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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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.
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53 The Mirror of Parliament (22 Feb. 1828), p. 311.
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62 For receipts and expenses of casual revenues, Maitland to Goderich, 1 Feb. 1831, CO. 217/152; attempts to increase revenues from coal mines, Stanley to Acting Governor, 2 Aug. 1833, CO. 218/31; the settlement of quit rents, Campbell to Spring Rice, 29 Dec. 1834, CO. 217/156; arrears of salaries, Jeffery to Stanley, 6 Mar. 1834, CO. 217/156; the renewed parliamentary grant, Grey to Campbell, 1 Aug. 1835, CO. 217/158. On the whole question of parliamentary grants and Nova Scotia, see Harvey, D. C., ‘The Civil List and Responsible Government in Nova Scotia’, Canadian Historical Review, XXVIII (Dec. 1947), 365–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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67 For these statistics, see Martin, R. M., Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire (London, 1839), statistical chart and appendix 1, p. 290; P.P. 1835Google Scholar (144, 374, 408), XXXVIII; ibid. 1837 (149), XL, 2; ibid. 1840 (179), xxx, 2; Spectator, 5 Jan. 1833. According to the Reports of the Select Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure, Britain's net expenditure on the colonies in 1834–35 amounted to £2,431,900, of which military charges accounted for £1,924,337. P.P. 1834 (570), VI, and 1835 (473), VI.
