more than two millions five hundred thousand
pounds, is to carry our enemies through the service of this year also.
No tax is raised to fund that debt; no tax is raised for the current
services. I am credibly informed that there is no anticipation
whatsoever. Compensations[31] are correctly made. Old debts continue to
be sunk as in the time of profound peace. Even payments which their
treasury had been authorized to suspend during the time of war are not
suspended.

A general reform, executed through every _department of the revenue_,
creates an annual income of more than half a million, whilst it
facilitates and simplifies all the functions of administration. The
king's _household_--at the remotest avenues to which all reformation has
been hitherto stopped, that household which has been the stronghold of
prodigality, the virgin fortress which was never before attacked--has
been not only not defended, but it has, even in the forms, been
surrendered by the king to the economy of his minister. No capitulation;
no reserve. Economy has entered in triumph into the public splendor of
the monarch, into his private amusements, into the appointments of his
nearest and highest relations. Economy and public spirit have made a
beneficent and an honest spoil: they have plundered from extravagance
and luxury, for the use of substantial service, a revenue of near four
hundred thousand pounds. The reform of the finances, joined to this
reform of the court, gives to the public nine hundred thousand pounds a
year, and upwards.

The minister who does these things is a great man; but the king who
desires that they should be done is a far greater. We must do justice to
our enemies: these are the acts of a patriot king. I am not in dread of
the vast armies of France; I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of
its brave and numerous nobility; I am not alarmed even at the great navy
which has been so miraculously created. All these things Louis the
Fourteenth had before. With all these things, the French monarchy has
more than once fallen prostrate at the feet of the public faith of Great
Britain. It was the want of public credit which disabled France from
recovering after her defeats, or recovering even from her victories and
triumphs. It was a prodigal court, it was an ill-ordered revenue, that
sapped the foundations of all her greatness. Credit cannot exist under
the arm of necessity. Necessity strikes at credit, I allow, with a
heavier a