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 vio lent 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. to 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, 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 governors, 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 indignation; 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 disappointed 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 advantage too; for it is a general popular error, to 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 aut to be careless enough about either the means or the conse quences. 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 thirty-second 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 attach ment in the bulk of the people towards the constitution. 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 (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. author well observes,' that a mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect without horror; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to bear its description. He ought to have added, that no man of common dis cretion 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, extraor dinaries; 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 in high 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 2 P. 33. 1 P. 31. 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 groundwork of his plan for the national redemption; 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 anywhere else.2 "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 Con- Present peace establishment, as by the project 1£3,609,700 3,919,375 3,468,161 It is not from anything our author has anywhere said, that you are enabled to find the ground, much less the justification, of the immense difference between these several systems; you must 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.2 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 anything 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 £40,000 more, than he had thought proper to allow for them in that estimate in his Considerations, 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 extras is too great, and expressly refers you to the Considerations; where, far from giving £75,000 a year to 3 4 The figures in the Considerations are wrongly cast up; it should be £3,608,700. ? Considerations, p. 43. • Ibid. State of the Nation, p. 33. • State of the Nation, p. 34 |