Well, the creditor could get security in the form of a lien on land for large-scale lending, and take the debtor to court after the fact, just like today. What they didn’t have were standardized credit scores.
Plus, you had to buy your commission in the first place. (Or some wealthy relative or patron had to buy it for you.)
Some regiments were more fashionable than others, and the officers were under a greater expectation to live high, and to have a private income with which to do so. There’s an indirect reference to this in Austen, where at the end of Pride and Prejudice Wickham takes a commission in a “northern regiment” which has the dual advantage of not requiring him to live beyond his means, and taking him and his wife well away from her family.
The system of purchasing army commissions lasted until the Cardwell reforms of around 1870. Army officers generally needed to have a private income, and were expected to have one. Hence the large number of sons of nobility in the army.
The north-south divide that Mrs Gaskell highlighted applied to the army as well. The London regiments were the most fashionable ones, anything from “up north” was seen as very low status. Although the north of England has always provided a disproportionately large number of military men, I’m hard-pressed to think of any northern regiment of any fame. Scotland is another matter.
The discussion seems to be about the Georgian/Regency era (Jane Austen) and the early-mid-Victorian era stories of Anthony Trollope and Mrs Gaskell. This was a time when there was either no income tax, or very little, and no inheritance tax. It also saw a radical change in British society due to commoners acquiring wealth and the aristocracy steadily losing it. The 18 C and early 19 C saw a number of nabobs (Englishmen in India who became rich, sometimes fabulously so) who were conspicuously wealthy, later on this changed to those who became rich through the industrial revolution. There were of course nouveau riche snobs who married into the aristocracy, a favorite topic of some novels, but as time went on this occurred less often, as status became linked more to actual wealth as opposed to a title.
One thing that hit the landed aristocracy is perhaps just after the period in question, but this was the general depression of the 1870s followed by a slump in farm produce prices in the 1880s. The latter was partly due to imports from the colonies. It also hit hard at the old idea that land was immutable wealth that yielded a more or less guaranteed income, both from produce and rents. The number of tenants also dropped sharply, as they left for the towns to work in factories. Quite a number of country houses changed hands in this period, a clear indicator of economic distress.
A series of disastrous harvests in Europe reduced agricultural incomes while at the same time the opening up of the North American prairies meant wheat prices didn’t rise to compensate.
Just thought of another 1st person one - Jane Eyre.
Reading Tim Harford’s “Fify Inventions…” in the section on insurance he mentions that governments in the 1700’s started selling a form of life insurance. They were perpetual bonds that instead of paying back the principal paid to the life of the buyer. These were guaranteed by the government so essentially a very safe annuity. Perhaps this explains the reference to “funds”?
It refers to Government stocks - typically perpetual stocks which have no redemption date but pay a fixed interest rate. ‘Consols’ have been running since the 18th century, and itself represents a consolidation of earlier government debt.
The last of this perpetual debt has recently been redeemed, as the (rather low in recent decades) interest rate it paid is now above market rate.