These were the people the government would need to turn to the next time Britain needed to borrow, so for the moment the ministry chose not to attack their interests. That might even have been the right choice politically, given how intimately connected the Whigs were to Britain’s monied men. But fiscally, such timidity had its cost. More than £15 million of the most expensive obligations, or over one-third of the nation’s total debt, remained a running drain on the Treasury.
