An Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress, the Redemption and Present State, and the Management, of the National Debt of Great Britain.

First edition of this incisive and highly original critique of Pittite economic policies during the Napoleonic Wars. Robert Hamilton (1743-1829) made the "first serious attack upon the general sinking fund policy of the period" (Wormell, p. 135). By the time of Waterloo in 1815, the British national debt stood at a crippling 180 per cent of total GDP, while debt servicing payments were consuming close to two-fifths of all government revenues. To address the issue, Pitt the Younger revived the idea of a sinking fund in 1786. The decidedly unorthodox career of Robert Hamilton took him from a clerkship at a Scottish bank to the chair of mathematics at the University of Aberdeen. In the Inquiry, he cogently argues that, far from reducing the national debt, Pitt's sinking fund would in fact increase it, largely because borrowing for the fund was often undertaken at higher rates of interest than those on the existing debts. Jeremy Wormell, National Debt in Britain 1850-1930, Vol. II, 1999. Octavo (212 x 131 mm), pp. Tables in the text. viii, 212. Contemporary half calf, spine ruled in gilt and with brown calf label lettered in gilt, marbled sides, green endpapers, edges sprinkled brown. Erased contemporary pencil signature to head of title page. Light rubbing, slight loss to head of spine, infrequent foxing and offsetting to contents: a very good copy. …