On the national debt

Abstract

The clear neat produce of these several branches of the revenue, after all charges of collecting and management paid, amounts at present annually to about seven millions and three quarters sterling; besides more than two millions and a quarter raised by the land and malt tax. How these immense sums are appropriated, is next to be considered. And this is, first and principally, to the payment of the interest of the national debt.

From Book I, Chapter 8. [Blackstone closely follows Hume’s argument in his essay on Public Credit. Hume emphasises the political consquences of the debt, Blackstone the economic consequences: see E. L. Hargreaves, The National Debt (London, 1930), 74–7.]