tions. I considered the scheme as neither substantial, nor
permanent, nor systematical, nor likely to be a corrective of evil
influence. I have always thought employments a very proper subject of
regulation, but a very ill-chosen subject for a tax. An equal tax upon
property is reasonable; because the object is of the same quality
throughout. The species is the same; it differs only in its quantity.
But a tax upon salaries is totally of a different nature; there can be
no equality, and consequently no justice, in taxing them by the hundred
in the gross.

We have, Sir, on our establishment several offices which perform real
service: we have also places that provide large rewards for no service
at all. We have stations which are made for the public decorum, made for
preserving the grace and majesty of a great people: we have likewise
expensive formalities, which tend rather to the disgrace than the
ornament of the state and the court. This, Sir, is the real condition of
our establishments. To fall with the same severity on objects so
perfectly dissimilar is the very reverse of a reformation,--I mean a
reformation framed, as all serious things ought to be, in number,
weight, and measure.--Suppose, for instance, that two men receive a
salary of 800_l._ a year each. In the office of one there is nothing at
all to be done; in the other, the occupier is oppressed by its duties.
Strike off twenty-five per cent from these two offices, you take from
one man 200_l._ which in justice he ought to have, and you give in
effect to the other 600_l._ which he ought not to receive. The public
robs the former, and the latter robs the public; and this mode of mutual
robbery is the only way in which the office and the public can make up
their accounts.

But the balance, in settling the account of this double injustice, is
much against the state. The result is short. You purchase a saving of
two hundred pounds by a profusion of six. Besides, Sir, whilst you leave
a supply of unsecured money behind, wholly at the discretion of
ministers, they make up the tax to such places as they wish to favor, or
in such new places as they may choose to create. Thus the civil list
becomes oppressed with debt; and the public is obliged to repay, and to
repay with an heavy interest, what it has taken by an injudicious tax.
Such has been the effect of the taxes hitherto laid on pensions and
employments, and it is no encouragement to recur again to the same
ex