In the eighth, the offices of honor about the king.

In the ninth, and the last of all, the salaries and pensions of the First Lord of the Treasury himself, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the other Commissioners of the Treasury.

If, by any possible mismanagement of that part of the revenue which is left at discretion, or by any other mode of prodigality, cash should be deficient for the payment of the lowest classes, I propose that the amount of those salaries where the deficiency may happen to fall shall not be carried as debt to the account of the succeeding year, but that it shall be entirely lapsed, sunk, and lost; so that government will be enabled to start in the race of every new year wholly unloaded, fresh in wind and in vigor.  Hereafter no civil list debt can ever come upon the public.  And those who do not consider this as saving, because it is not a certain sum, do not ground their calculations of the future on their experience of the past.

I know of no mode of preserving the effectual execution of any duty, but to make it the direct interest of the executive officer that it shall be faithfully performed.  Assuming, then, that the present vast allowance to the civil list is perfectly adequate to all its purposes, if there should be any failure, it must be from the mismanagement or neglect of the First Commissioner of the Treasury; since, upon the proposed plan, there can be no expense of any consequence which he is not himself previously to authorize and finally to control.  It is therefore just, as well as politic, that the loss should attach upon the delinquency.

If the failure from the delinquency should be very considerable, it will fall on the class directly above the First Lord of the Treasury, as well as upon himself and his board.  It will fall, as it ought to fall, upon offices of no primary importance in the state; but then it will fall upon persons whom it will be a matter of no slight importance for a minister to provoke:  it will fall upon persons of the first rank and consequence in the kingdom,—­upon those who are nearest to the king, and frequently have a more interior credit with him than the minister himself.  It will fall upon masters of the horse, upon lord chamberlains, upon lord stewards, upon grooms of the stole, and lords of the bedchamber.  The household troops form an army, who will be ready to mutiny for want of pay, and whose mutiny will be really dreadful to a commander-in-chief.  A rebellion of the thirteen lords of the bedchamber would be far more terrible to a minister, and would probably affect his power more to the quick, than a revolt of thirteen colonies.  What an uproar such an event would create at court!  What petitions, and committees, and associations, would it not produce!  Bless me! what a clattering of white sticks and yellow sticks would be about his head! what a storm of gold keys would fly about the ears of the minister! what