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III. Parliamentary Radicals and the Reduction of Imperial Expenditure in British North America, 1827–1834

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter Burroughs
Peter Burroughs
Affiliation:
Dalhousie UniversityHalifax, Nova Scotia
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Extract

Although retrenchment, with its overtones of efficiency and its implied attack on corruption, is a familiar watchword of modern politics, it is difficult today to appreciate the deep ethical and constitutional significance of the issue of economy during the early nineteenth century, or the strong hold which the concept exerted over the attitudes and actions of British politicians and administrators in the decades following the Napoleonic Wars. Twenty-three years of costly war with France had increased Britain's national debt from £228 million in 1793 to £876 million in 1815, and the laborious process of eliminating this deficit at the rate of a few millions a year by means of a sinking fund was aptly described as ‘the attempt of a wooden-legged man to catch a hare’. The propertied classes in the post-war period considered themselves excessively burdened with taxation, and until the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 had been effectively put into operation, they were also called upon to meet the costs of an expensive and inefficient system of poor relief.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1968 , pp. 446 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

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