of revenue, and, so far from removing these articles
beyond the reach of the poor, which had been one of the designs of the
bill, it was estimated that the business of smuggling was so stimulated
by the enormous bounty offered upon its labors, that the amount of
spirits consumed in the kingdom during the existence of this tax was not
sensibly diminished. After a short trial the tax was removed.

The work of reducing the list of excisable articles was nevertheless
begun, and from this time it went slowly, and, except as interrupted by
extraordinary demands upon the state, steadily forward. Stamps, however,
were governed by a different law. Its inoffensiveness, the economy of
its mode of collection, together with its ready availability, caused
this species of tax to be brought into more and more extensive use. In
fact, a constant increase of taxation in some form had become necessary
in order to meet the increasing expenses of the state. After the close
of the war in 1697, strong efforts were made to pay off the national
debt, the rising greatness of which filled all classes with alarm. No
corresponding efforts since have been rewarded with similar results. In
the brief period of peace that followed, the national debt was reduced
one fifth. Four expensive wars, following each other in rapid
succession, overwhelmed the petty labors of the sinking fund, put an end
to the work of diminution, and left the nation, at the beginning of the
war with her colonies in this country, oppressed with a debt of
$600,000,000. It came out from this struggle with $500,000,000 added to
the burden of the state. This point of time may be fixed as the close of
the second epoch. A new class of changes now begin, which have had, if
possible, a greater influence on the financial condition of England, as
it exists at the present, than those we have already described.

In 1793, notwithstanding its enormous debt, the country boldly entered
upon its great conflict with France. It is impossible to look without
admiration upon the obstinate energy displayed by the English nation
during this conflict, which lasted, with slight intermissions, for more
than twenty years, and by which the annual tax was quadrupled, and the
national debt increased beyond a chance of final extinction. In the
astonishing revolution which it wrought in the financial condition of
the state, as well as in much of the social phenomena with which it was
accompanied, this conflict s