d run mad on supplies and taxes. They who know
that the whole land-tax of England, at 4_s._ in the pound, raises but
two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author
has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France
owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before
that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something
in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this
astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes; an
addition, equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of
England taken together.

But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if
he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most
unaccountable of all errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the
_identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised
within the year_! Can it be conceived that any man, only entered into
the first rudiments of finance, should make so egregious a blunder;
should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition;
should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the
corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the
comparative states of France and England? But it will be said, that it
was his misfortune to be ill-informed. Not at all. A man of any loose
general knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never could have
been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately
rejected so wild and extravagant an account.

The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it might have been, did
enable her (not to raise within the year) but to _borrow_ the very sums
the author mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making, in
the author's computation, 50,314,378_l._ The credit of France was low;
but it was not annihilated. She did not derive, as our author chooses to
assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its consequence
was the natural one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms,
indeed on the most exorbitant usury.

In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be
the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can
with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the
public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect
exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to d