Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/373

 borne any proportion to its accumulation in time of war. It was in the war which began in 1688, and was concluded by the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, that the foundation of the present enormous debt of Great Britain was first laid.

On the 31st of December, 1697, the public debts of Great Britain, funded and unfunded, amounted to £21,515,742 13s. d. A great part of those debts had been contracted upon short anticipations, and some part upon annuities for lives; so that before the 31st of December, 1701, in less than four years, there had partly been paid off, and partly reverted to the public, the sum of £5,121,041 12s. 0¾d.; a greater reduction of the public debt than has ever since been brought about in so short a period of time. The remaining debt, therefore, amounted only to £16,394,701 1s. 7¼d.

In the war which began in 1702, and which was concluded by the treaty of Utrecht, the public debts were still more accumulated. On the 31st of December, 1714, they amounted to £53,681,076 5s. $6 1⁄12$d. The subscription into the South Sea fund of the short and long annuities increased the capital of the public debts, so that on the 31st of December, 1722, it amounted to £55,282,978 1s. d. The reduction of the debt began in 1723, and went on so slowly that, on the 31st of December, 1739, during seventeen years of profound peace, the whole sum paid off was no more than £8,328,354 17s. $11 3⁄12$d., the capital of the public debt at that time amounting to £46,954,623 3s. d.

The Spanish war, which began in 1739, and the French war which soon followed it, occasioned a further increase of the debt, which, on the 31st of December, 1748, after the war had been concluded by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, amounted to £78,293,313 1s.10¾d. The most profound