As the extent of our wars has scattered the accountants under the paymaster into every part of the globe, the grand and sure paymaster, Death, in all his shapes, calls these accountants to another reckoning.  Death, indeed, domineers over everything but the forms of the Exchequer.  Over these he has no power.  They are impassive and immortal.  The audit of the Exchequer, more severe than the audit to which the accountants are gone, demands proofs which in the nature of things are difficult, sometimes impossible, to be had.  In this respect, too, rigor, as usual, defeats itself.  Then the Exchequer never gives a particular receipt, or clears a man of his account as far as it goes.  A final acquittance (or a quietus, as they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained.  Terrors and ghosts of unlaid accountants haunt the houses of their children from generation to generation.  Families, in the course of succession, fall into minorities; the inheritance comes into the hands of females; and very perplexed affairs are often delivered over into the hands of negligent guardians and faithless stewards.  So that the demand remains, when the advantage of the money is gone,—­if ever any advantage at all has been made of it.  This is a cause of infinite distress to families, and becomes a source of influence to an extent that can scarcely be imagined, but by those who have taken some pains to trace it.  The mildness of government, in the employment of useless and dangerous powers, furnishes no reason for their continuance.

As things stand, can you in justice (except perhaps in that over-perfect kind of justice which has obtained by its merits the title of the opposite vice[39]) insist that any man should, by the course of his office, keep a bank from whence he is to derive no advantage? that a man should be subject to demands below and be in a manner refused an acquittance above, that he should transmit an original sin and inheritance of vexation to his posterity, without a power of compensating himself in some way or other for so perilous a situation?  We know, that, if the paymaster should deny himself the advantages of his bank, the public, as things stand, is not the richer for it by a single shilling.  This I thought it necessary to say as to the offensive magnitude of the profits of this office, that we may proceed in reformation on the principles of reason, and not on the feelings of envy.

The treasurer of the navy is, mutatis mutandis, in the same circumstances.  Indeed, all accountants are.  Instead of the present mode, which is troublesome to the officer and unprofitable to the public, I propose to substitute something more effectual than rigor, which is the worst exactor in the world.  I mean to remove the very temptations to delay; to facilitate the account; and to transfer this bank, now of private emolument, to the public.  The crown will suffer no wrong at least from the pay offices; and its terrors