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consequences: if we were obliged to raise our prices, they must, from the same causes, do the like, and could take no advantage by under-selling and under-working us. But the alarming consideration to Great Britain is, that France is not in the same condition. Her distresses, during the war, were great, but they were immediate; her want of credit, as has been said, compelled her to impoverish her people, by raising the greatest part of her supplies within the year; but the burthens she imposed on them were, in a great measure, temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few years of peace. She could procure no considerable loans, therefore she has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as those Great Britain has imposed in perpetuity for payment of interest. Peace must, therefore, soon re-establish her commerce and manufactures, especially as the comparative lightness of taxes, and the cheapness of living, in that country, must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and artificers." On this the author rests the merit of his whole system. And on this point I will join issue with him. If France is not at least in the same condition, even in that very condition which the author falsely represents to be ours, if the very reverse of his proposition be not true, then I will admit his state of the nation to be just; and all his inferences from that state to he logical and conclusive. It is not surprising, that the author should hazard our opinion of his veracity. That is a virtue on which great statesmen do not perhaps pique themselves so much: but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should stake on a very poor calculation of chances, all credit for care, for accuracy, and for knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He is rash and inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a public ignorant and inattentive. But he may find himself in that respect, as in many others, greatly mistaken.

In order to contrast the light and vigorous condition of France with that of England, weak and sinking under her burthens, he states, in his tenth page, that France had raised £50,314,378 sterling by taxes within the several years from the year 1756 to 1762 both inclusive. An Englishman must stand aghast at such a representation: To find France able to raise within the year sums little inferior to all that we were able even to borrow on interest with all the resources

say,

of the greatest and most established credit in the world! Europe was filled with astonishment when they saw England borrow in one year twelve millions. It was thought, and very justly, no small proof of national strength and financial skill, to find a fund for the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest of this, computed with the one per cent. annuities, amounted only to £600,000 a year. This, I was thought a surprising effort even of credit. But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to it for several years together. Suppose some Jacob Henriques had proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation by raising ten millions within the year: he would have been considered, not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the public; but as a poor visionary, who had run mad on supplies and taxes. They who know that the whole land tax of England, at 4s. in the pound, raises but two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes, an addition equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt taxes of England taken together.

But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most unaccountable of all errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised within the year. Can it be conceived that any man only entered into the first rudiments of finance should make so egregious a blunder; should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition; should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the comparative states of France and England? But it will be said, that it was his misfortune to be ill-informed. Not at all. A man of any loose general knowledge, and of

the most ordinary sagacity, never could have been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately rejected so wild and extravagant an account.

The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it might have been, did enable her (not to raise within the year) but to borrow the very sums the author mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making, in the author's computation, £50,314,378. The credit of France was low; but it was not annihilated. She did not derive, as our author chooses to assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its consequence was the natural one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms, indeed on the most exorbitant usury. In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to do, is to avoid gross errors and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the proper officer to lay the accounts before the House. But the reader must judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The author speaks of France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within the year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely worthy of notice. I affirm that she borrowed large sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated an immense debt. This debt continued after the war infinitely to embarrass her affairs; and to find some means for its reduction was then and has ever since been the first object of her policy. But she has so little succeeded in all her efforts, that the perpetual debt of France is at this hour little short of £100,000,000 sterling; and she stands charged with at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents and tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the Hotel de Ville of Paris, which are by no means her sole payments of that nature, amount to 139,000,000 of livres, that is, to 6,318,000 pounds; besides billets au porteur, and various detached and unfunded debts, to a great amount, and which bear an interest.

At the end of the war, the interest payable on her debt amounted to upwards of seven millions sterling. M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the French finances, was called in to

aid in the reduction of an interest, so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon those who are to pay it. After many unsuccessful efforts towards reconciling arbitrary reduction with public credit, he was obliged to go the plain high road of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent. upon a very great part of the capital debt of that kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to the destruction of future credit, produced about £500,000 a year, which was carried to their Caisse d'amortissement, or sinking fund. But so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behind-hand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances: and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard to her debt.

Everybody knows that the principal of the debt is but a name; the interest is the only thing which can distress a nation. Take this idea, which will not be disputed, and compare the interest paid by England with that paid by France:

Interest paid by France, funded and unfunded,
for perpetuity or on lives, after the tax of
10 per cent.
Interest paid by England, as
as stated by the
author, p. 27

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£6,500,000

4,600,000

£ 1,900,000

The author cannot complain, that I state the interest paid by England as too low. He takes it himself as the extremest term. Nobody who knows anything of the French finances will affirm that I state the interest paid by that kingdom toc high. It might be easily proved to amount to a great dea more: even this is near two millions above what is paid by England.

There are three standards to judge of the good condition of a nation with regard to its finances. 1st, The relief of

the people. 2nd, The equality of supplies to establishments. 3rd, The state of public credit. Try France on all these standards.

Although our author very liberally administers relief to the people of France, its government has not been altogether so gracious. Since the peace she has taken off but a single vingtieme, or shilling in the pound, and some small matter in the capitation. But, if the government has relieved them in one point, it has only burthened them the more heavily in another. The Taille,1 that grievous and destructive imposition, which all their financiers lament, without being able to remove or to replace, has been augmented no less than six millions of livres, or 270,000 pounds English. A further augmentation of this or other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary to their affairs: so exceedingly remote from either truth or verisimilitude is the author's amazing assertion, that the burthens of France in the war were in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few years of peace.

In the next place, if the people of France are not lightened of taxes, so neither is the state disburthened of charges. I speak from very good information, that the annual income of that state is at this day 30 millions of livres, or £1,350,000 sterling, short of a provision for their ordinary peace establishment; so far are they from the attempt or even hope to discharge any part of the capital of their enormous debt. Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labours the whole body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly look for some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system; the effect of which on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to conjecture.

In the third point of view, their credit. Let the reader cast his eye on a table of the price of French funds, as they stood a few weeks ago, compared with the state of some of our English stocks, even in their present low condition:

A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the presumed fortune of every person below the degree of a gentleman.

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