FINAL EXPLOSION OF THE SINKING FUND.
THE bubble of the Sinking Fund, which floated so long before the charmed eyes of the anti-economists, was effectually burst by the rude puff that it received from old Professor HAMILTON of Aberdeen; but many of its admirers still winked hard in order to escape conviction. The time has at length come when its decease in reality, as in form, has been announced by authority. On Tues- day, the following notice issued from the National Debt Office- " The Lords Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury having certified to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, in pursuance of the Act 10th George IV., c. 27,s. 1, that the actual expenditure of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland exceeded the actual revenue thereof, for the year ended the 10th day of October 1831, by the sum of twenty thousand five hun- dred and thirty-seven pounds eighteen shillings and eleven pence; "The Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt hereby give notice, that no sum will be applied by them on account of the Sinking-Fund, under the provisions of the said Act, between the 5th day of January 1832 and the 5th day of April 1832."
The great, and for many years the only reason, assigned for keeping up any sinking-fund, except such as arose from the ex- cess of income above expenditure, has been the tendency of a sinking-fund to keep up the price of Stocks. The high price of Consols may be desirable to a borrowing Minister, but we envy the felicity of that man's logic who would argue that a mock sink- ing-fund—in other words, a loan—had a tendency to produce such a price. A real sinking-fund diminishes pro tanto the sum of the debt, and if the demand for Government securities remain un- changed, must, in the nature of things, produce a rise; but a mock sinking-fund augments the sum of the debt, by the entire charge of the loan and the payment, and must, if the demand for Government securities remain the same, produce a fall. The Standard seeks to relieve the Mahomet of Tory delusion— Mr. Pirr—from the imputation of believing that a mock sinking- fund could diminish the debt. He advocated the mock sinking- fund, it seems, for no reason but because, while it existed, he could contrive to borrow on better terms. It is, according to the Tories, a scandalous imputation to say that Mr. PITT, in common with many others whose heads were not arithmetical, was bewil- dered by the golden globes of PRICE; but it is no imputation to say that he believed in that which even PRICE was not foolish enough to imagine,—namely, that he could raise the price of an article by adding to the supply without at the same time adding to the demand. The common opinion writes down Pm an ass in much good company, and therefore not markedly asinine; and his followers seek to defend him by showing him up as ass by him- self ass. And this, too, not only in defiance of common sense, but of plain matter of fact; for the announcement, that there was no fund to apply to the redemption of the debt between the 5th Ja- nuary and the 5th April 1832, has not led to the depression of Consols by the hundredth part of a per cent.; on the contrary, they have risen considerably since it was made.
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