ounds, would it not have been natural for Parliament first to
have asked, how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance came to
be insufficient? Would it not have savoured of some attention to
justice, to have seen in what periods of Administration this debt had
been originally incurred; that they might discover, and if need were,
animadvert on the persons who were found the most culpable? To put their
hands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper or
excessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication or
exceeding? Accounts for any other purposes are but a matter of
curiosity, and no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts which
could answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by previous
questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying an
improper suspicion of the Ministers of the Crown.

When every leading account had been refused, many others were granted
with sufficient facility.

But with great candour also, the House was informed, that hardly any of
them could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps not so
soon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of _payment
previous to account_, and to form it into a settled rule of the House,
the god in the machine was brought down, nothing less than the wonder-
working _Law of Parliament_. It was alleged, that it is the law of
Parliament, when any demand comes from the Crown, that the House must go
immediately into the Committee of Supply; in which Committee it was
allowed, that the production and examination of accounts would be quite
proper and regular. It was therefore carried that they should go into
the Committee without delay, and without accounts, in order to examine
with great order and regularity things that could not possibly come
before them. After this stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit and
humour, they went into the Committee, and very generously voted the
payment.

There was a circumstance in that debate too remarkable to be overlooked.
This debt of the Civil List was all along argued upon the same footing as
a debt of the State, contracted upon national authority. Its payment was
urged as equally pressing upon the public faith and honour; and when the
whole year's account was stated, in what is called _The Budget_, the
Ministry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just as
if they had discharged 500,000 pounds of navy or excheque