o, is to avoid
gross errors and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the
proper officer to lay the accounts before the House. But the reader must
judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The author
speaks of France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within the
year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely worthy of notice. I affirm
that she borrowed large sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated
an immense debt. This debt continued after the war infinitely to
embarrass her affairs; and to find some means for its reduction was then
and has ever since been the first object of her policy. But she has so
little succeeded in all her efforts, that the _perpetual_ debt of
France is at this hour little short of 100,000,000_l._ sterling; and she
stands charged with at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents
and tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the Hotel de Ville of
Paris, which are by no means her sole payments of that nature, amount to
139,000,000 of livres, that is to 6,318,000_l._; besides _billets au
porteur_, and various detached and unfunded debts, to a great amount,
and which bear an interest.

At the end of the war, the interest payable on her debt amounted to
upwards of seven millions sterling. M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the
French finances, was called in, to aid in the reduction of an interest,
so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon those who are to pay
it. After many unsuccessful efforts towards reconciling arbitrary
reduction with public credit, he was obliged to go the plain high road
of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent upon a very great part of
the capital debt of that kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to
the destruction of future credit, produced about 500,000_l._ a year,
which was carried to their _Caisse d'amortissement_ or sinking fund. But
so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which
compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given
the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to
the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her
establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any
consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is
France at present with regard to her debt.

Everybody knows that the principal of the debt is but a name; the
interest is the only thing which can distress a nation. Take th