He fixed the paymaster's salary at four thousand pounds a year, and was himself the first person who accepted the curtailed income.
Not the most fervid or brilliant of Burke's pieces, yet the speech on Economical Reform is certainly not the least instructive or impressive of them.

It gives a suggestive view of the relations existing at that time between the House of Commons and the Court.

It reveals the narrow and unpatriotic spirit of the king and the ministers, who could resist proposals so reasonable in themselves, and so remedial in their effects, at a time when the nation was suffering the heavy and distressing burdens of the most disastrous war that our country has ever carried on.

It is especially interesting as an illustration of its author's political capacity.

At a moment when committees and petitions and great county meetings showed how thoroughly the national anger was roused against the existing system, Burke came to the front of affairs with a scheme, of which the most striking characteristic proved to be that it was profoundly temperate.