o make room for the new she removes
the old. Every natural idiot can see this; it is the stock-jobbing idiot
only that mistakes. He has conceived that art can do what nature cannot.
He is teaching her a new system--that there is no occasion for man to
die--that the scheme of creation can be carried on upon the plan of
the funding system--that it can proceed by continual additions of new
beings, like new loans, and all live together in eternal youth. Go,
count the graves, thou idiot, and learn the folly of thy arithmetic!

But besides these things, there is something visibly farcical in the
whole operation of loaning. It is scarcely more than four years ago
that such a rot of bankruptcy spread itself over London, that the whole
commercial fabric tottered; trade and credit were at a stand; and
such was the state of things that, to prevent or suspend a general
bankruptcy, the government lent the merchants six millions in
_government_ paper, and now the merchants lend the government twenty-two
millions in _their_ paper; and two parties, Boyd and Morgan, men but
little known, contend who shall be the lenders. What a farce is this!
It reduces the operation of loaning to accommodation paper, in which
the competitors contend, not who shall lend, but who shall sign, because
there is something to be got for signing.

Every English stock-jobber and minister boasts of the credit of England.
Its credit, say they, is greater than that of any country in Europe.
There is a good reason for this: for there is not another country in
Europe that could be made the dupe of such a delusion. The English
funding system will remain a monument of wonder, not so much on account
of the extent to which it has been carried, as of the folly of believing
in it.

Those who had formerly predicted that the funding system would break
up when the debt should amount to one hundred or one hundred and fifty
millions, erred only in not distinguishing between insolvency and actual
bankruptcy; for the insolvency commenced as soon as the government
became unable to pay the interest in cash, or to give cash for the bank
notes in which the interest was paid, whether that inability was known
or not, or whether it was suspected or not. Insolvency always takes
place before bankruptcy; for bankruptcy is nothing more than the
publication of that insolvency. In the affairs of an individual, it
often happens that insolvency exists several years before bankruptcy,
and th