to the day, and that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor received his money with tears, well knowing that he could find no other investment equally secure.  The wonder is not that England should have at length imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, but that the fourth year of her arduous and exhausting struggle against Lewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to an expedient so obvious.

On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee of Ways and Means.  Somers took the chair.  Montague proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition was approved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in.  The details of the scheme were much discussed and modified; but the principle appears to have been popular with all parties.  The moneyed men were glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded.  The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready to consent to any thing for the sake of present ease.  No member ventured to divide the House.  On the twentieth of January the bill was read a third time, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without any amendment.369

By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors.  These duties were to be kept in the Exchequer separate from all other receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million was to be raised by life annuities.  As the annuitants dropped off, their annuities were to be divided among the survivors, till the number of survivors was reduced to seven.  After that time, whatever fell in was to go to the public.  It was therefore certain that the eighteenth century would be far advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished.  The rate of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after that year seven per cent.  The advantages offered to the public creditor by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient to compensate him for the risk which he ran.  It was not impossible that there might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would lose both interest and principal.

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers.  At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair.  At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand.  Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever.  When the great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that debt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators,