If the sanction of all
three be required. Court influence may secure one vote, and impunity
to great offenders. Neither of the three would be liable to be
deprived of his office, except with the consent, or on the
requisition of the Governor-General; and this privilege they would
value too highly to risk it by neglect or misconduct. The King's
brother--a most worthy and respectable, though not able man--might be
a member, if agreeable to the King.
5. The abuses they would have to remedy are all perfectly well
understood, and the measures required to remedy them are all simple
and obvious: a settlement would be made with the landholders, based
upon past avowed collections; they would be delighted to bind
themselves to pay such an assessment, as they would escape from the
more than one-third more, which they have now to pay, in one form or
another, to contractors and Court favourites; the large landholders,
who are for the most part now in open resistance to the Government,
would rejoice at the prospect of securing their estates to their
posterity, without the necessity of continually fighting for them.
6. The army would soon become efficient: at present every man
purchases his place in it from the minister and the singers and
eunuchs, and he loses it as soon as he becomes disabled from wounds
or sickness. The only exceptions are the four regiments under Captain
Burlow, Captain Bunbury, Captain Magness, and Soba Sing, lately
Captain Buckley's; in these, all that are disabled from wounds or
sickness are kept on the strength of the corps, and each corps has
with it a large invalid establishment of this kind unrecognized by
the Government.
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