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2
Paying off
(from whence it appears that his memos also embraced)
the whole.
From Mr Pelham's that time, the mass of Annuities
instead of being reduced, reached large
accessions from the expenses of the seven Years then next ensuing
War: nor did any means of expecting a diminution of the burthen, either in the way of
reduction of interest, or in the way of extension of
capital, till the year 1765, when the finances publick
of the country had just begun to take breath, part had just begun to recover itself from the inconvenience
that had been produced by that consuming struggle
after the termination of that war.
On this occasion a solution of some sort
was unavoidable: necessary to be made so far from grappling with
the whole mass of debt, as in Mr Pelham's time
the means was in hand were altogether
incapable of being measured with the burthern
of so much as a single year. The portion
selected was a mass of annuities created but two
years before in the funding in satisfaction of a portion of the floating
debt. The capital of these Annuities was did not
amount to so much as 4 millions: but the sum
at command falling short of a single million, the
course taken was to pay off an elegant part only
of this mass, viz: a fourth. How this fourth
was to be selected thus to be paid off from the three fourths that were to
remain unpaid is a point of which no det direction
is given by the Act. The personal friends of the
Minister or his personal enemies might, according
as the payment were regarded as matter of profit
or loss, might have been selected for the purpose. The
supposition