nce in
the stability of the funds, and that it was wrong to shake this
confidence even by the promulgation of truth. It has often been
supposed, indeed, that the statesmen who mainly carried out the system
were in secret conscious of its fallacy, but were content to carry it
out so long as they saw that it inspired confidence in the public. It
is in allusion to this that we have spoken of the sinking-fund as a
great hoax. We cannot sanction the morality of governments acting on
conscious fallacies; and in this instance the natural confidence in
the funds rather enlarged than decreased when the fallacy was exposed
and the system abandoned.

Keeping in view Dr Price's views of the potentiality of compound
interest, we now give a brief account of a singular attempt made in
France to put them in practice, and by their omnipotence pay our
national debt and that of other nations too, out of a small private
fortune. In the year 1794, a will was registered in France by one
Fortune Ricard, disposing of a sum of 500 livres, a little more than
L.20 sterling. Fortune stated that this sum was the result of a
present of twenty-four livres which he had received when he was a boy,
and had kept accumulating at compound interest to a period of advanced
age. By his will he left it in the hands of trustees, making
arrangements for a perpetual succession, as the purposes of the trust
were not to be all accomplished for a period of several centuries. The
money was to be divided into five portions, each of 100 livres, and so
to be put out at compound interest.

The first portion was to be withdrawn at the end of a century: it
would then amount to 13,000 livres, or about L.550. It is scarcely
worth while mentioning the purposes to which this trifle was to be
applied, but for the credit of M. Ricard it may be mentioned that they
were all unexceptionable. In two centuries the second sum would be
released, amounting to 1,700,000 livres. At the end of the third
century, the third instalment was to be released, when it would
consist of 226,000,000 livres. The destination of these magnificent
sums was also unexceptionable--it was for national education, the
erecting of public libraries, and the like. The instalment to be
released at the end of the fourth century would amount to about
30,000,000,000 livres: it was to be employed partly in the building of
100 towns, each containing 150,000 inhabitants, in the most agreeable
parts of France. 'In a s