Allowing all the credit possible to the sinking fund, (and a great deal is due,) still during war its operation is a sort of paradox; it does not obtain relief: it is liable to be questioned; but we are come to a point, where the stability of our finances ought to be put out of doubt, and beyond all question. The mode of settling our affairs ought not only to be such as in the end may succeed, but its efficacy and practicability ought to be such as our enemies can understand and give credit to. Without this, we shall have no end to the contest.
With respect to what our enemies will give credit to, a good deal depends on their own natural disposition. A fickle and arbitrary people, who are continually breaking their faith, can have little belief in the constancy of a sinking fund, but they will be perfectly well inclined to believe, that men of property may be compelled, and will even be glad to pay one per cent. a year, for ten years, to ensure the safety of that property. Supposing then that the sinking fund were the better plan of the two in reality, it would not be so in the present circumstances, because it would not obtain credit, and the other will.
As to the rest, deprive the French of their hopes of ruining our finances, and they will make peace on reasonable terms, whenever we please; their object for continuing the war will then be at an end; and, if they do continue it, we can go on as long as they can, without any addition to our burthens.
Whatever the cause of a war may be, the hope of success is the only possible motive for persisting in it. The French have been led into two errors; first, by the comparison of this country to Carthage, and of their own to Rome, (an absurd comparison that does not hold,) and, in the second place, by looking on our ruin, from the increase of our debt, as certain. We ought to undeceive them, and then they will have less inclination to persist in war. No pains has hitherto been taken to set them right; nor, indeed, with respect to the national debt, can it ever be done by the present method, till they see the effect; for though the progress of a sinking fund in peace is easily understood, in time of war there is much appearance of deception; it looks like slight =sic= of hand more than a real and solid transaction.
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CHAP. V.
Of Taxes for the Maintenance of the Poor.-- Their enormous Increase.-- The Cause.-- Comparison between those of England and Scotland.--Simple, easy, and humane Mode of reducing them.
AMONGST the interior causes that threaten England with decline, none is more alarming than the increasing expenses of the poor; expenses evidently rising in a proportion beyond our prosperity, and totally without example, either in the history of past times, or in that of any modern nation.
The poor of England cost more to maintain than the free revenue of the country amounted to thirty years ago, and to nearly three times the amount of the whole revenues of the nation, at the time of the revolution.
The proportion between the healthy and the sick cannot have changed so much as to account for this augmentation; we must, therefore, seek for the cause elsewhere.