During the extravagance of the preceding reign, the construction of a marble church had been commenced, after the magnificent designs of Jardin, a French architect. It was less an object of devotion than of pomp and decoration. In the same reign, when the state became deeply indebted, and frugality was necessary, the court reduced the annual amount devoted to this church to 20,000 dollars: it was deferring its completion for a century. Struensee cut the knot: he put a stop to the works, broke the contracts with the stone contractors in Norway, and offered Jardin, if he were willing to remain, an annual salary of 300 dollars, which sum a pupil of his would have rejected. The contractors naturally declared that they were ruined: social economists complained that it was a disgrace to the government to give up, for so slight a cause, a magnificent undertaking, the expenses of which returned in a thousand ways to the Treasury: artists protested against barbarism: and the zealots were scandalized at the house of the Lord being deprived of a trifling sum compared with that expended in the chase and playhouses. Retrenchment in the administration was, however, even more necessary than at court. Hence, in the first place, all those who had hitherto been in the enjoyment of pensions from the king's privy purse, were ordered to state their age, their position, and the services for which the pensions had been granted, and a similar order was sent to the Board of Revenue and the General Post Office. Many in consequence lost their pensions, while those of others were reduced. It is true that several needy persons were affected by this; but the changes, and especially the abolition of franking, which had been scandalously misused by the officials, produced savings and an augmented revenue. The latter was greatly aided by a cabinet order to the effect that the Sound dues, which had hitherto been paid into the king's privy purse, would henceforth be handed over to the Treasury. Unfortunately, the reductions effected in the king's household in this way did not go so far as had been hoped, for the court cost more than before, because Brandt consumed in his department all the savings made. Masked and dress balls, pic-nics, the chase, a troupe of French actors, the opera buffa, were all treated most profusely, and formed a revolting contrast with the retrenchments which daily reduced some family to misery.[146]