-the removing wardrobe ;-the jewel office;-the robes;-the board of works; almost the whole charge of the civil brunch of the board of ordnance are taken away. All these arrangements together will be found to relieve the nation from a vast weight of influence, without distressing, but rather by forwarding every public service. When something of this kind is done, then the public may begin to breathe. Under other governments, a question of expense is only a question of economy, and it is nothing more; with us, in every question of expense, there is always a mixture of constitutional considerations.

It is, Sir, because I wish to keep this business of subordinate treasuries as much as I can together, that I brought the ordnance office before you, though it is properly a military department. For the same reason I will now trouble you with my thoughts and propositions upon two of the greatest under treasuries, I mean the office of paymaster of the land forces, or treasurer of the army, and that of the treasurer of the navy. The former of these has long been a great object of public suspicion and uneasiness. Envy too has had its share in the obloquy which is cast upon this office. But I am sure that it has no share at all in the reflections I shall make upon it, or in the reformations that I shall propose. I do not grudge to the honourable gentleman, who at present holds the office, any of the effects of his talents, his merit, or his fortune. He is respectable in all these particulars. I follow the constitution of the office without persecuting its holder. It is necessary in all matters of public complaint, where men frequently feel right and argue wrong, to separate prejudice from reason; and to be very sure, in attempting the redress of a grievance, that we hit upon its real seat, and its true nature. Where there is an abuse of office, the first thing that occurs in heat is to censure the officer. Our natural disposition leads all our inquiries rather to persons than to things. But this prejudice is to be corrected by maturer thinking.

Sir, the profits of the pay-office (as an office) are not too great, in my opinion, for its duties, and for the rank of the person who has generally held it. He has been generally a person of the highest rank; that is to say, a person of eminence and consideration in this House. The great and

the invidious profits of the pay-office are from the bank that is held in it. According to the present course of the office, and according to the present mode of accounting there, this bank must necessarily exist somewhere. Money is a productive thing; and when the usual time of its demand can be tolerably calculated, it may, with prudence, be safely laid out to the profit of the holder. It is on this calculation that the business of banking proceeds. But no profit can be derived from the use of money, which does not make it the interest of the holder to delay his account. The process of the exchequer colludes with this interest. Is this collusion from its want of rigour and strictness, and great regularity of form? The reverse is true. They have in the exchequer brought rigour and formalism to their ultimate perfection. The process against accountants is so rigorous, and in a manner so unjust, that correctives must, from time to time, be applied to it. These correctives being discretionary, upon the case, and generally remitted by the barons to the lords of the treasury, as the best judges of the reasons for respite, hearings are had; delays are produced; and thus the extreme of rigour in office (as usual in all human affairs) leads to the extreme of laxity. What with the interested delay of the officer; the ill-conceived exactness of the court; the applications for dispensations from that exactness; the revival of rigorous process, after the expiration of the time; and the new rigours producing new applications, and new enlargements of time, such delays happen in the public accounts, that they can scarcely ever be closed.

Besides, Sir, they have a rule in the exchequer, which, I believe, they have founded upon a very ancient statute, that of the 51st of Henry III., by which it is provided, "That when a sheriff or bailiff hath began his account, none other shall be received to account until he that was first appointed hath clearly accounted, and that the sum has been received."1 Whether this clause of that statute be the ground of that absurd practice, I am not quite able to ascertain. But it has very generally prevailed, though I am told that of late they have began to relax from it. In consequence of forms ad1 Et quant viscount ou bailliff ait commence de accompter, nul autre ne seit resceu de acconter tanque le primer qe soit assis, eit peraccompte, et qe la somme soit resceu. Stat. 5, ann. dom. 1266.

verse to substantial account, we have a long succession of paymasters and their representatives, who have never been admitted to account, although perfectly ready to do so.

As the extent of our wars has scattered the accountants under the paymaster into every part of the globe, the grand and sure paymaster, Death, in all his shapes, calls these accountants to another reckoning. Death, indeed, domineers over everything but the forms of the exchequer. Over these he has no power. They are impassive and immortal. The audit of the exchequer, more severe than the audit to which the accountants are gone, demands proofs which in the nature of things are difficult, sometimes impossible to be had. In this respect too, rigour, as usual, defeats itself. Then, the exchequer never gives a particular receipt, or clears a man of his account as far as it goes. A final acquittance (or a quietus, as they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained. Terrors and ghosts of unlaid accountants haunt the houses of their children from generation to generation. Families, in the course of succession, fall into minorities; the inheritance comes into the hands of females; and very perplexed affairs are often delivered over into the hands of negligent guardians and faithless stewards. So that the demand remains, when the advantage of the money is gone; if ever any advantage at all has been made of it. This is a cause of infinite distress to families; and becomes a source of influence to an extent that can scarcely be imagined, but by those who have taken some pains to trace it. The mildness of government, in the employment of useless and dangerous powers, furnishes no reason for their continuance.

As things stand, can you in justice (except perhaps in that over-perfect kind of justice which has obtained, by its merits, the title of the opposite vice 1) insist, that any man should, by the course of his office, keep a bank from whence he is to derive no advantage? That a man should be subject to demands below, and be in a manner refused an acquittance above; that he should transmit an original sin, an inheritance of vexation, to his posterity, without a power of compensating himself in some way or other, for so perilous a situation? We know, that if the paymaster should deny himself the advantages of his bank, the public, as things 1 Summum jus summa injuria.

stand, is not the richer for it by a single shilling. This I thought it necessary to say, as to the offensive magnitude of the profits of this office; that we may proceed in reformation on the principles of reason, and not on the feelings of envy.

The treasurer of the navy is, mutatis mutandis, in the same circumstances. Indeed all accountants are. Instead of the present mode, which is troublesome to the officer, and unprofitable to the public, I propose to substitute something more effectual than rigour, which is the worst exactor in the world. I mean to remove the very temptations to delay; to facilitate the account; and to transfer this bank, now of private emolument, to the public. The crown will suffer no wrong at least from the pay-offices; and its terrors will no longer reign over the families of those who hold, or have held them. I propose that these offices should be no longer banks or treasuries, but mere offices of administration.—I propose, first, that the present paymaster and the treasurer of the navy should carry into the exchequer the whole body of the vouchers for what they have paid over to deputy paymasters, to regimental agents, or to any of those to whom they have and ought to have paid money. I propose that those vouchers shall be admitted as actual payments in their accounts; and that the persons to whom the money has been paid shall then stand charged in the exchequer in their place. After this process, they shall be debited or charged for nothing but the money balance that remains in their hands.

I am conscious, Sir, that if this balance (which they could not expect to be so suddenly demanded by any usual process of the exchequer) should now be exacted all at once, not only their ruin, but a ruin of others to an extent which I do not like to think of, but which I can well conceive, and which you may well conceive, might be the consequence. I told you, Sir, when I promised before the holidays to bring in this plan, that I never would suffer any man, or description of men, to suffer from errors that naturally have grown out of the abusive constitution of those offices which I propose to regulate. If I cannot reform with equity, I will not re

form at all.

For the regulation of past accounts, I shall therefore propose such a mode, as men, temperate and prudent, make use of in the management of their private affairs, when their ac

counts are various, perplexed, and of long standing. I would therefore, after their example, divide the public debts into three sorts; good, bad, and doubtful. In looking over the public accounts, I should never dream of the blind mode of the exchequer, which regards things in the abstract, and knows no difference in the quality of its debts, or the circumstances of its debtors. By this means, it fatigues itself; it vexes others; it often crushes the poor; it lets the rich escape; or, in a fit of mercy or carelessness, declines all means of recovering its just demands. Content with the eternity of its claims, it enjoys its epicurean divinity with epicurean languor. But it is proper that all sorts of accounts should be closed some time or other-by payment; by composition; or by oblivion. Expedit reipublicæ ut sit finis litium. Constantly taking along with me, that an extreme rigour is sure to arm everything against it, and at length to relax into a supine neglect, I propose, Sir, that even the best, soundest, and the most recent debts, should be put into instalments, for the mutual benefit of the accountant and the public.

In proportion, however, as I am tender of the past, I would be provident of the future. All money that was formerly impressed to the two great pay-offices, I would have impressed in future to the bank of England. These offices should, in future, receive no more than cash sufficient for small payments. Their other payments ought to be made by drafts on the bank, expressing the service. A check account from both offices, of drafts and receipts, should be annually made up in the exchequer; charging the bank in account with the cash-balance, but not demanding the payment until there is an order from the treasury, in consequence of a vote of parliament.

As I did not, Sir, deny to the paymaster the natural profits of the bank that was in his hands; so neither would 1 to the bank of England. A share of that profit might be derived to the public in various ways. My favourite mode is this; that, in compensation for the use of this money, the bank may take upon themselves, first, the charge of the mint; to which they are already, by their charter, obliged to bring in a great deal of bullion annually to be coined.

In the next place, I mean that they should take upon themselves the charge of remittances to our troops abroad.