But alas! this apparent revenue, arising from a multitude of taxes, was of no use towards defraying the smallest _extraordinary_ expence of government. Every article of it was engaged for debts; and the operations for reducing the interest were calculated only to produce a fund for discharging the capital. The civil list, indeed, that is to say, the expence of civil government, exclusive of army, navy, ordnance, and incidental articles, was paid from the permanent taxes, and considered as a charge upon them. But were not armies and navies then become as regular an expence upon every state in Europe as judges and ambassadors? Undoubtedly they were. Yet after the peace of Utrecht, in laying down the plan which has constantly been followed ever since, for defraying the regular expence of British government, these two great and unavoidable expences were considered as contingent only, and provided for by annual grants: and because armies, in time of peace, in former reigns, had proved dangerous to liberty from the abuse of power, they were still considered in the same light, at a time when liberty and trade were continually threatened from their armed enemies and rivals abroad. When the continuance of peace, in the reign of George the First, had produced the effect of reducing interest, on many occasions, to 3 _per cent._ the sinking fund began to gather strength. The land tax, from the year 1722, had not exceeded two shillings in the pound; and the _extraordinary_ expence of government, according to the annual grants of the 13 years of his reign, did not exceed 34 800 000_l._ or 2 670 000_l._ a year. Public tranquillity was very little disturbed during the first twelve years of the succeeding reign; and all the _extraordinary_ expence did not much exceed three millions _per annum_: yet that expence, small as it was, compared with what it has been since, was almost every year made out, by taking one million at least from the sinking fund; and in the years of the least expence, such as 1731 and 1732, the land tax was reduced to one shilling in the pound, at the expence of taking two millions and a half from the sinking fund.