THE POLITICIANS PKIMER. 5 



t/rtployes are, it is true, numerous, but that they, as well as the army 

 and navy, are badly paid, we shall be the less astonished at the 

 astonishing contrast which the Russian budget presents with those of 

 states even much less important. 



Generally speaking, the debt of a state arises from sums borrowed 

 by the government either at home or abroad. But we must not sup- 

 pose, a's is but too often the case among statistical writers, that we 

 can form a correct estimate of the debt of a state, even though we 

 should exactly know all the sums it has received by loans. There 

 are many other sources which may augment its debts either by 

 arrears of payment for services done ; by creating a paper money ; 

 or by putting into circulation coin much below its nominal value. 

 And even then, although we know with the utmost exactness 

 all the debts of a state, we should, in their estimation, arrive at 

 erroneous results, if we were ignorant of the sums that had already 

 been redeemed. As to debts, properly so called, there are several, 

 distinguished from the national debt, and which, in some states, 

 amount to very considerable sums. In fact, were we not limited for 

 space, we might present the reader with a comparative table, in 

 which the estimation of national debts would offer the same discre- 

 pancies as that of national revenues. 



Persons unacquainted with statistics, can form no idea of the 

 numerous difficulties met with in the estimation of debts ; especially 

 if we take accounts of the paper money, which is really a debt con- 

 tracted by the government to the nation, and the annihilation of 

 which either requires new loans or new taxes. But, in adding to the 

 debts of states, the sums which represent the mass of their paper 

 money, we have been careful, in our table, to keep accounts of the 

 quantity that has been destroyed by the different governments down 

 to 1820. Before the creation of the bank, Russia had not less than 

 873,537,920 paper roubles in circulation ; of these, in the space of 

 five years, they burnt 191,109,420, and 44,768,230 in 1822; so that, 

 in 1826, there only remained in circulation 595,776,310. The 

 Austrian empire presents equally favourable results : the amount of 

 paper money, which in 1811 exceeded 1,000,000,000 of florins, was 

 in 1822 reduced to 78,500,000. Hence her funds, bearing 5 per cent, 

 interest, which in 1817 were down to 48, have succesively risen to 

 56 in 1818, to 73 in 1820, to 83 in 1823, to 90 in 1826, and latterly 

 they have gone up to 92 and 93. 



It sometimes happens that governments contract, at certain periods, 

 considerable loans for the purpose of making some financial opera- 

 tion, the execution of which may be retarded from different causes. 

 Such sums, therefore, as are only received should be carried to the 

 debit of the debt for that year, and the remainder must figure among 

 the resources of the ensuing year. Thus, of the loan of 5,625,000, 

 contracted in England by the King of Denmark, the Danish govern- 

 ment had not received the half by the end of the year 1826. 



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