The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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18} 3 0 LO n j hy ¥ po il, ra 11, 116 PERMANENT ANNUITIES 423 cruing to subsequent generations from the military triumphs 40 of the past, can hardly be assessed in terms of money. It is ’ impossible to say what quota of the expense of Marlborough’s campaigns could be fairly imposed on Englishmen in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Political gains and military successes are often very transient advantages. If it is fair to postpone the reckoning, it is also necessary to take account of the rapid depreciation which affects this — species of national gain. It is not easy to adduce good sating reasons for deferring payment for military expense for more boners than a generation, and there is an undoubted danger that statesmen, who find they can obtain money easily, may be more tempted to engage in reckless undertakings, than if they were compelled at every step to look at ways and means. However this may be, it may still be said that the possession of such a powerful instrument of finance cannot but be beneficial to the country, even if we are forced to admit that it has not always been used with discretion. The chief point, at which the new system of finance lay open to criticism, was in the rapid increase in the charges and of ing which had to be defrayed by annual taxation, in consequence the charges of the necessity of paying interest on the growing national ** "*"“ debt. Charles Davenant, who discussed the new methods from a Tory standpoint, noted that when there is a heavy per- manent burden, there tends to be less room for new exactions on occasions of special emergency?; and after twenty years’ experience, this objection ceased to be closely associated with Tory jealousy. It became obvious to all dispassionate ob- servers that the system had been pursued to a dangerous extent. Archibald Hutcheson wrote most judiciously on the subject, and analysed the losses to the community from the pressure of debt, in the rise of prices, the depression of trade, and payment of interest to foreigners®. He urged that immediate steps should be taken to effect the repayment of the debt, as it stood in 1717. He would have appropriated a tenth part of all real and all personal estate to this object, as he believed that there would be such a revival of pro- sperity, when the pressure of taxation was lightened, that the landed interest, the trading interest, and the moneyed \ Essay on Ways and Means, in Works, 1. 28. 2 Qollection of Treatises, p. 20.

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