Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security against future, than it had been to a vindictive retrospect to past mismanagements.  I should have thought indeed that a ministerial promise, during their own continuance in office, might have been given, though this would have been but a poor security for the public.  Mr. Pelham gave such an assurance, and he kept his word.  But nothing was capable of extorting from our ministers anything which had the least resemblance to a promise of confining the expenses of the civil list within the limits which had been settled by Parliament.  This reserve of theirs I look upon to be equivalent to the clearest declaration, that they were resolved upon a contrary course.

However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the speech from the throne, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted, the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will endeavor to confine the expenses of the civil government—­within what limits, think you? those which the law had prescribed?  Not in the least—­“such limits as the honor of the crown can possibly admit.”

Thus they established an arbitrary standard for that dignity which Parliament had defined and limited to a legal standard.  They gave themselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the honor of the crown, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner of corruption.  This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to both Houses; while an idle and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating the dignity of the crown at 800,000_l._ and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of libraries, without any sort of advantage to the people.

After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think that the crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever.  For if the ministry has 800,000_l._ a year by the law of the land; and if by the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid previously to the production of any account; I presume that this is equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of the subject and the moderation of the court; that is to say, it is such an income as is possessed by every absolute monarch in Europe.  It amounts, as a person of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited power of drawing upon the sinking fund.  Its effect on the public credit of this kingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the sinking fund the great buttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to resort to it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to incur, under the name of the civil list, and through the medium of a committee, which thinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without any other account than that of the mere existence of the debt.