ABSTRACT
T HE main principle of the proposed measure consists in the open-ing the market for government annuities on terms of profit to government-viz. at a reduced rate of interest-to a mass of money, which, by existing circumstances, is either excluded from the faculty of yielding interest to the owners altogether, or, in the hands of bankers or otherwise, they are obliged to accept, on inferior security, a rate of interest inferior, all things considered, to that which, with a very considerable degree of profit, might be allowed by government. The annuities, thus created, to be charged upon the existing fund; and the money thus raised to be employed, as it comes in, in the redemption of debt, and thence in exoneration of that fund. The result and benefit of the measure, taking it on the smallest scale, will, besides the above profit to government, consist in the affording to the least opulent and most numerous class of individuals (Friendly Societies included)-in a word, to the great bulk of the community-the means of placing out small hoards, however minute, with a degree of advantage unattainable by any other means,t and this, too, even at compound interest-a mode of accumulation which, familiar as it is in name, is not in effect capable of being realized by any other means in favour of individuals, though so happily brought to bear in favour of the public in the instance of the Sinking Funds;-not to speak of the collateral advantage obtained, by creating on the part of the lower orders, in respect of the proposed new species of property, a fresh and more palpable interest in the support of that government, on the tranquillity of which the existence of such their property will depend.t
On the larger scale upon which it may be expected to expand itself, the measure, after accelerating the otherwise rapid ascent of government annuities to the par price,'*' and clearing away the 4 and 5 per Cents, t would afford the means of bringing the further reduction of the rate of interest on those annuities to its maximum in point of effect, rate of reduction and rapidity taken together;:!: reduction of interest accelerating, too, in this way, redemption of principal, instead of taking place of it and retarding it, as on the plan pursued in Mr. Pelham's days.§
Other paper currencies have been either (like the French Assignats and Mandats, &c.) engagements for money in unlimited quantity, and without funds for performance; or promises of minute portions of a species of property (for example lands and houses) incapable of being reduced into such portions; or, like some of the American currencies, promises of metallic money, payable at a period altogether indefinite, dating, for instance, from a fixed day posterior to the conclusion of a war.
