lculations of the future on their
experience of the past.

I know of no mode of preserving the effectual execution of any duty, but
to make it the direct interest of the executive officer that it shall be
faithfully performed. Assuming, then, that the present vast allowance to
the civil list is perfectly adequate to all its purposes, if there
should be any failure, it must be from the mismanagement or neglect of
the First Commissioner of the Treasury; since, upon the proposed plan,
there can be no expense of any consequence which he is not himself
previously to authorize and finally to control. It is therefore just, as
well as politic, that the loss should attach upon the delinquency.

If the failure from the delinquency should be very considerable, it will
fall on the class directly above the First Lord of the Treasury, as well
as upon himself and his board. It will fall, as it ought to fall, upon
offices of no primary importance in the state; but then it will fall
upon persons whom it will be a matter of no slight importance for a
minister to provoke: it will fall upon persons of the first rank and
consequence in the kingdom,--upon those who are nearest to the king, and
frequently have a more interior credit with him than the minister
himself. It will fall upon masters of the horse, upon lord
chamberlains, upon lord stewards, upon grooms of the stole, and lords of
the bedchamber. The household troops form an army, who will be ready to
mutiny for want of pay, and whose mutiny will be _really_ dreadful to a
commander-in-chief. A rebellion of the thirteen lords of the bedchamber
would be far more terrible to a minister, and would probably affect his
power more to the quick, than a revolt of thirteen colonies. What an
uproar such an event would create at court! What _petitions_, and
_committees_, and _associations_, would it not produce! Bless me! what a
clattering of white sticks and yellow sticks would be about his head!
what a storm of gold keys would fly about the ears of the minister! what
a shower of Georges, and thistles, and medals, and collars of S.S. would
assail him at his first entrance into the antechamber, after an
insolvent Christmas quarter!--a tumult which could not be appeased by
all the harmony of the new year's ode. Rebellion it is certain there
would be; and rebellion may not now, indeed, be so critical an event to
those who engage in it, since its price is so correctly ascertained at
just a thousand