But it was of "the Publick" that we were speaking, and I
believe that "the Publick" first becomes prominent in connexion
with the National Debt. Though much might be done for us by a
slightly denaturalized king, he could not do all that was
requisite. Some proceedings of one of his predecessors, who
closed the Exchequer and ruined the goldsmiths, had made our king
no good borrower. So the Publick had to take his place. The money
might be "advanced to His Majesty", but the Publick had to owe
it. This idea could not be kept off the statute book. "Whereas,"
said an Act of 1786, "the Publick stands indebted to" the East
India Company in a sum of four millions and more.(28*)
What is the Publick which owes the National Debt? We try to
evade that question. We try to think of that debt not as a debt
owed by a person, but as a sum charged upon a pledged or
mortgaged thing, upon the Consolidated Fund. This is natural, for
we may, if we will, trace the beginnings of a national debt back
to days when a king borrows money and charges the repayment of it
upon a specific tax; perhaps he will even appoint his creditor to
collect that tax, and so enable him to repay himself. Then there
was the long transitional stage in which annuities were charged
on the Aggregate Fund, the General Fund, the South Sea Fund, and
so forth. And now we have the Consolidated Fund; but even the
most licentious "objectification" (or, as Dr James Ward says,
"reification") can hardly make that Fund "a thing" for
jurisprudence. On the one hand, we do not conceive that the
holders of Consols would have the slightest right to complain if
the present taxes were swept away and new taxes invented, and, on
the other hand, we conceive that if the present taxes will not
suffice to pay the interest of the debt more taxes must be
imposed. Then we speak of "the security of an Act of Parliament",
as if the Act were a profit-bearing thing that could be pledged.
Or we introduce "the Government" as a debtor. But what, we may
ask, is this Government? Surely not the group of Ministers, not
the Government which can be contrasted with Parliament. I am
happy to think that no words of mine can affect the price of Bank
Annuities, but it seems to me that the national debt is not a
"secured debt" in any other than that loose sense in which we
speak of "personal security", and that the creator has nothing to
trust to but the honesty and solvency of that honest and solvent
community of which the King is the head and "Government" and
Parliament are organs.
One of our subterfuges has been that of making the king a
trustee (vel quasi) for unincorporated groups. Another of our
subterfuges has been that of slowly substituting "the Crown" for
King or Queen. Now the use which has been made in different ages
of the crown -- a chattel now lying in the Tower and partaking
(so it is said(29*)) of the nature of an heirloom -- might be
made the matter of a long essay. I believe, however, that an
habitual and perfectly unambiguous personification of the Crown
-- in particular, the attribution of acts to the Crown -- is much
more modern than most people would believe. It seems to me that
in fully half the cases in which Sir William Anson writes
"Crown", Blackstone would have written "King". In strictness,
however, "the Crown" is not, I take it, among the persons known
to our law, unless it is merely another name for the King. The
Crown, by that name, never sues, never prosecutes, never issues
writs or letters patent. On the face of formal records the King
or Queen does it all. I would not, if I could, stop the process
which is making "the Crown" one of the names of a certain
organized community; but in the meantime that term is being used
in three or four different, though closely related, senses. "We