Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/133

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¬public wealth, had been itself more under the controul of the people who were to sustain the burthens they laid upon them, the debt would not probably, in so short a period, have reached this magnitude, much less have enabled me to tell you that the same minister left it swoln from the two hundred and sixty millions and upwards, which I gave you, to the sum of Jive hundred and forty millions, increasing the annual taxation before given you from thirteen to above thirty millions ; which in the further prosecution of the war by his successors, and by the public councils acting upon his system, again swelled to the almost incredible amount of nearly seven hundred millions, still speaking in your English money. — Yet the most alarm- ing part is still behind, in the increased ex- penditure, which, unless corrected, seems to mock all redemption. — The same minister found it only about twenty-one and left it nearly sivty millions annually, and it has under his ¬

successors been still advancing. ¬ The ¬