1821 Feb. 21

Rid Yourselves

'.1. Interests concerned.

The worse the state of the /a/ government is in respect of economy,

the more decided is the impracticability of providing for the difference between

existing suppliers and indispensable exigences, by additional taxation: in the same

proportion therefore has place the necessity of having recourse to retrenchment.

This considered, the following are the classes of functionaries, the

pecuniary provision for which will naturally present itself as being, in the nature

of the case, in the greatest degree susceptible of retrenchment: and whose interest,

in proportion as a decision has place that retrenchmetn is the means f supply that

can not but be resorted to for the satisfaction fo the exigencies in question, will

be acknowledged even by themselves to stand in this respect in coincidence with, and

will operate in support of the universal interest. For this kind may be referred

I The King, her family, and houshold, including the [...?] of all

ranks receiving payment for personal services, rendered or supposed to be rendered,

to [...?] or [...?].

II. The Clergy. III. The Public Creditors: In relation to each of

these Classes, considered in an extraordinary degree exposed to suffer from

retrenchment, a free observation may here be not without this use. 1. As to the King,

and his personal dependents as justmentioned.

That, considered with reference to the universal interest the expence

belonging to this kind is not, in any part of it necessary to the king, nor yet to

the well-being, of government, as is demonstrated by this circumstance that in the

Anglo-American United States not a particle of it has place: and beyond possibility

of critislation[?], in that cluster of two and twenty representative democracies, the

people, in so far as depends upon the nature of the government are in a state of

felicity, not to be matched in any other country in any age. If therefore the

usefulness of the part of the official establishmetn to the whole value taken

together were the only consideration to be adverted to, here is a mass of constant

expenditure, from which not merely might ample retrenchment be made, but of which,

according to the above principles, were these the only ones that bore upon the

subject, the entire aggregate might be [...?] off with indisputable advantage - and

without detriment in any shape.