There are, indeed, two offices in his stables which are sinecures: by the change of manners, and indeed by the nature of the thing, they must be so: I mean the several keepers of buck-hounds, stag-hounds, foxhounds, and harriers. They answer no purpose of utility or of splendor. These I propose to abolish. It is not proper that great noblemen should be keepers of dogs, though they were the king's dogs. In every part of the scheme, I have endeavored that no primary, and that even no secondary, service of the state should suffer by its frugality. I mean to touch no offices but such as I am perfectly sure are either of no use at all, or not of any use in the least assignable proportion to the burden with which they load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with which they oppress the freedom of Parliamentary deliberation; for which reason there are but two offices, which are properly state offices, that I have a desire to reform. The first of them is the new office of _Third Secretary of State_, which is commonly called _Secretary of State for the Colonies_. _We_ know that all the correspondence of the colonies had been, until within a few years, carried on by the Southern Secretary of State, and that this department has not been shunned upon account of the weight of its duties, but, on the contrary, much sought on account of its patronage. Indeed, he must be poorly acquainted with the history of office who does not know how very lightly the American functions have always leaned on the shoulders of the ministerial _Atlas_ who has upheld that side of the sphere. Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment was requisite in the management of the colony politics; but the official detail was a trifle. Since the new appointment, a train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us almost the whole correspondence of this favorite secretary's office since the first day of its establishment. I will say nothing of its auspicious foundation, of the quality of its correspondence, or of the effects that have ensued from it. I speak merely of its _quantity_, which we know would have been little or no addition to the trouble of whatever office had its hands the fullest. But what has been the real condition of the old office of Secretary of State? Have their velvet bags and their red boxes been so full that nothing more could possibly be crammed into them?