the difficulty of borrowing money had been greater

But this system had been for more than a century adopted, for avoiding the immediate pressure of raising the supplies within the year, and could not now be abandoned. The impo. sition of new taxes to any great Lust, would have been harsh and cre, and might have been even a dangerous expedient. The raising of the property tax to 10 per cent, (which certain financiers entertained thoughts of raising still higher) was universally complained of as most oppressive, and tyrannical. It was called by thousands, not taxation, but confiscation.

Lord Henry Petty therefore, in the ardour of genius and youth, conceived the design of relieving the nation, at least for a time, by abstraction on abstraction, by refinements and calculations, that stretched to the utmost the finest and strongest nerves of political arithmetic. War. loans and supplementary loans; one percent, sinking funds on supplemen. tary loans, and five per cent. sinking funds on war-loans; to raise the first year a smaller supplementary kan than in proportion to that of other years; tables to shew how much might be diverted out of the isting sinking fund; and calculations on the rise and fall of consols, money capital of debt. and no. ainal capital.---A'! this with the ac knowledged uncertainty of future incidents, and the future deprecia. tion of money, conveyed to minds incapable, or too inactive to follow the labyrinth of his combinations, the idea of a machinery too cumbersome and intricate, and liable to too many unforeseen accidents, to be acted upon by men of common sense, and altogether chimerical: while more

acute and patient calculators, both in and out of parliament, set themselves to shew by a variety of statements, though with what degree of arcuracy it is not here pretended to judge, that the amount of taxes ne.. cessary to be imposed under the new plan, as it was called, or of debt in curred on account of compound in terest, in the twentieth year from raising any particular loan, would be twice as much as under common funding, that is to say, borrowing, and raising taxes within the year for payment of the interest of the sums borrowed.

Of all the plans of finance sub. mitted to the consideration of par liament, the most simple, solid, and what would have been most generally acceptable, was that of Sir James Puttency, who declared his opinion that the accumulation of the sinking fund should stop now, that is, that the produce of this fund, during the war, should be diverted to the service of the year: which would save the trouble and expence attending the making and managing of new loans to that amount. The great partiality of ministers. or those who expected or wished to be ministers, for the sinking fund, was very gene. rally ascribed to the facility it ex tended, by keeping up the price of stocks, to the borrowing of money. Lord H. Petty's confession that, in his view of the matter, the great benefit of the sinking fund lay in the certainty it afiorded of stock being a marketable commodity, was much commented on both in conversation and publications of the ress: ress: in which this benefit to stock-jobbers, and ministers, ever prone to get the command of as much money as possible into their own hands, was viewed as a tax of eight or nine millions a

year

year on the people. In truth, this benefit, if it be one, was the only be nefit that accompanied the sinking fund. With regard to the nation, considered as an individual proprie. tor, or one family, this scheme of making the family at once debtor and creditor, taking from the one hand to give the other, robbing Peter to pay Paul, was merely a political sophism. It reminds us of the covetous man in Moliere; who, chagrined beyond measure at the loss of his money, and not knowing whom to accuse of the theft, seizes the left hand with the right, and cries out in a paroxysm of passion, "And myself too! I will charge myself with the robbery." Public credit would never be shaken while we could pay the interest, though we should never diminish the amount of our debts. The taxes rai sed for the sinking fund, may be considered as a capital laid out at a very low interest, instead of being sullered to remain in the hands of industrious individuals, to be employed by them in agriculture, manufactures, and trade. It is, as if a landholder, or farmer, instead of improving his estate or farm, should lock up, for the benefit of his grandchildren, his guineas, crowns, and shillings, in his strongbox. Without a sinking fund, the very progress of society would alle viate the burthen of the national debt, and at last almost annihilate it.

Either the navigation, commerce, and general exertion and improve. ment of the British empire, must undergo a sudden and a sad reverse, or continue to flourish more and more: for in human affairs there is nothing absolutely stationary. In the first case, the sinking fund would be swept away in the general crash; public credit would dwindle also away, and almost to nothing; and the voice

of the stockholders, clamorous i vain for the regular payment of thei dividends, would be drowned in on general uproar of the nation....Bt such a sudden and sad reverse, eve though our open trade should t shut out from the continent of Europ with all the world to trade with b sides, is not to be apprehended. Ot national prosperity may reasonabl be expected, if we may judge by wha has past since the termination of th American war, to increase, not i an arithmetical, but more nearly i a

geometrical proportion to its pre sent extent: in which case the fatu depreciation of money must be e tremely rapid; so great indeed as 1 defy all our calculation. Here the los it is evident, would fall on the stock holders.

The debt of the natic would be almost annihilated, merel by a gradual decrease in the value money. And as to the stock-holder the depreciation in the real value stock, that is, the necessarics it wou purchase, while it continued to transferred from hand to hand, won! not be very sensibly felt by any po

sessor.

It seems therefore to be the wise as well as simplest political acon my, to apply, if necessary, the who revenue of the current year to t service of the state, rather than oppress and overload the people b taxes that cramp productive indus try, for the purpose of raising or co tinuing the accumulation of a sink ing fund..--Queen Elizabeth wa wont to say, that "money was good to her, in her people's pocke as in her own."...If the people ha been suffered to live as comfortab as possible, and if possible to put little money in their pockets instea of the sinking fund, goverume would have lost nothing. It seen

to have been just as easy for government, in the reign of George III, to put their hands in the pockets of the prope, as in that of Queen Elizabeth. It is the yearly produce of the natioalindustry alone that can be considered as a permanent fund for defrying the expences of each year. more be taken, by drawing bills on posterity, and loading the present generation with the interest, the ana produce is every year suffering diminution, which is also a diminution of the sources of revenue.

The controversy about lord H. Petty's plan of finance, and the nature and operation of the sinking fund in general, in 1807, bore a near resem. blance to that between Mr. Necker and Mr. Calonne, in France, about twenty years previous to that period. Mr. Necker, the comptroller of the

finances, like Mr. Pitt, had provided, according to his calculations, a sinking fund. But lo! instead of a

sinking fund, a great deficit. Mr. Necker acknowledged that deficit, but by way of apology, gave an account of the various unforeseen circumstances to which it was owing. Mr. de Calonne replied that reasons why the deficit could not but exist, se ved only to prove the truth of its existence. The contingencies by which it was occasioned, ought to have been taken into that average on which the pretended sinking fund was founded.

These false appearances of sinking funds, invite popular applause and confidence at first. But they do not seem calculated to stand the touch of reason, or the test of time.

CHAP.

the bill was meant to extend to the slave trade in general, both in the West Indies and on the coast of Afri, or if it was the African slavetrade only that was to be abolished. Lord Grenville said that the bill extended to the African trade only..-Lord Eldon, however, thought that this mode of proceeding, for the abolition of the slave-trade, was impracticable, and that, if their lord. hips consented to put an end to the trade on the coast of Africa, the appuration of the same principle would necessarily compel them to extend the abolition to the West-India isnds. The bill was read a first time, and printed.

January 12th, on the motion of lord Grenville, for appointing a day for the second reading of the bill for the abolition of the slave-trade, lord Hawkesbury moved an address to is majesty, praying, "that he would be graciously pleased to order to be kid before the house, copies of all Communications which had passed between his majesty and foreign powers, respecting the abolition of the slave trade, in consequence of the address of that house." Lord GrenYesaid, that with respect to France te fact was, that during the late negotiation with the government of that country, communications on this abject did take place, to the proaction of which he saw no objec

As to Spain and Holland, no Communications had or could have taken place with those powers. Communications respecting the slave trade had passed between the plenipotentiaries of this country, and the united states of America; and an agreement on this subject actually formed one of the articles of the treaty which had been signed by one of plenipotentiaries. With re

2

spect to Portugal, it was not thought expedient to make any communica tion on the subject, during the negotiation with France....These five were the only powers materially interested in the slave-trade.

On the 4th of February, counsel having been called in, pursuant to order, before the house of lords, Mr. Plumer and Mr. Dallas attended on behalf of the West-India merchants; Mr. Alexander for the merchants of Liverpool; Mr. Scarlett for the merchants and planters of Janai. ca and Trinidad; and Mr. Clarke for the corporation of Liverpool, and the trustees of the dock of that port. The counsels having concluded their pleadings, requested, according to the prayer of the petitioners for whom they appeared, that witnesses might be called in; which was not allowed, as it was not thought in any respect necessary

The day appointed for the second reading of the bill for abolishing the slave-trade, was Wednesday the 5th of February; on which day, lord Grenville having given a copious detail of the principal arguments on which the principle or spirit of the bill was founded, concluded with moving," that the bill be now read a second time." The abolition of the slave-trade has been so repeatedly submitted to the consideration of parliament, and the proceedings and debates on this subject so often noticed in the Annual Register for the preceding twenty years, that it is altogether unnecessary, and might appear even irksome to our readers, to follow the reiterated discussion through the speeches in both houses, in 1807. We shall therefore just state the progress of the bill till it was passed into a law, and then take a brief view of the question, not only as

it