In such a state is the exchequer of Wales at present, that, upon the report of the Treasury itself, its little revenue is greatly diminished; and we see, by the whole of this strange transaction, that an attempt to improve it produces resistance, the resistance produces submission, and the whole ends in pension.[34]

It is nearly the same with the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster.  To do nothing with them is extinction; to improve them is oppression.  Indeed, the whole of the estates which support these minor principalities is made up, not of revenues, and rents, and profitable fines, but of claims, of pretensions, of vexations, of litigations.  They are exchequers of unfrequent receipt and constant charge:  a system of finances not fit for an economist who would be rich, not fit for a prince who would govern his subjects with equity and justice.

It is not only between prince and subject that these mock jurisdictions and mimic revenues produce great mischief.  They excite among the people a spirit of informing and delating, a spirit of supplanting and undermining one another:  so that many, in such circumstances, conceive it advantageous to them rather to continue subject to vexation themselves than to give up the means and chance of vexing others.  It is exceedingly common for men to contract their love to their country into an attachment to its petty subdivisions; and they sometimes even cling to their provincial abuses, as if they were franchises and local privileges.  Accordingly, in places where there is much of this kind of estate, persons will be always found who would rather trust to their talents in recommending themselves to power for the renewal of their interests, than to incumber their purses, though never so lightly, in order to transmit independence to their posterity.  It is a great mistake, that the desire of securing property is universal among mankind.  Gaming is a principle inherent in human nature.  It belongs to us all.  I would therefore break those tables; I would furnish no evil occupation for that spirit.  I would make every man look everywhere, except to the intrigue of a court, for the improvement of his circumstances or the security of his fortune.  I have in my eye a very strong case in the Duchy of Lancaster (which lately occupied Westminster Hall and the House of Lords) as my voucher for many of these reflections.[35]

For what plausible reason are these principalities suffered to exist?  When a government is rendered complex, (which in itself is no desirable thing,) it ought to be for some political end which cannot be answered otherwise.  Subdivisions in government are only admissible in favor of the dignity of inferior princes and high nobility, or for the support of an aristocratic confederacy under some head, or for the conservation of the franchises of the people in some privileged province.  For the two former of these ends, such are the subdivisions in favor of the electoral