★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
+ 138
2. The second of the two distinguishable additions
made by the proposed increase to the mass of national) capital
is that which it makes by shortening the
period at the expiration of which the redemption
of the National Debt will have been compleated.
That an addition of
£100 to the mass of
national capital — an addition to the value of £100 once paid — is the result of every £100
paid in discharge of the National Debt — is a
proposition which, though hitherto it seems to
have created engaged but little, if any, attention, will be
assented to, almost as soon as mentioned. That
the putting of money into mens hands on this occasion in lieu
of the income they are obliged to part with has
no tendency to increase the ratio of the amount of money expended
in the way of prodigality, to that of the
money expended and employ'd in the way of thrift,
is evident enough. But if, in employing the money
put into his hands in lieu of a source of income
of which he is deprived, he a man employs it otherwise
than in the view of pro making it productive of
a mass of income to equal amount, he employs
it in the way of prodigality: and, if he employs
it in the view of making it productive of income,
it must be, either by expending it himself
in the production or improvement of such articles
as constitute a mass of capital, to the amount of such
expenditure, or by lending it directly or ultimately, to somebody else, by
whom it will be applied to that same purpose.
If