have always been fold at a large premium. The only inftance in which it has fince become an object of miniterial interference, was in the adjustment of their dividend for the laft half year of 1784. The point at which the comptroller-general wished to fix it was at 4 per cent. He was afterwards prevailed upon to fuffer them to divide at the rate of five per cent.

An operation of confiderable importance to M. de Calonne refpected the loan of 8,330,000 which had been opened in December 1782, but which had only been filled to the amount of one half the propofed fum. It was effential to the national credit that this loan fhould now be clofed. The money however was as much wanted as ever, and the new minifter muft of courfe open a loan for the remaining fum upon more attractive terms. The terms of the original loan had been an intereft of five per cent. with a capital, redeemable by installments, in the course of fifteen years. The new loan of M. de Calonne was opened on the fixteenth of December 1783. The money was to be borrowed on annuities, and the terms, like thofe of the most eligible loans of this kind that were made by Mr. Necker, were nine per cent. upon a fingle life, and eight per cent. upon two lives. To this was added a lottery of annuities to the amount of 635,000l. the tickets of which were distributed as a bonum to the fubfcribers to the loan. The mode of borrowing upon annuities has been condemned by Necker, and is condemned in the preamble to this very loan; but the most enlightened financier muft fubmit to neceffity. The principal defect of this mode of proceeding feems to lie in this circumstance, that govern ment cannot, like private focieties

for the infurance of lives, difcrimi nate between the different probabilities that attend different ages, fexes, and degrees of health, and of confequence is liable to be impofed upon by the gamefter and the fpeculatift. A fecond loan was made by M. de Calonne for the fum of 5,000,000l. fterling, in the month of December 1784. The loan bore an intereft of five per cent. was accompanied with a lottery, and was declared redeemable in twenty years.

But the greatest financial operation of the year 1784, was the creation of a new caiffe d'amortiffement, or finking fund, by an arret of the thirty-first of Auguft. It is a little remarkable that the national debt of England, and that of France, amount nearly to the fame fum; and it may therefore be additionally worth our attention to watch the proceedings of the neighbouring power upon this important fubject. The plan of the caiffe d'amortiffement is fimple and moderate. Its leading idea is the paying annually by government into the hands of a board, fet apart for that purpose, the entire intereft of the exifting national debt, whether in stock or annuities; together with an addtional annual fum of 120,000l. The annuities that will be annually extinguished are estimated in the arret at 50,000l. The fum, therefore, which is fet apart for the redemp tion of the national debt, will annually increafe in this amount. The operation of the arret is limited to the term of twenty-five years; and during that term the annual receipt of the caiffe d'amortiffement is declared unalterable, and incapable of being diverted to any other object, Of confequence it appears, from a train of accurate calculations, that the fum thus deftined to the redemption of the debt, will be equal

in the elofe of the year 1809 to 32,625,000l. At the fame time the amount of national debt, which will be redeemed in confequence of the conditions upon which the feveral loans were made, will be equal to 20,062,500l. The annuities which will of courfe expire, conformably to this calculation, will conftitute the fum of 1,250,000l. Of confequence the debt extinguished will be about 54,000,000l. and the intereft, as well in annuity as upon flock that will be extinguifhed, will amount nearly to the fum of 3,800,000l. per annum.

The fubject of national debts was never better underflood than at the period in which we write. The amount to which they have already rifen is fo vaft, that it requires a degree of experience and familiarity to be able to comprehend their nature and effects. At first fight, and during a confiderable lapfe of years, they were regarded as an object of unmixed aftonishment and horror. Every one looked forward to the fatal period, when this vaft bubble of the imagination must burst in its career, and involve millions in poverty and ruin. The fudden deftruction of an annuity of nine or ten millions per annum, was an event which the mind w s fcarcely adequate to conceive. The confequence feemed to be the overthrow of all government, the deftruction of all civilifation, the introduction of anarchy, and confufion, and a flate in the laft degree favage and barbarous. The event was confidered not only as probable but inevitable, and fpeculators in politics, like fpeculators in religion, foretold the deftruction of the beat, and the annihilation of the world.

It can scarcely be affirmed that a fudden end can now be put to the raode of carrying on war upon loans.

It has been adopted throughout Europe, and is like the vaft ftanding armies that are maintained upon the continent, which it would feem to be madness for any power to dif band, unless it could first bring the neighbouring powers to agree upon a fimilar reduction. But if we must give up the idea of putting an end to the mode of borrowing money on the part of government, it will fcarcely be difputed that we ought to give up the idea of extinguifhing the exiting debt. These fentiments, fo obvious and incontrovertible, have of late made innumerable converts, who have treated the very idea of a finking fund as worthy only of the chimerical brain of a dreaming projector. They have difplayed to us, with much emphafis, how much wifer policy it would be to leave the money, which has formerly been turned into this channel, in the pockets of the fubject. War muft again arife, taxes must be again impofed. If you would have the people able to bear those new burthens, which inevitably accompany a ftate of emergency, you muft lighten their fhoulders in a period of tranquility. Let the capi tal of which you are difpofed to drain them, be laid out upon commerce and agriculture, and it will yield a twentyfold increase. Befide, every new tax has a tendency to decreafe the produce of an old one. A true politician would rather feek at his leifure to increase the revenue, by remitting the existing taxes, than by impofing additional ones.

In the mean time it may not be unnatural to fear, that while we are recoiling from one extreme, we may be in danger of falling into another. If the debt is not to be extinguifh ed, it does not therefore follow that it is not to be kept within certain

bounds,

bounds. There are limits, beyond which the refources of a people will not go. And if in this country, for example, we are able to pay an annuity of ten millions, we must not haftily conclude, that we fhall be able at any future period to pay an annuity of twenty, or thirty, or fifty millions per annum. If the national debt is always to be increafed, and never to be diminished, it is impoffible to fix upon any. point at which it fhall ftop. Such a mode of proceeding feems to involve inevitable ruin. A medium is therefore to be difcovered, without exhaufting the vigour and refources of the country, fo as to prevent all future exertion. And nearly fuch a medium perhaps, is that which has been fixed on by M. de Calonne. To fay that the nation is able to pay the exifting in tereft, including the annuities, is a conceffion that ought readily to be granted by the enemies of a finking fund. But if they are able to pay an interest of eight or nine millions per annum, it should feem that they are alfo able to pay, without much inconvenience, the fum of 120,000l. per annum, which is the original flock of the caiffe d'amortiffement. If the fyftem of the French government, for employing the fum thus accumulated in the bufinefs of redemption, be equally politic with that by which it is created, a confiderable degree of merit feems juftly afcribable to the comptroller general.

Various were the regulations attempted by M. de Calonne for the improvement of the revenues. He revifed the restrictions that had hithe to been employed for the fupprehion of contraband commodi ties; and he was fuppofed particularly qualified for this office, by the eircumftance of his having refided

for fome time in the French Netherlands, the chief fcene of the contraband trade. He endeavoured to encourage the commerce of the Baltic, and the American colonies, by the introduction of bounties and immunities, at the fame time that certain ports in thefe iflands were opened for the purpose of general trade. Thefe regulations might poffibly be productive of temporary advantage. They certainly are not founded upon thofe unprejudiced and comprehenfive views which are alone worthy of a great minister in the clofe of the eighteenth century. They originate in petty views of monopoly, and the idea of forcing commerce into particular channels, though no truth be more notorious, than that commerce is then molt flourishing, when it is most left to itself.

The exertions of France with refpect to foreign countries during this period, were calculated to give her eclat and dignity among the nations, at the fame time that they did not expole her to the rifque and the calamities of war. An agreement had been entered into, in the clofe of the year 1783, by the courts of Verfailles and Conftantinople, in confequence of which, upon the event of a war, a temporary ceffion of Candia was to be made to the French, and a fleet was to fail for the affiftance of the Turks, which was at this time fitting out in Toulon. In the autumn of the year 1784, when the danger of war feemed moft imminent between the emperor and the Dutch, fome fleps were taken for the forming two ar mies of obfervation, on the fide of the Netherlands and the three bifhopricks, which were defined to be commanded, one of them by marshal Broglio, and, the other by the count de Stainville. During

the

the courfe of this year, Geneva was evacuated by the troops of France; and a new treaty of commerce and alliance was concluded with the court of Sweden.

The council of war, which had been commishoned to try the count de Graffe, and the other captains of the fleet which had been defeated by admiral Rodney, put an end to their feffion on the twenty-first of May 1784. The commander in chief, together with the majority of the officers, were honourably acquitted; a few were fubjected to a flight cenfure, among whom were M. Bougainville, the celebrated circumnavigator. But the reception which was bestowed on M. du Suffren, who arrived about the fame time from the Eaft Indies, was of a very different nature. All ranks and orders of men vied with each other who fhould fhew the moft gratitude and attachment to this great and fuccefsful commander. The compliment which was paid him by the queen, whether we confider it as a mark of the fentibility of her character, or the elegance of her tafte, perhaps deferves to be recorded. Introducing him to the dauphin, a boy of three years old, fhe is faid to have employed these remarkable words: "This, fir, is M. du Suffren, to whom we owe the greatest obligations. Obferve him well, and remember his name; it is one of the first of those that you must learn to repear, in order that you may never forget it."

The revenues of America were fill in a posture of diforder, difcredit, and difirefs. We fated in the fourth volume of our history the various fieps that had been taken by the general congrefs down to the fpring of the year 1783, to create a revenue adequate to the expences of government, and the in

tereft of the public debt, which had been the confequence of the war. They had pointed out the refpective fums which ought to be furnifhed for this purpose by each state, in proportion to its populoufnefs, cultivation, and wealth. Finding this meafure ineffectual, they had propofed a duty of five per cent. upon all commodities imported from other countries into America. Finally, they had published a recommendation on the eighteenth of May in the year we have mentioned, which they had reprefented as the dernier refort of the American tranquility, profperity and credit. This recommendation perhaps exhibited the wifett, the most politic, and moderate of all expedients for accomplishing the purpofe it had in view, the creating a permanent income proportioned to the burthen of the national debt. It included however, and it was highly proper it fhould include, a claufe in favour of that duty of five per cent. which was of all impofts the lightest and most unexceptionable. But the circumstance was in fome measure unfavourable to the fuccefs of the measure. Exelufive of every other objection that might have been started from a groundlefs prejudice against the ima→ ginary power and encroachments of congrefs, it was not to be fuppofed, that the very duty, which had been rejected by fome states and demurred by others, would be ac ceded to without difficulty when brought forward under a different form. The province of Virginia was the first to exhibit the patriotic example of complying with the juft and honourable requifition. It was flowly and gradually that it was brought under difcuffion in the other states. Rhode Island, and the province of Malachusetts, did not

decide upon the measure before the fummer of the year 1784. By the latter it was honourably adopted upon the coolest and most deliberate examination. By the former the tax of five per cent. had been warmly and pathionately rejected in 1782; they were equally peremp. tory in the prefent inftance. A third ftate, that of New York, did not come exprefly to the question till fo late as the fpring of 1785. At that time they rejected the recommendation of congres, in the month of March by a majority of two, and in that of April by a majority of four voices. But the bufinefs was not yet clofed. The recommendation of congrefs received the fanction of a confiderable majority of the ftates; and as it has not been practifed, in the progrefs of this measure, to decide upon it at once, and then difmifs it for ever, a reasonable expectation might be formed that it would be crowned with ultimate fuccefs. It was originally directed by congrefs, that the permanent revenue fhould not take place, till the act by which it was conftituted had been adopted in every part by all the ftates. This condition was mollified as it paffed through the fubordinate legiflatures and fome of the affemblies, in the act which made the meafure their own, required the affent only of twelve, and others only of eleven of the provinces. It was probable therefore, that the measure might be fo moderated and qualified, as at length to produce the effect that was fo ardently defired by the most enlightened statesmen of the new republic.

it had been ufual however, for the congress to enter upon the most deliberate examination of the state of their finances about the month of April in every year; and from

this practice they could not fafely depart. Accordingly, in the fpring of the year 1784, the fubject was once again brought under their difcuffion, though the great object of their recommendation was extremely far from being accomplished. Whether they confidered this delay as amounting to a defeat, or, on the contrary, expected that their propofal would be crowned with ultimate, though late fuccefs, in either cafe the amount was the fame. The expences of the general government, and the intereft of the debts both abroad and at home, were fill going on, and could not poffibly wait for the flow and gradual conqueft that might be gained over fufpicion, inexperience and prejudice. One of the meafures which in this circumstance was adopted by the legislature, impreffed with the conicioufnefs of their inability of meeting every claim, was to declare, that the two firft of the objects we have enumerated fhould first engage their attention; and that, for the intereft of the fums that might be due to the domeftic creditors, it would be neceffary, for the prefent, to pay them not in money, but in certificates figned by the fuperintendant of the finances. Thefe certificates were made payable inftead of money into the treafuries of the refpective fiates, only with this provifion, that three fourths of the fums paid by individuals into the exchequer of the fates, and three fourths of the fums paid by the flates into the general treafury, fhould be paid in money, and only one fourth by means of the certificates.

On the day previous to the adoption of this meafure, which received the fanction of the legiflature on the twenty-eighth day of April, the congrefs publifhed, in the fame manner in which they had

been