"other way, and should be used by the State." But in the shocks that trade may experience, does the whole of every displaced capital flout so as to be entirely disposable for some other employment? and even if no fragments were submerged, does it yield the same returns after being used by the State that it did before? undoubtedly not. The manufacturer who makes 10 per cent. on his capital as it stands in his books, would receive from the public only 5 per cent. on such parts of it as he could collect from the wreck: he cannot pour into the funds the value of his machinery, his skill, his credit, his correspondence. If, as is almost always the case both with manufacturers and merchants, a consi derable portion of the capital he employed consisted of borrowed money, he must lose the whole of the profit be made by the use of such borrowed money, since the funds yield only that legal interest which he must pay to his private creditor. Traders, therefore, on borrowed capital, and on long credit, cannot find relief in this way; neither can traders on commission, for they also have little or no capital to invest in any manner, and if they lose their commissions, they lose every thing. The funds are more advantageously resorted to by those merchants whose stock is of a more transferable character, and by men of every rank and profession who spend less than their incomes; but all these persons might find other means of bestowing their savings, in the extension of agriculture and trade, at home or in the colonies: the funds intercept them from these productive employments, and turn them to the unproduc tive and destructive service of war. But the funding system is chiefly supported, as it gratefully repays the obligation, by the moneyed interest: the benefits which it confers on this interest are indisputable, but it is as indisputable that these benefits are gained at the expence of the country. The immense floating capitals of moneyed men would never have existed, but for the funding system, in such a shape, and in such hands; such a race of men would not have existed; and if they should mourn the death of a system, of which they are the children and champions, (and we know Fingit in hoc casu, nemo dolorem "Ploratur lacrymis amissa pecunia veris;") yet the most eager advocate for the poor laws will hardly insist on the expediency, as a separate and ultimate object of policy, of assessing the country for the purpose of enriching the rich; and defend the interests of loan-contractors and stock-jobbers, as identified with the public prosperity. By "death" of the funding system, I mean an extinction of the national debt effected by the sinking fund, and not one involving the smallest breach of good faith. But though we talk of money being invested in the funds, we must not be imposed on by such an application of the word investment, as if the funds were actually a productive source of revenue like agriculture or commerce; or like mines, docks, canals, and banks, belonging to joint-stock companies with transferable shares. Let us hear the Reviewer: "Hence the public funds "afford a sort of entrepot, a deposit, where it is natural 66 ly collected in an useful employment, (inasmuch as 66 wars are necessary evils,) ready, at the same time "for other services, and capable of being transferred "in a moment to fill those blanks which accident may ❝ occasion." This passage affords a good example of the truth of the observation, that "Metaphors are fal ❝lacious when used without a sufficient regard to just analogy, and when the qualities of one object are "transferred to another:" and an analysis of it will precipitate a considerable quantity of error, which the single word deposit holds in solution. Property is invested in the funds in two ways: 1st, when the loan contractor advances the money to government which is expended in the public service, and for which new stock is created: 2d, when stock already existing is trasferred from the seller to the buyer. In the first way the funds afford such a receptacle as the tub of the Danaides afforded; money thus invested is irrecovera bly spent, and can never be "transferred to fill those "blanks which accident may occasion." In the second way there is not the shadow of a "deposit," for the purchaser of stock places his money at once at the disposal of the seller of stock: neither does the former place his money into, nor the latter withdraw his money from, any public deposit, for the purpose of filling up, any vacancy; the transaction is nothing more than the shifting of so much money from one hand to another. The public funds are the record of wealth expended, and not an "entrepot," or deposit," wherein it may be lodged, and whence it may be withdrawn, at will. In estimating the existing wealth of the country, the capital of the public debt is a mere nonentity, not a fund whence that wealth can be recruited, and where capital might, as it were, sleep till its services were required; neither is its amount at all affected however many transfers the public creditors may make of their securities. * See the Observations on Nominalism. In the following passage the Reviewer presumes, perhaps, still more on the negligence of his reader with respect to the ambiguities of language: "The emerહૈદ gencies of public affairs produce the very men re86 quired by their demands, and the very sums of money "by which those men may be hired by the State. The 66 same capitals now continue to employ the same men as σε during peace. Formerly they were employed in ma nufactures and trade; now those channels are ob"structed, and the stock is thrown into the public "service, together with the men no longer useful in "the peaceable arts." If there be no difference between consumption and production; if labour be equally profitable, whether it be employed in the service of the State, or in that of the merchant and farmer,-whether men be cruizing in frigates, or navigating merchantmen; whether they be roused from their beds by the rattling drum and ear-piercing fife, to seek the enemy in tented fields, or by the "cock's shrill clarion," to direct the plough in subduing the stubborn glebe;then we may admit that "the same capitals now con"tinue to employ the same men as during peace:" but as consumption and production are operations not merely different but opposite, the above passage, when corrected, will stand thus: the same capitals are now speedily consumed by the same men who during peace might have derived a permanent livelihood from them; and contributions are now levied from others to replace the revenues they yielded when employed in the peaceable arts. Such being the nature of the Funding System, Miseri quibus intentata nitet! ART. V. A Synopsis of the British Finances, and of the Funding System, during twenty years, from 1793 to 1812. Year. Revenue. Borrowed. Total expended. Charge for Interest and Sinking Fund. 6,204,616| 504,142 22,156,418] 10,704,646 11,451,772 Total 787,918,784 392,608,099 1180,526,883 472,764,320 707,762,563 144,744,889 64,588,671 315,154,464 Average. 39,395,939 19,630,404 59,026,344 23,638,216) 35,388,182 15,757,723 The above sum of £392,608,099 was funded for. .£581,380,812 |