‘Examination of Mr. Pitt’s Statement of the flourishing State of our Commerce - From the Lecture on the BUDGET’

This chapter examines Mr. Pitt’s statement of the flourishing state of commerce from the Lecture on the Budget. This lecture was a response to Pitt’s 1795 budget, which was announced to and approved by Parliament, and concerned the continuing and costly war with Revolutionary France, of which John Thelwall was a dogged critic. In the lecture, his criticisms concern not issues of just cause or of the ‘horrors’ suffered by those directly involved, but rather its effects on the British economy and on domestic living standards. One of the main purposes of the budget was the approval of a £4.6 million loan to Austria in return for the deployment of 200,000 soldiers, mostly in the Rhineland to increase pressure on the French who had successfully invaded the Netherlands and replaced the Republic of the United Provinces with the Batavian Republic.