ABSTRACT
The public debt has produced a difference of interests in this country, that we have lately suffered by, and if not remedied, can have no end. It is the interest of the stockholders, to involve the nation in war, because they get by it. It is the interest of landed men and merchants, to submit to any insultrather than engage in war, since they must bear the whole burden of it. 2
According to him the public creditors, threatened by Barnard's proposal of 1737 for reducing their interest, were responsible for the clamour for war with Spain in I 7 39· 3
1693, and the Bank ofEngland in 1694.1 Elibank (himself a not unsuccessful speculator in Government stock) described these early proprietors half a century later as follows.
