on which his reputation depends. The Treatise on Reversionary Payments was published in 1769. It contained the solution of many questions in the Doctrine of Annuities, with practical suggestions for the establishment of Insurance Offices on correct principles, and an exposure of the unsafe character of the benefit societies which were being continually formed in London and elsewhere. The alarm of the policy holders of the existing offices was only equalled by the indignation of the directors, but the success of the work was enormous.
The treatise on Reversionary Payments had contained an essay on Public Credit and the National Debt, criticising the manner in which the debt had been contracted and the alienation of the Sinking Fund. In 1772 this essay was enlarged into a treatise entitled An Appeal to the Public on the National Debt, giving a detailed account or the management of the Sinking Fund from 1716, when it was first established by Sir Robert Walpole, to 1733, when it was finally abandoned, and advocating the renewal of it, by means of the annual appropriation of a fixed sum and of the compound interest on all stock redeemed by that sum, to the reduction of the liabilities of the country. This system was to be followed in time of war as well as of peace, and—the weak point of the whole plan—the fund when necessary was to be supported by loans. Dr. Price at the same time gave the amount of the debt as it then existed—it was upwards of £140,000,000—compared with what the amount would have been had the operations of the original Sinking Fund been steadily maintained. For one antagonist excited by the Treatise on Reversionary Payments, twenty were aroused by the Appeal on the National Debt. The scheme was denounced, not only as visionary and impracticable, but even as seditious, and the controversy was still raging with unabated fury when Morellet met Price at Bowood.
Amongst the most intimate friends of Dr. Price was Dr. Priestley, then in charge of the Unitarian Congregation at Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds.[1] Already whilst
- ↑ Rutt's Life of Priestley, i. 86.
