pound.

Sir, this classing, in my opinion, is a serious and solid security for
the performance of a minister's duty. Lord Coke says, that the staff was
put into the Treasurer's hand to enable him to support himself when
there was no money in the Exchequer, and to beat away importunate
solicitors. The method which I propose would hinder him from the
necessity of such a broken staff to lean on, or such a miserable weapon
for repulsing the demands of worthless suitors, who, the noble lord in
the blue ribbon knows, will bear many hard blows on the head, and many
other indignities, before they are driven from the Treasury. In this
plan, he is furnished with an answer to all their importunity,--an
answer far more conclusive than if he had knocked them down with his
staff:--"Sir, (or my Lord,) you are calling for my own salary,--Sir, you
are calling for the appointments of my colleagues who sit about me in
office,--Sir, you are going to excite a mutiny at court against me,--you
are going to estrange his Majesty's confidence from me, through the
chamberlain, or the master of the horse, or the groom of the stole."

As things now stand, every man, in proportion to his consequence at
court, tends to add to the expenses of the civil list, by all manner of
jobs, if not for himself, yet for his dependants. When the new plan is
established, those who are now suitors for jobs will become the most
strenuous opposers of them. They will have a common interest with the
minister in public economy. Every class, as it stands low, will become
security for the payment of the preceding class; and thus the persons
whose insignificant services defraud those that are useful would then
become interested in their payment. Then the powerful, instead of
oppressing, would be obliged to support the weak; and idleness would
become concerned in the reward of industry. The whole fabric of the
civil economy would become compact and connected in all its parts; it
would be formed into a well-organized body, where every member
contributes to the support of the whole, and where even the lazy stomach
secures the vigor of the active arm.

This plan, I really flatter myself, is laid, not in official formality,
nor in airy speculation, but in real life, and in human nature, in what
"comes home" (as Bacon says) "to the business and bosoms of men." You
have now, Sir, before you, the whole of my scheme, as far as I have
digested it into a form that might be in any r