[xxxvi. 27]

1821. April 25.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance

Look, for example, to the situation of the Monarch. For /In/ procuring to him, for example, that sort of gratification which is afforded by quick motion, together with prompt conveyance at all times to the several different places at which a promise is afforded of successive gratifications to his several other appetites, horses, in vast multitudes, each in respect of its capacity of affording gratification to those by whom it is used and abused, brought, by a long and expensive course of training, to the most exquisite degree of perfection possible - the labour of men in correspondent multitudes having been exclusively consecrated to this one purpose - a proportionable quantity of money has necessarily been employed. But for the good management an establishment of this kind, good management, so far as regards aptitude for the service, is really desired. In the hands of an individual, and not in those of a Board is thus branch of the public service accordingly lodged. For were it in the hands of a Board, each Member, in reality as well as in name and pretence bearing a /his/ part in the business, what is sufficiently understood is - that there never would be a horse fit for service: each member would appoint to the management of one of the sacred horses some dependent of his who had never had any thing to do with horses. Constituting a necessary exception to the general rule this branch of the public service will therefore of necessity have found itself in individual hands. For the performing in the best possible manner this important service, were this the whole of the service thought fit to be required at the hands of the individual, an extremely moderate annual salary, not more than ten or twenty times the expenditure of an individual whose severe and bodily labour is employed in the production of these four-footed and preeminently favoured subjects of a monarchy, would be sufficient.

But