upon the income of the country, which has been in great part continued to the present time. This portion of the national expenditure was

It is probable that, owing to the greater development of the resources of the country, arising from the extension of its manufactures, a considerable addition was made to the national wealth during the early part of the war begun in 1793, notwithstanding the large expenditure that it occasioned; but this could no longer be the case when that expenditure was so lavishly increased that, as already shown,* the war charges, added to the interest on the national debt, in one year, (1814) exceeded 100 millions, a great part of which sum being expended in foreign countries was wholly abstracted from the national capital. Such a rate of exhaustion could not possibly have been continued; its disastrous effects were made sufficiently apparent during the earlier years of peace, but must have been long since repaired.

While dwelling on these circumstances, it seems hardly possible to prevent the inquiry arising in the mind, what must have been the condition of England at this time if the wars which caused this lavish, this unexampled, expenditure could have been avoided. A small part only of that expenditure would have sufficed to pay off the whole of the national burthens as they stood in 1793; we should then assuredly have heard nothing of the restrictions upon various branches of trade for which those burthens were so long made the groundless pretext, and an amount of prosperity would have been experienced that must have had the happiest effect upon the physical and moral condition of England first, and through England upon that of the whole European family.

If we may carry back our inquiry to a still earlier period-to the years that followed the peace of Paris in 1763, and before the breaking out of the unfortunate troubles that ended in the loss to us of our North American plantations, we shall find cause for still deeper regret. At the commencement of the insurrectionary war in America, our debt amounted to less than 130 millions, the annual charge in respect of the same being 4 millions, or less than one-sixth of its present amount. The sources of our national wealth which have since been discovered and made available, were none of them brought to light or fostered through the partial dismemberment of the British Empire. On the contrary, it may be said that the extent to which they have been carried was importantly limited by that misfortune. Had the case been otherwise—had the field for our manufacturing inventions equally embraced a peaceful and flourishing British Empire in the West, how much more

* Page 505.

rapid and gigantic must have been its growth! how much more rapid and gigantic, too, might have been the growth of the North American States themselves, if, instead of being drained of men and treasure in supporting the revolt into which they were driven in resistance of what has since been acknowledged to have been a course of legislative tyranny, they had continued to be recipients of the surplus population, and sharers in the accumulating capital of the mother-country! Is it likely, it may even be asked, could it possibly have happened, in such circumstances, that the British Empire could have been involved in such a war as that which followed the breaking out of the French revolution? Nay, is it probable that, without the participation of France in that struggle as the abettor of rebellion and the ally of republicanism, the French revolution would have occurred when and as it did occur? These, it is true, are questions of speculation rather than of fact, and it would be of little advantage to pursue them further on this occasion.

CHAPTER II.

INCREASE OF PERSONAL AND REAL PROPERTY.

Forms in which the National Accumulations appear-Amount of Property Insured at different Periods-Moral and Economical Effects of Insurances-Accumulations in Life Assurance Offices-Property devised in respect of which Legacy Duty has been paid affords an insufficient Test of the Amount of Accumulations-Estimate of Personal Property in the Kingdom at different Periods-Capital on which Legacy Duty was paid in Fifty-two Years to 1849-Yearly Average Amount, compared with the Year 1848, in England, Scotland, and Ireland--Savings invested in the Security of Real Estates, and in their Improvement. Assessments on Real Property, showing its Value at various

Periods Savings' Banks.

It must be sufficiently evident, from the circumstances stated in the last Chapter, that the accumulation of capital in this country since the peace has been exceedingly great; but it will place the fact in a much stronger light to bring forward in evidence some of the forms in which that accumulation has been made most apparent.

During the war, the surplus profits and the savings of individuals were, to a great degree, swallowed up by the public expenditure, and went to supply the constant drain which, without those savings, would very speedily have exhausted the whole resources of the nation. The return of peace soon brought the expenditure of Government nearer to the amount of revenue realized from taxation, and in time left a yearly surplus of income to be applied in diminution of the public debt. The loan of 1836, raised for the payment of the compensation for slaves, can be considered as only in a slight degree affording an opportunity for the absorption of savings. Unlike the produce of other loans, the amount was not consumed and destroyed, but by far the greatest part of it went to the payment of debts due to merchants in England, by whom it was employed as capital, and thus, as far as the nation generally was concerned, effected only a change from one hand to another, without causing any material alteration in the aggregate amount of capital in the country.

The amount of property insured does not, of itself, afford a correct view of the progressive value of the description of property liable to destruction by fire. It is most probable that a large but a continually lessening proportion of such property is always left uninsured; and it is manifestly impossible to calculate the proportionate degree of prudence among its owners, so as to arrive at any probable estimate of the

aggregate value of insurable property in the country. The following statement of the sums insured in the fire-offices of England, Scotland, and Ireland, at different periods within this century, has been calculated from the amount of duty received in respect of the same at the Stamp Office. If it be desirable-and who can doubt that it is so?-that all persons should secure themselves from losses arising through accidents beyond their own control, it must then be held unwise to subject insurances to taxation; and when, as in this country, the tax thus levied amounts to 200 per cent. upon the sum required by the insurance offices to cover the ordinary risk from accidents by fire, the degree of discou ragement occasioned by the duty must needs be very great. It is not only by reason of the security arising to individuals, amounting often to the prevention of beggary, that insurances against fire and upon lives are beneficial they exercise a good effect upon the country generally through the accumulation of savings which they cause. The sums paid for premium on life-policies especially, are, in every case, put by and added to the accumulating capital of the community. The money, as it is paid to the insurance offices, is beneficially employed, and made to stimulate, in one way or another, the industry of the nation; and when called for by the arrival of the contingency against which the payments were meant to provide, it is pretty certain that in a large proportion of cases the money is so much clear gain, because without such a resource the premiums out of which it is provided would have been unprofitably consumed.

The sums insured against fire in England, Scotland, and Ireland, respectively, in each of the years 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, and 1841 to 1849, were as follows:

The increase of the amount insured in the United Kingdom has been,—

The policy-duty on life insurances is but trifling in amount, and being charged only when the insurance is first effected, and not annually, as in the case of fire insurances, it would afford no test of the amount of policies outstanding at various periods. The records of the Stamp Office do not even offer the means of ascertaining the amount of new insurances effected from year to year, because the stamps employed are not distinguished from those used for giving validity to many other descriptions of instruments. The great increase, of late years, in the number of Life Assurance Offices, and the flourishing condition in which they appear to be, leads us to conclude that the number of insurances. must have been very greatly augmented, although it seems probable that the system has not yet been carried to anything like the extent that is desirable.

It is believed that the sums accumulated in the hands of the various Life Insurance Offices in the kingdom, and which form a part of the savings of the assured, amount to at least forty millions of money, an estimate which will not be thought extravagant when it is known that the assets of one office, the Equitable Assurance Company, form onefourth of that sum. It is to be wished that our various Life Assurance Societies were obliged by the legislature to register the amount of their engagements, and of the funds which they respectively hold to provide for the same. Such a regulation could not prove injurious to any assurance office conducted upon safe principles, while it would serve to put the public upon their guard against such-if any there be—as should be otherwise conducted, if it did not prevent their establishment. It must surely be useful to protect the public against the risk of intrusting to unsafe hands savings which are made oftentimes with much privation and at great sacrifice for the benefit of the widow and the orphan. At present there is no information upon this subject whereby a man may be guided in the selection of an office; and, should he make a bad choice, his error may not discover itself until to remedy it will have become impossible. There are, it is true, Assurance Offices which are of known stability, and by the choice of which a man may avoid the risk here mentioned; but to do this, it will mostly be the case that he will be forced to pay a rate of premium higher than sufficient, so that either his privation will be greater than it need be, or the sum insured to his family smaller than might have been provided.

Occasion has already been taken, in describing the produce of taxes (Section iv. Chapter iii. pp. 492 and 493), to show the capitals upon which legacy duty was paid in great Britain in each year, from 1797 to 1848.

The sums thus registered do not comprise the whole of the personal property held in this country which changes hands on the death of its