Year: 1864

clal sltuatlOns Inc nation must. He COll


ceived, sink under debt of Gl40,0O0,
/ 600 unless portion of the land was borne


by the American colonies The attemp
! To lay portion of the load on the Amer
! lean colonies produced another war


That war left us with an addition o


sl00, 600, 900 of debt, and without the col
onies whose help bad been represented al


indispensable. Again England was giVer


over; and again the strange patient per


sisted in becoming stronger and more


blooming, in spite of all the diagnostic'


and prognostics of state physicians. A:


she had been visibly more prosperous with


a debt of fl40, 100000, than with debt


of $4,000, 600, so she was yisibly more


prospersus with debt of G240, ,000,00
than with debt of l40, ,000, 900.


If the most enlightened man had been
told in 1892 that in 1915 the interest on
fS00, 600. 600 would be duly paid 10 the
day at the bank, he would have been as
hard of belief as if he had been told that
the Government would be in possession oi


the lamp of Aladdin or of the purse OF


Fortunatus. 1t was in truth gigantic, q


fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder
that the cry of despair should have been
louder than ever. But again that cry
was found to be as unreasonable as ever.
After a few years of exhaustion England
recovered herself Yet like Addison's
valetudinarian who continued TO whim-
per that he was dying of consumption till
he became so fat that he was shamed into
silence, she went on complaining that she
was sunk intopoverty till herwealth show
ed itself by tokens that made her com
plants ridiculous. The beggard. the
bankrupt society not only proved able TO
meet all its obligations. but while meeting
those obligations, grew richer and richer
so fast that the growth could be almost
discerned 10y the eye.


In every county we saw wastes recently
turned into gardens; in every city we saw
new streets and squares and markets,
more brilliant lamps, more abundant sup
plies of water; in the suburbs of every
seat of industry we saw villas multiplying
fast, each embosomed in its gay little
paradise of lilacs and roses. While shall
low politicians were repeating that the
energies of the people wereworn down by
the weight of the public burdens, the first
journey was performed by steam on rail
way. Soon the island was intersected by
railways.


The sum exceeding the whole amount
of the national debt at the end of the
American war was, in few years, volun-
tarily expended by this ruined people in
viaducts, tunnels, bridges, embankments,
stations, engines Meanwhile taxation
was becoming almost constantly lighter.
Yet still the exchequer was full. 1T may
now be affirmed without fear of contra
diction that we find it as easy to pay the
interest on eight hundred millions, as our
ancestors found it a century ago to pay
the interest on eighty millions.


1t can hardly be doubted that there
must have been great fallacy in the notion
of those who uttered and those who be-
lieved that long succession of confident
predictions so signally falsifed by long
succession ofindisputable facts. To point
out that fallacy is the duty of the politi-
cal economist rather than of the histori-
an. Here it is sufficient to say that the
prophets of evil were under a double de-
lusion. They enormously imagined that
there was an exact analogy between the
case of an individual who is in debt TO
another individual and the case of q So
ciety which is in debt to a part of itself;
and this analogy led them into endless
mistakes about the effect of the system
Of funding. They were under an error
not less serious touching the resources of
the country. They made no allowance
for the effect prodnced by the incessant
progress of every experimental science
and by the incessant efforts of every man
to get on in life. They saw that the debt
grew, and they forgot that other things
rreHv as wall nc the dabf