irit of prophecy, or foresight into
the event, but by observation of what has happened in all cases of human
or animal existence. If then any other subject, such, for instance, as
a system of finance, exhibits in its progress a series of symptoms
indicating decay, its final dissolution is certain, and the period of it
can be calculated from the symptoms it exhibits.

Those who have hitherto written on the English system of finance, (the
funding system,) have been uniformly impressed with the idea that its
downfall would happen _some time or other_. They took, however, no data
for their opinion, but expressed it predictively,--or merely as opinion,
from a conviction that the perpetual duration of such a system was a
natural impossibility. It is in this manner that Dr. Price has spoken of
it; and Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, has spoken in the same manner;
that is, merely as opinion without data. "The progress," says Smith,
"of the enormous debts, which at present oppress, and will in the long
run _most probably ruin_, all the great nations of Europe [he should
have said _governments_] has been pretty uniform." But this general
manner of speaking, though it might make some impression, carried with
it no conviction.

It is not my intention to predict any thing; but I will show from data
already known, from symptoms and facts which the English funding system
has already exhibited publicly, that it will not continue to the end of
Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live the usual age of a man. How much
sooner it may fall, I leave to others to predict.

Let financiers diversify systems of credit as they will, it _is_
nevertheless true, that every system of credit is a system of paper
money. Two experiments have already been had upon paper money; the one
in America, the other in France. In both those cases the whole capital
was emitted, and that whole capital, which in America was called
continental money, and in France assignats, appeared in circulation; the
consequence of which was, that the quantity became so enormous, and so
disproportioned to the quantity of population, and to the quantity' of
objects upon which it could be employed, that the market, if I may so
express it, was glutted with it, and the value of it fell. Between five
and six years determined the fate of those experiments. The same fate
would have happened to gold and silver, could gold and silver have been
issued in the same abundant manner that paper h