say, was thought a surprising effort even of credit.  But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to it for several years together.  Suppose some Jacob Henriques had proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation by raising ten millions within the year:  he would have been considered, not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the public; but as a poor visionary, who had run mad on supplies and taxes.  They who know that the whole land-tax of England, at 4_s._ in the pound, raises but two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations.  France owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before that war.  The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes; an addition, equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of England taken together.

But what must be the reader’s astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most unaccountable of all errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised within the year!  Can it be conceived that any man, only entered into the first rudiments of finance, should make so egregious a blunder; should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition; should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the comparative states of France and England?  But it will be said, that it was his misfortune to be ill-informed.  Not at all.  A man of any loose general knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never could have been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately rejected so wild and extravagant an account.

The fact is this:  the credit of France, bad as it might have been, did enable her (not to raise within the year) but to borrow the very sums the author mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making, in the author’s computation, 50,314,378_l._ The credit of France was low; but it was not annihilated.  She did not derive, as our author chooses to assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit.  Its consequence was the natural one:  she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms, indeed on the most exorbitant usury.