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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 432: FINANCIAL MEASURES.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

FINANCIAL MEASURES.

Previous to the introduction of his financial measures, Pitt proposed the appointment of a committee to inquire what had been the amount of the income and expenditure during the last five years, and what they might be expected to be in future; and also what alterations had occurred in the amount of the national debt since the 5th of January, 1786. This committee made its report on the 10th of May, when it appeared that the annual income had been £16,030,285, and the expenditure, including £1,000,000 for liquidating the national debt, £15,909,178, thereby leaving an excess of the income over the expenditure to the amount of £61,107. In his account of the state of finances on the 18th of May, Pitt referred to this report as a proof of their flourishing condition. Sheridan, however, still questioned the correctness of the figures; and on the 3rd of June he moved forty resolutions, calculated to discredit the management of the finances, and to show that he could have taken—spendthrift as he was—better care of the public money. These resolutions were all rejected; and ministers brought forward sixteen counter resolutions, which went to prove that the finances had never been so well managed before, and that there was every prospect, not only of keeping the expenditure within the limits of the income, but of reducing the national debt. This was visionary; but, at all events, Pitt was enabled to provide for the services of the year without a loan or any additional taxes. On a subsequent day, Dundas laid a flattering account of the finances in India before the commons; the revenues there, he stated, amounted to £7,000,000, and after defraying all expenses, there was left a clear surplus of nearly £1,500,000. His statement was questioned by Paul Benfield who had recently returned from India, and who asserted that he could prove it to be erroneous, but for the late period of the session.