1821. Aug. 3

Rid Yourselves

Lett 2. Interests concerned

according as, the value of his particular and

sinister interest on the one hand, or the value of his right and proper though particular interest, added to that of his share in the universal interest,

is, in his eyes the greater, determined by the view he thus takes of the two

contending interests will be the part he takes, as to the giving support to the claim

or making opposition to it.

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 supplies and

indispensable exigencies, 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 particular

interest, in proportion as retrenchment is understood to be

the means of supply, that can not but be resorted to, for the satisfaction of the

exigencies in question,- will, even by these classes themselves be acknowledged to

stand in this respect in coincidence with, the universal interest, and will

accordingly operate in support of it.

To this head may be referred the classes following. I can not find

any others.

I. The King, his family and household,

including the persons of all ranks receiving payment for personal services, rendered,

or supposed to be rendered, to him or them respectively.

II. The Clergy.

III. The Creditors of the Nation: called

for shortness the Public Creditors.

In relation to each of these classes, considered as in an

extraordinary degree exposed to suffer from retrenchment, a few observations may here

be not without their use.

1. As to the King and his personal dependents, as just mentioned.

That, considered with reference to the universal interest, the

expence belonging to this head is not in any part of it necessary to the being of government nor yet to the well-being of it has

received the fullest demonstration from experience. In the Anglo-American United

States, not a particle of it has place: at and the same time in that cluster of two

and twenty representative democracies, the people, subject

many and ruling few together in so far as depends upon the nature of the government,

are, and for these forty years and upwards have been, in a state of felicity

uninterrupted, such of them as have come successfully into existence.

not