It is said that the belief in the potency of a
sinking-fund for clearing off the debt inspired public confidence in
the stability of the funds, and that it was wrong to shake this
confidence even by the promulgation of truth. It has often been
supposed, indeed, that the statesmen who mainly carried out the system
were in secret conscious of its fallacy, but were content to carry it
out so long as they saw that it inspired confidence in the public. It
is in allusion to this that we have spoken of the sinking-fund as a
great hoax. We cannot sanction the morality of governments acting on
conscious fallacies; and in this instance the natural confidence in
the funds rather enlarged than decreased when the fallacy was exposed
and the system abandoned.
Keeping in view Dr Price's views of the potentiality of compound
interest, we now give a brief account of a singular attempt made in
France to put them in practice, and by their omnipotence pay our
national debt and that of other nations too, out of a small private
fortune. In the year 1794, a will was registered in France by one
Fortune Ricard, disposing of a sum of 500 livres, a little more than
L.20 sterling. Fortune stated that this sum was the result of a
present of twenty-four livres which he had received when he was a boy,
and had kept accumulating at compound interest to a period of advanced
age.
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