ngs,
from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in
his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:

'Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks;
Peeress and butler share alike the box;
And judges job, and bishops bite the town,
And mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.'

In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following
lines:

'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or ship off senates to a distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like
many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused
and prostituted.

England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against
further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal
rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent.
In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of
the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high
terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per
cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was
England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her
expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became
L132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume
was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to L231,000,000.
During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous
sums were raised; but the end was not yet.

The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty
years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the
debt went up from L231,000,000 to L537,000,000 sterling. From this
period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its
maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.

During these severe changes, reverses, extravagance, and extraordinary
governmental expenditure, the bank was considered the prop of national
finance. The French Revolution and its consequent war with England led
to many