but by acute and profound thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nation became richer and richer.  Then came the war of the Austrian Succession; and the debt rose to eighty millions.  Pamphleteers, historians and orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate.  Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to the England which was governed by Oxford.  Soon war again broke forth; and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions.  As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now really arrived.  The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who did not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke.  David Hume, undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time, declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders.  Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of arithmetical demonstration.  It was impossible to prove by figures that the road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was possible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was through the national debt.  It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; we had done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; all the revenues of the island north of Trent and west of Reading were mortgaged.  Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria than to be saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions.370 And yet this great philosopher—­for such he was—­had only to open his eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing, cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports, streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads.  He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with the Edinburgh of his old age.  His prediction remains to posterity, a memorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest minds are not exempt.  Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further.  He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the nation did actually sustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could have foreseen.  But he warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an experiment.  The limit had been reached.  Even a small increase might be fatal.371 Not less gloomy was the view which George