MONTHLY 
MAG 
FEBRUARY bat 
AZINE. 
[Noa of Vor. 13: 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
HE account which I communicated 
to the Monthly Magazine for Au- 
guft Jat, of the different ftatements of 
the public debt by Mefirs. Addington, 
Tierney and Morgan, has been the means. 
of producing, in the following Number 
a very tedious paper from your Northern 
Correfpondent O. P. ; in which the writer, 
after modeftly obferving, ‘* that it was his 
intention to fupply the public with a more 
correct ftatement of its prefent debt than 
had appeared in any former publication,” 
and fpending feven. columns of your va- 
luable Mifcellany in that arduous under~ 
taking, fucceeds at length in making out 
the following account: 
& Debt, according to Mr. Morgan’s ftatement in his ComparativeView, &c. 558,418,623l. 
€< Deduét the ftock redeemed by the Commiflioners , . 
«‘ Ditto the ftock redeemed by the Land-tax 
<¢ Prefent amount of the debt, as far as it can be made out, ° 
Now it will be obferved that, except 
in dedu&ting the ftock redeemed by the 
fale of the’ Land-tax, this account is co- 
pied literally from that which I had given 
as Mr. Morgan’s ftatement ; and there- 
fore this pretenfion of ‘fupplying the 
public with a more accurate account of its 
debt” is wholly founded on the difcovery, 
that a nation may fell the fee-jimple of a 
tax, and yet continue to reckon the annual 
produce of it asa part of its income. I 
fhould think my time but ill employed were 
{to engage in adifpute on this fubject. 
While the Land-tax is taken in the Mi- 
nifter’s Eftimates of the Ways and Means 
at its former produce of two millions, it 
will, as I have already obferved, be ab- 
furd to exclude the ftock redeemed by the 
fale of it from the amount of the debt. 
Either the fixteen millions fo redeemed 
-muft form.a part of the capital, or 
480,000]. the intereft of that fum, mut 
be deducted from the revenue. Either 
the one fhould have been taken from the 
debtor, and the other from the creditor 
fide, or neither of them fhould have been 
noticed at all ;—and Mr. Morgan, as the 
molt fimple, has adopted this latter me- 
thod, never, I dare fay, imagining it pof- 
fible that any perfon would have affumed 
to himfelf the merit of fuperior knowledge, 
merely for having chofen to perplex his 
fhatement by introducing fuch an article 
into his account. 
In fupplying the public with a more 
correct flatement of the wufunded debt, the 
information communicated by O. P. is ne 
MoxtHity Mac, N&, ‘335 
52,281,656. 
16,083,8021. — 68,365,458. 
£,+4.903953,170"° 
lefs new and important than that which 
he has-given refpe€ting the funded debt. 
On this occafion he prefersMr. Tierney’s to 
Mr.Morgan’s account,althoughhe acknow-. 
ledges himfeli incapable of determining 
which is the moft accurate. He does not 
however chufe even to adopt the former 
as his own before he deduéts three millions 
from it, merely becaufe that {um is not 
payable to the Bank of England till the 
year 1806; which is as reafonable as if a 
merchant, in winding up his affairs, ex- 
cluded from the demands upon him a 
Bill of Exchange which hé had himfelt. 
accepted at a few day’s fight, becaule fuch 
bill did not require an immediate pay- 
ment. If O. P. were called upon in the 
year 1806 to give a ftatement of the debt, 
he fays, that he fhould not #bex overlook 
the above-mentioned article. But ifhe has 
not at that period become a greater pro- 
ficient in finance than he feems to be at. 
prefent, Ido not believe that any perfon 
will call upon him for fuch an account ; 
and therefore he had better rectify his era 
rors in the mean time. 
In my account of Mr. Tierncy’s ftate~ 
ment, I find that I have committed a mif- 
take in fuppofing that he had, like Mr. 
Morgan, contidered the Imperial loans as 
a part of the funded debt of Great Britain. 
The difcovery of this overfightis certainly 
due to O. P. and he is welcome to all 
the praife. It appears, however, to me a 
matter of very little confequence whether 
Mr. Tierney is willing, or. not, to allow 
thefe loans to be a permanent charge'upon 
B this 
