202 
National Wealth and Public Debt. 
[April, 
IV. NATIONAL WEALTH AND PUBLIC DEBT. 
By Fred. Chas. Danvers. 
lETW people, probably, are aware of the vast amount of 
aILa information that is contained in the several “ Com- 
mand ” Papers annually laid before Parliament, and 
published as Parliamentary Blue Books. Many of them are 
doubtlessly very dry reading, per se, but it is the objeCt of the 
present article to extract from many hundreds of pages of 
figures and tabular statements, contained in printed Parlia- 
mentary Papers, and from other sources, information on 
certain points which can hardly fail to interest any “ true- 
born Englishman,” and which, being taken or compiled prin- 
cipally from official sources, is not likely to be otherwise than 
reliable. 
It is quite possible to contemplate mentally, in the space 
of a few moments, on the early prosperity and subsequent 
decline of Egypt ; on the rise and fall of Israel, Assyria, 
Persia, Macedonia, Greece, and Rome ; also on the slow 
but gradual growth of bands of wandering Scythians and 
Goths into the mighty empires which now inhabit the North 
and North-West of Europe, the whole of the North-American 
Continent, Australasia, and innumerable islands scattered 
all over the globe. These are all matters of history, which, 
having been carefully recorded from time to time by cotem- 
poraneous authors, handed down by tradition, or traced by 
the discovery of monuments or other national emblems, 
have formed subjects for investigation and study, the results 
of which are within the reach of every schoolboy. To re- 
flect deliberately, however, upon the circumstances that 
have led to such violent political changes as have transferred 
the seat of wealth, learning, and influence from the East to 
the West, cannot but fill the mind with thoughts calculated 
to excite feelings of wonderment, if not of awe. Are the 
changes that have taken place within the past two thousand 
years due to the aCtion of forces still in existence ? and, if 
so, to what will they ultimately lead ? are questions that 
may very naturally occur to any thinking mind, but it will 
be by no means easy to afford satisfactory replies to them. 
The growth of wealth naturally takes place together 
with an advance of civilisation in any nation. The former, 
however, has a natural tendency to encourage luxury and 
indolence, and to impair that spirit of energy and enterprise 
