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+ Note 147
Note to the Note continued and concluded
Be this as it may, the calculation would be
a very curious and instructive one: and, at any
rate, at the conclusion of the war, so many of the
above elements will have been given, that it might
easily be ascertained by what degree of ambition,
practicable or impracticable the profit to national wealth by
redemption of debt and restitution to capital, would be
exactly equal to loss to do by borrowing and war-expenditure.
A practical advantage, desirable from
such a calculation, and the views on which
the suggestion of it suggested it as above, is
the helping to reconcile the public in general,
and in some degree the parties affected, to the
loss that inevitably insus ensues to many
descriptions of persons, by the influx or rather reflux of wealth
capital which will be seen to flow pour in from this operation of
redemption of the Debt; I mean principally the fall in the
rate of the interest of money, not and thence the reduction of the defalcation from all
incomes flowing from that source. Such will (it is true)
be their suffering — from the redemption — from the
Sinking Fund — from the war with it's war-Debt: — but such
still greater would have been their sufferings, and still greater, had
there been neither borrowing nor redeeming, and
if the peace of the country had remained all the
while without disturbance. had the country been
reposing all the while in a state of uninterrupted
peace.
End of Note