how could
the facility of borrowing have increased, {191} as it has done? or how
could merchants and individuals raise the sums they now do? {192}

---
{190} In 1793, 5,000,000 L. was lent to merchants on exchequer-bills.
The property, on which the money was secured, was really
merchandize, but the lenders would have nothing to do with the
goods; government stepped in, and took the goods as a security,
creating a stock transferrable, that represented the same goods, and, as
if by magic, the money was found in a moment. I know of no
operation so fit for elucidating the advantage of national debt as this.

{191} Borrowing on life rents is bad, for this reason; where there is no
employment of this sort, all money is constantly employed in some
sort of trade or enterprise that will produce profit, but cannot be
realised. Example, Paris, &c.

{192} When money was wanted, in Queen Anne's time, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, (Mr. Montague,) attended by the Lord
Mayor and Sheriffs, went about, from shop to shop, to borrow it,
much in the way that is occasionally practised by the beadles for a
public charity!! Yet England's credit was good, it owed little, the war
was popular, and the country rich.
-=-

[end of page #239]

It must be allowed that one hundred millions, or at least a much
smaller sum than our debts amount to now, would have produced this
effect, and might answer every purpose of this sort, but there is still a
consideration arising from the fluctuations in a stock, when it is small,
and also from the number of persons possessed of it. People buy in
and sell out with total indifference when the quantity is great, and the
fluctuations small; but, the moment the funds are agitated, whether in
rising or falling, money becomes scarce for those who want it for
other purposes.

That the number of persons ready to buy and sell must be
proportioned, in some degree, to the quantity of stock, is of itself so
evident, that it would be useless to enlarge upon it; but it must be
granted that the national debt has long ago passed the sum that was
necessary to produce this advantage.

We find, then, that the evils attending the increase of debt are greatly
counteracted by the debt itself, and that, to a certain amount, it is
productive of a very considerable advantage to a trading nation. As
those who calculated its ill effects, and foretold the ruin it would bring
upon the state, did not take into account those cir