Your S

-n may, after this, trust his affairs in your hands with just the same case of mind, as if you had never fraternized with a jacobin in your life. The only danger is, lest the fury of your old associates, on account of your desertion, should render them now more vigorous and active in opposition, than ever they were before.

Economical Enquiry and Reform.

In the mean time steadily pursue the aim of vilifying the administration of your predecessors, and of throwing, comparatively, an extraordinary glitter of wisdom and virtue over your own.

In collecting and distributing an anuual expenditure of from twenty to perhaps fifty millions; a prodigious number of persons must be employed; great diversities of talents, integrity and assiduity, must, of necessity, be trusted; many irregularities of levy, of bargain, and of payment, are unavoidably incurred; multifarious accompts

must be kept either with a perplexing variety of manner and arrangement, or with an uniformity that is not convenient in all cases. alike; methods once established, shall be adhered to, after the fitnesses have ceased to exist, by which they were, at the first, recommended; and after changes and reforms have become palpably requisite, these cannot be introduced without great pains and very mature deliberation. It belongs to financial affairs, as being human things, the acts and arrangements of imperfect men, to lie under these difficulties. No ministry, of whatever government, and however able, can rise wholly above them. Yet the public at large who descend not into the details of these matters, naturally accuse the guilt and inability of the ministers, rather than the complex state of the business. And if any ministers have been long in office; the charges of financial corruption and incapacity may be easily rendered exceedingly plausible against them. The people understand charges which turn upon the waste or ex

penditure of pounds, shillings and pence, much more clearly than almost any others you can offer to their apprehension. No eloquence will inflame them so much, as if you shew, or pretend to shew, by a plain mercantile accompt, that this or that man has defrauded his country of a certain sum. Nothing will, in general, render you so much a favourite with them, as to make them be. lieve, that you are to introduce extraordinary œconomy and parsimony into the whole system of national expense.

Now, mark and apply these truths. It is impossible that you should be at a loss for matter of financial accusation against your predecessors. With a little latitude of misrepresentation, you may assume the appearance of having the clearest documents upon which to convict them of all that is mean and odious. Do not spare the misrepresentation. Institute board after board, of enquiry. Fill them with creatures of your own, such as are the most inclined to act, as malicious busy-bodies. By assigning ade

quate salaries to the members of your boards, augment, in a manner the least invidious, the strength of your pensioned myrmidons around you. Set them to enquire into accompts not yet finally discharged, as if the delay were owing, not to the necessity of affairs, but to nefarious embezzlement. Teach them to magnify casual errors of a few shillings or pounds, into frauds of hundreds of thousands. Attest them to propagate those ambiguas voces which have the true power to infuriate the suspicions of the vulgar. Though not one act of real embezzlement nor of wicked delay be found out; yet hesitate not to affirm boldly, that frauds to the value of hundreds of millions appear to have disgraced the administration of your immediate predecessors. Prolong the existence of your inquisitorial committees; and persuade the world, if possible, that there are still more and more speciosa miracula to be produced.

Beside blasting the charater of those who have gone before you, in the same functions,

you acquire, now, to yourself, a power to do as you please, without censure. It can never afterward be supposed, that you who were so zealous to have the whole Augœan stable flooded, swept, and garnished, can become, in your own administration, the author of any thing but oeconomy, rigorous fidelity, and the most lucid order in accompts.. You. may, now, with impunity, add sinecure to sinecure, deal out old offices to persons attached to you who are incompetent to discharge their duties, appropriate as much as. possible to the convenience of yourself and your friends, the whole expenditure of the state; still you shall retain the credit for dis-. interestedness and purity, since it was your early care when you became a minister, to display so signal an abhorrence of whatever. could be made to appear to be in hostility, to those qualities.