These old establishments were formed also on a third principle, still more adverse to the living economy of the age.  They were formed, Sir, on the principle of purveyance and receipt in kind.  In former days, when the household was vast, and the supply scanty and precarious, the royal purveyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provision with power and prerogative instead of money, brought home the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding country, and deposited their spoil in an hundred caverns, with each its keeper.  There, every commodity, received in its rawest condition, went through all the process which fitted it for use.  This inconvenient receipt produced an economy suited only to itself.  It multiplied offices beyond all measure,—­buttery, pantry, and all that rabble of places, which, though profitable to the holders, and expensive to the state, are almost too mean to mention.

All this might be, and I believe was, necessary at first; for it is remarkable, that purveyance, after its regulation had been the subject of a long line of statutes, (not fewer, I think, than twenty-six,) was wholly taken away by the 12th of Charles the Second; yet in the next year of the same reign it was found necessary to revive it by a special act of Parliament, for the sake of the king’s journeys.  This, Sir, is curious, and what would hardly he expected in so reduced a court as that of Charles the Second and in so improved a country as England might then be thought.  But so it was.  In our time, one well-filled and well-covered stage-coach requires more accommodation than a royal progress, and every district, at an hour’s warning, can supply an army.

I do not say, Sir, that all these establishments, whose principle is gone, have been systematically kept up for influence solely:  neglect had its share.  But this I am sure of:  that a consideration of influence has hindered any one from attempting to pull them down.  For the purposes of influence, and for those purposes only, are retained half at least of the household establishments.  No revenue, no, not a royal revenue, can exist under the accumulated charge of ancient establishment, modern luxury, and Parliamentary political corruption.

If, therefore, we aim at regulating this household, the question will be, whether we ought to economize by detail or by principle.  The example we have had of the success of an attempt to economize by detail, and under establishments adverse to the attempt, may tend to decide this question.