supersede all other
considerations, and they ought to be the very last to feel the
necessities of the state, or to be obliged either to court or bully a
minister for their right; they ought to be as _weak solicitors on their
own demands_ as strenuous assertors of the rights and liberties of
others. The judges are, or ought to be, of a _reserved_ and retired
character, and wholly unconnected with the political world.

In the second class I place the foreign ministers. The judges are the
links of our connections with one another; the foreign ministers are the
links of our connection with other nations. They are not upon the spot
to demand payment, and are therefore the most likely to be, as in fact
they have sometimes been, entirely neglected, to the great disgrace and
perhaps the great detriment of the nation.

In the third class I would bring all the tradesmen who supply the crown
by contract or otherwise.

In the fourth class I place all the domestic servants of the king, and
all persons in efficient offices whose salaries do not exceed two
hundred pounds a year.

In the fifth, upon account of honor, which ought to give place to
nothing but charity and rigid justice, I would place the pensions and
allowances of his Majesty's royal family, comprehending of course the
queen, together with the stated allowance of the privy purse.

In the sixth class I place those efficient offices of duty whose
salaries may exceed the sum of two hundred pounds a year.

In the seventh class, that mixed mass, the whole pension list.

In the eighth, the offices of honor about the king.

In the ninth, and the last of all, the salaries and pensions of the
First Lord of the Treasury himself, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
the other Commissioners of the Treasury.

If, by any possible mismanagement of that part of the revenue which is
left at discretion, or by any other mode of prodigality, cash should be
deficient for the payment of the lowest classes, I propose that the
amount of those salaries where the deficiency may happen to fall shall
not be carried as debt to the account of the succeeding year, but that
it shall be entirely lapsed, sunk, and lost; so that government will be
enabled to start in the race of every new year wholly unloaded, fresh in
wind and in vigor. Hereafter no civil list debt can ever come upon the
public. And those who do not consider this as saving, because it is not
a certain sum, do not ground their ca