raised against me.

Ye simple men on both sides the question, do you not see through this
courtly craft? If ye can be kept disputing and wrangling about church
and meeting, ye just answer the purpose of every courtier, who lives the
while on the spoils of the taxes, and laughs at your credulity. Every
religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that
instructs him to be bad.

All the before-mentioned calculations suppose only sixteen millions
and an half of taxes paid into the exchequer, after the expense of
collection and drawbacks at the custom-house and excise-office are
deducted; whereas the sum paid into the exchequer is very nearly, if not
quite, seventeen millions. The taxes raised in Scotland and Ireland are
expended in those countries, and therefore their savings will come out
of their own taxes; but if any part be paid into the English exchequer,
it might be remitted. This will not make one hundred thousand pounds a
year difference.

There now remains only the national debt to be considered. In the year
1789, the interest, exclusive of the tontine, was L9,150,138. How much
the capital has been reduced since that time the minister best knows.
But after paying the interest, abolishing the tax on houses and windows,
the commutation tax, and the poor-rates; and making all the provisions
for the poor, for the education of children, the support of the aged,
the disbanded part of the army and navy, and increasing the pay of the
remainder, there will be a surplus of one million.

The present scheme of paying off the national debt appears to me,
speaking as an indifferent person, to be an ill-concerted, if not a
fallacious job. The burthen of the national debt consists not in its
being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity
of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity
continues the same, the burthen of the national debt is the same to all
intents and purposes, be the capital more or less. The only knowledge
which the public can have of the reduction of the debt, must be through
the reduction of taxes for paying the interest. The debt, therefore,
is not reduced one farthing to the public by all the millions that
have been paid; and it would require more money now to purchase up the
capital, than when the scheme began.

Digressing for a moment at this point, to which I shall return again, I
look back to the appointment of Mr. Pitt, as minister.