To the authority of my right honourable friend, at least up to the present moment, for strengthening instead of impairing the Sinking Fund; to that of Lord Sidmouth and of Lord Grenville, I must add the greatest authority of all, that of Mr. Pitt. I can take upon me to assure the Committee, in the most confident manner, that it was the strong leaning of his mind, I might almost say his fixed intention, had he lived to direct the finances of the country for another year, to impose not only the taxes that might be necessary to meet the charge of the loan of that year, but as many more as he thought the country could bear, without too great or too sudden a pressure upon its resources. All the surplus of such taxes, beyond the interest of the loan, he intended to apply as an immediate voluntary aid to the Sinking Fund, to be gradually withdrawn for the charge of future loans, if for that purpose any part of it, or the whole, should, in future years, be required.

My right honourable friend, and others who so strongly condemned the subtraction of a single million from the war taxes in 1809, will not contend that the accumulation of debt, or the state of public credit, or the amount of the loan, compared to the Sinking Fund, was such as to render hazardous at that period what is comparatively safe at present. In that year, the three per cents were at 68; they are now at 59. In that year, the loan was seventeen millions, and the Sinking Fund about ten millions. For the present year, the loan, I much fear, will not be short of thirty millions on account of England only, and the Sinking Fund less than fourteen millions.

It cannot be imputed to my right honourable friend, that, in enumerating all the virtues of his plan, he ever mentioned economy as one of its recommendations. He well knew that he could not, although it is an inference in its favour which some persons have derived from a superficial

examination of his tables. My right honourable friend, I am sure, would be the last man to countenance such an inference. He has most successfully shown, on various occasions, that true economy consists in a course altogether opposite to that which he now adopts. He has reduced to figures, and recorded in Resolutions, the proofs of that economy, demonstrating, by the most irrefragable evidence, that to accumulate debt, in the manner and to the extent now proposed by this plan, is the very reverse of good management. He has shewn you what you have actually saved by raising a large portion of your supplies within the year. I will not fatigue the Committee by a detailed reference to these proofs. They will find them in the Speeches of my right honourable friend, to which I have already referred.

If our resources are not infinite and absolutely inexhaustible; if we have already dipped deep into those resources; surely it the more becomes us well to consider, whether the remainder is not now in danger of being dissipated with unnecessary celerity? Whether by mortgaging now, at usurious interest, that income which we had wisely set aside for the discharge of existing incumbrances, we shall be more at our ease some few years hence? Whether, by accumulating debt now, upon terms which may oblige us to redeem it at an expense nearly double hereafter, we are compensated for the immediate pressure of usurious interest, by the prospect of future relief? Let gentlemen look round the world, and show me a state once in difficulty; let them look among their acquaintance, and show me an individual, once involved, that has ever been brought round and saved by these, or such like expedients. If they still doubt the delusion of such a system, one example drawn from the financial affairs of this country, and brought before them, not by a comparison of distant transactions, but

confined to the three last years of the present war, will, perhaps more forcibly than any more general view, open their eyes to the wasteful consequences of the proposed plan.

Let us compare the terms of the loan of 1810 with the terms of the loan of 1812, both in the three per cents. In 1810, for every 1007. sterling the contractors received 1407. 78. 6d. three per cent. stock: in 1812, for every 100%. sterling they received 1767. three per cent. stock. A loan of twenty-eight millions, the amount assumed by my right honourable friend to be hereafter annually raised, would, if negociated upon the terms of 1812, add to the amount of debt in each year 10,000,000l. of stock, and to the permanent annual charge 404,000l. (money value), more than if negociated upon the terms of 1810. And who shall say that, under this plan, future loans will be raised even on the terms of 1812? Neither is this all in 1810 the Exchequer Bills were circulated at an interest of three pence per day for every 100l. The interest is now three pence halfpenny. This is another increase of annual charge, exceeding 200,000. Let gentlemen calculate what these differences only would amount to in the next four years, both in increased debt and in increased permanent charge; and then they will have some faint idea of the economy of a plan, the tendency of which, it is admitted, is to lower the price of the funds. On the other hand, there can be very little doubt, if the sinking fund were left to its natural growth for those four years (with the same amount of loan), that the funds would revert to the more favourable prices of the year 1810.

Another consideration of economy is, that the reduction of interest upon the five and four per cent. stocks, which has always been looked to as one of the advantages that would speedily be realized by the Sinking Fund on the restoration of peace, and which would produce a saving of

nearly three millions a year, must necessarily be retarded by the effects of the proposed system.

I am aware that it may be said to me, "If, after all, you are of opinion that this measure is so doubtful with repect to public faith, in policy so hazardous, and in economy so expensive, what is it that you would recommend? My general answer is, that it forms no part of the duty of an individual member of Parliament, neither holding a responsible situation, nor possessing those means of informing and maturing his judgment which properly belong to office, to go beyond the sphere of his duty. That duty I have discharged, by stating my conscientious opinion upon the present plan. It certainly is not necessary, and it may not be altogether prudent, for me to go further. But, knowing as I do, all the difficulties of my right honourable friend's situation, and anxious, as I am, to satisfy him and the Committee, that it is not my disposition to add to those difficulties, I am prepared to state what has occurred to me for obviating the fundamental objection which I feel to the intended measure in its present shape, if the patience of the Committe, which I have already so much abused, should incline them not to refuse this further indulgence.

My right honourable friend stated to this Committee, on a former occasion, that during war, but especially during the present war, the country possessed means of taxation, which, from their nature, could not be permanently continued in time of peace. In this I agree with my right honourable friend, thinking with him, that the war taxes, productive as they already are, might however be considerably augmented. That the permanent taxes do not admit of the same latitude, is an opinion which of late years I have more than once declared in this House. I also agree with my right honourable friend, that an alteration will, at some time hereafter, be requisite in the Sinking Fund

Act of 1802, so as to render more equal, and to extend over a larger portion of time, that relief which the public will derive from the extinction of the debt contracted prior to that period. I subscribe to the opinion, that to have devolved the whole of that relief upon one year, is an unwise departure from the original Acts of 1786 and 1792; but, on the other hand, I contend, in the first place, that no alteration is immediately necessary; and 2dly, that whenever it is attempted, the object which we ought to have principally in view should be, both as to Sinking Fund and debt, to revert, as much as possible, to the salutary provisions of those original Acts.

The simultaneous extinction of a very large portion of debt, and an accumulation of Sinking Fund, that would become unnecessarily large for some years before that event shall take place, are the two inconveniences against which my right honourable friend wishes now to provide. In order of time, the too great accumulation of the Sinking Fund is the first of these evils: it must necessarily precede the other. But, surely, this is not an inconvenience which is either now pressing upon us, or is likely to arise, so long as we are compelled to borrow far beyond what the Sinking Fund can redeem within the year. On the one hand, therefore, it cannot be said that any such evil now exists to call for our immediate interference; on the other, I have the clear and recorded opinion of my right honourable friend, that the Sinking Fund cannot be touched, "either with justice to the stockholder, or safety to the State, so long as the accumulation of debt continues."

Let us then examine, whether, upon the grounds which I have stated, my right honourable friend's plan cannot be so amended as to bring it within those limits of justice and safety, which he has so accurately defined. For that pur