system of borrowing adopted by Mr Pitt during the war, of giving a bond for £100 for every £60 advanced,- -a system which precluded the possibility of paying off the

that stock till the funds had been for a considerable time above 100, which they have only been for a few weeks during the last half-century. Had the stock all been borrowed in the 4 per cents, the reduction now effected would have been, not on £75,000,000, but on above £750,000,000, and the saving effected to the nation, not £375,000, but nearly £4,000,000 a-year.

12. The favourable state of the finances, and the high range of the public funds, which rose progressively to 84 in December 1823, and to 96 in October 1824, enabled the Chancellor of the Exchequer to carry through two measures which contributed, in a ma-3 per cents, or reducing the interest on terial degree, to relieve the pressure on the exchequer. The first of these was the carrying out the arrangement proposed in the preceding year for equalising, as it was called, the weight of the military and naval pensions, by transmuting them into a fixed charge on the nation for forty-five years. No purchasers had been found for these annuities during the distressed state of the money market in the preceding 14. A third important change was year; but the affluence of circulation, effected in the finances of the country produced by the extension of the cur- in the year 1823, which might have rency, now induced the Bank of Eng-conferred incalculable benefits upon land to take part of it, which they did by a contract which was to last five years. By this means there was a present saving, on the part taken, of £585,000 a-year effected: but a more delusive scheme never was proposed; for it was nothing but shifting the burden of present debt on posterity, and purchasing present relief by increasing future embarrassment. Such, however, was the pressure on the treasury, that the bill sanctioning this ar-ligible. To remedy these evils, Mr rangement with the Bank was passed in the Commons by a majority of 140 to 91.

the nation, had it been steadily adhered to in subsequent times. Hitherto the public accounts connected with the National Debt had been so mystified, by issues of exchequer bills and other temporary devices, that it required no small effort of attention on the part of those professionally trained to the subject to understand them; and to the great majority of persons they were altogether unintel

Robinson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, adopted the manly course, worthy of the chief finance-minister of 13. The next measure which was a free country, of so simplifying the carried was one of a very different accounts connected with the public character, and to which, neither on debt that they might be intelligible, the ground of public faith or financial not only to the members of the legiseconomy, could any objection be stated. | lature, but to every one who paid atThis was the reduction of the interest tention to the subject throughout the on the 4 per cent stock to 34. The country. With this view he placed, amount of this stock was £75,000,000, by Act of Parliament, the reduction of and its annual charge £3,000,000. the debt on its true footing; namely, Dissentients were allowed six months the annual issue from the treasury of to notify their dissension, in which a certain sum for its reduction. To efcase they were to be paid in full. A fect this, a bill was brought forward, very small proportion of the holders of founded on resolutions of the House, stock gave notice of their desire to be which provided, among numerous depaid up; in consequence of which, the tails calculated to simplify the public saving effected to the nation amounted accounts, that for the future there to £375,000 a-year. This sum bore a should be set apart, and issued out of small proportion to the whole interest | the consolidated fund, to be placed to

interest nearly £300,000,000 of the public debt. Whereas, under the popular inspection and control, nothing whatever has been done during that period towards its reduction; for in 1824 the public debt was £781,122,222, and in 1849 it was still £777,603, 818; and the interest paid on the debt was, in 1825, £28,060,287, and in 1849 it was £28,323,961 !*

15. The favourable state of the public finances, arising from the growing prosperity of the nation, enabled Gov

the account of the commissioners of the public debt, the annual sum of £5,000,000, to be applied to the reduction of the National Debt,-which sum was to be charged upon the consolidated fund, to be issued by equal quarterly payments, the first beginning on 5th April 1823. There can be no doubt of the wisdom and propriety of these enactments; and happy would it have been for the nation, if, now that it had attained majority, and been intrusted with the direction of its own affairs, it had shown more wis-ernment, in 1824, to carry through dom and foresight than its guardians had done during its long minority. But the result has been just the reverse. It was shown by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the debate, on this subject, that during the seven years which had elapsed from 1816, when the debt had attained its highest point, there had been paid off £19,700,000 of funded, and £4,984,000 of unfunded debt, in all £25,000,000 in round numbers,-which would have been £35,000,000 more, but for the reduction of the 5 per cents, which added £10,000,000 to the nominal amount of the public debt. The sinking fund of £5,000,000, so anxiously provided for by this Act, would in the next thirty years, if preserved inviolate, have paid off with the growing

several gracious and praiseworthy acts, of lasting benefit to the interests of religion, science, and art in the country. Out of the unexpected windfall arising from the partial repayment of the Austrian loan, Ministers proposed and carried through a grant of £500,000, to aid in the building of churches, especially in the manufacturing districts, where, notwithstanding the former grant of £1,000,000 for the same purpose, the want of church accommodation was still lamentably felt. In addition to this, there was granted to his Majesty £300,000 from the same fund, to be paid in three years, for repairing and enlarging Windsor Castle: a grant which was laid out with equal taste and judgment, and has produced the magnificent addition which now adds

* ACTUAL REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN 1823 AND 1824.

so much to the effect of that noble | a reduction of £23,000,000 in five structure. In the preceding year, the years.* Let these figures be kept in Sovereign had made to the nation the mind, when the progress of the debt munificent gift of the splendid library and financial situation of the country, of his late father, valued at £65,000, in the disastrous years which followed which had been intrusted to the trus- the renewed contraction of the curtees of the British Museum, and which rency in 1826, come to be taken into now adorns the noble gallery set apart consideration, and it will then be seen for it in that superb edifice; and on whether the greater part of the sufferthis the Chancellor of the Exchequer ings which the nation has since unproposed to bestow the sum of £57,000 dergone has not arisen from our own out of the Austrian loan, on the pur-acts, and whether the embarrassment chase of M. Angerstein's beautiful collection of pictures, which laid the foundation of the present National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Thus in all departments the ease of the finances was making itself felt, and the surplus at the disposal of Government was devoted to the noblest purposesthe extension of the means of religious instruction, and the formation of establishments which might diffuse the light of knowledge and refinement of taste among the people.

of finances under which we still labour is not of our own creation.

17. It has been already mentioned that, upon the death of Lord Londonderry in August 1822, Mr Canning was, by the voice of the nation rather than the choice of the Sovereign, to whom he was personally distasteful owing to the part he had taken in the affair of Queen Caroline, appointed to the important office of Minister for Foreign Affairs. Several other changes took place at the same time, or shortly 16. The preceding detail, uninter-after, all indicating the change which esting to many as it may appear, leads yet to general conclusions of the very highest interest, and second in importance to none educed in the course of this History. This is, that the nation, during the peace, when it possessed the advantages of a currency adequate to its wants, was able, without any extraordinary external advantages, not only to enjoy three years of unbroken and increasing domestic felicity, but during that period to remit nearly £12,000,000 of annual taxation,* and still uphold a real sinking fund, arising from an excess of income above expenditure, of £5,000,000 ayear. Such was the effect of these circumstances, that the National Debt, which in 1821 was £801,565,310, had sank in 1826 to £778,128,265, being

* TAXES TAKEN OFF IN GREAT BRITAIN FROM 1822 TO 1825 INCLUSIVE.

£2,139,101

was taking place in the balance of parties, and the increasing weight which the popular interest was acquir ing in the Government. Mr Vansittart, who had so long conducted the financial affairs of the country through a period of uncommon anxiety and difficulty, was promoted to the House of Peers under the title of Lord Bexley; and he was succeeded in his important office by Mr Robinson, a man of eloquence and ability of the school of Canning, and eminently qualified to earn popularity for himself and the Government, by falling in with, and sometimes taking the lead in, the popular fancies of the day. Mr Huskisson, whose great abilities and vast statistical knowledge had long given him the lead in all questions of social and political economy, and who was

* NATIONAL DEBT FUNDED FROM 1821 TO 1826.

£801,565,310

1822,

1823,

1824,

1825,