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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THE NATIONAL DEBT AND THE SINKING FUND 697 Dr Price!, and it avoided the errors which had rendered AD Walpole’s Sinking Fund nugatory?. There was now ample security that the money set aside every year should really be whick devoted to the reduction of debt, and not diverted, as Walpole’s A Sinking Fund had been, to bear the ordinary expenses of , oro government. According to Pitt's scheme £1,000,000 a year was paid to commissioners who were to invest in the National Debt, until a sum stood in their names which gave an income, along with the £1,000,000 contributed by the country, of £4,000,000 a year: With the £4,000,000, which thus be- came their annual income, they were to buy up additional portions of the National Debt, the dividends of which should be extinguished. In this way it was hoped that the charge for interest would be gradually reduced while the principal debt would be transferred to the credit of the commissioners ab the rate of £4,000,000 a year. Upon paper, the scheme appeared to be admirable?; and it had many merits; indeed it was in its very plausibility that its chief danger consisted, inspired a8 it appears to have lulled the mind of the ministers and oe, she public into a false sense of security in the matter of borrowing®. Possibly the vast additions to the debt would have taken place under any circumstances; as a matter of fact £271,000,000 was borrowed during the Revolutionary War, and £618,000,000 in the struggle with Napoleon; but it seems probable that the House of Commons was much more somplacent over this unexampled increase of the National ! The State of the Public Debts and Finances (1783), p. 29: also see the [ntroduction. 3 Price, Observations on Reversionary Payments (1773), 163. } 26 Geo. III. c. 31, § 20. * This provision was repealed in 1802 (42 Geo. ITI ¢. 71). An admirable history of the Sinking Fund will be found in the Explanatory and Historical Notes of the Several Heads by Public Income and Expenditure, which forms Appendix 13 to the Account relating to Public Income and Expenditure, 1868-9. dccounts and Papers, 1868-9, xxxv. 1197, printed pagination 713. 8 For a very sanguine view of the operation of the Sinking Fund see G. Rose, 4 Brief Examination into the Increase of the Revenue, Commerce and Manyu- factures of Great Britain from 1792 to 1799, p. 26. 8 This was a point on which Cobbett laid stress, “By giving people renewed confidence in the solidity of the Funds and Stocks it rendered Government borrowing more easy.” Paper against Gold (1815), 1. 65. Cobbett was a vigorous critic of the Sinking Fund in 1803 and onwards (Noble Nonsense (1828), p. 10), before Hamilton wrote or Grenville was convinced of its futility.

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