ht of them
should create murmurs among the people. It was therefore the policy of
the times, to anticipate the revenues of their posterity, by borrowing
immense sums for the current service of the state, and to lay no more
taxes upon the subject than would suffice to pay the annual interest
of the sums so borrowed: by this means converting the principal debt
into a new species of property, transferrable from one man to another
at any time and in any quantity. A system which seems to have had it's
original in the state of Florence, _A.D._ 1344: which government then
owed about 60000_l._ sterling; and, being unable to pay it, formed the
principal into an aggregate sum, called metaphorically a _mount_ or
_bank_, the shares whereof were transferrable like our stocks, with
interest at 5 _per cent._ the prices varying according to the
exigencies of the state[e]. This laid the foundation of what is called
the national debt: for a few long annuities created in the reign of
Charles II will hardly deserve that name. And the example then set has
been so closely followed during the long wars in the reign of queen
Anne, and since, that the capital of the national debt, (funded and
unfunded) amounted in January 1765 to upwards of 145,000,000_l._ to
pay the interest of which, and the charges for management, amounting
annually to about four millions and three quarters, the revenues just
enumerated are in the first place mortgaged, and made perpetual by
parliament. Perpetual, I say; but still redeemable by the same
authority that imposed them: which, if it at any time can pay off the
capital, will abolish those taxes which are raised to discharge the
interest.

[Footnote e: _Pro tempore, pro spe, pro commodo, minuitur eorum
pretium atque augescit._ Aretin. See Mod. Un. Hist. xxxvi. 116.]

BY this means the quantity of property in the kingdom is greatly
encreased in idea, compared with former times; yet, if we coolly
consider it, not at all encreased in reality. We may boast of large
fortunes, and quantities of money in the funds. But where does this
money exist? It exists only in name, in paper, in public faith, in
parliamentary security: and that is undoubtedly sufficient for the
creditors of the public to rely on. But then what is the pledge which
the public faith has pawned for the security of these debts? The land,
the trade, and the personal industry of the subject; from which the
money must arise that supplies the several taxes.