paid; the more the nation ran in debt, the higher their credit rose every day. After this, you never had any commissioners of accounts asked for, or any question about misapplication. No man need go far for a reason for this; the credit centred all in the queen, whose concern was so visible for her people's good, that she would suffer no misap. plications; that she would employ none but those in whom she could place entire confidence, whose probity and exactness her majesty could answer for to herself, and was well assured she might be safe in.

'Tis no way lessening the honour of the servants her majesty chose, to say that the nation's credit depends not on the reputation of their conduct, but on her majesty's care in choosing such men, whose conduct would perform all the nation could expect; and that if they should fail. her majesty would not fail to remove them, and put in others. This is putting the thing right; the sum and substance of the argument is this, in short.

Public credit is the consequence of honourable, just, and punctual management in the matter of funds and taxes, or loans upon them. Where this goes before, credit always follows.

This management depends not upon the wellexecuting their offices by the great officers of the treasury and the exchequer, but on the care, conduct, and vigilance of her majesty and the parliament; the latter in establishing sufficient funds, and the former in placing able officers, and obliging them to an honourable inanagement.

The public credit therefore depends upon the queen and parliament entirely, and not at all upon the well or ill-management of the officers, of what kind soever.

Another thing confirms this, viz., that while the parliament concerns itself to prevent the deficiency of funds, and the queen to place men of probity and honour in the government of the treasury, there is no question to be made but both would concern themselves upon any complaints of the subject, to inquire into any mismanagement or abuse of the people, in the greatest officers, and not only punish the offender, but prevent the offence, by removing such officer, and supplying his place with others who should better discharge so weighty a trust. This resolves the point, that credit centres where the government centres; for if the sovereign displaces those that misapply, the wound to credit heals of itself; and while the sovereign carefully prefers men of honour and probity in the nation's trust, credit rises by a natural consequence.

But still it is the nation's credit; that is, it is built on the honour of the queen and parliament, as above; and this has been the case of the late lord treasurer, the credit of whose management must return to the queen, as to the centre, otherwise this must be called my Lord T's credit, not the nation's; and, to our great loss, must die with his lordship, which would be very unhappy for us, and would imply that we ought to be more concerned for his lordship's long life than the queen's; a thing which would very ill please even his lordship to suggest.

Having laid down this as a foundation, 1 build this short fabric upon it, viz., that as the public credit is national, not personal, so it depends upon

no thing or person, no man or body of men, but upon the government, that is, the queen and parliament, displacing or removing any minister of state or great officer, whose management under the sovereign affects our treasure, can no way influence our national credit, while the just, honourable, and punctual conduct of the sovereign and parliament remains the same. Neither does our credit depend upon the person of the queen, as queen, or the individual House of Commons, identically; as if no queen but her present majesty, and no parliament but the present parliament, could support and uphold the credit of the nation. But it will remain a truth, that every queen or every king, and every parliament succeeding the present, that shall discover the same justice in government, the same care in giving sufficient funds, the same honesty in supplying the deficiencies, if they happen, the same concern for the burthen of the subject, and the same care to put the treasure into the hands of faithful and experienced officers; shall keep up the same character, have the same credit, and restore all these declinings to the same vigour and magnitude as ever.

From hence it appears that our present loss of credit does not arise from any doubt whether the like conduct can produce this effect or no; but from a strange suggestion, that a new parliament or a new ministry shall either not design or not pursue the same vigorous and wise resolutions, or manage with the same integrity, as the last have done. If her majesty saw room for this suggestion, I make no doubt (her concern for the public good is such) that no such change had been made, or would lodge an hour longer among her thoughts: but if her majesty is of the opinion that such a change will not lessen the concern for, or just measures in, the public service, then the difficulty ends. Her majesty has now put new officers into her treasury: no doubt her majesty is satisfied it shall be in their power to preserve the public credit, and restore it to as great a height as ever it was before; and I will presume to add, that if her majesty should find it otherwise, it would be an effectual motive to farther changes till such hands should be found in whose conduct the national credit could not miscarry.

It seems that the present discontents are grounded upon a supposition that a new ministry shall be less zealous for the public interest than the present; or, at least, the objectors argue that her majesty has sufficient experience of the zeal of the present ministry for her service, and for the public good; and therefore it cannot seem rational to run that risk and the like, of a new parliament.

To this may be answered; why should it be suggested that a new parliament shall not be equally zealous for the liberties of Britain with the present? They are to be chosen by the freeholders; they are to be Englishmen, they are to be protestants, they are to abjure the pretender, they are to be joined with the same House of Lords, to be blessed with the same queen; and the queen, I doubt not, filled with the same prin. ciples as before; the same by which her majesty, for I must place it there, restored the nation's credit before, and raised it to what we have now seen it.

Shall we say, the parliament will not raise money to carry on the war? This would be to say, we shall choose such a parliament as will declare the pretender, forsake the confederacy, join with the common enemy, and depose the queen. These are fears no thinking man can suppose to be rational; and are spread about by none but those that desire it should be so; and who, crying out loudest of the fall of public credit, procure the thing they complain of; and indeed we have no breach of our credit but what rises from these men.

To back their fears, and make others think them reasonable, they give long accounts of the progress of Dr Sacheverell; as if the folly and impolitic vanity of that gentleman could influence the people of England, to send up men as mad and foolish as himself. I must profess to think, if Dr Sacheverell thinks he serves the interest he pretends to appear for, by his mobbing and riotous progress, he is as much mistaken as they were who made him popular by a hasty prosecution, instead of committing his sermon to the hangman, and kicking him from the bar for a lunatic, which, if they had done, the nation had been more in debt to their prudence than I think they are now for their justice.

I am against furies on both sides; nor do I see any such coming in: if her majesty does let in any such, I dare presume to say, it must be for want of having their due character; and the term of their services may probably end when they discover themselves.

But if men of moderation and men of integrity come in, I see no room to fear but our credit shall revive as well under a new ministry as an old. I know that some talk of a stagnation of the

fountain: that there is a famine of funds; that the nation is exhausted, and we are at a full stop. This I take to be an amusement, that comes over from France, and is calculated very much for the service of the enemy. But there are ways to get over the difficulty, and the best way is demonstration and experience. I believe the French king does not raise half so much hopes from our not being able to find any funds at all, as from our being at a loss for credit to borrow upon those funds when they are raised; and he may live to be deceived in both.

But to obviate these things, I take the liberty to say, and that not without book, when the parliament meets, be it a present parliament or a new parliament, be it the present ministry or a new ministry; as I hope there will not want zeal in the members, to supply her majesty's occasions for the war; so, were this war to hold seven years longer, it is easy to propose sufficient funds for the carrying it on, without that horrid proposal of mortgaging our land tax, or without any such taxes as shall either be burthensome to the poor or scandalous to the nation.

As to credit, while the parliament and the queen continue to preserve those funds from deficiencies to make good such as happen, and to support the vigour and honour of the public management, I see no room to doubt but credit shall revive; and as we have not yet found any fund the parliament has raised unsupplied with loans and advances upon it, even faster than could be desired; so I can see no room to fear the contrary. Yet, if such a thing should happen, a mean head may find out some expedient that may not be ineffectual; for a supply of which, if there should be occasion, a proposal shall not be wanting.

HAVING treated in brief upon the difficult subject of credit, and that (if the town is not a deceiver) with some success, it seems necessary to speak a word or two upon the great object upon which that credit operates,-viz., loans of money upon the public demands.

The author, an enemy to long prefaces, presents his thoughts to the world upon this head without any other apology than this, that he thinks it a service at this time to remove the mistakes which some make, and others improve to our disadvantage, while they think it is to the disadvantage of somebody else. While they aim at an object they would hurt, they wound themselves; and in prosecuting private or party prejudices, injure, weaken, and assault the public good, which every man has a property in, and therefore is in duty bound to defend.

A discourse upon credit is naturally an intro. duction to a discourse upon loan: credit without loan is a beautiful flower, fair to the eye, fragrant to the smell, ornamental to the plot of ground it grows in, but yielding neither fruit nor seed, neither profit to the possessor of it, by making due advantage of its produce, or benefit to posterity, by propagating its species. On the other hand, loans without credit are like the labouring ploughman upon a barren soil, who works, cultivates, and toils, but to no purpose, all the fruit of his labour ends in sterility and

abortion.

Loans are the consequences of credit, and the evidence of that particular quality which, in the preceding discourse of credit, 1 laid down as its foundation-I mean general probity, punctual, just, and honourable management.

To explain things as I go, though this needs but little. By loans, I am now to be understood to mean lending money to the present government. The thing will extend to private affairs, and I might take up a great deal of your time in speaking of the effects of credit in trade, such as delivering goods by tradesmen to one another, paper credit in affairs of cash, pledging, pawning, and all the articles of security for money practised in general commerce; but these things are not to the present purpose.

The author of this confines his discourse to the government borrowing money of the subject, whether upon securities established by parliament, equivalent in value delivered, public faith, general credit, or otherwise.

The nature of these securities, the reason, the usefulness, and the foundation they stand on, are no part of the present subject; they are reserved by the author to a head by themselves, if leisure and the public service make it proper to present you a discourse upon funds.

The present war, which, with a small interval of an unsettled and impolitic peace, is now in its twenty-second year, has been remarkable in several circumstances, above all the wars that ever this nation has been engaged in since the Romans possessed it.

It has been the longest in its duration;
The fiercest and most expensive in blood;
The most famous in successes and unheard-of
victories;

It has been carried on against the most powerful enemies;

It has produced the most firm and the greatest confederacy;

And it has in view the most glorious conclusion.

Together with these things, it has this also peculiar to it, that it has been carried on at an expense which has surmounted not all that ever went before it only, but ail that it could be imagined was possible for any nation of our dimensions in the world to support.

Not the French king only has been deceived in the efforts made by this nation in the process of the war, which, as penetrating as he is, he never thought possible; but it is most certain, had the wisest and best calculator in the island been told what the undertaking would have called for, he would have determined it to be forty millions sterling beyond what the nation was able to do, and that without selling the very nation, it could not be done.

As the view of the expense would have made us wisely have avoided the war, and either not have begun it, or long since ended it, upon the best terms we could obtain from the enemy; so, had the enemy believed England capable of supporting the war, at such a prodigy of expense, he would never have begun it, which the king of France himself has been heard, in terms very plain, to acknowledge.

When upon the revolution the parliament fell most willingly into the war, as a thing the enemy, by espousing King James's interest, made absolutely necessary, the first branch of our expense was carried on in the common road of