the private opinion of an inferior establishment, without consulting
the principal, who can alone determine the proportion which it ought to
bear to the other establishments of the state, in the order of their
relative importance.

I propose, therefore, along with the rest, to pull down this whole
ill-contrived scaffolding, which obstructs, rather than forwards, our
public works; to take away its treasury; to put the whole into the hands
of a real builder, who shall not be a member of Parliament; and to
oblige him, by a previous estimate and final payment, to appear twice at
the Treasury before the public can be loaded. The king's gardens are to
come under a similar regulation.

The _Mint_, though not a department of the household, has the same
vices. It is a great expense to the nation, chiefly for the sake of
members of Parliament. It has its officers of parade and dignity. It has
its treasury, too. It is a sort of corporate body, and formerly was a
body of great importance,--as much so, on the then scale of things, and
the then order of business, as the Bank is at this day. It was the great
centre of money transactions and remittances for our own and for other
nations, until King Charles the First, among other arbitrary projects
dictated by despotic necessity, made it withhold the money that lay
there for remittance. That blow (and happily, too) the Mint never
recovered. Now it is no bank, no remittance-shop. The Mint, Sir, is a
_manufacture_, and it is nothing else; and it ought to be undertaken
upon the principles of a manufacture,--that is, for the best and
cheapest execution, by a contract upon proper securities and under
proper regulations.

The _artillery_ is a far greater object; it is a military concern; but
having an affinity and kindred in its defects with the establishments I
am now speaking of, I think it best to speak of it along with them. It
is, I conceive, an establishment not well suited to its martial, though
exceedingly well calculated for its Parliamentary purposes. Here there
is a treasury, as in all the other inferior departments of government.
Here the military is subordinate to the civil, and the naval confounded
with the land service. The object, indeed, is much the same in both.
But, when the detail is examined, it will be found that they had better
be separated. For a reform of this office, I propose to restore things
to what (all considerations taken together) is their natural order: to