public of the United States.

560. Increase of the National Debt; Taxation.

Owing to these hundred years and more of war (S559) the National Debt
of GReat Britain and Ireland (S503), which in 1688 was much less than
a million of pounds, had now reached the enormous amount of over nine
hundred millions (or $4,500,000,000), bearing yearly interest at the
rate of more than $160,000,000.[1] So great had been the strain on the
finances of the country, that the Bank of England (S503) suspended
payment, and many heavy failures occurred. In addition to this, a
succession of bad harvests sent up the price of wheat to such a point
that at one time an ordinary-sized loaf of bread cost the farm laborer
more than half a day's wages.

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, under "National Debt."

Taxes had gone on increasing until it seemed as though the people
could no longer endure the burden. As Sydney Smith declared, with
entire truth, there were duties on everything. They began, he said,
in childhood, with "the boy's taxed top"; they followed to old age,
until at last "the dying Englishman, pouring his taxed medicine into a
taxed spoon, flung himself back on a taxed bed, and died in the arms
of an apothecary who had paid a tax of a hundred pounds for the
privilege of putting him to death."[1]

[1] Sydney Smith's Essays, "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United
States."

561. The Irish Parliament; the Irish Rebellion (1798).

For a century after the battle of the Boyne (S500) Ireland can hardly
be said to have had a history. The iron hand of English despotism had
crushed the spirit out of the inhabitants, and they suffered in
silence. During the first part of the eighteenth century the
destitution of the people was so great that Dean Swift, in bitter
mockery of the government's neglect, published what he called his
"Modest Proposal." He suggested that the misery of the half-starved
peasants might be relieved by allowing them to eat their own children
or else sell them to the butchers.

But a new attempt was now made to improve the political condition of
the wretched country. That distinguished statesman, Edmund Burke
(S550), had already tried to secure a fair measure of commercial
liberty for the island, but without success. Since the reign of Henry
VII the so-called "free Parliament" of Ireland had been bound hand and
foot by Poynings's Act (S329, note 1). The eminent Protestant Irish
orator, Henry Grattan, now ur