ate these five
millions will by the union not only be advanced to six, but put in a way
of further improvement; and allowing L100,000 per annum were on this
foot to be paid in additional taxes, yet there would still remain a
yearly sum of about L900,000 towards subsisting the people more
comfortably, and making provision against times of scarcity, and other
accidents, to which, I understand, that country is very much exposed
(1706)."

"And I remember complaints of this kind were very loud in the days of
King Charles II.," said Mr. Brooks, "particularly that, though in his
time the public taxes and impositions upon the people were doubled or
trebled to what they formerly were, he nevertheless run at least a
million in debt."

"If men were uneasy with public taxes and debts in the time of King
Charles II.," said Mr. May, "because then doubled or trebled to what
they had formerly been, how much more may they be so now, when taxed at
least three times more, and the public debts increased from about one
million, as you say they then were, to fifty millions or upwards?...
and yet France is in a way of being entirely out of debt in a year or
two."

[Illustration: THE DOOR OF SADDLER'S HALL (_see page 341_).]

"At this rate," said Mr. May, "Great Britain may possibly be quite out
of debt in four or five years, or less. But though it seems we have been
at least as hasty in running into debt as those in France, yet would I
by no means advise us to run so hastily out; slower measures will be
juster, and consequently better and surer."

Mr. Pitt's celebrated measure was based upon an opinion that money could
be borrowed with advantage to pay the national debt. Paterson proposed
to redeem it out of a surplus revenue, administered so skilfully as to
lower the interest in the money market. The notion of _borrowing_ to
pay seems to have sprung up with Sir Nathaniel Gould, in 1725, when it
was opposed.

St. Matthew's was situate on the west side of Friday Street. The
patronage of it was in the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. This
church, being destroyed by the Fire of London, in 1666, was handsomely
rebuilt, and the parish of St. Peter, Cheap, thereunto added by Act of
Parliament. The following epitaph (1583) was in this church:--

"Anthony Cage entombed here doth rest,
Whose wisdome still prevail'd the Commonweale;
A man with God's good gifts so greatly blest,
That few or none his doings may impale,
A m