will certainly lower the provision made for the navy. He will cut off largely (God knows what or how) from the army and ordnance extraordinaries. He may be expected to cut off more. He hopes that the deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual; and he hopes that America and Ireland might be induced to take off 300,000l. of our annual charges.
If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations, and Inducements, should fail him, there will be a formidable gaping breach in his whole project. If all of them should fail, he has left the nation without a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrors which he has thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended with success, would signify anything to our revenue, can have no effect but to add to our distractions and dangers, we shall be if possible in a still worse condition from his projects of cure, than he represents us from our original disorders.
Before we examine into the consequences of these schemes, and the probability of these savings, let us suppose them all real and all safe, and then see what it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them:—
| Deficiency on land and malt, less by | £37,000 |
| Foundling Hospital | 20,000 |
| American Surveys | 1,800 |
| ——— | |
| £58,800 |
This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies: and yet he chooses to assert,[81] "that we may venture on the credit of them to reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161l.) to 3,300,000l."; that is, for a saving of 58,000l. he
is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than 168,161l.! Suppose even that we were to take up the estimate of the "Considerations" (which is however abandoned in the "State of the Nation"), and reduce his 75,000l. extraordinaries to the original 35,000l., still all these savings joined together give us but 98,800l.; that is, near 70,000l. short of the credit he calls for, and for which he has neither given any reason, nor furnished any data whatsoever for others to reason upon.
Such are his savings, as operating on his own project of a peace establishment. Let us now consider them as they affect the existing establishment and our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in his estimate for the navy is "69,321l. less than the grant for that service in 1767; but in that grant 30,000l. was included for the purchase of hemp, and a saving of about 25,000l. was made in that year." The author has got some secret in arithmetic. These two sums put together amount, in the ordinary way of computing, to 55,000l., and not to 69,321l. On what principle has he chosen to take credit for 14,321l. more? To what this strange inaccuracy is owing, I cannot possibly comprehend; nor is it very material, where the logic is so bad, and the policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetic be just or otherwise. But in a scheme for making this nation "happy at home and respected abroad, formidable in war and flourishing in peace," it is surely a little unfortunate for us, that he has picked out the Navy, as the very first object of his economical experiments. Of all the public services, that of the navy is the one in which tampering may be of the greatest danger,
which can worst be supplied upon an emergency, and of which any failure draws after it the longest and heaviest train of consequences. I am far from saying, that this or any service ought not to be conducted with economy. But I will never suffer the sacred name of economy to be bestowed upon arbitrary defalcation of charge. The author tells us himself, "that to suffer the navy to rot in harbor for want of repairs and marines, would be to invite destruction." It would be so. When the author talks therefore of savings on the navy estimate, it is incumbent on him to let us know, not what sums he will cut off, but what branch of that service he deems superfluous. Instead of putting us off with unmeaning generalities, he ought to have stated what naval force, what naval works, and what naval stores, with the lowest estimated expense, are necessary to keep our marine in a condition commensurate to its great ends. And this too not for the contracted and deceitful space of a single year, but for some reasonable term. Everybody knows that many charges cannot be in their nature regular or annual. In the year 1767 a stock of hemp, &c., was to be laid in; that charge intermits, but it does not end. Other charges of other kinds take their place. Great works are now carrying on at Portsmouth, but not of greater magnitude than utility; and they must be provided for. A year's estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a permanent peace establishment. Had the author opened this matter upon these plain principles, a judgment might have been formed, how far he had contrived to reconcile national defence with public economy. Till he has done it, those who had rather depend on any man's reason than the greatest man's
authority, will not give him credit on this head, for the saving of a single shilling. As to those savings which are already made, or in course of being made, whether right or wrong, he has nothing at all to do with them; they can be no part of his project, considered as a plan of reformation. I greatly fear that the error has not lately been on the side of profusion.
Another head is the saving on the army and ordnance extraordinaries, particularly in the American branch. What or how much reduction may be made, none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend to say; very little, I am convinced. The state of America is extremely unsettled; more troops have been sent thither; new dispositions have been made; and this augmentation of number, and change of disposition, has rarely, I believe, the effect of lessening the bill for extraordinaries, which, if not this year, yet in the next we must certainly feel. Care has not been wanting to introduce economy into that part of the service. The author's great friend has made, I admit, some regulations: his immediate successors have made more and better. This part will be handled more ably and more minutely at another time: but no one can cut down this bill of extraordinaries at his pleasure. The author has given us nothing, but his word, for any certain or considerable reduction; and this we ought to be the more cautious in taking, as he has promised great savings in his "Considerations," which he has not chosen to abide by in his "State of the Nation."