The Mint, though not a department of the household, has the same vices.  It is a great expense to the nation, chiefly for the sake of members of Parliament.  It has its officers of parade and dignity.  It has its treasury, too.  It is a sort of corporate body, and formerly was a body of great importance,—­as much so, on the then scale of things, and the then order of business, as the Bank is at this day.  It was the great centre of money transactions and remittances for our own and for other nations, until King Charles the First, among other arbitrary projects dictated by despotic necessity, made it withhold the money that lay there for remittance.  That blow (and happily, too) the Mint never recovered.  Now it is no bank, no remittance-shop.  The Mint, Sir, is a manufacture, and it is nothing else; and it ought to be undertaken upon the principles of a manufacture,—­that is, for the best and cheapest execution, by a contract upon proper securities and under proper regulations.

The artillery is a far greater object; it is a military concern; but having an affinity and kindred in its defects with the establishments I am now speaking of, I think it best to speak of it along with them.  It is, I conceive, an establishment not well suited to its martial, though exceedingly well calculated for its Parliamentary purposes.  Here there is a treasury, as in all the other inferior departments of government.  Here the military is subordinate to the civil, and the naval confounded with the land service.  The object, indeed, is much the same in both.  But, when the detail is examined, it will be found that they had better be separated.  For a reform of this office, I propose to restore things to what (all considerations taken together) is their natural order:  to restore them to their just proportion, and to their just distribution.  I propose, in this military concern, to render the civil subordinate to the military; and this will annihilate the greatest part of the expense, and all the influence belonging to the office.  I propose to send the military branch to the army, and the naval to the Admiralty; and I intend to perfect and accomplish the whole detail (where it becomes too minute and complicated for legislature, and requires exact, official, military, and mechanical knowledge) by a commission of competent officers in both departments.  I propose to execute by contract what by contract can be executed, and to bring, as much as possible, all estimates to be previously approved and finally to be paid by the Treasury.

Thus, by following the course of Nature, and not the purposes of politics, or the accumulated patchwork of occasional accommodation, this vast, expensive department may be methodized, its service proportioned to its necessities, and its payments subjected to the inspection of the superior minister of finance, who is to judge of it on the result of the total collective exigencies of the state.  This last is a reigning principle through my whole plan; and it is a principle which I hope may hereafter be applied to other plans.