He went to work with the zeal of a religious enthusiast, intent on purging his Church and his faith of the corruptions which lowered it in the eyes of men.

There was no part or order of government so obscure, so remote, or so complex, as to escape his acute and persevering observation.
Burke's object, in his schemes for Economical Reform, was less to husband the public resources and relieve the tax-payer--though this aim could not have been absent from his mind, overburdened as England then was with the charges of the American war--than to cut off the channels which supplied the corruption of the House of Commons.

The full title of the first project which he presented to the legislature (February 1780), was, A Plan for the Better Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments.

It was to the former that he deemed the latter to be the most direct road.

The strength of the administration in the House was due to the gifts which the Minister had in his hands to dispense.