fer them labour far short of that which on the same ocean the newspaper reporters were in the habit of undergoing, and if Mr. York and his honorable and worthy nephew had suffered them, would have continued to undergo, without ceasing: and even (how "incomplete" soever," and indeed wholly insufficient for that "purpose;" "for that public service must" (as Mr. Burke says) "be those means of rewarding" that " public service") yes, even without" further reward for that service than the daily wages received during pleasure:"daily labour beyond comparison more compulsory, more assiduous, more severe, than that which, besides so many contingent sweets, has present honour for a sweetening to it;-daily labour without pension of retreat, without provision for superannuation; provision, actual or eventual, for widows or mistresses, children or grandchildren, uncles or aunts, brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces; without power either of management or patronage, without either possession or prospect of honour, dignity, reputation or respect in any shape.

Proposition 6. So as the place be permanent, the hope of receiving it, how large soever the mass of emolument attached to it, "does not operate as corruption"-does not produce "dependence."

Proof. "Many of the persons who in all times have filled the Great Offices of State, have" (says he) " been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any fortune. There ought to be" (continues he) "some power in the Crown of granting pensions out of the reach of its own caprices."-Caprices! The hand by which the whole property of the people is thus to be disposed of, has it then its caprices? O yes, for the moment, and for the purpose of the argument. What is it that it may not happen to a thing to have, or not have, for the purpose of the argument? "The intail of dependence," (continues he)" is a bad reward of merit."

"I would therefore leave to the Crown" (says he) (viz. to the "caprices" of the Crown) "the possibility of conferring some favours, which, whilst they are received as a reward, do not operate as corruption;”—as if, to this purpose, call it good call it a bad one, a pension might not be made to operate with the same effect as a sinecure, both being equally for life.

Proposition 7. When a man is in parliament, whatsoever be the conduct of the servants of the Crown, and whatsoever be the quantity of money he may gain or hope to gain by giving them his indiscriminating support, virtue requires, that to protect him against the charge of corruption he be provided with the plea of gratitude; which plea pleaded, acquittal follows of course.

"When men receive obligations from the Crown through the pious hands of a father, or of connections as venerable as the pater

ual, the dependencies" (says he) "which arise from them are the obligations of gratitude, and not the fetters of servility. Such ties" (continues le)" originate in virtue, and they promote it."

Proposition 8. When a man happens to have children, " piety" on his part consists in filling their pockets with public money. Proof. The epithet "pious" applied with so much unction to paternal hands thus occupied.

Observations. In the Wolf's Bible, piety would indeed naturally enough consist in providing lamb, as much as she could lay her paws upon, to feed her cubs with. But in the Shepherd's

Bible, at least the Good Shepherd's Bible, piety will probably be found rather to consist in keeping the lambs from being disposed of to such pious uses. The orator, though not a no-popery-man, was foud of his Bible, and here we have a sample of the uses he was fond of making of it.

§. 6. Concerning Party-men and their Principles. Propositions 9, 10.

Proposition 9. Men, who have at any time joined together in the way of party, ought not ever, any one of them, to differ from any other; nor therefore to act, any one of them, according to his own conception of what is right. Smecures, if not absolutely necessary, are highly conducive at least, and thence proportionally useful, to the purpose of preventing all such differences.

Proof. They" ("such ties" as above)" continue men" (says he) in those habitudes of friendship, those political connections, and those political principles" (we have seen what principle)" in which they began life. They are antidotes against a corrupt levity, instead of causes of it."

Observations. Sinecures, according to this account of them, seem to be as necessary to secure fidelity at the expense of sincerity in parliament, as test oaths and subscriptions are to secure various good things, at the expense of reason or sincerity there and elsewhere.

Two things here call for notice, the proposed end and the proposed means. Proposed end, each man's persevering in the principles (whatever is meant by principles) in the professions and habits, right or wrong, in which he "began life;" i. e. which it happened to him to have imbibed from the instructors under whom it had happened to him to be placed, and the society in which it had happened to him to have lived. Proposed means; his having got into his hands as much public money as his parents and other connections could contrive to put into them by means of sinecures. Means and end, it must be acknowledged, are not ill matched.

Proposition 10. On a change of Ministry, were it not for the sinecures, the comers-in would cut the throats of the goers-out; whereupon "the sons" of the goers-out would "cringe" to the same comers-in (now ins) and "kiss their hands."

Proof. "What an unseemly spectacle would it afford, what a disgrace would it be to the common-wealth that suffered such things, to see the hopeful son of a meritorious minister begging his bread at the door of that treasury from whence his father dispensed the happiness and glory of his country? Why should he be obliged to prostrate his honour, and to submit his principles at the levee of some proud favorite shouldered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender, in the very spot where a few days before he saw himself adored?-obliged to cringe to the author of the calamities of his house, and to kiss the hands that are red with his father's blood? No, Sir;-these things are unfit, they are intolerable.

Observations. And so there are, it seems, such things as proud favourites. But if so, what sort of food is their pride fed upon? Sinecures? Aud if so, is not one of these proud fuvourites on every occasion a dangerous rival to the hopeful son of a meritori ons uiinister? But the plan was-that there should be enough of them for every body and thus every thing would be as it should be.

7. Concerning Ministers and their Duty to themselves.

positions 11, 12, 13, 14.

Pro

Proposition 11. The danger of a man's being too bountiful to himself, when, in and by the adjudication of reward claimed on the ground of service said to have been rendered to the public, he is allowed to be judge in his own cause, affords no reason, at least no conclusive reason, against the allowing him to act in that character.

As to abuse," (says he) " I am convinced, that very few trusts in the ordinary course of administration, have admitted less abuse than this.. Efficient ministers have been their own paymasters. It is true. But their very partiality has operated as a kind of justice; and still it was service that was paid. When we look over this Exchequer List, we find it filled with the descendants of the Walpoles, of the Pelhams, of the Townshends, names to whom this country owes its liberties and to whom his Majesty owes his Crown.' It was in one of those lines that the immense and envied

* Their co-operation within doors by hundreds, and without doors by millions, he would have us believe, having had no share in the business, or at least no merit in it. These men stand up in a room (absit verbo invidia) and pronounce a set of phrases, and by these men alone (we are desired to believe), by these men alone it is, that every thing that is done, is done.

employment he now holds, came to a certain Duke," ("the Duke of Newcastle," says a Note) "whose dining room is under the House of Commons, who is now probably sitting quietly at a very good dinner directly under us, and acting high life below stairs, whilst we his masters are filling our mouths with unsubstantial sounds, and talking of hungry economy over his head."

. For merited wealth and honour he declares his "respect:" spect" which accompanies it "through all its descents, through all its transfers, and all its assignments." In plain English, the object of his respect is wealth itself, whatever hands he sees it in. As for original title," and "first purchase," and the epithet "merited" prefixed to "wealth," all this is for decency and delusion. For as to merited, the orator's notion about merits have surely by this time become sufficiently apparent.

"

And as to title, what is it that on the subject of title, specific title, so much as asserted, not to speak of proved, he ever drops so much as a hint of his looking upon as requisite? No: with him, to the purpose of approbation, though without reason, as in a lawyer's point of view, to the purpose of protection, for the best reasou, possession of wealth, acquired at the public expense, is regarded as proof of title: and that proof not only presumptive and provisional, but conclusive.

As for transfer and assignment-wealth sure enough is transferable and assignable. But merit? is merit too a subject of bargain and sale? A manor? "manners" But yes. manners, those which, in the language of Edward the Third's chancellor "maketh man," are these manners with an e appendages and appurtenances that by the attraction of cohesion adhere to, and are rendered inseparable from the manors with an o?

Wealth or power, wherever you see them, "prostrate" yourself before them" cringe to" them, and though they be "red with" your "father's blood," "kiss the hands" that grasp them. This is what you are 66 obliged" to do: and that which is matter of obligation, how can it be matter of blame? Such are the precepts which call for the observance of that pupil whose preceptor is Edmund Burke.

After the predilection he thus declared, predilection for vicarious reward, in short for any thing that can afford to political rapacity a colour or a cloak, to complete the system of corruption and ty ranny, what more can be wanting than a like declaration in favour of vicarious punishment?

Observations." But" (continues the orator) "he is the elder branch of an ancient and decayed house, joined to, and repaired by the reward of services done by another." Thus far the orator.

"Done by another." Yes, done by George the Second's old favourite the minister Duke of Newcastle, whose culinary pro

fusion and political inaptitude were alike proverbial, whose inefficiency the efficiency of the first Pitt had for such a length of time to struggle with, and whose services consisted in the sacrifice made of his patrimony to his palate and his pride.

"I respect" (continues the rhetorician) "the original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth and honour through all its descents, through all its transfers, and all its assignments. May such fountains never be dried up! May they ever flow with their original purity, and fructify the commonwealth for ages."

May such fountains never be dried up! exclaims the ejaculation poured forth with fervency, with almost the solemnity, and with at least the sincerity, of a prayer. "May such fountains never be dried up." As if he had not all this while in full view a fountain of this sort, the patrimony of the Crown, all but dried up, and that almost a century before the utterance of this prayer: as if any thing could operate more speedily, or more effectually, towards the drying up of all such fountains, than the acting up to those laws of profusion to the keeping of which it was the object of this prayer to incline men's hearts.

Proposition 12. If it be admitted that the masses of emolument, respectively attached to the great efficient offices, are not excessive, this admission will be sufficient to justify the possessors of them in putting into their pockets additional masses of emolument to an unlimited amount, on condition of creating or keeping on foot inefficient offices, to which such additional masses of emolument shall respectively stand attached.

Proof. If I were to give judgment" (says he)" with regard to this country, I do not think the great offices of the state to be overpaid. When the proportion between reward and service” (resuines he)" is our object we must always consider of what nature the service is, and what sort of men they are, who are to perform it. What is just payment for one kind of labour, and full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud and discouragement to others."

Observations. True enough. But what is it to the purpose? and what is it that it amounts to? and what is it that by volumes of phrases thus floating in the air would be proved?

"Not overpaid." For the purpose of the argument let it pass. "Not overpaid!" Admitted. But does it follow that they are underpaid? £4,000 a year, or £6,000 a year not excessive? Good: but does it follow that £23,000 a year, or that £38,000 a year must be added?

Proposition 13. To justify the leaving to the possessors of public offices, in an unlimited number, the power of putting each into his own pocket, and into the pockets of his relatives, and friends, and dependents, and their respective descendants, such