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
splendour, 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 splendour 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 knowledge, that
besides the revenue settled on his Majesty's Civil List to the
amount of 800,000 pounds a year, he has a farther aid, from a large
pension list, near 90,000 pounds a year, in Ireland; from the
produce of the Duchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been
greatly improved); from the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall; from
the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per cent. duty in
the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more
than 40,000 pounds a year. The whole is certainly not much short of
a million annually.

These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our
national Councils. We have no direct right to examine into the
receipts from his Majesty's German Dominions, and the Bishopric of
Osnaburg. This is unquestionably true. But that which is not
within the province of Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every
man's own reflection. If a foreign Prince resided amongst us, the