8 Sept. 1801

Polit. Economy

Method

Finance

110

10

The support given to this opinion is given in two ways. One is by thinking

nothing of what becomes of the money taken /drawn/ in taxes and made over to the

Annuitants in discharge pro tanto of the national debt, but /or/ considering it

as annihilated or thrown away.

The other is by considering the labour paid for by the money when spent by the

proprietor as it would have been had there been no /instead of being taken from

him in/ taxes as being employ'd all of it in the shape of pecuniary capital, in

making a correspondent addition to real capital, just as would have really been

the case with the labour paid for by that money had it been made over to

annuitants in discharge of so much of the debt.

That a part of it would really have been so employ'd does not admitt of doubt:

the error consists in supposing /considering/ what is true only of this part as

/as if it were/ true of the whole. Let us observe the difference between this

part and the whole.

Admitting an encrease of wealth - and that a gradual and regular one the

productive capital of the country taken together with the growing mass of

consumed[?] & reproduced wealth continually produced by it must be

considered as encreasing at compound interest The rate of interest can scarcely

be taken as so high as 2 per Cent: for at two per Cent compound upon the capital

taken as it stands /whatever it may amount to/ in any year, the quantity of it

would be rather more than doubled in 351/2 years.+ The most sanguine estimator

will not

+ Smarts Annuities Table 1. p.54.