This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burthens and discharging debts.

Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital points of view. Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has thought proper to affirm that "they are comparatively light;" that "she has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours:" his effrontery on this head is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax in England to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burthen, does not exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of 100 years, and which were in kind, as well as burthen, much worse than our modern land tax? Besides that all the gentry

of France serve in the army on very slende pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes; all those who are not noble, have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, salt-petre, gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of salt? that they compel the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?* that they pay in France the Taille, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the acquisitions of their industry? and that in France a heavy capitation-tax is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort of people? have we taxes of such weight, or any thing at all of the compulsion, in the article of salt? do we pay any taillage, any faculty-tax, any industry-tux? do we pay any capitation-tar whatsoever? I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not a single article of provision for man or beast, which enters that great city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher's-meat, fish, fowls, every thing. I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on the consumption of great luxurious cities. I only state the fact. We should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50s. upon every ox sold in Smithfield. Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2d. a bottle. We indeed tax our beer: but the imposition on small beer is very far from heavy. In no part of England are eatables of any kind the object of taxation. In almost every other country in Europe they are excised, more or less. I have by me the state of the revenues of many of the principal nations on the continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am fairly warranted to assert, that England is the most lightly taxed of any of the great states of Europe. They whose unnatural and sullen joy arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their country, will revolt at this position. But if I am called upon, I will prove it beyond all possibility of dispute; even though this proof should deprive these gentlemen of the singular satis

Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the consumer at 11 sous, or about 5d. the pound. What it is at present, I am not informed Even this will appear no trivial imposition. In pound from the last retailer. London, salt may be had at a penny farthing per

faction of considering their country as undone; and though the best civil government, the best constituted, and the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamours and complaints. As to our neighbour and rival France, in addition to what I have here suggested, I say, and when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than England, on a computation of the wealth of both countries; that her taxes are more injudiciously and more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected; come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers, and are less applied by far to the public service. I am not one of those who choose to take the author's word for this happy and flourishing condition of the French finances, rather than attend to the changes, the violent pushes and the despair of all her own financiers. Does he choose to be referred for the easy and happy condition of the subject in France to the remonstrances of their own parliaments, written with such an eloquence, feeling, and energy as I have not seen exceeded in any other writings? The author may say, their complaints are exaggerated, and the effects of faction. I answer, that they are the representations of numerous, grave, and most respectable bodies of men, upon the affairs of their own country. But, allowing that discontent and faction may pervert the judgment of such venerable bodies in France, we have as good a right to suppose that the same causes may full as probably have produced from a private, however respectable person, that frightful, and, I trust I have shown groundless representation of our own affairs in England.

The author is so conscious of the dangerous effects of that representation, that he thinks it necessary, and very necessary it is, to guard against them. He assures us, "that he has not made that display of the difficulties of his country, to expose her counsels to the ridicule of other states, or to provoke a vanquished enemy to insult her; nor to excite the people's rage against their governours, or sink them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather to claim our pity than excite our indig nation; he finds himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disap

pointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable state of mind, find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen. They find an advan tage too; for it is a general popular errour tc imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of relief and profit to themselves, they are apt to be careless enough about either the means or the consequences.

Whatever this complainant's motives may be, the effects can by no possibility be other than those which he so strongly, and I hope truly, disclaims all intention of producing. To verify this, the reader has only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn in his 32d page of the state of this kingdom; such a picture as, I believe, has hardly been applicable, without some exaggeration, to the most degenerate and undone commonwealth that ever existed. Let this view of things be compared with the prospect of a remedy which he proposes in the page directly opposite and the subsequent. I believe no man living could have imagined it possible, except for the sake of burlesquing a subject, to propose remedies so ridiculously disproportionate to the evil, so full of uncertainty in their operation, and depending for their success in every step upon the happy event of so many new, dangerous, and visionary projects. It is not amiss, that he has thought proper to give the public some little notice of what they may expect from his friends, when our affairs shall be committed to their management. Let us see how the accounts of disease and remedy are balanced in his State of the Nation. In the first place, on the side of evils, he states, "an impoverished and heavily burthened public. A declining trade and decreasing specie. The power of the crown never so much extended over the great; but the great without influence. over the lower sort. Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the multitude set up against the sense of the legislature; a people luxurious and licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all authority. Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt selfish spirit pervading the whole. An opinion of many, that the form of government is not worth contending for. No attachment in the bulk of the people towards the con stitution. No reverence for the customs of our ancestors. No attachment but to private interest, nor any zeal but for selfish gratifications. Trade and manufactures going to ruin. Great Britain in danger of becoming tributary to

France, and the descent of the crown dependent on her pleasure. Ireland, in case of a war, to become a prey to France; and Great Britain, unable to recover Ireland, cede it by treaty, (the author never can think of a treaty without making cessions,) in order to purchase peace for herself. The colonies left exposed to the ravages of a domestic, or the conquest of a foreign enemy."-Gloomy enough, God knows. The author well observes,* that a mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect without horrour; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to bear its description. He ought to have added, that no man of common discretion ought to have exhibited it to the public, if it were true; or of common honesty, if it were false.

But now for the comfort; the day-star which is to arise in our hearts; the author's grand scheme for totally reversing this dismal state of things, and making us "happy at home and respected abroad, formidable in war and flourishing in peace."

In this great work he proceeds with a facility equally astonishing and pleasing. Never was financier less embarrassed by the burthen of establishments, or with the difficulty of finding ways and means. If an establishment is troublesome to him, he lops off at a stroke just as much of it as he chooses. He mows down, without giving quarter, or assigning reason, army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries; nothing can stand before him. Then, when he comes to provide, Amalthea's horn is in his hands; and he pours out with an inexhaustible bounty, taxes, duties, loans, and revenues, without uneasiness to himself, or burthen to the public. Insomuch that, when we consider the abundance of his resources, we cannot avoid being surprised at his extraordinary attention to savings. But it is all the exuberance of his goodness.

This book has so much of a certain tone of power, that one would be almost tempted to think it written by some person who had been high in office. A man is generally rendered somewhat a worse reasoner for having been a minister. In private, the assent of listening and obsequious friends; in public, the venal cry and prepared vote of a passive senate, confirm him in habits of begging the question with impunity, and asserting without thinking himself obliged to prove. Had it not been for some such habits, the author could never have expected that we should take his estimate for a peace establishment solely on his word.

This estimate which he gives, is the great ground work of his plan for the national redemp tion; and it ought to be well and firmly laid, or what must become of the superstructure? One would have thought the natural method in a plan of reformation would be, to take the present existing estimates as they stand; and then to show what may be practicably and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say, be the natural course; and what would be expected from a man of business. But this author takes a very different method. For the ground of his speculation of a present peace establishment, he resorts to a former speculation of the same kind, which was in the mind of the minister of the year 1764. Indeed it never existed any where else.§ "The plan," says he, with his usual ease, " has been already formed, and the outline drawn, by the administration of 1764. I shall attempt to fill up the void and obliterated parts, and trace its operation. The standing expense of the present (his projected) peace establishment, improved by the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated," and he estimates it at £.3,468,161.

Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons for condemning the subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favour of his new project; which has in some articles exceeded, in others fallen short, but on the whole is much below his old one. Hardly a word on any of these points, the only points however that are in the least essential; for unless you assign reasons for the increase or diminution of the several articles of public charge, the playing at establishments and estimates is an amusement of no higher order, and of much less ingenuity, than Questions and commands, or What is my thought like? To bring more distinctly under the reader's view this author's strange method of proceeding, I will lay before him the three schemes; viz. the idea of the ministers in 1764, the actual estimates of the two last years as given by the author himself, and lastly the new project of his political millennium: Plan of establishment for 1764,

as by Considerations, p. 43, *£.3,609,700 Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by State of the Nation, p. 29 and 30,

Present peace establishment, as

t P. 33.

§ P. 33. The figures in the Considerations are wrong cast up; it should be £.3,603 700.

by the project in State of the Nation, p. 33, £3,468,161 It is not from any thing our author has any where said, that you are enabled to find the ground, much less the justification, of the immense difference between these several systems: you raust compare them yourself, article by article; no very pleasing employment, by the way, to compare the agreement or disagreement of two chimeras. I now only speak of the comparison of his own two projects. As to the latter of them, it differs from the former, by having some of the articles diminished, and others increased.* I find the chief article of reduction arises from the smaller deficiency of land and malt, and of the annuity funds, which he brings down to £295,561 in his new estimate, from £.502,400, which he had allowed for those articles in the Considerations. With this reduction, owing, as it must be, merely to a smaller deficiency of funds, he has nothing at all to do. It can be no work and no merit of his. But with regard to the increase, the matter is very different. It is all his own; the public is loaded (for any thing we can see to the contrary) entirely gratis. The chief articles of the increase are on the navy,† and on the army and ordnance extraordinaries; the navy being estimated in his State of the Nation £.50,000 a year more, and the army and ordnance extraordinaries £.49,000 more, than ne had thought proper to allow for them in that estimate in his Conside. ations, which he makes the foundation of his present project. He has given no sort of reason, stated no sort of necessity, for this additional allowance, either in

the one article or the other. What is still stronger, he admits that his allowance for the army and ordnance extres is too great, and expressly refers you to the Considerations; where, far from giving £.75,000 a year to that service as the State of the Nation has done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision of £.35,000 to be by far too considerable, and thinks it may well admit of further reductions. Thus, according to his own principles, this great economist falls into a vicious prodigality; and is as far in his estimate from a consistency with his own principles as with the real nature of the services.

* Considerations, p. 43. State of the Nation, p. 32. Ibid. ibid. P. 24.

The author of the State of the Nation, p. S4, informs us, that the sum of £.75,000, allowed by him for the extras of the army and ord. nance, is far less than was allowed for the same service in the years 1767 and 1768. It is so undoubtedly, and by at least £.200,000. He sees

£.3,919,375

3,609,700 £.309,675

A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience then of the two last years ought naturally to have given the idea of an heavier establishment; but this writer is able to diminish by increasing, and to draw the effects of subtraction from the operations of addition. By means of these new powers, he may certainly do whatever he pleases. He is indeed moderate enough in the use of them, and condescends to settle his establishments at £.3,468,161 a year.

However, he has not yet done with it; he has further ideas of saving, and new resources

that he cannot abide by the plan of the Considerations in this point, nor is he willing wholly to give it up. Such an enormous difference as that between £.35,000 and £.300,000 puts him to a stand. Should he adopt the latter plan, of increased expense, he must then confess that he

had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the public; at the same time all his future promises of reduction must fall to the ground. If he stuck to the £.25,000, he was sure that every one must expect from him some account how this monstrous charge came to continue ever since the war, when it was clearly unne cessary; how all those successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay it, and why his great friend in Parliament, and his partisans least to utter shame, the authors of so groundwithout doors, came not to pursue to ruin, at less and scandalous a profusion. In this strait he took a middle way; and, to come nearer the real state of the service, he outbid the Considerations, at one stroke, £.40,000; at the same time he hints to you, that you may expect some benefit also from the original plan. But the author of the Considerations will not suffer him to escape it. He has pinned him down to his £.35,000; for that is the sum he has chosen, not as what he thinks will probably be requir ed, but as making the most ample allowance for every possible contingency. See that author, p. 42 and 43.

He has done great injustice to the esta blishment of 1769; but I have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this argu

ment.

of revenue. These additional savings are principally two: 1st, It is to be hoped, says he, that the sum of £.250,000 (which in the estimate, he allows for the deficiency of land and malt) will be less by £.37,924.†

2d, That the sum of £.20,000 allowed for the Foundling Hospital, and £.1,800 for American surveys, will soon cease to be necessary, as the services will be completed.

What follows with regard to the resources, is very well worthy the reader's attention. "Of this estimate," says he, "upwards of £.300,000 will be for the plantation service; and that sum, I hope, the people of Ireland and the colonies might be induced to take off Great Britain, and defray between them, in the proportion of £.200,000 by the colonies, and £.100,000 by Ireland."

Such is the whole of this mighty scheme. Take his reduced estimate, and his further reductions, and his resources all together, and the result will be; He will certainly lower the provision made for the navy. He will cut off largely (God knows what or how) from the army and ordnance extraordinaries. He may be expected to cut off more. He hopes that the deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual; and he hopes that America and Ireland might be induced to take off £.300,000 of our annual charges.

If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations and Inducements, should fail him, there will be a formidable gaping breach in his whole project. If all of them should fail, he has left the nation without a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrours which he has thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended with success, would signify any thing to our revenue, can have no effect but to add to our distractions and dangers, we shall be if possible in a still worse condition from his projects of cure than he represents us from our original disorders.

This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies; and yet he chooses to assert "that we may venture on the credit of them to reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from £.3,468,161) to £.3,300,000;"§ that is, for a saving of £.53,000, he is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than £.168,161! Suppose even that we were to take up the estimate of the Considerations, (which is however abandoned in the State of the Nation,) and reduce his £.75,000 extraordinaries to the original £35,000, still all these savings joined together give us but £.98,800; that is, near £.70,000 short of the credit he calls for, and for which he has neither given any reason, nor furnished any data whatsoever for others to reason upon.

Such are his savings, as operating on his own project of a peace establishment. Let us now consider them as they affect the existing establishment and our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in his estimate for the navy is "£.69,321 less than the grant for that service in 1767; but in that grant £.30,000 was included for the purchase of hemp, and a saving of about £.25,000 was made in that year." The author has got some secret in arithmetic. These two sums put together amount, in the ordinary way of computing, to £.55,000, and not to £.69,321. On what principle has he chosen to take credit for £.14,321 more? To what this strange inaccuracy is owing, I cannot possibly comprehend; nor is it very material, where the logic is so bad, and the policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetic be just or otherwise. But in a scheme for making this nation "happy at home and respected abroad, formidable in war and flourishing in peace," it is surely a little unfortunate for us, that he has picked out the Navy, as the very first object of his oeconominal experiments. Of all the public services, that of the

§ P. 43.