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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396 LAISSEZ FAIRE A.D. 1776 —1850. ind while Pitt's Sinking Fund. generations. Pitt was keenly alive to the disadvantages of public borrowing, and endeavoured to avoid it; but circum- stances were against him. He was alarmed by the rate at which the debt was increasing ; £121,000,000 had been added juring the American War’; the amounts were large, and the terms which ministers made with the public creditors were extravagant; instead of borrowing at a high rate of interest, in the hope of subsequently financing the debt, they borrowed at a low rate of interest, and were forced to offer all sorts of extra inducements. Thus in 1782 for every £100 subscribed, the Government allotted £100 in the three per cents., £50 in the four per cents. with an annuity of 17s. 6d. for seventy-eight years? and extra inducements were given in floating the loans by connecting them with lotteries’. The permanent indebtedness was swelled from time to time by funding Exchequer and Navy Bills‘, and in 1786 the debt amounted to £245,466,855, involving an annual charge of £9,666,541% Pitt set himself to reduce this terrible in- debtedness, and established a Sinking Fund, by means of which he was able to pay off about £10,000,000, before the exigencies of the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars rendered fresh borrowing inevitable. The main outlines of the scheme which Pitt introduced® had been formulated by 1 Sinclair, History of the Public Revenue, mv. 93. ? 22 Geo. III. ¢. 8. ' Hamilton, dn Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress of the National Debt of Great Britain (1814), p. 212. ¢ Sir John Sinclair thus describes the progress of the debt. * At first when 3 nation borrows, it is under the necessity of providing a fund for defraying not nly the principal but the interest of its debts. The creditor is afterwards perfectly wtisfied, if he is secured in the punctual payment of the interest, knowing serfectly well that his capital will at any time fetch an adequate value in the market: and in process of time he is contented without any fixed security either lor his principal or interest, except the general faith and credit of the public. In bis manner the unfunded debt of the nation has arisen. At present it consists of Exchequer Bills, of bills granted by the navy and victualling boards, and of various :laims and other expenses.” History of the Public Revenue, m. 258. Hamilton points out that ¢“ the funded capital has been increased in a manner different from loans. Exchequer and Navy Bills have been funded to a great extent. That is, nstead of paying these bills, capital in one or more funds has been assigned to the nolders on such terms as they were willing to accept of.” Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress of the National Debt, 64. 8 Fenn, Compendium of the English and Foreign Funds, 5. 3 96 Geo. IIL. e. 31.

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