There is now a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition into
the minutest detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteen
millions annually, a collection on which the public greatness, safety,
and credit have their reliance, the whole order of criminal
jurisprudence, which holds together society itself, have at no time
obliged us to call forth such powers,--no, nor anything like them. There
is not a principle of the law and Constitution of this country that is
not subverted to favor the execution of that project.[3] And for what is
all this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it because anything
substantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the
end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master will employ
themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is
nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to
economy; and our minister of the day must be an economist, whatever it
may cost us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be sure;
for where else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It
is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be
promising or not. If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may make
regulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation,
whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other
times and other men.
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