Almost every one professes to consider the debt as a drain upon the resources of the nation; as a nightmare upon the chests of the people; and as a millstone which will sink England below her proper position. Most of our political writers affect this view. All our alarmists make it their theme. Hume wrote,—“Either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit must destroy the nation.” Sir Robert Walpole said,—“When the debt reaches 100 millions, the nation will be bankrupt.” In 1735, Lord Hervey, in his memoir of George II., remarked,—“I do not see how it would be possible for the country, on any exigence, or for the support of the most necessary war, to raise one million a year more than it now raises”; and in 1777 the third earl wrote as a note,—“What would my father have said had he seen seventeen millions raised in a year?” Lord Bolingbroke declared the debt was sinking England into the gulf of inevitable bankruptcy. Cobbett was perfectly rabid in his attacks on those whom he invariably classed as Jews and fundholders, predicted the ruin of England in half a century, and proposed, in 1832, a plan which would have ceased the interest on the national debt in twenty-seven years, and have classed England among the repudiators. Adam Smith thought that the practice of funding had gradually weakened every state which had adopted it. Paine openly predicted the Bank and the government would perish together in a few months. Mr. Tierney said, in 1817, such a state of things could not go on. Sir James Graham proposed, in 1827, a reduction of thirty per cent. Mr. Baines thought it might be ultimately necessary to make a general contribution to extinguish a large portion of the debt; and the late Earl Grey talked in early life of “taking the bull by the horns”; although he failed to fulfil in his age the promise of his youth. If prophecies such as these have been plentiful, the following extract, at once a picture and illustration of the period when the nation first commenced to borrow, will prove that other views are entertained by many, and that there is a large class who, however they may deprecate the great evils arising from the debt, consider that it has been beneficial to the interests of England.