f enduring twenty times
longer than the systems adopted by America and France; and at the end of
that time it would arrive at the same common grave, the Potter's Field
of paper money.

The datum, I take for this proportion of twenty to one, is the
difference between a capital and the interest at five per cent. Twenty
times the interest is equal to the capital. The accumulation of paper
money in England is in proportion to the accumulation of the interest
upon every new loan; and therefore the progress to the dissolution is
twenty times slower than if the capital were to be emitted and put into
circulation immediately. Every twenty years in the English system is
equal to one year in the French and American systems.

Having thus stated the duration of the two systems, that of funding upon
interest, and that of emitting the whole capital without funding, to be
as twenty to one, I come to examine the symptoms of decay, approaching
to dissolution, that the English system has already exhibited, and to
compare them with similar systems in the French and American systems.

The English funding system began one hundred years ago; in which time
there have been six wars, including the war that ended in 1697.

1. The war that ended, as I have just said, in 1697.

2. The war that began in 1702.

3. The war that began in 1739.

4. The war that began in 1756.

5. The American war, that began in 1775.

6. The present war, that began in 1793.

The national debt, at the conclusion of the war which ended in 1697, was
twenty-one millions and an half. (See Smith's Wealth of Nations,
chapter on Public Debts.) We now see it approaching fast to four hundred
millions. If between these two extremes of twenty-one millions and four
hundred millions, embracing the several expenses of all the including
wars, there exist some common ratio that will ascertain arithmetically
the amount of the debts at the end of each war, as certainly as the fact
is known to be, that ratio will in like manner determine what the amount
of the debt will be in all future wars, and will ascertain the period
within which the funding system will expire in a bankruptcy of the
government; for the ratio I allude to, is the ratio which the nature of
the thing has established for itself.

Hitherto no idea has been entertained that any such ratio existed, or
could exist, that would determine a problem of this kind; that is, that
would ascertain, without having any kn