es of the
subject and the moderation of the Court--that is to say, it is such in
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 more 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 a 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
are published: I cannot be equally confident in any plan for the absolute
cure of those disorders, or for their certain future prevention. My aim
is to bring this matter into more public discussion. Let the sagacity of
others work upon it. It is not uncommon for medical writers to describe
histories of diseases, very accuratel