its
effects a considerable part of its own weight; and as the quantity
of gold and silver is, by some means or other, short of its proper
proportion, being not more than twenty millions, whereas it should be
sixty (foreign intrigue, foreign wars, foreign dominions, will in
a great measure account for the deficiency), it would, besides the
injustice, be bad policy to extinguish a capital that serves to supply
that defect. But with respect to the current expense, whatever is saved
therefrom is gain. The excess may serve to keep corruption alive, but it
has no re-action on credit and commerce, like the interest of the debt.

It is now very probable that the English Government (I do not mean
the nation) is unfriendly to the French Revolution. Whatever serves to
expose the intrigue and lessen the influence of courts, by lessening
taxation, will be unwelcome to those who feed upon the spoil. Whilst the
clamour of French intrigue, arbitrary power, popery, and wooden shoes
could be kept up, the nation was easily allured and alarmed into taxes.
Those days are now past: deception, it is to be hoped, has reaped its
last harvest, and better times are in prospect for both countries, and
for the world.

Taking it for granted that an alliance may be formed between England,
France, and America for the purposes hereafter to be mentioned, the
national expenses of France and England may consequently be lessened.
The same fleets and armies will no longer be necessary to either, and
the reduction can be made ship for ship on each side. But to accomplish
these objects the governments must necessarily be fitted to a common
and correspondent principle. Confidence can never take place while an
hostile disposition remains in either, or where mystery and secrecy on
one side is opposed to candour and openness on the other.

These matters admitted, the national expenses might be put back, for the
sake of a precedent, to what they were at some period when France and
England were not enemies. This, consequently, must be prior to the
Hanover succession, and also to the Revolution of 1688.*[32] The first
instance that presents itself, antecedent to those dates, is in the
very wasteful and profligate times of Charles the Second; at which time
England and France acted as allies. If I have chosen a period of great
extravagance, it will serve to show modern extravagance in a still worse
light; especially as the pay of the navy, the army, and the revenue