port of this motion, the Duke of Richmond entered into a detailed
statement of the existing vast military establishment; showed by a
number of calculations the great increase of the national debt since the
commencement of the American war; and urged the necessity of economical
reform, suggesting that the king himself should set the example, that
all classes of society might follow it. In the course of his speech,
his grace contrasted the state of this country with the wise system of
economy adopted by France under Neckar; asserting that our formidable
neighbour was rising to wealth as fast as we were sinking in poverty.
Yet with all his zeal for reform, the Duke of Richmond advocated the
continuation of the pensions bestowed on the Pelhams, Walpoles,
and Pitts, families of his own party, as being too sacred for the
sacrilegious hand of parliament to touch. In reply, the lords in
administration confessed that the expenditure was enormous, and that
there had even been some want of economy; but while they made this
confession, they opposed the motion, chiefly on the ground that it could
not be of any great service, or at all adequate to the object proposed.
It was insisted by them that the civil list could not bear any
diminution; that it would be degrading to parliament, after having voted
an augmentation, now to declare their inability to pay it; that the
complaint of the waste of the public money was not substantiated by any
kinds of proof; and that the nation was not so poor or reduced as the
noble duke had represented. The motion was rejected by seventy-seven
against thirty-six.

The subject of economical reform was introduced into the lower house by
Mr. Burke on the 15th of December. Burke gave notice of his intention to
propose some very important regulations after the Christmas recess,
and in doing so, he also took occasion to extol the financial system of
Neckar, to which he attributed the re-production of the French marine
out of the wrecks and fragments of the last war. He anticipated, he
said, a cool reception of the propositions he should make, since they
would have a tendency to weaken court influence. He could only, however,
make an offer, and if it was rejected the people must effect their own
salvation. All the grievances of the nation, he observed, arose from the
overgrown influence of the crown, and this influence was the creature
of the prodigality of the commons. The operation of this influence,
he sai