The work of reducing the list of excisable articles was nevertheless begun, and from this time it went slowly, and, except as interrupted by extraordinary demands upon the state, steadily forward. Stamps, however, were governed by a different law. Its inoffensiveness, the economy of its mode of collection, together with its ready availability, caused this species of tax to be brought into more and more extensive use. In fact, a constant increase of taxation in some form had become necessary in order to meet the increasing expenses of the state. After the close of the war in 1697, strong efforts were made to pay off the national debt, the rising greatness of which filled all classes with alarm. No corresponding efforts since have been rewarded with similar results. In the brief period of peace that followed, the national debt was reduced one fifth. Four expensive wars, following each other in rapid succession, overwhelmed the petty labors of the sinking fund, put an end to the work of diminution, and left the nation, at the beginning of the war with her colonies in this country, oppressed with a debt of $600,000,000. It came out from this struggle with $500,000,000 added to the burden of the state. This point of time may be fixed as the close of the second epoch. A new class of changes now begin, which have had, if possible, a greater influence on the financial condition of England, as it exists at the present, than those we have already described. In 1793, notwithstanding its enormous debt, the country boldly entered upon its great conflict with France. It is impossible to look without admiration upon the obstinate energy displayed by the English nation during this conflict, which lasted, with slight intermissions, for more than twenty years, and by which the annual tax was quadrupled, and the national debt increased beyond a chance of final extinction. In the astonishing revolution which it wrought in the financial condition of the state, as well as in much of the social phenomena with which it was accompanied, this conflict strongly resembles that in which the States of the North are engaged against the South. The first effects of the war appeared in the tax system.