antages offered to the public creditor
by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient to
compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible that
there might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there
were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would lose
both interest and principal.

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest
prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of
statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt
the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every
stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise
men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on
growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the
great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the
Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that
debt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by
foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and profound
thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body
politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nation
became richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian Succession;
and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and
orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate.
Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be
counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and
reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England
which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to
the England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;
and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first
William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions.
As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and
men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now
really arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who
did not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume,
undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time,
declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders.
Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of
arithmetical demonstration. I