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. Still, however, his present establishment differs from its archetype of 1764, by being, though raised in particular parts, upon the whole about £141,000 smaller. It is improved, he tells us, by the experience of the two last years. One would have concluded that the peace establishment of these two years had been less than that of 1764, in order to suggest to the author his improvements, which enabled him to reduce it. But how does that turn out? Peace establishment2 1767 and 1768, medium Ditto, estimate in the Considerations, for 1764 £3,919,375 3,609,700 Difference £ 309,675 The author of the State of the Nation, p. 34, informs us, that the sum of £75,000 allowed by him for the extras of the army and ordnance, 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 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 £35,000 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 unnecessary; how all those successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay it, and why his great friend in parliament, and his partisans without doors, came not to pursue to ruin, at least to utter shame, the authors of so groundless 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 required, but as making the most ample allowance for every possible contingency. See that author, p. 42 and 43. 2 He has done great injustice to the establishment of 1768: but I have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this argument. A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience then of the two last years ought naturally to have given the idea of a 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 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 £37,924.2 2nd, 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,3 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 altogether, and the result will be; He will certainly lower the provision made for the navy. He will cut off largely I P. 34. * 2 In making up this account, he falls into a surprising error of arithmetic. "The deficiency of the land-tax in the year 1754 and 1755, when it was at 2s., amounted to no more, on a medium, than £49,372; to which if we add half the sum, it will give us £79,058 as the peace deficiency at 3s." Total £ 49,372 £ 74,058 Which he makes £79,058. This is indeed in disfavour of his argument; but we shall see that he has ways, by other errors, of reimbursing himself. 3 P. 34. (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 one 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 terrors which he has thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended with success, would signify anything 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. Before we examine into the consequences of these schemes, and the probability of these savings, let us suppose them all real and all safe, and then see what it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them: Deficiency on land and malt, less by American Surveys £37,000 20,000 1,800 £58,800 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;' "1that is, for a saving of £58,000 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 £98,000; 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 1 P. 43. peace establishment. Let us now consider them as they af fect 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 economical experiments. Of all the public services, that of the navy is the one in which tampering may be of the greatest danger, which can worst be supplied upon an emergency, and of which any failure draws after it the longest and heaviest train of consequences. I am far from saying, that this or any service ought not to be conducted with economy. But I will never suffer the sacred name of economy to be bestowed upon arbitrary defalcation of charge. The author tells us himself, "that to suffer the navy to rot in harbour for want of repairs and marines, would be to invite destruction." It would be so. When the author talks therefore of savings on the navy estimate, it is incumbent on him to let us know, not what sums he will cut off, but what branch of that service he deems superfluous. Instead of putting us off with unmeaning generalities, he ought to have stated what naval force, what naval works, and what naval stores, with the lowest estimated expense, are necessary to keep our marine in a condition commensurate to its great ends. And this too not for the contracted and deceitful space of a single year, but for some reasonable term. Everybody knows that many charges cannot be in their nature regular or annual. In the year 1767 a stock of hemp, &c. was to be laid in; that charge intermits, but it does not end. Other charges of other kinds take their place. Great works are now carrying on at Portsmouth, but not of greater magnitude than utility; and they must be provided for. A year's estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a permanent peace establishment. Had the author opened this matter upon these plain principles, a judgment might have been formed, how far he had contrived to reconcile national defence with public economy. Till he has done it, those who had rather depend on any man's reason than the greatest man's authority, will not give him credit on this head, for the saving of a single shilling. As to those savings which are already made, or in course of being made, whether right or wrong, he has nothing at all to do with them; they can be no part of his project, considered as a plan of reformation. I greatly fear that the error has not lately been on the side of profusion. Another head is the saving on the army and ordnance extraordinaries, particularly in the American branch. What or how much reduction may be made, none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend to say; very little, I am convinced. The state of America is extremely unsettled; more troops have been sent thither; new dispositions have been made; and this augmentation of number, and change of disposition, has rarely, I believe, the effect of lessening the bill for extraordinaries, which, if not this year, yet in the next we must certainly feel. Care has not been wanting to introduce economy into that part of the service. The author's great friend has made, I admit, some regulations; his immediate successors have made more and better. This part will be handled more ably and more minutely at another time; but no one can cut down this bill of extraordinaries at his pleasure. The author has given us nothing, but his word, for any certain or considerable reduction; and this we ought to be the more cautious in taking, as he has promised great savings in his Considerations, which he has not chosen to abide by in his State of the Nation. On this head also of the American extraordinaries, he can take credit for nothing. As to his next, the lessening of the deficiency of the land and malt tax, particularly of the malt tax; any person the least conversant in that subject cannot avoid a smile. This deficiency arises from charge of collection, from anticipation, and from defective produce. What has the author said on the reduction of any head of this de |