13,400,000.
The loan was increased exactly in the way in which our friend added
the L.10 to the L.100. It was borrowing money to pay loans.
The application of millions in this manner by our statesmen, was in a
great measure owing to the enthusiastic speculations of Dr Richard
Price, a benevolent, ingenious, and laborious man, who, unfortunately
for the public, possessed the power of giving his wild speculations a
tangible and practical appearance. He was, to use a common expression,
'carried off his feet' by arithmetical calculations. He believed
compound interest to be omnipotent. He made a calculation of what a
penny could have come to if laid out at compound interest from the
birth of Christ to the nineteenth century, and found it would make--we
forget precisely how many globes of gold the size of this earth. He
did not say, however, where the proper investments were to be made;
how the money was to be procured; and, most serious of all, he
overlooked that where one party received such an accumulating amount
of money, some other party must pay it, and to pay it must make it. In
fact, the doctor looked on the increase of money by compound interest
as a mere arithmetical process.
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