entire increase in the revenue to be expected from even the most
efficient administration of the customs in all the ports of,
America. In addition, it should perhaps be said that Mr. Rigby,
although excelled by none, was by no means the only man in high
place with a good degree of talent for exploiting the common
chest.

The reform of such practices, very likely, was work for a
statesman rather than for a man of business. A good man of
business, called upon to manage the King's affairs, was likely to
find many obstacles in the way of depriving the Paymaster of the
Forces of his customary sources of income, and Mr. Grenville, at
least, never attempted anything so hazardous. Scurrilous
pamphleteers, in fact, had made it a charge against the minister
that he had increased rather than diminished the evil of
sinecures--"It had been written in pamphlets that 400,000 pounds
a year was dealt out in pensions"; from which charge the able
Chancellor, on the occasion of opening his first budget in the
House of Commons, the 9th of March, 1764, defended himself by
denying that the sums were "so great as alleged." It was scarcely
an adequate defense; but the truth is that Grenville was sure to
be less distressed by a bad custom, no law forbidding, than by a
law, good or bad, not strictly enforced, particularly if the law
was intended to bring in a revenue.

Instinctively, therefore, the minister turned to America, where
it was a notorious fact that there were revenue laws that had not
been enforced these many years. Mr. Grenville, we may suppose,
since it was charged against him in a famous epigram, read the
American dispatches with considerable care, so that it is quite