But how could the real resources of the country for supplying the war be known, until all possible economy was used in the expenditure upon objects of less importance? Was there any economy used by Mr. Perceval? Was not that the blooming period of places, pensions, sinecures, and jobbing contracts? Did not the government and all belonging thereto, then shout and revel in their extravagance? Did not corruption the most extensive and the most sordid overspread the land? Was not that the palmy state of the system which the indignant nation has since risen in its moral strength to reform? Why did not Mr. Perceval reduce the home and the colonial expenses, admit the necessity of honest retrenchment, and then manfully call upon the people of England to bear the real burthen of the war, because it was necessary, and because their money was fairly expended to sustain their honour and their true interests? This would have been the conduct of an able, zealous, and faithful servant of the country; and am I to be silenced by a phrase, when I charge with a narrow, factious, and contemptible policy and a desire to keep himself in power, the man, who supported and extended this system of corruption at home, clinging to it as a child clings to its nurse, while the armies of his country were languishing abroad for that assistance which his pitiful genius could not perceive the means of providing, and which, if he had been capable of seeing it, his more pitiful system of administration would not have suffered him to furnish. Profuseness and corruption marked Mr. Perceval’s government at home, but the army withered for want abroad; the loan-contractors got fat in London, but the soldiers in hospital died because there was no money to provide for their necessities. The funds of the country could not supply both, and so he directed his economy against the troops, and reserved his extravagance to nourish the foul abuses at home, and this is to be a pre-eminently “_honest, zealous, and able servant of the king_!” [Sidenote: See further on, Second Extracts, No. 4.] [Sidenote: Ditto, No. 6] [Sidenote: See further on, Second Extracts, No. 7.]