r bills. Though,
in truth, their payment, from the Sinking Fund, of debt which was never
contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and purposes,
so much debt incurred. But such is the present notion of public credit
and payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such effects.

Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security against
future, than it had been to a vindictive retrospect to past,
mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a Ministerial promise,
during their own continuance in office, might have been given, though
this would have been but a poor security for the public. Mr. Pelham gave
such an assurance, and he kept his word. But nothing was capable of
extorting from our Ministers anything which had the least resemblance to
a promise of confining the expenses of the Civil List within the limits
which had been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I look upon
to be equivalent to the clearest declaration that they were resolved upon
a contrary course.

However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the Speech from the
Throne, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted,
the Ministers inform the two Houses that they will _endeavour_ to confine
the expenses of the Civil Government--within what limits, think you?
those which the law had prescribed? Not in the least--"such limits as
the _honour of the Crown_ can possibly admit."

Thus they established an arbitrary standard for that dignity which
Parliament had defined and limited to a legal standard. They gave
themselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the _honour of the
Crown_, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner of
corruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to
both Houses; while an idle and inoperative Act of Parliament, estimating
the dignity of the Crown at 800,000 pounds, and confining it to that sum,
adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of
libraries without any sort of advantage to the people.

After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think
that the Crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For if
the Ministry has 800,000 pounds a year by the law of the land, and if by
the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid
previous to the production of any account, I presume that this is
equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abiliti