ese, Sir, are the outlines of the plan I mean to follow, in
suppressing these two large subordinate treasuries. I now come to
another subordinate treasury,--I mean that of the _paymaster of the
pensions_; for which purpose I reenter the limits of the civil
establishment: I departed from those limits in pursuit of a principle;
and, following the same game in its doubles, I am brought into those
limits again. That treasury and that office I mean to take away, and to
transfer the payment of every name, mode, and denomination of pensions
to the Exchequer. The present course of diversifying the same object can
answer no good purpose, whatever its use may be to purposes of another
kind. There are also other lists of pensions; and I mean that they
should all be hereafter paid at one and the same place. The whole of
the new consolidated list I mean to reduce to 60,000_l._ a year, which
sum I intend it shall never exceed. I think that sum will fully answer
as a reward to all real merit and a provision for all real public
charity that is ever like to be placed upon the list. If any merit of an
extraordinary nature should emerge before that reduction is completed, I
have left it open for an address of either House of Parliament to
provide for the case. To all other demands it must be answered, with
regret, but with firmness, "The public is poor."

I do not propose, as I told you before Christmas, to take away any
pension. I know that the public seem to call for a reduction of such of
them as shall appear unmerited. As a censorial act, and punishment of an
abuse, it might answer some purpose. But this can make no part of _my_
plan. I mean to proceed by bill; and I cannot stop for such an inquiry.
I know some gentlemen may blame me. It is with great submission to
better judgments that I recommend it to consideration, that a critical
retrospective examination of the pension list, upon the principle of
merit, can never serve for my basis. It cannot answer, according to my
plan, any effectual purpose of economy, or of future, permanent
reformation. The process in any way will be entangled and difficult, and
it will be infinitely slow: there is a danger, that, if we turn our line
of march, now directed towards the grand object, into this more
laborious than useful detail of operations, we shall never arrive at our
end.

The king, Sir, has been by the Constitution appointed sole judge of the
merit for which a pension is to be given. We