ABSTRACT
As long as the Great French Wars lasted, patriotism reinforced paternalism to hold overt class conflict in check. There were of course increasing social strains, which came near to bursting point towards the end. War enriched the few and put almost intolerable burdens of taxation and high prices on the many, in a way which seemed to some contemporaries to be not inevitable but the artificial result of the Government’s policy of paying for it by means of inflationary loans rather than by taxing the rich. This inequitable policy, and the still more inequitable deflationary resumption of cash payments in 1819, which increased both the real value of the funds held by the few and the real burden of taxation of the many, were to play an important part in exacerbating class conflict after the Wars.
