which could
not have been owing to inadvertency.

The misrepresentation of the increase of the peace establishment is
still more extraordinary than that of the interest of the unfunded debt.
The increase is great, undoubtedly. However, the author finds no fault
with it, and urges it only as a matter of argument to support the
strange chimerical proposals he is to make us in the close of his work
for the increase of revenue. The greater he made that establishment, the
stronger he expected to stand in argument: but, whatever he expected or
proposed, he should have stated the matter fairly. He tells us that this
establishment is nearly 1,500,000_l._ more than it was in 1752, 1753,
and other years of peace. This he has done in his usual manner, by
assertion, without troubling himself either with proof or probability.
For he has not given us any state of the peace establishment in the
years 1753 and 1754, the time which he means to compare with the
present. As I am obliged to force him to that precision, from which he
always flies as from his most dangerous enemy, I have been at the
trouble to search the journals in the period between the two last wars:
and I find that the peace establishment, consisting of the navy, the
ordnance, and the several incidental expenses, amounted to 2,346,594_l._
Now is this writer wild enough to imagine, that the peace establishment
of 1764 and the subsequent years, made up from the same articles, is
3,800,000_l._ and upwards? His assertion however goes to this. But I
must take the liberty of correcting him in this gross mistake, and from
an authority he cannot refuse, from his favorite work, and standing
authority, the "Considerations." We find there, p. 43[57], the peace
establishment of 1764 and 1765 stated at 3,609,700_l._ This is near two
hundred thousand pounds less than that given in "The State of the
Nation." But even from this, in order to render the articles which
compose the peace establishment in the two periods correspondent (for
otherwise they cannot be compared), we must deduct first, his articles
of the deficiency of land and malt, which amount to 300,000_l._ They
certainly are no part of the establishment; nor are they included in
that sum, which I have stated above for the establishment in the time of
the former peace. If they were proper to be stated at all, they ought to
be stated in both accounts. We must also deduct the deficiencies of
funds, 202,400_l._ These deficiencies