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THE NATIONAL DEBT.

A treatise on taxation may very properly terminate with a few remarks on our National Debt, as it is now called, in courtesy to Royalty, being formerly called,— 'The King's Debt.'

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about our National Debt.

The capital of the National Debt, although nominally large, has no real existence. It is, in fact, except as a measure of annuities, a mere fiction; and, if it were more correctly viewed, it would cease to create the uneasiness which is so frequently expressed about its

amount.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the National Debt is a great burden on the resources of this country.

It is another common error to attribute the deprivation and suffering in this country to the great weight of taxation under which it labors. That the Public Debt and Taxation are great evils, cannot be denied; and that these are the consequences of the extravagance and mismanagement of former Governments, must be admitted.

But though it be impossible to doubt that, a high rate of taxation has operated as a clog on the progress of this country, yet it is demonstrable that, taxes, the product of which is circulated in the country from which they are raised, can never seriously injure a country directly by the mere amount, but either from the time or circumstances under which they are raised; or, from the injudicious manner in which they are levied; or, from the improper objects to which they are applied.

If the sum received in dividends on the National Debt were paid in taxes, and if these two sums precisely coincided in amount, and if there were no expenses

of collection, and if the taxes did not interfere with the production of wealth, the National Debt would not diminish the National Wealth, though it could not augment it.

It would be a mere matter of distribution.

But the expense of collecting the national revenue, and the interference of taxation with production, are so much pure loss, and by the removal of these two sources of expense and loss, we should be richer if we were relieved of the National Debt.

To relieve ourselves of the National Debt may not be conveniently within our power, but to relieve ourselves of the worst consequences of it is easily within our power.

But, still the fact remains that, the National Debt,now, in round numbers, about 800 millions, is a mortgage laid upon Taxes; and this is a great evil, as also a great breach of the much boasted, but much violated, English Constitution; for it is the great privilege of each House of Commons in turn to enact taxes at pleasure, and no existing House has any right to engage that taxes shall be voted by its successor.

Our National Debt is, therefore, a National Evil, and has been fixed on us and posterity by unconstitutional means; but this evil, great as it is, is often exaggerated in its evil effects, and made to appear to be a greater evil than it really is.

The following illustration by the Poet and Philosopher, Coleridge, has some truth in it, though it is more poetically beautiful, than philosophically correct :-"The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, the pasture, and the corn-field; but it may, likewise, force upwards the moisture from the fields of industry, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste."- And, he

adds, the corruptions of a system can be duly appreciated by those only who have contemplated the system in that ideal state of perfection exhibited by the reason, -the nearest possible approximation to which, under existing circumstances, it is the business of prudential understandings to realise.

In "the merrie days" (whenever those were) there was no National Debt to be provided for. No Customs and Excise duties were filched out of the people's food and clothing. No war taxes were wrung from the people's wages. There was plenty of tyranny then, but there was not the tyranny of taxation. There were wars then, but the King of England, who waged the war, paid for it out of his own pocket, with the aid of voluntary contributions from such of his subjects as possessed the means as well as the will.

The present practice of making the people pay for the wars, appears to have come in with King William the Third, and then England began to be more frequently engaged in wars, and in wars of longer continuance than before. To that change in the practice, the British Nation owes its present Debt. But few, perhaps, have any definite notion of the extent to which this country stands indebted to her wars.

The following Tables, No. 1 and No. 2, have been prepared from the most authentic documents for the purpose of showing this:

TABLE NO. 1. SHOWING THE INCREASE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT FROM WARS.

The column of Debt shows the increase at the end of each war, but as this does not include the extra expenditure, preparatory and subsequently to the war, it is obvious that this does not show the actual direct ex

penses of each war. If the whole of the direct expenditure consequent upon these wars could be ascertained, including the annual interest paid in respect of the debt so created, the aggregate would extend to many thousand millions sterling. But if, in addition to this, the indirect cost and loss to the nation could be ascertained, (which is impossible,) the aggregate would be extended to an amount quite inconceivable. It is, therefore, unnecessary to carry the calculation further, and this may be sufficient to show how unprofitable to a nation is war, unless for defence.

In looking back to the history of past wars in this list, it is impossible to say, even on the ground of national policy, that the English Nation has gained any advantage which might not have been acquired without any interference with the policy of other nations.

If this view be correct, it follows that the many thousand millions, sterling, expended by the British Nation in these wars, and all the human misery consequent thereon, might have been saved.

TABLE NO. 2. SHOWING THE COST CF WAR.