ect
of his department?

All these incumbrances, which are themselves nuisances, produce other
incumbrances and other nuisances. For the payment of these useless
establishments there are no less than _three useless treasurers_: two to
hold a purse, and one to play with a stick. The treasurer of the
household is a mere name. The cofferer and the treasurer of the chamber
receive and pay great sums, which it is not at all necessary _they_
should either receive or pay. All the proper officers, servants, and
tradesmen may be enrolled in their several departments, and paid in
proper classes and times with great simplicity and order, at the
Exchequer, and by direction from the Treasury.

The _Board of Works_, which in the seven years preceding 1777 has cost
towards 400,000_l._,[37] and (if I recollect rightly) has not cost less
in proportion from the beginning of the reign, is under the very same
description of all the other ill-contrived establishments, and calls for
the very same reform. We are to seek for the visible signs of all this
expense. For all this expense, we do not see a building of the size and
importance of a pigeon-house. Buckingham House was reprised by a bargain
with the public for one hundred thousand pounds; and the small house at
Windsor has been, if I mistake not, undertaken since that account was
brought before us. The good works of that Board of Works are as
carefully concealed as other good works ought to be: they are perfectly
invisible. But though it is the perfection of charity to be concealed,
it is, Sir, the property and glory of magnificence to appear and stand
forward to the eye.

That board, which ought to be a concern of builders and such like, and
of none else, is turned into a junto of members of Parliament. That
office, too, has a treasury and a paymaster of its own; and lest the
arduous affairs of that important exchequer should be too fatiguing,
that paymaster has a deputy to partake his profits and relieve his
cares. I do not believe, that, either now or in former times, the chief
managers of that board have made any profit of its abuse. It is,
however, no good reason that an abusive establishment should subsist,
because it is of as little private as of public advantage. But this
establishment has the grand radical fault, the original sin, that
pervades and perverts all our establishments: the apparatus is not
fitted to the object, nor the workmen to the work. Expenses are incurred
on