house. He now took a general review not only of the expenditure of the public revenue by the Ministers of the time, but of the general establishments, considering the various places in detail, to ascertain their public utility. After enlarging on the topics, and entering into a history and discussion of finance in other countries, he gave notice, that after the Christmas holidays he should propose a plan for the reduction of the public expenditure.

The very enormous expence of our establishments from the war, and from waste continuing to increase, the imposts began to be severely felt in the nation. The subject now awakened the attention both of the inhabitants of the metropolis and of the different counties in the kingdom. Yorkshire and London, the chief county and the chief city of the kingdom, the principal districts of landed and of monied property, took the lead in expressing alarm from an expenditure by which they were so much affected. The city of London and the

county of York each petitioned the House of Commons to adopt some plan for the reduction of expence. Other cities, counties, and towns followed this example, and established a committee of correspondence for promoting the common cause. eyes of all were anxiously turned towards Burke, all expected his plan of reform.

The

On the 11th of February, 1780, he communicated to the House of Commons his ⚫ plan of reform in the constitution of several parts of the public oeconomy. This speech is replete with financial principle, accurate information as to the detail of establishments, their object and use, and embellished with all the beauties of eloquence. It is the speech of wisdom, selecting from the stores of knowledge what might be practically beneficial. The orations of Burke, especially those on great and comprehensive questions, abound in general observations, drawn from the most profound philosophy; which have the double merit of being in their place specially applicable to the object

in consideration, and to a variety of other situations and circumstances in the conduct

of life.

From his speeches and writings might be formed a collection of moral and political maxims of the strictest truth and highest importance, but which are not introduced in an abstract form: they are made to bear immediately upon the case. On the principles of national revenue he displays an enlarged view of the subject, which shews a mind capable of writing a treatise on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Nor could Smith himself, whose penetrating, investigating, and generalizing mind, the details and principles. of finance so much and so long occupied, have displayed more complete knowledge and philosophical views than this speech of Burke, who attended to revenue, among a multiplicity of momentous objects: at the same time so minute is his acquaintance wth offices, that he appears fit to have composed a court-calendar without copying from the red-book. His introduction is, perhaps, one of the most masterly that ever served

to usher in a piece of eloquence. In that part in which he speaks of the difficulties he must encounter in conducting a plan of reform, a reforın bearing on private interest and lessening private emolument, he is peculiarly excellent. What he says applied precisely to that individual case, and would apply in general to any situation in which it was proposed to sacrifice individual gain from donative to general good in the retrenchment of unnecessary expence. feel,' says he, he, that I engage in a business in itself most ungracious. I know that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to unkindness; and that (on some person or other) every reform must operate as a sort of punishment: indeed the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity; what is worse, there are very few of those virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more deeply, and finish much more sharply, in

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the work of retrenchment, than frugality and providence. I do not, therefore, wonder that gentlemen have kept away from such a task, as well from good nature, as from prudence. Private feeling might, indeed, be overborne by legislative reason; and a man of long-sighted and strong nerved humanity might bring himself, not so much to consider from whom he takes a superfluous enjoyment, as for whom, in the end, he may preserve the absolute necessaries of life.' He lays down certain rules of political œconomy, which he applies to the various cases he details, and to the establishments which he would retrench: considering various establishments as wasteful, because employed in a manner neither tending to reproduction or to security of what is by other means produced; and hurtful, as the means of corruption. His principle is, that whatever establishments are either more expensive than gainful, or afford the means of corruption more than advantage to judicial and political administration, ought to be abolished.

This general principle he