Without this had been one of the effects of national debt, how could the facility of borrowing have increased, {191} as it has done? or how could merchants and individuals raise the sums they now do? {192}
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{190} In 1793, 5,000,000 L. was lent to merchants on exchequer-bills. The property, on which the money was secured, was really merchandize, but the lenders would have nothing to do with the goods; government stepped in, and took the goods as a security, creating a stock transferrable, that represented the same goods, and, as if by magic, the money was found in a moment. I know of no operation so fit for elucidating the advantage of national debt as this.
{191} Borrowing on life rents is bad, for this reason; where there is no employment of this sort, all money is constantly employed in some sort of trade or enterprise that will produce profit, but cannot be realised. Example, Paris, &c.
{192} When money was wanted, in Queen Anne's time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (Mr. Montague,) attended by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, went about, from shop to shop, to borrow it, much in the way that is occasionally practised by the beadles for a public charity!! Yet England's credit was good, it owed little, the war was popular, and the country rich.
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It must be allowed that one hundred millions, or at least a much smaller sum than our debts amount to now, would have produced this effect, and might answer every purpose of this sort, but there is still a consideration arising from the fluctuations in a stock, when it is small, and also from the number of persons possessed of it. People buy in and sell out with total indifference when the quantity is great, and the fluctuations small; but, the moment the funds are agitated, whether in rising or falling, money becomes scarce for those who want it for other purposes.
That the number of persons ready to buy and sell must be proportioned, in some degree, to the quantity of stock, is of itself so evident, that it would be useless to enlarge upon it; but it must be granted that the national debt has long ago passed the sum that was necessary to produce this advantage.
We find, then, that the evils attending the increase of debt are greatly counteracted by the debt itself, and that, to a certain amount, it is productive of a very considerable advantage to a trading nation. As those who calculated its ill effects, and foretold the ruin it would bring upon the state, did not take into account those circumstances, the result of their enquiries was necessarily wrong, in point of time, though the effect of which they spoke is perfectly certain to take place, if the debt continues to increase. Their reasoning may be compared to that of an astronomer, who observed the position of a planet, but, in his calculations, made no allowance for the refraction of the atmosphere, who would therefore err as to the place of the star, but not as to its existence.