lcate a belief, that the war in Germany was chiefly supported as
a necessary diversion in favour of Great Britain and her plantations,
which would have been exposed to insult and invasion had not the enemy's
forces been otherwise employed. But the absurdity of this notion will at
once appear to those who consider, that by this time Great Britain was
sole mistress of the sea; that the navy of France was almost ruined, and
her commerce on the ocean quite extinguished; that she could not, with
the least prospect of success, hazard any expedition of consequence
against Great Britain, or any part of her dominions, while the ocean was
covered with such powerful navies belonging to that nation; and that if
one-third part of the money, annually engulphed in the German vortex,
had been employed in augmenting the naval forces of England, and those
forces properly exerted, not a single cruiser would have been able to
stir from the harbours of France; all her colonies in the West Indies
would have fallen an easy prey to the arms of Great Britain; and, thus
cut off from the resources of commerce, she must have been content to
embrace such terms of peace as the victor should have thought proper to
prescribe.

The funds established by the committee of ways and means, in order
to realize those articles of supply, consisted of the malt-tax, the
land-tax at four shillings in the pound, sums remaining in the exchequer
produced from the sinking fund, four millions five hundred thousand
pounds to be raised by annuities at three pounds ten shillings per cent,
per annum, and five hundred thousand pounds by a lottery, attended with
annuities redeemable by parliament, after the rate of three pounds per
cent, per annum; these several annuities to be transferable at the bank
of England, and charged upon a fund to be established in this session of
parliament for payment thereof, and for which the sinking fund should
be a collateral security--[438] _[See note 3 M, at the end of this
Vol.]_--one million six hundred and six thousand and seventy-six pounds,
five shillings and one penny farthing, issued and applied out of such
monies as should or might arise from the surpluses, excesses, and other
revenues composing the sinking fund--a tax of one shilling in the pound
to be annually paid from all salaries, fees, and perquisites of offices
and employments in Great Britain, and from all pensions and other
gratuities payable out of any revenues belonging t