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, rigor, as usual, defeats itself. Then the Exchequer never gives a particular receipt, or clears å 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, any advantage at all has been made of it. 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.

if ever This is a

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 *) 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

* Summum jus summa injuria.

be in a manner refused an acquittance above, that he should transmit an original sin and 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 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 rigor, 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 reform 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 accounts 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 escape the rich, 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 reipub

licæ ut sit finis litium. Constantly taking along with me, that an extreme rigor 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 imprested to the two great pay offices I would have imprested 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 I to the Bank of England. A share of that profit might be derived to the public in various ways. My favorite 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. This is a species of dealing from which, by the same charter, they are not debarred. One and a quarter per cent will be saved instantly thereby to the public on

very large sums of money. This will be at once a matter of economy and a considerable reduction of influence, by taking away a private contract of an expensive nature. If the Bank, which is a great corporation, and of course receives the least profits from the money in their custody, should of itself refuse or be persuaded to refuse this offer upon those terms, I can speak with some confidence that one at least, if not both parts of the condition would be received, and gratefully received, by several bankers of eminence. There is no banker who will not be at least as good security as any paymaster of the forces, or any treasurer of the navy, that have ever been bankers to the public: as rich at least as my Lord Chatham, or my Lord Holland, or either of the honorable gentlemen who now hold the offices, were at the time that they entered into them; or as ever the whole establishment of the Mint has been at any period.

These, Sir, are the outlines of the plan I mean to follow, in suppressing these two large subordinate treasuries. I now come to another subordinate treasury, -I mean that of the paymaster of the pensions; for which purpose I reënter the limits of the civil establishment: I departed from those limits in pursuit of a principle; and, following the same game in its doubles, I am brought into those limits again. That treasury and that office I mean to take away, and to transfer the payment of every name, mode, and denomination of pensions to the Exchequer. The present course of diversifying the same object can answer no good purpose, whatever its use may be to purposes of another kind. There are also other lists of pensions; and I mean that they should all be here