of business.  But this author takes a very different method.  For the ground of his speculation of a present peace establishment, he resorts to a former speculation of the same kind, which was in the mind of the minister of the year 1764.  Indeed it never existed anywhere else.  “The plan,"[70] says he, with his usual ease, “has been already formed, and the outline drawn, by the administration of 1764.  I shall attempt to fill up the void and obliterated parts, and trace its operation.  The standing expense of the present (his projected) peace establishment, improved by the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated”; and he estimates it at 3,468,161_l._

Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons for condemning the subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favor of his new project; which has in some articles exceeded, in others fallen short, but on the whole is much below his old one.  Hardly a word on any of these points, the only points however that are in the least essential; for unless you assign reasons for the increase or diminution of the several articles of public 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:—­

  Plan of establishment for 1764, as by
    “Considerations,” p. 43 [71] L3,609,700
  Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by
    “State of the Nation,” p. 29 and 30 3,919,375
  Present peace establishment, as by the
    project in “State of the Nation,” p. 33 3,468,161

It is not from anything our author has anywhere 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.[72] 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 295,561_l._ in his new estimate, from 502,400_l._ 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 increase,