inciple which first recommended this system at court. The
pretence was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a faction, and
made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to
answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal
capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his government.
But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every
affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience
all the evils which attend it.

In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to
consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the king, and not of the
crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of
that greatness which a king possesses merely by being a representative
of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual
interest seem to be these:--wealth accumulated; wealth spent in
magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention;
and, above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the
inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a prince or a
subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they
are formed.

Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king has been richer than his
predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan
of favoritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royal
indigence, which our court has presented until this year, has been truly
humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but
by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken
their confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had been
exhausted in magnificence and splendor, this distress would have been
accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more
unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete
out the splendor of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons
disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it
must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the
wants of the court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause of
this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence. In all
this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with
all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved.
Their wonder is increased by their kn