to take credit for 14,321_l._ 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 harbor 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.