Owing to these hundred years and more of war (S559) the National Debt
of GReat Britain and Ireland (S503), which in 1688 was much less than
a million of pounds, had now reached the enormous amount of over nine
hundred millions (or $4,500,000,000), bearing yearly interest at the
rate of more than $160,000,000.[1] So great had been the strain on the
finances of the country, that the Bank of England (S503) suspended
payment, and many heavy failures occurred. In addition to this, a
succession of bad harvests sent up the price of wheat to such a point
that at one time an ordinary-sized loaf of bread cost the farm laborer
more than half a day's wages.
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, under "National Debt."
Taxes had gone on increasing until it seemed as though the people
could no longer endure the burden. As Sydney Smith declared, with
entire truth, there were duties on everything. They began, he said,
in childhood, with "the boy's taxed top"; they followed to old age,
until at last "the dying Englishman, pouring his taxed medicine into a
taxed spoon, flung himself back on a taxed bed, and died in the arms
of an apothecary who had paid a tax of a hundred pounds for the
privilege of putting him to death."[1]
[1] Sydney Smith's Essays, "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United
States."