Scott's edit, vol xix, pp 20-21 [T.S.]]

I am persuaded that foreigners, as well as those at home, who live too
remote from the scene of business to be rightly informed, will not be
displeased with this account of a person, who in the space of two years,
hath been so highly instrumental in changing the face of affairs in
Europe, and hath deserved so well of his own Prince and country.[13]

[Footnote 13: See also Swift's "Enquiry" (vol. v., pp. 425-476).
[W.S.J.]]

In that perplexed condition of the public debts, which I have already
described, this minister was brought into the treasury and exchequer,
and had the chief direction of affairs. His first regulation was that of
exchequer bills, which, to the great discouragement of public credit,
and scandal to the crown, were three _per cent._ less in value than the
sums specified in them. The present treasurer, being then chancellor of
the exchequer, procured an Act of Parliament, by which the Bank of
England should be obliged, in consideration of forty-five thousand
pounds, to accept and circulate those bills without any discount. He
then proceeded to stop the depredations of those who dealt in
remittances of money to the army, who, by unheard of exactions in that
kind of traffic, had amassed prodigious wealth at the public cost, to
which the Earl of Godolphin had given too much way,[14] _possibly by
neglect; for I think he cannot be accused of corruption_.

[Footnote 14: Added in the author's own handwriting. [ORIGINAL NOTE.] P.
Fitzgerald gives the addition as "either through ignorance, connivance,
or neglect." [W.S.J.]]

But the new treasurer's chief concern was to restore the credit of the
nation, by finding some settlement for unprovided debts, amounting in
the whole to ten millions, which hung on the public as a load equally
heavy and disgraceful, without any prospect of being removed, and which
former ministers never had the care or courage to inspect. He resolved
to go at once to the bottom of this evil; and having computed and summed
up the debt of the navy, and victualling, ordnance, and transport of the
army, and transport debentures made out for the service of the last war,
of the general mortgage tallies for the year one thousand seven hundred
and ten, and some other deficiencies, he then found out a fund of
interest sufficient to answer all this, which, being applied to other
uses, could not raise present money for the war, but in a very few years
woul