The financial affairs of the country called for a bold hand and found it. Lord North had muddled the finances of England almost as completely and almost as hopelessly as contemporary French financiers were muddling the finances of France. Pitt faced something that was not altogether unlike financial chaos with a courage which was well and with a genius which was better. The picturesque institution of smuggling, capitalized by wealth and rank in London, and profitably employing some forty thousand adventurous spirits, withered before the spell of Pitt's dexterous manipulations. A window tax compensated for a lightened tea duty that made smuggling merely a ridiculous waste of time, and its most sinister effect may still be noticed here and there in England in the hideous imitations of windows painted on to the walls of houses to support a grotesque idea of harmony, without incurring the expense of an actual aperture for light and air. Pitt raised the loans necessary to meet the yawning deficit and to minimize the floating debt, and he astonished his world by introducing the amazing elements of absolute honesty and admirable publicity into the transaction. The principle of patronage that had made previous loans a scandalous source of corruption was gallantly thrown overboard; and the new minister announced to the general amazement that the new loans would be contracted for with those who offered the lowest terms in public competition. A glittering variety of new taxes, handled with the dexterity of a conjuror, and extracting sources of revenue from sources untaxed and very justifiably taxable, rounded off a series of financial proposals that inaugurated brilliantly his administration, and that had their abiding effect upon the welfare of the country. The crown of his financial fame was his plan for the redemption of the National Debt introduced in 1786. His plan was based on the comparatively familiar idea of a sinking fund. Up to the time of Pitt's proposal, however, such sinking fund as might exist in a time of peace was always liable to be taken over and {240} made use of by the Government in a time of war. Pitt's plan was to form a sinking fund which should be made inalienable by an Act of Parliament until the Act creating it should be repealed by another Act of Parliament. For this purpose Pitt created a Board of Commissioners consisting of the Speaker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, the Accountant-General, and the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. To this independent and distinguished body of men the sum of one million sterling was to be handed over annually for the gradual redemption of the existing debt by the purchase of stock.