restore them to their just proportion, and to their just distribution.
I propose, in this military concern, to render the civil subordinate to
the military; and this will annihilate the greatest part of the expense,
and all the influence belonging to the office. I propose to send the
military branch to the army, and the naval to the Admiralty; and I
intend to perfect and accomplish the whole detail (where it becomes too
minute and complicated for legislature, and requires exact, official,
military, and mechanical knowledge) by a commission of competent
officers in both departments. I propose to execute by contract what by
contract can be executed, and to bring, as much as possible, all
estimates to be previously approved and finally to be paid by the
Treasury.

Thus, by following the course of Nature, and not the purposes of
politics, or the accumulated patchwork of occasional accommodation, this
vast, expensive department may be methodized, its service proportioned
to its necessities, and its payments subjected to the inspection of the
superior minister of finance, who is to judge of it on the result of the
total collective exigencies of the state. This last is a reigning
principle through my whole plan; and it is a principle which I hope may
hereafter be applied to other plans.

By these regulations taken together, besides the three subordinate
treasuries in the lesser principalities, five other subordinate
treasuries are suppressed. There is taken away the whole _establishment
of detail_ in the household: the _treasurer_; the _comptroller_ (for a
comptroller is hardly necessary where there is no treasurer); the
_cofferer of the household_; the _treasurer of the chamber_; the _master
of the household_; the whole _board of green cloth_;--and a vast number
of subordinate offices in the department of the _steward of the
household_,--the whole establishment of the _great wardrobe_,--the
_removing wardrobe_,--the _jewel office_,--the _robes_,--the _Board of
Works_,--almost the whole charge of the _civil branch_ of the _Board of
Ordnance_, are taken away. All these arrangements together will be found
to relieve the nation from a vast weight of influence, without
distressing, but rather by forwarding every public service. When
something of this kind is done, then the public may begin to breathe.
Under other governments, a question of expense is only a question of
economy, and it is nothing more: with us, in every question