management of a preparatory and gradual introduction to an unpleasing report:  that it is the only substantial information he shall have to convey in that letter.”  In confidence, therefore, of their fortitude, he tells them without ceremony, “that there will be a necessity of making a large reduction, or possibly a total suspension, of their investment;—­that they had already been reduced to borrow near 700,000_l._ This resource,” says he, “cannot last; it must cease at a certain period, and that perhaps not far distant.”

He was not mistaken in his prognostic.  Loans now becoming the regular resource for retrieving the investment, whose ruin was inevitable, the Council enable the Board of Trade, in April, 1781, to grant certificates for government bonds at eight per cent interest for about 650,000_l._ The investment was fixed at 900,000_l._

But now another alarming system appeared.  These new bonds overloaded the market.  Those which had been formerly issued were at a discount; the Board of Trade was obliged to advance, therefore, a fourth more than usual to the contractors.  This seemed to satisfy that description of dealers.  But as those who bought on agency were limited to no terms of mutual advantage, and the bonds on the new issue falling from three to eight, nine, and ten per cent discount, the agents were unable to furnish at the usual prices.  Accordingly a discount was settled on such terms as could be made:  the lowest discount, and that at two places only, was at four per cent; which, with the interest on the bonds, made (besides the earlier advance) at the least twelve per cent additional charge upon all goods.  It was evident, that, as the investment, instead of being supported by the revenues, was sunk by the fall of their credit, so the net revenues were diminished by the daily accumulation of an interest accruing on account of the investment.  What was done to alleviate one complaint thus aggravating the other, and at length proving pernicious to both, this trade on bonds likewise came to its period.

Your Committee has reason to think that the bonds have since that time sunk to a discount much greater even than what is now stated.  The Board of Trade justly denominates their resource for that year “the sinking credit of a paper currency, laboring, from the uncommon scarcity of specie, under disadvantages scarcely surmountable.”  From this they value themselves “on having effected an ostensible provision, at least for that investment.”  For 1783 nothing appears even ostensible.

By this failure a total revolution ensued, of the most extraordinary nature, and to which your Committee wish to call the particular attention of the House.  For the Council-General, in their letter of the 8th of April, 1782, after stating that they were disappointed in their expectations, (how grounded it does not appear,) “thought that they should be able to spare a sum to the Board of Trade,”—­tell the