the prospect of the general superintendent of finance, which
destroy his superintendency, which disable him from foreseeing and
providing for charges as they may occur, from preventing expense in
its origin, checking it in its progress, or securing its
application to its proper purposes. A minister, under whom expenses
can be made without his knowledge, can never say what it is that he
can spend, or what it is that he can save.

_Fifthly_, That it is proper to establish an invariable order in
all payments, which will prevent partiality, which will give
preference to services, not according to the importunity of the
demandant, but the rank and order of their utility or their
justice.

_Sixthly_, That it is right to reduce every establishment and every
part of an establishment (as nearly as possible) to certainty, the
life of all order and good management.

_Seventhly_, That all subordinate treasuries, as the nurseries of
mismanagement, and as naturally drawing to themselves as much money
as they can, keeping it as long as they can, and accounting for it
as late as they can, ought to be dissolved. They have a tendency to
perplex and distract the public accounts, and to excite a suspicion
of government even beyond the extent of their abuse.

Under the authority and with the guidance of those principles I
proceed,--wishing that nothing in any establishment may be changed,
where I am not able to make a strong, direct, and solid application of
those principles, or of some one of them. An economical constitution is
a necessary basis for an economical administration.

First, with regard to the sovereign jurisdictions, I must observe, Sir,
that whoever takes a view of this kingdom in a cursory manner will
imagine that he beholds a solid, compacted, uniform system of monarchy,
in which all inferior jurisdictions are but as rays diverging from one
centre. But on examining it more nearly, you find much eccentricity and
confusion. It is not a _monarchy_ in strictness. But, as in the Saxon
times this country was an heptarchy, it is now a strange sort of
_pentarchy_. It is divided into five several distinct principalities,
besides the supreme. There is, indeed, this difference from the Saxon
times,--that, as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of
a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts