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assign reasons for the encrease or diminution of the several articles of publick 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:

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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 75,000l. a year to that service, as the State of the Nation has done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision of 35,000l. 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 141,0007. 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 establishment ¶ 1767 and 1768,
medium,

Ditto, estimate in the Considerations,
for 1764

£.

3,919,375

3,609,700

Difference £. 309,675

It is not from any thing our author has any where 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. 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 295,5617. in his new estimate, from 502,4007. 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 encrease, the matter is very different. It is all his own; the publick is loaded (for any thing we can see to the contrary) entirely gratis. The chief articles of the encrease are on the navy,‡ However, he has not yet done with it; he has and on the army and ordnance extraordinaries; further ideas of saving, and new resources of the navy being estimated in his State of the Nation | revenue. These additional savings are principally 50,000l. a year more, and the army and ord- two: 1st, It is to be hoped, says he, that the nance extraordinaries 40,000l. more, than he had sum of 250,0001. (which in the estimate he allows thought proper to allow for them in that estimate for the deficiency of land and malt) will be less in his Considerations, which he makes the founda- by 37,9241.†† tion of his present project. He has given no sort

The figures in the Considerations are wrongly cast up; it should be 3,608,7001.

↑ Considerations, p. 43. State of the Nation, p. 33. 1 Ibid.

§ State of the Nation, p. 34.

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 ordance, 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 35,000l. and 300,000Z. puts him to a stand. Should he adopt the latter plan of encreased expence, he must then confess that he had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the publick; 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 VOL. I.

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A vast encrease 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 encreasing, 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 3,468,1617. a year.

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2d, That the sum of 20,000l. allowed for the

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, 40,0001; 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 35.0001; 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.

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.

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Foundling Hospital, and 1,8007. for American | 75,000l. extraordinaries to the original 35,0001.

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still all these savings joined together give us but 98,8001.; that is, near 70,000l. 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 peace establishment. Let us now consider them as they affect the existing establishment and our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in his estimate for the navy is “69,3217. "less than the grant for that service in 1767; but "in that grant 30,000l. was included for the pur"chase of hemp, and a saving of about 25,0007. "was made in that year." The author has got some secret in arithmetick. These two sums put together amount, in the ordinary way of comput

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 (God knows what or how) from the army and ordnance extra-ing, to 55,000l. and not to 69,3211. On what ordinaries. 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 300,000l. of our annual charges.

If any 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 terrours which he has thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended with success, would signify any thing 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:

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£. Deficiency on land and malt, less by 37,000 Foundling Hospital 20,000 American surveys 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 expences of the estimate (from "3,468,1617.) to 3,300,000l.;" that is, for a saving of 58,0001. he is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than 168,1617.! 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

"dium, than 49,3721.; to which if we add half the sum, it will
"give us 79,0581. as the peace deficiency at 38."
Total
£. 49,372
Add the half
24,686

£. 74,053

principle has he chosen to take credit for 14,3211. more? To what this strange inaccuracy is owing I cannot possibly comprehend; nor is it very material, where the logick is so bad, and the policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetick 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 publick 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 de"struction." 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 expence, 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. Every body 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. year's estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a

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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 publick 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 errour 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 deficiency upon the land tax? On these points he is absolutely silent. As to the deficiency on the malt tax, which is chiefly owing to a defective produce, he has, and can have, nothing to propose. If this deficiency should be lessened by the encrease of malting in any years more than in others, (as it is a greatly fluctuating object,) how much of this obligation shall we owe to this author's ministry? will it not be the case under any administration? must it not go to the general service of the year, in some way or other, let the finances be in whose hands they will? But why take credit for so extremely reduced a deficiency at all? I can tell him he has no rational ground for it in the produce of the year 1767; and I suspect will have full as little reason from the produce of the year 1768. That produce may indeed become greater, and the

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deficiency of course will be less. It may too be far otherwise. A fair and judicious financier will not, as this writer has done, for the sake of making out a specious account, select a favorable year or two, at remote periods, and ground his calculations on those. In 1768 he will not take the deficiencies of 1753 and 1754 for his standard. Sober men have hitherto (and must continue this course, to preserve this character) taken indifferently the mediums of the years immediately preceding. But a person who has a scheme from which he promises much to the publick ought to be still more cautious; he should ground his speculation rather on the lowest mediums; because all new schemes are known to be subject to some defect or failure not foreseen; and which therefore every prudent proposer will be ready to allow for, in order to lay his foundation as low and as solid as possible. Quite contrary is the practice of some politicians. They first propose savings, which they well know cannot be made, in order to get a reputation for economy. In due time they assume another, but a different method, by providing for the service they had before cut off or straitened, and which they can then very easily prove to be necessary. In the same spirit they raise magnificent ideas of revenue on funds which they know to be insufficient. Afterwards, who can blame them, if they do not satisfy the publick desires? They are great artificers; but they cannot work without materials.

These are some of the little arts of great statesmen. To such we leave them, and follow where the author leads us, to his next resource, the Foundling Hospital. Whatever particular virtue there is in the mode of this saving, there seems to be nothing at all new, and indeed nothing wonderfully important in it. The sum annually voted for the support of the Foundling Hospital has been in a former parliament limited to the establishment of the children then in the hospital. When they are apprenticed, this provision will cease. It will therefore fall in more or less at different times; and will at length cease entirely. But, until it does, we cannot reckon upon it as the saving on the establishment of any given year: nor can any one conceive how the author comes to mention this, any more than some other articles, as a part of a new plan of economy which is to retrieve our affairs. This charge will indeed cease in its own time. But will no other succeed to it? Has he ever known the publick free from some contingent charge, either for the just support of royal dignity, or for national magnificence, or for publick charity, or for publick service? does he choose to flatter his readers that no such will ever return? or does he in good earnest declare, that let the reason, or necessity, be what they will, he is resolved not to provide for such services?

Another resource of economy yet remains, for he gleans the field very closely, 1,8007. for the American surveys. Why what signifies a dispute about trifles? he shall have it. But while he is carrying it off, I shall just whisper in his ear, that

neither the saving that is allowed, nor that which is doubted of, can at all belong to that future proposed administration, whose touch is to cure all our evils. Both the one and the other belong equally (as indeed all the rest do) to the present administration, to any administration; because they are the gift of time, and not the bounty of the exchequer. I have now done with all the minor, preparatory parts of the author's scheme, the several articles of saving which he proposes. At length comes the capital operation, his new resources. Three hundred thousand pounds a year from America and Ireland.-Alas! alas! if that too should fail us, what will become of this poor undone nation? The author, in a tone of great humility, hopes they may be induced to pay it. Well, if that be all, we may hope so too: and for any light he is pleased to give us into the ground of this hope, and the ways and means of this inducement, here is a speedy end both of the question and the revenue. It is the constant custom of this author, in all his writings, to take it for granted, that he has given you a revenue, whenever he can point out to you where you may have money, if you can contrive how to get at it; and this seems to be the master-piece of his financial ability. I think however, in his way of proceeding, he has behaved rather like a harsh step-dame, than a kind nursing-mother to his country. Why stop at 300,0007.? If his state of things be at all founded, America and Ireland are much better able to pay 600,0007. than we are to satisfy ourselves with half that sum. However, let us forgive him this one instance of tenderness towards Ireland and the colonies.

He spends a vast deal of time,* in an endeavour to prove, that Ireland is able to bear greater impositions. He is of opinion, that the poverty of the lower class of people there, is, in a great measure, owing to a want of judicious taxes; that a land tax will enrich her tenants; that taxes are paid in England which are not paid there; that the colony trade is encreased above 100,000l. since the peace; that she ought to have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to have further privileges in the woollen manufacture. From these premises, of what she has, what she has not, and what she ought to have, he infers that Ireland will contribute 100,000l. towards the extraordi

naries of the American establishment.

I shall make no objections whatsoever, logical or financial, to this reasoning: many occur; but they would lead me from my purpose, from which I do not intend to be diverted, because it seems to me of no small importance. It will be just enough to hint, what I dare say many readers have before observed, that when any man proposes new taxes in a country with which he is not personally conversant by residence or office, he ought to lay open its situation much more minutely and critically than this author has done, or than perhaps he is able to do. He ought not to content himself with saying that a single article of

• P. 35.

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her trade is encreased 100,000l. a year; he ought, if he argues from the encrease of trade to the encrease of taxes, to state the whole trade, and not one branch of trade only! He ought to enter fully into the state of its remittances, and the course of its exchange; he ought likewise to examine whether all its establishments are encreased or diminished; and whether it incurs or discharges debts annually. But I pass over all this; and am content to ask a few plain questions.

Does the author then seriously mean to propose in parliament a land tax, or any tax for 100,0007. a year upon Ireland? If he does, and if fatally, by his temerity and our weakness, he should succeed; then I say he will throw the whole empire from one end of it to the other into mortal convulsions. What is it that can satisfy the furious and perturbed mind of this man; is it not enough for him that such projects have alienated our colonies from the mother country, and not to propose violently to tear our sister kingdom also from our side, and to convince every dependent part of the empire, that when a little money is to be raised, we have no sort of regard to their ancient customs, their opinions, their circumstances, or their affections? He has however a douceur for Ireland in his pocket: benefits in trade, by opening the woollen manufacture to that nation. A very right idea in my opinion; but not more strong in reason, than likely to be opposed by the most powerful and most violent of all local prejudices and popular passions. First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes of taxation in America; he then proposes one which will set all Ireland in a blaze; and his way of quenching both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten times a greater flame in Britain.

Will the author pledge himself previously to his proposal of such a tax, to carry this enlargement of the Irish trade; if he does not, then the tax will be certain; the benefit will be less than problematical. In this view his compensation to Ireland vanishes into smoke; the tax to their prejudices, will appear stark naked in the light of an act of arbitrary power and oppression. But if he should propose the benefit and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very high and spirited people, would think it the worst bargain in the world. They would look upon the one as wholly vitiated and poisoned by the other; and, if they could not be separated, would infallibly resist them both together. Here would be taxes indeed, amounting to a handsome sum; 100,000l. very effectually voted, and passed through the best and most authentick forms; but how to be collected?— This is his perpetual manner. One of his projects depends for success upon another project, and this upon a third, all of them equally visionary. His finance is like the Indian philosophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands upon an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise; and so on for ever.

In New England by far the greatest part of their revenue is raised by faculty taxes and capitations. Such is the method in many others. It is obvious that parliament, unassisted by the colonies themselves, cannot take so much as a single step in this mode of taxation. Then what tax is it he will impose? Why, after all the boasting speeches and writings of his faction for these four years, after all the vain expectations which they have held out to a deluded publick, this their great advocate, after twisting the subject every way, after writhing himself in every posture, after knocking at every door, is obliged fairly to abandon every mode of taxation whatsoever in America, impose the sum, and reserve the account to itself, leaving the mode of taxation to the colonies. But how and in what proportion? what does the author say? O, not a single syllable on this the most material part of the whole question. Will he, in parliament, undertake to settle the proportions of such payments from Nova Scotia to Nevis, in no fewer than six and twenty different countries, varying in almost every possible circumstance one from another? If he does, I tell him, he adjourns his revenue to a very long day. If he leaves it to themselves to settle these proportions, he adjourns it to doomsday.

Then what does he get by this method on the side of acquiescence? will the people of America relish this course, of giving and granting and applying their money, the better because their

As to his American 200,000l. a year, he is satisfied to repeat gravely, as he has done an hundred times before, that the Americans are able to pay it. Well, and what then? does he lay open any part of his plan how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging ourselves into calamities that outweigh tenfold the proposed benefit? or does he shew how they may be induced to submit to it quietly? or does he give any satisfaction concerning the mode of levying it; in commercial colonies, one of the most important and difficult of all considerations? Nothing like it. To the stamp act, whatever its excellencies may be, I think he will not in reality recur, or even choose to assert that he means to do so, in case his minister should† He thinks it the best method for parliament to come again into power. If he does, I will predict that some of the fastest friends of that minister will desert him upon this point. As to port duties, he has damned them all in the lump, by declaring them "contrary to the first principles of coloni"zation, and not less prejudicial to the interests of "Great Britain than to those of the colonies." Surely this single observation of his ought to have taught him a little caution; he ought to have begun to doubt, whether there is not something in the nature of commercial colonies, which renders them an unfit object of taxation; when port duties, so large a fund of revenue in all countries, are by himself found, in this case, not only improper, but destructive. However he has here pretty well narrowed the field of taxation. Stamp act, hardly to be resumed. Port duties, mischievous. Excises, I believe, he will scarcely think worth the collec-assemblies are made commissioners of the taxes? tion (if any revenue should be so) in America. Land tax, (notwithstanding his opinion of its immense use to agriculture,) he will not directly propose, before he has thought again and again on the subject. Indeed he very readily recommends it for Ireland, and seems to think it not improper for America; because, he observes, they already raise most of their taxes internally, including this tax. A most curious reason, truly! because their lands are already heavily burthened, he thinks it right to burthen them still further. But he will recollect, for surely he cannot be ignorant of it, that the lands of America are not, as in England, let at a rent certain in money, and therefore cannot, as here, be taxed at a certain pound rate. They value them in gross among themselves; and none but themselves in their several districts can value them. Without their hearty concurrence and co-operation, it is evident, we cannot advance a step in the assessing or collecting any land tax. As to the taxes which in some places the Americans pay by the acre, they are merely duties of regulation: they are small; and to encrease them, notwithstanding the secret virtues of a land tax, would be the most effectual means of preventing that cultivation they are intended to promote. Besides, the whole country is heavily in arrear already for land taxes and quit rents. They have different methods of taxation in the different provinces, agreeable to their several local circumstances.

P. 37.

This is far worse than all his former projects; for here, if the assemblies shall refuse, or delay, or be negligent, or fraudulent, in this new-imposed duty, we are wholly without remedy; and neither our custom-house officers, nor our troops, nor our armed ships, can be of the least use in the collection. No idea can be more contemptible (I will not call it an oppressive one, the harshness is lost in the folly) than that of proposing to get any revenue from the Americans but by their freest and most cheerful consent. Most monied men know their own interest right well; and are as able as any financier, in the valuation of risks. Yet I think this financier will scarcely find that adventurer hardy enough, at any premium, to advance a shilling upon a vote of such taxes. Let him name the man, or set of men, that would do it. This is the only proof of the value of revenues; what would an interested man rate them at? His subscription would be at ninety-nine per cent. discount the very first day of its opening. Here is our only national security from ruin; a security upon which no man in his senses would venture a shilling of his fortune. Yet he puts down those articles as gravely in his supply for the peace establishment, as if the money had been all fairly lodged in the exchequer.

American revenue,
Ireland,

↑ P. 37, 38.

£. 200,000 100,000

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