part of my scheme, I have endeavoured that no pri mary, and that even no secondary service of the state, should suffer by its frugality. I mean to touch no offices but such as I am perfectly sure, are either of no use at all, or not of any use in the least assignable proportion to the burthen with which they load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with which they oppress the freedom of parliamentary deliberation; for which reason there are but two offices which are properly state offices, that I have a desire to reform.

The first of them is the new office of third secretary of state, which is commonly called secretary of state for the colonies.

We know that all the correspondence of the colonies had been, until within a few years, carried on by the southern secretary of state; and that this department has not been shunned upon account of the weight of its duties; but on the contrary, much sought on account of its patronage. Indeed he must be poorly acquainted with the history of office, who does not know how very slightly the American functions have always leaned on the shoulders of the ministerial Atlas, who has upheld that side of the sphere. Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment were requisite in the management of the colony politicks; but the official detail was a trifle. Since the new appointment, a train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us almost the whole correspondence of this favourite secretary's office, since the first day of its establishment. I will say nothing of its auspicious foundation; of the quality of its correspondence; or of the effects that have ensued from it. I speak merely of its quantity; which we know would have been little or no addition to the trouble of whatever office had its hands the fullest. But what has been the real condition of the old office of secretary of state? Have their velvet bags, and their red boxes, been so full, that nothing more could possible be crammed into them?

་

A correspondence of a curious nature has been lately published.* In that correspondence, sir, we find the opinion of a noble person, who is thought to be the grand, manufacturer of administrations; and therefore the best judge of the quality of his work. He was of opinion, that there was but one man of diligence and industry in the whole administration--it was the late earl of Suffolk. The noble lord lamented very justly, that this statesman, of so much mental vigour, was almost wholly disabled from the exertion of it, by his bodily infirmities. Lord Suffolk, dead to the state, long before he was dead to nature, at last paid his tribute to the common treasury to which we must all be taxed. But so little want was found even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant even in nomination and appointment for a year after his death. The whole of the laborious and arduous correspondence of this empire, rested solely upon the activity and energy of lord Weymouth.

It is therefore demonstrable, since one diligent man was fully equal to the duties of the two offices, that two diligent men will be equal to the duty of three. The business of the new office which I shall propose to you to suppress, is by no means too much to be returned to either of the secretaries which remain. If this dust in the balance should be thought too heavy, it may be divided between them both; North America (whether free or reduced) to the northern secretary, the West Indies to the southern. It is not necessary that I should say more upon the inutility of this office. It is burning day light. But before I have done, I shall just remark, that the history of this office is too recent to suffer us to regret, that it was made for the mere convenience of the arrangements of political intrigue, and not for the service of the state; that it was made, in order to give a colour to an exorbitant increase of the civil list; and in the

*Letters between Dr. Addington and sir James Wright.

same act to bring a new accession to the loaded compost heap of corrupt influence.

There is, sir, another office, which was not long since closely connected with this of the American secretary; but has been lately separated from it for the very same purpose for which it had been conjoined; I mean, the sole purpose of all the separations and all the conjunctions that have been lately made a job. I speak, sir, of the board of trade and plantations. This board is a sort of temperate bed of influence; a sort of gently ripening hot house, where eight members of parliament receive salaries of a thousand a year, for a certain given time, in order to mature at a proper season, a claim to two thousand, granted for doing less, and on the credit of having toiled so long in that inferiour laborious department.

I have known that board, off and on, for a great number of years. Both of its pretended objects have been much the objects of my study, if I have a right to call any pursuits of mine by so respectable a name. I can assure the house, and I hope they will not think that I risk my little credit lightly, that, without meaning to convey the least reflection upon any one of its members past or present,-it is a board which, if not mischievous, is of no use at all.

You will be convinced, sir, that I am not mistaken, if you reflect how generally it is true, that commerce, the principal object of that office, flourishes most when it is left to itself. Interest, the great guide of commerce, is not a blind one. It is very well able to find its own way; and its necessities are its best laws. But if it were possible in the nature of things, that the young should direct the old, and the inexperienced instruct the knowing; if a board in the state was the best tutor for the counting house; if the desk ought to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle-yet in any matter of regulation, we know that board must act with as little authority as skill. The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate to its object; because all regulations are, in their nature, restrictive of some liberty.

In the reign, indeed, of Charles the first, the council, or committees of council, were never a moment unoccupied with affairs of trade. But even where they had no ill intention, (which was sometimes the case) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from their injudicious tampering. But since that period, whenever regulation is wanting (for I do not deny, that sometimes it may be warning) parliament constantly sits; and parliament alone is competent to such regulation. We want no instruction from boards of trade, or from any other board; and God forbid we should give the least attention to their reports. Parliamentary inquiry is the only mode of obtaining parliamentary information. There is more real knowledge to be obtained, by attending the detail of business in the committees above stairs, than ever did come, or ever will come from any board in this kingdom, or from all of them together. An assiduous member of parliament will not be the worse instructed there, for not being paid a thousand a year for learning his lesson. And now that I speak of the committees above stairs, I must say, that having till lately attended them a good deal, I have observed that no description of members give so little attendance, either to communicate, or to obtain instruction upon matters of commerce, as the honourable members of the grave board of trade. I really do not recollect, that I have ever seen one of them in that sort of business. Possibly, some members may have better memories; and may call to mind some job that may have accidentally brought one or other of them, at one time or other, to attend a matter of

commerce.

If ever there were commercial points of great weight, and most closely connected with our dependencies, they are those which have been agitated and decided in parliament since I came into it. Which of the innumerable regulations since made had their origin or their improvement in the board of trade? Did any of the several East India bills which have been successively produced since 1767, originate D d

VOL. II.

there? Did any one dream of referring them, or any

Was any body so ridiculous

part of them thither? as even to think of it? If ever there was an occasion on which the board was fit to be consulted, it was with regard to the acts that were preludes to the American war, or attendant on its commencement: those acts were full of commercial regulations, such as they were;-the intercourse bill; the prohibitory bill; the fishery bill. If the board was not concerned in such things, in what particular was it thought fit that it should be concerned? In the course of all these bills through the house, I observed the members of that board to be remarkably cautious of intermeddling. They understood decorum better; they know that matters of trade and plantation are no business of theirs.

It was but the other day,, that the noble lord in the blue riband carried up to the house of peers, two acts, altering, in a great degree, our whole commercial system. Those acts, I mean, for giving a free trade to Ireland in woollens and in all things else, with independent nations, and giving them an equal trade to our own colonies. Here too the novelty of this great, but arduous and critical improvement of system would make you conceive that the anxious solicitude of the noble lord in the blue riband, would have wholly destroyed the plan of summer recreation of that board, by references to examine, compare, and digest matters for parliament-You would imagine, that Irish commissioners of customs, and English commissioners of customs, and commissioners of excise, that merchants and manufacturers of every denomination, had daily crowded their outer rooms. Nil horum. Nil horum. The perpetual virtual adjournment, and the unbroken sitting vacation of that board, was no more disturbed by the Irish than by the plantation commerce or any other commerce. The same matter made a large part of the business which occupied the house for two sessions before; and as our ministers were not then mellowed by the mild, emollient, and engaging blandishments of our dear sister, into all the