the public treasures had been exhausted in magnificence and splendor, this distress would have been accounted for, and in some measure justified.  Nothing would be more unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete out the splendor of the crown.  Indeed I have found very few persons disposed to so ungenerous a procedure.  But the generality of people, it must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the wants of the court with its expenses.  They do not behold the cause of this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence.  In all this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with all the consequences of profusion.  Nothing expended, nothing saved.  Their wonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue settled on his Majesty’s civil list to the amount of 800,000_l._ a year, he has a farther aid from a large pension list, near 90,000_l._ a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the duchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the duchy of Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per cent duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more than 40,000_l._ a year.  The whole is certainly not much short of a million annually.

These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national councils.  We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his Majesty’s German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnaburg.  This is unquestionably true.  But that which is not within the province of Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man’s own reflection.  If a foreign prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not fail of becoming the subject of our speculation.  Filled with an anxious concern for whatever regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over.  There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments.  This produce the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent.  It is accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn away, for the support of that court faction, which, whilst it distresses the nation, impoverishes the prince in every one of his resources.  I once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the purpose of showing how little this system of favoritism has been advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this country, and in other parts of his dominions.