CONSOLS, an abbreviation of Consolidated Annuities, had their origin in 1751, and now form the larger portion of the funded debt of the United Kingdom. In the progress of the national debt it was deemed expedient, on grounds which have been much questioned, instead of borrowing at various rates of interest, according to the state of the market or the need and credit of the Government, to offer a fixed rate of interest, usually three or three and a half per cent., and as the market required to give the lenders an advantage in the principal funded. Thus subscribers of £100 would sometimes receive £150 of three percent, stock. In 1815, at the close of the French wars, a large loan was raised at as much as £174 three per cent, and £10 four per cent, stock for £100. Thelow rate of interest was thus purely nominal, while the principal of the debt was increased beyond all due proportion. This practice began in the reign of George IL, when some portions of the debt on which the interest had been successfully reduced were consolidated into three per cent, annuities, and consols, as the annuities were called, and other stocks of nominally low interest, rapidly increased under the same practice during the great wars. In times of peace, when the rate of money has enabled portions of the debt at a higher interest to be commuted into stock of lower interest, it has usually been into consols that the conversion has been effected. Temporary deficits of the revenue have been covered by an issue of consols; exchequer bills when funded have taken the same form, though not constantly or exclusively; and some loans of the Government in recent times for special purposes, such as the relief of the Irish famine and the expenditure in the Crimean war, have been wholly or partly raised in ...