1820 Dec r 21

Rid Yourselves

Introduction

IV. Table IV I style Spanish Revenue and Expenditure Table A

o

1819. In this you may in the first place see the

particulars the revenue of that year,as translated in our Morning Chronicle of the

12 th of August 1820 from such documents of yours as had at

that time come to hand.

Note (a)

(a) Should there be any errors in this statement, any translator

of this my address to you is requested to make the requisite corrections.

In the next place comes the expenditure of that same year. But of this all that the

document exhibits is the sum total:

Note (b)

(b) If, when a translation comes to be made the particulars have

been made public, they will of course be added.

Meantimes, for the purpose of the present argument the sum total is quite

sufficient: it would err nor would incorrectness brought to

the utmost probable extent suffice to render it otherwise. The expenditure more than

double the receipt, and for the four preceding years the same proportion kept up - a

state of the finances such as they will hardly be regarded as being altogether

suitable, to any such purpose as that of making distant conquests: no, nor so much as

to the keeping up on the most peaceable footing, the means of government though it

were confined to the peninsula.

Note (c)

As to the proportion thus expressed how it can for any such length of time have had

existence is more than I can figure to myself: I give it as I find it. Upon the face

of it what is stated is a contradiction in terms. By money, to the amounts in

question borrowed, possibility might have been given to it.

But by the extreme difficulty that but t'other day attended the borrowing of Reals

vellon 200,000,000, pounds sterling about 2,000,000, it seems to me sufficiently

evident, that no loans to any such amount if to any amount can in the interval in

question have had place.