tance or justice of the demand, or to the inability of the persons entitled to enforce their pretensions. In the first of these classes were placed the judges; the ministers to foreign courts in the second; tradesmen who supplied the Crown in the third; domestic servants of the King, and all persons in efficient offices, with salaries not above 2001. a year, in the fourth; the pensions and allowances of the royal family, including the privy-purse, and the Queen's, composed the fifth class; the sixth contained those whose efficient offices exceeded 2001. a year; the seventh included the whole pension list; the eighth the honorary offices about the King; the ninth consisted of the salaries of the First Lord of the Treasury himself, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the other Commissioners of that department. To these regulations were added other arrangements, precluding the possibility of future debts being incurred on the civil list, which should call on the public for liquidation.

Such are the outlines of the scheme for the reduction of expenditure, and the diminution of corrupt influence, by Mr. Burke in his famous Economy Bill.

The following passages also shew the force and versatility of Burke's humour:'Lord Talbot's scheme of œconomy was dashed to pieces; his department became more expensive than ever;-the civil list debt accumulated. Why? It was truly from a cause, which, though perfectly adequate to the effect, one would not have instantly guessed;-it was because the turnspit in the King's kitchen was a member of Parlia ment. The King's domestic servants were all undone; his tradesmen remained unpaid, and became bankrupt ;-because the turnspit of the King's kitchen was a member of Parliament. His Majesty's slumbers were inter. rupted, his pillow was stuffed with thorns, and his peace of mind entirely broken,-because the King's turnspit was a member of Parliament. The judges were unpaid; the justice of the kingdom bent and gave way;

the Foreign Ministers remained inactive and unprovided; the system of Europe was dissolved; the chain of our alliances was broken; all the wheels of government at home and abroad were stopped ;—because the King's turnspit was a member of Parliament. The household troops form an army, who will be ready to mutiny for want of pay, and whose mutiny will be really dreadful to a Commander in Chief. A rebellion of the thirteen Lords of the bedchamber would be far more terrible to a Minister, and would probably affect his power more to the quick, than a revolt of thirteen colonies. What an uproar such an event would create at court! What petitions, and committees, and associations would it not produce! Bless me! what a clattering of white sticks and yellow sticks would be about his head!-what a storm of gold keys would fly about the ears of the Minister!-what a shower of Georges, and Thistles, and medals, and collars of S. S. would assail him at his first entrance into the antichamber, after an insolvent Christmas quar

ter! A tumult which could not be appeased by all the harmony of the New Year's Ode.'

The individuals affected by his reform (after it had fallen much short of his intention) have inveighed bitterly against Burke for diminishing their profits. That, no doubt, was a serious concern to themselves and those interested in their prosperity; but it could be no reason to prevent a patriot from proposing reduction of useless expence, that some had gained by it. If a man find it prudent to dismiss supernumerary footmen, or housemaids, he ought not to be deterred by the consideration, that it would be more agreeable to these persons to live upon him, though doing nothing in return. He went through offices of a higher description than those of the mere menials of the household, and proposed the reduction of various places in the civil list, in which either there was pay without service, or where the pay greatly exceeded the service. An impartial examiner must admit the justness and com

prehensiveness of Burke's general principles of political œconomy, the accuracy of his details of office, and the applicability of his principles to those details: he must acknowledge that considerable saving would have accrued to the nation from the general adoption of his plan, as indeed there did even from the partial. Their utility would have been much greater if they could be applied to infinitely more momentous departments of public expence than any within the civil list, to the ordnance, the navy, and the army. The necessary expenditure in these is so very considerable, that there is a much greater probability of waste, and opportunity of mismanagement or even intentional misapplication, than in the comparativ ly confied expenditure of the civil list. From the general political principles of Burke, together with his particular financial principles, it is probable that if he had fully succeeded in his first plan of reform, he would have afterwards extended their operation to the larger sources of expence. Ministers joined with Opposition in bestow