Such is the whole of this mighty scheme.  Take his reduced estimate, and his further reductions, and his resources all together, 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 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_l._ 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 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 L37,000
Foundling Hospital 20,000
American Surveys 1,800
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L58,800

This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies:  and yet he chooses to assert,[81] “that we may venture on the credit of them to reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161_l._) to 3,300,000_l._”; that is, for a saving of 58,000_l._ he is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than 168,161_l._!  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_l._ extraordinaries to the original 35,000_l._, still all these savings joined together give us but 98,800_l._; that is, near 70,000_l._ 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 “69,321_l._ less than the grant for that service in 1767; but in that grant 30,000_l._ was included for the purchase of hemp, and a saving of about 25,000_l._ 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_l._, and not to 69,321_l._ On what principle has he chosen