The public debt of Great Britain in 1842 reached to $3,827,833,102, the growth of War since 1688. This amount is equal to two thirds of all the harvest of gold and silver yielded by Spanish America, including Mexico and Peru, from the discovery of our hemisphere by Christopher Columbus to the beginning of the present century, as calculated by Humboldt.[77] It is much larger than the mass of all the precious metals constituting at this moment the circulating medium of the world. Sometimes it is rashly said, by those who have given little attention to the subject, that all this expenditure has been widely distributed, and therefore beneficial to the people; but this apology forgets that it has not been bestowed on any productive industry or useful object. The magnitude of this waste appears by contrast. For instance, the aggregate capital of all the joint-stock companies in England of which there was any known record in 1842, embracing canals, docks, bridges, insurance, banks, gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous objects, was about $800,000,000,--all devoted to the welfare of the people, but how much less in amount than the War Debt! For the six years preceding 1842, the average payment for interest on this debt was $141,645,157 annually. If we add to this sum the further annual outlay of $66,780,817 for the army, navy, and ordnance, we shall have $208,425,974 as the annual tax of the English people, to pay for former wars and prepare for new. During this same period, an annual appropriation of $24,858,442 was sufficient for the entire civil service. Thus War consumed ninety cents of every dollar pressed by heavy taxation from the English people. What fabulous monster, what chimæra dire, ever raged with a maw so ravenous? The remaining ten cents sufficed to maintain the splendor of the throne, the administration of justice, and diplomatic relations with foreign powers,--in short, all the more legitimate objects of a nation.[78] [77] New Spain, Vol. III. p. 431. [78] Here and in subsequent pages I have relied upon the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Annual Register, McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary, Laurie's Universal Geography, founded on the works of Malte-Brun and Balbi, and the calculations of Hon. William Jay, in War and Peace, p. 16, and in his Address before the Peace Society, pp. 28, 29. * * * * *