Soon after the peace in 1763, an unfunded debt, amounting to 6.983,553l. was funded on the Sinking Fund, and on new duties on wine and cyder, at 4 per cent. There has been since borrowed and funded on coals exported, window-lights, &c. 6.400,000l. The funded debt, therefore, has increased since the war 13.383,553l. It has decreased (as appears from [page 171]) 11.983,553l.; and, consequently, there has been on the whole an addition to it of 1.400,000l.—During seven years, from 1767 to 1774, 1.415,883l. navy-debt was paid off. See [page 172]. But, as this is a debt arising from constant deficiencies in the peace estimates for the navy, it is a part of the current peace expences.—In 1768 this debt was[137] 1.226,915l.—In 1774 it was 1.850,000l.; and consequently, though 1.415,883l. was paid off, an addition was made to it, in seven years, of 623,085l. It increased, therefore, at the rate of 291,000l. per ann.
The paper from which I have taken the following account, came into my hands after almost the whole of this work had been printed off. It contains a fact of so much importance, that I cannot satisfy myself without laying it before the public.—In a Committee of Congress in June 1775, a declaration was drawn up containing an offer to Great Britain, “that the Colonies would not only continue to grant extraordinary aids in time of war, but also, if allowed a free commerce, pay into the Sinking Fund such a sum annually for ONE HUNDRED YEARS, as should be more than sufficient in that time, if faithfully applied, to extinguish all the present debts of Britain. Or, provided this was not accepted, that, to remove the groundless jealousy of Britain that the Colonies aimed at Independence and an abolition of the Navigation Act, which, in truth, they had never intended; and also, to avoid all future disputes about the right of making that and other Acts for regulating their commerce for the general benefit, they would enter into a covenant with Britain, that she should fully possess and exercise that right for one hundred years to come.”
At the end of the Observations on Civil Liberty, I had the honor of laying before the public the Earl of Shelburne’s plan of Pacification with the Colonies. In that plan, it is particularly proposed, that the Colonies should grant an annual supply to be carried to the Sinking Fund, and unalienably appropriated to the discharge of the public debt.—It must give this excellent Peer great pleasure to learn, from this resolution, that even this part of his plan, as well as all the other parts, would, most probably, have been accepted by the Colonies. For though the resolution only offers the alternative of either a free trade, with extraordinary aids and an annual supply, or an exclusive trade confirmed and extended; yet there can be little reason to doubt, but that to avoid the calamities of the present contest, both would have been consented to; particularly, if, on our part, such a revisal of the laws of trade had been offered as was proposed in Lord Shelburne’s plan.
The preceding resolution was, I have said, drawn up in a Committee of the Congress. But it was not entered in their minutes; a severe Act of Parliament happening to arrive at that time, which determined them not to give the sum proposed in it.
FINIS.
POSTSCRIPT.
The following Postscript was published only in a few of the last Editions of the Observations on Civil Liberty. It has been often referred to in the preceding work; and therefore, it is necessary to give it a place here.