A deficiency of the civil list duties for several years before was stated as the principal, if not the sole ground on which an application to Parliament could be justified.  About this time the produce of these duties had fallen pretty low; and even upon an average of the whole reign they never produced 800,000_l._ a year clear to the treasury.

That prince reigned fourteen years afterwards:  not only no new demands were made; but with so much good order were his revenues and expenses regulated, that, although many parts of the establishment of the court were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since, there was a considerable sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about 170,000_l._ applicable to the service of the civil list of his present Majesty.  So that, if this reign commenced with a greater charge than usual, there was enough and more than enough, abundantly to supply all the extraordinary expense.  That the civil list should have been exceeded in the two former reigns, especially in the reign of George the First, was not at all surprising.  His revenue was but 700,000_l._ annually; if it ever produced so much clear.  The prodigious and dangerous disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a pretender then powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many demands of an extraordinary nature both abroad and at home.  Much management and great expenses were necessary.  But the throne of no prince has stood upon more unshaken foundations than that of his present Majesty.

To have exceeded the sum given for the civil list, and to have incurred a debt without special authority of Parliament, was prima facie, a criminal act:  as such, ministers ought naturally rather to have withdrawn it from the inspection, than to have exposed it to the scrutiny of Parliament.  Certainly they ought, of themselves, officially to have come armed with every sort of argument, which, by explaining, could excuse, a matter in itself of presumptive guilt.  But the terrors of the House of Commons are no longer for ministers.

On the other hand, the peculiar character of the House of Commons, as trustee of the public purse, would have led them to call with a punctilious solicitude for every public account, and to have examined into them with the most rigorous accuracy.

The capital use of an account is, that the reality of the charge, the reason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it, should all appear antecedent to the payment.  No man ever pays first, and calls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of his hands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling a full and fair one.  But, in national business, there is an additional reason for a previous production of every account.  It is a check, perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money.  An account after payment is to no rational purpose an account.  However, the House of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles:  they were of opinion, that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was, to pay first what the court thought proper to demand, and to take its chance for an examination into accounts at some time of greater leisure.