finances was worse,
if possible. Every branch of the revenue became less productive after
the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of
the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in
four of the value in the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly
amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense of three millions
sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous
principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain
ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often
the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was
cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At this day we have seen
parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance
eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller loans, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public
credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with
the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like a solicitor for
an hospital, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred
pound, and even smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they could,
their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent. Even the
paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and generally preferred to it)
was often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the state of the
rest may be judged.

As to our commerce, the imports and exports of the nation, now
six-and-forty million, did not then amount to ten. The inland trade,
which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which, in
part growing out of the foreign, and connected with it, is more
advantageous and more substantially nutritive to the state, is not only
grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been
augmented at least in a tenfold proportion. When I came to England, I
remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was
limited by an act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of William the
Third. I mean that of the Aire and Calder. The rate was settled at
thirteen pence. So high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these
beginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one of the longest and
sharpest contests I remember in your House, and which rather resembled a
violent contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was,
as well as I can recollect, to ho