existence. The single circumstance, were there no other,
that a war should now cost nominally one hundred and sixty millions,
which when the system began cost but twenty-one millions, or that the
loan for one year only (including the loan to the Emperor) should now be
nominally greater than the whole expense of that war, shows the state of
depreciation to which the funding system has arrived. Its depreciation
is in the proportion of eight for one, compared with the value of its
money when the system began; which is the state the French assignats
stood a year ago (March 1795) compared with gold and silver. It is
therefore that I say, that the English funding system has entered on the
last twenty years of its existence, comparing each twenty years of
the English system with every single year of the American and French
systems, as before stated.

Again, supposing the present war to close as former wars have done, and
without producing either revolution or reform in England, another war at
least must be looked for in the space of the twenty years I allude to;
for it has never yet happened that twenty years have passed off without
a war, and that more especially since the English government has dabbled
in German politics, and shown a disposition to insult the world, and the
world of commerce, with her navy. The next war will carry the national
debt to very nearly seven hundred millions, the interest of which, at
four per cent, will be twenty-eight millions besides the taxes for
the (then) expenses of government, which will increase in the same
proportion, and which will carry the taxes to at least forty millions;
and if another war only begins, it will quickly carry them to above
fifty; for it is in the last twenty years of the funding system, as in
the last year of the American and French systems without funding, that
all the great shocks begin to operate.

I have just mentioned that, paper in England has _pulled down_ the value
of gold and silver to a level with itself; and that _this pulling dawn_
of gold and silver money has created the appearance of paper money
keeping up. The same thing, and the same mistake, took place in
America and in France, and continued for a considerable time after the
commencement of their system of paper; and the actual depreciation of
money was hidden under that mistake.

It was said in America, at that time, that everything was becoming
_dear_; but gold and silver could then buy those dear