hoes
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
officers has not increased since that time.

The peace establishment was then as follows (see Sir John Sinclair's
History of the Revenue):

Navy L 300,000
Army 212,000
Ordnance 40,000
Civil List 462,115
-------
L1,014,115

The parliament, however, settled the whole annual peace establishment
at $1,200,000.*[33] If we go back to the time of Elizabeth the amount of
all the taxes was but half a million, yet the nation sees nothing during
that period that reproaches it with want of consequence.

All circumstances, then, taken together, arising from the French
revolution, from the approaching harmony and reciprocal interest of the
two nations, the abolition of the court intrigue on both sides, and
the progress of knowledge in the science of government, the annual
expen