k
that the crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For if
the ministry has 800,000_l._ a year by the law of the land; and if by
the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid
previously to the production of any account; I presume that this is
equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of the
subject and the moderation of the court; that is to say, it is such an
income as is possessed by every absolute monarch in Europe. It amounts,
as a person of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited power
of drawing upon the sinking fund. Its effect on the public credit of
this kingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the sinking fund the great
buttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to
resort to it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to
incur, under the name of the civil list, and through the medium of a
committee, which thinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without
any other account than that of the mere existence of the debt.

Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum. But it is nothing to the
prolific principle upon which the sum was voted: a principle that may be
well called, _the fruitful mother of an hundred more_. Neither is the
damage to public credit of very great consequence, when compared with
that which results to public morals and to the safety of the
constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by the
precedent, and to be wrought by the principle, of the late payment of
the debts of the civil list. The power of discretionary disqualification
by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the
civil list by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed,
must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make
Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever
was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun
between the representatives and the people. The court faction have at
length committed them.

In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest
staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly
any landmarks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we
can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases. I know
the diligence with which my observations on our public disorders have
been made; I am very sure of the integrity of the motives on which they
a