ment which the House of Commons, the close of the contest which he so by a great majority, voted, was placed nobly maintained, and recollects that above his grave in Westminster Abbey, the liberty of mankind was dependent already illustrated by the ashes of so on its success, will award him a wider many of the great and good in English mausoleum, and inscribe on his grave history; but the historian who surveys the well-known words, “Si monumenthe situation of the British empire at tum quæris, circumspice!"

CHAPTER XLI.

THE BRITISH FINANCES, AND MR PITT'S SYSTEM OF FINANCIAL POLICY.

contest they had so heroically maintained, if they had not found in the resources of government the means of permanently continuing it. Vain would have been the reaction produced by suffering against the French Revolu tion, vain the charnel-house of Spain and the snows of Russia, if Britain had not been in a situation to take advantage of the crisis. If she had been unable to aliment the war in the Peninsula when its native powers were prostrated in the dust, the sword of Wellington would have been drawn in vain; and the energies of awakened Europe must have been lost in fruitless efforts if the wealth of England had not at last arrayed them in dense and disciplined battalions on the banks of the Rhine.

1. It would be to little purpose that the mighty drama of the French revolutionary wars was recorded in history, if the mainspring of all the European efforts, the BRITISH FINANCES, were not fully explained. It was in their boundless extent that freedom found a never-failing stay; in their elastic power that independence obtained a permanent support. When surrounded by the wreck of other states, when surviving alone the fall of so many confederacies, it was in their inexhaustible resources that England found | the means of resolutely maintaining the contest, and waiting calmly, in her citadel amidst the waves, the return of a right spirit in the neighbouring nations. Vain would have been the prowess of her seamen, vain the valour of her soldiers, if her national finances 2. How, then, did it happen, that had given way under the strain. Even this inconsiderable island, so small a the conquerors of Trafalgar and Alex-part of the Roman empire, was enabled andria must have succumbed in the to expend wealth greater than ever had from the multiplicity of duties to which his been amassed by the ancient mistress attention was directed, exerting his influence of the world; to maintain a contest of neither to enrich himself nor those with unexampled magnitude for twenty whom he is connected, it is impossible not to conclude that he has acted with a high years; to uphold a fleet which condegree of integrity and moderation. In the quered the united navies of Europe, course of his long administration, the only and an army which carried victory into denship of the Cinque Ports. But I cannot every corner of the globe; to acquire concur in a motion for funeral honours a colonial empire that encircled the upon Mr Pitt as an 'excellent statesman.' earth, and subdue the vast continent of Public honours are matters of the highest Hindostan, at the very time that it importance, and we must not in such cases yield our consent if it is opposed by struggled in Spain with the land forces a sense of public duty."-Parl. Deb. vi. 61, 62. of Napoleon, and equipped all the

office which be took to himself was the War

* "It is seldom," says Hume, "that the people gain anything by revolutions in government; because the new settlement, jealous and insecure, must commonly be supported with more expense and severity than the old but on no occasion was the truth of this maxim more sensibly felt than in England after the overthrow of the royal authority. Complaints against the oppression of ship-money and the tyranny of the StarChamber had roused the people to arms, and, having gained a complete victory over the Crown, they found themselves loaded with a multiplicity of taxes formerly un--PEBRER, 139, 140. known, while scarce an appearance of law and liberty remained in any part of the administration."

The following are some of the items in this enormous aggregate of £83,000,000 raised from the nation during the Commonwealth, -a striking proof of the despotic character of the executive during that period :Land-tax, Excise, .

4. These inconsiderable taxes, how been discovered. Great as have been ever, were destined to be exchanged the obligations which England owes in for others of a very different character, many different views to the Revolution, upon the accession of the house of it is beyond all question the greatest Orange to the throne. The intimate that it brought in a sovereign instructed connection of the princes of that family in the art of overcoming the ignorant with Continental politics, and the long impatience of taxation which is the inwars in which in consequence the na- variable characteristic of free commution was involved, soon led to a more nities, and thus gave it a government burdensome system of taxation, and capable of turning to the best account the raising of sums annually from the the activity and energy of its inhabipeople which in former times would tants, at the same time that it had the have been deemed incredible. The means given it of maintaining their inPrince of Orange brought from the re- dependence. public of Holland, where it had been 5. So great was the increase of the already practised and was thoroughly public burdens during the reign of understood, the important secret of William, that the national income, in governing popular assemblies, and ex- the thirteen years that he sat on the tracting heavy taxes from popular com-throne, was nearly doubled: being raismunities. Like the Roman emperors, ed from £2,000,000 a-year to £3,895,000. he did not discard the senate, but he But the addition made to the public contrived to render it the instrument revenue was the least important part of his will. He did not, like the of the changes effected during this Stuarts, engage the throne in a contest important period. It was then that the with parliament: on the contrary, NATIONAL DEBT began; and governhe did everything by its votes, and ment was taught the dangerous secret concealed the exactions of the crown of providing for the necessities, and under the shadow of the authority of maintaining the influence of present the House of Commons. His whole times, by borrowing money and laying efforts were directed to gain the ma- its payment on posterity. Various mojority of the constituencies in the tives combined to induce the governcountry by corruption, and of votes ment, immediately after the Revolution, in parliament by patronage. A vast to adopt the system of borrowing on the government expenditure, incurred in credit of the state. Notwithstanding a cause at first highly popular, and the the temporary unanimity with which profuse contracting of loans on the the Revolution had been brought about, security of the revenue of future years, various heart-burnings and divisions afforded the means of doing both. This soon succeeded that event, and the exsystem proved entirely successful, and iled dynasty still numbered a large it is to its success that the subsequent and resolute body, especially in the greatness of the empire is mainly to be rural districts, among their adherents. ascribed. But for it, the means of Extensive patronage and no small raising taxes adequate to the protection, share of corruption were necessary to and necessary for the defence, of the secure the influence of government over empire, would never have been dis- a nation thus divided: foreign wars were covered; and England, like Poland, rightly deemed requisite to maintain would have fallen a prey to the ambi- the ascendant of the Protestant printion of the adjoining nations, the re- ciples to which the king owed his acsources of which had been drawn forth cession to the throne; and the Contiby the force of despotic power, while nental connections of the house of no means of developing its own had Orange imperiously required the interfive years preceding 1836 was only 48s. The vention of Great Britain in those desprice was much higher during the next five perate struggles by which the very exyears, but that was the result of uncommonly istence of the commonwealth of Holland rainy seasons coming in succession during that whole period.-SMITH's Wealth of Nations, was endangered. The same cause which i. 358; and Corn Average, 1835. led to nearly the duplication of the

6. It is unnecessary to follow the successive steps by which both the public revenue and the national debt of Great Britain were increased after this period. Suffice it to say, that both were largely augmented during the glorious war of the succession; that the long and pacific administration which followed, effected no sensible reduction in their amount; that the checkered contest of 1739, and the more triumphant campaigns of the Seven Years' war, contributed equally to their increase; and that the disasters of the American struggle were attended by so great an augmentation of the national burdens, that at its termination in 1783, in the opinion both of Mr Hume and Adam Smith, they must inevitably prove fatal in the end to the independence of the nation. At the close of the last contest the public revenue was £12,000,000, and the debt £240,000,000, the interest of which absorbed so large a proportion as £9,319,000 of the annual income of the state; the loans contracted during its disastrous continuance having been no less than one hundred millions.+

public burdens of France by Louis | produced, is to be found the remote Philippe,* after the revolution of 1830, but certain cause of financial embarproduced a similar increase in the taxes rassments, now to all appearance irreof Great Britain after the change of dy-mediable. nasty in 1688, and originated the dangerous system of borrowing on the security of the assessment of future years. It was justly thought, that the present influence of government could in this way be increased to an extent altogether impracticable if the expenditure of each year were to be limited to the supplies raised within itself; and that, by the distribution of the debt among a great number of public creditors, an extensive and influential body might be formed, attached by the strong tie of individual interest to the fortunes of the ruling dynasty; because they were aware that their claims would be disregarded by the legitimate monarchs if restored to the throne. The expedient, therefore, was fallen upon of contracting a debt transferable by a simple power of attorney, in the smallest shares, from hand to hand; and capable of being used almost like the highest and most valuable species of bank-notes, in the transactions of the nation. To the steady prosecution of this system, and the formation of a secure deposit by its means for the savings of the nation, much of the subsequent prosperity and 7. It was at this period that Mr Pitt grandeur of England is to be ascribed. came into office, on the resignation of But, like all other human things, it has Mr Fox and the coalition ministry. its evils as well as its advantages: and His ardent and sagacious mind was in the perilous facility of borrowing, immediately turned to the considerawhich the magnitude of the national tion of the finances, and the means of resources and the fidelity with which extricating the nation from the embarthe public engagements were fulfilled | rassments, to ordinary observers inex

*The following is a statement of the budgets of France before and after the Revolution of July. It is a curious and instructive object of contemplation to observe a similar convulsion leading, in countries so widely different in their character, customs, and institutions, as France and England were at the accessions of the dynasties of Orange and Orleans to their respective thrones, to a result so precisely similar:—

†The following table exhibits, in a clear and condensed form, the increase of the public

tricable, in which it had been involved prospect that the existing engagements by the improvident expenditure of pre- could ever be liquidated, but as threatceding years. It was evident, from a ening at no distant period to render it retrospect of history, that no sensible impossible for the nation to make those impression had been made on the debt efforts which its honour or indepenby any efforts of preceding times; that dence might require. Little foresight though a sinking-fund had long existed was required to show that, in the course in name, yet its operations had been of events, wars and changes must arise, very inconsiderable; and that all the which would render it indispensable for economy of the long periods of peace the government to assume a menacing which had intervened since the Revo- attitude, and possibly engage in a long lution, had done little more than dis- course of hostilities. But how could any charge a tenth of the burdens con- administration venture to assume the tracted in the preceding years of hos- one, or the people bear the other, if an tility. The interest of the debt ab- immense load of debt hung about their sorbed now more than two-thirds of necks, absorbing alike by its interest the public revenue. It was impossible their present revenues, and paralysing to conceal that such a state of things by its magnitude the credit by which was in the highest degree alarming; their resources might be increased on not only as affording no reasonable any unforeseen emergency?

revenue, and progressive growth of the debt, from the Revolution in 1688 to the present times.

-MOREAU and PEBRER'S Tables, 70, 89, 153, 245; and PORTER's Parl. Tables, i. 1.

528,839,277 19,428,508 34,113,146 335,983,164 12,796,796

864,822,441 32,225,304
82,155,207

72,210,512

3.883,841