My exertions, whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of
pecuniary reward could possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation
can possibly reward them. Between money and such services, if done by
abler men than I am, there is no common principle of comparison: they
are quantities incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort and
convenience of animal life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal
life must indeed sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his
Grace, I have not had more than sufficient. As to any noble use, I trust
I know how to employ, as well as he, a much greater fortune than he
possesses. In a more confined application, I certainly stand in need of
every kind of relief and easement much more than he does. When I say I
have not received more than I deserve, is this the language I hold to
majesty? No! Far, very far, from it! Before that presence, I claim no
merit at all. Everything towards me is favour, and bounty. One style to
a gracious benefactor; another to a proud and insulting foe.
His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt, by charging my acceptance of
his majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas, and the spirit of my
conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas of economy were false
and ill-founded. But they are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy
I have contradicted, and not my own. If he means to allude to certain
bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell
him, that there is nothing in my conduct that can contradict either the
letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean the Pay-office Act?
I take it for granted he does not. The act to which he alludes, is, I
suppose, the Establishment Act. I greatly doubt whether his Grace has
ever read the one or the other. The first of these systems cost me, with
every assistance which my then situation gave me, pains incredible.
I found an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the
public at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize
the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I
succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether
the general economy of our finances, have profited by that act, I leave
to those who are acquainted with the army, and with the treasury, to
judge.