Additional Preface to a Pamphlet, Entitled An Appeal to the Public, on the Subject of the National Debt
- Richard Price (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
The essay is a follow-up to his influential 1772 work on British public finance, in which Richard Price had argued for a rigorously managed sinking fund as a means of paying down Britain’s burgeoning national debt. In this additional preface, Price revisits and defends his earlier proposals in light of criticism he had received, while connecting the broader question of fiscal responsibility to the heated political debate over Britain’s relationship with its American colonies.
This piece reflects Price’s characteristic blend of moral seriousness and quantitative rigor, and illustrates how questions of debt, taxation, and imperial authority were deeply intertwined in the public discourse on the eve of the American Revolution.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.