John Wade, The Black Book: An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State [1835]

Edition used:

The Black Book: An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State, Courts of Law, Municipal Corporations, and Public Companies; with a Précis of the House of Commons, Past, present, and to come. A New Edition, greatly enlarged and corrected to the present time. By the Original Editor. With an Appendix (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1835).

- Author: John Wade

About this title:

An extraordinary document which details the corruption and financial abuses of the British government as well as the sinecures and privileges of the army, church, and other groups. It was drawn up by John Wade as part of the radical movement to expand the franchise in England. It went through many editions. The work is an excellent example of the Philosophic Radicals class theory of political power. This edition one is the revised and expanded edition of 1835. Previous editions were known as the “extraordinary” Black Book.

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- “We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

- That SHAKSPEARE spake; the faith and morals hold

- Which MILTON held. In everything we are sprung

- Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold._____”

Engraved for the Extraordinary Black Book from Originals by Percy Roberts.

PUBLISHED BY, EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. LONDON, 12TH MARCH, 1832.

LONDON:

MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NEW EDITION.

THE rapid sale of a large impression of The Black Book has speedily afforded an opportunity for again subjecting it to severe revision, and this it has undergone in every department. Besides improving the arrangement, the Lists of Places, Pensions, and Pluralists have been carefully corrected, and the illustrative notes revised. The reductions in salaries and allowances, the settlement of the Civil List, and other economical arrangements of Ministers, either actually effected, or in contemplation, have been noticed.

Besides correction, many parts have been greatly enlarged, as those on the Church, Legal Sinecures, the Bank of England, and East-India Company; in the former a section has been added on the Numbers, Wealth, and Educational Efficiency of the Dissenters; and in the last have been comprised the chief facts and considerations involved in the approaching renewal of the charters of these two powerful associations. In addition, several new chapters have been introduced on subjects of immediate national interest; one on the Origin and Present State of CORPORATIONS IN CITIES AND TOWNS, and on COMPANIES, GUILDS AND FRATERNITIES: these form branches of the ancient institutions of the country, and an account of them was essential to the completeness of our work. A chapter has been added on the Principles of Finance, Abuses in the Government Expenditure, and the Workings of Taxation. Also a Précis of the HOUSE OF COMMONS, Past, Present, and to Come; with details illustrative of the Reform Bill, and the present state of parties and opinions.

In the APPENDIX will be found many new articles and tables of value, as those on the Ecclesiastical Patronage of the Nobility—the House of Lords—Inns of Court—Church Rates—Trinity College—Colonial Statistics—Civil Contingencies—Remarks on the Reports on Irish Tithes—Commissioners of Sewers—Lay and Clerical Magistrates, &c.

Notwithstanding our anxiety to be correct, we cannot be sure that in every case we have succeeded. Our work is an assemblage of facts and principles, and it would be wonderful, if, in so great a number, some errors had not escaped vigilance. Of errors of intention we know we are guiltless; of those which have originated in the inaccuracy of the official returns and other sources of information on which we have relied, we cannot be so confident.

All parliamentary and public documents, whatever could throw light on the Ecclesiastical Establishments, the Civil List and Hereditary Revenues, the Courts of Law and Judicial Administration, the Aristocracy, Public Offices, Funding System, Public Revenue, Pensions, Sinecures, and other departments of our work, have been consulted. Our object has been an honest one, and we have sought to attain it by honest means: nothing has been exaggerated, nor has a single fact been wilfully misstated; we needed not the aid of falsehood, our case being strong enough without it, and we refer to the references on our pages to attest the veracity of our sources of intelligence. The statements we have made we shall at all times be ready to defend, but cannot answer for those which have been mistakenly imputed to us. It has unfortunately happened, either from similarity of name or other circumstance, many representations have been placed to our account with which we had nothing in common, and of which any one might be convinced by reference to our publication. In a high quarter we have been most unjustly aspersed: we believe it was unintentional; but, consistently with honour, atonement ought to have been made by open acknowledgement in the same place where the injury was inflicted. Instead of exaggeration we have leaned to an opposite course; whenever we had doubts, from the absence of authentic information, about the correctness of a statement, we omitted it altogether: if, in the statements of the emoluments of individuals, the errors on the side of redundancy were compared with those of deficiency, we know—and many names inscribed on our pages know too—which would preponderate. These, however, are the evils of a day, while the good we have done will be lasting. By the improvement of the Game Laws the Aristocracy have torn out one leaf from our pages; when, in like manner, they have torn out the rest, our labours will cease—and not till then.

The Black Book is the Encyclopedia of English politics for the Georgian era, and will last as long as the abuses it exposes shall endure. It was, originally, brought out in periodical numbers twelve years ago, and laboured under the disadvantages incident to that mode of publication. Defective as the publication was, it excited unusual interest; though ill-arranged, rough in manner, and incorrect in matter, it contained a striking development of Oligarchical abuse, and thus fixed the attention of the public. It was oftentimes reprinted, and upwards of 14,000 copies were sold, almost without the expense of advertisement, or any of those helps from literary notices which are usually deemed essential to give celebrity to the productions of the press. In the edition of last year an endeavour was made to remedy the defects of the first undertaking; in this we flatter ourselves the task has been nearly completed.

The object of the Editor at first was, and now has been, to show the manifold abuses of an unjust and oppressive system; to show the dire calamities it has inflicted on the country, and by what ramifications of influence it has been supported.

Government has been a corporation, and had the same interests and the same principles of action as monopolists. It has been supported by other corporations; the Church has been one, the Agriculturists another; the Boroughs a third, the East-India Company a fourth, and the Bank of England a fifth: all these, and interests like these, constituted the citadel and out-works of its strength, and the first object of each has been to shun investigation. We have, however, rent the vail; those who before doubted may, if they please, come and see, and be convinced.

In lieu of the old system we are told a new one is in progress of being substituted; intelligence, not patronage, is to form the pivot of public authority: the idea is a grand one,—it is worthy of the age, and we wait in hope to see it practically realized.

In conclusion we must observe that many opinions have been introduced, from which, we doubt not, our readers will dissent; we regret this, but it is unavoidable. Our object has been Truth, not to compromise with error, nor knowingly pander to any prejudice, aristocratic or democratic. We have an aversion to war, foreign and domestic; nor do we love spoliation either on the part of the People or their Rulers. The land is full of miseries; we share them not, neither do we profit by them; but it is the impulse of our nature to wish to see them alleviated. In place of a bad government we wish a good one substituted; for it is not individuals, but the power of the State, directed by intelligence, which must administer to the maladies of a nation. And even wisdom and good intentions, without co-operation on the part of the community, would be unavailing. Public disorders of long standing and extremely complicated require deliberation as well as remedial applications. But while we crave indulgence for an Administration we believe patriotic, it must be an indulgence accompanied with constant watchfulness, and even suspicion, on the part of the People.

March 16th, 1832.

ADDRESS TO THE NEW EDITION.

IN our Dedication, written about a twelvemonth since, we expressed a want of confidence in the Whig Ministry. In the interval they have gained on our esteem. They mean well, but the difficulties they have to surmount are great. Arrayed against them are all the interests identified with public abuses, and which have so long flourished by the ruin of the country; but they must be compelled to yield. The People are quiescent; it is the quiescence of hope: should doubt prevail, they will rise in their might and scatter the band—the factious band that would interpose its selfish ends between the weal of twenty-four millions of persons.

The People have nobly done their duty, and Ministers must do theirs. In the words of their chief, they are individually pledged to the REFORM BILL; it is the tenure of administration. They know their power; and to have held office so long without the means and determination to accomplish the public wish, would have been basely perfidious,—it would have been treachery to the nation. Their honour is bound up in the Bill—our patriotic Monarch is faithful—the People are unanimous—and it must be carried in all its integrity. Every interest in the empire is abased, shaken, or powerless, except that of Reform, and it must triumph: it is essential to the harmony of the Constitution and the peace of the community.

Hitherto, in their domestic policy, Ministers have claims on the confidence of the public. In Ireland they have endeavoured to substitute national interests and toleration, for the reign of factions and religious feuds. They have not fomented plots, nor sought by new laws to abridge popular liberties. They have entered on the Augean stable of judicial abuses. They have cut down a part of our enormous establishments; they have even touched their own salaries, and meditate further reductions. In the work of economy has consisted their greatest difficulty; it tends to generate opposition and discontent among those who ought to be their servants, and, by impairing future prospects, dilutes the zeal of mercenary supporters; but it has conciliated the esteem of the People.

Abroad they have maintained peace and leaned to the side of constitutional governments. The battle of continental freedom is not yet won. A terrible phalanx is couched in the North and East, which waits only the acquiescence or neutrality of this country to open a new crusade against liberal institutions. While England and France are united, the hordes of Tyrants will not break from their ambush. Englishmen are awake! Feudal pretexts of national rivalry and hereditary hate will not excite hostile feelings towards a nation with which so many interests in common ought to unite them in amicable bonds. They rightly appreciate the Aberdeen school of foreign politics; they will not again suffer the produce of industry to be squandered and future calamities entailed in support of aristocratic wars,—in support of wars to defend Misrule at home and Despotism abroad!

So long as Ministers pursue national objects, they will be supported. They have opposed to them only that delinquent Muster-roll with whose names are associated every lavish grant—every attack on public liberty—every insolence of authority for the last forty years. That they should be vanquished by a set like this, when supported by the People, is impossible. While, however, we seek for them popular aid, it is, we repeat, an aid accompanied with unceasing vigilance. Government is power, and its agents will luxuriate in the enjoyment without strict responsibility. Its inherent tendency is to abuse, not to improvement. Individuals are slow to reform without imperative motives; governments are still more reluctant: they are always prompt to bequeath the redemption of their follies to their successors; while posterity has cause to lament that justice has not been contemporary with guilt.

March 17th, 1832.

DEDICATION TO THE PEOPLE.

To the People our labours may be fitly inscribed—they are the tribunal of last resort,—also the victims of Misrule,—and to them, therefore, may be properly dedicated a record of the abuses from which they have long suffered, and of the means by which they may be alleviated.

All the blessings the nation ought to enjoy have been intercepted,—the rewards of industry, science, and virtue have been dissipated in iniquitous wars abroad—at home, in useless establishments, in Oligarchical luxury, folly, and profusion.

If we wanted proof of misgovernment—of incapacity and turpitude—Ireland affords a frightful example: it is not Mr. O’Connell who causes her agitation; he is only one of the fruits of Tyranny,—an effect, not the cause, of the disorders, which have originated in the neglect of her vast resources, in an unemployed population, an absentee proprietary, and a plundering church. To the wretchedness of Ireland, England is fast approaching, and just as little from the efforts of individual disturbers. It is not the manufacturing, but the agricultural districts which are now excited; these have always formed the exclusive domain of the Clergy and Aristocracy;—the rural population is exactly what tithes, game-laws, the country magistracy, Church-of-Englandism, and a luxurious and non-resident priesthood have made them. And what do we behold? The people have risen against their pastors and landlords, and have resorted to nightly outrage and revenge—the last resort of the oppressed for wrongs for which neither remedy nor inquiry has been vouchsafed.

We are not of the number of those who inculcate patient submission to undeserved oppression. A favourite toast of Dr. Johnson was, “Success to an insurrection of the BLACKS!” Shall we say—Success to the rising of the WHITES! We should at once answer yes, did we not think some measures would be speedily adopted to mitigate the bitter privations and avert the further degradation of the labouring classes.

A new era, we are told, is about to commence:—no more liberticide wars—no more squanderings of the produce of industry in sinecures and pensions—and, above all, reform is to be conceded. We wait in patience. Our diseases are manifold and require many remedies, but the last is the initiative of all the rest, involving at once the destruction of partial interests—of monopolies, corn-laws, judicial abuse, unequal taxation,—and giving full weight and expression to the general weal and intelligence. If Ministers are honest, they deserve and will require all the support the People can give them to overturn a system which is the reverse: if they are not, they will be soon passed under the ban of their predecessors, with the additional infamy of having deceived by pledges which they never meant to redeem. We have hope, but no confidence.

Public opinion, and not Parliament, is omnipotent; it is that which has effected all the good which has been accomplished, and it is that alone which must effect the remainder. Unfortunately, Government can never be better constituted than it is for the profit of those who share in its administration; they have no interest in change, and their great maxims of rule are,—first, to concede nothing, so long as it can with safety be refused; secondly, to concede as little as possible; and, lastly, only to concede that little when every pretext for delay and postponement has been exhausted. Such are the arcana of those from whom reform is to proceed, and it is unnecessary to suggest the watchfulness, unanimity, and demonstrations by which they must be opposed.

Some of the Ministers are honest—they are all ingenious, and, no doubt, will have an ingenious plan, with many ingenious arguments for its support, concocted for our acceptance,—a plan with many convolutions, cycles, and epicycles—and, perhaps, endeavour to substitute the shadow for the substance! But it will avail them nothing; the balance is deranged, and it must be adjusted by a real increase of democratic power. The remedy, too, must be one of immediate action, not of gradual incorporation; it must not be patch-work—no disfranchising of non-resident voters—the transfer of the right of voting to great towns—the lessening of election expenses—and stuff of that sort. Such tinkering will not merit discussion, and would leave the grievance precisely in its original state.

We have fully stated our views on the subject in the concluding article of our work: by their accomplishment a real reform would be obtained, and all good would follow in their train. Our last wishes are, that the PEOPLE, to whom we dedicate our labours, will be firm—united—and persevering; and, rely upon it, we are on the eve of as great a social regeneration as the destruction of Feudality, the abasement of Popery, or any other of the memorable epochs which have signalized the progress of nations.

February 1st, 1831.

ADDENDUM.

MINISTERIAL PLANS ON TITHES.

WE thought of submitting some observations on the recent reports of the two Houses of Parliament on Irish tithes, and the resolutions founded upon them, but, in looking over what we have written, we find the subject has been nearly exhausted in our copious articles on the united churches of England and Ireland. If the project of Ministers for converting arrears of tithes in Ireland into debts of the crown, and levying them by government process, be enforced, it concedes at once the important principle in dispute as to the tenure of church property. If an evasion of tithes may be prosecuted by the attorney-general, like an evasion of the excise or revenue laws, then is the income of the church identified with the income of the State, and the clergy admitted to be the stipendiaries of the public. Nothing, however, we apprehend, will ultimately result from the government measure: these are not the times to harden the tithe laws, and convert what has been hitherto treated as a civil delinquency, when committed by a whole body of Christians, into a criminal charge when committed by an entire kingdom. Ministers in this, as other emergencies, will be compelled to succumb to events. Public opinion obviously points to two inevitable conclusions,—first, the abolition of the Irish protestant establishment as a national church; and, secondly, the appropriation of the tithes and ecclesiastical revenue to the wants of society, and not suffering the former to be amalgamated with the rents of the landlords.

The increasing numbers and wealth of Dissenters indicate that the fate of tithes in Ireland involves their fate in England. Such are the conflicting claims of religionists that in all measures of general improvement, whether as respects popular education or parliamentary reform, the Government is embarrassed rather than supported by its alliance with any; and we doubt not the question will soon arise whether it would not be better policy for the State to withdraw its support from the privileged worship, rather than be compelled to adopt the alternative, which will be speedily forced upon its consideration, of granting a common support both to separatists and members of the national church.

In these movements there is nothing to excite alarm; least of all in the prompt extinction of tithe. It is an impolitic and impoverishing impost condemned by Mr. Pitt and every statesman of eminence, and the only miracle is that it has been so long upheld. The attempt to confound rent with tithe is monstrous. One is as much private property as the wages of the operative, and every one, rich or poor, is alike interested in maintaining its inviolability. The difference between them is almost as great as that between useful industry and downright robbery; or the sinecure of lord Ellenborough and the salary of an efficient servant of the public.

The most difficult part of the question is the settlement of existing interests. A substantial difference has always appeared to us to subsist between the claims of the clerical and lay-tithe owner, and we have expressed as much on a former occasion (p. 91). Beyond a life interest we imagine no one would claim a compensation for the clergy, and even for this it would be fair to accept a compromise. It is a plain case of bankruptcy, and in lieu of receiving the full value they must be content with a dividend. If such is their lot, they will not be alone in misfortune. What a sinking in the condition of most classes at this moment, and how many fortunes have been cut from under the possessors within the last twenty years! What fluctuations have been wrought by changes in the currency, the introduction of machinery, and improvements in mercantile law! The clergy cannot expect to be exempt from the vicissitudes of life. They ought, themselves, to practise the precepts of resignation it has been their duty to inculcate in others, and place their affections on treasures more enduring than temporal possessions.

If the occupation of the clergy be gone, it is their own fault, and they have only themselves to blame. Government has always been prompt to lend its aid to support the ecclesiastical establishment; but the days are past when the “arm of flesh” could be put forth to control the religious faith of a nation. The basis of the contract between Church and State is that the latter shall afford protection, on condition the former affords spiritual instruction, to the people. If, however, the people secede from the established communion, or if its ministers, from want of zeal—correct discipline—or soundness of doctrine—fail to make converts of the community over which they are the appointed pastors; why, then, it may be reasonably inferred that as the duties have ceased, or failed to be discharged, the stipends annexed to them ought to cease also; or, at least, the servants of the fallen or abandoned worship ought only to be paid temporary allowances—as was the case with the Catholic clergy at the Reformation—till such time as they can adjust themselves to the altered circumstances of society.

A consideration of a peculiar nature tends to augment the difficulties of this embarrassing subject, and the apprehensions naturally felt by many at the sinking state of the Irish protestant establishment. By the articles of UNION the churches of the two kingdoms are united into one episcopal church, under the denomination of “the United Church of England and Ireland.” It was no doubt esteemed good policy in the framers of this great legislative measure to support the weakness of one church by the strength of the other; but in the existing circumstances of the two countries it is likely the English hierarchy will consider it true wisdom to imitate the example of a certain order of the creation, remarkable for prescience of coming calamites, and endeavour to scape from so perilous an alliance!

The Black Book: An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State, Courts of Law, Municipal Corporations, and Public Companies

THE EXTRAORDINARY Black Book.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

RELIGION and the institution of property, the pursuits of science, literature, and commerce have greatly benefited the human race. Christianity is peculiarly the worship of the people: among them it originated, and to the promotion of their welfare its precepts are especially directed. Under the influence of its dogmas the pride of man is rebuked, the prejudices of birth annihilated, and the equal claim to honour and enjoyment of the whole family of mankind impartially admitted.

Men of liberal principles have sometimes shown themselves hostile to the Gospel; forgetting, apparently, that it has been the handmaid of civilization, and that for a long time it mitigated, and, finally, greatly aided in breaking the yoke of feudality. They are shocked at the corruptions of the popular faith, and hastily confound its genuine principles with the intolerance of Bigotry, the oppression of tithes, the ostentation of prelacy, and the delinquencies of its inferior agents, who pervert a humble and consoling dispensation into an engine of pride, gain, and worldliness. In spite, however, of these adulterations, the most careless observer cannot deny the generally beneficial influence of the Christian doctrine, in promoting decorum and equality of civil rights, in spreading a spirit of peace, charity, and universal benevolence.

As education becomes more diffused, the ancillary power of the best of creeds will become less essential to the well-being of society. Religions have mostly had their origin in our depravity and ignorance; they have been the devices of man’s primitive legislators, who sought, by the creations of the imagination, to control the violence of his passions, and satisfy an urgent curiosity concerning the phenomena by which he is surrounded. But the progress of science and sound morals renders superfluous the arts of illusion; inventions, which are suited only to the nursery, or an imperfect civilization, are superseded; and men submitting to the guidance of reason instead of fear, the dominion of truth, unmixed with error, is established on the ruins of priestcraft.

Even now may be remarked the advance of society towards a more dignified and rational organization. The infallibility of popes, the divine right of kings, and the privileges of aristocracy, have lost their influence and authority: they once formed a sort of secular religion, and were among the many delusions by which mankind have been plundered and enslaved. Superstition, too, is gradually fading away by shades; and it is not improbable it may entirely vanish, ceasing to be an object of interest, further than as a singular trait in the moral history of the species. Formerly, all sects were bigots, ready to torture and destroy their fellow-creatures in the vain effort to enforce uniformity of belief; now, the fervour of all is so far attenuated, as to admit not only of dissent, but equality of claim to civil immunities. The next dilution in pious zeal is obvious. Universal toleration is the germ of indifference; and this last the forerunner of an entire oblivion of spiritual faith. Such appears the natural death of ecclesiastical power; it need not to be hastened by the rude and premature assaults of Infidelity, which only shock existing prejudices, without producing conviction: while the priesthood continue to aid the civil magistrate, their authority will be respected; but when, from the diffusion of science, new motives for the practice of virtue and the maintenance of social institutions are generally established, the utility of their functions will cease to be recognized.

Sensible men of all ages have treated with respect the established worship of the people. If so unfortunate as to disbelieve in its divine origin, they at least classed it among the useful institutions necessary to restrain the passions of the multitude. This was the predominant wisdom of the Roman government. Speaking of this great empire, in its most triumphant exaltation, GIBBON says, “The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious part of their subjects. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the known world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.” Further on he continues, “Notwithstanding the fashionable irreligion which prevailed in the age of the Antonines, both the interests of priests and the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected. In their writings and conversation, the philosophers asserted the independent dignity of reason; but they resigned their actions to the command of law and custom. Viewing with a smile of pity the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temple of the gods, and, sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of the atheist under the sacerdotal robes. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence the altars of the Libyan, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter.”

Can it be supposed the statesmen and teachers of the nineteenth century are less adroit and sagacious than those of pagan Rome? Can it be supposed those whose minds have been enlightened by foreign travel, who have witnessed the conflict of opposite creeds, and who have escaped the mental bondage of cloisters and colleges in the freedom of general intercourse, are less penetrating than the magnates of the ancient world? Like them too, they will be equally politic in maintaining an outward respect for the errors of the vulgar. In the prevailing worship they recognize an useful auxiliary to civil government; prosecuting no one for dissent, it can as little offend the philosopher as politician; and the topics of all-absorbing interest it holds forth to every class, divert the vast majority from too intense a contemplation of sublunary misfortunes, or from the painful contrast of their privations with the usurpations and advantages of their superiors.

The policy of governing nations by enlightening the few and hoodwinking the many, is of very old standing. It is strongly inculcated by Machiavel in his Prince, and Dugald Stewart remarks, that public men of the present day mostly hold the double-doctrine; that is, they have one set of principles which they openly profess in complacence to the multitude, and another, comprising their real sentiments, which they keep to themselves, or confide to intimate friends. The result of this sinister policy may be constantly remarked in the proceedings of legislative assemblies: in the discussion of questions bearing on the social interests, especially such as involve the principles of government, the theory of morals, or population, there is invariably maintained a conventional latitude, beyond which if any one trespass, it is deemed more creditable to his sincerity than understanding. It is only the vain and superficial who unreservedly assail popular opinions, and prophane with invective and ribaldry the sanctities of religion. Such rash controversialists are ignorant of the points d’appui upon which the welfare and harmony of society depend; and though it may happen that honour, philanthropy, or patriotism be sufficient guarantees for the discharge of social duties by some, there are others whose turpitude can only be restrained by the fear of Tyburn or Tartarus. Hence theological inquiries have lost much of their interest, and are, in fact, placed beyond the pale of discussion. The mysteries of religion are well understood by the intelligent of all classes; it is considered for the good of society that some should “believe and tremble,” while others enjoy, in private, the consciousness of superior light; and to those who impugn and to those who dogmatise in matters of faith, the same indulgence is extended as to well-meaning disputants, who utter, as new discoveries, commonplace or self-evident truths.

Having made these general observations on the utility of religion, considered as a civil institution for the government of mankind during a period of ignorance, we shall proceed to our more immediate object—an exposition of the Established Church of this country.

In our elucidations of this important inquiry, it is not our intention to interfere with the doctrines of the national religion. We have heard that there are more than one hundred different sects of Christians: so it would be highly presumptuous in mere laymen to decide which of these multifarious modes of worship is most consonant to the Scripture. A certain Protestant Archbishop said, “Popery was only a religion of knaves and fools;” therefore, let us hope the Church of England, to which the Right Reverend Prelate belonged, comprises the honest and enlightened. The main purpose of our inquiries, is not the dogmas, but the temporalities of the Church. To us the great possessions of the clergy have long appeared an immense waste, which wanted surveying and enclosing, if not by act of parliament, by the act of the people. Like some of our political institutions, the excellence of our religious establishment has been greatly over-rated; it has been described as the most perfect in Europe; yet we are acquainted with none in which abuses are more prevalent, in which there is so little real piety, and in which the support of public worship is so vexatious and oppressive to the community.

Most countries on the Continent have reformed their church establishments: wherever a large property had accumulated in the hands of the clergy, such property has been applied to the service of the nation; and we are now the only people who have a large mass of ecclesiastical wealth appropriated to the maintenance of an indolent and luxurious priesthood. Even in papal Rome the church property has been sold to pay the national debt; so that far more property belonging to the clergy is to be found in any part of England of equal extent than in the Roman state. The cardinals of Rome, the bishops, canons, abbotts, and abbesses, have no longer princely revenues. A cardinal who formerly had thousands has now only four or five hundred pounds a-year. Residence is strictly enforced, and no such thing as pluralities is known; the new proprietors of the Church estates live on them and improve them to the best advantage. In France, there has been a still greater ecclesiastical reformation. Before the Revolution the clergy formed one fifty-second part of the population. The total number of ecclesiastics, in 1789, was estimated at 460,000, and their revenues at £7,400,000. At present the total number of ecclesiastics of all ranks, Protestant and Catholic, is about 40,000, and their total incomes £1,460,000. Throughout Germany and Italy there have been great reforms in spiritual matters; the property of the church has been sold or taxed for the use of the state, and the enormous incomes of the higher have been more equally shared among the lower order of the clergy. In the Netherlands, the charges for religion, which supply the wants of the whole community, except those of a few Jews, do not, in the whole, exceed £252,000, or 10d. per head per annum, for a population of six millions. Even in Spain, under the most weak and bigotted government, ecclesiastical reform has made progress. A large portion of the produce of tithe is annually appropriated to the exigences of the State, and the policy adopted of late has dispossessed the clergy of their wealth; and this body, formerly so influential, is now lightly esteemed, and very moderately endowed.

Wherever these reforms have been made, they have been productive of the most beneficial effects; they have been favourable to religion and morality, to the real interests of the people, and even to the interests of the great body of the clergy themselves; they have broken the power of an order of men at all times cruel and tyrannical, at all times opposed to reform, to the progress of knowledge, and the most salutary ameliorations; they have diffused a spirit of toleration among all classes, removed the restrictions imposed by selfish bigotry, and opened an impartial career to virtue and talent in all orders; they have spread plenty in the land by unfettering the efforts of capital and industry, paid the debts of nations, and converted the idle and vicious into useful citizens. Wherever these changes have been introduced, they have been gratefully received by the People, and well they might; for with such changes their happiness is identified, liberty and intelligence diffused.

To England, however, the spirit of ecclesiastical improvement has not yet extended; though usually foremost in reform, we are now behind all nations in our ecclesiastical establishment; though the Church of England is ostentatiously styled the reformed Church, it is, in truth, the most unreformed of all the churches. Popery, in temporal matters at least, is a more reformed religion than Church of Englandism. There is no state, however debased by superstition, where the clergy enjoy such prodigious wealth. The revenues of our priesthood exceed the public revenues of either Austria or Prussia. We complain of the poor-rates, of superannuation charges, of the army and navy, of overgrown salaries and enormous sinecures; but what are all these abuses, grievous as they are, to the abuses of our church establishment, to the sinecure wealth of the bishops, dignitaries, and aristocratical rectors and incumbents? It is said, and we believe truly, that the clergymen of the Church of England and Ireland receive, in the year, more money than the clergy of all the rest of the Christian world put together. The clergy of the United Church cost at least seven times more than the whole of the clergy of France, Catholic and Protestant, while in France there is a population of 32,000,000; whereas, of the 24,000,000 of people comprising the population of our islands, less than one-third, or 8,000,000, are hearers of the Established Religion.

Such a system, it is not possible, can endure. While reform and reduction are in progress in other departments, it is not likely the clergy should remain in undisturbed enjoyment of their possessions. To protect them from inquiry, they have neither prescriptive right nor good works to plead. As a body they have not, latterly, been remarkable for their learning, nor some of them for exalted notions of morality. It would be unfair to judge any class from individual examples; but it is impossible to open the newspapers without being struck by the repeated details of clerical delinquency. When there is an instance of magisterial oppression, or flagrant offence, it is almost surprising if some father in God, some very reverend dean, or some other reverend and holy person, be not accused or suspected. In this respect they resemble the clergy of the Church of Rome before the Reformation. It is known that the catholic priesthood in the fourteenth century exceeded all other classes in the licentiousness of their lives, their oppression, and rapacity; it is known, too, that their vices arose from the immense wealth they enjoyed, and that this wealth was the ultimate cause of their downfal.

It is not to the credit of the established clergy, that their names have been associated with the most disastrous measures in the history of the country. To the latest period of the first war against American independence, they were, next to George III. its most obstinate supporters; out of the twenty-six English Bishops, Shipley was the only prelate who voted against the war-faction. To the commencement and protracted duration of the French revolutionary war, they were mainly instrumental; till they sounded the ecclesiastical drum in every parish, there was no disposition to hostilities on the part of the people; it was only by the unfounded alarms they disseminated, respecting the security of property and social institutions, the contest was made popular. In this, too, the episcopal bench was pre-eminent. Watson was the only bishop who ventured to raise his voice against the French crusade, and he, finding his opposition to the court fixed him in the poorest see in the kingdom, in the latter part of his life appeared to waver in his integrity. In supporting measures for restraining the freedom of discussion, and for interdicting to different sects of religionists a free participation in civil immunities, they have mostly been foremost.

Uniformly in the exercise of legislative functions, our spiritual lawmakers have evinced a spirit hostile to improvement, whether political, judicial, or domestic, and shown a tenacious adherence to whatever is barbarous, oppressive, or demoralizing in our public administration. The African slave-trade was accompanied by so many circumstances of cruelty and injustice, that it might have been thought the Bishops would have been the most forward in their endeavours to effect its abolition. Yet the fact is quite the contrary. They constantly supported that infamous traffic, and so marked was their conduct in this respect, that Lord Eldon was led, on one occasion, to declare that the commerce in human bodies could not be so inconsistent with Christianity as some had supposed, otherwise it would never have been so steadily supported by the right reverend prelates. The efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly and others to mitigate the severity of the Criminal Code never received any countenance or support from the Bishops. But the climax of their legislative turpitude consists in their conduct on the first introduction of the Reform Bill. Setting aside the political advantages likely to result from this great measure, one of its obvious consequences was the destruction of the shameless immoralities and gross perjuries committed in parliamentary elections. Yet the Heads of the Church, in their anti-reform speeches, never once adverted to this improvement; their fears appeared chiefly to centre on the ulterior changes in our institutions which might flow from the Bill, and which might involve a sacrifice of their inordinate emoluments, and under this apprehension they voted against the people and reform.

Public education is a subject that appears to have peculiar claims on the attention of the clergy; unless indeed, as instructors of the people, their functions are extremely unimportant, and certainly, in this world, do not entitle them to much remuneration. Yet this is a duty they have generally neglected. Had not a jealousy of the Dissenters roused them into activity, neither the Bell nor Lancaster plans of instruction would have been encouraged by them. A similar feeling appears to have actuated them in the foundation of King’s College, in which their object is not so much the diffusion of knowledge, as the maintenance of their influence, by setting up a rival establishment to the London University. In short, they have generally manifested either indifference or open hostility to the enlightenment of the people, and, in numerous instances of eleemosynary endowments, they have appropriated to their own use the funds bequeathed for popular tuition.

So little connexion is there between the instruction of the people and the Church establishment, that it may be stated as a general rule that the ignorance and degradation of the labouring classes throughout England are uniformly greatest where there are the most clergy, and that the people are most intelligent and independent where there are the fewest clergy. Norfolk and Suffolk, for instance, are pre-eminently parsons’ counties; Norfolk has 731 parishes, and Suffolk 510. Yet it has been publicly affirmed, by those well-informed on the subject, that so far as instruction goes, the peasantry of these two counties are as ignorant as “Indian savages.” The same observation will apply to the southern and midland counties, which have been the chief scene of fires and popular tumults, and where the people have been debased by the maladministration of the poor-laws. Compare the state of these districts with that of the north of England, in which it is generally admitted the people are best instructed and most intelligent, and where, from the great extent of parishes, they can have little intercourse with the parsons. Cumberland has 104 parishes, Durham 75, Northumberland 88, Westmoreland 32, Lancaster 70, West-Riding of Yorkshire 193, Chester 90. It appears that Norfolk alone has a great many more parsons than all these northern counties, containing about one-third of the population of the kingdom. In Lancashire there are only 70 parsons for a million and a half of people; yet so little detriment have they suffered from the paucity of endowed pastors, that barristers generally consider the intelligence of a Lancashire common jury equal to that of a special jury of most counties.

A feeling of charity is the great beauty of Christianity; it is, indeed, the essence of all virtue, for, if real, it imports a sympathy with the privations of others divested of selfish considerations. The rich and prosperous do not need this commiseration; if they are not happy, it is their own fault, resulting from their artificial desires and ill-regulated passions. But the poor, without the means of comfortable subsistence, have scarcely a chance of happiness, though equally entitled with others to share in the enjoyments of life. It is the especial duty of the clergy to mitigate extreme inequalities in the lot of their fellow-creatures. Yet it is seldom their labours are directed to so truly a Christian object; though wallowing in wealth, a large portion of which is the produce of funds originally intended for the destitute and unfortunate, they manifest little sympathy in human wretchedness. As a proof of their ordinary callousness, it may be instanced that, at the numerous public meetings to relieve the severe distress of the Irish, in 1822, not a single Irish bishop attended, when it was notorious the immense sums abstracted by that class from the general produce of the country had been a prominent cause of the miseries of the people.

The clergy might be usefully employed in explaining to popular conviction the causes of the privations of the people, and in enforcing principles more conducive to their comfort and independence. In the agricultural districts, where their authority is least disputed, and where the sufferings of the inhabitants are greatest, such a course might be pursued under peculiar advantages. Their remissness in this respect is less excusable, since they are relieved from cares which formerly engaged anxious attention. In the time of Hoadley, Barrow, and Tillotson, much of the zeal and talent of the church was consumed in theological controversy: the removal of civil disqualifications has tended to assuage the fervour of ecclesiastical disputation, and the clergy have only tithes, not dogmas, to defend. This tendency to religious tranquillity has been also promoted by the indifference of the people, who discovered that little fruit was to be reaped from polemical disquisitions, which, like the researches of metaphysicians, tended to perplex rather than enlighten. Men now derive their religions as they do parochial settlements, either from their parents or birth-place, and seldom, in after life, question the creed, whether sectarian or orthodox, which has been implanted in infancy. The all-subduing influence of early credulity is proverbial. Once place a dogma in the catechism, and it becomes stereotyped for life, and is never again submitted to the ordeal of examination.

- By education most have been misled,

- So they believe because they so were bred;

- The priest continues what the nurse began,

- And thus the child imposes on the man!

- —Hind and Panther.

It is the inefficiency of the clergy as public teachers, the hurtful influence they have exerted on national affairs, and their inertness in the promotion of measures of general utility, that induce men to begrudge the immense revenue expended in their support, and dispose them to a reform in our ecclesiastical establishment. To the Church of England, in the abstract, we have no weighty objection to offer; and should be sorry to see her spiritual functions superseded by those of any other sect by which she is surrounded. Our dislike originates in her extreme oppressiveness on the people, and her unjust dealings towards the most deserving members of her own communion. To the enormous amount of her temporalities, and abuses in their administration, we particularly demur. It is unseemly, we think, and inconsistent with the very principles and purposes of Christianity, to contemplate lofty prelates with £20,000 or £40,000 a-year, elevated on thrones, living sumptuously in splendid palaces, attended by swarms of menials, gorgeously attired, and of priests to wait upon their persons, emulating the proudest nobles, and even taking precedence of them in all the follies of heraldry. Beneath them are crowds of sinecure dignitaries and incumbents, richly provided with worldly goods, the wealthiest not even obliged to reside among their flocks; and those who reside not compelled to do any one act of duty beyond providing and paying a miserable deputy just enough to keep him from starving. Contrasted with the preceding, is a vast body of poor laborious ministers, doing all the work, and receiving less than the pay of a common bricklayer or Irish hodman: but the whole assemblage, both rich and poor, paid so as to be a perpetual burthen upon the people, and to wage, of necessity, a ceaseless strife with those whom they ought to comfort, cherish, and instruct.

These are part of the abuses to which we object, and which we are about to expose; and as we intend our exposition to be complete, it may be proper to state the order in which the several subjects will be treated.

1. We shall inquire into the origin and tenure of Church-property, clearly showing that Church-property is public property, originally intended for, and now available to public uses.

2. We shall inquire into the tenure of patronial immunities; exhibit the present state of Church-patronage, and show, by examples, its abuses and perversion to political and family interests.

3. We shall expose the system of Pluralities, Non-residence, and other abuses in Church Discipline.

4. We shall treat on the enormous Revenues of the Established Clergy, from tithes, church-lands, surplice-fees, public charities, Easter-offerings, rents of pews, and other sources.

5. We shall detail some extraordinary examples of Clerical Rapacity, exemplified in the conduct of the higher clergy, in regard to Queen Ann’s Bounty, and of the Clergy generally, as regards First Fruits, Moduses, and Tithes in London.

6. We shall advert to the history, origin, and defects of the Church Liturgy.

7. We shall compare the Numbers, Wealth, Moral and Educational efficiency of the Protestant Dissenters with the Established Clergy.

8. We shall inquire,—Who would be benefited by a Reform in the Church Establishment?

Lastly, we shall give a statement of the Incomes of the Bishoprics and principal Dignities, and an Alphabetical List of Pluralists in England and Wales, showing the number of livings and other preferments held by each individual, the names of their patrons, their family connexions, and influence.

I.

ORIGIN AND TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.

A late dignitary of the church, the Rev. Dr. Cove, inclines to the idea that the consecration of a tenth part to the clergy was the consequence of “some unrecorded revelation made to Adam;” which, he says, is not only “a most rational, but the most probable solution” of the origin of tithes. To what parish church Adam paid his tithe, this zealous partizan of the establishment has left unascertained; if Adam paid tithe, he must have paid it to himself, or a very near relation,—a practice which, if tolerated in his descendants, would render them less averse from the impost, though it might be far from advantageous to the church establishment.

The only people who can pretend to place the right to tithe on divine authority are the Jews; but such a right, if it ever existed among them, certainly ceased with their theocracy. The Jews of this day pay no tithes for the support of their rabbis; nor, indeed, have any tithes been paid by this nation since the destruction of the Temple and consequent dispersion of the tribe of Levi.

It is so inconsistent with reason, that it may be almost affirmed to be an unquestionable fact, that there never was a religion, either Jew or Gentile, which could legally claim for its maintenance a tenth part of the yearly produce of land and labour. For the clergy to be entitled to a tenth, they ought to form one-tenth of the population; but there never was a mode of worship which required one-tenth of the people to be teachers and ministers. The tribe of Levi had a tenth, because they formed a tenth of the population, and had no other inheritance; but Aaron and his sons had only a tenth of that tenth; so that the clergy received no more than the hundredth part, the remainder being for other uses, for the rest of the Levites, for the poor, the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the temple.

Christianity contains less authority for tithe than Judaism. Jesus Christ ordained no such burden; and in no part of his history is any compulsory provision for the maintenance of the clergy mentioned. Both our Saviour and his Apostles unceasingly taught poverty and humility to their followers, and contempt of worldly goods. Hear their exhortations: “Carry neither scrip nor shoes; into whatever house ye enter, say, Peace.” “Take no care of what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, nor for your bodies what ye shall put on.” “Beware of covetousness; seek not what ye shall eat, but seek the kingdom of God.” “Give alms; provide yourselves with bags that wax not old, a treasure in Heaven that faileth not.” Again, “Distribute unto the poor, and seek treasures in Heaven.” And, again, “Take care that your hearts be not charged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life.”

In all this there is no authority for tithing, and the fathers of the Church were equally hostile to this species of extortion. The council of Antioch, in the fourth century, allowed the bishops to distribute the goods of the Church, but to have no part to themselves. “Have food and raiment, be therewith content,” says the canon. It was only as real Christianity declined, that tithing began. When the simple worship of Christ was corrupted by the adoption of Jewish and Pagan ceremonies; when the saints and martyrs were put in the room of the heathen deities; when the altars, the bishops, prebends, and other corruptions were introduced; then tithes commenced, to support the innovations on the primitive faith.

It is impossible to ascertain exactly the period when tithes were first introduced into this country. During the first ages of the Church, its ministers were supported by charity, by oblations, and voluntary gifts. According to Blackstone, the first mention of tithes in any written English law is in a constitutional decree made in a synod held A.D. 786, wherein the payment of tithes is generally enjoined. But this was no law, merely a general recommendation, and did not, at first, bind the laity. They are next mentioned in the Fœdus Edwardi et Guthurni, or treaty agreed upon between King Guthrun, the Dane, and Alfred and his son Edward the elder, successive kings of England, about the year 900. Guthrun being a Pagan, it was thought necessary to provide for the subsistence of the Christian clergy under his dominion; accordingly the payment of tithes was enjoined, and a penalty imposed for its non-observance; which law is countenanced by the laws of Athelstan, and this, according to the Commentator, is all that can be traced out with regard to their legal origin. In fact, this inquiry, like all others into the early constitutional history of the country, is involved in darkness and contradiction. We are not even satisfactorily informed of the origin of the civil divisions of the kingdom into counties, hundreds, and parishes. These have been commonly ascribed to Alfred; but the researches of late writers have traced them to a period of much earlier date.

One thing, however, is certain as regards tithes, namely, that in England, in France, and, probably, in all Christian countries, they were divided into four portions: one for the bishop, one for the poor, one for the repair of the church, and one for the priest. A late writer attempts to controvert the fourfold division of parochial tithes; but the fact rests upon such unquestionable authority, that it may be deemed a truth placed beyond dispute. Without digressing into any learned research, it may be observed that the quadrupartite division of tithes is still retained in many parishes in Ireland; a point which appears to have been overlooked by the reviewer. In the Diocesan Returns to Parliament in 1820, the bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh and the bishop of Kildare remarked that in their dioceses is preserved the old episcopal establishment of the quarta pars; that is, a portion of the parochial tithes out of every parish is payable to the bishop.

The right of the poor to share in the tithe is established by the tenor of ancient statutes made to protect them from the consequences of the appropriation of parishes by spiritual corporations. After these appropriations had been effected, the religious houses were wont to depute one of their own body to perform divine service in those parishes of which the societies had become possessed of the tithes. This officiating minister was in reality no more than the curate or vicar of the appropriators, receiving from them an arbitrary stipend. Under this system the poor suffered so much, that the legislature was obliged to interpose, and, accordingly, the 15 Rich. II. c. 6 provides, that in all appropriations of churches the diocesan shall order a competent sum to be distributed among the poor parishioners annually; and that the vicar shall be sufficiently endowed. “It seems,” says Blackstone, “the parishes were frequently sufferers, not only by the want of divine service, but also by withholding those alms for which, among other purposes, the payment of tithes was originally imposed; and, therefore, in this act, a pension is directed to be distributed among the poor parochians as well as a sufficient stipend to the vicar.”

One or two facts well attested are better than a hundred ingenious deductions and learned conjectures. What we have advanced not only establishes the original fourfold division of parochial tithes, but also the right of the poor to a portion of them. It also incidentally establishes another fact deserving attention, in showing the falsity of those representations made, from time to time, of the charity and hospitality of the abbeys and monasteries. By masses and obits and other sanctimonious pretexts, the monks possessed themselves of a large number of the benefices in the kingdom; instead of applying the revenues of these to the purposes of religion and charity, they perverted them to the enriching of their own fraternities, and a compulsory act of the legislature was necessary to compel them to restore to the poor a portion of their rights, and allow a decent maintenance to the parish priest. The little charity of the religious houses might be inferred from the general principles of human nature without the aid of facts. It is notorious that they had become the abodes of luxury, indolence, and crime. Who would expect from societies so depraved, either charity or hospitality? The rich, the sensual, and vicious, rarely sympathise with indigence. For their own ease, and, as a motive to indifference, they are mostly prompt to calumniate the poor with unjust aspersions, and represent a lively zeal in their welfare, either as undeserved or mistaken benevolence.

The practice of appropriating livings was first introduced by the Normans; and within three hundred years after, the monks had become the proprietors of one-third of all the benefices in the kingdom, and these for the most part the richest. At the dissolution of the religious houses by the 27 and 31 Hen. VIII. these benefices, by the common law, would have been disappropriated, had not a clause been inserted in these statutes to give them to the King in as ample a manner as the abbots, &c. had held the same at the time of their dissolution. Having thus become the proprietor of one-third of the benefices as well as all the plate, revenues and wealth of the abbeys, the manner in which this monarch disposed of the treasure he had acquired accounts for the present state of ecclesiastical property. With a part of it he founded new bishoprics, colleges, and deaneries; large masses of it he gave to courtiers and noblemen; a portion he retained in his own hands, and the remainder applied to the maintenance of the reformed religion. Individuals, corporations, and colleges, who obtained grants from the Crown, obtained, also, all the rights annexed to them; and the present proprietors of the abbey-lands are proprietors of the tithes and benefices formerly attached to these lands. Hence it is so large a portion of the tithes are in the hands of laymen. It is calculated there are 3845 impropriations in England; that is, benefices, in the hands of persons not engaged in the service of religion, but who receive the great tithes, leaving only the vicarial tithes or other minor endowments for the maintenance of the incumbent,

The effect on society of this new disposition of ecclesiastical property has been differently represented by writers. Discontent is inseparable from the reform of every established practice and institution. Those who profit by abuses, and those who are benefited by their removal must view in different lights and hold forth different representations of measures by which they are oppositely affected. With the dissatisfaction of the monastic orders, there can be no surprise; their condition was that of drones forced from the hives in which they had devoured in idleness the fruits of others’ industry; but the dissatisfaction of other classes cannot be so readily explained. Mr. Hallam states that the summary abolition of the religious houses led to the great northern rebellion: it is certain from the popular ballads of the time, this important measure was a subject of regret to the lower orders; and old Harry Jenkins laments that “those days were over in which he used to be invited to the Lord Abbot’s chamber, to feast on a quarter of a yard of roast beef and wassail in a black jack.” Two reasons may be assigned for the existence of this feeling; either it may be ascribed to the cessation of the almsgiving and hospitality of the conventual bodies, or to the general ignorance of the people. The limited extent of the former has been already shown; if the populace could be conciliated by such miserable charity as we have adverted to, their fatuity may be likened to that of the multitude in more recent times, who are often blinded to their just claims by doles of soup or salt fish, or a bonus of 100 guineas out of an enormous civil list. The extreme ignorance of the people was, doubtless, the principal cause of their hostility to the reformation, and disqualified them from duly estimating the advantages likely to ensue from so great a revolution. While the people continue unenlightened, they must always be subject to their superiors, or those who possess influence enough to delude or direct them. The Forty-Shilling freeholders of Ireland were the alternate slaves of aristocratic landlords and fanatic priests, and in the votes they gave at the instigation of each, as well as in the tameness with which they submitted to be disfranchised, they have manifested a like rational view of their ultimate interests. The monks of the time of Henry VIII. were not less omnipotent over the multitude than the priests of Ireland, or those of Spain and Portugal; under the influence of the former the populace sung out whatever note they were directed; and, unquestionably, such views of the tendency of the reformation would be impressed upon them as best accorded with the interests of their spiritual guides.

To this cause we ascribe the popular feeling as regards the dissolution of monastic establishments. The same spirit opposed the opening of turnpike-roads, and the introduction of the cow-pox and machinery. But it is extremely erroneous to maintain that the Reformation was not a great blessing to the country, and tended, most essentially, to better the condition of the working classes. Had popery (such popery we mean as existed at that day) continued the established religion, the present condition of the people would have been no better than that of the degraded rabble who have restored Don Miguel and Don Ferdinand, and whose miseries, in spite of the almsgiving and hospitality of convents, are sufficiently acute to prevent an increase in their numbers. From the general poverty of the Peninsula, and the state of its agriculture, commerce, and population, fettered and oppressed by aristocratic, ecclesiastic, and corporate immunities, we may form an idea of what England would have been without the Reformation. Knowledge was incompatible with the power of the monks, whose influence was founded on the general belief of miracles, the sanctity of relics, and other pious frauds, to which popular illumination would have been fatal. Without, therefore, the excitement produced by their dispersion, and the freedom of discussion with which it was accompanied, the people would have remained intellectually debased; their ignorance was necessary to the ascendancy of those in whose hands they were, and of course they would have been kept in that state, and withheld from the only means by which their condition in society could be ameliorated. If more substantial benefits have not resulted from the Reformation, it may be easily traced to other causes. That great event certainly put the people in possession, by removing the mental incubus of a degrading superstition, of the most powerful instrument, by which they can be obtained.

It is to be regretted that, at the dissolution of the abbeys, the immense revenue at the disposal of the Crown was not appropriated in a manner more advantageous to the community. One of the great evils in our social economy is the unequal division of property—the vast masses in which it is accumulated by entails and rights of primogeniture in the hands of individuals. This evil was aggravated by transferring the endowments of the monks to the aristocracy, and thus was lost a favourable juncture for obtaining better security for the liberties of the people, by a more equal partition of proprietary influence. Instead of wasting the spoils of the church on rapacious courtiers, it might have been appropriated, as in Scotland, to the establishment of a system of parochial education; or, it might have been applied to sustain the dignity of the Crown, or defray the charges of government without burthening the people, or to other undertakings of general and permanent interest. Of the magnitude of the opportunity thrown away, we may form some idea from the almost incredible wealth of the monastic institutions.

Of the annual value of 388 religious houses, we have no estimate; but, computing the value of these in the same proportion, as of the 653 of which we have the returns, the total revenue of the 1041 houses in England and Wales was £273,106:—a prodigious sum in those days, if we consider the relative value of money, and the smallness of the national income. But incredible as this revenue is, it was only the reserved rents of manors and demesnes, without including the tithes of appropriations, fines, heriots, renewals, deodands, &c. which would probably have amounted to twice as much. Upon good authority it is stated the clergy were proprietors of seven-tenths of the whole kingdom; and, out of the three remaining tenths, thus kindly left to king, lords, and commons, were the four numerous orders of mendicants to be maintained, against whom no gate could be shut, to whom no provision could be denied, and from whom no secret could be concealed.

Mr. Cobbett often amuses his readers by exclamations of astonishment, in contemplating the splendid cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely, Canterbury, and Winchester; considering them incontestable evidence of the great wealth and population of the country at the period of their erection. But it would be quite as correct for future generations to refer to Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace as evidence of the general contentment and prosperity of the kingdom under the government of the Boroughmongers. The fact is, it was not necessary either the population or general wealth of the community should be very great to enable the Catholic priesthood to erect those magnificent, but comparatively useless, structures. Pious souls! they had possessed themselves of nearly the whole land and labour of the community, and would have grasped the remainder, had it not been for the interference of the legislature. Such have been the religious propensities of the English, at all times, that the fervour of their piety has oftener required checking than encouraging by their rulers. It was with this view the Mortmain Act was passed, in the reign of Henry VII. which, by prohibiting the bequest of property to the ecclesiastical bodies, prevented the patrimony of almost every family in the kingdom from being engulphed by the cunning and insatiable monks. Had the vast amount of landed property acquired by spiritual corporations, previously to the passing of this statute, remained tied up in their hands, it must have formed an insuperable obstacle to the development of the productive powers of the country, and under such a system neither the riches nor numbers of the people could have greatly augmented.

The statements of church property before the Reformation would appear exaggerated, had we not illustrative proof in the present state of Ireland and other countries. The mere remnant of the estates of the church, now held by the Irish Protestant Establishment, is calculated at two elevenths of the entire soil of the kingdom. In Tuscany, before the French Revolution had partially regenerated the dukedom, the priesthood was found, from inquiries instituted by the grand duke, to enjoy seventeen parts in twenty of the land. In Spain and Portugal, and in France, the monopoly of the church was nearly as great.

But we shall now leave the subject. We could not treat on the origin of church property in this country, without adverting to the changes effected by the Reformation. We shall next advert to the tenure on which the property of the church devolved, and continues to be holden by our Protestant Establishment.

It seems almost a work of supererogation to set about proving that the property of the established church is public property, the bare terms of the proposition apparently involving the demonstration. What can be understood by an established church, but a church endowed by the state, and, if so endowed, subordinate to the state, and for the benefit thereof? This principle has been recognized in every country in Europe. Wherever church property has been interfered with, (and we know none where it has not been interfered with,) it never appears to have been surmised that the state had not only the power but the right to give a new disposition to ecclesiastical endowments, either by appropriating them to the maintenance of a different religion, or to the necessities of the community. In England this power has been distinctly admitted, as appears from the measures adopted at the Reformation: at that period a commission was appointed to investigate the abuses of the church; a return was made of the value of all monasteries and religious houses, of parochial livings, episcopal and cathedral dignities, and every other species of ecclesiastical revenue, and the whole entered in a book, called Liber Regalis, or the King’s Book. This important document has been recently reprinted by the Commissioners of Public Records; it is the only authentic survey of the revenues of the church; and the result was, as before described, an entire new disposition of ecclesiastical property. No claim appears to have been set up that the property was sacred, and in every succeeding period it has been treated in a similar manner. It has been always considered public property, and the government, for the time being, whether a monarchy under a Tudor, or a commonwealth under Cromwell, has always exercised the right of applying it to secular uses, or to the maintenance of whatever form of faith might be in vogue, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Presbyterian.

Down to our own time the same principle has been constantly acted upon by parliament. In the numerous acts of parliament, passed within the last thirty years, for regulating the sale and exchange of parsonage-houses and glebe-lands, of mortgages in cases of buildings and repairs, church property is invariably treated as public property, the ownership of which is vested in the State. Were it not so, the legislature could have no more right to interfere in the disposal of the property of the church than of the property of private individuals. It could have no right to pass the act for prohibiting the sale of spiritual preferment, by making it penal to present to any benefice for money, gift, or reward. It could have no right to pass the act, by which an incumbent is compelled to pay to his curate the whole, or a proportionate part of the income of his benefice. It could have no right to pass the Church-Building Acts, authorizing the division of parishes, glebes, and tithes; nor the various statutes for regulating the discipline of the clergy, by compelling them to reside on their benefices, or refrain from exercising any trade, or taking any farm of more than eighty acres of land. It is never attempted by such legislative interference, to control the conduct and possessions of laymen. The possessor of an estate can sell it to another in his lifetime, or, after his death, bequeath it to posterity; but the clergy have no such power over their possessions. They have at most only a life-interest; and even of that they may be disinherited at the pleasure of their diocesan. The tenure of their property is similar to that by which any public servant holds the office of Secretary of State, or the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.

The church is now as anxious to disown connexion with the state as it formerly was to claim its alliance and protection. With this view ingenious theories, for they are nothing more, have been put forth to prove that ecclesiastical property has not been derived from any public grant or concession. It has been alleged, for instance, that tithes and other profits of ecclesiastical benefices were not derived from the state, but from the bounty of private individuals, by whom such benefices were founded and endowed. This assumption has been refuted by Mr. Eagle in his admirable Legal Argument on Tithes: he has proved by the most incontestable authorities, that parochial tithes formed no part of the original endowment of benefices; that the dowry of churches at the time of their foundation consisted of house and glebe only, and that tithes were subsequently assigned to incumbents by the state. But were it otherwise, and could it be shewn that the gifts of individuals formed part of the endowments of benefices, still the public nature of the purposes to which they were appropriated has made them the property of the public to the exclusion of all other claimants.

Others again attempt to defend the claims of the clergy, upon the principle that they possess corporate rights, and hence contend that though the existing race of bishops, deans, prebendaries, rectors, and vicars might compromise their interests with the state, they could have no power to enter into any arrangement for the future, by which their successors might be deprived of the reversion of church property.

To this it has been answered, that bodies politic and corporate are civil institutions created by the law, and what the law has power to create it has power to abrogate. Therefore if the legislature, in the exercise of its undoubted right to dissolve by the law that which was created by the law, should think fit to put an end to the corporate capacity of the clergy, their right to the tithes and other profits of their benefices would necessarily cease. For they could not claim as individuals that which they had held and enjoyed in their corporate capacity only. Their possessions would revert to the state, from which they had been derived, to be disposed of in the manner best calculated to promote the welfare of the nation.

But it is useless to contend with mere legal fictions, shadows, and assumptions. The entire argument on church tithes may be comprised in a very small compass, and rests on recent and indubitable authority. The tenure of ecclesiastical property was prescribed by the Statutes of Dissolution at the time of the Reformation. The legislature of that day made a new disposition of the possessions of the church, and reserved to itself, and has constantly exercised the power of altering that disposition in future. Any title or claim of the clergy antecedent to these acts is superseded on the well-known principle that posterior abrogate prior laws. If the acts of Henry VIII. be invalid, if the parliament of the sixteenth century be deemed to have exceeded its powers, what would be the consequences? Why precisely those which have been forcibly pointed out by Mr. Eagle. All the grantees, lay and ecclesiastical, of the lands and tithes of the dissolved monasteries would not have a shadow of a legal title, and therefore the Duke of Bedford and every other descendant of the grantees would be liable to be called to account for the past rents and profits accruing from their possessions.

To conclude, the established clergy are a great body of public stipendiaries, engaged for the discharge of specific duties; and their rights and constitution resemble more those of our military establishment than any other department of the national service. Like the army, the clergy have their own laws, and may be tried by their own courts. A regular subordination exists from the lowest to the highest; from the curates, who are privates in the ecclesiastical corps, to the rectors and vicars, who are regimental officers; from thence to the bishops and archbishops, who are generals and field-marshals: there are, also, district generals, inspectors, and quarter-masters-general under the names of archdeacons, deans, and prebendaries. The bishops have their regular staff of commissaries, chaplains, secretaries, and apothecaries. No clergyman can be absent without leave, and is liable to be broken or cashiered for neglect of duty. The king is the supreme head of the Church and the Army; he appoints to all the principal commissions, and in both a plurality of commissions may be holden. Supplies are voted by the parliament for both branches of service; either may be augmented or diminished, or entirely discontinued, as circumstances require. Lastly, the military have the same property in their muskets, barracks, and accoutrements, that the clergy have in their pulpits, tithes, and cathedrals; both may be transferred from the present possessors to others, or sold for the benefit of the community.

Such being the tenure of ecclesiastical immunities, it is mere sophistry to contend that the property of the church is as sacred as any other property. No analogy exists betwixt the rights of individuals, or even of corporations, and the rights of the church, and this view of the subject is confirmed by the history of the church itself, and the example of every European government. If the church ever had an indefeasible claim, it could only have appertained to the catholic church, to which the ecclesiastical revenues were originally granted. But whatever corporate or other rights the catholic church might claim, they were annihilated at the Reformation, and the legislators of that period plainly dealt with the possessions of the clergy, as neither perpetually attached to any particular class of persons, nor to any particular form of worship. They evidently treated church endowments as a sort of waif or estray; and, in assigning them pro tempore to the protestant establishment, they only assigned them on the terms of a tenancy-at-will, subject to such conditions of occupancy, ejectment, forcible entry, &c. as the parliamentary landlords might think expedient from time to time to promulgate.

II.

PATRONAGE OF THE CHURCH.

If the possessions of the clergy are not inviolate, the rights of patrons appear to have a still less substantial guarantee. It has, however, been affirmed by an eminent ecclesiastical judge, Dr. Lushington, that, whatever opinion might be held on the general tenure of ecclesiastical property, there could be no doubt advowsons were strictly private property. As this is a point of great importance, it may be proper, before we give an exposition of the present state of church patronage, shortly to elucidate the nature and origin of patronial immunities. Our observations will, of course, apply solely to the rights of private individuals: of the tenure of the patronage vested in the king, the lord chancellor, the bishops, deans and chapters, there cannot be any difference of opinion; all these exercise their patronage ex officio, and unquestionably the same legislative power which has authority to regulate the functions of these offices, may make regulations as to the disposition of the ecclesiastical patronage appertaining to them.

A patron, as is well known, is one who has the right to present to ecclesiastical preferment. The exercise of this right is called a presentation, and the right itself an advowson. When the Christian religion was first established in England, the sovereign began to build cathedrals, and afterwards, in imitation of him, lords of manors founded churches on part of their demesnes, endowing them with house and glebe, reserving to themselves and heirs a right to present a fit person to the bishop as officiating clergyman. Hence most advowsons were formerly appendant to manors, and the patrons parochial barons: it was only by the corruptions of later ages the lordship of the manor and the patronage of the church were dissevered, and any one, however mean and disreputable, might, by purchase, aspire to the dignity of patron.

Still such presentative right, however valuable it might be as a provision for relatives and friends, was deemed purely an honorary function, from the exercise of which no lucrative benefit ought to accrue to the possessor. For the better security of this principle, severe laws have been enacted to punish patrons who dispose of spiritual preferment from interested motives. If a patron present any person to a benefice for a corrupt consideration, by gift, promise, or reward, the presentation is void, and, for that turn, lapses to the Crown. If a person procure a presentation for money or profit, and is presented, he is disabled from holding the living. Even general bonds given to resign a benefice at the request of a patron, or in favour of some particular person, have been declared a violation of the statutes. Such transactions have been termed simony, from their supposed relation to the offence of Simon Magus, who offered, with money, to buy the Holy Ghost. The design of the Legislature was to prevent the obtrusion of improper persons in the ministry, and guard against the patronage of the Church being perverted to objects of mere lucre in lieu of promoting religion and virtue. For the same salutary end, bishops may refuse to institute the presentee of a patron who is not sufficiently learned, or labours under moral or canonical disqualification.

In practice, however, all these precautions are nugatory, and the laws against simony are as easily evaded as those against usury or the sale of seats in the House of Commons. Preferment in the Church is as regular a subject of sale as commissions in the army; and a patron would as soon think of rewarding an individual for his learning and piety with the gift of a freehold estate as a church living. Hence, the door of the church is open to all, whether they have a call or not, provided they possess a golden key; and, in the Metropolis, offices are openly kept in which spiritual preferment is sold as regularly as offices in the East Indies, medical practice, or any other secular pursuit. Not unfrequently, a cure of souls is brought under the hammer of an auctioneer, and a JEW, who maintains our Saviour was an impostor, may, if he please, purchase the right to select a proper person for the ministry of the Gospel. In short, church patronage is dealt with as a mere commodity, and the produce of tithe and glebe, instead of being employed as the reward of religious zeal and service, is bought, like a life annuity, as a provision and settlement for families.

These abuses must always continue while the law tolerates the sale of advowsons; it is in vain to prohibit the corrupt presentation to an ecclesiastical benefice, if a third person may purchase the right to present, and, under the semblance of a gift, convey the benefice to his employer. But such perversion can in no way strengthen the claims of patrons, and entitle them to set up a mere incorporeal immunity as real property. The history of church patronage, as well as the enactments of the law, are repugnant to the idea of treating church patronage as houses and land. In cases of bankruptcy and insolvency, the assignees can neither sell nor present to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice; this is a personal function which cannot be delegated or assigned like a mere chattel, but must be discharged by the insolvent himself. Were, therefore, the Church reformed to-morrow, and all its ministers placed on an uniform salary of £250 a-year, the patrons of livings could not claim a compensation for the loss of tithe and church estate. They never, either in law or in equity, had a beneficial interest in the Church; their interests were purely honorary and functional: and were the patronage of livings continued to them under a reformed system, however much the value of advowsons might be depreciated in the market, whatever interest they legally possessed would have been abundantly respected.

Having shortly exhibited the origin and tenure of patronial immunities, we shall next explain the present distribution of church patronage, and the mode and purposes for which it is usually employed.

The patronage of the Church is in the king, bishops, deans and chapters, universities, collegiate establishments, aristocracy, and gentry. The king’s patronage is the bishoprics, all the deaneries in England, thirty prebends, twenty-three canonries, the mastership of the Temple, the wardenship of the collegiate church of Manchester, and 1048 livings. The lord chancellor presents to all the livings under the value of £20 in the king’s book, which are about 780; he also presents to six prebendal stalls in Bristol cathedral, and to five in each of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Norwich, and Rochester; the other ministers present to the remaining patronage of the crown. Upwards of 1600 pieces of church-preferment are in the gift of the bishops; more than 600 in the presentation of the two universities; 57 in the colleges of Eton and Winchester: about 1000 in the gifts of cathedrals and collegiate establishments; and the remainder in the gift of the aristocracy and private individuals.

The population-returns of 1821 make the number of parishes and parochial chapelries in England and Wales 10,674; which, divided into rectories and vicarages, exhibit the following classification of parochial patronage:—

In the gift of

Rectories.

Vicarages.

The crown

558

490

The bishops

592

709

Deans and chapters

190

792

University of Oxford

202

112

University of Cambridge

152

131

Collegiate establishments

39

107

Private individuals

3,444

3,175

In addition, there are 649 chapels not parochial, making the total number of benefices in England and Wales, without allowing for the consolidation of the smaller parishes, 11,342. To this number ought to be added 227 new churches and chapels erected under the authority of the Church-Building-Acts, and which must hereafter greatly augment the patronage and revenues of the established church. All these churches and chapels constitute, by the statutes, so many separate benefices, their ministers are incumbents, and bodies corporate, empowered to take endowments in land or tithes.

The benefices now in the gift of the Crown were reservations, when the manors to which they were appendant were granted away, or were acquired by lapse, or conferred on Henry VIII. and his successors, by act of parliament, at the dissolution of the monasteries to which they belonged. The livings belonging to the bishoprics, the deans and chapters, the universities, and colleges, were the gifts of their munificent founders. Those in the hands of private individuals have come into their possession along with their estates, or they have purchased or inherited the advowson dissevered from manorial rights.

Directly or indirectly the entire patronage of the church may be said to be vested in the Crown. No one is eligible to church-preferment, unless first ordained by the bishop; when eligible, no one can enjoy any benefice unless instituted by a bishop: the bishops, therefore, by ordination and institution, have a double power to exclude obnoxious persons: and the bishops themselves being appointed by the king, the latter has, virtually, the whole patronage of the church, having a veto on all ecclesiastical appointments by the aristocracy, the gentry, cathedrals, and other bodies in which church patronage is vested.

It is easy to conceive how much the power of the Crown is thereby augmented. The clergy, from superior education, from their wealth and sacred profession, possess greater influence than any other order of men, and all the influence they possess is as much subservient to government as the army or navy, or any other branch of public service. Upon every public occasion the consequence of this influence is apparent. There is no question, however unpopular, which may not obtain countenance by the support of the clergy: being everywhere, and having much to lose, and a great deal to expect, they are always active and zealous in devotion to the interests of those on whom their promotion depends. Hence their anxiety to attract notice at county, corporate, and sessional meetings. Whenever a loyal address is to be obtained, a popular petition opposed, or hard measure carried against the poor, it is almost certain some reverend rector, very reverend dean, or venerable archdeacon, will make himself conspicuous.

It has been before remarked that church patronage is a regular article of sale. Besides being sold for money, spiritual preferment is devoted to political objects, and to the emolument of powerful families, chiefly the nobility. Few individuals attain high honour in the church, unless remarkable for their devotion to government; any show of liberality or independence is fatal to ecclesiastical ambition, as may be instanced in the history of a Watson, a Paley, or a Shipley. On the contrary, hostility to reform, subserviency to ministers, and alacrity in supporting them on all occasions, is sure to be rewarded. We do not think the conduct of the Bishops in voting against the reform bill any objection to this imputation. They, doubtless, calculated, as Lord Brougham remarked, on “tripping up the heels” of the Whig Ministers. That they have mostly thriven by subserviency, will be apparent from adverting to the claims to promotion of the individuals rewarded by mitres under Tory administrations. Two of them are generally known as “the Lady’s Bishops,” from the nature of the court influence to which it is supposed they were indebted for their exalted stations. Marsh, one of the most orthodox, was a political pamphleteer, who wrote a book in favour of Pitt’s war; after which he received a pension, then a bishopric. Blomfield owed his first preferment to a noble lord, whom he had pleased by his dexterity in rendering some Greek verses; his subsequent elevation is said to have been purchased by a compromise of principle on the catholic question: he did not vote on the first introduction of the reform bill, divided, probably, by a sense of gratitude to his early patron lord Spencer, and uncertainty as to future events. Dr. Monk is also an eminent haberdasher in “points and particles.” He was raised to the throne of Gloucester, from the deanery of Peterborough and rectory of Fiskerton; and to which elevation it is not unlikely he paved the way by a fulsome dedication of his “Life of Bentley” to his friend and patron, the bishop of London. The tergiversations and subserviency of Dr. Philpotts are too notorious to require description. The archbishop of Canterbury is, as far as we know, without any particular trait of distinction, either in his history or character. He was formerly dean of the Royal Chapel, and tutor to the prince of Orange; he seems a man of great singleness of mind; for in one of his charges to the clergy, he deplores the absence of that “humble docility” and “prostration of the understanding” which formerly rendered the people such apt subjects, either of religious or political knavery. The bishop of Durham is of Dutch extraction, and some years since underwent a severe prosecution for non-residence on a benefice in the City, of which he was then incumbent. Burgess is a protégé of lord Sidmouth, who is now living in retirement on a pension of £3000 a year, granted for “high and efficient” services to church and state. Coplestone is the writer of a satirical squib, called “Hints to a Young Reviewer,” directed against a well-known northern periodical. John Bird Sumner is considered a person of some merit, and has written several articles in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Carey, too, who was sub-almoner to George III. is also an author and has published a sermon, preached on the occasion of the famous “Jubilee.” With the exception of Bathurst and Maltby little is known of the rest; they have mostly been indebted for promotion to marriage, or to their connexions with the aristocracy, either by relationship, or from having filled the office of tutor or secretary in their families. In this roll of services, of accident of birth, of situation, and connexion, there is evidently no claim of public service or utility to entitle the bishops to their princely revenues and vast patronage.

One of the greatest abuses in the disposal of patronage is monopoly, in a few individuals, of influence and connexion, sharing among them the most valuable emoluments of the church. In all spiritual offices and dignities, there is a great difference in value, and also in patronage; and the great object of ecclesiastical intrigue is, to secure not only the most valuable, but the greatest number of preferments. Hence arises the present disposition of church property. Scarcely any preferment is held single; the sees, dignities, rectories, and vicarages, being mostly held with other good things, and the most valuable monopolized by the relations and connexions of those who have the disposal of them; namely, the Crown, the Bishops, and Aristocracy. The bishops are frequently archdeacons and deans, rectors, vicars, and curates, besides holding professorships, clerkships, prebends, precentorships, and other offices in cathedrals. Their sons, sons-in-law, brothers, and nephews, are also pushed in to the most valuable preferments in the diocese. We shall give an instance of the manner of serving out the loaves and fishes of the church in particular families, from the example of SPARKE, bishop of Ely, who owed his promotion to the circumstance of having been tutor to the duke of Rutland. The exhibition is limited to the two sons and son-in-law of the bishop, without including appointments to distant relatives. In the shiftings, exchanges, resignations, movings about, and heaping up of offices, we have a complete picture of the ecclesiastical evolutions which are constantly being performed in almost every diocese of the kingdom.

1815.

The Rev. John Henry Sparke, the eldest son, took his degree of B.A.; he was then about 21; he was immediately appointed by his father to a bishop’s fellowship in Jesus College, Cambridge.

1816.

He was appointed steward of all his father’s manorial courts.

1818.

He took his degree of M.A., and was presented to a prebendal stall in Ely Cathedral, on the resignation of the Rev. Archdeacon Brown, who had been holding it one year: he was also presented to the sinecure rectory of Littlebury, and in the following month he was presented to the living of Streatham-cum-Thetford, by an exchange with the Rev. Mr. Law for the living of Downham, which last living had been held for three years by the Rev. Mr. Daubeny, the bishop’s nephew, who now resigned it in favour of Mr. Law, and retired to the living of Bexwell.

1819.

The Rev. J. H. Sparke had a dispensation granted him from the archbishop of Canterbury, permitting him to hold the living of Cottenham with his other preferments.

1818.

The Rev. Henry Fardell, the bishop’s son-in-law, was ordained deacon.

1819.

He was presented to a prebendal stall in Ely, the degree of M.A. having been conferred on him by the archbishop of Canterbury.

1821.

He was presented to the living of Tyd St Giles.

1822.

He was presented to the living of Waterbeach, on the resignation of the Rev. Mr. Mitchell.

1823.

He resigned Tyd St. Giles, and was presented to Bexwell, on the resignation of the Rev. Mr. Daubeny, the bishop’s nephew, who was presented to Feltwell; but in a few weeks, when the value of Feltwell was better understood, Mr. Daubeny was required to resign Feltwell and return to Bexwell. This, it is said, he did with great reluctance; he was, however, presented to Tyd as well as Bexwell, and the Rev. Mr. Fardell was then presented to Feltwell.

1824.

The Rev. J. Henry Sparke was appointed Chancellor of the diocese, and this year he resigned the prebendal stall he held, and was presented to the one which became vacant by the death of the Rev. Sir H. Bate Dudley; the house and gardens belonging to the latter stall being considered the best in the College.

1826.

The Rev. Edward Sparke, the bishop’s youngest son, took his degree of B.A., and was immediately presented by his father to a bishop’s fellowship in St. John’s College, Cambridge, on the resignation of Charles Jenyns, Esq. a friend of the family, who had been holding it three years. He was also appointed Register of the diocese.

1827.

The Rev. J. Henry Sparke resigned the livings of Cottenham and Stretham, and was presented to the rich living of Leverington.

1829.

The Rev. J. Henry Sparke was presented to Bexwell.

1829.

The Rev. Edward Sparke took his degree of M.A. and was presented to a prebendal stall on the resignation of Rev. Ben. Park (another friend of the family) who had been holding it three years.

He was also this year presented to the living of Hogeworthingham, and to the living of Barley.

1830.

He resigned Hogeworthingham, and was presented to Connington. This year he resigned Barley also, and was presented to Littleport.

1831.

He resigned Connington, and was presented to Feltwell, at the same time he resigned his prebendal stall, and was presented to the one become vacant by the death of the Rev. George King—the rich living of Sutton being in the gift of the possessor of the latter stall.

1831.

The Rev. Henry Fardell resigned Feltwell, and was presented to the rich living of Wisbech.

The Rev. J. Henry Sparke now holds the living of Leverington, the sinecure rectory of Littlebury, the living of Bexwell, a prebendal stall in Ely Cathedral, is steward of all his father’s manorial courts, and Chancellor of the diocese. The estimated annual value of the whole, £4,500.

The Rev. Henry Fardell now holds the living of Waterbeach, the vicarage of Wisbech, and a prebendal stall in Ely Cathedral. The estimated annual value of his preferments, £3,700.

The Ref. Edward Sparke holds the consolidated livings of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, Feltwell, the vicarage of Littleport, a prebendal stall in Ely, is Register of the diocese, and Examining Chaplain to his father. The estimated annual value of his appointments not less than £4000.

The bishop’s see of Ely and dependencies, £27,742.

Total income of the Sparke family, £39,942.

In the Ordination-Service a bishop is said to be intrusted with office for “the glory of God, and the edification of the Christian flock.” He is particularly enjoined not to be “covetous,” nor “greedy of filthy lucre,” and he promises to be “faithful in ordaining, sending, and laying hands on others.” How far bishop Sparke has observed these matters, we shall not presume to say; it is obvious, however, that the faithful discharge of the duties of his office does not allow the “sending” of relations and connexions on the service of the church, unless duly and properly qualified. For any thing we know, his sons and son-in-law may be amply qualified for these numerous endowments; indeed, they must be men of extraordinary capabilities, to be able to discharge the duties of so many and important offices.

Bishop Sparke is not the only prelate who has shown regard to the temporal welfare of his family. Other prelates seem to agree with lord Plunket and sir R.Inglis, in considering church property of the nature of private property, which cannot be better employed than in providing handsome marriage portions for their sons and daughters. Several prelates are of too recent elevation to have had time to send off numerous branches into the church; but an example or two from their immediate predecessors on the bench will illustrate the ordinary working of the system. The late archbishop SUTTON is an eminent instance of the perversion of ecclesiastical patronage. The Suttons remaining in the church are very numerous; among seven of them are shared sixteen rectories, vicarages, and chapelries, besides preacherships and dignities in cathedrals. Of the eleven daughters of the archbishop, several had the prudence to marry men in holy orders, who soon became amply endowed. Hugh Percy, son of the earl of Beverly, married one daughter; and, in the course of about as many years, was portioned off with eight different preferments, estimated to be worth £10,000 per annum; four of these preferments were given in one year, probably that of the nuptials, and intended as an outfit. This fortunate son-in-law is now bishop of Carlisle, to which see he was translated from Rochester. According to law he ought to have resigned all the preferments he held at the time of being promoted to a bishopric; but somehow he has contrived to retain the most valuable prebend of St. Paul’s, worth £3000 per annum, and also the chancellorship of Sarum. Another daughter of the archbishop married the Rev. James Croft, who is archdeacon of Canterbury, prebendary of Canterbury, curate of Hythe, rector of Cliffe-at-Hone, and rector of Saltwood—all preferments in the gift of the archbishop.

Archbishop Sutton kept a favourable eye towards collaterals as well as those in a direct line. A sister married a Rev. Richard Lockwood, who was presented, in one year, with the three vicarages of Kessingland, Lowestoff, and Potter-Heigham: all these livings are valuable, and in the gift of the bishop of Norwich, and were presented by his grace when he held that see. The archbishop left the Rev. T. M. Sutton and the Rev. Evelyn L. Sutton, chaplains to the House of Commons, and a nephew with several livings; but we cannot state particulars.

The late bishop of Winchester is another instance of a man who provided well for his family out of the revenues of the church. This prelate first held the sea of Lincoln, and changed his name from Pretyman to Tomline, on acceding to a large estate bequeathed by a relation. He had been tutor to the “heaven-born Minister,” to whom he was indebted for his earliest preferments. His children, it will be seen, from the subjoined enumeration, are not left destitute in the world.

G. T. PRETYMAN:

- Chancellor and Canon Residentiary of Lincoln,

- Prebendary of Winchester,

- Rector of St. Giles, Chalfont,

- Rector of Wheat-Hampstead,

- Rector of Harpenden.

RICHARD PRETYMAN:

- Precentor and Canon Residentiary of Lincoln,

- Rector of Middleton-Stoney,

- Rector of Walgrave,

- Vicar of Hannington,

- Rector of Wroughton.

JOHN PRETYMAN:

- Prebendary of Lincoln,

- Rector of Sherrington,

- Rector of Winwick.

The younger Pretymans had, also, some nice pickings out of the Mere and Spital charities, the wardenship of which the father got hold of by the exchange of a living in his gift; but as the subject has already been before the public, we refrain from dwelling upon it.

The Sumners, Blomfields, and Marshes are growing thick in the church calendar, but, as before remarked, they have been too recently planted to have yet struck their roots wide and deep in the Lord’s vineyard. The death of a bishop causes a movement in the church, like a change of ministers in the state. Expectations are excited, numerous removes follow, the adherents and connexions of the deceased are got out of the way as fast as possible, and all vacancies filled with the followers of the new diocesan. No regard is apparently paid to “the faithful ordaining, sending, or laying hands on others;” the great object is to secure the dignities, the fat living, the fine living, the noble living to the next of kin. The excessive greediness of filthy lucre has long been the reproach of the episcopal bench, and it is known that former diocesans of London, Durham, Winchester, and Canterbury, have died loaded with the spoils of the church. The wealth they amassed was due to the poor, to God, and the unfortunate of their own order. In the epistle which is read at their consecration, it is required of them that they should “be given to hospitality:” they, likewise, solemnly promise to assist the “indigent, and all strangers who are destitute of help.” But who ever heard of a bishop being generous, of being given to hospitality, or assisting the unfortunate? who ever heard of them employing their immense revenues in any useful work; of their patronage of science, of literature, or the arts? Most of them have been only intent on amassing immense fortunes, and leaving behind them their million or half million, like Jew-jobbers, loan-contractors, and commercial speculators. They live out of the world, consuming, in solitary indulgence, the spoil of the industrious, and without sympathy with the misfortunes and vicissitudes of life. They have no bowels even for the indigent of their own class: in the rich diocese of Durham it is known begging subscriptions are had every year for the poor clergy and their families; and measures introduced into Parliament for the general relief of the inferior clergy have usually failed from the opposition of the higher class of ecclesiastics.

In the disposal of Parochial Patronage there is the same abuse and monopoly as prevail in the higher departments of the church. The most valuable benefices, like the most valuable sees and dignities, fall into the hands of those whose chief claims are their families and connexions. By bringing forward the poor livings, it is usual to make out a favourable case for the parochial clergy; but from the small number of individuals among whom parochial preferments are shared, there are few except the curates entitled to much sympathy. We shall illustrate this point by laying before the reader a list of incumbents, selected almost at random, which will at once show the measureless rapacity that directs the disposal of church-preferment.

- Robert Affleck, prebendary of York; rector of Silkston, with Bretton-Monk and Stainbury chapelries; rector of East Mediety; rector of West Mediety, Tresswell; perpetual curate of Thockerington; vicar of Westow.

- Henry Anson, vicar of Buxton, with rectory of Oxnead and rectory of Skeyton; rector of Lyng with vicarage of Whitwell.

- H. Bathurst, archdeacon of Norwich; rector of North Creake; rector of Oby with rectory of Ashby and rectory of Thurne.

- J. W. Beadon, precentor and prebendary of Wells; precentor of Brecon; rector of Farley Chamberl; rector of Christian-Mal.

- J. T. Casberd, prebendary of Wells and Llandaff; also, one rectory, four vicarages, and two chapelries.

- Charles W. Eyre, prebendary of York; rector of Carlton, in Lindrick; rector of Hooton-Roberts; vicar of Kilnwick-Percy; vicar of Pocklington with the chapelry of Yapham.

- John Fisher, archdeacon of Berks; canon-residentiary of Sarum; also, two vicarages and three chapelries.

- Dr. Forester, prebendary of Worcester; rector of Broseley; rector of Little Wenlock, with the chapelries of Barrow and Benthall; vicar of St. John’s, Worcester.

- Dr. Goddard, archdeacon and prebendary of Lincoln; chaplain to the king; vicar of Bexley; vicar of Louth; rector of St. James, Garlichythe, London.

- Dr. Goodall, provost of Eton; canon of Windsor; vicar of Bromham; rector of Hitcham: rector of West Ilsley.

- Dr. E. Goodenough, dean of Bath and Wells; prebendary of Westminster; vicar of Carlisle; rector of York; vicar of Wath, All Saints-on-Dearne, with the chapelries of Adwick and Brampton Bierlow.

- W. Goodenough, archdeacon of Carlisle; rector of Mareham-le-Fen; rector of Great Salkeld.

- Hon. T. de Grey, archdeacon of Surrey; prebendary of Winchester and chaplain to the king; rector of Calbourne; rector of Fawley with the chapelry of Exburg; rector of Merton.

- Earl of Guildford, rector of New and Old Alresford, with chapelry of Medstead; rector and precentor of St. Mary, Southampton; master of St. Cross with St. Faith’s.

- A. Hamilton, archdeacon of Taunton; prebendary of Wells; chaplain to the King; rector of Loughton; rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, of St. Pancras, and of Allhallows, London.

- W. Hett, prebendary and vicar-choral of Lincoln; vicar of Dunholme; rector of Enderby Navis; vicar of St. John’s and rector of St. Paul’s, Lincoln; minister of Greetwell and Nettleham chapelries; rector of Thorpe-on-the Hill.

- Hon. H. L. Hobart, dean of Windsor and of Wolverhampton; rector of Haseley; vicar of Nocton; vicar of Wantage.

- Dr. Hodgson, dean of Carlisle; vicar of Burgh-on-Sands; vicar of Hillingdon; rector of St. George’s, Hanover-square.

- Hon. E. S. Keppel, rector of Quiddenham, with rectory of Snetterton; vicar of St. Mary’s and All Saints, Shottisham; rector of Tittleshall with rectories of Godwick and Wellingham.

- Dr. Madan, prebendary and chancellor of Peterborough; chaplain to the King; rector of Ibstock, with chapelries of Dunnington and Hugglescote; rector of Thorpe Constantine.

- Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough; rector of Castor, with chapalries of Sutton, St. Michael, and Upton; rector of St. Clement and St. John, Terrington.

- Dr. Oldershaw, archdeacon of Norfolk, with perpetual curacy of Coston; vicar of Ludham; vicar of Ranworth, with the vicarage of St. Margaret, Upton; rector of Redenhall with chapelry of Harlestone.

- Hon. G. Pellew, dean of Norwich; prebendary of York; and rector of St. Dionis Backchurch, London.

- F. D. Perkins, chaplain to the King; vicar of Foleshill; rector of Hatherley-Down; rector of Sow; rector of Stoke; rector of Swayfield; rector of Ham.

- Lord Wm. Somerset, prebendary of Bristol; rector of Crickhowel; rector of Llangallock, with ohapelries of Llanelly and Llangenneth.

- Lord John Thynne, prebendary of Westminster; rector of Kingston-Deverill; rector of Street, with chapelry of Walton.

- Wm. Trivett, vicar of Arlington; rector of Willington; rector of Ashburnham, with rectory of Penshurst; rector of Bradwell.

- James Webber, dean of Ripon and prebendary of Westminster; vicar of Kirkham; rector of St. Mary, Westminster.

- Fras. Wrangham, archdeacon of York and prebendary of York and Chester; rector of Dodleston; vicar of Hunmanby, wtth chapelry of Fordon; vicar of Muston.

Abundant other examples of equal or greater enormity will be found in the List of Pluralists subjoined to this Article. But nothing, in a small compass, attests more strikingly the abuses in patronage, and the scandalous manner in which offices are heaped on favoured individuals, than a comparison of the whole number of ecclesiastical preferments with the whole number of persons among whom they are divided. This is a test which may be applied with perfect accuracy. The only description of ecclesiastics whose number cannot be ascertained with precision are the curates and the inferior classes connected with cathedral and collegiate churches; the rest may be easily reckoned up from the Clerical Guide, which contains the names of all the episcopal, dignified, and beneficed clergy. From this work we find that the whole number of prelates, dignitaries, rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates, in England and Wales, is only seven-thousand six-hundred and ninety-four. Those who make the established clergy amount to 18,000 must needs include the parish-clerk, sexton, and grave-digger; but these functionaries of the church not being in holy orders, they certainly ought not to be included in the ecclesiastical corps, any more than the groom, valet, or other menials of clergymen. Neither ought curates to be included: they are merely the hired deputies of their principals, without institution or induction, and always subject to removal at the pleasure of the bishop or incumbent. Omitting these classes, we affirm that the whole number of endowed and beneficed clergy is, as we have stated, 7694, and by this diminutive number are the whole preferments of the church monopolized. These preferments are, as we collect from COVE and other sources, as under:—

Sees

26

Chancellorships

26

Deaneries of cathedral and collegiate churches

28

Archdeaconries

61

Prebends and canonries

514

Minor canonries, priest-vicars, vicars-choral, and other dignities and offices, without including lay-offices in cathedrals

330

Rectories, vicarages, and chapelries

11,342

Total

12,327

Thus, there are 12,327 places of preferment divided among 7694 individuals, affording nearly two for each. This extraordinary monopoly of offices accounts for the vast number of pluralists. The whole number of incumbents in England and Wales is 7191; of this number, 2886 hold two or more rectories, vicarages, and chapelries. From data in the last edition of the Clerical Guide, published in 1829, we have drawn up the following classification of parochial patronage, exhibiting the number of individuals and the number of parochial preferments enjoyed by each.

PAROCHIAL PATRONAGE,showing the Number of Individuals, and the Number of Rectories, Vicarages, and Chapelries held by each.

Number of Individuals.

Livings held by each.

Total Number of Livings.

1

11

11

1

8

8

5

7

35

12

6

72

64

5

320

209

4

836

567

3

1701

2027

2

4054

4305

1

4305

7191

11,342

According to strict ecclesiastical discipline, no minister ought to hold more than one living; and, for the better care of the souls of parishioners, he ought to reside on his benefice. Laws have been made, and are still in force, imposing forfeitures and penalties on clergymen who, having one living, accept another, or who absent themselves from their parishes. These laws, however, in practice, like the representation of the people in the lower house of parliament, are little more than the theory of church government. By dispensations and licenses, a clergyman may hold as many livings as he can get, and he need not reside on any of them. Hence it is that considerably more than one-third of the whole number of incumbents are PLURALISTS. Many have five, four, and three livings. Majendie, late Bishop of Bangor, who died in 1830, held no fewer than ELEVEN parochial preferments. These preferments we presume are held by his successor, and what an extraordinary divine he must be to be able to administer his various episcopal and parish duties! In the above classification are not included cathedral dignities, fellowships in the universities, chaplainships, professorships, masterships of grammar-schools, and other offices held by incumbents, and to which members of the Establishment are exclusively eligible. It merely shows the cutting-up of parochial benefices, and it is hardly necessary to add that those who are in possession of the most valuable and greatest number are connected by birth, marriage, politics, or in some other way, with those who have the disposal of them. Indeed, it is impossible to peruse the list of dignitaries and highly-beneficed clergy, without remarking that many of them are “honourable lumber,” who have been turned over to spiritual pursuits from inability to succeed in the more arduous professions of the law, the army, or the navy. In the church, as in the state, those chiefly work for the public who have no other dependence, who are of plebeian extraction, and without support from family interest or aristocratic connexion.

III.

SINECURISM—NON-RESIDENCE—PLURALITIES—CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

Sinecurism abounds more in our ecclesiastical than civil establishment. In the church almost every thing is done by deputy,—a consequence naturally resulting from her great wealth; for where large salaries are annexed, great duties are seldom discharged. Those with large incomes have various reasons for not burthening themselves with official toil. First, they can afford to pay for a deputy; secondly, they can purchase or influence the connivance of others for neglect of their own duties; thirdly, they have the means for indulgence and recreation, which, consuming much time, leave little leisure for more serious avocations. Hence has arisen sinecurism in both Church and State; presenting the singular spectacle of one class receiving the pay, and another, born under less favorable auspices, doing the work for which the pay is received.

Among the different orders of our ecclesiastical polity, there are none, with the exception of the curates and a few beneficed clergy, who reside and do the duties of their parishes; the remainder being clerical sinecurists, filled with the Holy Ghost, to share in the rich endowments of the church. The bishops are most amply remunerated, and, as is usual in such cases, perform the least service. They employ archdeacons to visit for them; rural deans and others to preach for them; and a vicar-general to issue licenses, hold courts, and perform other drudgery; if otherwise engaged, they employ a brother bishop to ordain for them. They have their own chaplains, commissaries, and secretaries; in short, their work must be light, and chiefly consists in keeping an eye to the next translation, and the falling in of the rich livings. In the Ordination Service, however, they are enjoined strict and abstemious duties. It is there said a bishop must be “blameless,” they are admonished diligently to preach the word, and be conspicuous examples of various Christian virtues.” They are now chiefly known among the people by their grotesque attire. They are the only men (save exquisites) who continue to dress in imitation of the female sex, or take pains to disguise themselves under uncouth habiliments. The shovel, or coal-scuttle hat is particularly distinguishable. It is the remains of the old hat worn by Roman Catholic priests in their days of splendour, and still to be seen on the Continent. Under this chapeau is a bush of false hair, plastered and twisted into a most unnatural size and ridiculous shape, resembling any thing but what we may suppose to have been the fashion among the apostles. To these distinctions may be added the long gaiters and “lady’s maid apron,” from the hips to the knees only, so that the gaiters may not be concealed. These gaiters are of vast importance, importing that the wearers are meek and lowly, and constantly walking about doing good. Nevertheless they often ride in dashing style through the streets, attended by grooms in purple liveries, and some of them are very Nimrods in the country.

Many of the church dignitaries are distinguishable by peculiarities of dress, as the shovel hat and kirtle. Their duties are less onerous than those of the bishops. For instance, what are the duties of the very reverend Dean? he is chiefly known among sextons and monument-builders. Mr. Gordon, in the debate on the Curates’ Salary Bill, said he knew a clergyman who was dignitary in no fewer than six cathedrals. Were there any duties to perform, how could a man discharge the duties of so many different offices, in so many different places, perhaps at the distance of some hundred miles from each other? Archbishop Cranmer, in a letter to Cromwell, in the reign of Henry VIII., denounces the canons and prebendaries as a “superfluous condition.” He says, a prebendary is neither a “learner nor a teacher, but a good viander, who wastes his substance in superfluous belly cheer.” If they were a “superfluous condition” under a Popish regime, they must be much more so under a Protestant establishment. The prebends, however, are very valuable, some of them worth £3000 a year, which will be a good reason with many for retaining them as a part of the venerable establishment. What further adds to their value is, that, being benefices not having cure of souls, they may be held with other preferment without a dispensation for plurality.

The Parochial Clergy are, for the most part, a mass of sinecurists. In one respect, Church of Englandism is an improvement on the original simplicity of the gospel, by rendering the discharge of its duties almost a mechanical operation. No long and expensive course of education is requisite to prepare her ministers: all her service is written; no extempore preaching or praying; it requires no mind, merely to be able to read is enough. To perform such a puerile and heartless ceremony, it is not surprising a majority of the clergy conceive it unnecessary to reside on their benefices. Of the violation of the law in this respect, of the penalties incurred by this violation, and of the Bill of Indemnity passed by our immaculate representatives to screen the delinquents, we shall relate an extraordinary example.

It is necessary to premise that, under the 43d Geo. III. c. 84, every spiritual person, possessed of any archdeaconry, deanery, or other dignity or benefice, is required to reside on his preferment; if he absent himself without license from the bishop, or some special cause of exemption, he is subject to penalties varying from one-third to three-fourths of the annual value of his dignity or benefice, recoverable by action of debt by any person suing for the same. This act was passed to amend a statute of Henry VIII. as regards the residence of the clergy; it has been subsequently modified by the 57th Geo. III. c. 99, and was introduced by Sir William Scott, (now Lord Stowell,) and solemnly enacted, in the year 1803, by king, lords, and commons. In the year 1811, Mr. Wright commenced nearly 200 different actions against the incumbents in the dioceses of London, Ely, and Norwich, to recover the penalties under the statute. This gentleman had been secretary to four right reverend bishops—the bishops of London, Norwich, Ely, and some other prelate—and, of course, had enjoyed the most ample opportunities for procuring correct information of the conduct of the clergy. These opportunities appear not to have been neglected. In a series of letters published in the Morning Chronicle, betwixt the 6th November, 1813, and the 11th March, 1814, he favoured the public with many curious disclosures which had come to his knowledge during the discharge of his official duties.

In his letter of November 20th, he says that he has selected from well authenticated documents 10,801 benefices, on which there are only 4,490 incumbents, even said to be resident, so that there are 6,311 confessedly non-resident incumbents; to supply whose places 1,523 resident curates are employed, which leaves 4,788, which are acknowledged to have neither a resident curate nor incumbent. The whole number of curates, whether resident or not, employed to supply the place of non-resident incumbents, is only 3,730, and only 1,793 of these are licensed; whereas, according to the canon and statute law, no person has a right to officiate until he is licensed. In one diocese, he says, one-third of the livings have had duty reduced from twice to once on a Sunday; and in another diocese, one-third of the parsonage-houses were returned in bad repair, as an excuse for the non-residence of our gentlemen pastors. Speaking of the false pretences made use of by the clergy, in order to avoid residing among their parishioners, and the scandalous lives they lead, he says,—

“Now ill-health of the incumbent himself, or his wife, or daughter, is a common pretext, when no other legal cause can be found of avoiding residence. Of twenty-two licenses granted in one diocese for this reason, three only of the persons are in a state of health to warrant it, and the benefices from which they so absent themselves are very valuable. Whether the ministers whom I thus challenge as using false pretences deserve the imputation, will best appear by the mode of life they adopt. Some live in town during the winter; and although night air certainly cannot benefit a valetudinarian, they may be constantly seen at card parties, routs, or the theatres. In summer, enjoying the amusements of fashionable watering places; whilst, too often, their curates, by the parsimonious stipends they afford them, are with a numerous family in a state of the greatest poverty. Others have beneficial schools in the neighbourhood of London. Others are continually to be met with near their residence in more pleasant parts of the country, enjoying the sports of the field, or vigorously endeavouring to detect some poor countryman who may have an unfortunate inclination to taste game! Others may be seen most days driving their own carriage! Some are in debt, and some are Curates near the Fens! and all to observers seem perfectly healthful; yet a certificate from a medical man is deposited with the bishop that they are not so; probably it is six or eight years before when there might have existed a degree of temporary ill-health, but after the cause ceases, the same plea is continued; and a license once granted, is renewed as a matter of course.”—Lett. IV. Jan. 6, 1814.

Thus we see how these reverend gentlemen are employed; not in administering spiritual instruction to the ignorant, comfort to the afflicted, or alms and clothing to the naked. Oh! no; these are ignoble pursuits, the mere theory of the profession. They pretend sickness in order to obtain a license for non-residence, that they may bawl at the card-table, frequent the playhouse, tally-ho, shoot, play at cricket, brandish the coachman’s whip, and bully at fashionable watering-places. Remember, these jovial spirits are all filled with the Holy Ghost,—empowered to forgive or not to forgive sins—have the cure of souls; that their poor curates are starving on a wretched stipend, and that, in the maintenance of both, the industrious are deprived of the fruits of their labour, and the necessary comforts of their families wasted in the profligate and dissipated lives of their parochial ministers.

In Letter V. Jan. 18th, 1814, Mr. Wright gives the following statement, collected, he says, with infinite pains, of the state of the ecclesiastical discipline in the small diocese of Ely, in 1813, compared with the year 1728:—

In 1728.

In 1813.

On 140 livings, 70 Resident Incumbents.

On the same 140 livings, 45 Resident Incumbents.

Thirty-four who reside near and perform the duty.

Seventeen who reside near and perform the duty.

Thirty-one curates who reside in the parish or near it.

Thirty-five curates, some of whom reside eight, ten, or twelve miles off.

The population was 56,944 souls. The duty was performed 261 times every Sunday.

The population is 82,176 souls. The service is performed about 185 times every Sunday.

And their income £12,719 per annum.

And their income is now £61,474 per annum.

This is singular—duty neglected in proportion as it became more important and better paid. The population increased one-half, and the number of times service is performed diminished one-third. The revenues increased almost fivefold, and the number of resident incumbents decreased one-third. What sincere and conscientious labourers in the vineyard of the Lord! How strikingly it confirms the observation that “Religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter devoured the mother.”

“The number of these (says Mr. Wright, Lett. II.) who have neglected their duty in contempt of the law, and in direct violation of solemn oath and bond, are far more than can be contemplated without a considerable degree of alarm.” One vicar obtained a license from a bishop for non-residence on one living, stating that he was going to reside near another in a different part of the kingdom. On inquiring for him at the place where he was supposed to reside, he was gone to a more fashionable part of the country. On another, to ‘encourage him,’ the great tithes were settled, worth near £1200: when he was instituted, he tookAN OATHto reside, which he afterwards neglected to observe. A rector, holding two valuable rectories worth £1200 per annum, to obtain which he gave bond to the archbishop that he would constantly reside on one, and keep a resident curate on the other, himself preaching on the benefice where he did not reside thirteen sermons every year: this worthy son of the church contrived to evade these conditions, and got a poor devil of a curate to do the work of both livings for £84 a year. Another rector holding two livings, one worth £500, the other £400—he lived 200 miles off, and had neither resident nor licensed curate!

On the subject of pluralities and of non-residence together, the Secretary to four bishops says, “In one diocese there are about 216 clergymen, who each hold two livings; 40 who hold three each; 13 who hold four each; 1 who holds five; 1 who holds six, besides dignities and offices: and although many of these thus accounted single benefices are two, three, four, or five parishes consolidated, yet a great part of these pluralists do not reside on any of their preferments.” In Lett. VII. he says, “I will prove that there are pluralists holding more than seven benefices and dignities.”

It might be thought these statements of Mr. Wright were exaggerations or the result of personal pique, had they not been fully supported by the Diocesan Returns laid before the Privy Council, and ordered by the House of Commons to be printed. Prom these returns in the years 1809, 1810, 1811, and 1827, we shall insert an abstract, and then a few explanations: it will shew at once the state of church discipline both at present, and when the Secretary was arrested in his attempt to bring the delinquents to justice.

CASES OF NON-RESIDENTS IN YEARS

1809.

1810.

1811.

1827.

1.

Resident on other benefices

1240

1846

2059

2163

2.

Absent without licence or exemption

672

650

1033

405

3.

Exemptions not notified

817

363

155

9

4.

Infirmity of incumbent or family

465

389

396

395

5.

Want or unfitness of parsonage-house

944

943

1068

1389

6.

Incumbents residing in the neighbourhood, and doing duty

565

348

301

815

7.

Unenumerated cases confirmed by the Archb.

54

35

26

13

8.

Dilapidated churches

23

34

56

39

9.

Sinecures

233

70

68

33

10.

Livings held by Bishops

26

35

21

10

11.

Recent institutions

——

54

33

71

12.

Miscellaneous cases

1271

38

51

41

Total open to connivance

6310

4903

5268

5383

Total of non-residents

7358

5840

6311

6120

Total of residents

3836

4421

4490

4413

Total of residents and non-residents together

11,194

10,261

10,801

10,533

The first of these totals contains the twelve preceding classes, in each class of which there is room for connivance on the part of the bishops to whom the returns are made, and of falsehood and evasion on the part of the incumbents. The second total exhibits the whole number of non-residents; and the fourth, the total number of residents and non-residents together, in England and Wales. Hence it appears, that considerably more than one-half of the whole number of incumbents do not reside on their benefices; receive large salaries for nothing; and the little duty that is performed is performed by their curates.

As the Diocesan Returns for 1827 are the latest printed, it may be proper to exhibit more particularly, as follows, the state of church discipline in that year.

RESIDENTS:

Resident in the parsonage-house

3598

Resident within two miles of the church or chapel, there being no parsonage-house

815

Total-residents

4413

NON-RESIDENTS:

Non-residents exempt

2619

Non-residents licensed

2147

Cases which could not be included among licenses or exemptions

1313

Miscellaneous cases

41

Total non-residents

6120

Total number of benefices returned

10,533

Thus, only 3598 incumbents consider the parsonage-houses good enough to reside in; the rest are absentees. According to Mr. Wright, want or unfitness of parsonage-house is a common pretext for obtaining a license for non-residence: in one diocese, he says, one-third of the parsonage-houses were returned in bad repair. In 1827, this aversion of the clergy to their domicile appears to have augmented; in that year 1398, or more than one-eighth of the whole number of parsonage-houses in the kingdom were returned as not fit places for our aristocratic pastors to reside in; or, in other words, as an excuse for a license to desert their parishes, and roam about the country in quest of more lively amusements than churching, christening, and spiritually instructing their parishioners.

Among the clergymen exempt from residence, a large portion consists of those who reside on other benefices; that is, holding more livings than one, they cannot, of course, reside on both. The exemptions also include such privileged persons as chaplains to the nobility; preachers and officers in the royal chapels and inns of court; wardens, provosts, fellows, tutors, and ushers in the universities, colleges, and public schools; the principal and professors of the East-India college; and officers of cathedral and collegiate churches. The duties of many of these offices are such as ought to disqualify the possessors altogether from church preferment. For instance, what reason is there in masters of the Charter-house claiming exemptions; in other words, seeking to hold benefices and dignities in addition to their other offices and duties? Surely the management of a great public foundation, with upwards of 800 scholars, and incomes of near £1000 per annum, afford sufficient both employment and remuneration, without incurring the responsibility of a cure of souls. The same remark applies to the heads of colleges, and the masters and teachers of endowed charities. With so many friendless curates in the country, starving on miserable stipends, there is no need that any class of persons should be overburthened with duties, or corrupted by the aggregation of extravagant salaries.

Of the other cases of non-residence, mentioned in the above table, we shall offer only some brief remarks. The cases of those who plead sickness and infirmity have been sufficiently illustrated by an extract from Mr. Wright, page 34. Sinecures hardly need explaining; they are offices yielding masses of pay without any duty whatever. Livings held by bishops present a curious anomaly; the right reverend prelates commit the very offence of absenteeism, which it is their duty to prevent being committed by the subaltern clergy of their diocese. Lastly, among the miscellaneous cases are included those livings held in sequestration. In these instances, the incumbent being insolvent, possession, at the instance of some creditor, had been taken of the benefice, to raise money for the discharge of his debts. In 1811 the number of livings held by sequestration was seventy-eight; in 1827, forty-eight.

Such is a brief exposition of the state of church discipline, as exhibited by official documents, and the averments of Mr. Wright, when that gentleman commenced his actions against the clergy. We have stated that the number of actions amounted to 200; and had Mr. Wright been allowed to recover, the penalties would have amounted to £80,000. To this sum he had an indisputable claim; a claim as sacred as any person can have to an estate devised by will, or on mortgage, or other legal security; his claim had been guaranteed to him by a solemn act of the legislature. Moreover, this gentleman had been basely treated by the right reverend bishops; and it was partly to indemnify himself for losses sustained in their service, that he endeavoured to recover the penalties to which the clergy had become liable by their connivance and neglect. In Letter I. he says, “At a committee of bishops, after a deliberation of nearly Two Years, it was decided that each bishop should give his secretary an annual sum of money. I have received it from not one of them, except my late lamented patron, the Bishop of London.”——“Commiseration may have been given, (Letter VII.) but it was all I ever received from any one, and that would have been unnecessary, if the sums had been paid which were acknowledged to be my due.”——“Two secretaries have, within the last ten years, fallen victims to depression of mind, arising from a want of sufficient income.”

Most merciful bishops! most Christian bishops! What, not pay your poor secretaries their stipends! drive two of them to despair by your barbarous avarice! Surely you might have spared them the odd hundreds, out your 10, 20, and 40,000 pounds per annum. But you are right reverend fathers, you can lisp about charity, turn up your eyes, talk about treasures in heaven, but your treasures are all in this world; there your hearts are fixed upon translations, pluralities, fat livings, and heavy fines on leases and renewals.

These, however, are private anecdotes betwixt Mr. Wright and his right reverend employers. Let us speak to the public part of the question. It is clear, from what has been said, that Mr. Wright was in possession of valuable information; he had resided in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple, and was intimately acquainted with the secret management of the holy church. The clergy were terribly alarmed at his disclosures: they resorted to every artifice to avert the storm, and save their pockets: clubs were formed among the higher order of ecclesiastics: lies and calumnies of every shape and description were vomited forth to blacken the character of Mr. Wright; he was stigmatized as an “informer,” who, availing himself of his official situation, was in part the cause of and then the betrayer of their guilt. In short, he became exposed to the whole storm of priestly cunning, malignity, and fury. But facts are stubborn things; and this gentleman had secured too firm a hold of his object to lose his grasp by the wiles and malice of the church. Their guilt was unquestionable; there was no chance of escape from the verdict of a jury; but that protection which it was in vain to expect from an English court of justice, they found in the great sanctuary of delinquency, a boroughmongering House of Commons.

On the 17th November, 1813, Bragge Bathurst brought in a bill to stay all legal proceedings against the clergy on account of the penalties they had incurred under the Clergy Residence Act. This bill shortly after passed into a law, almost without opposition. The whigs were silent. Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Brand indeed said something about the absurdity of enacting laws one day, and abrogating them the next; of the injustice of tempting people by rewards, and after they had earned them, interfering to prevent their being granted. But this was all. These gentlemen agreed it was necessary to protect the clergy; and, with the exception of the present Earl of Radnor, we do not find, in Hansard’s History of the Debates, a single individual who raised his voice against the principle of this nefarious transaction. Mr. Wright, too, finding it vain to hope for justice from such a source, ceased his communications to the public relative to the clergy: the Parsons’ Indemnity Bill passed into a law, and the church received a complete white-washing from the State for all its manifold sins and transgressions.

After the passing of the Bank restriction Act, Gagging Bills, Seditious Meeting Bills, Press Restriction Bills, and of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bills, it can hardly excite surprise that a bill passed to indemnify the clergy. In the latter case, however, there appears something more unprincipled and contemptible than in the former unconstitutional measures. The law imposing the penalties which Mr. Wright sought to recover had only been enacted in 1803: the professed object was to remedy the crying evil of non-residence; and to give greater encouragement to prosecutions, the act provided that the whole of the penalties should be given to the informer. Only eight years elapse, an informer comes forward, relying on the faith of parliament; prosecutions are commenced; when the legislature interferes—in utter contempt of justice and consistency—belying its former professions, violating its pledge, robbing an individual of his reward, and screens the delinquents which its own laws had made liable to punishment. It is impossible for the people to feel any thing but contempt for such a system of legislation. Laws, it is clear, are not made to principles, but to men, and are only terrible to the weak, not to the wicked.

Since the memorable actions of Mr. Wright, nothing has intervened to improve the state of church discipline. An act of parliament, passed some years after, was rather in favour of the clergy than otherwise, by abolishing the oaths formerly exacted of vicars to reside, by augmenting the monitory power of the bishops, and increasing the difficulties in the way of prosecution. Accordingly, the great abuses in ecclesiastical discipline remain unabated. Lord Mountcashell states that, since 1814, the number of incumbents has decreased to the amount of 2,500; consequently, there has been a proportionate increase in pluralities. Of the number of resident and non-resident incumbents, the latest returns printed are for the year 1827; in that year, we have seen, the returns were from 10,583 benefices in England and Wales, of which benefices 4,413 had resident, and 6,120 non-resident incumbents. Many incumbents who reside on their benefices do no duty; they are only attracted to their parishes by a fine cover for game, an excellent trout-stream, or, perhaps, they seek a quiet retreat, having worn out the better part of their existence in the dissipation of a town life.

Even those who reside and do duty, and are called the working clergy, perform a service requiring so little intellectual exertion, that it hardly merits the remuneration of a tide-waiter. They have scarcely ever occasion to compose and deliver an original sermon. The late Dr. Johnson, before he received his pension, was regularly employed in the manufacture of this description of commodity. The market is now overstocked; we seldom turn over a newspaper without meeting with advertisements for the sale of MS sermons, which, next to manufactures, seem the most abundant of all things. Sometimes parcels are advertised in lithographic type; this type being an imitation of writing, sermons composed in it pass with the congregation for original compositions, and the minister has the credit of propounding a good discourse, the result of the previous week’s hard study and preparation. A lot of sermons of this description would be invaluable, and might be transmitted from father to son, like a freehold estate. If they became stale, they might be sold or exchanged with a neighbouring incumbent: this is a common practice with ministers who wish to indulge their parishioners with novelty; they exchange one old batch of sermons for another, from a different part of the country.

But enough of this. One is at a loss to imagine what the bishops have been doing while the church has been running to seed. These right reverend prelates are expressly appointed to watch over the morals and conduct of the inferior clergy; they are amply endowed, and have numerous corps of officers to assist in the discharge of their episcopal functions. Yet they have been strangely remiss in attention to their subaltern brethren. Translations have tended greatly to produce this apathy; they divest the bishops of a permanent interest in their dioceses, and prevent them becoming intimately acquainted with the character and demeanour of incumbents. Until they attain the summit of prelatical ambition, they consider themselves only birds of passage; in their sees, what they chiefly take an interest in is, to fill up the vacant commissions, and then keep a steady eye on Durham or Winchester.

Under the primacy of the late Archbishop SUTTON, energetic measures of reform were not likely to be countenanced; the career of this mild but rapacious prelate was not an inapt exemplar of the favourite priestly motto on the Lambeth arms,—“Unite the meekness of a dove with the subtlety of a serpent.” His grace and his grace’s family shared too largely in the advantages of the existing system to relish innovation. His lordship had profound views of the true policy of our spiritual establishment; was always for yielding a little to keep things quiet, rather than make a noise; knowing that the less was said about the church the more she would shine. Some of the primate’s successors, on the episcopal bench, appear hardly yet so rife in the mysteries of ecclesiastical dominion. A few years since, Marsh, of Peterborough, was tormenting his clergy with some unintelligible points of doctrine, and Bishop Blomfield lately astounded the inhabitants of London and Westminster with a “Letter on the Profanation of the Lord’s Day.” Had the strictures of this right reverend prelate been directed only against the baneful habit of drinking to excess, and other vices which disgrace the Sabbath, they might have passed without animadversion; but when he assails the Sunday press, and those innocent relaxations, conducive only to health and harmless enjoyment, he betrays a puritanism unsuited to the age. His lordship seems to opine a poor man is born only to work and pray, while a lord or a bishop may have his concerts, card-parties, and grand dinners every day, not even excepting the seventh. Such idle cant deceives no one; it only excites contempt or disgust. Men’s professions now pass unheeded; every thing is put into the scale and taken at its intrinsic worth. People quietly ask why should the clergy take TEN MILLIONS annually out of the produce of land and industry? What services do they render society? Do they instruct the rising generation? No; they teach them little that is useful and a great deal positively injurious. Are they administrators of justice? No; God forbid they should. Are they profound statesmen? Do they often originate or encourage measures for the good of the country? No; they are most miserable politicians, and as to any project for bettering the condition of the great body of the people, they appear not to have a single idea. Well, but they are ministers of religion! Very few of them are so employed, and as to that the Dissenters are not less teachers of their flocks, and they receive no tithes, build their own chapels, and altogether do not cost one-tenth as much as the mere sinecure rectors of the Establishment.

IV.

REVENUES OE THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY.

It is impossible to produce a complete and accurate statement of the revenues of the clergy. The bulk of ecclesiastical revenue consists of tithe; but besides tithe, an immense revenue is drawn from other sources. The clergy are almost in entire possession of the revenue of charitable foundations. They hold, exclusively, the professorships, fellowships, tutorships, and masterships of the universities and public schools. Immense landed property is attached to the sees, cathedrals, and collegiate churches. The clergy have also a very considerable income from glebe-lands, surplice-fees, preacherships in the royal chapels, lectureships, town-assessments, Easter-offerings, rents of pews in the new churches, stipends of chapels of ease, chaplainships in the army and navy, chaplainships to embassies, corporate bodies, and commercial companies; besides which they monopolize nearly all profitable offices in public institutions, as trustees, librarians, secretaries, &c.

The bishops, who hold the chief estates of the church, and to whom the parochial clergy, on obtaining licenses for curates and dispensation for plurality, are required by law to state the yearly value of their benefices, could furnish the most valuable information relative to the incomes of the clergy. But even this would be insufficient; nothing would throw complete light on the subject, but every member of the establishment, whether in lay or spiritual capacity, making a return of his income and emoluments. The times, we doubt not, are fast approaching when this defect in public statistics will be supplied, and one of the first objects of a reformed parliament be an inquiry into the amount and distribution of ecclesiastical revenues. Until this period arrive, we are compelled to rely on collateral and inferential evidence. The endowments of the church are nearly as ancient as the first introduction of Christianity into Britain, and we know from the results of recent inquiries into the incomes of grammar-schools and other charitable foundations, which are nearly of cotemporary antiquity, that the increase in the value of ecclesiastical estates must be immense. The returns in Liber Regis are usually relied upon, in estimating the revenues of the church, and, perhaps, with other helps, it is the best authority to which we can resort. Of the vast increase in the value of land since the Valor Ecclesiasticus was obtained, the history of St. Paul’s School affords a striking and appropriate exemplification. The estates of this foundation are situated in various parts of the kingdom; in A. D. 1524, they produced an income of £122:0:11; in the year 1820, the yearly income derived from the same estates was £5252:2:111/2. Here is an increase in value of nearly fifty fold, under the wasteful and negligent management of a city company. The colleges of Eton and Winehester were endowed for the education and maintenance of only seventy poor and indigent scholars; their revenues amount respectively to £10,000 and £14,000 a year. The founder of Hemsworth’s hospital in Yorkshire estimated its revenues not to exceed £70 a year; they are now more than £2000. Leeds’ grammar-school was endowed in the reign of Philip and Mary, for the maintenance of two masters, and the endowments probably calculated to yield £80 a year; they now produce £1595. Birmingham grammar-school has a revenue of near £5000 per annum. The valuation of the rectory of Alresford in the king’s book is only £8 a year; the composition now paid for tithes by the parishioners is £300 per annum, being an increase of more than thirty-seven fold. The rectory of Stanhope, Durham county, Mr. Phillpotts admits to yield an income of £2500; the valuation in Liber Regis is £67:6:8. Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, is returned at £50:4:4: the tithes are leased to a layman, and worth £1000 a year. The tithes of the adjoining parish of Morthoe are also leased out to a layman for £700 or £800, although the valuation in the king’s book is only £19:19:3. Besides affording a curious illustration of the increase in the value of ecclesiastical property, we may observe, in passing, that the two last mentioned parishes are a curious example of the state of church discipline. Ilfracombe is attached to a prebendal stall of Salisbury 120 miles distant; Morthoe belongs to the dean and canons of Exeter; although the tithes are so considerable, the working minister of each parish receives only a stipend of £100 a year. In Morthoe the glebe is also leased out,—the vicar, having no residence, lives five or six miles off, and service is performed once on Sunday, which is all the return the parishioners receive for their tithe-assessment of £800 per annum.

Other facts might be cited to illustrate the increase in the value of church property since the ecclesiastical survey of the sixteenth century; but we consider the examples we have selected from various parts of the kingdom sufficient to afford a criterion of the proportional increase in the revenues of the church. The increase in population, by increasing the number of church-fees, has tended, as well as the increased value of land, to swell the revenues of the church, and no doubt many benefices are worth two hundred fold what they were at the time of the Reformation. The vicarage of Hillingdon, held by the present rector of St. George’s, Hanover-square, is an instance of the vicissitudes in clerical income. This, it appears, from the original record preserved in the archives of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, was a mere trifle, the great tithes of which, in the year 1281, were bestowed on the Bishop of Worcester towards defraying the expenses of his journeys to the metropolis, and for repair of the church, the small tithes being reserved for the maintenance of a vicar, to be appointed by the Bishop of London. That part of the contract relating to the expense of repairs has always been left to be performed by the parishioners, the Right Reverend Prelates of Worcester contenting themselves with receiving their share of the tithes, and reading a sermon to the inhabitants about once in a twelvemonth. These tithes have been of considerable value, and the management of them not a little extraordinary. The practice has been to let them to the highest bidder, by granting a lease of them for three lives, the purchaser paying down, in ready money, about £8000. Even on these terms it is said to have been a profitable bargain; the last speculator in this spiritual traffic was the late Lord BOSTON, of whom the Bishop demanded the exorbitant sum of £8000, for the insertion of a new life, one of the former having dropt. His lordship neglecting to complete the agreement, the lease was nominally made over to the bishop’s daughter, who gave receipts in her own name for the amount of tithes collected.

Affairs continued in this state until the year 1812, when an act of parliament was obtained for enclosing and exonerating from tithes certain lands in the parish of Hillingdon; which was promptly acted upon, and a distribution of lands took place, by which 765 acres were set apart and appropriated in lieu of rectorial and vicarial tithes for ever. By this arrangement the bishop and vicar have obtained a fine estate in exchange for £16 a year, the valuation of the living in the time of Henry VIII. All parties are more independent of each other—no contention about tithes nor compositions for tithes. The bishop repairs a chapel in lieu of the church; the vicar is an absentee, leaving a curate for the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants; and the only parties who have sustained any loss are the poor, in being deprived of the rights of common which their forefathers enjoyed.

Leaving these incidental illustrations of church property, let us endeavour to ascertain, upon some general principle, the amount of the revenues of the clergy. The estimates, by individuals, of ecclesiastical revenues are mostly limited to a valuation of tithe and the landed estates of the church. Of the unfairness of this mode of proceeding we shall hereafter speak; at present we shall submit to the reader two estimates of the revenues of the church, drawn up on very different principles, and by parties who entertain very different views of the state of our ecclesiastical establishment. The first statement is from the third edition of a work, entitled “Remarks on the Consumption of Public Wealth by the Clergy.”

Estimate of the Revenues and Property of the Established Church in England and Wales.

Annual value of the gross produce of the land of England and Wales

£150,000,000

One-third of the land of England and Wales not subject to tithe for the clergy, being either tithe-free or lay-impropriations

50,000,000

Leaving the amount on which tithes for the clergy are levied

100,000,000

Supposing the clergy to levy one-sixteenth, they get

6,250,000

Tithes

6,250,000

Estates of the bishops and ecclesiastical corporations

1,000,000

Assessments in towns, on houses, &c.

250,000

Chapels of ease stipends

100,000

Total

£7,600,000

From the Quarterly Review, No. 58.

Total number of acres in England and Wales

37,094,400

Deduct waste land, about one-seventh

5,299,200

Number of acres in tillage

31,795,200

Abbey-land, or land exempt by modus from tithe, one-tenth

3,179,520

Number of acres actually subject to tithes

28,615,680

This number, divided by 10,693, the number of parishes, gives 2,676 tithable acres to each parish.

In the Patronage of the Crown, the Bishops, Deans and Chapters, the Universities and Collegiate Establishments.

1733

Rectories, containing 4,637,508 acres, at 3s. 6d.

£ 811,563

2341

Vicarages, containing 6,264,516 acres, at 1s. 3d.

391,532

Annual value of Public Livings

1,203,095

In the Gift of private Patrons.

3444

Rectories, containing 9,216,144 acres, at 3s. 6d.

1,612,825

2175

Vicarages, containing 5,820,300 acres, at 1s. 3d.

363,768

1000

Perpetual curacies, averaging £75 each

75,000

649

Benefices, not parochial, averaging £50 each

32,450

Annual value of Private Benefices

2,084,043

8000

Glebes, at £20 each

160,000

Total income of parochial clergy

3,447,138

Income of bishoprics

150,000

Income of deans and chapters

275,000

Total revenue of the Established Clergy

£3,872,138

We shall first solicit attention to the estimate from the Quarterly Review, which is such an unfair and misleading representation of the revenues of the clergy, that we ought almost to apologize to the reader for laying it before him. Arthur Young, who is no bad authority in these matters, says the revenue of the church was five millions in 1790, and how greatly it must since have augmented from the vast increase in population and produce. Notwithstanding the evasions and omissions under the Property-Tax, the returns for 1812 make the tithe of that year amount to £4,700,000, and, allowing for the increase in produce and fall in prices, it is not likely a less sum would be returned at present. During the war, the tithe was usually estimated at one-third of the rent; it is not much less now, but, suppose it only one-fourth, and the rental of England and Wales £31,795,200, or one pound for every acre in tillage; then the whole amount of tithe collected is £7,948,200; from which, if we deduct one-third for lay-tithes and land exempt from tithe, the church-tithes alone amount to £5,297,200.

Upon whatever principle we test the statement in the Quarterly Review, its erroneousness is apparent. The reviewer supposes the rectorial tithes to average only 3s. 6d. per acre, and the vicarial tithes only 1s. 3d. Both these sums are assuredly too low. The vicarage tithes, in consequence of the turnip-husbandry and other improvements in agriculture, are often more valuable than the parsonage. The returns to the circular inquiries by the Board of Agriculture make the tithe throughout the kingdom, in 1790, average, per acre, 4s. 01/4d.; in 1803, 5s. 31/2d.; in 1813, 7s. 91/2d. Adopting the rate of tithe of 1803, and taking, with the reviewer, the land in tillage at 31,795,200 acres, the whole amount of tithes collected is £10,267,200; from which, if we deduct, as before, one-third for lay-tithes and tithe-free land, the amount of church-tithes is £6,844,800 per annum.

Again: the reviewer greatly misrepresents the proportion between rectories and vicarages. It is well known to every one the impropriate livings barely equal one-third of the whole number. Yet the reviewer makes the number of vicarages 4516; whereas, according to Archdeacon Plymley, there are only 3687 vicarages in England and Wales. But it suited the sinister purpose of the writer to exaggerate the number of vicarages, in order to calculate the tithes of so many parishes at only 1s. 3d. per acre.

The estimate of the income of the Bishoprics at £150,000 is greatly below the truth. The revenues of the four sees of Winchester, Durham, Canterbury, and London alone exceed that sum. A vast deal of mystery is always maintained about the incomes of the bishops; but the public has incidentally been put in possession of some certain data on this point. In 1829, the late Archbishop Sutton applied for a private act of parliament to raise a loan of £37,000, to assist in altering and improving Lambeth-palace; when it came out that the revenue of the see of this poor member of the “college of fishermen” was ONLY £32,000 per annum. This is the representation of his own officer, Doctor Lushington. Mr. A. Baring stated that the revenue of the see of London would, by the falling in of leases, shortly amount to £100,000 a year. The Bishop of London, in reply to this, alleged that his income, allowing for casualties, did not amount to one-seventh of that sum. His lordship, of course, meant his fixed income, and did not include fines for the renewal of leases, nor the value of his parks, palace, and mansions. We can assure this right reverend prelate that the public never, in truth, thought his income, or that of his Grace of Canterbury, was so extravagantly high as on their own showing they appear to be. The see of Winchester is supposed to be worth £50,000 per annum. In one year the bishop of this diocese received upwards of £15,000 in fines for the renewal of leases.

But let us ascertain the total income of all the sees. In Liber Regis, the King’s book, we have an anthentic return of the value of the bishoprics in the reign of Henry VIII. As this return was to be the foundation of the future payment of first fruits and tenths, we may be sure it was not too much. However, in these returns, the See of Canterbury is valued at £2682: 12: 2 per annum; the See of London at £1000. This was at a time when a labourer’s wages were only a penny a day. Now, it appears, from the admissions of Doctor Lushington and the Bishop of London, that the present incomes of these sees are £32,000 and £14,444 a-year. So that one see has increased in value twelve and the other more than fourteen-fold. The other bishoprics have, no doubt, increased in a similar proportion. Hence, as the incomes of the twenty-six sees in Liber Regis amount to £22,855 a-year, their present value cannot be less than thirteen times that sum, or £297,115, instead of £150,000, as stated in the Quarterly Review. This does not include the dignities and rectories annexed to the sees, or held in commendam, nor the parks and palaces, the mansions, villas, warrens, fines for renewals, heriots, and other manorial rights, enjoyed by the bishops, and which would make their incomes equal to, at least, half-a-million per annum.

The revenues of the Deans and Chapters may be approximated to on the same principle. Their incomes, like those of the bishops, arise principally from lands and manors, and certain payments in money. In the King’s Book, the deans and chapters are valued at £38,000 a-year; consequently, they do not amount, at present, to less than £494,000 per annum, instead of £275,000. But the returns in the Valor Ecclesiasticus are far from complete; several deaneries, prebends, and other offices are omitted; it follows, our estimate is far below the annual worth of the ecclesiastical corporations.

The Reviewer considers each glebe to be worth only £20 a-year; but, when he is desirous of illustrating the penury of the church by comparing its endowments with those of the Church of Scotland, he values the glebes of the latter at £30 per annum. The writer omits to estimate the value of the parsonage-houses: they must be worth something, as they save rent to the incumbents or their curates.

But enough of the estimate in the Quarterly Review. The principles and purposes of this publication are so notorious that every one is on his guard against receiving, implicitly, any representations relative to the church from so suspicious a source. The first statement, from the “Remarks,” &c. contains some inaccuracies and omissions which we shall endeavour to supply. Before, however, we submit a complete view of the revenues of the church, it will be proper shortly to advert to some items of ecclesiastical emolument usually omitted in inquiries of this nature.

Besides tithe and the landed estates of the church, there are, as before remarked, various other sources from which the clergy derive very considerable advantages. Of these, the first we shall notice are Public Charities. The inquiries by the Royal Commissioners, so far as they have proceeded, tend to confirm the accuracy of Lord Brougham’s estimate of the revenues of charitable foundations at nearly two millions a-year. From the tenure of charitable endowments, the clergy have almost entire possession of this immense fund. In England and Wales, according to the returns under the Gilbert Act, there are 3898 school charities, of which the clergy enjoy the exclusive emolument; and, in the remaining charities, they largely participate as trustees, visitors, or other capacity. The pious credulity of our ancestors induced them to place implicit reliance on the clergy, little foreseeing how their confidence would be abused. Three-fourths of charitable property, at least, were thus placed at the mercy of ecclesiastics. It is certain that, in the inquiries recently instituted into charitable foundations, the worst abuses have been found under their management. The school of Pocklington, in Yorkshire, was a flagrant instance, in which a member of the established church was receiving a snug income of nine hundred pounds a-year for teaching ONE scholar. A right reverend prelate, who had been left IN TRUST, and his family, had appropriated the funds of the Mere and Spital charities. The grammar-schools in almost every town have become mere sinecures, seldom having more than two or three foundation-scholars; and the buildings piously intended for the gratuitous accommodation of poor scholars, have been perverted into boarding and pay schools for the emolument of their clerical masters. Bristol and Bath, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Ripon, and Preston, are striking examples of this sort of abuse and perversion. In the principal foundations in the metropolis and neighbourhood, in the Charter-house, Christ’s Hospital, the great schools of Westminster, St. Paul’s, Harrow, Rugby, and the Gresham Lectures, they derive great advantages as wardens, visitors, provosts, high masters, senior masters, ushers, lecturers, and assistants. Many of these offices are held by pluralists, who are, also, dignitaries, and yield salaries of £800 a-year, besides allowances for house-rent, vegetables, and linen, and large pensions of one thousand a-year, or so, on retirement. The present head-master of the Charter-house, and the late and present head-master of St. Paul’s School, are examples of this sort of monopoly. In the colleges of Eton and Winchester, again, the established clergy have a nice patrimony. The government of these foundations is vested in a certain number of reverend fellows, and a provost, who is a reverend also. The value of a fellowship, including allowances for coals, candles, and gown, is about £1000 a-year; and a provostship, in good years, has netted £2500 per annum; besides which, the fellows generally help themselves to a good fat living or two, which are in the gift of the colleges. Again, the established clergy have exclusive possession of the revenues of the Universities, to the exclusion of dissenters, and all persons of delicate consciences, who are scrupulous about taking oaths, and subscribing to articles of faith they neither believe nor understand. The value of a university fellowship is generally less than a fellowship at Eton or Winchester; though the incomes of some of the fellows are handsome enough to induce them to prefer celibacy and college residence to a benefice in the country: add to which the professorships and tutorships, which, bringing the possessors in contact with the youth of the aristocracy and gentry, lead to livings and dignities. Numerous livings are also in the gift of the Universities, as well as in the other foundations we have mentioned, believe some of the offices in the Universities are incompatible with church-preferment.

From these details we may conclude the established clergy share largely in the revenues of Public Charities; supposing the college and school charities average only £175 each, they will produce £682,150 a-year.

CHURCH OR SURPLICE FEES, as they are commonly called, form another abundant source of revenue to the clergy. Originally, surplice-fees were paid only by the rich, and were intended for charity: what was formerly a voluntary gift has been converted into a demand, and, instead of the poor receiving these donations, they are pocketed by the clergy, and poor as well as rich are now compelled to pay fees on burials, marriages, churchings, and christenings. The total sums netted from this source we have no means of estimating correctly. In London, church-fees are supposed to be equal to one-third of the priest’s salary. Besides the regular fee, it is usual, on the burial of opulent people, to get a compliment of a guinea or more for hat-band and gloves: at marriages, five guineas; at christenings, a guinea. In Ireland, the surplice-fees, aided by a few voluntary gifts, form the only maintenance of the catholic priesthood: and, in this country, the total revenue derived from fees and gratuities, is little short of one million a-year. The late Rev. Dr. Cove, whose estimate of church property is seldom more than one-half of its real amount, calculates the annual value of the glebe and surplice-fees of each parish, on an average, at £40 a-year, making, according to him, a tax upon the population of half a million per annum.

EASTER-OFFERINGS, OBLATIONS, &c. form a third source of ecclesiastical emolument. These Offerings, or Dues, as they are sometimes called, are certain customary payments at Easter and all church-festivals, to which every inhabitant-housekeeper is liable. Their amount varies in different parts of the country. In the North, they commonly pay sixpence in lieu of an offering-hen; a shilling in lieu of an offering-goose or turkey; one penny, called smoke-penny; one penny-halfpenny for every person or communicant above the age of sixteen, and so on. We have no means of judging the annual value of these good things. All that we can say is, that in some parts they are very pertinaciously levied, and considered by the established clergy as part of their “ancient rights.” Probably, the value of Easter-offerings may be taken at £100,000 a-year.

The LECTURESHIPS, in towns and populous places, are another branch of clerical income. Where there is no endowment for a lectureship, the parishioners, if they desire a novelty of this sort, in addition to the ordinary routine of church-service, provide one at their own charge. The value of a lectureship, of course, varies with the number and liberality of the subscribers. No person can officiate as a lecturer unless approved by the incumbent and diocesan. Frequent squabbles arise from this cause; the parishioners choosing a popular preacher, who, from a miserable feeling of jealousy, is not approved by the less gifted incumbent. The lectureships are generally held with other preferments. Their total value may be stated at £60,000 per annum.

The next branch of revenue we shall notice are CHAPLAINSHIPS and those public offices which the Clergy may be said to hold ex officio, and to which they have always the preference. The value of chaplainships to the nobility, to ambassadors, public bodies, and commercial companies, must be considerable; but of the value of these, and of the places held by the clergy in public institutions, it is hardly possible to estimate. Suppose £10,000 a-year.

Beside all these sources of ecclesiastical revenue, another and onerous burthen is imposed on the people by the NEW CHURCHES erected under the authority of the Commissioners appointed for that purpose. The sum of £1,367,400 in Exchequer-bills has been already issued in aid of the voluntary contributions towards this undertaking. The salaries of the secretary, surveyors, office-keepers, and other underlings of this commission cost the country more than £5,000 a-year. One hundred and nine churches and chapels have been completed, and one hundred and five more are in different stages of progress: what is the whole number intended to be erected, or the total expense, nobody can tell, for the Commissioners have been recently incorporated, and in all probability their pious labours will be protracted for ages to come. Had the rich clergy contributed their just share to the First Fruits Fund, there would have been no necessity for imposing this additional tax on the public. But the first outlay is far from being the worst part of this extraordinary proceeding. All those new churches and chapels will have to be kept in repair by rates levied on the parishioners—dissenters as well as churchmen, and this, though many have opposed their erection as unnecessary. Then there are the stipends of ministers, clerks, beadles, pew-openers, and though last, not least, the guzzlings and feedings of sextons, churchwardens, and chapelwardens to be provided for; for though the patronage of the new churches is given to the patron or incumbent of the mother-church, yet the salaries of the minister and other officials, instead of being deducted from the income of the rector or vicar, are to be raised by a charge for the rents of pews. Only think of this novel device for augmenting the revenues of the ecclesiastical order! Notwithstanding the immense sums levied for the maintenance of the established religion, and though the frequenters of the new churches are actually compelled to pay tithes to the incumbents of their parishes, yet they are obliged to contribute an additional sum in pew rents to enjoy the benefit of the national communion, and if they desire a third service on Sundays, they must contribute additional for that too. How much the revenues of the clergy will be ultimately increased from this source, we have not the means of estimating. The incomes settled on some of the new ministers by the Commissioners are very considerable; that of the minister of St. Peter’s, Pimlico, is £900 a year; and those of the rectors of the three new churches in the parish of St. Mary-le-bone are £350 per annum each. Suppose the annual charge of each new church £450 per annum, it will shortly add to the other permanent revenues of the church a yearly sum of £94,050.

We shall now collect the different items and exhibit a general statement of the revenues of the Established Clergy. The sum put down for tithe is church-tithe only, after deducting the tithe of lay-impropriations, and allowing for abbey-land and land exempt by modus from tithe. The church-rates are a heavy burden on the people, but being levied at uncertain intervals, for the repair of churches and chapels, they do not form a part of the personal income of the clergy, and are omitted.

Revenues of the Established Clergy of England and Wales.

The see of Sodor and Man is not in charge in the King’s Book, and is omitted in this estimate.

Church-tithe

£6,884,800

Incomes of the bishoprics

297,115

Estates of the deans and chapters

494,000

Glebes and parsonage-houses

250,000

Perpetual curacies £75 each

75,000

Benefices not parochial £250 each

32,450

Church-fees on burials, marriages, christenings, &c.

500,000

Oblations, offerings, and compositions for offerings at the four great festivals

80,000

College and school foundations

682,150

Lectureships in towns and populous places

60,000

Chaplainships and offices in public institutions

10,000

New churches and chapels

94,050

Total Revenues of the Established Clergy

£9,459,565

We are confident several of these sources of emolument are rather under-rated. Perhaps it may be alleged that some items do not properly appertain to ecclesiastical income—that they are the rewards pro opera et labore extra-officially discharged by the clergy. But what would be said if, in stating the emoluments of the Duke of Wellington, we limited ourselves to his military pay, without also including his pensions, sinecures, and civil appointments? The sums placed to the account of the clergy are received by them either as ministers of religion, or from holding situations to which they have been promoted in consequence of being members of the Established Church. There are several sums annually raised on the people which we have omitted, but which, in strictness, ought to be placed to the account of the clergy. Large sums are constantly being voted by Parliament for building churches in Scotland, as well as in England; more than £21,000 has been granted for building churches and bishops’ palaces in the West Indies; £1,600,000 has been granted for the aid of the poor clergy, as they are called, and who have been also favoured by their livings being exonerated from the land-tax; nearly a million has been granted for building houses and purchasing glebes for the clergy in Ireland; upwards of £16,000 a-year is voted to a society for propagating Church of Englandism in foreign parts; and more than £9,000 is granted to some other Society for Discountenancing Vice,—a duty which one would think especially merged in the functions of our established pastors. All these sums have been omitted; they certainly tend to augment the burthen imposed on the public by the Church: but as it is to be hoped they do not all form permanent branches of ecclesiastical charge, they are excluded from our estimate of clerical income.

The next consideration is the Number of Persons among whom the revenues of the Church are divided. It has been already shown that the number of prelates, dignitaries, and incumbents, is only 7,694, and by this diminutive phalanx is the entire revenue of £9,459,565 monopolized, affording an average income of £1,228 to each individual. Except the clergy, there is no class or order of men whose incomes average an amount like this. The average pay of officers in the army or navy will bear no comparison with that of the Clergy. Take the legal classes—the most gainful of all professions; add together the incomes of the lord-chancellor, the judges, the barristers, conveyancers, proctors, special-pleaders, and every other grade of that multitudinous craft—the pettifogger of most limited practice included—and divide the total by the number of individuals, and it will yield no average income like that of dignitaries, rectors, and vicars. Still less will the fees and gains of the medical classes—the physician, surgeon, and apothecary—bear a comparison with the Church. The pensions, salaries, and perquisites of employés in the civil department of government are justly deemed extravagant; but compare the united incomes of these with ecclesiastics, from the first lord of the treasury to the humblest official in the Stamp Office, and the difference is enormous. The Church is a monstrous, overgrown CRŒSUS in the State, and the amount of its revenues incredible, unbearable, and out of proportion with every other service and class in society.

An average estimate of the incomes of the Clergy, however, affords no insight into the mode in which the enormous revenues of the church are squandered among its members. Next to pluralists, the greatest abuse in the establishment results from the unequal amount of income possessed by individuals of the same rank in the ecclesiastical order, and the unequal burthen of duties imposed upon them. The incomes of some bishops, as those of Llandaff, St. Asaph, and Bangor, barely equal that of a clerk of the Treasury, or of rectors and vicars whose conduct they are appointed to superintend; while the incomes of others exceed those of the highest functionaries in the land. Yet we are told, by Mr. Burke, that the revenues of the higher order of ecclesiastics are to enable them to rear their “mitred fronts in courts and palaces to reprove presumptuous vice.” But if one bishop requires a large revenue to support his dignity in high places, so does another. Among the archdeacons is like inequality, their incomes varying from £200 to £2000 a-year. And among the dignitaries and members of cathedral and collegiate establishments is similar disproportion. Many of the deaneries, as those of Westminster, Windsor, St. Paul’s, Salisbury, Lincoln, Exeter, and Wells, are very valuable, yielding, probably, to their possessors, incomes of £10,000, £8,000, £5,000, £2,000, £1,900, and 1,500 respectively. The prebendaries and canonries vary in amount from £250 to £2,000 a-year. Some of the precentorships are worth not less than £900 a-year; and many of the chancellorships, treasurerships, succentorships, and we know not how many other official ships, afford snug incomes of £400, £500, and £800 per annum. The minor canons some of them have £250; the vicars-choral £350; the priest-vicars, the chanters, and sub-chanters, and a hundred more popish names and offices, are all amply, though unequally, remunerated for their services.

In the incomes of the parochial clergy there is similar diversity and injustice. Many rectories, as before observed, are more valuable than bishoprics, having incomes from £8,000 to £10,000 a-year. The same may be said of the vicarages, being possessed of large glebes or large endowments, and sometimes both. While, again, it cannot be denied that there are some rectories, and in particular vicarages, whose tithes are in the hands of laymen, and without even a parsonage-house. In some instances, the deficiency of income has been so great, that it has been found necessary to unite the incomes of two or three parishes to produce an adequate maintenance to the officiating minister, who, in the care of so many churches, cannot have time to officiate at any of them properly; and thus, no doubt, are many souls lost which might be saved; some, straying into the fold of sectarianism, become jacobins and dissenters, to the great injury of the mother church, and the eternal reproach of the right reverend bishops, the very reverend deans, the venerable archdeacons, and other reverend dignitaries, who waste, in the pomp, vanities, and luxuries of the world, the sums which ought to be appropriated to the augmentation of these poor livings.

The penury of one part of the church is not less objectionable than the bloated and sinecure opulence of another. At the establishment of Queen Anne’s bounty, in the beginning of the last century, there were 5597 livings (above one-half of the whole number) whose incomes did not exceed £50 per annum. The Diocesan Returns in 1809 gave the following classifications of poor livings under £150 per annum:—

£

Livings.

Not exceeding

10

12

———

20

72

———

30

191

———

40

353

———

50

433

———

60

407

———

70

376

———

80

319

———

90

309

———

100

315

———

110

283

———

120

307

———

130

246

———

140

205

———

150

170

Total

3998

It is by grouping these poor livings with the rich ones, and averaging the whole, that a plausible case is often attempted to be made out in favour of the clergy. One writer, for instance, whose statement has been often quoted, makes the average income of each living in England and Wales only £303 per annum. The Rev. Dr. Cove, adopting different principles of calculation, makes the average income of the parochial clergy only £255 each. Both these estimates, it is apparent from what has been advanced, are very wide of the truth. There are 11,342 benefices, and only 7,191 incumbents; and these incumbents engross the entire revenue of the parochial clergy arising from tithe and other sources. Turning to the statement at page 52, and deducting from the total revenues of the established clergy the incomes of the bishoprics and ecclesiastical corporations, it will be found that the parochial clergy alone have a total revenue of £8,668,450, which, divided by the number of benefices and the number of incumbents, gives £764 for the average value of each benefice, and £1,205 for the average income of each incumbent. From this enormous income, the paltry stipends of £40 or £60 a-year, paid by some of the beneficed clergy to their curates, are, of course, to be deducted.

The representation which the Quarterly Review, and other misleading publications, is desirous of impressing on the public is, that there are about 10 or 11,000 benefices, held by about as many individuals—rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates—whose average income is the very moderate sum of £255 or £303 each. Such a statement, if true, would render the amount of the revenues of the clergy, and the distribution of these revenues, very little objectionable indeed. But we will soon show this is all mystification and delusion.

The real situation of the Parochial Clergy is this: in England and Wales there are 5098 rectories, 3687 vicarages, and 2970 churches neither rectorial nor vicarial; in all, 11,755 churches. These churches are contained in 10,674 parishes and parochial chapelries; and, probably, after a due allowance for the consolidation of some of the smaller parishes, form about as many parochial benefices. Now, the whole of these 10,674 benefices are in the hands of 7191 incumbents; there are 2886 individuals with 7037 livings; 517 with 1701 livings; 209 with 836 livings; 64 with 320 livings. Look again, at page 31, and the whole mystery of parochial monopoly is solved. Or let any one look into the Clerical Guide, and he will find nearly one-half the whole number of incumbents are pluralists. Some are rectors at one place, vicars at another, and curates at another; some hold three or four rectories, besides vicarages and chapelries; some hold two vicarages, a chapelry, and a rectory; in short, they are held in every possible combination. But what does the secretary to four bishops, Mr. Wright, the “Informer,” as the late Bragge Bathurst termed him, say on this subject: in one diocese the majority of the clergy held three livings, some five, and some six, besides dignities, and “yet a great part of them did not reside upon any of their preferments.”

This is exactly the way in which the property of the church is monopolized. Some persons imagine that there are as many rectors as rectories, vicars as vicarages, prebendaries as prebends, deans as deaneries, &c. No such thing: the 26 bishops, 700 dignitaries, and about 4000 non-resident incumbents, principally belonging to the Aristocracy, enjoy nearly the whole ecclesiastical revenues, amounting to more than NINE MILLIONS, and averaging upwards of £2000 a-year.

And for what service? what duties do they perform? what benefit do the people derive from their labours? The bishops ordain the priests; sometimes visit their dioceses; sometimes preach; and this we believe is the extent of their performances, and which, in our opinion, amount to very little. As to the venerable, very reverend, and worshipful dignitaries, they perform still less. Let any one visit the cathedral or collegiate churches; go into St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, or York Minster, for instance; and observe what is doing in those places. No service is performed which interests the public. Persons may be found admiring the stone and mortar; but the vicars-choral, the priest-vicars, the chanters, or sub-chanters, or fifth or sixth canons, are very little regarded; and as to the dignitaries themselves, why they are never to be seen; many of them probably reside some hundred miles off, in more pleasant parts of the country, enjoying the amusements of the chase, or whiling away their time at card-tables or watering-places. Then, as to the non-resident incumbents, it must be admitted they are sinecurists, whose duty is performed, and for which they receive the salary, by deputy. Thus, it appears, that these three classes, without performing any duties of importance, absorb almost the entire revenues of the church.

The labouring bees in the established church are the curates, who receive a very small share of its emoluments. In a parliamentary paper, ordered to be printed on the 28th of May, 1830, containing the diocesan returns relative to the number and stipends of curates in England and Wales, we find that, for the year 1827, out of 4254 individuals of that class, there were 1639 with salaries not exceeding £60, and only eighty-four out of the whole number with salaries exceeding £160. There were fifty-nine curates with incomes between £20 and £30, and six with incomes between £10 and £20. There were 1393 curates resident in the glebe houses, and 805 more resident in their parishes. So that, either for want of parsonage-houses, or other cause, a vast number of parishes had neither resident curate nor incumbent. Supposing the stipends of the curates average £75 a-year, which is higher than the bishops, under the 55 Geo. III., have in many cases authority to raise them, their share of the church-revenues amounts only to £319,050. Yet it is this useful and meritorious order which performs nearly the whole service of the national religion.

To the curates we may add the possessors of the poor livings, as a portion of the clergy who really discharge some duties for their emoluments. These livings may be considered the mere offal, or waste land of the church, on which those who have neither rotten boroughs nor family influence, are allowed to graze. Their incomes not being sufficient to allow for the maintenance of a curate, many of the incumbents reside on their benefices and perform the duties of their parishes. But even this class is not in the indigent state some persons are apt to imagine. The returns we have cited of the value of poor livings in 1809, were considered, at the time, a gross imposition on the public and parliament. In consequence, however, of these returns, true or false, the incomes of the poor clergy have subsequently been greatly augmented. Besides Queen Anne’s bounty, £100,000 has been voted annually by parliament; the benefactions in money, by private individuals, amount to upwards of £300,000; other benefactions, in houses for the residence of ministers, in lands, tithes, and rent-charges, are very considerable: to which we may add the advantages small benefices have derived from being exonerated from the land tax, and from the increase in population, and in the value of tithes from agricultural improvements.

Another point necessary to be borne in mind, in considering the situation of the poor clergy, as they are called, is, that they are, like the non-resident aristocratical incumbents, nearly all pluralists. Few, indeed, only hold one living; and, probably, the whole 3998 livings under £150, are held by 1500 or 2000 individuals. That this is the case, is evident, from the returns made to the Commissioners appointed to exonerate small benefices from the land-tax, and which are now lying before us. In these returns for 1820 we find 2137 livings, or other ecclesiastical benefices of less than £150 in clear yearly value, had been exonerated from the land-tax. Of 419 benefices exonerated from the land-tax in 1814, there were only ninety-two with incomes of less than £100 each, held without other preferment. Hence we conclude that the poor clergy, whose incomes Dr. Cove made about £80, have, from pluralities, consolidation, and the other advantages mentioned, incomes of at least £150 each, and that, with the exception of curates, there are few poor clergy in England.

We have now afforded the reader, without exaggeration or distortion of facts, a complete and intelligible view of the total amount and disposition of the immense revenues of the Established Clergy. The chief points to be borne in mind are the diminutive number of the beneficed clergy, their sinecurism, and relative efficiency in the discharge of religious duties, and the monstrous inequality in their incomes. These points will best appear from the succinct statement we subjoin.

Statement, showing the Mode in which the Revenues of the Church, amounting to £9,459,565, are divided among the different Orders of Clergy.

Class.

Average income of each individual.

Total incomes.

The value of the deaneries, prebends, and other dignities, is calculated from the returns in the King’s book, allowance being made for the increase in the value of ecclesiastical property in the proportion of thirteen to one. The result is, we are aware, an average value greatly below the truth. Some single prebends, as the golden ones of St. Paul’s, Winchester, Ely, Lincoln, and Durham, are worth from £800 to £2000 a-year. But, in the absence of more authentic information, we have been reduced to the alternative of either proceeding on the general principle mentioned, or of relying on private reports—and we preferred the former.

EPISCOPAL CLERGY,

{ 2

Archbishops

£26,465

£52,930

{ 24

Bishops

10,174

244,185

DIGNITARIES, &c.

{ 28

Deans

1580

44,250

{ 61

Archdeacons

739

45,126

{ 26

Chancellors

494

12,844

{ 514

Prebendaries and Canons

545

280,130

{ 330

Precentors, Succentors, Vicars-General, Minor Canons, Priest-Vicars, Vicars-Choral, & other Members of Cathedral and Collegiate Churches }

338

111,650

Carried forward

£791,085

Brought forward

£791,085

PAROCHIAL CLERGY,

{ 2886

Aristocratic Pluralists, mostly non-resident, and holding two, three, four, or more livings, in all 7037 livings, averaging each, tithes, glebes, church-fees, &c. £764 }

1863

5,379,430

{ 4305

Incumbents, holding one living each, and about one-half resident on their benefices }

764

3,289,020

{ 4254

Curates, licensed and unlicensed, whose average stipends of about £75 per annum, amounting together to £319,050, are included in the incomes of the pluralists and other incumbents.

Total

£9,459,565

Observations.

The above statement affords room for important remarks, in order to distinguish the over from the under paid, and the useful and meritorious from the mere sinecurists, in our ecclesiastical polity.

Every thing in this country is formed upon an aristocratic scale. Because some noblemen have enormous incomes, ergo the bishops must have enormous incomes, to be fit and meet associates for them. Thus, one extravagance in society generates another to keep it in countenance; because we have a king who costs a million a year, we must have lords with a quarter of a million, and bishops with fifty thousand a year; and as a consequence of all this, a labourer’s wages cannot be more than 10d. a day—he must live on oatmeal and potatoes, and have the penny roll not bigger than his thumb. But why should the income of a bishopric so far exceed that of the highest offices in the civil department of government? Burke’s argument is not consistent. A Secretary of State has to show his “front in courts and palaces,” as well as a bishop; he is in constant intercourse with dukes and princes, yet his salary does not exceed £6000 a year. The bishops have their private fortunes as well as others, and there is no just reason why their official incomes should be so disproportionate to that of a lord of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

An Archdeacon is considered the deputy of the bishop, and assists in the discharge of the spiritual duties of his diocese. As such, we think the deputy ought to be paid out of the income of his principal, and the revenues of the archdeaconries applied to a fund to be raised, in lieu of tithes. Many bishops are not overburthened with duty, and have little need of assistants. One bishop of the United Church, it is well known, spent all his time in Italy, where he dissipated the revenues of an immensely rich see. Some English bishops do not reside in their dioceses. We knew a bishop who resided, within the last eight years, not more than a mile from St. James’s Palace; he lived till he sunk into a state of dotage and imbecility; he was in fact left to the care of a wet-nurse, who treated him like an infant: we never heard the church sustained any injury from the suspended services of this right reverend prelate, and he, or some one for him, continued, till his death, to receive the revenues of his see.

The Dean and Chapter, consisting of canons and prebendaries, are considered the council of the bishop. This is about as much of a farce as O’CONNELL’S great crucifix in Merrion-Square, or the virtues of relics and holy water. It is notorious, the bishop and his chapter are oftener at open loggerheads, than sitting in harmonious conclave to devise measures for the good of the Church. The bishop of St. David’s is his own dean, and so endeavours to avoid such unseemly dissensions by being part council to himself. One of the most important offices of the dean and chapter, is to elect the bishop; that is choose the appointee of some court favourite, and in the exercise of which franchise, they discharge as virtual functions as the electors of Cockermouth or Ripon, who adopt the nominees of Earl Lonsdale and Miss Lawrence. The deaneries, prebends, canonries, and other cathedral dignities, are in fact honorary offices of great value; they are endowed with vast estates, numerous manors, and other good things, and have valuable livings in their gift; all of which advantages are so much public income idly squandered. We have before adverted to the sinecure nature of these appointments before the Reformation, and, as a further proof that they are offices without duties, we may mention that nominations to them are sometimes suspended. In 1797, when the cathedral of Lichfield was about being repaired, an act of parliament was obtained to defray the expense, by sequestrating the revenues of two vacant prebends. If the duties of these two offices could be suspended for an indefinite term, they might for perpetuity, and the revenues of all similar situations appropriated to the establishment of a fund in lieu of tithes, for the maintenance of the Working Clergy.

Next in order come the Aristocratic Pluralists. These are so many clerical sinecurists who receive immense incomes, without rendering any service to the community. They are mere men of the world, whose element is the race-course, the ball-room, and billiard-table. They seldom see their parishes: their residence is in London, at Paris, Naples, or Florence. If they visit their benefices, it is not in the capacity of pastor, but of surveyor or tax-gatherer, who comes to spy out improvements, to watch the increase of stock and extension of tillage, and see how many hundreds more he can squeeze out of the fruits of the industry and capital of the impoverished farmer. The poor parishioner, who contributes his ill-spared tithe to the vicious indulgence of these spiritual locusts, is neither directed by their example, instructed by their precepts, nor benefited by their expenditure.

From the preceding table, it is evident that about 2152 incumbents, and 4254 curates, discharge nearly the entire duties of the established religion; that their average income is £301, which is more than the average income of the Scotch clergy; more than the income of the dissenting clergy in England, and the catholic clergy in Ireland; that, therefore, £1,974,503, the total revenue of these classes, constitutes nearly the whole expenditure the national worship requires for its maintenance and the discharge of its spiritual functions.

It is further evident that the Bishops, Dignitaries, and Non-resident incumbents, amounting to 6,025 individuals, receive £7,485,062 per annum, or seven-ninths of the revenues of the church; that these classes hold either merely honorary appointments, discharge no duties, or are greatly overpaid; that, in consequence, by abolishing non-residence, stalls, and other sinecures, and by reducing the salaries of the higher clergy to a level with those of appointments in the State, or to a level with those of the best paid clergy in Europe, several millions of public income might be saved, to be applied either to the establishment of a fund for the maintenance of the operative clergy, in lieu of tithe and other ecclesiastical imposts; or, it might be applied, as a great portion of it was originally intended, as a provision for the maintenance of the poor; or, as a substitute for those public taxes whose pressure on “the springs and sources of industry” tends to produce national poverty and embarrassment.

Further, it is clear, from an impartial inquiry into the origin and tenure of church property, that it has been always considered public property; that it was dealt with as such in the reign of Henry VIII., and by parliament in the reigns of George III. and IV., and the same policy has been pursued towards ecclesiastical possessions in every European state: that, in consequence, the legislature, after making a provision for the life interests of the present possessors of the church revenues, as was done at the time of the Reformation, is authorized by precedent and the example of other nations; and may, without injustice or inhumanity, adopt such measures for introducing a new disposition of clerical endowments, as is most conducive to the general interests of the community.

Lastly, it appears, on the authority of the ablest writers on ecclesiastical polity, that a religious establishment of any kind is no part of Christianity—it is only the means of inculcating it; that a church establishment is founded solely on its utility; that the public endowment of any church implies, it is intended to be subordinate and auxiliary to the public good; that the endowments of the Church of England were not originally granted for the support of a particular sect of religionists, but the general support and diffusion of the Gospel: that, in consequence, our episcopalian establishment is not an essential part of religion, but a mean of social advantage, and its policy and duration ought to be determined solely by its bearing on the public interest; and, that, on any future interference with the revenues of the church, the two most important considerations are—first, that if appropriated to the maintenance of religion at all, they ought to be appropriated to the maintenance of the teachers of Christianity generally, without distinction of creed; and, secondly, that the amount and proportion in which they are so appropriated, ought to be determined by one sole object—the only true end of religion, government, law, and every social institution—namely, the general prosperity and happiness of the People.

We cannot, perhaps, more appropriately conclude this section than by a comparative estimate of the cost of Church of Englandism and of Christianity in other countries. England affords the only grand monument of ecclesiastical wealth remaining to shew the intellectual bondage of men in times of superstition, before the more general diffusion of knowledge and education. Except in this country, the people have every where cast off the prejudice impressed upon them during the dark ages, that it was necessary to yield up a large portion of their property and the fruits of their industry, to be consumed by a numerous body of idle and luxurious ecclesiastics. Abroad those clergymen are only respected and supported who zealously labour in their ministry, and are the real spiritual pastors of the people. Formerly clergymen were almost the only persons who knew how to read and write; they took an active part in the administration of the laws, and were in universal request as secretaries and clerks. This was some excuse for their number and endowments. But these days are past, and the subjoined comparison will show that the churches of the Roman Catholic faith present as singular a contrast with their ancient endowments as with the present enormity of Church of England opulence.

Comparative Expense of Church of Englandism and of Christianity in all other Countries of the World.

Name of the Nation.

Number of Hearers.

Expenditure on the Clergy, per Million of Hearers.

Total Amount of the Expenditure in each Nation.

France

32,000,000

£62,000

£2,000,000

United States

9,600,000

60,000

576,000

Spain

11,000,000

100,000

1,100,000

Portugal

3,000,000

100,000

300,000

Hungary, Catholics

4,000,000

80,000

320,000

Calvinists

1,050,000

60,000

63,000

Lutherans

650,000,

40,000

26,000

Italy

19,391,000

40,000

776,000

Austria

18,918,000

50,000

950,000

Switzerland

1,720,000

50,000

87,000

Prussia

10,536,000

50,000

527,000

German Small States

12,763,000

60,000

765,000

Holland

2,000,000

80,000

160,000

Netherlands

6,000,000

42,000

252,000

Denmark

1,700,000

70,000

119,000

Sweden

3,400,000

70,000

238,000

Russia, Greek Church

34,000,000

15,000

510,000

Catholics and Lutherans.

8,000,000

50,000

400,000

Christians in Turkey

6,000,000

30,000

180,000

South America

15,000,000

30,000

450,000

Christians dispersed elsewhere

3,000,000

50,000

150,000

The Clergy of

203,728,000

people receive

9,949,000

England and Wales

6,500,000

1,455,316

9,459,565

Hence, it appears, the administration of Church of Englandism to 6,500,000 hearers costs nearly as much as the administration of all other forms of Christianity in all parts of the world to 203,728,000 hearers.

Of the different forms of Christianity the Romish is the most expensive. A Roman Catholic clergyman cannot go through the duties of his ministry well for more than 1000 persons. The masses, auricular confessions, attendance on the sick, and other observances, make his duties more laborious than those of a Protestant clergyman with double the number of hearers: add to which, the cost of wax lights, scenery, and other accompaniments peculiar to Catholic worship. Notwithstanding these extra outgoings, we find that the administration of the Episcopalian Reformed Religion in England to one million of hearers, costs the people fourteen times more than the administration of Popery to the same number of hearers in Spain or Portugal, and more than forty times the administration of Popery in France.

Dissenters, like churchmen, are compelled to contribute to the support of the ministers and churches of the established religion, besides having to maintain, by voluntary payments, their own pastors and places of worship. In France all religions are maintained by the state, without distinction; all persons have access to the universities and public schools: in England, only one religion is maintained by the state; and all dissenters from the national worship are excluded from the universities and colleges, and from the masterships of grammar-schools, and other public foundations, endowed by our common ancestors, for the general promotion of piety and learning.

Dr. PALEY, a writer of great eminence, and whose principal work has been adopted as a text-book at Oxford and Cambridge, has shown that it is the policy of every government which endows a particular form of religion, to make choice of that religion which is followed and believed in by a majority of the people. This principle, however, is not acted upon in this country. Notwithstanding the immense endowments of the established clergy, their gradation of rank, and protection by the state, it seems that, owing to laxity of discipline, want of zeal, defects in the Liturgy, or other causes, the adherents of the privileged worship constitute a minority of the nation.

England and Ireland are the only countries in the world where a tenth of the produce is claimed by the clergy. In Popish Italy the ecclesiastical tithe is only a fortieth, and is taken in kind. A prosecution by a clergyman for tithe is nearly unknown; whereas, in the United Kingdom, tithe causes, often forming the most costly and intricate source of litigation, are of frequent occurrence. In France the expense of all religions, Protestant and Catholic, is defrayed out of the taxes, like other branches of the public service. In the United States of America all the different modes of worship are maintained by their respective followers.

The monstrous excess in the pay of the English clergy appears from comparing their average income, with the incomes of the clergy of equal rank in other countries. In France an archbishop has only £1041 a-year; a bishop £625; an archdeacon £166; a canon or prebend £100; a rector £48; a curate £31. In Rome the income of a cardinal, the next in dignity to the pope, is £400 to 500 a-year; of a rector of a parish £30; of a curate £17: compare these stipends with the enormous incomes of the English clergy; and, making allowance for difference in the expence of living in the respective countries, the disparity in ecclesiastical remuneration appears incredible.

V.

RAPACITY OF THE CLERGY EXEMPLIFIED.

Though the avocations of the clergy are professedly of a spiritual nature, no class has manifested so greedy an appetite for temporal advantages and enjoyments. They have been like the daughters of the horse-leech, their cry has constantly been give! give! A brief notice of the application of First Fruits and Tenths, and, subsequently, of parliamentary grants to the augmentation of ecclesiastical revenues, will show as much rapacity on the part of the clergy and as wasteful expenditure of public money on the church as was ever exhibited in the darkest ages of monkish superstition.

First Fruits, as is well known, are the first year’s whole profit or value of any spiritual preferment. The Tenths are the tenth part of the annual value of each living. Both first-fruits and tenths were formerly paid to the pope. The first-fruits were paid to his Holiness on promotion to any new benefice, and the tenths were an annual incometax of ten per cent. out of the revenue of the clergy. As the clergy would, when it was contrary to law, persist in the payment of these foreign exactions, Henry VIII. determined, on the dissolution of the monasteries, to keep them to the yoke to which they had voluntarily subjected themselves, and annexed the revenue arising from first-fruits and tenths to the crown; excepting, however, from the payment of first-fruits, all vicarages under ten pounds, and rectories under ten marks per annum.

According to the valuation in the King’s Book, the first-fruits and tenths were paid, as the 1st of Elizabeth has it, to “the great aid, relief, and supportation of the inestimable charges of the Crown:” and so continued till the 2d year of queen Anne, 1703, when an act passed giving to a corporation, which was to be erected for the augmentation of small livings, the whole of the first fruits and tenths. This is what is called QUEEN ANNE’S BOUNTY, and amounted to about £14,000 per annum: it has been subsequently increased by an annual grant of £100,000 from parliament and the benefactions of individuals. By another act of the queen, the bishops are required, by oaths of witnesses, to ascertain the clear improved yearly value of every benefice with incomes not exceeding £50 per annum, and certify the same to the exchequer, in order to be discharged from the payment of first-fruits: and all above that value to contribute, by the payment of first-fruits and tenths, to the augmentation of the former.

The object of the queen in establishing this fund was to relieve the poor clergy; the real and only effect has been to relieve the rich clergy from a charge to which by law they were liable. In the 26th Henry VIII. a provision was made for revising, from time to time, the valuations under which the first-fruits and tenths were paid. It is probable the clergy of 1703 were apprehensive, as the nation was then engaged in an expensive war, that such a revision might be made; and in persuading the pious queen to renounce a portion of the hereditary revenue for the sake of “her poor clergy,” they artfully contrived to insert a clause (the last in the act) by which the payment of first-fruits and tenths was made perpetual at the original rate of valuation!

The cunning of the rich clergy in thus shifting from themselves the burthen of contributing to the relief of their poorer brethren, is only to be matched in degree by the folly shown in the application of the diminished revenue which this trick of theirs still left for the improvement of small livings. At the time when the Bounty-Fund was established, there were, according to the returns, 5597 livings in England and Wales with incomes not exceeding £50, and which the slow operation of the fund, aided by parliament, would not raise to £150 in two centuries. Under such circumstances any rational being would suppose the governors and the legislature, by whom the disposal of the fund was superintended, would have made some inquiry into the condition of these livings. Some of them were of very small extent and scarcely any population; and might, therefore, have been advantageously united with one another or with other parishes. In others, the number of hearers was very great, and the parishes so large, they might have been advantageously subdivided. No attention was paid to these different circumstances. The governors of the bounty proceeded bountifully: they distributed a part of their money, in sums of £200, on any poor living to which any private person would give an equal sum; the rest, and greater part, they distributed by lot, letting each poor living take an equal chance for a £200 prize, without any regard to persons or urgency of claim. After this the story of Bridoye deciding suits-at-law by dice, after making up a fair pile of paper on each side, appears no longer an extravaganza. Up to the year 1815 the governors had made in this way 7323 augmentations of £200; but with benefices, as with men, fortune is not proportioned to desert or necessity. Some of the least populous parishes had a wonderful run of luck. In the diocese of Chichester, for instance, the rectory of Hardham, which, in 1811, contained eighty-nine inhabitants, has received six augmentations by lot, or £1200. The vicarage of Loddington, with forty-eight people, has had six augmentations,—£1200. In the diocese of Salisbury, Bremilham drew a prize; it contained fourteen people. Pertwood drew another; it had but twelve people. Calstone had £1000, including a benefaction of £200; its population was nineteen. In the diocese of Winchester, St. Swithin’s, with twenty-four people, has received £800; and £200 has been expended on Ewhurst, which has seven people, and the living returned worth £99. In the diocese of York, Butterwick, with sixty-two people, has had five prizes,—£1000; while Armley, with 2941 people, and Allendale, with 3884, have only gained one each. Even in cities, where the scattered condition of the population could afford no pretext against the union of parishes, the same random plan of augmentations has been pursued. In Winchester separate augmentations have been given to seven parishes, the population of which, all united, would have amounted only to 2376, and would, consequently, have formed a very manageable and rather small town parish. In short, the whole of the returns teem with instances of extravagance, and clearly demonstrate this clerical little-go has been managed for a very different purpose than relieving the penury of part of the establishment. Indeed it is supposed that the church looks upon the poverty of some of her members as sturdy beggars look upon their sores, considering them a valuable adjunct for exciting an ill-judged compassion for the whole body, and securing impunity in idleness and over-feeding.

Had it not been for the fraudulent substraction of the higher clergy from the burthen of contributing to the relief of their poor brethren, there would have been no need of resorting to eleemosynary aid from parliament. If the first-fruits and tenths had been paid, subsequently to the gift of Queen Anne, according to the rate which the law provided, that is, according to the real value of the benefices, instead of a million and a half, at least thirty millions would have been received from those taxes; a sum not only quite sufficient to have removed the poverty of all the poor livings in the kingdom, but to have established schools in every parish, and left a surplus beside for building additional churches, or any other useful purpose.

The funds at present in the hands of the governors are very considerable: not long since these faithful trustees for the benefit of the poor clergy advanced a loan for the repair of the palace of the rich archdiocese of Canterbury; and it is said they have come to a resolution to discourage as much as possible the purchase of lands, and to make certain annual allowances to clergymen with small livings from the dividend of the stock. By this latter proceeding the heads of the church have themselves begun to pay the clergy out of the public funds; affording an example, from high authority, of the practicability of this mode of paying the clergy generally.

In the course of the augmentations no security has been taken against non-residence or plurality. The governors have gone on increasing the income of two small livings, in order to make each of them capable of supporting a resident clergyman, while, after as well as before the augmentation, one incumbent may hold them together—reside on neither—and allow only a small part of the accumulated income to a curate, who performs the duties of both.

Rapacity and finesse appear inseparable traits in the character of the clergy at all times; and the recent conduct of our spiritual guides in the metropolis is a worthy counterpart to that of the clergy in the time of Queen Anne. The situation of the clergy of the City of London is different from that of the clergy in other parts of the kingdom. In the reign of Henry VIII. continual altercations took place between the citizens and their pastors relative to tithes and ecclesiastical dues. To put an end to these unseemly disputes, the 37th Henry VIII. established a commission, at the head of which was the archbishop, with full power to give to their decrees the force of law, if they were enrolled in the Court of Chancery before March, 1545. By a decree of this commission the tithe of houses and buildings is fixed at the rate of 2s. 9d. for every 20s. yearly rent, and 2d. for each of the family for the four yearly offerings. Great disputes, however, have arisen between the inhabitants and tithe-holders respecting the validity of this decree; for it appears, on the authority of Tomline and Raithby, that it never was enrolled agreeably to the obligation of the act. The clergy, however, have continued to urge their claim to 2s. 9d. in the pound, which they modestly term their “ancient rights,” and would, doubtless, yield a very handsome remuneration. An assessment of 1s. in the pound, as stated by the City tithe-committee, would, in the smallest and poorest parishes, yield an income of £500 a-year; and an assessment of 2s. 9d. would raise the lowest living to £1400 a-year. To this exorbitant pretension the clergy have long looked with extreme desire, beholding the increasing wealth and population of the City with feelings similar to those ascribed by Milton to Satan, when contemplating, with malign eye, the happiness of our first parents in the garden of Eden.

Though the decree emanating from the 37th Henry VIII. was of doubtful validity, it has formed the principle on which the assessment has been raised for the maintenance of the city clergy. The clergy, indeed, do not generally exact the 2s. 9d. but content themselves with 2s. 1s. 9d. or 1s. or, in short, any thing they can obtain,—insisting, however, at the same time, on their extreme forbearance in thus generously foregoing their “ancient rights.” Even the 37th Henry did not intend to vest in the clergy the 2s. 9d. for their exclusive maintenance, but also for relieving the poor and repairing the edifice of the church. This they have always kept out of sight: the parishioners apparently acquiesced in their pretended rights; and it was only owing to the ill-timed rapacity of the Fire-Act Clergy which led to the explosion of their unfounded claims. Of the proceedings of the Fire-Act Clergy it may be worth while to give some account.

After the 37th Henry VIII. the clergy in the city were maintained by a certain pound-rate levied on the rental of buildings in their respective parishes. This practice continued till the great fire laid the major part of the city in ashes, burning down or damaging eighty-five parish-churches. After this catastrophe, the legislature enacted that some of the parishes destroyed should be united; that only fifty-one churches should be rebuilt; and that the ministers of those churches should, in lieu of their former allowance, receive certain fixed sums, levied by an equal pound-rate on the houses. This was the 22d and 23d Charles II. termed the Fire-Act. The clergy subject to the provisions of this act were perfectly satisfied, till the effects of the fire began to disappear, the rents of the houses to rise, and the city to get rich again. Then it was our reverend gentlemen became discontented: they saw, with grudging eyes, the increasing wealth of the capital, of which their fixed stipends would not allow them to participate; they talked unceasingly of their former pound-rate, of their “ancient rights,” and at length determined, in good earnest, to apply to parliament.

This was in 1804, and, in consequence, parliament made valuable additions to their salaries; the lowest incomes were raised to £200 a-year, and many of the larger parishes, nearly, if not quite, to £600 a-year, exclusive of surplice-fees and other valuable emoluments. Such augmentation, to all reasonable men, appeared quite sufficient: not so to the clergy. In 1817 they applied for a further augmentation. This application was refused. In 1818 they came forward a third time, with their famous petition of the 4th February, filled with grievous lamentations about the loss of their “ancient rights.” The bubble now burst. Parliament, disgusted with the rapacity of these “sturdy beggars,” determined to refer their petition to a committee. It was soon discovered their “ancient rights” had no foundation; that they never were entitled to 2s. 9d. on the rental, or any part of it; that with the 37th Henry VIII. which they had foisted into their petition, they had nothing to do, except it were to exhibit the craving and rapacious spirit which actuated them.

Various other disclosures were made. Of the thirty-five poor clergymen who had signed the petition, none of them, on an average, was receiving less than £500 a-year. Twenty-five out of the number were pluralists, and not a few of them the fattest pluralists of the profession. Some of the incumbents received annually £1200, £1500, and even £2000, while they did not pay their curates more than £60, £70, or £80 a-year. Instead of residing in the parsonage-house, among the parishioners, the parsonage-houses of many were let to the merchants and manufacturers for counting-houses and warehouses, for which they received exorbitant rents of £200 or £300 a-year. Some of them were archdeacons, royal chaplains, or honourable and very reverend deans; some canons at St. Paul’s, some were precentors, prebendaries, and held other dignified situations in cathedral and collegiate churches. Had they not been the most unreasonable and rapacious men breathing, there is little doubt but they would have considered the emoluments arising from their numerous preferments sufficient. But the wealth of India would not satisfy the cravings of spiritual men. Some of them were mean enough to lay in wait for the members going to the House while their petition was pending, and beseech them to support their claims for an increase in their stipends. It reminds us of the monks of St. Swithin’s. These gluttons had thirteen dishes a day. Hume relates that they threw themselves prostrate in the mire before Henry II. and, with doleful lamentations, complained that the Bishop of Winchester had cut off three dishes a day. “How many has he left?” said the King. “Ten,” replied the disconsolate monks. “I myself,” said Henry, “have only three, and I enjoin the Bishop to reduce you to the same number.”

The emoluments of the metropolitan clergy generally exceed those of the provincial clergy. The practice of uniting parishes, which is allowed by 37th Henry VIII. c. 21, when churches are not more than one mile apart, and under the value of £6, has been carried to a great extent in London. The City alone reckons 108 parishes, which have been formed into no more than seventy-eight benefices, having alternate patrons. Some of these livings are very valuable. For instance, the rectory of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, held by the dean of Hereford, and in the alternate gift of the King and Bishop of London, is worth £2500 a-year. The rectory of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, held by the Rev. Mr. Beresford, and in the patronage of the Duke of Buccleugh, is probably worth £3500. In Westminster, the rectory of St. George’s, Hanover-square, held by the Dean of Carlisle, and in the gift of the Bishop of London, is worth, at least, £4000 per annum. The living of St. Giles’s, held by the Rev. J. E. Tyler, and in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, is another valuable rectory. We could enumerate others, but these must suffice.

In considering the incomes of the metropolitan clergy, it must be remembered that they have many other sources of emolument besides their benefices. St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster-Abbey have many valuable dignities, equal in value to good livings, and which are principally shared among the London ecclesiastics. Then there are the appointments in the royal chapels, public libraries and museums, and the salaries they receive as ushers, masters, &c. in the numerous and wealthy charitable foundations, and which altogether must make their incomes immense.

From this representation of the situation of the clergy of the metropolis, it is clearly their wisest course to follow the policy of primate SUTTON, and keep quiet. They should constantly bear in mind the fable of the dog with a piece of flesh, and not endanger what they possess by grasping at too much. But, somehow, the clergy ordinarily evince so little general knowledge, and are so blindly intent on immediate gain, that they usually adopt the most contracted and mistaken views of their permanent interests. Their conduct in respect of compositions for tithes strikingly exemplifies these traits in the clerical character. In order to render this part of the subject intelligible, it will be necessary to premise a few explanations.

A real composition for tithes is when an agreement is made between the landlord and parson, with the consent of the ordinary and patron, that certain land shall be discharged from the payment of tithes, by reason of some land, or other recompense, given to the incumbent in lieu thereof. Such agreements were anciently very frequent, till, by the 13th Elizabeth, it was provided that no composition for tithes should be valid for a longer term than three lives, or twenty-one years. This tended greatly to restrain compositions, and they are now rarely heard of, unless by authority of parliament. To establish the validity of these agreements previously entered into, it is necessary to produce the deed itself, executed between the commencement of the reign of Richard the First and the restraining act of Elizabeth, or such evidence from whence, independent of mere usage, it may be inferred that the deed once existed. Now this is often impossible. Time, as Lord Ellenborough once said, is a greedy devourer of patents and parchments, as of other things, and, probably, in the lapse of 240 years, the deed has been lost or destroyed, or other circumstances utterly preclude the production of the necessary proof. Clergymen, however, have often been found greedy enough to avail themselves of this strange peculiarity in the law, and suddenly claim the tithes from land that had been exonerated for centuries, and for which there could be no doubt a composition had been once granted. This was done, not many years since, by some sinecure priests of the cathedral of Exeter. We well remember the case of Dr. Peplow Ward, the rector of Cottenham. This was a real composition traced so far back as the middle of the sixteenth century; the parson claimed his tithes, and kept the land too, given in lieu of them, because the unfortunate owner could not produce the deed of conveyance.

A recent instance of clerical rapacity has been evinced by the dean and chapter of Ely, and was brought before parliament in the session of 1831, by the owners of Lakenheath-fen, a district of 5000 acres. The fen-owners claim exemption from tithe by prescription; and the property has been purchased, made the subject of wills, family settlements, and contracts, as tithe-free land. But the legal maxim is, that the elapse of no time bars the claim of the church, and the petitioners are bound to prove an uninterrupted exemption from the payment of tithe for nearly 650 years. The dean and chapter of Ely, who possess the rectory and vicarage of Lakenheath, have availed themselves of this difficulty, to revive their claim of tithe over the fen. For nineteen years have the owners of the fen-land been harassed by their spiritual oppressors; they have already expended £5000 in litigation, and more law is now threatened them; the dean and chapter having granted a concurrent lease of the rectory to Mr. Evans, their solicitor and agent, who has renewed the persecution for the tithe of the fen.

A modus, or accustomed rate of payment for tithe, no more than a composition, is never allowed to stand after the clergyman wishes to terminate it, unless it can be proved to have existed prior to A.D. 1189. Day after day rank moduses, as they are called, though they have continued from time out of mind, yet bear evidence of not having existed before the return of King Richard from the Holy Land, are set at naught. Why our legal sages should have adopted this antiquated era for the bounds of legal memory, and to which, for the validity of a custom or prescription, it is necessary to trace an uninterrupted observance, no one can divine, unless it arise from the obvious interest they have in involving every rule regarding the rights of persons and property in the greatest possible obscurity and contradiction. The parsons, however, avail themselves of this dictum, and set aside every customary payment for tithe they do not like, which cannot be proved to have continued, without interruption, from the twelfth century. Hence no modus for hops, turkeys, or other thing introduced into England since that period, is valid. The keenness with which, on various occasions, the clergy have litigated these points is astonishing; and their conduct, both as regards compositions, first fruits, and tithes in London, shows the inherent rapacity of the order, and that there is no stratagem to which they will not resort, in order to avoid payments to which they are justly liable, or to fasten on the public some of their own dormant pretensions. They cannot, therefore, expect any indulgence, nor complain if a similar measure of justice be dealt to them. One mode of retaliation would be to insist on the payment of first fruits and tenths, according to the present value of benefices, whereby the condition of the inferior clergy would be improved out of the redundant incomes of the rich ecclesiastics.

But quite as equitable and a more effective blow might be dealt the priesthood, by the POOR insisting on their old common law right to one-third of the tithes of benefices. If the clergy will persist in reviving worn-out claims, why should the people suffer their own just rights to remain in abeyance? That the poor are entitled to one-third of the tithes has been unanswerably proved by Ruggles and Eagle. No time has elapsed to defeat the claims of the poor any more than the claims of the Church. There stands their right, guaranteed to them by the old common law of the land, sanctioned by centuries of uninterrupted usage, and never repealed by any statute of the realm.

VI.

ORIGIN AND DEFECTS OF THE CHURCH LITURGY.

New religions are seldom genuine. Like new constitutions of government, they are mostly established by being incorporated with preexisting opinions and institutions. This observation will appear evident from an advertance to the origin and history of the Church Liturgy, by which will be seen the successive gradations of Paganism, Popery, and Protestantism, through which it has emerged and been transmuted.

Dr. MIDDLETON, an eloquent and learned divine of the Church of England, was the first to lead the way in this inquiry. In his celebrated letter from Rome, he exhibits, in a very perspicuous manner, the great conformity between Paganism and Popery, and proves that the religion of the present Romans is entirely derived from that of their heathen ancestors:—in the use of incense, holy water, tapers and lamps, in their worship; in the practice of pomps and processions, penance, pretended miracles, and pious frauds; in the making of votive gifts and offerings, and erecting rural shrines; in the orders of their priesthood, nuns, monks, and begging friars, and in the use of boys clothed in sacred habits, to attend the officiating priest: all of which he has shown to have been practised by the Pagans, and by the Papists, in imitation of them. But here Dr. Middleton stopped in his comparison, unaware, apparently, that in his zeal to depreciate a rival church, he had furnished weapons of no ordinary temper, with which that to which he belonged might be assailed.

This task has been executed in the well-known work of DE LAUNE, in his Plea for the Nonconformists, where he has exhibited learning and ability not inferior to Dr. Middleton. He shows that in the several particulars of kneeling at the Sacrament, the use of the surplice, the sign of the cross, the rite of confirmation, the use of sponsors in the baptism of infants, of a liturgy or form of prayer, and of altars, the observance of fasts and festivals, the ceremony of marriage, bowing at the name of Jesus, and towards the east, the authority of episcopacy, and the dedication of churches to saints; the church of England symbolizes not with primitive Christianity, but with the idolatrous forms of Popery. Such resemblance ceases to be matter of surprise, when it is known, on the authority of Calderwood, that the English service was put together out of three Romish channels: viz. 1. The breviary, out of which the common prayers are taken; 2. The ritual, or book of rites, out of which the administration of the sacraments, burial, matrimony, and the visitation of the sick, are taken; and, 3. The mass-book, out of which the consecration of the Lord’s supper, collects, epistles, and gospels are taken.

The Rubric, or Service-book of Henry VIII.’s time, was no other than the Romish liturgy, partly translated into English. In the reign of Edward VI. the whole was rendered into the vernacular tongue, but otherwise was little altered. This fact was distinctly avowed by the proclamation of the king and council made at the rebellion of some enthusiasts in the West of England, who had been excited thereto by the priests; it is thus: “As for the service in the English tongue, it perchance seems to you a new service, and, yet, indeed, it is no other but the old, the self-same words in English; for nothing is altered but to speak with knowledge that which was spoken with ignorance, only a few things taken out, so fond, that it had been a shame to have heard them in English.” Between that period and the reign of James I. it is true that some alterations were effected, but notwithstanding we find that monarch thus speaking of the same service. “As for our neighbour Kirk of England, their service is an evil said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass, but the liftings.” It is allowed, that after this period there were some other alterations made in the service, but we find that Charles II. in his preface to the Common Prayer, annexed to the Act of Uniformity, thus expresses his opinion: “the main body and essentials of it (as well in the chiefest materials as in the frame and order thereof) have still continued the same unto this day, notwithstanding all vain attempts and impetuous assaults made against it.” Now the obvious inference from these testimonies is, that the service of the Church of England, with little alteration, is the same as that of the Church of Rome. But, to show more satisfactorily the resemblance between the two churches, we shall insert the following comparison from an ingenious and elaborate publication, entitled “The Church Establishment founded in Error:”

“The breviary and calendar of the Church of Rome divides the year into fasts, vigils, feasts, and working days. The same division is adopted by the Church of England, with this exception, that there are less of the former; but of those that are observed they stand in the same order, and are evidently borrowed from the calendar of the Roman Church. Their feasts are divided into moveable and fixed; so are ours; and of thirty-six of them the observance is the same in both churches. The fast-days of both are alike. In the Church of Rome the service itself is divided into matins and even songs; so is ours; theirs is appropriated to the particular feasts, fasts, vigils, &c.; so is ours; the substance of their service consists in collects, confessions, absolutions, psalms, epistles, gospels, prophets, apocrypha, litanies, anthems, &c. so does ours. In the Church of Rome, the people kneel at confession or absolution, repeat after the priest the pater-noster, stand at gloria patri, stand up and repeat the apostle’s creed, kneel and repeat after the minister, Lord, have mercy upon us; Christ have mercy upon us; make responses at the saying of the litany, kneel at the altar when they partake of the eucharist, or Lord’s supper, kneel and ask mercy and grace after the rehearsal of the decalogue; read the psalms alternately with the priest, verse by verse; sit at reading the lessons, say the psalms to the accompaniment of music, bow to the east and at the name of Jesus. All this is done in the Church of Rome, and so is it performed in the Church of England. The places of worship which the Church of England at present occupies, and the endowments it possesses, were built, consecrated, and bestowed by the Papists, and as they were dedicated by them to various saints, so they continue dedicated by the Church of England. The Church of Rome has its archbishops, bishops, deans and chapters, prebends, archdeacons, and other graduated dignities; so has the Church of England, which retains also distinguishing habits for each, as formerly practised by the Roman Church. And the ordination services in both churches so closely resemble each other, that, with a few unimportant alterations, they are verbatim the same. A parallel so singular and striking cannot fail to convince every unprejudiced mind, that one system has given rise to the other.”—pp. 44-5.

Having gone through the historical part of our inquiry, we shall next come to a notice of the church service as now administered. Apart from the temporalities of the Church, we do not think there is much to give offence in the established worship, notwithstanding its impure and idolatrous origin. Man is said naturally to be prone to religion, and were he deprived of his present idols, it is not improbable he might create others with more onerous pretensions. Those, however, most attached to the national establishment, cannot deny there are defects in its ritual, which, if they could be quietly abscinded, would be a great improvement. The church has partaken, in some degree, of the improvements of the age. It has been argued out of intolerance towards every Christian sect. Some doctrines still retained, as part of the Athanasian creed and Thirty-nine Articles, are viewed, we apprehend, in the same light as special pleading and other legal fictions, rather as curious relics of a past age than as dogmas of practical use and belief. In its rites and ceremonial, the services it exacts are of easy performance to every class. The enforcement of the sabbath is an unmixed good to the industrious orders, while the hebdomadal inculcation of a future state of reward and punishment supports with hope or restrains with fear those who cannot appreciate the claims of a more enlightened morality. Philosophers can hardly begrudge the devotion of one morning out of seven to a parish church; if their feelings are not interested in the iterations of the Liturgy, their souls may be soothed by music and psalmody, and thus be enabled to range, with less disturbance, through the regions of science.

Mere politicians, who usually look on the sanctions of religion as more useful than credible, are little under its influence. The Tories were formerly a godly race of men,—they had religion at the heart, but with the Whigs it never went beyond the lips. Speaking of these once notable factions, the late Mr. Fox observes, “While the Whigs considered all religion with a view to politics, the Tories, on the other hand, referred all politics to religion. Thus the former, in their hatred to Popery, did not so much regard the superstition or even idolatry of that unpopular sect, as its tendency to establish arbitrary power in the state; while the latter revered arbitrary monarchy as a divine institution, and cherished passive obedience and non-resistance as articles of religious faith.” With few exceptions, both parties are now agreed in treating religion as an engine or ally of the state,—a branch of the police, or civil power, very useful for repressing disorders, or assisting that famous tax machine, a mock representation, in extracting money out of the pockets of the people.

The Church appears inclined to cultivate a spirit of indifference and quietism,—the most favourable course it could take for a lengthened duration. It prosecutes no doctrine, controls, with a gentle hand, the passions of the multitude, gives full scope to the pleasures of the great, and is mostly prompt to throw the weight of its influence into the scale of government. So far is well and judicious. But there are some parts of the Liturgy so staringly preposterous, and so inconsistent with genuine Protestantism, that we think, if they are not shortly got rid of, they must, ere long, attract a dangerous share of popular attention. The reformation of Henry VIII. from the first needed reforming, and, after an elapse of more than two centuries, the task cannot surely be deemed premature.

The portion of the book of Common Prayer, to which we shall first call attention, is the Church Catechism. This includes the elements of Church of Englandism, and is of the utmost importance from being first impressed on the minds of the rising generation. To the bad grammar and logic of this manual we do not attach much importance, though, entering as it does into early instruction, it ought to be unobjectionable on these points. But what is more serious, is the impracticable, superfluous and unintelligible matter it contains.

For example:—in the baptismal service, the godfather and godmother renounce, in the name and behoof of the child, “the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh;” and this engagement the child solemnly promises to fulfil. But the utter impossibility of performance reduces the whole to an unmeaning ceremony: sponsors offer up their pledges without consideration, and christenings next to marriages are scenes of the greatest levity and indecorum.

That part where the child engages to make “no graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth,” is superfluous, inapplicable, and liable to be misunderstood. Though the golden calf was never more worshipped than at present, it is the most romote possible from a religious worship. The injunction was delivered to the Jews when they were surrounded by nations of idolators; but the nearest idolatry is distant from England at least a thousand leagues, and children can find no type of it in this country, except in the productions of the artist, to which they may mistakenly think it applies.

In another place occurs the phrase “all the elect people of God,” which savours strongly of that Calvinism against which Lord Chatham directed his anathema, and which we verily believe, next to the anarchical principles of the French revolutionists, is the most anti-social doctrine ever propagated. Unless religion aids the cause of virtue, it is, comparatively, valueless; but the doctrine of election divests the Christian faith of every moral obligation. Of what importance can an individual’s conduct be, if his salvation depends solely on the fiat of a foregone conclusion. In the words of JOHN WESLEY, who has stated the case with equal force and truth, the sum of all is this: “one in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated! The elect shall be saved, do what they will: the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can.” Affirm till doomsday that there can be no election without faith, and no faith without works, this is the essence of Calvinism; for which, diabolism would be a better name; and in the worst and bloodiest idolatry that ever defiled the earth, there is nothing so horrid, so monstrous, so impious.

Transubstantiation, or the real presence, was the great test of popery at the time of the Reformation. If a man, like Mr. O’Connell, for example, were to affirm his belief that the body and blood of Christ are actually taken and swallowed, at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, he was hurried off to the stake, without pity or remorse. Yet, for the life of us, we cannot attach any other than a real and corporeal interpretation to the following interrogatories in the Catechism:—

Question.—

What is the inward part or thing signified?

Answer.—

The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.

Question.—

What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby?

Answer.—

The strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine.

If this is not transubstantiation we do not know how it can be otherwise expressed. But it may be urged, that our apprehensions are wholly groundless, and no harm is done: that the catechism is intended only for the instruction of children; that it is mere words learnt by rote, like the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments, at an age when the understanding is so little unfolded that no ideas are attached to them. Granted: but if the formula is to be so construed, we think it had better be consigned to the exclusive use of the dame shools, and the public saved the expense of maintaining so many well-fed clergymen, chiefly employed in impressing and confirming it on the minds of our juvenile population.

Another morceau from the mass-book is retained in the Visitation of the Sick; in which the Protestant priest actually grants absolution of sin with as much sang froid and authority as Leo. X. The sick person is directed to make a confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled in any weighty matter; the priest then tenders a carte blanche in manner and form following:—

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority, committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

—Amen.

In the Morning Service is a form of absolution; but the terms in which it is given are less explicit; and the priest only declares a remission of sins to those who truly repent. Considering the era when the Common Prayer was framed, it is not surprising it retains some remnants of the superstition out of which it was fabricated. For aught we know, the power of granting absolution may have scriptural authority; at all events it must often prove salutary, affording consolation at a moment when human nature most needs support, and compensating for any fears and anxieties which may have been felt during past life, by the certain hope held out of future forgiveness and beatitude.

The mode of filling a Church of England priest with the Holy Ghost, and endowing him with the invaluable elixir to forgive sins, and keep out of hell, or let drop into it whom he pleases, is not less extraordinary than the gift itself. It must be premised that no person can be admitted to any benefice unless he has been first ordained a priest; and then, in the language of the law, he is termed a clerk in orders. The mode of such ordination is thus described in the Liturgy.

“The bishop, with the priest present, shall lay their hands severally upon every one that receiveth the order of priesthood; the receivers humbly kneeling upon their knees, and the bishop saying,

Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.

—Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.”

Truly this is marvellous in our eyes! The bare idea of any one who can swallow three bottles of wine, and leap a five-barred gate, being filled with the Holy Ghost, makes the gorge rise. But then the necromancy of this wonderful infusion. The bishop, only imposing his right reverend hands, saying, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” and instantly, with the suddenness of the electric fluid, the Holy Ghost passes from the fingers of the bishop into the inside of—perhaps, a Clogher, a Philpotts, a Hay, a Blacow, or a Daniels.

Talk of miracles having ceased,—they are performing daily. Talk of popery, of indulgences, and absolutions. Talk of the poor, naked, godless, unenlightened Indian, who wanders on the banks of the Niger or the Orinoque. Talk of the Chinese, who cuts his deity with scissars, or moulds him in paste. Talk of the wretched Hindoo, who immolates his victim to Juggernaut; or of the wild Tartar, who worships the invisible Lama. Talk of all or any of these, or go to what age or country we may, for examples of supernatural pretension, can we find any to match this part of the rites of the Church of England?

We shall now leave to the Reader’s further consideration the subject of the church ritual. It is only a work of men’s hands, and cannot, of course, claim the same infallibility as the Holy Scriptures. An order in council is any time sufficient authority for introducing alterations in the Liturgy; and, even within our own time, it has been subjected both to curtailment and additions. George IV., it will long be remembered, ordered the name of Queen Caroline to be struck out, as a person unworthy of the prayers of the people. Lord Sidmouth, who now forms a fragment of the dead weight, during his secretaryship, directed four prayers to be interpolated, and they form a regular portion of the church service. In the few observations we have ventured to put forward, our purpose has been only to advert to such parts as seemed most startling to vulgar apprehension; and in doing this, we trust, nothing irreverent has escaped us, or in derogation of the general utility of the Book of Common Prayer. With all its imperfections we greatly prefer the established ceremonial to the random out-pourings of the conventicle; and think the measured solemnities deliberately framed for the various occasions of life, preferable to those wild exhortations which have no standard but the intellect of the preacher, his thirst of gain or popularity, or the passions and fatuity of his hearers.

VII.

NUMBER, WEALTH, MORAL AND EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS.

The Roman slaves were never numbered lest they should discover their power and importance. A similar policy appears to have been observed towards the dissenters. Although we have had three censuses of the people within the last thirty years, in the taking of which various inquiries were made into the numbers employed in different trades and occupations; no inquiry was made into the number of the different religious sects. Were the legislature, in this case, apprehensive that they might be called upon, agreeably to the dogma of Dr. Paley on the policy of patronizing the most popular faith, to commence another religious reformation, by altering the present disposition of ecclesiastical endowments? Whatever may have been the motive, the fact is as stated—that no public inquiry has ever been instituted into the relative number of Separatists and Episcopalians.

In the session of 1829, returns were ordered by the House of Commons of the number of churches and chapels of the establishment, and of the number of places of worship not of the establishment. With the exception of Lancaster, no returns have yet been published from any other country. The only public document which throws light on the question, is a parliamentary paper, ordered to be printed May 29th, 1812, and re-printed by the Lords in 1818. This document comprises only the results of returns from parishes containing a population of 1000 persons and upwards. In 1881 parishes of this description, containing a population of 4,937,789, there were 2,533 churches and chapels belonging to the established church; the number of persons they would contain 1,856,108: in the same number of parishes there were 3,438 dissenting places of worship. From this it might be inferred the number of dissenters considerably exceeds the number of conformists. No doubt many small parishes not included in the return would have a church and not a dissenting chapel. On the other hand, the manufacturing population consists chiefly of dissenters; and it is to be observed, that dissenting chapels are generally more crowded and afford greater seat-room in the same space than the churches of the establishment. A dissenting minister cannot subsist without a large audience, but the income of a Church of England priest is secure, if he have no audience at all, nor even a church to preach in. The structure, too, of churches—the system of proprietary pews—generally empty and locked up to guard against intrusion—the vast space taken up by the mayor’s pew, the churchwardens’ pew, and other parish officials, leaves little accommodation for the poor, and they have no alternative but to be crammed up—often standing in aisles, or driven to what are called free-seats, where they can neither hear nor see—or resort to a dissenting chapel.

In the absence of more complete official returns, the Dissenters themselves have attempted to solve this important question in public statistics.

The supplement to the Congregational Magazine for December, 1829, comprises the results of very elaborate inquiries into the number of the places of worship of different religious persuasions. There are some inaccuracies in this statement which we cannot reconcile; but the data it affords, aided by information from other sources, will enable us to make out a tolerable exposition of the relative numbers, and the religious and educational efficiency of the several classes of religionists.

The great religious denominations of the day are those of the Established Church, the Roman Catholics, and the Protestant Dissenters. The number of churches and chapels of the Establishment is 11,600; of Roman Catholics, 388: of Protestant Dissenters, 7,634. Supposing the number of attendants at each place of worship is the same, the following will be the result:—

Churches, &c.

Attendants.

Established Church

11,600 × 300

= 3,480,000

Roman Catholics

388 × 300

= 116,400

Protestant Dissenters

7,634 × 300

= 2,290,200

It appears from this that, in point of number, the advantage is on the side of the national establishment. But from what has been previously observed, it may be presumed that this is a partial mode of stating the question. It is probable the Church of England has the greatest number of ministers and places of religious worship; we doubt, however, its numerical superiority; at all events, the efficiency of an army is not to be estimated by its skeleton regiments, or even by its numerical strength, but by the skill, energy, and devotedness which animate its soldiery. In these points the Dissenters may claim preeminence, as appears from a comparison of missionary and educational exertions.

During the year 1828-9, the Church of England party raised, for missionary purposes, as under:—

£

s.

d.

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge—Foreign Objects

9,208

9

5

Society for Propagating the Gospel

6,239

10

5

Church Missionary Society

52,080

19

1

£67,528

18

11

The Protestant Dissenters alone, during the same period, contributed the following sums:—

£

s.

d.

Wesleyan Missionary Society

41,846

12

10

London Missionary Society

37,207

0

6

Particular Baptist Society

9,305

10

2

General Baptist Society

1,651

1

6

£90,010

5

0

Thus it appears, that although the numerical strength of the Church of Englandists exceeds that of the Protestant Dissenters, they do not contribute so much by £22,481 per annum, towards the cause of evangelizing the world, as the non-conformists.

For the mental improvement of their countrymen, the Protestant Dissenters are not less strenuous in their exertions; and on the subject of education, notwithstanding the superior advantages of the Establishment party, they likewise bear the palm.

Children.

Church Establishment founded in Error, p. 92.

The National School Society educates

704,730

The Sunday School Society educates

720,717

In exhibiting the exertions of the two great parties of Conformists and Dissenters, we have taken no notice of what is done by the Catholics, which cannot be inconsiderable; if, therefore, we add the amount of their efforts to our previous calculation, we shall find that the classes of religionists without public endowments, not only possess the greatest share of Christian zeal, but of moral and educational energy.

With so many things to be proud of, it is not surprising the Dissenters have begun to manifest symptoms of dissatisfaction with the favour shown to the national establishment. Hitherto they have submitted to this inequality in an exemplary manner, and steadily refrained from any thing like political agitation. Some fifty years ago, it is true, their ministers were said to be “men of close ambition,” and the way in which this imputation was met deserves to be recorded. It was occasioned by the introduction of a bill, in 1772, to relieve dissenters from the hardship of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles. The bill passed the House of Commons, but was lost in the House of Lords by the weight and influence of the episcopal bench, particularly Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York, who strongly inveighed against dissenters. Pitt, the eloquent Earl of Chatham, in reply to the archbishop, said, “whoever brought a charge against dissenters without proof, defamed.” After a pause, he felt the workings of a generous and indignant enthusiasm, and thus proceeded: “The dissenting ministers are represented as men of close ambition—they are so, my lords; and their ambition is to keep close to the college of fishermen, not of Cardinals; and to the doctrine of inspired apostles, not to the decrees of interested bishops. They contend for a spiritual creed and spiritual worship. We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy. The reformation has laid open the Scriptures to all; let not the bishops shut them again Laws, in support of ecclesiastical power, are pleaded, which it would shock humanity to execute. It is said, that religious sects have done great mischief, when they are not kept under restraint; but history affords no proof that sects have ever been mischievous, but when they were oppressed by the ruling church.”

The chief oppression of which dissenters have to complain is the injustice of having to pay tithe and church-rates. Building their own chapels and maintaining their own ministers; supporting their own colleges to the number of twenty; educating upwards of 700,000 children in their Sunday-schools; and expending nearly £150,000 in diffusing their religious tenets—impose on them duties and sacrifices sufficiently onerous, without being compelled to aid in the support of the Episcopal establishment. It is apparent, therefore, if land-owners, farmers, and politicians were to be silent on ecclesiastical grievances, they would not be much longer tolerated by the vast body of separatists—who in England probably equal, and certainly in the United Kingdom greatly exceed, in number the members of the national communion. The dissenters have already begun to sound the tocsin of discontent, and several papers, extensively circulated, sufficiently indicate the spirit working within them. We subjoin one of these documents.

TWENTY REASONSwhy Dissenters should not be compelled to pay Church Rates and Tithes, or in any way to support the Church of England.

- 1. Because it is a flagrant violation of equity, to compel people to pay for instruction, which they, in conscience, cannot receive.

- 2. Because it is a denial of our Saviour’s interpretation of the law: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”—Matt. vii. 12.

- 3. Because no passage in the Bible sanctions compulsion in supporting religion.

- 4. Because Christianity is slandered by its professors using compulsion for its support.

- 5. Because compulsory payments were not known in the purest ages of Christianity.

- 6. Because the Constitution of the Church of England, with the peculiar names, titles, and offices of its clergy, has no foundation in the Holy Scriptures.

- 7. Because no writer in defence of the Church of England, has ever dared to rest its claims upon the declarations of the Holy scriptures.

- 8. Because the Church of England is a fearful system of traffic in the souls of men.—Rev. xviii. 13.

- 9. Because the Church of England gives the chief occasion to infidels to slander Christianity as a system of mere Priestcraft,—INFIDELSof this class are found in every parish.

- 10. Relinquishing unscriptural claims would remove a foul blot from the Church of England.

- 11. Because Dissenters bear all the expenses of their own Colleges, Chapels, Ministers, and Schools.

- 12. Because Dissenters in the United Kingdom far exceed in number those who attend at church.

- 13. Because religion flourishes most in the United States of America, without tithes or church rates, but supported by voluntary contributions.

- 14. Because religion is known to flourish most at those places in the Church of England, in which all their expenses are met by voluntary contributions.

- 15. Because the system of compulsion leads the clergy grievously to oppress each other.

- 16. Because the curates of the church are worse paid than any class of educated men; and the majority of them far less than journeymen mechanics.

- 17. Because the working clergy would be incomparably better supported by free contributions.

- 18. Because Christianity, left to its own resources, would become universal, as in the first ages.

- 19. Because no priesthood, in any age or nation, has received tithes to the extent of our clergy.

- 20. Because the tithes of the Israelites were not for the clergy, but for the whole tribe of Levi, about a tenth of the population, who were not allowed to possess a single acre of freehold land; and these were the judges, magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and instructors of the nation.

A desirable fact to ascertain is, the relative strength of religious sects in the several counties of England. Official returns, as before stated, have been received for the county of Lancaster, (Parl. Paper, No. 664, Sess. 1830,) but for no other county. From these returns it appears the number of parish churches in Lancashire is 65, parochial chapels 157, chapels of ease 59: total number of churches and chapels of the establishment, 281. The total number of dissenting places of worship is 590, and of sectarians 255,411. So that one-fourth of the population of Lancashire are open and professing non-conformists.

We shall conclude with stating the results of the inquiries of the Dissenters on this subject. They have exhibited a statement of the number of church livings and the number of chapels or congregations in each county in England. Their statement, we apprehend, is not far from the truth; it is certainly not exaggerated, as will appear from comparing the results of their inquiries with the official returns for Lancashire. It does not contain the unitarian chapels in England and Wales; this sect has 169 chapels; they are a numerous and increasing body; in Lancashire alone there are 28 congregations of that persuasion, with 5,099 members.

In the next chapter, on the Church of Ireland, we shall endeavour to ascertain the proportion of Conformists and Separatists in the United Kingdom.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND DISSENTING PLACES OF WORSHIP.

COUNTIES.

Roman Catholics.

Presbyterians.

Independents.

Particular Baptists.

General Baptists.

Quakers.

Wesleyan Methodists.

Calvinistic Methodists.

Other Methodists.

Missionary Stations.

Total Dissenting Congregations.

Church Livings.

Bedfordshire

1

—

8

21

—

4

35

—

1

1

71

115

Berkshire

6

1

14

11

1

6

34

7

—

1

81

150

Buckinghamshire

1

—

21

28

—

8

25

1

—

37

121

190

Cambridgeshire

1

1

23

19

6

3

29

1

1

1

85

162

Cheshire

7

12

27

5

9

6

48

8

30

1

153

145

Cornwall

2

—

31

12

—

10

219

3

39

4

320

187

Cumberland

4

10

16

8

—

22

32

—

11

2

105

139

Derbyshire

8

7

36

5

11

5

84

3

22

1

182

161

Devonshire

9

15

65

31

—

6

93

—

18

10

247

442

Dorsetshire

7

3

22

5

—

5

21

—

22

3

88

248

Durham

14

7

13

8

—

7

72

—

28

28

177

91

Essex

7

2

64

24

—

20

36

1

—

21

175

413

Gloucestershire

5

4

38

27

—

13

53

11

7

19

177

290

Hampshire

11

4

49

22

1

5

27

6

—

3

128

258

Herefordshire

4

—

11

9

—

4

16

1

—

4

49

201

Hertfordshire

1

1

28

13

1

12

2

4

—

—

62

129

Huntingdonshire

—

1

9

12

1

3

9

1

—

—

36

74

Kent

8

4

44

30

4

9

90

15

—

6

210

395

Lancashire

81

36

88

29

5

25

156

9

75

—

504

287

Leicestershire

7

3

17

13

17

4

68

—

13

2

144

208

Lincolnshire

12

2

18

14

11

9

211

2

24

1

304

598

London and }

21

15

91

55

2

12

59

22

7

5

289

233

Middlesex }

Monmouthshire

4

—

24

28

—

3

10

—

—

3

72

118

Norfolk

8

1

21

32

2

13

74

1

24

5

181

683

Northamptonshire

3

1

35

40

4

7

61

—

—

2

153

303

Northumberland

19

50

8

3

1

4

29

—

22

—

136

97

Nottinghamshire

3

3

12

7

6

3

77

—

41

—

152

178

Oxfordshire

8

3

14

12

—

10

44

—

2

6

99

203

Rutland

—

—

3

1

1

1

7

—

—

—

13

40

Shropshire

7

2

25

15

—

3

32

—

18

—

102

209

Somersetshire

8

7

47

37

—

17

94

3

20

21

254

456

Staffordshire

21

5

32

16

3

6

82

—

41

7

213

178

Suffolk

4

2

33

35

2

10

40

1

—

5

132

486

Surrey

4

1

27

21

—

10

—

11

—

27

101

142

Sussex

6

4

31

13

—

5

20

6

—

2

87

300

Warwickshire

11

5

30

16

7

12

18

2

2

5

108

209

Westmoreland

2

1

12

—

—

11

13

—

1

1

41

68

Wiltshire

3

1

38

31

3

3

37

1

8

4

129

274

Worcestershire

8

8

10

22

—

7

24

3

21

1

104

175

Yorkshire

46

13

154

51

9

64

532

1

147

2

1019

809

North Wales }

6

23

{ 172

52

—

3 }

214

300

{ 6

0 }

1100

299 }

South Wales }

{ 202

107

—

5 }

{ 9

0 }

526 }

VIII.

WHO WOULD BE BENEFITED BY A REFORM OF THE CHURCH?

A reform of the Church, like most other reforms, would permanently benefit the many, and only temporarily injure the few. The lawn-sleeves, the shovel-hats, silk-aprons, and monopolizing incumbents would be the chief sufferers; while the condition of the most numerous and useful order of the clergy would be improved. Such odious abuses as non-residence and pluralities would be abolished, and the shameful injustice of one man doing the duty and another receiving the reward would be no longer tolerated. Every district, or parish, requiring the services of an officiating clergyman would be provided with one to whom the degrading epithet of “poor curate” or “poor parson” could never be justly applied. By mitigating the penury of the working clergy, their respectability and influence would be augmented, and every neighbourhood enjoy the advantages which are known to result from the permanent abode of at least one educated, intelligent, and exemplary individual. The clergy alike profess to be engaged solely in the work of religious instruction, and no class can boast superior piety or attainments by which to lay claim to superior reward. Why then should there exist such disparity in income? Why should the rector enjoy his £2000 per annum, the vicar receive but £400, and the curate only £80 or £100?

The equalizing of the value of sees would remove the abuse of translations, and thereby effect a great improvement in the bench of bishops. It is only a few lucky individuals who obtain the rich prizes of Canterbury, Winchester, London, Ely, and Durham, that are benefited by the unequal revenues of the bishoprics. Many prelates have barely income enough to support the dignity of their stations; yet they share, in common with the rest, the public odium attached to their class from the inordinate wealth of their more fortunate brethren. It is this inequality, and the desire consequently excited to move to the wealthier endowments that gives to the bishops their political animus, and renders them the most self-seeking men in the country. Without translations they would be as independent in their conduct as the judges are said to be; but with the help of them government has, generally, the power to render them subservient to its purposes.

The exercise of legislative functions by the bishops has become extremely unpopular since their mischievous vote on the Reform Bill. The House of Lords has always been to them the great scene of jobbing, intrigue, and ambition. On no occasion have they done themselves credit there; they appear, indeed, totally void of legislative aptitude, and never, by one act, have they rendered substantial service to the State, or done honour to themselves and the Church. Whether as magistrates or legislators, clergymen are inherently disqualified for the discharge of secular duties. It is not so much in their character of churchmen as of laymem that they have become so universally disliked; and we verily believe, had they been eligible to seats in the lower house as they are to the upper, the additional opportunity thereby afforded to render themselves odious, would have hastened the downful of the establishment.

Besides the deprival of their legislative functions, a substantial improvement in the prelacy would consist in the abolition of their patronage. As it is, a rigid discharge of their duties is often incompatible with their interests, or at least their feelings. Their proper functions are the superintendence of the subaltern clergy of their dioceses; but many of these clergy have been promoted by themselves to their benefices; they are their very good friends, and not a few their own flesh and blood. How, in such cases, can it be expected they will be strict in the enforcement of pastoral duties; that they will not be indulgent in the granting of licenses for non-residence, and dispensations for pluralities; or that they will insist on the payment of suitable stipends to the curates. A bishop, like a pope, ought to have no relations, and thus escape, as Benedict II. remarked of the successors of St. Peter, the opprobrium of perverting the patronage of the church to the aggrandizement of his family. Under the existing system the chopping, exchanging, bargaining, and moving about, that ensue in a diocese on a translation or consecration, are a disgrace to the church, and render the discharge of episcopal duties more like a game on the chessboard, in which the rooks, knights, and other prime pieces, represent the “kit and kin” of the new diocesan.

The unequal extent of benefices has been urged in favour of ecclesiastical reform. In most cases, the extent of the livings is made to answer antiquated boundaries of parishes, by which, sometimes five or six churches are to be seen within a mile of each other, in a thinly populated country, while, again, parishes of from eight or ten miles in length afford but the accommodation of one church to a large population. Thus the distribution of the churches and livings bears no proportion either to the inhabitants or the acres, as will appear from the following list:—

Inhabitants.

Sq. Miles.

Livings.

Av. Inh.

Av. Miles.

England and Wales

12,912,106

and

58,554

10,872

1.187

and

5.38

Bedfordshire

70,213

and

463

115

610

and

4.00

Durham

207,673

and

1,040

91

2.282

and

11.42

Lincolnshire

283,058

and

2,748

598

473

and

4.59

Northumberland

195,965

and

1,850

97

2.020

and

19.07

London and Middlesex

2,370,225

and

282

250

9.490

and

1.12

Lancashire

1,052,859

and

1,831

287

3.665

and

6.38

Huntingdon

48,771

and

370

74

659

and

5.00

Rutland

18,487

and

149

40

462

and

3.72

Norfolk

344,368

and

1,710

683

504

and

2.50

Anomalous and disproportionate as are these numbers, the above remark is still more strikingly displayed by reference to individual cases; thus the livings of—

Easton Neston

Northamptonshire

contains

137

inhabitants.

Eaton-sacon

Bedfordshire

——

2,039

inhabitants.

Eccles

Lancashire

——

23,331

inhabitants.

Ecclesfield

Yorkshire

——

7,163

inhabitants.

Edburton

Sussex

contains

92

inhabitants.

Edgcot

Northamptonshire

——

67

inhabitants.

Egmore

Norfolk

——

47

inhabitants.

“Thus we see,” as observed by the author from whom the preceding statement is copied, “that the State provides the same extent of accommodation for 47 as for 23,331 persons, so that as far as secular authority is concerned for the religious instruction of the people, a large proportion of them are wholly unprovided for; while, on another portion, its goodness is showered to redundancy. And should the former class think it necessary to have a second church in the same parish, they can have no clergyman to perform the services therein without an increase of their ecclesiastical burdens, notwithstanding they may already raise £3,000 per annum, for the purpose of an adequate supply of religious instruction. That income is the freehold of the rector, and any other instruction than what he can afford in a church not large enough to contain one-tenth part of the inhabitants, at a distance of five or six miles from many of their homes, must be paid for by a separate imposition.”—Church Establishment founded in Error, p. 70.

Having adverted to the benefits the church would derive from ecclesiastical reform, let us next advert to those it would confer on the community.

In the first place the abolition of non-residence, of pluralities, of sinecure offices in cathedrals, and the reduction of extravagant incomes, and the substitution, in lieu of these abuses, an uniform and graduated rate of payment to the different order of ecclesiastics, proportioned to rank and duty, would not only effect a vast improvement in church discipline, but a saving of at least seven millions per annum of public income. Away then would go the TITHE,—the most unjust and impolitic impost the ingenuity of rulers ever devised for tormenting God’s creatures, and crippling national resources. Of course we do not mean the tithe would be simply repealed; that would be merely throwing so much additional rent into the pockets of the land-owners without benefiting the farmer or general consumer of his produce. The tithe is a tax, and forms part of the public income levied for public purposes. Its simple removal, without purchase or commutation, would only yield so much increase of revenue to be lavished on opera dancers and Paganinis; or dissipated in gaming-houses, in concerts, coteries, and grand dinners; or wasted at Paris, Florence, and Naples, and which had better continue to be spent, as much of it now is, by sinecure silk-aprons and non-resident pluralists, at Bath, Cheltenham, and Tonbridge. The measure contemplated by the people is the sale of the tithe outright to the landowners, or its commutation by a land-tax. This would be a real reform; the other is only delusion.

With such a resource as church property would yield, all the rabble of taxes might be repealed which now weigh down to annihilation the springs and sources of industry, and oppress a man’s “house, even his heritage.” The farmers and working agriculturists would share in the general benefit, not only by an increase of profits and wages and the mitigation of public burthens, but also by the extinction of an inquisitorial impost, whose pressure augments with every increase in industry, skill, and capital. For the tithe is not, as it has been alleged, a rent-charge imposed on the land, it is a virtual income-tax levied on stock and industry. A rent-charge is paid by reason of the land, but tithes are not, but by reason of the stock and labour of the occupier. If there be no annual increase, no profit made, or crop planted, no tithe can be demanded; but for non-payment of a rent-charge, he on whom it is settled, may enter upon and possess the land; whereas, he that claims tithe can only avail himself of the produce.

Nothing can more pointedly illustrate the stagnating influence of our aristocratic institutions on the mind and energies of the community than the continuance of the tithe-tax so long after its impolicy and injustice have been demonstrated. Even Mr. Pitt, who, throughout his political life was the slave of a paltry ambition for place, and the tool of a despicable faction, meditated its removal. It has been denounced by Bishop Watson, by Dr. Paley, by Burke, by Malthus, and every writer and statesman with the least pretensions to intelligence and patriotism. It is supported by the example of no country in Europe. Though England swarms with separatists, and can hardly be said to have a national religion, yet, for the maintenance of one handful of spirituals, the whole nation is insulted and the operations of rural industry fettered and impeded.

Our neighbours, the Scotch, have long since wiped out this abominable stain. Among them tithe is a valued and commuted rate of payment, forming a trifling and invariable impost, to the extent of which, alone, the landlord can ever be made liable to the church. This reform they commenced about the time they got rid of prelacy and cathedrals, in the days of JOHN KNOX. With this superiority Scotland would be the land to live in, were it not for her rag-money, her myriads of legalists and placemen, her host of servile writers, the barrenness of her moors and mountains, and the griping keenness of her population. “Strange as it may seem,” says lord BROUGHAM, in one of his eloquent harangues, “and to many who hear me incredible, from one end of the kingdom to the other, a traveller will see no such thing as a bishop—not such a thing is to be found from the Tweed to John o’Groats: not a mitre, no nor so much as a minor canon, or even a rural dean—and in all the land not a single curate—so entirely rude and barbarous are they in Scotland—in such utter darkness do they sit that they support no cathedrals, maintain no pluralists, suffer no non-residence; nay, the poor benighted creatures are ignorant even of tithes! Not a sheaf, or a lamb, or a pig, or the value of a plough-penny, do the hopeless mortals render from year’s end to year’s end! Piteous as their lot is, what makes it infinitely more touching is to witness the return of good for evil, in the demeanour of this wretched race. Under all this cruel neglect of their spiritual concerns, they are actually the most loyal, contented, moral, and religious people any where, perhaps, to be found in the world.”

Bishop Watson, said “a reformer, of Luther’s temper and talents, would, in five years, persuade the people to compel parliament to abolish tithes, to extinguish pluralities, to enforce residence, to confine episcopacy to the overseeing of dioceses, to expunge the Athanasian creed from our Liturgy, to free dissenters from Test-Acts, and the ministers of the establishment from subscription to human articles of faith.”—Letter to the Duke of Grafton.

Mr. Burke said, he “wished ministers to preach the gospel with ease, but their possessions to be such that the pastor would not have the inauspicious appearance of a tax-gatherer.”—His Works, vol. x. p. 146.

The progress of public reform is at a snail’s pace, and so numerous and strong are the holds of abuse, that many pitched battles have to be fought before a single inch can be gained from the waste of corruption. But the interests identified with a reform of the church are so many, important, and self-evident, that we feel certain it is a measure that cannot be much longer averted. The Archbishop of Canterbury, we are sure, may save himself the trouble of putting forward his cunningly-devised scheme for a composition for tithes, for a limited period, at a fixed rate of payment. The country will never sanction any plan tending to give permanency to an odious impost which, to our great opprobrium, has long been suffered to survive the natural term of its existence. The worthy primate seems to feel that the foundations of Mother Church are giving way, and he, doubtless, deems it good foresight in himself and brethren to lay hold of something certain for at least the next twenty years, the probable term of their earthly pilgrimage. But he may rely upon it the owners and occupiers of land, in England, will not be so easily overcome by ecclesiastical artifice as some of them have been in Ireland: a man must be totally regardless of the aspect of the times, he can know nothing of the state of opinion, as indicated by private conversations, by proceedings at public meetings, by newspapers, by parliamentary debates, by the petitions from Rochester, Devonshire, and other parts of the kingdom, who is not convinced that tithes, two years hence, will neither impoverish the soil nor reproach the wisdom of domestic policy: the attention of the people is rivetted on the vast possessions of the church, and to them they look as the best resource in their privations and difficulties. In the language of Scripture, and of the followers of Sir Walter Raleigh, they may truly exclaim, “Come hither, all ye that are heavy laden,—Here is the real El Dorado for reducing the boroughmongers’ debt, and lightening the burden of taxation. Here is the fund for colonizing, for mitigating poor-rates, repealing corn-laws, and creating employment; and none but fools look for any other!”

Considering, then, a great bettering in the condition of the operative clergy,—the improvement of church discipline,—the abolition of tithes,—and the saving of many millions of public income, as the certain and prominent advantages of ecclesiastical reformation, we will next advert to one or two interests in society which, at first sight, appear to present some obstruction to this salutary revolution.

First, of the rights of lay-impropriators. It is necessary to bear in mind the distinction which has been before adverted to between the tithes of the church and the tithes of laymen. These last are considerable, amounting, perhaps, to one-fourth or one-fifth of the whole tithes of the kingdom. They have been estimated—though, we think, on incorrect principles—to be worth £1,752,842 per annum. Now, these tithes are unquestionably of the nature of private property, and bear no analogy to clerical tithes. How they originated has been explained, (page 12,) but that has no bearing on their present tenure. We must take things as we find them, and adopt such rights of property as the laws and usages of society recognize, without ascending to their remote origin. Upon this principle we quickly discern the different tenure of church and impropriate tithes. The former have always been dealt with as a portion of the public income, payable to certain persons while engaged in the service of such form of worship as the State choose to patronize; the latter has been considered a rent-charge due to individuals, and with which the legislature had no concern. Hence the parliament has no more thought of interfering with impropriate tithes than with the estates in land obtained at the Reformation. The tithe-owner has dealt with them as part of his patrimony, which he could rightfully sell or devise to whom he pleased, and which immunities of ownership have been shown not to appertain to ecclesiastical possessions. To sequestrate lay-tithes would be gross spoliation, but, in the secularization of church-property, the legislature would only exercise an authority it has always possessed; and, were the life-interests of present possessors fairly commuted, neither loss nor injustice would be sustained by any person. It follows, impropriate tithes do not at all enter into the question of church reform; they must continue a charge on land, or lands liable thereto may be exonerated on such terms as can be agreed upon by the landlords and lay-impropriators.

Next, as to the interests of private patrons in advowsons. A right of presentation, in its origin and in acts of the legislature, has been shown to have been always considered merely an honorary function, which ought not to be exercised for gain or family interests, but the promotion of religion and virtue. Private patrons, therefore, could not expect to be indemnified for the loss they would sustain by ecclesiastical reform, according to the present value of benefices. All they could expect would be the continuance to them (as was the case in Scotland) of the right of nominating the ministers of the Reformed Church, subject, as at present, to the approval of the bishop. For the public to purchase their interests, according to the present value of tithes and church-fees, would be nothing less than at act of NATIONAL SIMONY; it would be converting a spiritual function into a temporal possession, and the state committing the very crime in wholesale which had been condemned and punished when perpetrated in a less degree by individuals.

Nothing has yet been said of the provision for the Established Clergy, to be substituted in lieu of tithes and church estates,—whether they ought to be paid stipends by Government, or out of the poor-rates, the county-rate, or some other rate levied expressly for the purpose, or whether they ought to be supported by the voluntary contributions of their hearers. The discussion of these matters will be time enough, when the people, or their representatives, have determined upon the secularization of church property. The proceedings of the Church-building Commissioners offer an example which some may think it wise to follow. They have shown not only how episcopalian churches may be built by subscription, but how the minister’s stipend may be paid out of pewrents, and other voluntary contributions, without the aid of the compulsory and odious provision of tithes. It may be thought a similar plan might be extended to all the churches of the establishment; but, for our parts we are in favour of a national religion—a Liturgy—and an endowed clergy; provided the endowment is moderate—fairly apportioned among the working clergy—and does not exceed about a million and a half per annum. A public worship protected by the state has formed, with few exceptions, a part of every well-ordered community. The French tried to do without it; the experiment was productive of enormous crimes, and after floundering for a time in the waves of anarchy, they were compelled again to resort to the aid of spiritual faith. Religion contains now little to give offence to the most liberal mind; it is not, as formerly, like the demon of some German story—recluse, bloody, and unrelenting; its worst features—bigotry and intolerance—have been removed by the progress of science and philosophy, and what remains may be considered a good with scarcely any admixture of evil.

Whether, however, we have an endowed clergy or not, no fear need be entertained about the interests of religion suffering. The fear at present is all the other way, lest a people evidently verging into the gloom of puritanism, may not afterwards recoil into the opposite extreme of licentiousness and unbelief. This has been termed an age of cant, and every thing tends to show its ascendancy. Nothing but cant can live in literature, the drama, trade, or politics. Let any one deny the popular faith, and the doors of the legislature are closed upon him; he is a “doomed man,” whose future life is “bound in storms and shallows,” and he is shunned as if he had caught the plague from some infectious lazaretto. This is the state of opinion among the lower and middle orders; among the higher, there is less scrupulosity; and a lord or a gentleman of £10,000 a year may admire Voltaire, Diderot, or Spinoza, without being ejected out of the pale of social communion.

While men’s fortunes depend on their faith, we may be sure there will be enough of it, or at least, the profession. Like the French satirist, every one thinks it necessary he should live, and of course will adopt the means essential to the end in view. It is possible, however, the artificial encouragement of devotion may produce it in excess, beyond the wants of the state, and thus generate the extreme to which we have adverted at the Restoration of Charles II. There is always some danger in meddling with spiritual opinions as with temporal interests; and many may think the wisest course to be adopted towards religion would be to follow the policy recently become popular in respect of trade—leaving it free; neither attempting to depress one sect by the drawback of civil disabilities, nor to encourage another by the bounty of protection. It is certainly a fact that religion will generally abound in proportion to the wants and demands of society; where there is much ignorance and mental debility, there will, as there ought, be much faith; on the other hand, where there is a strong and enlightened reason, the motives for good conduct will be sufficiently apparent, without being aided by the hopes and fears of superstition.

However, as before hinted, we are not the partizans of a free-trade in religion, and think a worship patronized by the state is best, provided it be cheap. Our reason for this preference may be somewhat peculiar, and not shared in by our readers. We prefer an established worship, not less as a means of maintaining a rational piety, than as a counterpoise to fanaticism. Without religion at all, men are seldom better than beasts; but if their rulers have no control over the popular faith, the people will be at the mercy of every pretender, whose warm imagination or an over-weening conceit may have filled with the delusion of a divine commission. With an endowed corps of ecclesiastics the state possesses a medium through which religion may be kept in countenance among the higher classes, (adopting the slang of aristocracy,) and its temperature among the lower be regulated. Of course we mean a race of clergymen differently qualified from the present. These, good easy souls! have little influence or authority; they have ministered away their flocks, and remain themselves objects of derision or cupidity, not veneration.

With the near and long-standing example of the Presbyterian establishment, North of the Tweed, it is surprising the task of ecclesiastical reform has made no progress either in England or Ireland. In the Kirk of Scotland, it has been already remarked, there are no bishops, nor dignitaries, nor tithes. The incomes of the national clergy are paid by the Court of Session out of a fund formed from the ancient tithes of the country. Some of the benefices being considered of too small value, they were, in 1810, augmented by an annual grant, from Parliament, of £10,000, which made the poorest livings worth £150 a-year, and the income of some of the ministers are considerably more, amounting to £300 or £350. Exclusive of house and glebe, the average income of the clergy is £245, which to 948 pastors, makes the whole annual expenditure on the Kirk only £234,900. This cannot be considered extravagant to a ministry with upwards of a million and a half of hearers; and upon the whole there are many things to admire in the Scotch Establishment. The Scots do not pay a quarter of a million for lawn-sleeves; nor half a million for cathedral and collegiate sinecurists. There are no curates; the parochial clergy reside upon their benefices; exhorting, catechising, instructing, and performing all those duties to their parishioners, for which they receive their incomes. The Scotch Church, though it cannot now be termed poor, yet its wealth is not so exorbitant as to corrupt its ministry. The wealth of the English Church is the source of all its vices—sinecurism, pride, luxury, and inefficiency.

The Dissenters afford an example of the efficient support of religion without any compulsory provision. In England and Wales there are upwards of 9,000 ministers supported by Dissenters. This is certainly not done at a less expense than £120 each, or rather more than a million per annum. Again, America is another proof of what can be done by voluntary contributions. There are not less than 11,000 ministers of all denominations in the United States, the great majority of whom derive their subsistence from the free-will offerings of the people, independent of legislative provision. The option left to the people has not operated to the decay of virtue or religion; on the contrary, religion flourishes among them to an extraordinary extent—it pervades all ranks and conditions of men—it is associated with all their pursuits—not, indeed, as a second head of the social body, dividing the intellect and strength of its frame, but as a pursuit distinct from political combinations, altogether a personal concern, and, therefore, purposely discarded by the constitution. Notwithstanding this absence of state-worship the United States have become a mighty empire, which, in spite of the solemn pedantries of Capt. Basil Hall, may be advantageously compared with any other in the world, whether measured by the standard of morals, personal prowess, commercial enterprize, or national wealth and power.

We have now done, and having finished our exposition of the Church of England, can truly say we have “nothing extenuated, nor set down aught in malice.” Our statements we know cannot be impugned; but it is possible our opinions may be misunderstood. It may be thought we are Jacobins, Liberals, or worse. Of this we take no note, knowing we are as good subjects as true Christians. We have no dislike to the Church, but we object to it as we do to the borough system, because it does not reward merit, and oppresses the honest and industrious. Our humble endeavour has been to expose the corruptions of the establishment. If the duties of the Church be of importance to Government, or to the interests of religion and morality, it is a strong reason for reforming, not protecting its abuses. It must be clear to the most common observers it cannot long continue in its present state. Without adverting to the number of dissenters—to defects in discipline,—the Liturgy—ill-proportioned revenue—or the conduct of the clergy themselves, the mere fact of a body of men, not exceeding eight thousand in number, and of no great social importance—claiming in the most vexatious manner a tenth of the natural and artificial produce of a soil, raised for the support of FOURTEEN MILLIONS, is so staringly outrageous, as to throw all argument out of court, and leave the Church a barefaced and unparalleled oppression, without precedent or palliative. Further reasoning on such a subject is out of place, and the only question is—Who will rise to abate the colossal nuisance? Will Government timely interfere and afford the Church a chance of prolonged duration, under a less obnoxious form, or will it supinely wait and behold it swept off in a whirlwind, leaving “not a wreck behind,” by a simultaneous rush of the TIERS ETAT?

If the Church is to be saved it must be saved by a wisdom very different from that which directs the councils of the heads of the Establishment. They are obviously as insensible to the position in which they stand as the child unborn. Only think of the nature of the bills introduced by them last year for the reform of the Church. The character of one—that for a composition for tithe—has been already noticed. Of the remaining two, one is for augmenting the incomes of vicarages; the other for shortening the time of prescription in cases of moduses and exemptions from tithes. In the last is a proviso which prevents it from interfering with any suit which may be commenced within three years. Ah, my Lords Bishops, the crisis will be past long before. Do not, we beseech you, lay the flattering unction to your souls that there will be litigation about moduses, prescription terms, and nullum tempus maxims three years hence. Your days are assuredly numbered; your lease is expired. The fatal vote given on the Reform-Bill has sealed your doom, and no depth of repentance can again establish you in the estimation of the people. Solemn pledges will be demanded from a reformed parliament that tithe shall be abolished, and that haughty prelates shall cease to haunt the chambers of legislation. A terrible storm is impending over the Church, and nothing can avert its destructive ravages save a timely abandonment of all that has long excited popular indignation—its enormous wealth—its avarice, pride, and self-seeking—its insolent and oppressive power.

LIST OF BISHOPS, DIGNITARIES, AND PLURALISTS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

EXPLANATIONS.

THE name of the Pluralist comes first. After the name comes the first living of the Pluralist in italic, and an initial letter denoting its title—namely, r. for rectory, v. for vicarage, c. for chapelry, p. c. for perpetual curacy, d. for donative, d. r. for district rectory, and d. c. for district chapelry. The name of the Patron is put after the living or livings, supposing more than one living, of which the same person is patron. Abp. is put for archbishop, bp. for bishop, archd. for archdeacon, dn. for dean, ch. for chapter. When a living is in the gift of the University of Oxford, Oxon is put; when of the University of Cambridge, Camb. When a nobleman, as the duke of Newcastle, or the marquis of Exeter, is patron, the of in the title is omitted both for brevity and propriety. The “of” expresses territorial jurisdiction, but as peers do not possess such authority at the present day, the term by which it is implied may be properly dropped.

In the language of churchmen a living or benefice, which are synonymous, is a rectory or vicarage only; but many chapelries are equally entitled to fall under this denomination, and have been so considered. There are free chapels perpetually maintained, and provided with a minister, without charge to the rector or parish. In some places chapels of ease are endowed with lands and tithes; they have by custom a right to a distinct minister, to baptize, to administer sacraments and burial: such parochial chapelries differ only in name from parish churches. Parish is a vague term. In the north, parishes comprise thirty or forty square miles, which is seven or eight times the area of parishes in the south. Under 13th Charles II. certain townships and villages are allowed to maintain their own poor; hence these townships became so many distinct parishes. There are 200 extra-parochial places, many of which are as large as parishes; these are exempt from poor-rate, because there is no overseer on whom the magistrate can serve an order;—from militia, because no constable to make a return; from repairing highways, because no surveyor. The 37 Hen. VIII. c. 31, (also 4 and 5 Will. & Mary,) allows the union of churches, when not more than one mile apart, and under value of £6. Under these acts churches have been united: the city of London reckons 108 parishes, forming no more than 78 benefices; in Norwich, 70 parishes have been compressed into 37 benefices. Contrary to the rule of ecclesiastics, we have considered all parishes held cum, or with another, distinct benefices; the only reason for an opposite course is, that they form only one presentation, though such presentation is often held by two patrons, who present alternately; and many of such consolidated parishes (Upham cum Durley, for instance,) have two churches, and two sets of overseers and churchwardens.

The district rectories and district chapelries, established in such parishes as have been divided into ecclesiastical districts by the Royal Commissioners for Building New Churches, under the authority of powers granted to them by Parliament, form so many distinct livings or benefices, each having a separate maintenance for a minister, independent of the mother church.

Apart, then, from the corruptions and mystification of the Church, we have deemed every parochial preferment, chapelry, vicarage, or rectory, a living; and we consider every clergyman a pluralist who holds two such preferments, whether separate or united. A curacy, without any great impropriety, might be styled a living, as a stipend is, or ought to be, annexed to the office, adequate to the maintenance of at least one individual: but as curates are removable at the pleasure of incumbents, they are excluded from our List, which includes only beneficed clergymen.

The abuse of holding two livings or more is so prevalent, that to have enumerated all the transgressors (about 2880 in number,) would have extended our List to an inconvenient length, without corresponding utility; our object has been to exhibit the more flagrant breaches of ecclesiastical discipline; and with this view, we have restricted ourselves to such shameful monopolists among the parochial clergy as hold three or more preferments. We have also included the bishops and principal dignitaries of the church.

The 21 Hen. VIII. c. 13, prohibits a person holding a second benefice when the first is worth eight pounds in the King’s Book. But a man, by dispensation, may hold as many benefices, without cure, as he can get; and, likewise, so many with cure as he can get, all of them, or all but the last, being under the value of eight pounds; provided the person to be dispensed withal be not otherwise incapable thereof. By the 41st Canon, however, of 1603, the two benefices must not be farther distant than thirty miles; and persons obtaining dispensation, must at least be M.A. But the provisions of this canon are not regarded or enforced in the courts of law; and the privileges, ex officio, entitling to grants of dispensation, are so numerous, and the facilities for obtaining them, through favour or evasion, so easy, that there can hardly be said to exist a practical check to the most aggravated cases of plurality.

In the disposal of every living, three parties are principally concerned: first, the patron; second, the incumbent; third, the bishop. The patron is the person in whom the right of presenting to a living is vested. The person nominated by the patron is the incumbent. The office of the bishop is to grant institution to the living to which the incumbent is presented. By refusing institution, the bishops have a veto on appointments by patrons; this veto, however, is rarely exercised, and it is seldom that the patron and the diocesan are at issue. The most important personage in the affair is the patron. It will be seen from the List that the patronage is sometimes in individuals—sometimes in public bodies. Sometimes the incumbent is his own patron, and presents himself; sometimes the incumbent’s wife is patron, and presents her husband; sometimes the husband and wife are co-patrons. In some instances the patronage is divided, the nomination being in one party and the appointment in another. Many ladies are patrons, and though otherwise ineligible to the exercise of civil rights, no doubt they are well qualified to select spiritual persons for the cure of souls.

Nearly all the livings in the metropolis, and the most valuable livings in the large towns in the country, are in the gift of the crown, which adds enormously to its influence. The patronage not in the crown is chiefly in the aristocracy and gentry, the universities, and the bishops. The patronage of the aristocracy and gentry is chiefly bestowed on the members of their own families; the patronage of the universities on the members of those places; the patronage of the bishops on their connexions and relations to the hundredth degree. A great mass of patronage, however, remains, which cannot be disposed of in any of these ways; for though the families of the aristocracy have been recently proved to be, on the average, more prolific than those of the democracy, they are not sufficiently so to fill all offices in the army, navy, law, church, and public departments; and, consequently, there is a surplus patronage to be brought into the market, which is disposed of, like other commodities, to the highest bidder.

It would have been more satisfactory, had we been able to state the present value of livings; but there is no authentic data for the purpose: parliamentary returns, it is true, have been made of the poor livings, but none of the rich ones; and there have been returns of the number of all livings above and below the value of £300, having non-resident incumbents: returns were also ordered in the session of 1830 of the value of livings in the gift of the crown. These last returns have not yet been made, or at least printed: they would add something to our knowledge of the present value of church-property; but what the public wants is the separate value of every see, dignity, benefice, and ecclesiastical preferment, and the proportion in which, and number of individuals among whom, they are shared. By such data would be shown what the Church of England really is, and indisputably prove the existence of those enormous abuses, which, in our preliminary article, we have fully proved to pervade the ecclesiastical establishment.

We have only one more remark to make, and that refers to our accuracy. The movements that are daily and almost hourly occurring in the Church, from deaths, translations, resignations, and exchanges, render it probable that alterations have intervened since our List was sent to the press. But this does not defeat our object. If one pluralist has been removed another has succeeded. So that our List will continue to exhibit a correct picture of ecclesiastical patronage as long as the present system of church discipline is tolerated.

- Adams, J. C. Saxleby, r. lord Aylesford. Shilfon, c. Anstye, c. the King.

- Affleck, R. preb. of York; Silkston, r. with Bretton, Monk, and Stainborough chapelries, abp. of York. Treswell, East Mediety, r. West Mediety, r. dn. and ch. of York and Mr. Stevenson. Thockerington, p. c. Prebendary. Westow, v. abp. of York.

- Alban, T. Llandrillo, v. bp. of St. Asaph. Eaton, v. H. and W. Lloyd. Snead, c. P. Morris.

- Aldrich, W. Boyton, r. lord Rous. Stowe-Market, v. with Stowe-Upland, c. Mr. Aldrich.

- Allen, R. Driffield, r. precentor of York. Whaream Pier, v. Misses Isted and Englefield. Little, p. c. unknown.

- Allen, S. Haslingfield, v. C. Mitchell. Lynn, St. Margaret and St. Nicholas, c. dn. and ch. of Norwich.

- Allen, D. B. preb. of St. David’s and Brecon. Burton, r. sir W. Owen. Manordiffy, r. Llandewn Welfrey, r. the King.

- Allen, S. Dunton, v. T. W. Coke. Wolterton, r. with Wickmere, r. earl of Oxford.

- Allfree, E. M. minor canon of Rochester; Canterbury, St. Andrew, r. and St. Mary, Bredon, r. abp. of Cant. and dn. and ch. of Cant. Strood, r. dn. and ch. of Rochester.

- Alison, A. preb. of Sarum; Ercall, v. H. Pulteney. Roddington, r. the King.

The pluralist is senior minister of the episcopal chapel, Canongate, Edinburgh, and a native of Scotland; being related to the late bishop Douglas, that prelate gave him a stall in his cathedral, and procured for him the vicarage of High Ercall, in Shropshire, to which was afterwards added the rectory of Roddington, in the same county. Mr. Alison is the author of a work on Taste.

- Allington, W. Bardford Lit. r. Twywell, r. J. Williamson. Swinhop, d. Mrs. Allington.

- Anson, H. Buxton, v. with Oxnead, r. and Skeyton, r. lord Anson. Lyng, r. with Whitwell, v. T. Anson.

Uncle of earl of Lichfield, master of the buckhounds. Another uncle is rector of Longford, and rector of Sudbury, of which benefices Mr. Coke of Norfolk, and lord Vernon, both connected with the family by marriage, are respectively the patrons.

- Ashfield, C. R. Great Blakenham, r. Eton Coll. Dodington, r. duke Buckingham. Stewkley, v. bp. of Oxon. London, St. Benet Finck, c. dn. and canons of Windsor.

- Apthorpe, F. preb. of Lincoln; Bicker, v. dn. and ch. of Lincoln. Farndon, v. with Balderton and Fiskerton, chapelries, preb. of Lincoln. Gumley, r. dn. and ch. of Lincoln.

The grandfather of this gentleman was a merchant at Boston, in America. His father was rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, and had the valuable prebend of Finsbury, in St. Paul’s. His brother-in-law, Dr. Cory, is master of Emanuel College, Cambridge. Another brother-in-law is master of Shrewsbury grammar-school.

- Atlay, H. Great Casterton, r. Pickworth, r. marq. Exeter. Great Ponton, preb. of Sarum.

- Astley, H. N. Foulsham, r. sir H. Astley. Little Snoring, r. with Bashan, v. bp. of Norwich.

- Atkinson, R. Musgrove, r. bp. of Carlisle. Upelby, c. J. B. Elliot. Claxby with Normanby, r. Rd. Atkinson.

- Bagot, Richard, bishop of Oxford and dean of Canterbury.

Brother of lord Bagot and of sir C. Bagot, ambassador to the Netherlands, who married a daughter of lord Maryborough.

- Bankes, E. king’s chaplain and preb. of Gloucester and Norwich; Corfe Castle, r. Henry Bankes, M.P.

Son-in-law of lord Eldon. The inhabitants of Corfe Castle must feel greatly indebted to the late member for Dorsetshire: he appoints one of his sons to watch over their spiritual welfare, and sends another into the house of commons to take care of their temporal affairs.

- Baker, T. canon res. of Chichester; Bexhill, v. Rodmell, r. bp. of Chichester. Falmer, v. earl Chichester.

- Barker, F. H. St. Alban’s, St. Stephen, v. A. Fisher. North Church, r. the King. Steppingley, r. duke of Bedford.

- Barker, T. Acaster Malb. v. T. B. Thompson. Kilburn, p. c. Thirkleby, v. abp. of York.

- Barrington, viscount, preb. of Durham; Sedgefield, r. with Embleton, c. bp. of Durham.

- Bathurst, Henry, bishop of Norwich: Sapperton, r. earl Bathurst.

- Bathurst, H. archdn. of Norwich; North Creake, r. earl Spencer. Oby, r. with Ashby, r. and Thurne, r. bp. of Norwich.

- Barrow, R. vic. chor. Southwell; Barnoldby le Beck, r. Halloughton, p. c. South Muskham, v. Rampton, v. South Wheatley, r. Southwell, Collegiate chapter.

The small collegiate church of Southwell has attached to, in the gift of the chapter and prebendaries, twenty-seven livings, amongst them several of the large and populous parishes: of these there are four resident incumbents, very few of them have any resident officiating minister, and almost all, if not all, of the parsonage houses have been suffered to fall into decay. The following particulars will exemplify the state of ecclesiastical discipline.

In the gift of the Chapter:—

7

Rectories

None resident.

4

Vicarages

One resident.

3

Perpetual Curacies

One resident.

1

Chapelry

Not resident.

In the gift of Prebendaries:—

11

Vicarages

Three resident.

4

Vicarages

Believe none resident.

Many of these are held by clergymen living in Southwell, who are pluralists, and several of the curates also live in Southwell, so that the people of the parishes never see their ministers except on a Sunday in the pulpit. That they find Southwell more agreeable than living in a retired village is possible; but ought they not to remember that their duty is to visit the sick and afflicted, and to go about doing good. They are thus suffered to neglect their duty, and to let fall down their houses, because they are in the gift of the church, and yet they expect to be esteemed and their delinquencies overlooked.

- Bartlett, T. Canterbury All Saints, r. All Saints St. Mary’s church, r. All Saints St. Mildred, r. lord Chan. Kingston, r. sir E. Brydges.

- Bartlett, W. P. Great Cranford, v. G. T. Brice. Cranford, r. earl Berkeley. Worth Maltravers, v. rev. T. C. Bartlett.

- Bastard, J. Stratfieldsay, v. Stratfieldsay Turgis, r. lord Wellington. Belchalwell, r. Fifehead Neville, r. lord Rivers.

- Basnett, T. G. vic. chor of Southwell; Bonsall, r. dn. Lincoln. Edingley, v. Halam, p. c. Southwell College.

- Beadon, F. North Stoneham, r. J. Fleming. Sulham, r. J. Wilder. Titley, p. c. Winton College.

Chancellor and canon res. of Wells. Several other Beadons are in the church, who are indebted for their preferments to the late bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been tutor to the duke of Gloucester.

- Beauclerk, lord F. Kempton, v. Redburn, St. Alban’s, St. Michael, v. lord Verulam.

- Beauchamp, Brian, Cove, c. chapel in Tiverton. Hawkridge, v. with Withypoole, c. Miss Wood. Thoverton, c. vic. Thoverton.

- Beauchamp, T. W. H. Chedgrave, r. Langley, c. Buckenham Ferry, r. with Hassingham, r. sir T. B. Proctor.

- Becher, J. T. preb. of Southwell; Hoveringham, p. c. sir R. Sutton. Thurgorton, p. c. Trinity Coll. Camb. Farnsfield, v. Southwell Coll.

- Beckett, G. preb. of Lincoln; Barnsley, p. c. abp. of York. Epworth, r. the King. Gainsborough, v. preb. of Corringham.

- Beeke, H. dean of Bristol.

- Beevor, Miles, Bircham Newton, r. earl Orford. Toft Bircham, r. sir T. Beevor. Hethell, r. Ketteringham, v. E. Atkins.

- Bellaman, J. Ewerby, v. lord Chan. Kirkby Green, v. the King. Kyme South, c. sir A Hume.

- Belfield, F. St. Martin, r. viscountess Sandwich. Stoke Gabriel, v. Exbourne, r. F. Belfield.

- Beynon, T. archdn. of Cardigan, preb. of St. David’s and Brecon; Llanfchangel Aberbythych, r. bp. of St. Asaph. Llandevey, p. c. Llanvihan Kilwayn, r. Penboyr, r. with Ydrindod, c. earl Cawdor.

- Berkeley, H. R. fell. of Winton Coll.; Cotheridge, c. Himself. Shelsea Beauchamp, r. lord Foley. Onibury, r. bp. of Hereford.

- Bertie, hon. F. Aldbury, r. Wooton, p. c. Wigtham, r. earl Abingdon.

- Bethell, Christopher, D.D. bishop of Bagnor; Kirkly Wiske, r. duke of Northumberland.

- Biddulph, T. T. Bristol, St. James’s, c. corp. of Bristol. Durston, d. rev. R. Gray. Lyneham, c. Mr. Long.

- Binney, H. Hackthorne, v. Hanworth Cold, r. Rt. Cracroft. West Moulsey, p. c. rev. Dr. Binney.

- Birch, Samuel, D.D. president of Sion Coll. preb. of St. Paul’s, and professor of geometry at Gresham College; St. Mary Woolnoth, and St. Mary Woolchurch, r. London, the King and Mr. Thornton alternately; the former this turn.

As this gentleman is one of the Gresham professors, a short notice of the present state of the college may not be out of place. Sir Thomas Gresham, the munificent founder of the Royal Exchange, for the convenience of commerce, was also the founder of a college for the advancement of learning; the rents of the former were bequeathed for the maintenance of the college; seven learned men were perpetually to reside there, for the cultivation of science; and during term time—every day—they were to deliver, in English and Latin, gratuitous lectures to the public, on astronomy, civil law, music, rhetoric, geometry, divinity, and medicine. All the remains of this endowment are the professors, their salaries of £100 per annum each, and an obscure nook in the south-east angle of the Exchange, adjoining the premises of our publisher; no lectures are delivered, or none that the public think worth hearing. An attempt was lately made to revive the college by removing the lectures to the London Institution. It failed, we believe, from the reluctance of the professors to concur in the new arrangement. The fact is, the Gresham lectures have degenerated into a city job; the professors had received their appointments as sinecures, through personal favour or relationship, and had not sufficiently devoted themselves to scientific pursuits to be prepared to convert their professorships, as the founder intended, into chairs of efficient popular instruction. It is not pleasant to be always reverting to abuses; but there is such a principle of vitality in them that it is only by repeated exposures they can be rooted out.

- Birch, Thomas, D.C.L. dean of Battle, archdeacon of Lewes; Westfield, v. bp. of Chichester.

- Blandford, Joseph, Carlton in Moreland, v. w. Stapleford, c. lord Middleton. Kirton, r. Mapplebeck, c. duke Newcastle. Wellow, c. hon. and rev. J. L. Saville.

- Blomberg, F. W. canon res. of St. Paul’s, deputy clerk of the king’s closet, chap. in ord. to H. M.; Bradford, v. w. Atworth, Holt, Stoke, Wraxhall, Winsley, and South, chapelries, dn. and ch. of Bristol. Shepton Mallett, r. the King.

- Blomfield, Charles James, D.D. bishop of London, provincial dean of Canterbury, and dean of the chapels royal.

- Bower, H. Orchard Portman, r. Taunton, St. Mar. r. Staple Fitzpoine, r. E. B. Portman.

- Bowes, T. F. F. chaplain to the king; Cowlam, r. Cake, r. B. F. Bowes. Barton le Clay, r. the King.

- Bradley, W. Baddesley Ensor, p. c. Inhabs. of Polesworth. Merevale, c. D. S. Dugdale. Whitacre Over, c. earl Howe.

- Brice, J. Aisholt, r. Incumbent. Grenton, r. S. Kekewich. Catcott, p. c. lord Henniker.

- Bromley, W. D. Bagginton, r. Oxhill, r. rev. W. D. Bromley. Copesthorne, c. D. Davenporte.

- Brown, H. Ayleston, r. with Little Glen, c. Lubbesthorpe, c. duke Rutland. Hoby, r. Incumbent.

Father-in-law of the rev. Gilbert Beresford, rector of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, by whom Ayleston was resigned on account of the distance.

- Brown, L. R. Carlton, r. with Kelsale, r. rev. B. Bence. Prestbury, v. Mrs. Leigh. Saxmundham, r. D. L. North. Thorington, r.

- Browne, J. H. archdeacon of Ely; Cotgrave, 1st Mediety, r. 2d Mediety, r. Eakring, r. earl Manvers.

- Browne, W. Charsfield, p. c. W. Jennens. Great Glemham, c. with Little Glemham, r. D. L. North. Marlesford, r. A. Arcedeckne.

- Buckle, W. Banstead, v. rev. W. Buckle. Pirton, v. Christ Church, Oxon. Shireborn, v. lord Macclesfield.

- Bulwer, A. Haydon, r. W. W. Bulmer. Cawston, r. Pemb. Hall. Corpusty, v. sequestrated.

- Burgess, Thomas, D. D. bp. of Salisbury, and provincial precentor of Canterbury.

- Burgess, Geo. Atherington, r. Fra. Bassett. Halvergate, v. bp. of Ely. Moulton, v. Tunstall, c. rev. H. Anguish.

A relation of the bishop of Salisbury and of the duke of St. Alban’s. The bishop is the son of a grocer at Odiham, Hants, where he was born, about 1755. His first patron was the bishop of Durham, who gave him a prebend, first in the cathedral of Salisbury, and afterwards at Durham. At Durham he continued till the administration of Mr. Addington (now Sidmouth), who had been his companion at Winchester College, conferred on him, in 1802, the See of St. David’s. In 1796, the bishop married a Miss Bright of Durham, half-sister of the marchioness of Winchester.

- Burrard, Geo. Middleton-Tyas, r. the King. Yarmouth, r. Shalfleet, v. sir H. B. Neale.

This pluralist is also a magistrate and a king’s chaplain. He is brother to sir H. Burrard Neale and to lady Rook, who has a pension, and son-in-law to admiral Bingham.

- Butler, Samuel, D.D. archdn. of Derby, preb. of Lichfield; Kenilworth, v. lord Chan.

Several more Butlers are in the church. Dr. Butler is head master of Shrewsbury grammar-school. He married a daughter of Dr. Apthorpe, a pluralist. His son, W. Butler, is author of a pamphlet on the French Revolution.

- Bull, archdn. D.D. preb. York, canon res. of Exeter, archdn. of Barnstaple; Lezant, r. bp. of Exeter.

- Butler, W. J. Nottingham, St. Nicholas, r. Thwing, 1st Midiety, r. 2d Mediety, r. lord Chan.

- Calvert, W. Childerly, r. Hunsdon, r. Pelham Stocking, r. Nicholas Calvert.

- Candler, P. Burnham Market, v. lord Chan. Little Hautboys, r. Lammas, c. rev. P. Candler. Letheringsett, r. Mrs. Burrell.

- Carr, G. Great Eversden, v. lord Chan. Little Eversden, r. Queen’s Coll. Ipswich, St. Margaret, c. rev. W. Fonnereau. Ipswich, St. Mary, c. Parishioners.

- Cage, Ed. Bearsted, v. dn. and ch. of Rochester. Badlesmere, r. Eastling, r. Newnham, v. cum Leveland, r. lord Sondes.

- Campbell, C. Wesenham, All Saints, v. St. Peter, v. Shingham, r. Beechamwell, All Saints, r. the King.

- Canon, R. Broxholme, r. North Carlton, p. c. lord Monson. Westbury-on-trim, p. c. with Minehampton, c. G. Edwards and J. Baker, alternately.

- Cantley, T. Cambridge, St. Clement, Camb. Griston, v. bp. of Ely. Gawston, v. R. Huddleston.

- Carey, Wm. bishop and archdeacon of St. Asaph.

- Carr, Robert James, bishop of Worcester, canon res. of St. Paul’s, and clerk of the closet to the king.

The prelate is brother of sir H. W. Carr, the gentleman who married Perceval’s widow alluded to in the Pension List.

- Capper, G. Blackenham, Lit. r. Gosbeck, St. Mary, r. T. Vernon. Wherstead, v. the King.

- Capper, J. preb. of Chichester; Ashurst, r. duke Dorset. Wilmington, v. hon. G. A. H. Cavendish. Lollington, v. bp. of Chichester.

- Casberd, J. T. preb. of Wells and Llandaff; Eglwystowis, r. R. Jones. Llanover, v. ch. of Llandaff. Llantude, v. Penmark, v. dn. and ch. of Gloucester. Lysevanoth, v. lord Plymouth. Mamlad, c. Trevethan, c. vic. of Llanover.

- Champness, T. minor canon, Westminster and Windsor; Cottesford, r. Eton Coll. Upton, v. the King. Fulmer, c. Wyrardsbury, v. with Langley, c. dn. and canons of Windsor.

- Chaplin, W. West Halton, r. abp. of Canterbury. Raithby, r. with Hallington, r. and Maltby, c. lord Chan. Hougham, v. sequestrated.

Several more Chaplins in the church; they are cousins of the late archbishop Sutton.

- Chandler, G. dean of Chichester; Southam, r. Marylebone, All Souls, Langham Place, r. the King.

- Chester, W. Denton, r. abp. of Cant. Woodrising, r. J. Weyland. Walpole, St. Peter, r. the King.

- Clarke, J. S. canon of Windsor, dep. clerk of the closet to the King, chap. in ord. to H. M. East Preston, w. Hove, v. Tillington, r. lord Egremont.

Son of the late rev. Edward Clarke, rector of Buxted, Sussex; he was formerly a chaplain in the navy, and owed his appointment in the royal household to his intimacy with admiral Payne. He is author of a Life of Nelson, and established the periodical miscellany the Naval Chronicle.

- Clapham, Samuel, Christchurch, v. with Bransgore, c. and Holdenhurst, c. dn. and ch. of Winton. Gussage, St. Mie. r. I. and R. Randall. Great Ouseborn, v. the King.

This gentleman is a native of Leeds, Yorkshire, where he was educated. He was first patronized by lord Loughborough, then lord chancellor, who presented him to the living of Great Ouseborn. As a remuneration for his Abridgement of the Bishop of Winchester’s (Pretyman) Elements of Christian Theology, that prelate obtained for him the vicarage of Christchurch and the rectory of Gussage. He is an acting magistrate for the county, and compiled an Index to Burn’s and Williams’s Justice, Blackstone’s, Hawkins’, &c. law-books.

- Clarkson, T. Hinxton-Combes, v. Swovesey, v. Camb. Acton Scott, r. R. J. Stackhouse.

- Cleaver, J. F. preb. of Southwell. Holme Pierrepont, r. earl Manvers. Appleton-in-the-Street, v. Amotherby, c. Camb.

- Cleaver, J. Edwinstow, v. Ollerton, c. Carburton, c. Polethorpe, c. dn. and ch. Lincoln.

- Cleaver, J. F. canon and reg. of St. Asaph. Corwen, r. Rug, c. bp. St. Asaph. Great Coxwell, v. bp. of Sarum.

The pluralists owe their preferments to their father, the bishop of St. Asaph, who died in 1815. The bishop was tutor to the marquis of Buckingham, with whom he went to Ireland during his viceroyship. His brother was first made bishop of Ferns, then archbishop of Dublin. He himself first obtained a prebend of Westminster, was next elevated to the see of Chester, and, after one or two more moves, to the see of St. Asaph. He married a Miss Asheton, sister of Wm. A. of Lancashire, from whom the present are descended.

- Cobbold, T. Ipswich, St. Mary Tower, c. Parishioners. Welby, r. rev. N. White. Woolpet, r. rev T. Cobbold.

There are three more Cobbolds in the church, one vicar of Selbourne, and a witness at the Winchester trials under the special commission; a riotous assemblage of farmers and labourers had endeavoured to compel the reverend gentleman to consent to reduce his tithes from £600 to 400 a-year, the last—four pounds a week—being deemed sufficient remuneration to a parish priest in the opinions of the rural logicians. In the existing state of popular feeling, how is it possible for the tithe system to be upheld? it does not answer a single good purpose; and its compulsory exaction is wholly impracticable. The ends of religion can never be furthered by an impost which generates social animosity, and tends to exhibit ministers and parishioners more in the relation of wolves and sheep than pastors and their flocks.

- Cockburn, Wm. dean of York.

- Coldham, J. Anmer, r. J. Coldham. Snettisham, r. H. Styleman, Stockton, r. P. Randall.

- Combe, E. Barrington, p. c. rev. Dr. W. Palmer. Donyatt, r. Earnshill, r. Drayton, p. c. R. T. Combe.

- Colson, T. M. Pilesdon, r. with Stratton, c. hon. C. Damer. Chaminster, c. Mr. Trenchard. Linkenholt, r. Mrs. Worgan.

- Collet, A. Aldringham, c. with Thorpe, c. Great and Little Linstead, c. lord Huntingfield. Heveningham, r. the King.

- Collett, W. Swanton Morley, r. sir J. Lambe. Surlingham, r. rev. W. Collett. Egmere, r. T. W. Coke.

Last year the parishioners of Surlingham gave to the rector the alternative of either accepting a compensation for tithes, or gathering them in kind; the reverend pluralist dexterously endeavoured to ward off this blow, by sowing division in the enemy’s camp; and in a hand-bill, signified his intention to distribute, as a gift, among the “poor and deserving families of his parish, all the eggs, milk, pigs, poultry, and fruit, which would in future belong to him, as small tithes, on the occupations of certain of the rebels whose names were mentioned.” A very adroit stratagem this! but it is a pity the worthy rector did not think of the “poor and deserving families” before the FIRES, and the union of the labourers and farmers. Other parsons have endeavoured to conciliate their parishioners, by circulating hand-bills, in which they try to prove that tithes are good things for the labourers—that they do not oppress the farmer, being only part of his rent, which if not paid to the incumbent, would be exacted by the landlord—and that the average incomes of the beneficed clergy are so small that it is impossible they should be objects of cupidity with any reasonable person. All these sophistries we have exposed; it is not the average income of the clergy, but the total amount of the revenues of the church and the unequal distribution of them that are objected to; neither is it meant that tithe should be simply abolished—that would certainly only add to the rents of the landlords—but that it should be commuted for an equivalent and less objectionable assessment, levied on the landed interest, and this commutation be available to the relief of the productive classes.—On these matters, see p. 53, 55, and p. 88.

- Corbett, S. LL.D. Kirkhamwith, r. chan. du. Lancaster. Scrayingham, r. with Leppington, c. the King. Wortley, c. rec. of Tankersley.

- Cooke, G. Rissington Wick, r. the King. Cubbington, v. Honingham, p. c. I. H. Leigh.

Professor of natural philosophy, and keeper of the archives in the University of Oxford.

- Copleston, Edw. bishop of Llandaff and dean of St. Paul’s.

- Crabbe, Geo. Trowbridge, r. Staverton, c. Croxton Kerrial, v. duke of Rutland.

A popular poet, who was chaplain to the late duke of Rutland, from whom he obtained his preferments, and whose funeral sermon he preached at Belvoir.

- Crawley, C. Broadwater, v. Miss Mills. Flaxley, d. sir J. Crawley. Stow, Nine Churches, r. rev. J. L. Crawley.

- Croft, James, archd. and preb. of Canterbury. Cliffe-at-Hone, r. Saltwood, r.w. Hythe, c. abp. of Cant.

Married a daughter of the late archbishop Sutton.

- Crook, Ch. Bath, St. Peter and St. Paul, v. St. Mary Mag. Ch. St. Michael, r. Widcombe, c. Mayor and Corporation.

- Cust, Henry, Cockayne-Hatley, r. Sywell, r. Raisen Mid. Tupholm, v. earl Brownlow. Willoughby, St. Helen, r. lord Gwydyr.

- Dallen, J. vic. chor. York. Rudston, v. Trinity in Goodramgate, r. St. John Delpike, r. and St. Maurice without Monk, v. abp. of York.

- Dampier, J. Codford, St. Peter, r. H. Kellow. Langton Matravers, r. Incumbent. Pitcombe, c. Brewham, c. sir R. C. Hoare.

- Davies, G. J. Grovenhurst Superior, r. Trustees. Marfleet, c. H. Grylls. Sutton, c. H. Broadley.

- Davy, Geo. M.A. dean of Chester; vacated by Dr. Phillpotts.

- Davy, C. Barking, r. Combes, r. Badley, c. earl Ashburnham.

- Dawson, F. Chiselhurst, r. Hayes, r. Orpington, (sinecure,) r. with Down, c. abp. of Cant.

- Day, G. minor canon of Norwich. Barton Bendish, r. sir H. Berney. Hemblington, c. Norwich Eaton, v. dn. and ch. of Norwich.

- Day, J. Seething, c. St. Peter, Mundham, c. Corp. of Norwich. Yelverton, r. lord Chan.

- Digby, C. canon of Windsor. Chiselboro’, r. with West Chinnock, c. Middle Chinnock, r. Penselwood, r. lord Ilchester.

- Dillon, H. L. Carhampton, v. Mrs. Langham. Carhampton, p. c. H. P. Wyndham. Litchet, r. W. Trenchard.

- Dixon, W. H. preb. of York and Ripon. Bishopsthorpe, v. abp. of York. Cawood, c. preb. of Wistow. Mappleton, v. archdn. E. Riding. Topcliffe, v. dn. and ch. of York.

- Doveton, J. F. Betchworth, v. dn. and ch. of Windsor. Burnet, r. Corp. of Bristol. Mells, r. with Leigh on Mendip, c. T. G. Horner.

- D’Oyley, Geo. Lambeth, r. with Stockwell, c. Sundridge, r. abp. of Cant.

Chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, and christian advocate in the University of Cambridge.

- Dudley, J. Humberstone, v. Incumbent. Sileby, v, W. Pochin. Himby, r. earl Dudley.

- Dowland, J. J. G. Broad Windsor, v. the King. Turnworth, v. bp. of Sarum. Winterbourne Whitchurch, v. E. M. Pleydell.

- Edge, W. Hollesley, r, Noughton, r. Nedging, r. rev. W. Edge.

- Ellis, J. Llangamdimell, v. Llankerrig, r. bp. St. David’s. Llanbadrig, v. the King. Wooten Waven, with Uttenhall, c. King’s Coll. Cambridge.

- England, W. archdn. of Dorset. Ower Moine, r. Winterbourne Carne, r. and St. Germain, r. lady Damer. West Stafford, r. Mrs. Floyers.

- Fardell, H. preb. of Ely. Wisbech, v. Waterbeach, v. bp. of Ely.

See a chronological statement of the progress of this gentleman in the church, p. 25.

- Fellowes, J. Bramerton, r. Easton, r. Mottisham Mantby, r. R. Fellowes. Bratton Clovelly, r. bp. of Exeter.

- Field, R. Mendlesham, v. Pearson and Wyatt. Sutton, All Saints, v. Oxon. Ramskolt, c. J. Pennington.

- Finch, H. Oakham, v. with Barleythorpe, c. and Brooke, c. Langham, c. Eggleton, c. lord Winchelsea.

- Finch, H. Great Melford, v. Little Melford, r. W. F. Finch. Longstanton, All Saints, bp. of Ely.

Nine Finches in the church, with eighteen livings, besides dignities. Most of them are honourables, and branches of the family of lord Winchelsea.

- Fisher, John, archdn. of Berks, can. res. of Sarum. Gillingham, v. w. East and West Stover, c. Motcombe, c. Osmington, v. bp. of Salisbury.

- Fisher, Jona. P. D.D. can. res. of Exeter. Farringdon, r. Rockbear, v. bp. of Exeter.

- Fisher, P. Elton, r. Messrs. Shafto and Hogg. Whapload, v. the King. Stoke Canon, d. dn. and ch. of Exon.

Thirteen more Fishers with benefices and offices. They are all, we suspect, relations of the late bishop of Salisbury, and are an instance of that monopoly which is the disgrace of the establishment. The bishop was preceptor to the princess Charlotte of Wales and the Duke of Kent. Having obtained a prebend of Windsor and the archdeaconry of Exeter, he was, in 1803, promoted to that see; and, in 1808, translated to Salisbury. The patronage of the diocese is forty livings and thirty-five prebends, from which fund he made a comfortable provision for his family. P. Fisher, beside his three livings, has a prebend at Norwich, and another at Salisbury, and is head master of the Charter-house. This man is really insatiable. His salary at the Charter-house is £800 a year, with a house, candles, vegetables, and an allowance for linen. He had a nephew lately on the foundation, and two sons exhibitioners at the Universities, with allowances of £80 a year from the charity.

- Fletcher, W. chan. of d. of Carlisle, and preb. of York. Bromfield, v. Dalston, v. Lazonby, v. bp. of Carlisle.

- Fly, H. D.D. sub-dean of St. Paul’s, London. Trinity, Minories, c. the King. Willesdon, v. Kingsbury, p. c. with Twyford, c. dn. and ch. of St. Paul’s.

- Forester, T. preb. of Worcester. Broseley, r. Little Wenlock, with Barrow, c. and Benthall, c. lord Forester. Worcester, St. John Bedwardine, v.

- Foxton, G. Queensbury, v. with Ragdale, c. E. Loveden. New Town, r. bp. of St. Asaph. Twining, v. Christ-church, Oxon.

- Frome, R. Folke, r. rev. W. Chafin. Goathill, r. earl Digby. Mintern, r. Mrs. Sturt.

- Gabell, H. D. Ashow, r. C. Leigh. Binfield, r. Winchester, St. Laurence, r. lord Chan.

- Gaisford, T. dean of Oxford.

- Garnier, Thomas, Bishop’s Stoke, r. Brightwell, r. Foxhall, c. bp. of Winton.

The patronage of the church is an excellent resource for comfortable marriage-settlements. A son of the pluralist married a daughter of Brownlow North, late bishop of Winchester, and was portioned off with the rectory of Droxford, a prebend of Winchester, and the mastership of St. Cross’s Hospital, which has great patronage. A daughter married Thomas, second son of the late lord Walsingham, who is archdeacon of Surrey, prebendary of Winchester, rector of Colbourne, and king’s chaplain. A son of this last is prebendary of Winchester, and rector of Alverstoke and of Havant. The Norths, who are numerous in the church, are relations of the former bishop of Winchester, and had more than thirty livings shared among them.

- Geldert, J. Aldfield, c. Mrs. Laurence. Barnwell, c. Cambridge Less, c. Kirk Deighton, r. rev. Dr. Geldart.

- Goddard, C. archdn. and preb. of Lincoln, chaplain to the king; Bexley, v. viscount Sidney. Louth, v. preb. of Louth. London, St. James’s, Garlichythe, r. bp. of London.

- Goddard, E. Eartham, v. preb. of Eartham. Easthampstead, r. Chr. Ch. Oxon. Pagham, v. with Bognor, c. abp. of Cant. Sidlesham, v. preb. of Sidlesham.

- Goodacre, W. Mansfield Woodhouse, p. c. Skegly, p. c. duke Portland. Sutton Ashfield, p. c. duke Devonshire.

- Goodall, J. provost of Eton Coll. canon of Windsor; Bromham, v. Hitcham, r. Eton Coll. West Ilsley, r. dn. and cns. of Windsor.

The rev. pluralist being the head of a great public school, we shall give a brief account of one of these foundations, the boasted nursery of our legislators and statesmen. They are receptacles of abuse, and present a singular contrast to similar institutions in a neighbouring country; while the latter produce philosophers, heroes, and patriots, the former send forth a plentiful crop of exquisites, air-gun shooters, and at best pedants and Payleyean politicians. From the seed sown such fruit may be expected; the scholar’s time is misspent in grammatical and metrical trifling, and little is read or studied but Horace, Virgil, and Homer. Leaving these matters, let us come to the foundation of Eton and its management.

Eton college is situated near Windsor, and was founded by Henry VI. for the education of seventy poor and indigent scholars, who were enjoined by the founder to swear they had not £3: 6s. a year to spend. The exact amount of the revenues it is not easy to ascertain, as it is a fact carefully concealed by the heads of the college; but, according to the evidence of Mr. Hinde, they amount to considerably more than £10,000 a year, and arise from various manors, estates, rectories, and tenements belonging to the foundation. The government of the college, and the management of this large income, is vested in the provost and seven fellows; the salaries of the latter, according to the statutes, are £10 a year, and of the former double that sum. The bishop of Lincoln is visitor. Besides the foundation scholars there are more than 400 oppidens, or town scholars, who pay for their education; though, like the rest of the boys, they are entitled to gratuitous instruction. The scholars are instructed by masters and assistants, who in fact do all the business of the college, and, as is usual in such cases, get the worst paid; the head master receives only £63 a year; the under master fares still worse and is paid in a trifling “allowance of bread and beer.”

The more interesting subject for inquiry is, what becomes of the revenue when all the work is done at such a cheap rate? Nearly the whole of this, at the present, appears to be divided betwixt the provost and the fellows; the share of the former in good years has amounted to £2500; but the incomes of the latter are made up of such variety of items, they are not easily estimated. It is certain, however, their incomes are enormous. Besides the total income of the college, thirty-seven livings, some of which, worth £800 per annum, are in the gift of the fellows; they have the power of presenting themselves to one of these livings, which of course would not be the worst. They receive about £550 in money annually from the fines; a yearly stipend of £50; and a liberal allowance for gowns, coals, candles, &c. Moreover, they generally confer some office on themselves in the college, as bursar, precentor, sacrist, or librarian; for which they receive a salary. These are the principal items; but it is impossible to discover exactly what the fellows receive in all: their gross incomes cannot be much less than £1000 a year each.

After Dr. Goodall has taken the lion’s share, and the fellows nearly as much as they please, the remainder is applied to support the establishment. According to the statutes, the scholars ought to be fed, clothed, educated, and lodged, free from expense; they have reduced their meals to two, namely, dinner and supper; clothing they have none; for their education they pay a gratuity of six guineas to the master, and their other yearly expenses amount to about sixty pounds; while, at the same time, they swear, or ought to swear, they have not three pounds six shillings a year to spend!

These exactions are, however, so shameless, unjustifiable, and so directly in the teeth of the statutes, that when any person ventures to object to their payment, to prevent enquiry, the charges are remitted. The indulgence is extended to a very small number; and to prevent such a dangerous example spreading through the school, the fact is carefully concealed from the rest of the boys. That this illegal demand for teaching may excite as little notice as possible, it is always thrust into the bill of the person with whom the boys board.

Such is a brief account of the royal college of Eton. It only now remains to point out the more flagrant abuses which prevail in its management, and the manner the poor have been robbed of their rights and interests in this celebrated foundation.

First, instead of the revenues being expended in feeding, educating, and clothing, “seventy poor and indigent scholars,” they are divided among eight clerical sinecurists; and children of opulent persons, who can afford to pay £70 a-year for their education, are alone admitted to the benefits of the foundation. The statutes provide, that one-third part of the yearly saving shall be placed in the treasury, for the use of the college; although there has been annually a surplus revenue to a very considerable amount, instead of being applied to the enlargement of the college, or any other laudable object, it has been divided and pocketed by the reverend fellows and the provost; one hundred marks, too, piously left to clothe the “poor and indigent scholars,” have, in like manner, been shared as lawful plunder by the same reverend persons. In consequence of the spoliation of Edward the IVth. the number of fellows was reduced from ten to seven; but although the revenues have increased so enormously, that they would very well support the old statutable number, yet they have for centuries been kept at the present amount, contrary to the intentions of the founder. Finally, the reverend fellows have all sworn not to obtain a dispensation for the holding of livings; or, if obtained, not to use it; yet, notwithstanding their oaths, notwithstanding the dreadful maledictions of the founder, such has been their greediness for the emoluments of the church, that they have obtained a dispensation to hold church preferment; and the right reverend visitor has sanctioned this infringement of the ordinances of Henry VI.

- Goodenough, E. dn. of Bath and Wells, and preb. of Westminster, Carlisle, and York; Wath, All Saints on Dearne, v. Adwick, c. Brampton Bierlow, c. Christ Ch. Oxon.

- Goodenough, S. J. preb. of Carlisle; Broughton Poges, r. rev. J. Goodenough. Hampton, v. the King.

- Goodenough, William, archdn. of Carlisle, with Mareham le Fen, r. and great Salkeld, r. bp. of Carlisle.

Three more Goodenoughs; they are of the family of the late Bishop of Carlisle. The prelate obtained the deanery of Rochester in 1802, and in 1808 was promoted to the See of Carlisle, through the interest of lord Sidmouth, his brother having married the sister of the letter-of-thanks-man.

- Gordon, G. dn. of Lincoln; Harbling, v. with Briggend, c. bp. of Lincoln. Whittington, r. dn. of Lincoln. Ledgbrook, 1st and 2d Mediety r. with East Allington, c. lord Chan.

- Gordon, G. Bentley Fenney, r. Dr. Gordon. Muston, r. lord Chan. Whittington, c. dn. of Lincoln.

- Gower, G. L. St. Mabyn, r. St. Michael Penkevil, r. lord Falmouth. Tatsfield, r. Titsey, r. W. L. Gower.

- Grant, J. T. Merston, r. Wrabness, r. The King. Butterleigh, r. lord Chan.

- Grant, R. fellow of Winton Coll.; Bradford Abbass, v. marquis Anglesea. Clifton Maybank, r. Winton Coll. Portsea, St. Paul’s, p. c. vicar of Portsea.

- Gray, Robert, bishop of Bristol, and prebendary of Durham.

- Green, J. C. Rillington, v. the King. Thornton-le-Moor, r. bp. of Ely. Birdsall, p. c. marquis Hertford. Whaream-in-the-Street, v. lord Middleton. Rustington, v. bp. of Chichester.

- Grey, hon. Thomas de, archd. of Surrey; Calbourne, r. Fawley, r. with Exbury, c. bp. of Winton. Merton, r. lord Walsingham.

The honourable, venerable, and reverend pluralist is, also, a king’s chaplain, and prebendary of Winchester. He is uncle of lord Walsingham, and related to the Norths and Garniers, whom see. Three more Greys are in the church; one of them is brother of the earl of Stamford, and is rector of Wickham and prebendary of Durham. Another relation of the earl has a living worth £1500 a-year.

- Grey, hon. E. dean of Hereford, and prebendary of Hereford; St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, r. bp. of London and the King alternately.

Youngest brother of earl Grey, who married, firstly, Miss Croft, by whom he had a family of ten children, nine of whom survive; secondly, Miss Adair, the daughter of Sir R. Adair, the minister to Belgium, by whom he had also a family; and, thirdly, the very reverend dean married Miss Innes, the daughter of an opulent merchant, formerly M.P. for Grampound.—A bishop, lord chancellor, or first lord of the treasury, with vast patronage and a host of expectants about him, always appears to our mind like the man at the head of the table with a fine turkey before him, which he is prepared to carve for the benefit of his family and guests. “Which part do you prefer—here is a leg—the wing or the apron.” Just so in the distribution of public offices and preferments; there is a benefice for one, a dignity for another, and an embassy, secretaryship, or commissionership for a third. We do not in this place complain; earl Grey has certainly lost no time in moving his brother nearer to Durham or Winchester; but it is not the advancement of the meritorious—though they be relatives—but the worthless that excites indignation. With the exception of the dispute about the payment of the stipend of the minister of the new church, the dean, like his predecessor in the parish of St. Botolph, bears an exemplary character, and the public is gratified rather than otherwise by his promotion.

- Griffith, C. preb. of Brecon; Disserth, r. bp. of St. David’s. Glondegla, p. c. bp. of St. Asaph. Llanvayes, v. archdn. of Brecon.

- Guildford, earl of, Alresford, New and Old, r. with Medsted, c. Southampton, St. Mary, prec. and r. St. Cross, with St. Faith’s Master, bp. of Winchester.

The family, of which his lordship is the head, was some years since widely ramified in the church, engrossing upwards of thirty livings and dignities. These numerous preferments were derived through Brownlow North, uncle of the present lord Guildford and former bishop of Winchester. The bishop was a younger brother of lord North, the minister under whose administration the inglorious war was waged against the independence of North America. The bishop owed his promotion to his brother, and his advancement to the bench was much resisted by the minister’s colleagues, on account of his youth. Lord North, however, observed—“that when he should become of more matured age, he would not have a brother prime minister.” Under such powerful auspices the bishop rose rapidly in the church. He was first preferred to a canonry of Christ Church, Oxford. A few months afterwards he was pushed into the deanery of Canterbury, and the following year advanced to the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry. Soon after he was translated to Worcester, and in 1781 to the rich See of Winchester, which he held more than forty years, and must have netted from the revenue of his diocese upwards of one million and a half principal money.

- Haden, A. B. Ware, c. O. Crewe. Saddington, r. Wednesbury, v. the King.

- Haggitt, D’Arey, Branxton, v. dn. and c. of Durham. Cornhill, c. W. N. Darnell. Pershore St. Andrew, v. and Holy Cross, c. with Besford, c. Bricklehampton, c. Defford, c. and Penvin, c. dn. and cns. of Westminster.

- Harbin, J. North Barrow, r. E. B. Portman. Kingston, r. Mr. Harbin. Wheathill, r. Mrs. Phillips.

- Harvey, B. Alsager, c. lord of the Manor. Blackmore, v. the King. Doddinghurst, r. J. Henrick.

- Hasted, H. Bury St. Mary, c. Corporation. Chedburg, r. with Ickworth, r. chap. of Worcester. Braisworth, r. marquis Cornwallis. Horningsheath, r. lord Bristol.

- Hett, W. Enderby Navis, r. Incumbent. Greetwell, c. ch. of Lincoln. Lincoln, St. John in New, v. and St. Paul, r. archd. of Lincoln. Dunholme, v. the King. Nettleham, c. chanc. of Lincoln. Thorpe-on-the-Hill, r. chap. of Lincoln.

Three rectories, a vicarage, and two chapelries, are not enough for this reverend pluralist. He is prebendary and vicar choral of Lincoln, and chaplain to the marquis of Stafford. His recommendation to all these good things are—The Genuine Tree of Liberty, or the Royal Oak of Great Britain; a political squib of 1793; a Fast-day Sermon; Letter upon Restrictions on Dissenting Teachers, &c.

- Holdsworth, Robt. preb. of Exeter; Brixham, v. with Kingsweare, c. the King. Dartmouth, St. Sav. c. Corporation. Townstall, v. Churston Ferrers, c. corp. of Clifton.

- Hales, R. Hemesby, v. J. T. Hales. Herringswell, r. H. Sperling. Hillington, r. sir W. J. B. Folkes.

- Hamond, R. Beechamwell St. John and St. Mary, r. J. Molleaux. Pensthorpe, r. East Walton, v. Gayton Thorpe, r. A. Hamond.

- Hanbury, T. Burrough, r. Somerby, v. Langton Church, r. with Langton Tur, c. and Thorpe Langton, c. W. Hanbury.

- Hankinson, r. Pentney, c. sequestrated. Walpole St. Andrew, v. T. Hankinson, West Bilney, p. c. J. Dalton.

- Harries, G. preb. of St. David’s. Letterston, r. Llanwair, c. Nolton, r. Rock, c. Rupa Castle yn Graig, v. lord Chan.

- Harries, J. Langattock, r. earl Abergavenny. Llandett, r. T. H. Gwynne. Newcastle in Emlyn, c. with Bettws, c. and Llalestone, c. T. Lewis.

- Hawkesley, J. W. Knotting, r. with Souldrop, r. rev. J. W. Hawkesley, Melchburn, v. lord St. John. Turvey, r. D. C. Higgins.

- Heathcote, G. archdn. of Winchester, fellow of Winton Coll., treasurer of Wells Cathedral. Andover, v. with Foscot, c. Winton Coll. Hursley, v. Otterburn, c. sir G. Heathcote.

- Hewgill, F. Littleborough, p. c. J. Hewett. Soundby, r. North Wheatley, v. lord Middleton. Sturton in the Clay, v. dn. and ch. of York.

- Hill, R. Berrington, r. with Little Ness, c. Sutton St. John, r. Thornton Mayow, r. lord Berwick. Great Bolas, r. sir R. Hill.

Several other Hills in the church. The pluralist is uncle of lord Hill, commander of the forces, and of Rowland Hill, the well known dissenting preacher.

- Hobart, hon. H. L. Haseley, r. the King. Nocton, v. dn. and ch. of Cant. Wantage, v. dn. and cns. of Windsor.

This hon. and very reverend pluralist has two deaneries, that of Windsor, the other of Wolverhampton. A brother is canon of Hereford, and rector of Beer Ferrers; of which rectory, his nephew, the duke of Buckingham, is patron. Another Hobart, a son, we suspect, of the plural dean, has a valuable rectory, and prebend of Wolverhampton.

- Hodgson, R. dn. of Carlisle. Burgh on Sands, v. lord chan. Westminster, St. George’s, Hanover-square, r. Hillington, v. bp. of London.

Nephew of Porteus, late bishop of London. Many other Hodgsons, with livings, offices, and dignities.

- Hodson, G. Birmingham, Christ Church, c. Colwick, v. with Frodswell, c. bp. of Lich. and Cov. London, St. Katharine Cree, v. Mag. Coll.

- Holland, W. Wm. vic. of Chichester cath. Bapchild, v. Burpham, v. dn. and ch. of Chichester. Chichester St. Andrew and St. Martin, r. dn. of Chichester.

- Holland, S., M.D. precent. and preb. of Chichester. Beaudesert, r. Poynings, r. Warehorn, r. the King.

This is a remarkable instance of the secular uses to which church property is applied by those who have the disposal of it. The reverend pluralist was originally a physician; but, happening to marry a daughter of lord Erskine, while his lordship held the great seal, he took holy orders, with a view to qualify himself for a share of the good things in the gift of his father-in-law. Erskine gave him the three rectories, worth about £2000 a-year, during the short period of his chancellorship. Doctor Holland has written a book to vindicate the clergy from the charge of neglecting their duties. Who may the preceding pluralist of this name be?

- Holt, J. Elston, r. W. B. Darwin. Gringley, v. Camb. Kelstern, v. sir J. C. Hawkins. Wrawby, v. with Brigg, c. Clare Hall, Camb.

- Hoste, J. Barwick in Brakes, v. Mrs. Hoste. Longham, c. Wendling, r. T. W. Coke.

- Housen, H. vicar choral of Southwell. Bleasby, v. Howerby, r. with Beesby in the Marsh, c. Southwell, v. prec. and preb. of Normanton. Aslacton, p. c. Southwell Coll.

- Howard, J. Fundenhall, d. T. T. Burney. Morley, St. Botolph and St. Peter. r. B. N. Cooper. Tacolneston, r. Mrs. Warren.

- Howard, R. D.D. Denbigh, r. bp. St. Asaph. Llandegfan, r. with Beaumaris, c. Llanvewgan, c. R. W. Bulkeley.

- Howes, F. min. can. of Norwich. Attlebridge, v. with Alderford, r. Bawburgh, v. Norwich, St. George, col. r. dn. and ch. of Norwich.

- Howes, T. Fritton, r. T. L. Hodges. Tharston, v. bp. of Ely. Thorndon, r. rev. T. Howes.

- Howley, Wm. primate of all England; consecrated bishop of London, 1813, and elevated to the primacy in 1828, on the decease of archbishop Sutton.

We have nothing to add to our notice, page 24, of this prelate. It may be inferred, from the strictness with which the preserves are watched at Addington, and the severe persecution of poachers, that his grace is very fond of game.

- Hudleston, A. Bownes, r. Morresby, r. Whitehaven St. Nicholas, c. lord Lonsdale.

- Hume, T. H. treas. and can. res. of Sarum. Figheldean, r. Treas. of Sarum, Kewstoke, v. lord Chan. Stratford-under-Castle, c. dn. and ch. of Sarum.

- Huntingford, G. H. bishop of Hereford; consecrated bishop of Gloucester, 1802; translated 1815.

- Hurt, T. Lindby, r. Papplewick, c. hon. F. Montague. Scrooby, v. with Sutton-on-Lound, v. duke of Portland.

- Jacob, S. S. Waldershore, v. Whitefield, p. c. abp. of Cant. Woollavington, v. dn. and cans. of Windsor.

- Ibbotson, J. Ayton, p. c. rev. W. Marwood. Newton, p. c. rev. S. Shepherd. Nunthorpe, p. c. T. Simpson and W. Richardson.

- Ibbotson, T. Garton, v. the King. Lowthorpe, p. c. sir A. Quentin. Skerne, p. c. R. Arkwright.

- Jenkinson, J. Banks, bishop of St. David’s, dean of Brecon, and dean of Durham.

- Jepson, G. preb. and vic. chor. of Lincoln. Ashby Pueror, v. Glenthan, v. Normanby, v. dn. and ch. of Lincoln. Lincoln St. Botolph, p. c. preb. of St. Botolph.

- Inman, G. Kilnsea, v. L. Thompson. Skefling, v. rev. N. Holme. Easington, v. abp. of York.

- Johnson, P. Beeston, r. Sustead, p. c. the King. Ingworth, r. W. Wyndham.

- Jones, H. Lewisham, v. lord Dartmouth. Talgarth, v. dn. and cans. of Windsor. Mablethorpe, r. with Stane, r. col. Jones.

- Iremonger, L. preb. of Winchester. Wherwell, preb. sin. Goodworth Clatford, v. J. Iremonger. Kevil, v. Wanborough, v. dn. and ch. of Winton.

Brother-in-law of lord Gambier, who has a nephew with three livings.

- Karslake, W. Culmstock, v. dn. and ch. of Exeter. Dalton, r. J. Cleveland. Loxbeare, r. sir T. D. Acland.

- Kaye, John, bishop of Lincoln, v. dn. and ch. of Exeter. prebendary, and provincial chancellor of Canterbury.

- Keith, P. Marr, p. c. earl Kinnoul. Ruckinge, r. Stalisfield, v. abp. Cant.

- Kelly, A. P. Barnham, p. c. Little Hampton, v. bp. Chichester. Hoxton, c. archdn. of London.

- Kempthorne, J. preb. of Lichfield. Gloucester St. Michael, r. and St. Marg. de Grace, c. lord Chan. Northleach, v. Preston, v. bp. of Gloucester. Wedmore, v. dn. of Wells.

- Kent, G. D. preb. of Lincoln. Newton, r. T. Smith. Lincoln St. Martin, v. bp. of Lincoln. Scothern, v. lord Scarboro’. Conisholme, r. hon. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. East Winch, v. E. Kent.

- Kett, W. Darsham. v. Sir J. Rous. Shottisham, r. Mr. Kett. Waldringfield, r. N. Randall.

- Keppel, hon. E. G. Quiddenham, r. with Snetterton, r. Shottisham All Saints, v. and St. Mary, v. earl of Albermarle. Tittleshall, r. with Godwick, r. and Wellingham, r. T. W. Coke.

Third son of lord Albemarle, master of the horse, and brother-in-law of Mr. Coke, of Norfolk.

- Kidd, T. Croxton, r. sir G. W. Leeds. Eltisley, v. lord Chan. Norwich, St. Swithin, r. bp. of Norwich, sequest.

- Kipling, C. Coston, r. Newport Pagnall, v. lord Chan. Wolverton, v. with Stratford Tony, c. W. Drake.

- Kipling, J. Chearsley, c. sir C. Dormer. Chilton, p. c. Oakley, v. sir J. Aubrey. Upper Winchendon, p. c. sir C. Cave.

- Knatchbull, W., D.D. Aldington, r. with Smeath, c. abp. Cant. Bircholt, r. lady Bankes. Wesbere, r. lord Chan.

- Kynaston, sir E. chap. in ord. to H.M. Farnham, St. Genev. r. with Risby, r. Kinnersley, v. the King. Hordley, r. J. K. Powell.

- Lade, W. Graveney, v. with Goodnestone, r. Wickhamtreux, r. J. Lade, Knowlton, r. sir N. D’Aeth.

- Langdon, G. Houghton, r. E. M. Pleydell. Milton Abb. v. lord Dorchester. Weston-Patrick, p. c. W. T. L. Wellesley.

- Landon, W. dn. of Exeter and preb. of Sarum. Bishopstone, r. preb. of Bishopstone. Branscombe, v. dn. and ch. of Exeter. Croft, r. with Yarpole, c. Mrs. Johnes.

- Lates, J. J. Charlton Abbot, c. F. Pyson. Sudely, r. lord Rivers. Winchcombe, v. with Gretton, c. lord Tracey.

- Law, G. H. bishop of Bath and Wells; consecrated bishop of Chester, 1812.

- Law, Henry, archdeacon of Wells and canon residentiary.

- Lax, W. Ippolitts, v. with Great Wymondley, v. Marshworts, v. Camb. Orwell, v. rev. J. H. Renouard.

- Lee, H. fellow of Winton Coll. and preb. of Hereford. Ash, r. Frimley, p. c. Hound, v. with Bursledon, c. and Hamble, p. c. Winton Coll.

See Bishop Sumner for an account of Winton College.

- Lewis, D. C. min. can. of Windsor. Colnbrook, c. Pem. Coll. Oxon. Newington, v. Eton Coll. Ruislip, v. dn. and ch. of Windsor.

- Lewis, J. Buttsbury, c. rev. D. Lloyd. Ingatestone, r. N. W. Lewis. Ravenhall, r. C. W. Western.

- Leyson, T. Bassalleg, v. bp. Llandaff. Panteague, r. Treddunnock, r. C. H. Leigh.

- Linton, H. Dinton, v. with Great Teffont, c. Mag. Coll. Oxon. Fritwell, v. North Aston, v. T. F. Willes.

- Long, R. C. Dunston, c. Misses S. and G. Long. Illington, r. Mrs. Kellett. Newton Flotman, r. Miss Long. Swarsthorpe, r. rev. R. C. Long.

- Lord, J. Berfreyston, r. Oxon. Northiam, r. Miss Lord. Drayton Parslow, r. rev. J. Lord.

- Lowe, J. Tankersley, r. Swinton, c. Wentworth, p. c. earl Fitzwiiliam. Brotherton, v. dn. and ch. of York.

- Lowndes, R. Astwood, v. the King. North Crawley, r. Miss Duncombe. Farley, r. Oxon.

- Lucas, G. Caifield, r. Stokesby with Heringby, r. W. Downs. Billockby, r. Filby, r. C. Lucas.

- Luxmore, C. S. dean, with Heullan, v. annexed, chanc. of see of St. Asaph, and preb. of Hereford. Bromyard, 2d Port, r. and v. West Cradley, r. bp. of Hereford. Daroven, r. Gurlsfield, v. bp. of St. Asaph.

- Luxmore, John, joint regist. of Hereford, preb. of St. Asaph. Berriew, v. bp. of St. Asaph.

Three more Luxmores in the church. They are sons and nephews of the late bishop of St. Asaph. The prelate owed his promotion to his connexion with the family of the duke of Buccleugh. He first obtained the living of St. George the Martyr, Queen’s-square, which he vacated upon being presented to the neighbouring rectory of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, which he held, in commendam, with the see of Hereford. To the last see he was translated from the diocese of Bristol, before which he held the deanery of Gloucester. He was translated to St. Asaph in 1815. The progress of the bishop, like most of his brethren, may be generally traced from the number of relations and dependents which they leave behind them in possession of the most valuable preferments in their gift.

- Madan, Spencer, preb. and chan. of diocese of Peterborough, chap. in ord. to the King. Ibstock, r. with Hugglescote, c. Dunnington, c. bp. of Rochester. Thorpe Constantine, r. W. P. Inge.

Son of the late bishop of Peterborough, nephew of the late bishop of Lichfield, and cousin of the marquis Cornwallis. Except a fast-day sermon or two, we do not know any other claim of this reverend pluralist to his appointments. His uncle, the bishop, to whom he is chiefly indebted for his preferments, was, at first, intended for the bar, and, with that view, entered himself a student of the Temple; but the elevation of his uncle to the archbishopric, on the death of Dr. Secker, opened a more lucrative prospect, and he devoted himself, without any particular call that way, to the church. His first preferment was the rich rectory of Wrotham, in Kent, soon after which he obtained a prebend of Westminster, and shortly after succeeded Dr. Moore in the deanery of Canterbury. On the translation of bishop Hurd, he was raised to the throne of Lichfield and Coventry; and, on the death of bishop Douglas, he succeeded him as dean of Windsor, which he vacated for the richer deanery of Durham.

- Maddy, J. Somerton, r. Incumbent. Stansfield, r. Hartest, r. Boxted, r. the King.

- Markham, Robert, archd. of York, and canon. res.

- Maltby, Edward, bishop of Chichester, and preacher to Society of Lincoln’s Inn: consecrated in 1831.

- Manning, H. C. Burgh Castle, r. the King. Thetford St. Cuth. c. and St. Peter, r. duke Norfolk. Santon, r. Corp. of Thetford.

- Mapleton, J. H. Southwark, Christchurch, r. Trustees of Marshall’s charities. Whaddon, v. New Coll. Oxon. Mitcham, v. Mrs. Simpson.

- Marsh, Herbert, bishop of Peterborough, professor of divinity, Cambridge.

- Marsham, hon. and rev. J. Allington, r. earl Romney. Wateringbury, v. dn. and ch. of Rochester. Kirby Overblow, r. earl Egremont.

Canon of Windsor, prebend of Bath and Wells, v. dn. and ch. of Rochester. Brother of lord Romney.

- Marsham, C. Cavenfield, v. dn. and ch. Rochester. Edgcott, r. Stoke Lyne, v. J. Coker. Islington, v. dn. and cans. Windsor.

- Marsham, E. Sculthorpe, r. sir G. Chadd. Wramplingham, r. Stratton Strawless, r. R. Marsham.

- Massingberd, F. C. Calceby, v. Dribg, r. Kettlesby, r. South Ormesby, c. C. B. Massingberd.

- Mavor, W. Bladon, r. Hurley, v. Woodstock, c. duke of Marlborough.

This is the well-known compiler of useful books, and a native of Aberdeen. He was, at first, a schoolmaster, and being employed by the duke of Marlborough to instruct the junior branches of the family in writing, he obtained such favour as to get a title for holy orders. Soon after he was rewarded with the livings of Hurley and Woodstock.

- Methold, T. preb. of Norwich. Apsal-stoneham, r. W. Middleton. Kilverton, r. lord Chan. Wetheringselt, r. Mrs. Close.

- Millard, C. F. Henley, v. Norwich St. Giles, r. and at Palace, d. dn. and ch. Norwich. Hickling, v. Mr. Micklethwaite.

- Miller, E. Chesterton, c. lord Willoughby de Broke. Radway, v. Ratley, v. lord Chan.

- Millers, G. min. can. of Ely. Hardwich, r. Runham, v. Stanford, v. bp. of Ely.

- Mills, T. chap. to the King. Bumpstead Helion,, v. Camb. Little Henney, r. Stutton,, r. N. Barnardiston.

- Mitford, J. Benhall, v. W. Mitford. Weston, St. Peter’s, r. the King. Stratford St. Andrew, r. chan. of du. of Lancaster.

- Monk, John H. bishop of Gloucester, and prebendary of Westminster: consecrated in 1830.

- Monins, J. Charlton, near Dover, r. Ringwould, r. rev. J. Monins. Fawkenhurst, r. Hurst, r. Miss Carter.

- Moore, G. Croxby, r. lord Chan. Lincoln St. Margaret, with St. Peter, p. c. precent. and preb. Lincoln Cath. Ownby, r. chan. du. of Lancaster.

- Moore, R. preb. of Canterbury. Eynesford, r. Hollingbourn, r. Hunton, r. Latchingdon, r. abp. of Cant.

- Morgan, H. H. can. res. of Hereford. Fownhope, v. Wolhope, v. dn. and ch. of Hereford. Moccas, r. sir G. Cornwall.

- Mounsey, G. Forest, c. lord Derby. Fairfield, p. c. Trustees. Rushton Spencer, c. lord Macclesfield.

- Mount, C. Bath, Christchurch, c. rev. C. A. Moysey. Hannington, v. R. Montgomery. Helmdon, r. Suttesbury, r. Oxon.

- Moysey, C. A. archdn. of Bath, preb. of Wells. Bath, Wolcot, r. dame Gay. Boarhunt, d. T. Kethwayte. Southwick, d. Mr. Thistlethwayte.

- Mucklestone, J. F. preb. and vic. of Lichfield, and preb. of Wolverhampton. Tong, p. c. G. Durant. Weeford, c. chan. of Lichfield. Wybunbury, v. bp. of Lich. and Cov.

- Mules, J. H. Abbot’s Isle, v. dn. and ch. of Bristol. Broadwater, c. Broadway, c. rev. W. Palmer. Ilminster, v. H. Hanning.

- Murray, Geo. bishop of Rochester, dean of Worcester, rector of Bishopsbourne, and chaplain to abp. of Cant.

- Nelson, J. vic. chor. of Lincoln. Ruskington, v. the King. Searby, r. Wellingore, r. dn. and ch. of Lincoln. Snarford, r. sub-dn. of Lincoln. Lincoln St. Mark, p. c. precent. of Lincoln.

- Nevile, viscount, Byrling, v. Holveston, r. with Burgh Apton, r. Otley, r. lord Abergavenny.

Third son of the noble patron. Another son is vicar of Trant, in Sussex, and rector of Birling, in Kent.

- Newsam, Clement, Harbury, v. Miss Newsam. Portbury, r. with Tickenham, v. bp. of Bristol.

- Nicholas, John, D.D. Bremilham, r. lady Northwich. Fisherton Ange, r. W. H. F. Talbot. Westport, v. with Brockenborough, c. lord Chan.

- Nicolay, G. F. L. one of the brethren of St. Katharine; Little Marlow, v. rev. G. F. L. Nicolay. London, St. Michael Royal and St. Martin Vintry, r. abp. Cant. and bp. Worcester, alt.—See Nicolay, in the Place List.

- North, Henry. Heacham, v. H. Spelman. Great Ringstead, St. Andrew and St. Peter, r. H. Styleman.

- Northcote, Hugh, Dowlan, p. c. Monkoakhampton, r. Okhampton St. James, r. Upton Pyne, r. sir H. Northcote.

- Nott, G. F., D.D. preb. of Winton, Chichester, and Sarum. Harrietsham, r. All Souls’ Coll. Woodchurch, r. abp. of Cant.

This gentleman has been for a long time missing; should this meet his eye, we beg to inform him, that the parishioners of Woodchurch are very desirous of seeing him, and they wish to know where he may be found; they have been served with notices for the payment of tithes by the solicitor of the reverend pluralist, who has only been once in the parish during the whole of last reign, and that for a day only.

- Oakes, James. Gipping, d. C. Tyrrel. Thurston, v. Rattlesden, r. James Oakes, esq. Tostock, r. Mr. Moseley.

- Oldershaw, John, D.D. archdn. of Norfolk, with Coston, p.c. Ludham, v. bp. of Norwich. Ranworth, v. with Upton, St. Margaret, v. bp. of Ely. Redenhall, r. with Hailestone, c. duke of Norfolk, on nom. of bp. of Norwich.

- Onslow, G. W. Send, v. with Ripley, c. earl Onslow. Wisley, r. with Perford, v. Shalford, v. with Bramley, c. lord Chan.

- Onslow, R. F. archdn. of Worcester, preb. of Sarum. Kidderminster, v. w. Lower Mitton, c. lord Foley. Newent, v. hon. E. Foley.

The venerable archdeacon is son of the late dean of Worcester, whose father was a lieutenant-general, and brother of the famous Arthur Onslow, who was forty years speaker of the Collective Wisdom. A. C. Onslow, rector of St. Mary, Newington-butts, of which benefice the bishop of Worcester is patron, is a brother of the archdeacon.

- Oxenden, Mont, Bonington, r. T. Papillon. Luddingham, r. lord Chan. Wingham, p. c. sir H. Oxenden.

- Palmer, G. Leominster, v. Eton Coll. Parham, r. baroness Zouch. Sidlington, r. N. Tredcroft.

- Parkinson, J. D.D. Brocklesby, r. lord Yarborough. Healing, r. rev. R. Parkinson. Immingham, v. W. Amcotts.

- Parkinson, T. D.D. preb. St. Paul’s, chan. of dioc. of Chester, archdn. of Leicester; Kegworth, r. with Isley Walton, c. Christ Coll. Camb.

257 livings are in the gift of the University of Oxford, and 292 in the gift of Cambridge. The livings are situate in different parts of the country; many of them in the metropolis. Some of the livings are annexed to the provostships and professorships of the different colleges, but for the most part they are in the gift of the fellows. By the statutes of the universities the holding of a fellowship is incompatible with the holding of a college living. When, however, a living is more valuable than a fellowship, a fellowship is vacated for the sake of being eligible to the living.

- Parsons, H. preb. of Wells; Durleigh, v. Mr. Dunning. Goathurst, r. lady Tynte. Wembdon, v. C. K. Tynte.

- Payne, Henry Thomas, can. res. of St. David’s, preb. of Brecon; Devunnuck, v. with Blaen Glyn Tavy, c. bp. of Gloucester. Ystradvellty, p. c. Llanbedr, r. Patricio, p. c. duke Beaufort.

- Pearce, Thomas, Folkstone, v. Hawkinge, r. abp. of Cant. Hartlip, v. dean and c. of Roch. Merston, r. lord Chan.

- Pearson, H. dean of Salisbury.

- Pellew, hon. G. D.D. dn. of Norwich, preb. of York; London, St. Dionis Backchurch, r. dn. and can. of Cant.

This honourable and very reverend dignitary is son of lord Exmouth, who has a pension of £2000 a-year, and son-in-law of lord Sidmouth, who has a pension of £3000 a-year. He was originally intended for the legal profession, but his abilities not lying that way, he was, after eating a few terms, turned over to the church. His progress in this line has been very successful: in 1819 he was presented to the vicarage of Naseing, worth £1200 a-year; next year he was presented to the rectory of Sutton, said to be worth £4000 a-year; and, within a few months after he had a prebend’s stall in St. Paul’s: these appear to have been subsequently resigned or negotiated for his present preferments.

- Penrice, Charles, Smallburgh, r. bp. of Norwich. Witton, r. with Brundall, r. and Little Plumstead, r. J. Musket.

- Pepys, H. preb. of Wells; Aspeden, r. lord Hardwicke. Westmill, r. Moreton, r. St. John’s Coll.

- Percy, hon. Hugh, D.D. bp. of Carlisle, chan. of Sarum, preb. of St. Paul’s.—See page 26.

- Perkins, F. D. chap. in ord. to H. M.; Down-Hatherley, v. Sow, v. with Stoke, v. Swayfield, r. lord Chan.

- Perkins, John David, D.D. Dawlish, v. bp. Exon. Exeter, St. Laurence, r. Manhead, r. lord Chan.

- Pett, Phineas, D.D. archdn. of Oxford, can. of Christ Church, preb. of Sarum. Chilbolton, r.bp. of Winton. Newington, r. abp. of Cant.

- Phillpotts, Henry, bishop and treasurer of Exeter, and prebendary of Durham.

The honest retraction of an error does credit to the heart and understanding; but if a man from mercenary motives suppresses or disguises—for he cannot abandon them—his convictions, he is a traitor to truth, and merits the most ignominious brand that public opinion can inflict. The most charitable cannot put a favourable construction on the conduct of Dr. Phillpotts, and he is given up, by all parties, as one guilty of unpardonable crimes. The first exploit we remember of this spiritual adventurer was a pamphlet imputed to him in defence of the Manchester massacre, in which 800 poor creatures, men. women, and children, were killed, cut-down, and maimed, under the sabres of a ferocious yeomanry. He next signalized himself by his writings against catholic emancipation, and finally astonished people by voting for a minister, at Oxford, who was favourable to the catholic relief bill. Thus he was all things to all men, and at last receives his reward—universal contempt and a mitre! As the political bishop had succeeded in fastening on the See of Exeter, we would have suffered him to have held Stanhope rectory too, with the fine house to live in he had built at an expense of £12,000: there appeared a paltriness in the Whigs attempting to blink the transaction by suffering the prelate to exchange the rectory with Mr. Darnell for a stall at Durham.

- Pierce, W. M. Burwell, v. with Walmsgate, c. Goulsby, v. M. B. Lister. Fulletby, r. bp. of Lincoln.

- Plater, Charles Eaton, River, v. Whitstable, c. abp. of Cant. Seasalter, v. d. and c. of Cant.

- Plimley, Henry, chan. of diocese of Chichester, preb. of Chichester; Cuckfield, v. Shoreditch, v. bp. of Chichester.

- Polson, J. H. P. preb. of Exeter; Exeter Major, r. d. and c. of Exeter. Upton Helion, r. Jos. Polson, esq.

- Poore, J. Bicknor, r. lord Chan. Murston, r. St. John’s Coll. Rainham, v. abp. of Cant.

- Potchett, William, preb. of Sarum; North and South Grantham, v. with Great and Little Gunnerby, v. Londonthorpe, v. and Braceby, v. cath. of Sarum.

- Pott, Jos. Holden, archdn. of London, preb. of St. Paul’s, chan. of Exeter Cath.; Kensington, v. bp. of London.

- Poulter, Edm. preb. of Winton; Alton, v. with Holybourn, c. dn. and can. of Winton. Meonstoke, r. with Soberton, c. bp. of Winton.

- Pratt, J. S. preb. of Peterboro’; Maxey, v. Paston, r. with Werrington, c. dn. and cns. of Peterboro’. Peterboro’, &c. v. bp. of Peterboro’.

- Preston, W. preb. of York; Bulmer, r. earl Fitzwilliam. Butterwich, c. Parson Foord. Ergham, r. T. Grimstone. Sculcoates, v. the King. Whenby, v. W. Garforth. Wold Newton, v. hon. M. Langton.

- Pretyman, G. T. chan. and can. res. of Lincoln, preb. of Winton; Chalfont St. Giles, r. Wheathampstead, r. with Harpenden, r. bp. of Lincoln.

- Pretyman, John, preb. of Lincoln; Sherrington, r. Winwick, r. bp. of Lincoln.

- Pretyman, Richard, prec. and can. res. of Lincoln; Middleton Stoney, r. Walgrave, r. with Hannington, v. bp. of Lincoln. Wroughton, r. bp. of Winton.

Having, at page 27, noticed the numerous ecclesiastical emoluments of the Pretymans, we shall only give some account of the rise of the bishop, to whom the family is indebted for its preferments. Tomline, formerly Pretyman, the late bishop of Winchester, was the son of a tradesman at Bury St. Edmund’s, at the grammar-school of which town he and his brother, Dr. John Pretyman, the archdeacon of Lincoln, received the elements of their education; after which they removed to Cambridge. The bishop was distinguished at the university as a good classical scholar and expert arithmetician. Having the good fortune to become tutor to “the Heaven-born minister,” he soon experienced the patronage of his pupil, who appointed him his private secretary, and gave him a prebendal stall in the church of St. Peter, Westminster. In 1787 he was made bishop of Lincoln, to which preferment was added the deanery of St. Paul’s; and on the death of Dr. Randolph, he was offered the See of London, but that dignity he declined, from an expectation of something more substantial, in which calculation he was not disappointed; for, on the death of Brownlow North, he obtained the rich See of Winchester, the summum bonum of episcopal ambition.

- Price, Morgan, Knebworth, r. Letchworth, r. R. W. Lytton. Llangedwyn, c. sir W. W. Wynne. Tallachdu, r. Parson Griffiths.

- Proby, Charles, can. of Windsor; Tachbrook Bishops, v. Lichfield Cath. Twickenham, v. d. and can. of Windsor. Waddesden, 3rd Port, r. duke Marlborough.

- Probyn, John, archdn. of Llandaff; Abbenhall, r. E. Probyn. Mathern, v. with Caerwent, v. archdn. of Llandaff.

- Proctor, Joseph, D.D. preb. of Norwich; Conington, r. Gidding Steeping, r. J. Heathcote.

- Prosser, Richard, D.D. preb. of Durham, with Easington, r.

- Radcliffe, John, Doddington, v. Teynham, v. archdn. of Cant. Lime-house, r. Brazenose Coll.

- Ramsden, W. B. Croxton All Saints, v. Christ Coll. Great Stambridge, r. govs. of Charter House. Little Wakering, v. St. Bart. Hospital. Witcham, v. d. and c. of Ely.

- Randolph, J. H. preb. of St. Paul’s; Burtan Coggles, r. lord Chan. Fobbing, r. the King. Nothall, v. bp. of London.

- Randolph, T. preb. of St. Paul’s, and chap. to the King; Great Hadham, r. and Little Hadham, c. bp. of London.

- Raymond, Oliver, Belchamp Walters, v. with Bulmer, v. Middleton, r. Trustees of S. R. Raymond.

- Rennell, Thomas, D.D. dn. of Winchester, preb. of St. Paul’s. Barton Stacey, v. dn. and ch. of Winton.

The prebend was resigned to Dr. Rennell, by his father, on his obtaining a fellowship in the university. Having obtained the patronage of the Grenvilles, he was presented to a living in the city, and, in 1798, was made master of the Temple. On the death of Dr. Holmes he was presented to the deanery of Winchester. The dean married a daughter of judge Blackstone, by whom he has a son, who is also in the church. He was suspected of being concerned in a foolish book, called the Pursuits of Literature, but this charge he publicly disavowed. He is the author of several political sermons, one delivered in Winchester cathedral, in 1793, on the Violence and Blood Guiltiness of the French Revolution; another thanksgiving sermon for the success of his majesty’s arms, preached before the Collective Wisdom, 1798. We mention these forgotten squibs, thinking they may afford a hint to spiritual aspirants, who may seek to avail themselves of passing events, by serving up au rechauffé the labours of the venerable dean.

- Rice, hon. E. dn. of Gloucester, and precentor of York. Great Rissington, r. lord Dynevor. Oddington, r. precentor of York.

Brother of lord Dynevor, and brother-in-law of the Markhams.

- Richards, Charles, preb. of Winton. Chale, r. Incumbent. Winchester, St. Bartholomew, v. the King.

- Richardson, J. vic. chor. of York. Crambe, v. Hutton’s Ambo, p. c. abp. of York. Fryston Ferry, v. vic. chor. of York. Heslington, v. Huntington, v. York Cath.

- Rodney, hon. Spencer, New Romney, v. All souls Coll. Swarraton, r. A. Baring, M.P. Wonstow, v. T. Swineston.

Brother of lord Rodney, a pensioner; another brother vicar of Eye, of which the lord Chancellor is patron.

- Roles, William, Raunds, v. Upton Lovel, r. Sharncot, r. lord Chan.

- Rolfe, Robert, Caldecot, r. Mrs. Tynte. Cockley Cley, r. R. Dashwood. Hempnall, v. John T. Mott. Yaxley, r. Thurgarton, r. bp. of Norwich.

- Rooke, George, Wolford, v. with Burmington, c. Woolvercot, c. Merton Coll. Yardley Hastings, r. marquis Northampton.

- Rowley, Joshua, East Bergholt, r. with Brentham, r. Incumbent. Stoke by Nayland, r. sir W. Rowley.

- Royle, James, Islington, v. the King. Stanfield, r. rev. W. Newcome. Wereham, p. c. with Wretton, c. Edw. W. Pratt.

- Rycroft, Henry, preb. of Lincoln. Greetham, r. Mumby, v. bp. of Lincoln.

- Ryder, hon. Henry, D.D. bp. of Lichfield and Coventry, with Pitchley, r. annexed, and prebendary of Westminster.

Brother of lord Harrowby, and uncle of lord Sandon, M.P. late secretary to the India Board. The prelate was raised to the see of Gloucester on the translation of Huntingford to the neighbouring bishopric of Hereford, from which Luxmore had been removed to St. Asaph. It is necessary to attend to these translations, as they afford an important key in the disposal of patronage; the successive removes of bishops and dignitaries generally being indicated by trails of relations left behind in possession of the most valuable preferments.

- Sandiford, P., D.D. Ashbury, r. bp. of Bath. Fulmodeston, r. with Croxton, v. Corpus Christi Coll. Newton in the Isle, r. bp. of Ely.

- Sargent, J. Graffham, r. Woolavington, r. with Punton, v. J. Sargent, esq.

- Savory, Samuel H. Barmer, c. earl Oxford. Houghton-in-the-Hole, v. marquis Cholmondely. Twyford, r. G. Thomas.

- Seale, J. B., D.D. Anstye, r. Camb. Stisted, r. abp. Cant. Willingale Spain, r. bp. of London.

- Simms, W. Eratt, Nayland, c. sir W. Rowley. Santon Downham, p. c. lord Cadogan. West Bergholt, r. W. Fisher. West Toft, r. J. Mosely.

- Simpson, T. Boynton, v. Carnaby, v. Fraisthorpe, c. sir G. Strickland. Auborn, p. c. dn. of York.

- Singleton, Thomas, archdn. of Northumberland with Elsdon, r. annexed, preb. of Worcester.

- Skurray, Francis, Horningham, p. and p. c. dn. of Sarum. Lullington, r. marq. Bath. Winterbourne Abbas, r. and Steepleton, r. Lincoln Coll. Oxon.

- Slaney, Richard, Kemberton, r. with Sutton Maddock, v. P. Broughton. Penkridge, p. c. with Coppenhall Hay, c. Dunston, c. and Woodbaston, c. sir E. Lyttleton.

- Sleath, John, D.D. head master of St. Paul’s School, preb. of St. Paul’s, and chaplain to the King.

As Dr. Sleath is high master of St. Paul’s school, we cannot help adverting to the abuses in the management by the Mercer’s company of that munificent foundation of dean Colet. The landed revenues of the school amount to upwards of £6000 per annum; and by the aid of sundry outgoings in dinners, committees, pensions, repairs, gratuities, and medals, it is contrived that the expenditure shall nearly equal the income. It is now admitted, the charity was intended for all who could avail themselves of it, whether rich or poor; why then should the benefits of so wealthy a foundation, situated in the centre of the metropolis, be limited to the precise number of 153 scholars? The company are invested with full authority to modify the statutes of the school, as the changes of the times may require. When the number 153 was fixed, the income of the foundation was not one-fiftieth part of its present amount, and that number was fixed solely from a superstitious notion of the founder.

But if the company are scrupulous about violating the ordinances of dean Colet, it is strange they have already violated so many. The dean ordained that, every morning, the children should be at the school by seven o’clock; that, thrice every day, prostrate, they should say their prayers; that, at Childermas-day, they should “come to Paule Church and hear the Childe Bishop’s sermon, and after be at the high-mass.” Are these things observed?

The statutes of St. Paul’s school are venerated in the same way, we suspect, as those of the colleges of Eton and Winchester; just as much of them is observed as suits the interest of those having the management, the rest is given to the winds. On this principle the high-master’s salary of a mark a week is interpreted to mean £613 per annum, besides gratuities; and the surmaster’s salary of 6s. 8d. a week £300 per annum. From what part of the ordinances the annual gold medal to the accountant-surveyor, or the fee of one guinea for attendance on committees is derived, we have not been able to discover.

From the evidence of the high-master, Dr. Sleath, it appears, the children mostly belong to the clergy, the professional gentlemen, and medical men in the neighbourhood, and to gentlemen in Doctors’ Commons. It has been suggested the instruction of the school should embrace reading, writing, and mathematics, but we have not heard this plan has been adopted. There certainly appears no just reason why the education of the school should be limited to the acquirement of Latin and Greek. Dean Colet contemplated no such restriction when he said, “desiring nothynge more thanneEDUCATIONand bringing uppe children in good manners and literature.” Without deviating from the literal expression, education might be interpreted to include many other branches of knowledge beside an acquaintance with the learned languages.

The profusion in the expenditure of the school is wholly indefensible. There can be no doubt but the same number of boys might be taught Latin and Greek at a much less sum than was paid in pension to the late high-master; but it is mostly thus in foundations under the management of corporate bodies; no efforts to economize or to multiply the objects of the charity. If there be a surplus revenue it is sure to be exhausted in the expenses of committees, law-agency, and surveyors’ charges; in extra repairs and improvements; in ostentatious buildings; in luxurious feasting for the parties and their friends; and in pensions and gratuities. There is never too much—generally too little, and the charity in debt.

- Smith, S., D.D. dn. of Christchurch, preb. of York. Daventry, p. c. Dry Drayton, r. Oxon.

- Smith, Sidney, preb. of Bristol, and canon res. of St. Paul’s. Foston, r. lord chan. Londesboro’, v. duke of Devonshire.

- Somerset, lord Wm. preb. of Bristol. Crick Lowel, r. Llangattock, r. with Lonelly and Llangennett, c. duke Beaufort.

- Sparke, Bowyer Edward, D.D. bishop of Ely; consecrated bishop of Chester, 1809.

- Sparke, J. H. preb. and chan. of the diocese of Ely. Leverington, r. with Parson Drove, c. Littlebury, sinecure, r. bp. of Ely.

Son of the preceding; the father had the good fortune to become tutor to the duke of Rutland, and his advancement followed of course. From the deanery of Bristol he was raised to the see of Chester; and, on the death of Dr. Dampier, removed to the valuable see of Ely. Besides an immense revenue and numerous cathedral appointments, he has one hundred and eight livings in his gift. For an account of the preferments the rev. prelate has heaped on his family see p. 25.

- Spooner, William, archdn. of Coventry, preb. of Lichfield. Acle, r. lord Calthorpe. Elmdon, r. L. Spooner.

- Spry, J. Hume, D.D. preb. of Canterbury. Hanbury, v. bp. Lich. and Cov. St. Marylebone, r. the King.

The commissioners of woods and forests purchased of the duke of Portland the advowson of the opulent and populous parish of Mary-le-bone, out of the produce of the crown lands, for £40,000; this was considered less than the value, but his grace was content to make a sacrifice, rather than the patronage of so important a district should fall into the hands of dissenters.

- Stabback, William, East Anstye, r. corp. of Exeter. St. Stephen, r. bp. of Exeter. Sancread, v. dn. and ch. of Exon.

- Stanhope, hon. F. H. R. St. Buryan, d. and r. with St. Levan, c. the King. Cattan, r. Wressle, v. lord Egremont.

- Stawell, Wm. M. Creacombe, r. rev. W. Karslake. Filleigh, r. with East Buckland, r. earl Fortescue. High-Bickington, r. rev. W. Stawell.

- Stevens, Robert, D.D. dn. of Rochester, preb. of Lincoln. West Farleigh, v. dn. and ch. of Rochester.

- Stopford, hon. R. B. preb. of Hereford, can. of Windsor, chap. in ord. to H. M. Barton Seagrave, r. duke Buccleugh.

- Strong, Philip, Aston Abbots, v. lord Chesterfield. Colchester, St. Michael, Mile End, r. Myland, r. countess de Grey.

- Stubbin, N. J. Higham, v. Offton, r. with Little Bricet, c. Somersham, r. Trustees.

- St. John, J. F. preb. of Worcester; Chaddesden, c. H. Gilbert. Powick, v. Severnstoke, r. lord Coventry. Spondon, v. with Locker, c. and Standley, c. D. W. Lowe.

- Sumner, C. H. V. Farmborough, r. G. H. Sumner. Newdigate, r. lord chan. Newington Butts, Trinity, c. rec. of Newington.

- Sumner, Charles Rich. D.D. bishop of Winchester, sub-dean of Canterbury, prelate of the order of the garter, and visitor of Winchester College.

The right rev. prelate being visitor of Winchester College it may not be improper to call the attention of his lordship to the abuses which have crept into the foundation, and which in the exercise of his power of inspection and super-intendence he may have authority to reform. The college was founded by William of Wykham, in the fourteenth century, and, like that of Eton, intended for the education of seventy “poor and iudigent scholars.” So careful was the founder to confine the benefits of his institution entirely to the poor, that the boys, when they attain the age of fifteen, solemnly swear they have not three pounds six shillings a year to spend; and it is expressly ordered, if ever any scholar come into the possession of property to the amount of five pounds a year, he shall be expelled. The management of the college is vested in the warden, the bishop of Hereford, and ten reverend divines, termed “fellows,” subject to the visitation of the bishop of Winchester. The warden, fellows, and scholars, all swear to observe the statutes, “according to their plain, literal, grammatical sense and understanding.” Peculiar privileges are secured to the founder’s kin, ten or twelve of whom were lately upon the foundation. The revenue of the college amounts to about £14,000, and the expenditure to £11,000. The value of a fellowship, according to the evidence of Mr. Williams, is four or five hundred pounds a year, with meat and drink gratis in the college; also the use of knives, forks, plates, and as many church livings as they can obtain. The emoluments of a warden are double those of a fellow, with travelling expenses, &c. The scholars are chosen yearly, by six electors; their ordinary fare is bread, and butter to breakfast: beef, bread, and cheese to dinner; mutton, bread, and cheese to supper, with beer at every meal. They have no spoons, knives, nor forks, nor vegetables of any sort, allowed by the statutes, but they have salt and wooden trenchers found, and one gown is given annually to each scholar for clothing. The allowance for the sustentation of the boys may be varied agreeably to the statutes, according to the price of corn and provisions.

Such we collect from the Third Report of the Education Committee, to be the history and nature of this foundation, which has been very strangely perverted and abused. First, instead of the scholars being “poor and indigent,” they are all children of opulent persons; some, we suspect, of noble families, who, at the time they solemnly swear they have not three pounds six shillings a year to spend, are paying ten guineas a year to the masters, and the average of their other expenses exceeds fifty. By a liberal translation of the warden, who has sworn to observe the statutes according to their literal and grammatical sense, one hundred shillings are considered equal to £66 : 13 : 4. It is strictly enjoined that no boy shall be admitted above twelve years of age. This is wholly disregarded. The incomes of the fellowships are augmented to four or five hundred pounds a year, by a liberal interpretation of the term describing their money payments: while the strictest construction is adopted towards the scholars and founder’s kin; the latter continuing only to receive their old statutable allowance of forty shillings a year. Thus, too, while the scholars are refused the convenience of knives, forks, spoons, plates, &c. on the ground that such articles of furniture were unknown in the time of William of Wykham, the fellows are allowed those accommodations, although the fellowships were endowed at the same early period: That a surplus revenue of three or four thousand pounds may be divided betwixt the warden and fellows, the parents of the scholars pay between sixty and seventy pounds a year for their education; although it was intended by the founder they should be instructed and maintained gratuitously.

During the inquiries of the Education Committee, a singular sort of delicacy was manifested by the heads of this college to screen the abuses of the institution from investigation. They affected to be extremely willing to give every possible information relative to the college; but unfortunately they had sworn, conformably to the statutes, not to disclose the private affairs of the college; and until their scruples relative to this moral and religious obligation were removed, they could not, forsooth, submit their concerns to the investigation of the committee. Now, this would have been all well enough, had it not been notorious that the warden and fellows, on every occasion, when it suited their interest, had shown the greatest contempt both for the oaths and ordinances of the founder; nay, with so little respect had these precious relics been treated by the reverend hypocrites, who affected to be suddenly seized with a profound veneration for them, that they had been left exposed to the boys of the school, who scrawled upon them whatever nonsense they pleased. But the truth is, they wished to avoid inquiry,—as well they might; and they attempted to play off the same artifice on the committee, in the construction of the statutes, which enabled them to deprive the scholars of knives, forks, vegetables, and the kinsmen of the founder of their yearly incomes.

- Sumner, John Bird, D.D. bishop of Chester, with Waverton, r. annexed, preb. of Durham.

- Surtees, J. preb. of Bristol; Banham, r. The King. Bristol, St. Augustine, v. and St. Mark, c. lord Chanc. Taverham, 1st and 2d Mediety, r. bp. Norwich and Mrs. Branthwayte alt.

Brother-in-law of lord Eldon. For another brother-in-law of the ex-chancellor see M. V. Surtees, List of Places.

- Sutton, Charles, D.D. Aldeburgh, r. duke Norfolk. Holme (near the Sea) v. with Bishops Thornham, v. bp. of Norwich. Norwich, St. Geo. Tombla, r. bp. of Ely.

- Sutton, E. L. one of the six preach. of Canterbury, and chaplain to the House of Commons; High Halden, r. St. Peter’s, v. abp. of Cant.

- Sutton, Robert, preb. of Ripon; Falford, c. York, St. Michael in Spurrier Gate, alias St. Michael at Ousebridge, r. lord Chan.

- Sutton, T. M. preb. of Westminster, and chaplain to the House of Commons; Great Chart, r. Tunstall, r. abp. of Cant.

Other Suttons are in the church, with one or two livings. Most of them, but we cannot discover how many, are related to the late primate Sutton, whose mode of disposing of church patronage has been described, page 26. The archbishop, like many other noble persons, was indebted for his education to the Charter House, which opulent foundation was intended only for the “maintenance and education ofPOORE CHILDREN,” and “the relief of poore, fatherless, decrepit, aged, sick, infirm, and impotent persons.” On entering holy orders, his grace obtained some ecclesiastical preferment, and soon after, by his affinity to the Rutland family, was raised to the see of Norwich, with which dignity he was permitted to hold the deanery of Windsor. On the death of archbishop Moore, in 1804, his lordship, by the special favour of George III., was elevated to the primacy. It is observable that a short time before the following panegyric on his grace appeared in the Pursuits of Literature, a work ascribed to Mr. Mathias, privy clerk to queen Charlotte:—“He is a prelate whose amiable demeanour, useful learning, and conciliating habits of life, particularly recommend his episcopal character. No man appears to me so peculiarly marked out for the highest dignity of the church, sede vacante, as Dr. SUTTON.” This puff direct, and the writer, availing himself of those opportunites which his situation afforded, is supposed to have materially contributed to the sudden exaltation of the archbishop. The patronage of the archbishopric is 131 livings, an archdeaconry, and three prebends. Out of this fund his grace was enabled to provide comfortably for his numerous offspring.

- Swainson, C. preb. of Hereford; Clunn, v. with Bettws, c. Edgton, c. Llanvair Waterdine, c. and Shipton, c. earl Powis.

- Swan, Francis, Kirton, v. with Brothertoft, c. Mercers’ Comp. Lond. Lincoln, St. Pet. Arc. r. and at Goats, p. c. Prebendary. Winteringham, r. rev. J. L. Saville.

- Tanqueray, Edward, Ridgmont, v. Sequest. Tampsford, r. the King. Tingrith, r. Mr. Treven.

- Taylor, C. D.D. preb. of Hereford and chanc. of the dio. Hereford; Madley, v. with Tibberton, c. Stanton, St. Michael, v. dn. and ch. Hereford.

- Templer, G. H. preb. of Wells; Shapwick, v. Incumbent. Thornford, r. Mrs. Sampson.

- Tennyson, G. D.D. Benningworth, r. R. Ainstie. Great Grimsby, St. James, v. and St. Mary, v. G. R. Heneage. Somersby, r. R. Burton.

- Thackeray, J. R. Downham Market, r. Miss Franks. Hadley, d. J. Penny. Wiggenhall, St. Mary Magdalen, v. Mrs. Gorforth.

- Thompson, John B. Luddesdown, r. rev. Dr. R. Thompson. Shropham, v. Corp. of Norwich. Thompson, c. S. Hethersett.

- Thornhill, John, Cockfield, r. Staindrop, r. marquis Cleveland. Middleton in Teesdale, r. the King.

- Thorpe, C. archdeacon of Durham; vice Prosser, resigned.

- Thurlow, Edward S. preb. of Norwich; Eastwn, r. Stamfordham, v. lord Chanc. Houghton-le-Spring, r. bp. of Durham.

Three more Thurlows in the church, one a pluralist. Houghton-le-Spring, next to Brentford, is the highest valuation in the king’s book, and rated at £124. The pedigree of these preferments will be seen by referring to Thurlow in our Place List.

- Thynne, lord John, preb. of Westminster; Backwell, r. Kingston Deverill, r. Street, r. with Walton, c. marquis of Bath.

Third son of the patron and son-in-law of the rev. C. C. Beresford.

- Tickell, John A. Castle Acre, v. T. W. Coke. Hempstead, near Holt, v. Wighton, v. dn. and ch. of Norwich.

- Timbrill, J. D.D. archdn. of Gloucester, with Dursley, r. annexed, Beckford, v. with Alston Underhill, c. Bradforton, v. with Aldington, c. rev. Dr. Timbrell.

- Tredcroft, Robert, preb. of Chichester; Fittleworth, v. bp. of Chichester. Tangmere, r. duke Richmond. West Ichenor, r. lord Chanc.

- Trevelyan, Walter, preb. of Wells; Henbury, v. with Aust, c. and Northwick, c. lord Middleton. Nettlecombe, r. sir J. Trevelyan.

- Treweeke, George, Illogan, r. lord de Dunstanville. Manselgamage, v. St. Menver, v. sir J. G. Cotterell.

- Trivett, W. Arlington, v. Willingdon, r. Chichester Cath. Ashburnham, with Penshurst, r. dn. and ch. of Cant. Bradwell, r. the King.

- Turner, Richard, preb. of Lincoln; Great Yarmouth, p. c. dn. and ch. of Norwich. Ormesby, St. Margaret, v. and St. Michael, v. with Scroteby, c. Swelling, r. Incumbent.

- Turner, Samuel, Attenborough, v. with Bramcote, r. F. Foljambe. Nettleton, r. rev. W. Jackson. Rothwell, r. lord Middleton. Tealby, v. G. Tennyson.

- Turton, Thomas, dn. of Peterborough, preb. of Lincoln, reg. prof. of div. Cambridge. Somersham, r. with Coln St. Helen, c. and Pidley, c. annexed; Gimmingham, r. with Trunch, r. Cath. Hall, Camb.

- Underwood, T. can. res. of Hereford. Lugwardine, v. with Bartestry, c. Dewchurch, c. Hentland, c. Langarrow, c. and St. Veep Wennard, c. dn. and ch. of Hereford. Ross, r. and v. bp. of Hereford.

- Van Mildert, W., D.D. bishop of Durham and custos rotulorum.

- Vansittart, W., DD. preb. of Carlisle, master of Wigston’s Hosp. Leicester. Waltham Abbas, with Shottesbrook, r. A. Vansittart.

- Vernon-Harcourt, hon. Edward Venables, primate of England, and lord almoner to the King.

- Vernon, hon. J. S. V. preb. of Southwell. Barton in Fabis, r. abp. of York.

- Vernon, L. V. chan. of the church of York, archdn. of Cleveland. Kirby in Cleveland, sinecure, r. Stainton, St. Winifrid, v. Stokesley, r. abp. of York.

- Vernon, W. Venables, can. res. of York. Etton, r. Wheldrake, r. abp. of York.

Six more Vernons, with valuable preferments. They belong to the family of the archbishop of York. The Venables are also relations of the archbishop. The right rev. prelate is the younger son of the late lord Vernon by his third wife, the sister of the first lord Harcourt. He married a sister of the marquis of Stafford, by whom he has several children, all well provided in church and state. The first preferment of the bishop was a canonry in Christchurch; he was next advanced to the bishopric of Carlisle, on the removal of Douglas to Salisbury; and, in 1807, he succeeded Markham in the see of York. The patronage of his grace is 80 livings, 50 prebends, besides precentorships and sub-deaconries. We subjoin the following estimate of the gleanings of the archbishop and five sons during his primacy:—

Revenues of the archdiocese, 23 years

£26,000

598,000

L.

Vernon, chancellorship, prebend, and two rectories, 10 years

3,000

30,000

W.

Vernon, prebend and three rectories, 10 years

2,500

25,000

C.

Vernon, one rectory, 10 years

2,000

20,000

G.

Vernon, chancellor of diocese

1,800

1800

E.

Vernon, registrar of diocese

2,000

2000

£37,300

676,800

- Vevers, Richard, Saxby, r. lord Harborough. Stoke Albany, r. Wilbarston, v. lord Sondes.

- Vevers, R. W. Coates, v. sequestrated. Marton, v. bp. of Lincoln. Somershall, r. lord Chesterfield.

- Vincent, Wm. preb. of Chichester, London, Allhallows, Great and Less, r. abp of Cant.

Son of the late Dr. Vincent, head-master of Westminster school, dean of Westminster, King’s chaplain, and rector of Allhallows. The son has apparently succeeded to most of his father’s preferments. The doctor was patronized by lord Sidmouth, from whom he received a prebend in the collegiate church of Westminster. He preached and published several loyal sermons, which were carefully distributed by the Association for the “Protection of Property,” at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.

- Vivian, J. W., D.D. min. can. of St. Paul’s. London, St. Austin and St. Faith, r. Mucking, v. dn. and ch. of St. Paul’s.

- Wakeham, H. Culford, r. with Ingham, r. and Timworth, r. bp. of Lich. and Cov.

- Walker, A. J. Bishops Stone, r. Llangua, r. Yazer, v. U. Price.

- Walpole, Robert, Itteringham, r. with Mannington, r. lord Orford. St. Mary-le-bone, Christchurch, d. r. the King

- Ward, Wm. D.D. bishop of Sodor and Man, preb. of Sarum. Great Horkesley, r. countess de Grey.

- Warneford, S. W., D.D. Burton on the Hill, r. with Moreton in Marsh, c. and Lower Slaughter, c. Liddiard Millicent, r. rev. Dr. Warneford.

- Warren, J. dean of Bangor.

- Watson, J. J., D. D. archdn. of St. Alban’s, preb. of St. Paul’s. Digswell, r. Incumbent. Hackney, r. S. Tyssen.

- Watson, Richard, preb. of Wells and Llandaff. Dingestow, v. with Tregan, c. arch. and ch. Llandaff. Penrice, v. Undy, v. bp. Llandaff.

- Watson, Robert, Barlavington, r. South Bradon, sinecure, r. lord Egremont. Egdean, r. Hardham, r. sir G. F. Goring.

These Watsons are relicts of the late Dr. Watson, bishop of Landaff, archdeacon of Ely, rector of Knoptoft, professor of divinity in Cambridge, with the rectory of Somersham, in Huntingdonshire, annexed. The bishop had been tutor to the late duke of Rutland, who gave him the rectory of Knoptoft, and next exerted his influence for his advancement to the bishopric of Landaff. Here the prelate became stationary: his politics did not exactly accord with the Toryism of George III., and the doctrines advanced by him in the American war and during the French Revolution, prevented his translation to a richer see. Neither his ambition nor cupidity, however, appear to have been less than those of his brethren. In the Posthumous Memoirs published by his son, he complains bitterly that his “public services” had not been sufficiently rewarded, though possessed of the numerous preferments mentioned. He also declaims lustily against the statesmen of his time, declaring that they “sacrificed their public principles to private ends, and their honour to their ambition,” and that their “patriotism was merely a selfish struggle for power.” In the latter opinions all men had reason to concur, unless those blinded by prejudice or personal attachment.

- Webb, Richard, min. can. of St. Paul’s, Westminster, and Windsor. Kensworth, v. dn. and can. of St. Paul’s.

One might exhibit a curious and authentic account of the private history of this minor canon of three churches; but we wish to avoid personal details relative to the clergy. First, because to enter into the private history of the clergy would far exceed our limits. Secondly, because we had not materials for so doing, unless we chose to rely on reports and statements which we had no means of verifying. Lastly, and this is our principal reason, the best authenticated private details serve only to expose individuals, not the system; whereas our object has constantly been to expose the system, not the individuals composing it. As a body, no doubt the clergy have improved in external demeanor as well as other classes of the community. Modern manners do not sanction the gross vices which were common forty or fifty years ago; and for sake of social intercourse the priesthood have found it necessary to conform to the altered fashion of the times. The clergy, therefore, do not frequently come intoxicated to church, nor reel into the streets in open day-light: still some of them, according to Mr. Beverly, continue addicted to hard drinking. “I have been acquainted,” says he, “with drunken clergymen at Cambridge, and the intoxication of one, in particular, was so remarkable, that I have often wondered how he was able to clear his head for the Sunday morning’s duty, after the Saturday night’s debauch. I state it also as a notorious fact, that at the present moment there are priests in that University remarkable for their intemperate habits. There was in existence, within these five years, a clerical club, consisting of not more than six members, who used to meet at a tavern every Sunday evening, after their days’ labours, and indulge in compotations worthy of the hard-drinking parsons of Queen Anne’s reign.”

- Webber, Charles, archdn. and can. res. of Chichester. Amport, v. with Appleshaw, c. dn. and ch. of Chichester.

- Webber, E. Bathealton, r. bp. of Bath. Runnington, r. the King. Thorne, St. Margaret, c. archdn. of Taunton.

- Webber, James, preb. of Westminster, dn. of Ripon. Kirkham, v. Christ Church, Oxon, Westminster, St. Marg. r. dn. and ch. of Westminster.

- Welby, John Earle. Haceby, r. W. G. Welby. Harston, r. the King. Stroxton, r. sir J. E. Welby. West Allington, r. dn. and ch. of Exon.

- Welfitt, William, D.D. preb. of Canterbury. Elmstead, v. Hastingleigh, r. abp. of Cant. Ticehurst, v. dn. and ch. of Cant.

- Wellesley, hon. G. V., D.D. preb. of Durham, chap. in ord. to H. M. Bishop’s Wearmouth, r. bp. of Durham. Chelsea, r. lord Cadogan. Therfield, r. dn. and ch. of St. Paul’s.

Brother of lady Ann Culling Smith, and the Duke of Wellington, whom see in our Place List.

- Wells, George, preb. of Chichester. Billinghurst, v. sir H. Goring. Wilson, r. C. Goring.

- Westcombe, Thomas, min. can. of Winton. Preston, Candover, v. with Nutley, c. dn. and ch. of Winton. Winchester, St. Peter Stoke, r. with St. John, r. lord Chan.

- Weston, C. F. Melton Ross, p. c. Prebendary. Ruckland, r. with Farforth, r. and Marden Well, c. lord Yarborough. Somerby, r. with Bagenderby, r. the King.

- Wetherell, Henry, archdn. of Hereford and preb. of Gloucester. Kentchurch, r. the King. Kingstone, v. dn. of Hereford.

- Whichcote, Francis, Aswardby, r. Deeping, St. James, v. Swarby, v. sir T. Whichcote.

- Whinfield, H. Battlesdon, r. with Potsgrove, r. sir G. P. Turner. Tyringham, r. with Filgrave, r. Wm. Praed.

- Whalley, R. T. preb. of Wells. Ilchester, r. Yeovilton, r. bp. of Bath.

- Whistler, W. W. Hastings, All Saints, r. and St. Clements, r. sir G. Webster. Newtimber, r. N. Newnham.

- Whitcombe, Francis, Ferring, v. Prebendary. Lodsworth, c. S. W. Poyntz. Stanlake, r. Magdalen Coll.

- White, Henry, vic. of Lichfield Cath. Chebsea, v. Dilhorn, v. Ridware Pipe, c. dn. and ch. of Lichfield.

- Whittingham, Paul, min. can. of Norwich. Martham, v. Norwich, St. Saviour, r. Sedgford, v. dn. and ch. of Norwich.

- Wickham, Thomas, preb. of Sarum. North Newington, v. with Little Knoyle, c. preb. of Sarum Cath. Yatton, v. with Kenn, c. preb. of Yatton.

- Wilkins, G., D.D. preb. of Southwell. Lowdham, v. Nottingham, St. Mary, v. and St. Paul, c. Snenton, p. c. Earl Manvers. Wing, r. lord Chan.

- Wilkinson, W. F. East Harling, r. W. F. Wilkinson. North Walsham, v. with Antingham, St. Margaret, r. Queen’s Coll. Cam. Norwich, St. Benedict, c. and St. Laurence. r. Parishioners.

- Wilkinson, M. W. Harescombe, r. with Pitchcombe, r. Mrs. Parnell. Redgrave, r. G. St. Wilson. Uley, r. lord Chan.

- Willoughby, H. P. Birthorpe, r. Burythorpe, c. lord Chan.

- Wingfield, Thomas, Stapleford, v. Teigh, r. lord Harborough. Tickencote, r. J. Wingfield.

- Wintle, Robert, preb. of St. Paul’s. Compton Beauchamp, r. Mr. Wright. Culham, v. bp. of Oxford.

- Wodehouse, hon. A. Bixton, r. East and West Lexham, r. with Litchans, r. Kimberley, v. with Barnham Broom, r. lord Wodehouse.

- Wodehouse, C. N. preb. of Norwich. Geldestone, r. lord Chan. Murningthorpe, r. the King.

- Wodehouse, Thomas, can. res. of Wells. Norton, r. Stourmouth, r. bp. of Rochester.

- Wodehouse, hon. W. Carlton Forehoe, r. lord Wodehouse. Hingham r. Falmouth, r. hon. and rev. W. Wodehouse.

The hon. and rev. A. Wodehouse, who has four rectories and a vicarage, is the son of lord Wodehouse, the patron, and son-in-law of sir T. Beauchamp-Proctor. W. Wodehouse is another son of the noble lord. Several more of the family are well provided in church or state, but a notice of them does not belong to our present subject.

- Wollen, W., D. D. Bridgewater, v. with Chilton Trinity, v. Kilton, v. the King.

- Wood, George, Cann. St. Rumbold, r. Dorchester, Trinity, v. Shaftesbury, St. Rumbold, r. lord Shaftesbury.

- Wood, J., D.D. dean of Ely. Freshwater, r. St. John’s Coll. Camb.

- Wood, Peter, preb. of Chichester. Broadwater, r. Rusper, r. Mr. Wood.

- Worsley, Ralph, sub-dean of Ripon. Finchley, r. bp. of London. Little Ponton, r. rev. Dr. Dowdeswell.

- Woodcock, H. preb. of Sarum, can. of Christ Church. Longparish, or Middleton Prebend, lady Churchill. Michaelmarsh, r. bp. of Winton.

- Woodhouse, J. C. dn. of Lichfield and Coventry.

- Woodward, W. P. preb. of Chichester. Plumpton, r. Mrs. Woodward. West Grinstead, r. Mr. Woodward.

- Woolcombe, Henry, Ashbury, r. the King. High Hampton, r. J. M. Woolcombe. Pillaton, r. W. Helgar.

- Worsley, H., D.D. Gatcomb, r. Mr. Campbell. St. Lawrence, r. hon. C. A. Pelham. Woolverton, r. Messrs. R. and J. Clarke.

- Wrangham, Francis, archdn. of East Riding of York and preb. of York and Chester. Dodleston, r. dn. and ch. of Chester. Hunmanby, v. with Fordon, c. Muston, v. H. S. Osbaldeston.

- Wrench, J. G., D.C.L. Blakeney, c. Haberdashers’ Comp. London. Salehurst, v. S. Micklethwait. Stowting, r. rev. Dr. Wrench.

- Wrey, B. W. Combintenhead, r. Tawstock, r. Temple Imp. c. sir B. Wrey.

- Wright, Thomas, East Claydon, v. Middle, r. and Steeple, v. Mr. Vacknell.

- Wyndham, T. T., D.D. Hinton Admiral, p. c. G. J. Topps. Melcombe, r. with Radipole, c. W. Wyndham. Pimperne, r. lord Rivers.

- Yonge, Denys, East Anthony, v. R. Carewe. West Putford, r. lord Clinton. Willoughton, v. King’s Coll. and lord Scarborough, alt.

- Yonge, James, Cockington, c. Tormoham, c. rev. R. Mallock. Stockley Pomeroy, r. bp. of Exeter.

- Yonge, William, Chan. of d. of Norwich. Hillburgh, r. earl Nelson. Swaffham, v. with Threxton, r. bp. of Norwich.

Several more Yonges in the church. They are, by marriage, relations of earl Nelson, prebendary of Canterbury, and a pensioner to the amount of £5000 per annum.

VALUATION OF SEES AND DIGNITIES IN THE KING’S BOOK.

THE only authentic return of the amount of church revenues is the Valor Ecclesiasticus, of the time of Henry VIII. This document is incomplete even for the period it was obtained, many deaneries and ecclesiastical dignities having been omitted; and it is still less applicable to the present, owing to the vast alteration in the value of land and tithe. Still it is the only authentic basis for estimating the value of sees and dignities; and, aided by information from other sources, we may form an estimate of the incomes of the bishops, deans, archdeacons, precentors, chancellors, and other cathedral and diocesan officials.

In the parliamentary session of 1830, Dr. Lushington admitted the income of the See of Canterbury amounted to £32,000, and the bishop of London admitted his income amounted to about £15,000. Thus it appears from the subjoined table of the valuations in Liber Regis that these sees have increased in value twelve and fourteen fold. The revenues of other sees and dignities being derived from sources similar to those of Canterbury and London, the incomes of any of the bishoprics, dignities, and offices in the subjoined statement may be calculated to have augmented in a similar ratio. In some instances we have only been able to insert the year when the dignity was received by the present possessor; the value not being returned in the King’s Book.

If churchmen demur to our mode of calculating their incomes, our reply is—let us have an authentic and authorised return of the amount of ecclesiastical revenues. Till then we must depend on collateral and inferential evidence.

Canterbury:

King’s Book.

Archbishop

£2682

12

2

Dean

1827

Archdeacon

163

1

10

Prebendaries.

Wm. Welfitt

1786

Geo. Moore

1795

Chas. Norris

1799

Earl Nelson

1803

Robt. Moore

1804

Walt. Brown

1804

J. E. Boscawen

1822

Archdn. Croft

1822

W. F. Baylay

1826

John Russell

1827

J. Hume Spry

1828

John Peel

1828

York:

Archbishop

1610

0

0

Dean

308

10

7

Chancellor of the Church

85

6

8

Precentor

96

4

2

Sub-dean

£50

14

2

Succentor

8

0

0

Archdeacons.

Robt. Markham

90

3

1

Fras. Wrangham

62

14

7

L. Ver. Harcourt

36

0

10

Wm. Barrow

61

0

10

Canons Residentiary.

Archdeacon Markham

82

11

3

W. Ver.-Harcourt

40

0

1

Charles Hawkins

14

8

4

W. H. Dixon

32

10

5

Prebendaries.

Hon. J. Lumley Savile

14

9

9

H. Kitchingman

17

17

1

Samuel Smith

9

17

1

Lamplugh Hird

17

17

1

Hon. A. Cathcart

43

19

1

Robert Affleck

2

17

1

W. R. Hay

19

10

10

Edward Otter

34

11

8

William Preston

14

8

9

R. Carey

42

17

1

Hon. H. E. J. Howard

£11

3

9

Archd. Wrangham

35

0

0

Dean of Wells

6

0

0

Walter Fletcher

34

7

3

John Bull

37

15

5

Theophilus Barnes

38

16

0

Dean of Norwich

65

16

0

Charles W. Eyre

74

7

1

G. P. Marriott

32

13

4

Henry John Todd

38

17

11

Henry Markham

10

2

6

Hammond Roberson

8

0

0

John Lowe

33

11

8

T. Hutton Croft

47

16

3

G. H. Vernon, Chanc.

1818

London:

Bishop

1000

0

0

Dean

210

12

0

Chancellor

33

0

0

Precentor

46

7

6

Treasurer

37

0

0

Archdeacons.

G. O. Cambridge

60

0

0

Jos. Holden Pott

23

13

4

I. J. Watson

1816

Hugh C. Jones

52

0

0

W. Rowe Lyall

50

0

9

Cunons Residentiary.

Very Rev. the Dean

10

5

0

Thos. Hughes

6

0

0

F. W. Blomberg

7

17

1

Sydney Smith

7

13

4

Prebendaries of St. Paul’s.

William Gibson

8

6

8

Robert Watts

5

15

10

Dean of Winchester

10

2

6

Thomas Wintle

12

0

0

George Secker

13

13

4

William Wood

6

0

0

Richard Lendon

7

1

3

Thomas Randolph

34

8

9

W. S. Goddard

8

6

8

Bishop of Carlisle

39

13

4

A. R. Chauvel

28

15

10

Samuel Birch

5

6

8

John H. Randolph

5

6

8

Archdeacon Pott

19

17

6

John Sleath

5

6

8

Dean of Christ Church

11

6

8

Archdeacon Watson

14

6

8

Sir Herb. Oakeley, Bt.

21

6

8

Jon. Tyers Barrett

12

0

0

H. Handley Norris

8

5

5

C. E. J. Dering

46

0

0

Charles Wodsworth

5

6

8

William Hale Hale

11

10

10

John Smith

17

19

2

T. Hartwell Horne

13

6

8

John Lonsdale

28

0

0

Minor Canons of St. Paul’s.

H. Fly, Sub-dn. & 1st Can.

£24

17

11

H. J. Knapp 2d Can.

20

6

3

W. Holmes 3d Can.

20

6

3

R. H. Barham 4th Can.

13

16

5

W. J. Hall 5th Can.

15

9

9

J. W. Vivian 6th Can.

16

15

11

J. Lupton 7th Can.

15

9

9

J. T. Bennett 8th Can.

17

11

8

R. C. Packman 9th Can.

14

9

9

E. G. A. Beckwith 10th Can.

16

16

8

E. J. Beckwith 11th Can.

13

10

10

C. Packe 12th Can.

13

8

6

S. Lushington, Chancellor

1828

Durham:

Bishop

1821

1

2

Dean, Bishop of St. David’s

1827

Prebendaries.

David Durell

1801

Bishop of Bristol

1804

R. Prosser

1804

Bishop of Chester

1820

J. Savile Ogle

1820

Th. Gisborne

1823

G. Townsend

1825

Wm. S. Gilly

1826

G. V. Wellesley

1827

Charles Thorp

1829

Bishop of Exeter

1831

Samuel Smith

1831

Archdeacons.

C. Thorpe

100

0

0

Thos. Singleton

36

13

4

Winchester:

Bishop

2873

18

1

Dean, Thomas Rennell

1805

Prebendaries.

Edm. Poulter

1791

Robt. Barnard

1793

Lord Walsingham

1807

Geo. F. Nott

1810

W. Harrison

1820

Rd. Cockburn

1825

G. Pretyman

1825

Ch. Richards

1827

Edw. James

1828

Wm. Dealtry

1830

William Vaux

1831

Thos. Garnier

1831

Archdeacons.

Lord Walsingham

91

3

6

Ven. Chas. J. Hoare

67

15

2

Bangor:

Bishop

1830

Dean

22

17

3

Chancellor

0

3

4

Precentor

0

4

2

Treasurer

£ 0

18

9

Archdeacon

13

3

4

Prebendaries.

Henry Warren

29

16

8

H. W. Majendie

8

5

7

Canons.

T. Roberts 1st Can.

0

3

4

R. Williams 2d Can.

0

3

4

R. Newcome 3d Can.

0

3

4

Senior Vicar Choral }

17

0

5

Junior Vicar Choral }

Bath and Wells:

Bishop

533

1

3

Dean and Canon Res.

121

7

6

Sub-dean of Wells

21

15

7

Chancellor of the Church

40

5

0

Precentor

24

6

3

Treasurer

62

2

3

Archdeacons.

Henry Law

144

2

11

C. A. Moysey

25

15

0

A. Hamilton

83

7

6

Canons Res. of Wells.

Henry Gould

4

0

0

Frederick Beadon

24

0

0

Thos. Wodehouse

4

0

0

Ch. Henry Pulsford

5

6

8

H. W. Barnard

42

0

4

Archdeacon Law

1828

Prebendaries of Wells.

W. F. Browne

7

16

3

Thomas Heberden

6

6

10

Hon. J. Marsham

7

0

0

Henry Parsons

6

13

4

J. Thos. Casberd

5

6

8

John Williams

7

14

4

Edward Willes

5

6

8

Brook H. Bridges

14

0

0

J. Watson Beadon

15

16

0

Edward Edgell

5

6

8

John Lukin

5

6

8

George H. Templer

5

6

8

Thomas Williams

5

6

8

Joseph Drury

22

8

9

J. W. Hoskins

5

6

8

W. Hen. Turner

5

6

8

Richard Watson

22

15

5

William Lucas

4

0

0

Francis Goforth

9

0

0

Charles Johnson

8

13

4

William Gimingham

5

6

8

R. P. Whish

7

9

9

Thomas S. Escott

4

0

0

Robert Forster

4

0

0

W. P. Thomas

1

0

0

Wad. Knatchbull

5

6

8

Francis Warre

5

6

8

Geo. M. Coleridge

20

10

0

Master of Balliol

£22

0

0

George Vanbrugh

4

13

4

Rob. Vanbrugh Law

11

13

4

Archdeacon Moysey

5

6

8

Henry Pepys

3

7

6

Miles Bland

5

6

8

Samuel Blackall

5

6

8

Chas. Edm. Keene

38

0

7

Archd. of Taunton

1

5

7

W. A. Fitzhugh

11

6

8

Henry Hoskins

6

12

1

William Bowe

22

0

0

W. B. Whitehead

11

4

2

Charles M. Mount

5

6

8

Bristol:

Bishop

£327

5

7

Dean, H. Beeke

1814

Prebendaries.

H. J. Ridley

1816

William Bond

1818

John Surtees

1821

Lord W. Somerset

1822

Samuel Lee

1831

Henry Harvey

1831

Archdeacon of Dorset

82

12

8

Carlisle:

Bishop

£420

13

3

Dean, R. Hodgson

1820

Prebendaries.

Adn. Markham

1801

S. J. Goodenough

1810

W. Vansittart

1824

Dean of Wells

1826

Archdeacon, S. J. Goodenough

1831

Chancellor, W. Fletcher

1814

Chester:

Bishop

£420

0

0

Dean, G. Davys

1831

Prebendaries.

Archd. Clarke

1801

James Slade

1816

Archdn. Wrangham

1825

Wm. Ainger

1827

G. B. Blomfield

1827

Robt. V. Law

1829

Archdeacons.

Unwin Clarke

1801

John Headlam

1826

Chichester:

Bishop

677

5

3

Dean

58

9

4

Precentor

35

0

10

Chancellor of the Church

27

7

1

Treasurer

62

6

8

Archdeacons.

Charles Webber

38

3

4

Thomas Birch

39

15

0

Chancellor of the Diocese

1822

Canons Residentiary.

Archdeacon Webber

16

13

6

Thomas Baker

12

0

0

Charles E. Hutchinson

10

0

0

Charles Webber, jun.

1829

Canons Non-residents.

Thomas Heberden

11

17

4

Treasurer of Church

20

0

0

Chanc. of Church

8

0

0

R. Constable

6

0

0

George Fred. Nott

18

13

4

James Capper

2

13

4

Barre Phipps

4

15

0

Precent. of Church

20

13

4

John G. Challen

11

0

0

William Woodward

13

0

0

Thomas Valintine

9

10

0

Charles Gray

13

6

8

Edmund Cartwright

16

10

5

Hugh James Rose

2

3

4

George H. Webber

4

10

0

Peter Wood

18

6

8

George Shiffner

2

6

8

Edward Fulham

9

16

8

W. St. A. Vincent

10

0

0

J. Lettice

0

16

8

S. J. Tufnell

0

10

0

Chancellor of Diocese

4

6

8

R. Tredcroft

2

13

4

Richard Bingham

10

2

8

David Williams

13

6

8

George Wells

10

5

0

Henry Atkins

9

16

8

Ely:

Bishop

£2134

18

0

Dean, James Wood

1820

Prebendaries.

Archdeacon Cambridge

1795

George L. Jenyns

1802

John H. Sparke

1818

Henry Fardell

1819

W. W. Childers

1824

E. B. Sparke

1829

Benj. Parke

1831

Wm. French

1831

Archdeacon

97

5

2

Exeter:

Bishop, H. Phillpotts

1830

Dean, W. Landon

158

0

0

Canons Residentiary.

Precentor, Thomas Bartlam

99

13

4

Chanc. of the Ch., Adn. Potts

59

0

0

Treasurer, The Lord Bishop

32

7

3

Sub-dean, J. Parker Fisher

22

10

0

Archdeacons.

John Moore

60

15

10

R. H. Froude

37

19

7

John Sheepshanks

50

6

5

George Barnes

49

0

0

15 Prebendaries, £4 each.

Gloucester:

Bishop

£315

7

3

Dean, E. Rice

1825

Prebendaries.

Hon. D. Finch

1792

G. W. Hall

1810

T. Selwyn

1814

E. Bankes

1821

Adn. Wetherell

1825

J. H. Seymour

1829

Archdeacon

64

10

0

Hereford:

Bishop

£768

11

0

Dean

38

6

3

Chancellor

14

3

4

Precentor

21

9

7

Treasurer

9

10

10

Archdeacons.

J. J. Corbett

32

10

10

Henry Wetherell

41

17

11

Canons Residentiary.

T. Underwood

14

0

0

John Clutton

7

13

4

Hen. C. Hobart

1

17

8

H. H. Morgan

4

10

0

Arthur Matthews

3

0

5

Canons or Prebendaries.

John Wall

1

19

2

J. Walker Baugh

11

13

1

R. Wetherell

15

0

0

Love Robertson

28

12

6

Samuel Picart

7

1

0

Christ. Swainson

12

10

0

Edward Barnard

10

7

6

Hon. R. B. Stopford

17

18

1

James Garbett

7

10

0

Dean of St. Asaph

15

0

2

Henry Hoskins

11

6

8

H. Huntingford

15

5

0

Charles Taylor

20

0

0

Harry Lee

10

13

6

Archdeacon Clarke

17

18

9

James Wetherell

6

10

0

Hon. J. Somers Cocks

2

10

2

James Johnson

2

12

11

Fred. Twisleton

3

9

7

Hon. Hen. Rodney

11

4

4

K. E. Money

15

5

0

Dean of Hereford

2

7

8

John Clutton, jun

2

3

4

Lichfield & Coventry:

Bishop

559

17

3

Dean of Lichfield

40

0

0

Precentor

40

0

0

Chancellor

40

13

1

Treasurer

56

13

4

J. Newling

34

0

0

Spencer Madan

23

0

0

Geo. Hodson

30

0

0

Archdeacons.

Samuel Butler

26

13

4

William Spooner

45

9

2

Edward Bather

19

0

0

George Hodson

30

16

101/2

Prebendaries of Lichfield.

J. F. Muckleston

0

10

0

Dean of Bangor

8

0

0

Thomas Wythe

10

0

0

William Walker

10

11

5

Archdeacon Butler

2

3

4

W. G. Rowland

6

13

4

Sir Her. Oakeley, Bt.

2

0

0

Chancellor Law

1

0

0

Thomas Cotton Fell

13

6

8

Watson W. Dickins

10

0

0

T. R. Bromfield

0

3

4

Simeon Clayton

5

0

0

The Lord Bishop

20

0

0

John Kempthorne

2

13

4

Francis Blick

1

6

8

Archdeacon Spooner

2

0

0

Archdeacon Bather

2

13

4

J. F. Muckleston, Succen

14

0

10

Lincoln:

Bishop

824

4

9

Dean and Canon Res.

203

9

7

Archdeacons.

Charles Goddard

179

19

2

H. Kaye Bonney

60

12

3

Henry V. Bayley

25

17

8

Justly Hill

87

14

7

J. B. Hollingworth

64

14

2

T. Kaye Bonney

87

19

2

Precentor

40

13

8

Chancellor of the Church

42

7

4

Sud-dean

2

8

4

Prebendaries.

George Jepson

1

0

0

Maurice Johnson

3

0

0

William Hett

2

16

8

George Moore

32

0

0

John Humphrey

7

15

2

Richard Turner

25

6

4

L. C. Humphrey

33

18

6

Frederick Apthorpe

30

11

3

George D. Kent

0

3

4

Robert Pointer

9

10

0

R. Williams

15

14

2

Archdeacon H. Bonney

45

3

3

James Cullum

14

10

0

W. W. Drake

7

7

6

John Pretyman

36

0

0

C. A. Wheelwright

12

18

9

C. Webb Le Bas

12

5

0

J. H. B. Mountain

16

10

2

Sir C. Anderson, Bt.

1812

Henry Craven, Ord.

21

13

1

Dean of Rochester

29

10

2

Archdeacon Goddard

36

3

4

J. Henry Batten

5

5

5

Charles Turnor

19

0

0

William Palmer

5

12

1

Edward Fane

19

14

2

John Bouverie

4

9

4

George Beckett

38

16

8

Henry Rycroft

22

13

4

Theodore Bouwens

26

7

3

Edward Edwards

13

13

11

Archdeacon of Stow

20

0

10

Archdeacon T. Bonney

5

5

3

Nathaniel Dodson

11

0

0

Francis Swan, jun.

9

3

5

Fred. Borradaile

7

3

4

Edward Warneford

24

0

0

The Lord Bishop

17

7

6

J. Hobart Seymour

27

6

3

Thomas Turton

20

0

0

Fras. V. Lockwood

12

10

0

John Maul

33

2

3

John Graham

4

0

0

Edward Smedley

11

19

7

Peter Fraser

10

19

2

(Vacant.) Leighton

68

16

0

Llandaff:

Bishop

154

14

2

Precentor

6

0

0

Chancellor

2

13

9

Treasurer

12

2

11

Archdeacon

38

12

8

Prebendaries.

William Williams

1

6

8

John Fleming

4

0

0

W. B. M. Lisle

3

10

7

Richard Watson

3

5

5

John F. Parker

3

17

1

H. Handley Norris

1

3

4

J. Thomas Casberd

4

0

0

Thomas Gaisford

5

6

8

Edward James

0

18

1

Norwich:

Bishop

834

11

7

Dean, George Pellew

1828

Prebendaries.

E. S. Thurlow

1788

J. Procter

1798

T. Methold

1804

Philip Fisher

1814

C. N. Wodehouse

1817

Ed. Bankes

1820

Archdeacons.

J. Oldershaw

143

8

4

Henry Bathurst

71

1

3

H. D. Berners

89

2

1

George Glover

76

9

4

Oxford:

Bishop

381

11

0

Canons of Christ Church.

F. Barnes

1810

E. C. Dowdeswell

1808

Hen. Woodcock

1824

W. Buckland

1825

E. B. Pusey

1828

Edw. Burton

1829

R. W. Jelf

1830

John Bull

1830

Archdeacon

71

6

0

Peterborough:

Bishop

414

17

8

Dean, T. Turton

1830

Prebendaries.

Spenc. Madan

1800

S. Pratt

1808

Wm. Tournay

1817

T. S. Hughes

1827

John James

1829

W. Macdouall

1831

Archdeacon

122

7

1

Chancellor.

Spenc. Madan

1794

Rochester:

Bishop

358

14

0

Dean, Stevens

1620

Prebendaries.

Hon. J. Marsham

1797

Hon. F. Hotham

1807

Matthew Irving

1824

W. F. Baylay

1827

John Griffith

1827

Prov. of Oriel

1828

Archdeacon

34

14

9

Salisbury:

Bishop

1385

5

0

Dean and Canon Res.

204

10

0

Precentor

69

6

8

Chancellor of the Church.

56

6

10

Treasurer

101

3

1

Archdeacons.

John Fisher

54

18

6

Liscombe Clarke

70

11

8

W. Macdonald

64

18

9

Canons Residentiary.

T. H. Hume

101

3

1

Archd. Fisher

30

3

4

Archd. Macdonald

29

0

0

Matthew Marsh

35

16

3

Hon. F. P. Bouverie

43

12

6

W. L. Bowles

6

10

0

Subdean

1

13

4

Succentor

13

0

0

Prebendaries.

Archibald Alison

14

13

4

W. J. Kerrich

19

10

0

Henry Hetley

7

0

0

John White

18

0

0

Francis Saunders

3

4

2

Jarvis Kenrick

63

13

4

Martin Whish

32

0

0

Prof. Civil Law, Oxford

39

6

3

A. E. Howman

30

0

0

Bishop of Sodor and Man

25

16

0

Robert Morres

16

0

0

George Fred. Nott

20

0

0

John Salter

17

10

0

Henry Woodcock

18

16

8

Dean of Exeter

19

9

2

J. T. Hurlock

52

11

5

Archd. Onslow

62

0

0

William Fisher

50

0

0

Frederick Browning

36

0

0

John Still

35

15

5

Edward Fane

10

0

0

Thomas H. Mirehouse

24

5

10

H. W. Majendie

20

0

0

The Lord Bishop

William Potchett

32

9

2

Edward Bouverie

17

0

0

John Bright

29

3

1

Archdeacon Clarke

28

19

2

G. A. Montgomery

8

0

0

Thomas Tyrwhitt

4

13

4

Charles Grove

2

0

0

Edw. C. Ogle

52

0

0

W. S. Goddard

22

5

7

Edward Berens

20

0

0

Herbert Hawes

32

1

10

George Stanley Faber

20

0

0

Francis Lear

5

0

1

St. Asaph:

Bishop

187

11

0

Archdeacon

74

15

7

Dn. and Chan. of Diocese.

45

11

5

Precentor

40

0

0

Chanc. of the Church

37

13

4

Treasurer

18

6

8

Prebendaries.

C. Robson

9

5

5

H. Horsley

9

5

5

J. H. M. Luxmoore

3

6

8

Cursal Canons.

Roger Clough

2

6

8

H. H. Edwards

2

6

8

Rowland Williams

2

6

8

J. Francis Cleaver

2

6

8

Rowland Wingfield

2

6

8

W. Williams

2

10

7

T. G. Roberts

2

6

8

St. David’s:

Bishop

426

2

1

Precentor

20

6

10

Chanc. of the Church

17

17

1

Treasurer

24

18

6

Canons.

Preb. of, 5th Cursal

1800

Archdn. of Brecon

1805

Archdn. of Carmarthen

1810

Archdeacons.

St David’s

56

8

8

Brecon

40

0

0

Cardigan

18

0

0

Carmarthen

16

0

0

Worcester:

Bishop

929

13

Dean of Rochester

1828

James Meakin

1804

F. St. John

1804

Wm. Digby

1813

Down. Forester

1815

Henry A. Pye

1818

John Davison

1825

Christ. Benson

1825

G. Faussett

1827

Adn. Singleton

1829

Hon. J. S. Cocks

1830

Southwell Collegiate Chapter. Prebendaries.

William Dealtry

5

2

0

Henry Smith

5

0

0

Archdn. Barrow

2

11

3

J. T. Becher

13

4

7

James Jarvis Cleaver

22

19

7

E. G. Marsh

9

17

11

Robert Chaplin

27

19

7

George Wilkins

22

6

0

Charles Nixon

1

2

6

Frederick Anson

24

10

0

John Rudd

8

17

6

C. Boothby

32

5

3

T. Percival

23

11

4

Fitzgerald Wintour

15

7

11

Thos. H. Shepherd

16

15

10

C. Vernon-Harcourt

48

1

3

Brecon Collegiate Chapter. Prebendaries.

Bishop of St. David’s

47

0

0

Precentor

18

0

0

Chancellor

34

0

0

H. Davies Morgan

7

0

7

W. Morgan

3

6

8

D. Williams

7

13

4

Richard Venables

1

6

8

Archdeacon Beynon

7

6

8

Archdeacon Payne

2

0

0

W. J. Rees

9

15

4

D. R. Allen

13

0

0

W. A. Barker

3

17

3

C. Griffith

5

0

0

J. Jones

12

9

4

J. Drake

6

13

4

J. Holcombe

10

0

0

Charles Thorp

5

8

9

Edward Owen

13

6

8

Jeremiah Jackson

1

7

1

J. Davies

12

0

0

John Hughes

7

6

8

L. Llewellin

15

0

0

CHURCH OF IRELAND.

HAVING, in the preceding chapter, given a detailed account of the general principles and management of the Church of England, it will not be requisite to be equally copious in our exposition of the Irish Protestant establishment.

In the past and present state of Ireland we have a striking illustration of the tendency of the government that is said to “work well,” and the wretchedness of her population, her tithe-system, her vast tracts of land, either ill-cultivated or totally unproductive, her judicial and magisterial administration, her insurrections, factions, burnings, desolations, and bloody domestic outrages,—all symptomatic of a community entering on the first stages of civilization,—afford irrefragable proof of the excellencies of the good working government. In England, it is true, there are grievous abuses in the absorption of public money by the Aristocracy, in the denial of justice by the cost and uncertainty of legal decisions;—in the tolerance of commercial monopolies, in cornlaws, partial taxation, and other oppressions;—but these sink into insignificance when contrasted with the sufferings of Ireland. There the natural order of society has been inverted, and the government for many years existed, not for the benefit of the people, but the people existed solely for the benefit of the government.

Among the various forms under which oppression has been carried on, the most conspicuous is the Church Establishment; one is at a loss to conceive for whose benefit this institution exists in Ireland. Is it for the benefit of the clergy, the people, or the state? If by the former is meant those who minister religious instruction, it can hardly be said to be of advantage to them. The teachers of religion in Ireland are nearly all Catholics, a vast majority of the people are of the same persuasion, and what religion there is the expense is chiefly defrayed by voluntary contributions. Neither the really operative clergy, therefore, nor the people, benefit by the church establishment. With respect to the state, the advantage appears not less equivocal. The alliance betwixt church and state is founded on reciprocal benefits—that, on the one hand, the state shall give its civil protection to the church, and, on the other, the church shall aid in sustaining the state, by its influence over the people:—this is the basis of the compact; and it follows, when the church loses its influence, when it loses the adherence of a majority of the population, when it is no longer able to sustain the state, the compact is dissolved; it has no claim for protection, and its alliance becomes a source of weakness instead of power.

Such is the actual condition of the Irish church, such the advantages it confers on the government; it adds little to its authority, affords no aid to the civil magistrate, neither the law nor its ministers are rendered more sacred by its influence—quite the reverse. Authority is degraded and abhorred in Ireland, solely on account of the ecclesiastical establishment: it is the colossal grievance of the country, the source of all its factions, murmuring, and discontent. Why then, it may be asked, is the establishment maintained? On what principle or pretext is it justified? The godly cannot defend it from piety, the politician from reasons of state, nor the patriot for the blessings it confers on the community. Whose interest, then, is identified with the odious system? The only rational answer that can be given to this question is the fact, that there is, in Ireland, as in this country, an oligarchical interest, which has entwined itself round her institutions, and whose support is incompatible with public liberty and happiness. For many years Ireland was the prey of a favoured caste, a selfish and bigoted faction, who divided her as a spoil; and such was the wretched policy of the general government, that it was weak and unprincipled enough to avail itself of the folly and cupidity of such agents to preserve a precarious sovereignty—when, too, its frown would have made the same creatures, who were ready, at any time, to sacrifice their country for a pension or a place, instrumental to her greatness and welfare. Under the Wellington and Grey administrations attempts have been made to introduce a more impartial and enlightened system; with what success time must develope; but it is apparent, so long as her ecclesiastical establishment is continued—it is vain to expect contentment and tranquillity.

The Irish branch of the United Church is more pregnant with abuses even than its sister establishment in England; presenting a more revolting spectacle of inordinate incomes, of lax discipline, of laborious duties without adequate remuneration, and of an immense ecclesiastical revenue levied under circumstances of greater insult, partiality, and oppression. The points most deserving attention in the exposition of these subjects are, first, the revenue of the Irish Protestant establishment; secondly, the number of individuals among whom this revenue is divided; thirdly, the hardships and impoverishment resulting not less from the amount than the mode in which the clerical income is levied; fourthly, the patronage of the Irish church; lastly, the diminutive portion of the population who derive even a semblance of benefit from the intolerable burthen imposed on the land and industry of the community. We shall touch on these several heads of inquiry as briefly as possible, confining ourselves strictly to such facts as illustrate the state of the church.

To begin with our first topic—the Irish Church Revenue. Within the last ten years a mass of important details has been laid before parliament relative to the estates and revenues of the Protestant establishment; but, either from inability or reluctance in the parties interested to communicate the requisite information, our knowledge is still far from complete and accurate on this interesting branch of public statistics. Upon the authority of documents so communicated we shall, however, in great part, found our exposition; and thus, by relying on the statements of the clergy themselves, their registrars, and other dependent officials, we shall at least avoid the imputation of having arrived, through a prejudiced medium, at an exaggerated result.

We shall commence with the revenues of the Episcopal Clergy. The incomes of the bishops are derived principally from land, but partly from tithe. In some dioceses, in the West of Ireland, a fourth part of the tithes of almost every parish is paid to the bishop; affording decisive testimony of the ancient fourfold division of parochial tithes, and of the veracity of the allegation of those who affirm that the poor were formerly entitled to share equally with the bishop and priest in the produce of this impost. The practice, however, is not universal; and the revenues of the bishoprics chiefly arise from their immense landed estates. In the session of 1824, returns were made to parliament of the number of acres attached to the several Irish sees. These returns are very incomplete, and were mostly compiled by the registrars from the fallacious representations of the tenantry. Three dioceses, Dromore, Down, and Raphoe, made no return at all; alleging that, on examining the leases of the church lands, it was found they did not mention “the number of acres demised.” In the return from Armagh, it is remarked that the number of acres has been calculated from the representations of the tenants, but “the lands have never been surveyed.” Of the magnitude of the errors in these reports, we may judge from the fact subsequently ascertained, that, in one of them there was a trifling omission of thirteen thousand acres. Enough, however, may be collected from them to show the vast extent of ecclesiastical property: in fact, it is clear that the bishops’ lands are held, leased, and managed much upon the same liberal scale and principle that lands are in Australia, Canada, and Nova Scotia; and the conjectural estimates by Wakefield, and other statists, of what their immense incomes, either actually are, or might be made, under an improved system of tenure and cultivation, are not remote from the truth. We shall insert the number of acres returned by fourteen sees; the acres are Irish, which makes the amount about one-third less than it would be in English acres.

Number of Acres of Land belonging to fourteen Irish Sees.

Name.

See.

Quantity of See-Lands.

Parliamentary Papers, vol. xxi. No. 402, Session 1824.

Lord J. G. Beresford, D.D.

Armagh

63,270

Power Le Poer Trench, D.D.

Tuam

49,281

Richard Ponsonby, D.D.

Derry

94,836

John Leslie, D.D.

Elphin

31,832

James Verschoyle, D.D.

Killala

34,672

Lord Robert Tottenham, D.D.

Clogher

27,070

Nathaniel Alexander, D.D.

Meath

18,374

George De la Poer Beresford, D.D.

Kilmore

47,361

Richard Whately, D.D.

Dublin

21,781

Samuel Kyle, D.D.

Cork and Ross

22,755

John Brinkley, D.D.

Cloyne

15,871

Richard Laurence, D.C.L.

Cashel

13,392

Robert Fowler, D.D.

Ossory

13,391

Hon. R. Bourke, D.D.

Waterford

9,996

Total, in Irish acres

463,962

Mr. Leslie Foster, one of the barons of the Irish exchequer, estimates the lands belonging to all the sees to amount to 617,598 Irish acres, which are equal to about 990,000 English acres. This does not include the demesne lands attached to the episcopal residences, and which, by the same authority, are said to vary from 100 to 500 acres each; making the entire patrimony of the bishops about 623,598 acres, or, according to Beaufort’s map of Ireland, one nineteenth of the entire soil of the kingdom. This, it must be allowed, is enough for the maintenance of twenty-two bishops, especially when it is considered a population of eight millions is to be supported out of the remainder.

However, the area grasped by the right reverend fathers affords an inaccurate idea of their incomes. Mr. Baron Foster supposes the average value of the see-lands to be 20s. per acre. Even at this low rate, the bishops’ lands, if out of lease, would yield a total revenue of £623,598, averaging £28,340 to each prelate. Some of the wealthier sees, as those of Derry, Armagh, Tuam, and Elphin, would have incomes, respectively, of £94,836, £63,270, £49,281, and £31,832, exclusive of what might be derived from tithes, patronage, and other sources. But the nature of ecclesiastical tenures precludes the bishops from realizing incomes to this amount. It scarcely ever happens the occupying tenantry are the bishops’ tenants; the immediate lessees hold from the bishops for the term of 21 years; the bishops renew the leases from year to year, always leaving 21 years unexpired; the rent reserved to the bishops is mostly the old rent payable in the time of Charles II., which has become almost nominal, and the real incomes of the bishops proceed from the annual fines for renewing the leases. Now these fines usually amount to about one-fifth of what an ordinary landlord would receive for rent. So that, if the actual worth of the see lands be £623,598, the sum ordinarily received does not exceed £124,719.

We have thought it expedient to explain this, because it is a subject on which there has been a great deal of misapprehension. The fact is, the spiritual tenures are one great obstacle to agricultural improvement in Ireland. The Church is a principal proprietor of the soil, but the vast tracts she holds can never be cultivated to advantage under the uncertainties of the existing system. Much of the land is rough pasture, bog, and mountain, which requires, in the first instance, a great expenditure to render productive; but who would risk capital in the undertaking with a lease which, by law, cannot exceed twenty-one years; or with a certainty of having a fine levied on its renewal, augmented in exact proportion to the money and labour expended in improvement? Again, an ecclesiastical tenant is never sure of his landlord, being constantly liable to be changed, not only by death but translation. New lords, as the proverb says, often bring new laws. Although the usual course is to renew every year at one-fifth of the real worth, yet some prelates act differently; they will have surveys made—demand exorbitant fines—or wait the fall of the leases, which are relet at a nominal rent, perhaps, to their own relations. From these causes arises the non-improvement uniformly remarked in the condition of the church lands. It is a great obstacle to the public prosperity of Ireland, and the practice is as little favourable to the interests of the bishops as to those of the lessees, by rendering the incomes of the former not only less than they otherwise would be, but uncertain, varying, as they do, with the amount of the fines, or perhaps they lose the fines altogether, the tenants electing to run out their leases, and thus the advantage stands over to the succeeding diocesan.

In spite of these drawbacks, the bishops, from estates, tithes, brokerage in livings and other means, contrive to make a very profitable crusade. In the Edinburgh Review (vol. xliii. p. 483) their incomes are stated to average £10,000 a year each, or £220,000 in the whole. The patronage of an Irish bishop, of which we shall hereafter speak, is nearly as valuable as the income of his see. The vast revenues appendant to the bishoprics may be inferred from the immense wealth the prelates leave behind them. A former Bishop of Clogher, (the predecessor of the soldier-bishop,) who had been Cambridge tutor to lord Westmoreland, went over to Ireland without a shilling, and continued in his bishopric for eight years, and, at the end of that time, died worth between £300,000 and 400,000. It was stated, by Sir John Newport, that three bishops, in the last fifteen years, had left the enormous sum of £700,000 to their families.

The career of Warburton, the predecessor of Dr. Brinkley in the see of Cloyne, is an example of the sudden acquisition of wealth by the Irish bishops. Warburton, whose real name was Mungan, died in 1826. He was the son of a poor road-way piper, in a little village in the north of Ireland. He was a Roman Catholic, and intended for that Church. On the continent, where he was sent to study at one of the Catholic colleges, before the building of Maynooth, he was thrown, by accident, into the society of the earl of Moira, and having won his favour, was induced to change his destination from the Roman to the Protestant Church. He was, after taking orders, appointed chaplain to a regiment in America, and there he married his first wife, a lady said to have been particularly recommended by lord Moira. That lady soon after dying, he married his second wife, now his widow. With her he changed his name to Warburton. He became dean of Ardah, then bishop of Limerick, and from thence was translated to Cloyne. He was a man of courteous manners, and much esteemed in the higher circles. His ruling passion was the acquisition of riches, which the retired situation of Cloyne afforded him opportunities for indulging. From the hour of his arrival there he continued to amass wealth, and the result was he left £120,000 among his children, three sons and one daughter, one of whom is a colonel in the army, another a major, another in the church, and the daughter married archdeacon Mansell. The bishop was unexceptionable as a private individual, and strict in the observance of religious forms, but he was neither respected nor esteemed in his neighbourhood. He drained the diocese of an immense annual sum, but he returned no part of it in works of charity. He abstracted himself from all society, and held his station more as a petty despot, exacting a subsidy from the toil of the people, than as a Christian pastor, in daily communicating with his flock, to whose care a great revenue was entrusted, as the steward for the children of want and misfortune. His palace was more like a rack-rent farmer’s house than a gentleman’s mansion. The coldness and apathy of the people at his funeral formed the best comment on his life and character.

Such is the general run of Irish prelates; without the claim of public services or superior mental endowments, they succeed to honours and vast revenues, obtained through intrigue, family connexion, or political interest, and die loaded with spoil, either on a foreign soil, or amidst the scorn and hatred of the people whom they have impoverished and oppressed. Only a month ago we passed over, in Kent, the remains of Dr. Bennett, Warburton’s predecessor. He was buried in an obscure grave in Plumstead church-yard, with a common stone slab over him. He died in 1820, after holding the see of Cloyne twenty-six years, and draining at least a quarter of a million from the Irish soil. Yet he must have been an absentee, otherwise he would have been buried in his cathedral, or among the clergy of his diocese.

Let us resume our inquiries into the ecclesiatical revenues of Ireland. Of the extent of the estates of the Deans and Chapters, we have no means of forming an estimate, there having been no return laid before parliament of the real property of the ecclesiastical corporations. Many of the dignities as well as the sees are known to be extremely valuable. The Deanery of Down, for example, in 1790, was worth £2000 per annum; in 1810, it let for £3700. The archdeaconry of Armagh is returned at £1662 per annum; the chancellorship £2385, and the precentorship £2350. By comparing the cathedral and collegiate establishments of Ireland with those of England, it may, perhaps, be possible to form a conjecture of their relative value. In England the income of the Deans and Chapters is £494,000: but, as the number of members of these corporations is double what it is in Ireland, it is probable their endowments exceed in the same proportion. We may, therefore, conclude that the Deans and Chapters have estates and endowments a little exceeding those of the Irish Bishoprics, and producing a total revenue of £250,000 per annum.

Next in order let us advert to the incomes of the Parochial Clergy, from tithes and glebe. Ireland contains 18,000,000 of English acres of land, of which 900,000 pay nothing to the church; 4,000,000 pay from endowments about one-third of their tithes, and the remaining 13,000,000 and upwards are liable to pay full tithes. The share which the clergy actually derive from the soil will be best ascertained from the valuations of the Tithe Commissioners, acting under the authority of Mr. Goulburn’s statute. Compositions under this act continue in force twenty-one years when the original right to tithes revives, and vary in amount every third year, if the average price of wheat or oats fluctuate one-tenth. Had this act been exclusively framed by a conclave of tithe-eaters, it could not have more adroitly guaranteed their interests; and this is strikingly exemplified by the provision which provides that the tenant may deduct his share of the composition from the landlord’s rent, and, if in arrear, it must be paid in preference to debt, rent, or taxes—that is, the parson’s claim must have priority of that of a creditor, the landlord, or even the KING. It is a very cunningly devised measure for perpetuating, without lightening, a most grievous burden. A design is entertained by the Heads of the Church to introduce a similar project into England, but we trust the intention will be frustrated. Its direct tendency is to fasten on the community the tithe-tax like the land-tax; with this difference, that the latter is paid by the landlord, but the former would have to be paid by the tenants, and augment with every increase in capital and industry. Its tendency is also to make the pastors completely independent of their congregations, converting the former into annuitants who derive their incomes as independently of their parishoners as if paid out of the public treasury. The motives for residence will be still further lessened; many parsons before, from having few or no hearers, had little inducement, from the claims of duty, to reside on their livings, but now they will not even have the tithes to look after,—no need of watching the growth of potatoes, the increase of farm stock, nor extension of tillage; their composition-money, like the rent of the absentee-landlord, may be remitted whole and entire to them at London, Paris, Bath, or whatever place they may select as best calculated for unobserved luxurious indulgence.

However, let us attend to the workings of this precious scheme of Lord Wellesley’s Irish administration, and the light it throws on the value of parochial tithes. But first we must give the reader an idea of the rapacious manner in which church-preferment has been cut up in Ireland; how the parishes have been compressed into unions; how the unions have been dovetailed into enormous pluralities; how the pluralities and unions together have been tacked to dignities and offices; and how all these good things, like so many bunches of grapes on a string, have been heaped on the Beresfords, Trenches, Saurins, and Plunkets, as the means whereby the resources of the country may be absorbed.

Be it known, then, that there are in Ireland 2450 parishes. Now, as no parish (though some districts or portions of land are) is wholly exempt from the payment of tithes, each parish ought to have at least one resident minister, one church, one parsonage-house, and one glebe. This is the ecclesiastical state which ought to subsist. Instead of which there are only, according to clerical authority, one thousand and seventy-five rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates in all Ireland, and of these not more than two-thirds are said to reside on their benefices. In the whole 2450 parishes there are only 1100 churches, and of these churches 474 have been built within the last century by means of grants of public money. There are only 771 glebe-houses, and though there are some benefices with two or three glebes, containing 4000 acres, there are many parishes without any glebe at all, the land, through negligence or abuse, having been lost or alienated, it not being unusual to find a patch of ground, designated as glebe, situate in the middle of a gentleman’s lawn or part of his demesne, to which he lays claim in virtue of some patent right, granting him the lands and tenements of a church for ever. It follows from this that there are more than three parishes to every resident incumbent; there is less than one church to every two parishes; and, if every parish had its pastor, as it ought, there would be nearly four parsons to live in every glebe-house.

To accommodate these dilapidations and inconsistencies the policy of consolidating the parishes into UNIONS has been resorted to. As in many parishes there were neither hearers nor a church, there could be no need of the services of an officiating minister. In these parishes it would have been rational either to have abolished the tithe or applied the produce of it to some other purpose than the support of a sinecure rector or vicar. But this did not accord with the temporal interests of the church. Hence the expedient of unions of parishes; that is, clusters of parishes, in various numbers, from two to a dozen and more, have been compressed into a single benefice, forming one presentation, held by a single incumbent, and this incumbent, perhaps, a pluralist, holding two or more of these ecclesiastical conglomerations. In England a similar abuse prevails; it frequently happening that two or more rectories, vicarages, or parochial chapelries are held cum, or with, others, forming a single benefice; but the instances are neither so numerous nor outrageous as in Ireland. In the latter country unions may be found thirty-six Irish miles in length, containing as many square miles of territory as some of the petty kingdoms under the Heptarchy. One union, that of Burnchurch, in the diocese of Ossory, formed by an act of the privy council, and in the gift of the king and the bishop alternately, consists of no fewer that thirteen parishes. Here is a benefice! If a man is fortunate enough to obtain, as is not impossible, two or three such benefices, he is more like a bishop at the head of a diocese than a parish priest.

Of the whole 2450 parishes there are only 749 held single, the remaining 1701 parishes having been consolidated into 517 unions, forming, in the whole, 1266 parochial benefices. The territorial contents of the benefices vary in different districts. According to Mr. Erck, in the northern, southern, and eastern provinces, they average 6544 Irish acres, or upwards of ten square miles, with the exception of those in the dioceses of Clogher and Killaloe, and in the three western dioceses of Elphin, Clonfert, and Killala, where they average from 10 to 12,000 acres; in the dioceses of Derry, Kilmore, Raphoe, Ardfert, and Achonry, they average from 12 to 15,000 acres; and in the western diocese of Tuam they average the enormous area of 25,800 acres. The union benefices have been constituted under different authorities, by parliament, by charter, by act of council, by license of the bishops; and some are of such ancient date that the period and mode of their origin cannot be traced. All the unions are permanent except those under episcopal authority, which enure only during the life of the incumbent, when the parishes may revert to their original state. But if an union has been once formed it is generally continued to successive incumbents, and it is not likely the bishops will dissolve them, especially if they happen to be, as is mostly the case, the patrons. In fact, it is by the heads of the church, whose duty consisted in the maintenance of more strict ecclesiastical discipline, that the abuse of unions has been chiefly encouraged. Of the 517 unions 230 are of episcopal creation, and 126 more have been established under an authority almost identical with that of the bishops,—namely, the privy council of Ireland. We subjoin a classification of the unions now subsisting, as we collect them from the Ecclesiastical Register, for 1830, pp. 14, 15. So long established and intimately cemented have some of these unions become, that the boundaries of the parishes of which they consist it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trace; and there are among the apologists of ecclesiastical abuses those who would avail themselves of this circumstance, and boldly affirm that the parishes in some unions are not distinct parishes, only town lands, and this though the denomination and names of the parishes are fully set forth in the titles of every incumbent!

A Statement exhibiting the Number of Unions, the Number of Parishes in each, and their Denominations.

Number of Parishes in each Union.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

13

Total of Benefices.

Total of Parishes.

Parliamentary Unions

2

4

1

3

10

38

Charter Unions

5

8

4

3

3

1

1

25

98

Privy Council Unions

46

34

19

12

7

2

4

1

1

126

440

Episcopal Unions

119

51

29

16

5

3

3

2

2

230

704

Immemorial Unions

49

34

18

13

5

5

1

1

126

421

Total

221

131

71

44

23

11

8

2

3

2

1

517

1701

Having explained the nature of unions and their territorial magnitude, the reader will be better enabled to judge of the value of Irish benefices, and he must be convinced what a fortunate aspirant he must be who happens to be presented with two or more such benefices, besides dignities and offices, especially if he have not—as is possible—a church in any of them to preach in, nor a single Protestant to whom he need read prayers. In Ireland, as in England, there is great disparity in the value of livings; some are extremely small and insignificant, while others, according to the admission of his grace of Armagh, are worth £2300 per annum. We are as averse to the penury of one part of the church as to the corruptive opulence of another; for we dislike all extremes of condition, and are quite of AGUR’s opinion in thinking that neither excess of riches nor poverty is for the good of individuals. The list of parishes we subjoin has been taken almost at random from the Parliamentary Returns of the amount of compositions for tithe: it will show the actual sums now paid by parishes in lieu of tithes, and, as the UNIONS are enclosed in crotchets, it will be seen what monstrosities some of them are. The composition-rent put down is for clerical tithes only; the amount paid for impropriate tithes is omitted, as not forming part of the income of the incumbent. In some unions all the parishes have not yet compounded; in others the compositions have been annulled by the bishops, (who have a veto on these agreements,) as not being adequate to their reputed value. The names of the patrons and present incumbents have been collected from the Ecclesiastical Register of Ireland.

STATEMENTof the Sums agreed to be paid, under the Composition-Act, by several Parishes in lieu of Tithes, and the Names of the present Incumbents and Patrons.

[Those Parishes marked ‡ are not compounded for.]

Incumbent.

Patron.

Parish.

Amount of Composition.

The lay tithes of this parish have been compounded for £476, making the total amount of composition £1429 a year.

This is an union containing six more parishes, but as they have not compounded, their names are omitted.

Ferns has compounded for its impropriate tithe for £553, making the annual sum payable by this parish for lay and ecclesiastical tithes £823.

The lay-tithes of this parish have been compounded for £1142, making the yearly composition for impropriate and clerical tithes £1713.

Edward Hincks

Trin. Col. Dublin

Artrea

£738

Francis Hall

Trin. Col. Dublin

Arboe

507

Charles Atkinson

Archb. Armagh

Creggan

1050

Hon. C. Knox

Archb. Armagh

{ Carnteel

406

{ Aughaloo

609

E. Stopford

Archb. Armagh

Derrynoose

646

G. Blacker

Archb. Armagh

Drumcree

650

J. Campbell

Archb. Armagh

Forkhill

650

W. Pinching

Bp. Clogher

Carrickmacross

646

J. G. Porter

Bp. Clogher

Donaghmoine

953

W. Athill

Bp. Clogher

Findonagh

600

T. De Lacy

Bp. Meath

{ Kells

553

{ Duleene

200

{ Rathboyne

270

{ Burry ‡

W. Kellett

The King

Moynalty

550

W. Pratt

Bp. Meath

Enniskeen

900

R. Symes

Bp. Connor

Ballymoney

1015

A. Leslie

The King

Ahoghill

1015

G. Macartney

Marq. Donegal

{ Skerry

419

{ Racavan

295

W. Knox

Bp. Derry

Ballynascreen

623

A. Ross

{ Skinner’s Com. London }

Banagher

650

A. W. Pomeroy

Bp. Derry

Bovevagh

580

J. W. Ormsby

Trin. Col. Dublin

Cappagh

1000

W. Knox

Bp. Derry

Clonleigh

840

R. Babington

Bp. Derry

Cumber Lower

560

F. Gouldsbury

Bp. Derry

Cumber Upper

£740

A. T. Hamilton

Marq. Abercorn

Donagheady

1350

Sir J. Leighton

The Lightons

Donaghmore

1440

S. Brownlow

Bp. Derry

Leekpatrick

646

J. S. Knox

Bp. Derry

Magheara

1015

O. M. Causland

Bp. Derry

Tamlaghfinlagan

1000

J. Jones

Bp. Derry

Urney

700

R. Allott

The King

Raphoe

900

J. Usher

Trin. Col. Dublin

Raymochy

650

E. Bowen

Marq. Abercorn

{ Taughboyne, }

1569

{ All Saints }

H. E. Boyd

Bp. Dromore

Drumaragh

937

G. Crawford

Bp. Ardagh

{ Clongesh

461

{ Killoe

535

W. Bourne

Duke of Leinster

Rathangan

553

H. Joly

Duke of Leinster

{ Clonsast

628

{ Ballinakill

65

J. D. Wingfield

Lord Digby

Geashill

1292

R. Vicars

The King

{ Coolbanagher

276

{ Ardea

259

Hon. J. Bourke

The King

{ Aghavoe

789

{ Comer

969

G. Stevenson

Marq. Ormonde

{ Callan

550

{ Coolagh

383

{ Tullomain

105

{ Tullaroan‡

{ Killaloe‡

{ Ballycallan‡

J. B. Ridge

The King

Eirke

692

M. Monck

Bp. Ossory

{ Rathdowny

750

{ Glashare‡

{ Kildelgy‡

H. P. Elrington

Bp. Ferns

Templeshambo

1200

P. Browne

The King

{ Kilmackclogue

234

{ Magloss

55

{ Kilkevan

369

{ Kilnehue

465

W. Hore

Bp. Ferns

Kilrush

694

M. Charters

Bp. Ferns

{ Clone

332

{ Kilbride

203

{ Ferns

270

H. Moore

Bp. Ferns

Carnew

£830

A. Lord

Archbp. Cashell

{ Templetonhy

500

{ Loughmore

249

{ Another parish‡

J. Pennefather

Archbp. Cashell

{ Killoscully

323

{ Kilvolane

461

{ Kilnerath

303

{ Kilcomenty

323

T. P. Le Fann

Bp. Emly

{ Abington

650

{ Tough

250

C. P. Coote

Bp. Emly

Doon

830

W. Galway

Bp. Emly

{ Kilmastulla

318

{ Templeichally

406

Lord Brandon

{ Lordship of Castle Island

{ Castle Island

638

{ Ballyncushlane

460

{ Dysert

173

{ Killentierna

823

B. Denny

Sir E. Denny

{ Ballynahaglish

230

{ Anna

332

{ Cloherbrien

332

{ Caher

226

{ Killencan

160

{ Glanbeagh

130

Vicars Choral

Vicars Choral

{ Lismore‡

{ Mocollop

1569

J. Scott

The King

{ Tubrid

955

{ Ballybacon

461

T. G. Laurence

Bp. Cork

{ Moviddy

507

{ Kilbonane

208

{ Aglish

379

W. Harvey

Bp. Cork

{ Kilnaglory

325

{ Athnowen

425

J. Jervois

Bp. Cork

{ Kilmichael

692

{ Macloneigh

250

A. Trail

The King & Bp.

Skull

850

T. Kenny

Bp. Cloyne

Donoughmore

1100

Hon. G. de la P. Beresford

Bp. Cloyne

{ Inniscarra

636

{ Malthy

513

J. Hingstone

Bp. Cloyne

Whitechurch

784

J. Hingstone

Bp. Cloyne

Aghabullogue

750

A. Champagne

Bp. Cloyne

Castlelyons

571

M. Purcell

Fitzgerald

Dungourney

664

T. Newneham

Bp. Cloyne

{ Kilworth

£170

{ Macroney

230

{ Leitrim

230

{ Kilcrumper

220

J. Lombard

Bp. Cloyne

Kilshannick

738

E. Palmer

Bp. Killaloe

{ Modreeny

533

{ Arderony

307

G. Holmes

Bp. Killaloe

{ Kilmore

323

{ Kilnaneave

315

{ Lisbonny

323

E. Price

Bp. Killaloe

{ Aglishcloghane

161

{ Lorrha

438

{ Dorrha

415

From the above statement it appears that the amount of composition-money paid in lieu of tithes, in some unions, amounts to £1410, £1407, £1554, £1569, and £1758; and that single parishes have come down to the tune of £1050, £1200, £1350, and £1440, in order to rid themselves of the worldly visitations of the spiritual locust. These sums, it must be remembered, are not the conjectural estimates of individuals imperfectly informed of the worth of parochial tithes; they are public and authentic returns, founded on an average and impartial valuation. It must, also, be borne in mind that the composition is a net payment, obtained without the trouble of collecting the tithes, or the expense of proctors or middlemen, and the receipt of which is better secured than the landlord’s rent or public taxes.

Many of the incumbents enjoying these really fat livings, are pluralists, holding other parochial benefices, beside dignities and offices. The names of the honourable Charles Knox, the honourable George de la Poer Beresford, the honourable Joseph Bourke, and other well-known signatures, are quite sufficient to indicate their connexions with the episcopacy and aristocracy of Ireland. It would require pages fully to set forth the families, connexions, and influence; the sinecures, places, offices, and pensions by which some of these honourables have sent forth their absorbents into the substance of Church and State. There is one man, however, JAMES HINGSTONE by name, who, as far as we know, is not of noble blood, unless it be by some left-handed tilt; yet he seems to have reaped a plentiful harvest. He has compounded for the tithes of two parishes, that of Whitechurch for £784, and that of Aghabullogue for £750, making a snug income of £1534 per annum. But this is far from being the extent of his good fortune. He is, also, rector of Subulter, and prebendary and vicar-general of Cloyne. His son, James Hingstone, is vicar of Clonmult, and vicar-choral of the cathedral church of St. Colman’s. It were easy to give similar illustrations of others, but this must suffice.

Mr. Goulbourn’s bait has taken so well that nearly two-thirds of all the parishes in Ireland have compounded for their tithes: the progress of the measure, up to the present, will appear from the subjoined statement, exhibiting the number of parishes, in each diocese, that have compounded in the four provinces, the proportion between lay and ecclesiastical tithe, and the total amount of the compositions for both descriptions of tithe.

PROVINCE OF ARMAGH.

Parishes.

Lay Tithes.

Clerical Tithes.

Composition.

Diocese.

£

£

£

Armagh

48

—

19,292

19,292

Clogher

28

1,291

12,257

13,548

Meath

137

11,212

21,406

32,618

Down and Connor

40

1,439

13,622

15,061

Derry

42

—

22,990

22,990

Raphoe

14

352

7,424

7,777

Kilmore

19

874

4,813

5,688

Dromore

9

2,128

2,647

4,775

Ardagh

21

2,303

4,793

7,097

PROVINCE OF DUBLIN.

Dublin

91

4,031

15,035

19,066

Kildare

36

2,089

7,363

9,452

Ossory

61

1,550

15,557

17,107

Ferns and Leighlin

103

7,181

27,989

35,170

PROVINCE OF CASHEL.

Cashel and Emly

93

5,083

19,555

24,638

Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe

128

7,016

24,349

31,366

Waterford and Lismore

52

2,386

12,500

14,886

Cork and Ross

65

4,022

23,282

27,305

Cloyne

57

4,345

18,629

22,975

Killaloe and Kilfenora

121

3,676

23,355

27,032

PROVINCE OF TUAM.

Tuam

60

2,945

11,450

14,396

Elphin

54

2,377

6,817

9,194

Clonfert and Kilmacduagh

59

86

8,636

8,723

Killala and Achonry

15

1,098

2,593

3,691

TOTAL

1,353

67,494

326,363

393,857

From the results of the compositions already entered into it is easy to calculate the value of tithes in all Ireland. Of the 1353 parishes, the average rate of composition for each parish, for impropriate tithe, is £50, for church tithe £241, and for ecclesiastical and lay tithes together £291. Supposing the whole 2450 parishes to compound for tithes at the same average rate, the annual value of impropriate tithes is £122,500, of church tithes £590,450, making the total burden imposed by tithes, lay and ecclesiastical, on the entire kingdom, amount to £712,950 per annum. The average tithe for the whole kingdom would probably exceed the sum here stated; since it is known the most fertile districts have been the most backward in compounding for their tithes.

The ecclesiastical tithe of £590,450 per annum constitutes only one item in the yearly emoluments of the parochial clergy. They have, also, glebe-houses, extensive glebes, minister’s money, and church-fees. In Ireland, “all things seem oddly made and every thing amiss.” Many benefices have neither glebe-house nor glebe-land; while others have two glebe-houses each, and two or more glebes, comprising a superficial area of 2000 acres. One-third of the benefices are destitute of any glebe whatever, and, consequently, of any residence; while the remaining two-thirds of the benefices are estimated to possess glebeland to the enormous extent of 91,137 acres. Supposing, with Mr. Baron Foster, the glebe to be worth, on an average, only £1 per acre, it forms a very considerable addition to the yearly revenue of the beneficed clergy.

Another source of clerical emolument is that termed minister’s money, intended as a substitute for tithe, and which, as we have no assessment levied in the same way in England, it will be proper to explain. In cities and towns corporate, where there are small or no tithes, a power is vested in the Lord Lieutenant, authorising, by a commission, valuations to be made, from time to time, of every house; upon a return of such valuations, in which no house may be rated above £60, the Lord Lieutenant and six more of the privy-council are empowered to assess each house, in a yearly sum, for the maintenance of the incumbent. Under this authority valuations have been made of the parishes in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, and the towns corporate of Drogheda and Clonmel; and it is from the proceeds of these assessments that the incumbents of forty-eight city parishes are paid their stipends. We have not any public return of the incomes allotted to the ministers of these towns and parishes; if they average £500 each, it makes an addition of £25,000 a-year to the revenues of the parochial clergy. The clause which provides that no house shall be rated above sixty pounds originated, no doubt, in the same selfish policy that dictated the abolition of the tithe of pasture, and shows, in every measure, how scrupulously have been considered the interests of the wealthy Protestants, when the burden even of maintaining the established church of the ascendant party was thrown, with unequal weight, on their poor and politically-disfranchised catholic brethren.

The yearly sums derived from church-fees we can only conjecture. They do not, of course, from a vast majority of the population being separatists from the endowed worship, form so productive a source of emolument as in England. But, supposing the million of Protestants of different sects, in Ireland, pay for marriages, christenings, and burials only 5s. a-head, surplice-fees yield an income of £250,000. Without including, then, the emoluments derived by the parochial clergy from the dignities and offices they hold, from being masters of diocesan-schools, vicar-general or surrogate of a diocese, or official chaplain at the Castle; their total revenue, from the four sources of tithes, glebe-land, minister’s money, and church-fees, cannot be less than £956,587. If to this sum we add the incomes of the episcopal clergy and the deans and chapters already ascertained, we shall have the total amount of the burden imposed on Ireland by its Protestant establishment as follows:—

Revenues of the Established Church of Ireland.

Archbishops and bishops, average income of each

£10,000

£220,000

Estates and tithes of the deans and chapters

250,000

Ecclesiastical rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates:—

Tithes

£590,450

Glebe-lands

91,137

Ministers’ money

25,000

Church-fees

250,000

956,587

Total

£1,426,587

Here is, certainly, a noble revenue for the maintenance of a little insignificant church, with barely more than half a million of hearers. The established church of Scotland, with a million and a half of followers, is now considered amply endowed, although its revenues do not exceed £234,900, or one sixth of those of Ireland. The sums expended on the established priesthood of Ireland are nearly equal to one-half the amount of the revenue paid into the Exchequer, on account of public taxes for the maintenance of an army of 30,000 men, for defraying the expense of police and justice, for the support of the local administration, for defraying the interest of the public debt of Ireland, and its proportional contribution to the exigencies of the general government. It ought never to be forgotten that the immense income lavished on a luxurious priesthood, whose duties prescribe to them charity, humility, and self-denial, is wrung from a poor distressed population, of whom hundreds perish annually from sheer want of the necessaries of life, and the vast majority of whom—so little have they been benefited by the instructions of their well-paid spiritual guides—are in such a state of ignorance and destitution that they are little better fed, clothed, and lodged than the beasts of the field!

Our next inquiry is the Number of the Clergy, among whom the revenues of the Irish Church are squandered. The policy of the church, like that of the City companies and all corporations, has been to keep their numbers as few, and render their revenues as productive as possible. Formerly there were thirty-two dioceses in Ireland; these, either by parliamentary authority or by annexing sees to others by way of commendam, have been compressed into eighteen suffragan bishoprics. Thus the work of uniting sees has been nearly as rife as that of uniting parishes. The deans and capitulary bodies are kept up as in England, though their functions are little more than nominal, and the sinecure offices and dignities appendant to them serving only to augment the otherwise redundant incomes of the priesthood. The deans and chapters are endowed in some instances with tithes, in others with lands, and in most cases with both; but their possessions are, for the most part, divided, the dean having one part alone in right of his deanery, and each member of the chapter a certain part in right of his office. Of the thirty chapters, eighteen consist of the four offices of precentor, chancellor, and archdeacon, and of prebendaries, varying, intermediately, from one, as in the case of Dromore, to twenty, as in the case of St. Patrick’s, Dublin. The chapters of Waterford and Kilfenora are without any prebends, and in the chapter of Kildare the eight prebendaries, although they have a voice in the election of a dean, yet form no constituent part of the chapter, which is composed of other officials and four canons.

The precentor, or chantor, is generally the first member of the chapter; his duties, in the old religious houses in papal times, were important and various, consisting in the care of the choir-service, in presiding over the singing men, organist, and choristers, paying their salaries, and keeping the seal of the chapter and chapter-book. In these cathedrals, where a choir-service is still maintained, of which there are only a few in Ireland, the precentor has the superintendence of the choir, but in all others it is a mere title of honour, without any duty whatever attached to the office. The same may be observed of the chancellors of cathedral churches, the treasurers, provosts, and prebendaries, many of whom are without cure or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and have nothing whatever to do for their emoluments and patronage, unless it be in taking their turn of preaching in the cathedral, and that is mostly performed by deputy.

A dignity without cure is not incompatible with a parochial benefice, and both may be holden together without any dispensation for plurality; for though the dignitaries gain possession of office by institution, they are not instituted to the cure of souls. The cure attaches not to any office of the chapter as such; yet it is to be observed that there are no fewer than two hundred and nineteen dignities and offices, to which either, by charter or other means, one or more parishes with cure have been annexed, and of which parishes the tithes and emoluments are received by the collegiate sinecurists, and the duties, where any exist, are mostly discharged by a stipendiary curate. The fortunate possessors of these plural offices and parishes being eligible to other benefices, one individual may concentrate in his own person scores of dignities, offices, and livings, and enjoy an aggregation of ecclesiastical income and patronage almost incredible.

Next let us advert to the number of the parochial clergy, consisting of all ecclesiastical rectors having cure, vicars, and perpetual curates, and of whom there are, according to Mr. Erck, exclusive of ninety-eight dignitaries having cure, one thousand and seventy-five. The assistant curates, amounting to five hundred and fifty, do not, of course, form a part of the beneficed clergy; they are only deputies, removable at pleasure, and discharging the duties, at very miserable stipends, which ought to be discharged by their principals, who receive ample remuneration. Of lay-rectors, or laymen, possessing tithes as a lay-fee, there are seven hundred and eighteen. These, not being in orders, form no part of the ecclesiastical corps; they are usually denominated impropriators, as being, according to Spelman, improperly possessed of the tithes of the church; inasmuch as it severs labour from reward,—a principle which ecclesiastics profess to repudiate, though it is notorious, the most amply endowed incumbents of the United Church of England and Ireland are as justly obnoxious to the opprobrium of being impropriators as the secular parsons—having, by the intervention of curates and other devices, unknown before the Reformation, contrived to rid themselves entirely of every particle of spiritual duty.

The whole number of beneficed parochial clergy, without including collegiate officials, is then only 1075, according to the admission of the editor of the Board of First Fruits. This diminutive phalanx one would think quite small enough, in all conscience, to monopolize the cure of the 2450 parishes of Ireland. But the fact is, the number of individuals is not so numerous by a great many. We have seen that 1701 parishes have been compressed into 517 benefices. Some parishes are both rectorial and vicarial; that is, the same parish has a rector and vicar, united in the same person, and which, we suspect, reckon two in Mr. Erck’s enumeration of 1075. Then how many are PLURALISTS? The Ecclesiastical Register informs us, page 32, one hundred and thirty-five benefices are held with other benefices by faculty, dispensation, or permission of their diocesans. This reduces the number of individuals to 940. There appear to be 587 parishes where the vicarial are united with the rectorial tithes, or where both descriptions of tithe are united in the incumbent. It is probable, we think, the entire number of rectories, vicarages, and perpetual curacies are possessed by not more than 700 individuals, who also enjoy the chief offices in cathedrals, the diocesan schools, and public institutions of a religious and literary character.

From the Ecclesiastical Register, and other sources, we collect that the number of preferments in Ireland—episcopal, collegiate, and parochial—possessed by the established clergy, is—

Sees

22

Deaneries

33

Precentorships

26

Chancellorships

22

Treasurerships

22

Archdeaconries

34

Provostships

2

Prebends and canonries

188

Rural deans

107

Vicars choral

52

Choristers

20

Choir readers and stipendiaries

12

Diocesan schools

30

Offices in consistorial courts

175

Benefices consisting of a single parish

749

Parishes compressed into 517 benefices

1701

Total of offices enjoyed by the established clergy

3195

Thus it appears there are 3195 offices shared among about eight hundred and fifty individuals, whose aggregate ecclesiastical revenue amounts to £1,426,587, averaging £1678 to each person. Such proportions between numbers, offices, and revenue are certainly without parallel. There is no example any where of 850 persons possessing, in see lands and glebes, one-eighteenth part of the soil, and claiming one-tenth of the produce of the remainder, which supports eight millions of people. No country, however debased by superstition, ever abandoned so large a portion of its real property, in addition to a tenth part of the national income, for the maintenance of a priesthood, forming less than a nine-thousandth part of the population.

It is not, however, the average income of either the Irish or English ecclesiastic that constitutes the principal abuse in their respective establishments. Although both churches might very well spare two-thirds of their aggregate revenues, and enough remain for the adequate remuneration of spiritual service, still it is not the redundancy of their united incomes that is so objectionable as the unequal and inhuman manner in which they are possessed by candidates of the same grade and pretension. We have before enlarged on this point in our exposition of the Church of England; we have there shown how masses of pay and pluralities of office are heaped on clerical sinecurists enjoying high connexions and influence; while the most useful and meritorious labourers in the ministry, divested of patronage, are kept in the most miserable poverty and dependence. Precisely the same injustice predominates in the Irish church. In the latter the grievance is more intolerable, for, in Ireland, church-patronage is chiefly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and it is invariably observed that the clergy have less regard for their brethren, and are more blindly intent on promoting their own personal and family interests than laymen.

We shall insert a tabular representation of the patronage of the Irish church; the number of parishes in Ireland is greater than appears from the subjoined statement, as is evident from the Ecclesiastical Register. But it is a point on which there is much difference of opinion, originating in the uncertain boundaries of parishes, and the extraordinary manner they have been consolidated, to serve the purposes of clerical rapacity.

Irish Church Patronage.

DIOCESES.

Patronage of Bishops.

Patronage of Crown.

Others.

Impropriate without Churches or Incumbents.

Lay

Universit

Armagh

60

13

22

5

Cashell and Emly

Clogher

34

1

2

4

Clonfert and Kilmacduagh

43

3

14

Cloyne

107

10

9

11

Cork and Ross

94

8

Derry

33

3

9

3

Down and Connor

53

12

36

10

Dromore

23

2

Dublin

144

15

16

Elphin

72

2

1

Kildare

30

27

24

Killala and Achonry

48

4

Killaloe and Kilfenora

131

10

36

17

Kilmore

33

3

2

1

Leighlin and Ferns

171

18

19

1

13

Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe

34

27

65

Meath

69

81

37

35

Ossory

76

26

30

Raphoe

15

6

3

7

Tuam and Ardagh

72

10

Waterford and Lismore

43

24

30

9

1392

293

367

21

95

Patronage of Bishops

1392

Patronage of Crown

293

Patronage of Lay

367

Patronage of University

21

2168

The Irish bishops have a far greater proportion of patronage than the English bishops: the former have the gift of 1392 livings out of 2168; the latter have only the gift of 1290 out of 11,598. The livings, too, in the gift of the Irish bishops are far more valuable. Those in the gift of the Archbishop of Cashel are worth £35,000 per annum; those in the gift of the Bishop of Cloyne, £50,000; of Cork, £30,000; and of Ferns, £30,000. In the see of Cloyne ONE living is worth £3000, one worth £2000, and three worth £1500 each. A living of £500, as we have seen, is but a middling one in Ireland, and any thing beneath it is considered very low.

The king’s ministers nominating the bishops, and these having the disposal of all the livings, with the exception of a few belonging to the Universities, lay lords, and those that are tithe free, nearly the whole of the tithes and church revenues of Ireland are in the gift of the crown. Hence we may see how discouraging was the prospect of ecclesiastical reform under Tory ministers. The Irish sees were almost in the exclusive possession of their thick-and-thin supporters, in the families of the Beresfords, the Clancartys, Balcarrases, Mayos, Northlands, Rodens, Hoaths, Kilkennys, Caledons, &c. among whom one looks in vain for a single scholar or celebrated divine. Indeed the Irish Protestant Establishment formed a convenient and almost inexhaustible fund for parliamentary corruption; and appointments to it, like those in the Colonies, being out of sight of the English public, were often made without any regard to decency. Thus a lieutenant in the navy has been made an archbishop; a member of the House of Commons, a dean; a proprietor, and it is said editor, of a newspaper, a chancellor; and an aide-de-camp at the Castle, a rich rector. Such men as Sir Harcourt Lees, the heroes of Skibbereen and Newtonbarry, and Warburton and Percy Jocelyn, having attained preferments in the church, are still more illustrative. All the Irish representative prelates voted against the Reform Bill on its first introduction. Lord MOUNTCASHEL stated, in the House of Lords, that he knew an archdeacon in Ireland who kept one of the best packs of fox-hounds in the country. Another clergyman, not seven miles distant from the former, had, also, a pack of fox-hounds, with which he regularly hunted; and he knew of a clergyman who, after his duties in the church had been performed, used to meet his brother-huntsmen at the communion-table, on the Sunday, and arrange with them where the hounds were to start for next day. Can these things be, when it is alleged by Sir Robert Peel, that the church has no support to depend upon but her “own purity?”

However, the love of sporting is not confined to the clergy of the sister kingdom. The English spirituals have also a taste for rural sports, and a good pack of fox-hounds is deemed a suitable appendage to a cure of souls, as will be seen from the following notice: “To be sold, the next presentation to a vicarage, in one of the midland counties, and in the immediate neighbourhood of one or two of the first packs of fox-hounds in the kingdom. The present annual income about £580, subject to curate’s salary. The incumbent in his 60th year.”—Morning Herald, April 15, 1830.

But it is not these matters which engage our attention; we should care little about the sporting propensities of the parsons if they would leave to the industrious the produce of their labour. So far as manners and morals are concerned, the different sects of religionists may be left to watch each other; and that they will do with the most lynx-eyed attention. Only read what Mr. Beverley has written on this subject in his “Letter to the Archbishop of York.”

“It surely is not very edifying to behold a clergyman following the hounds, and though the fox-pursuing parsons are of a different opinion, and defend the practice with orthodox arguments, yet they cannot persuade the people to agree with them; in vain do they sing a song concerning ‘manly sport—no harm,’ &c.; for their parishioners will not listen to such trash, but indignant at the indecencies of their rectors, turn away in disgust to find better examples amongst the methodists and independents.

But indecent and unpopular as is the spectacle of a fox-hunting parson, perhaps one’s bile is not a little agitated in these exhibitions, by that sort of vestiary hypocrisy with which they choose to decorate the scandal: for it seems to be a received dogma of ecclesiastical decorum, that a parson is not to hunt in a red coat; provided only the scarlet does not appear, the reverend successor of the Apostles may leap over hedge and ditch without the slightest impropriety: give these successors of the Apostles a black or dark grey jacket, a pair of white corderoy breeches, and handsome top-boots, and then you save the character of the church; but if a young priest were to give the view-holloa in a red coat, all men would be shocked, and I suspect that ere long a grand and verbose epistle would come to him from Bishopthorpe.

The same farce in clothing is kept up throughout; at balls the successors of the Apostles must appear clad in black, or any of the shades of black. Thanks, however, to the ingenuity of tailors and haberdashers, such exquisite tints have of late years been discovered in silk stockings and silk waistcoats, such delicious varieties of light black, raven black, French black, and French whites—the black has been softened into winning lavender-tints, and the white has been so dexterously made to blush a morning blush, that it requires very great ingenuity to discover a layman from a priest in a brilliant ball-room. These, however, who are more apostolical, take the bull by the horns, and venture to place black-tinted buttons on the breasts of their shirts, a mark of the priestly office not easily to be mistaken! Of such a toilet there is great hope, and it would be a shame indeed if the black-button-bearing priests did not become rich pluralists at last.”

Mr. Beverley of Beverley is such a nice connoisseur in drapery, that we suspect him of being a bit of an exquisite himself: he is evidently an intense evangelical, and, for aught we know, may be a believer in Mr. Irving’s new revelation of a “gift of tongues.”

Non-residence of the Irish Clergy.

It is a curious fact that, during the sway of the Catholic Church, no man was permitted to hold a benefice who did not perform the duties of it upon the spot, and it was left for the Reformation, which is said to have established religion in greater perfection, to entitle a man to a large income for the cure of souls in a district which he never visited. A great proportion of the Irish Bishops, Dignitaries, and Incumbents, are absentees; many of them whiling away their time on the Continent, and others dissipating their large revenues in the fashionable circles of Brighton and London. With the single exception of the Bishop of Kildare all the archbishops and bishops have each, within their respective dioceses, an episcopal residence, or see-house, with parks, chases, and demesne-lands attached. Yet they spend little or none of their time in Ireland in superintending the clergy. The families of some prelates reside constantly in England, and the only duty performed by the bishop is to cross the water in the summer months, take a peep at the “palace,” and then return to give grand dinners, and mingle in the gaieties of the metropolis, for the remainder of the year. The late Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, resided twenty years abroad, and during that time received the revenues of his rich diocese, amounting to £240,000. This Right Rev. Prelate was the intimate associate of Lady Hamilton, the kept-mistress of Lord Nelson. The bishop lived in Italy, spending his princely income, wrung from the soil and labour of Ireland, among the fiddlers and prostitutes of that debauched country. The great primate Rokeby resided at Bath, and never visited Ireland. The parochial clergy are not more exemplary. Upwards of one-third of the whole number of incumbents do not reside on their benefices. Some of them, with incomes of £5,000 or £10,000 a-year, are living in France, with their wives and families. Others live at Bath, on account of the gout. Most of them never see their parishes, deriving their incomes through the medium of agents, or of tithe-farmers, and engaging a curate at some £30 or £50 a-year to attend once on each Sunday to read prayers; often, perhaps, only to the parish clerk.

According to the Diocesan Returns, in 1819, the following was the state of the provinces, as regards parochial residence and duty:—

The province of Ulster, containing 443 parishes or unions, had 351 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Leinster, 281 parishes or unions, with 189 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Munster, 419 parishes or unions, with 281 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Connaught, 95 parishes or unions, with 65 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

Thus, in 354 parishes or unions, there was neither an incumbent resident, nor near enough to do the duty of his benefice. These returns make the number of incumbents, resident and non-resident, amount to 1240. It is unnecessary to explain, after what has been already stated, that there are not actually so many individuals. The deception results from pluralities. Every benefice with cure has an incumbent; but, as each incumbent often holds two or more benefices, or is rector and vicar of the same parish, it reduces the number of individuals to the amount previously stated, namely seven hundred.

One great excuse for the neglect of duty by the protestant clergy is that they have scarcely any duty to perform. Notwithstanding all the inducements offered by the established religion, notwithstanding its monopoly of tithes, honours, power, and emoluments, it has scarcely any followers. A protestant is as rare to be met with in Ireland, as a JEW in England. Out of a population of eight millions, there are little more than half a million communicants of the state religion. The consequence is, that the church establishment is little better than an enormous sinecure, a prodigious job, carried on for the benefit of a few hundred individuals, to the impoverishment, disunion, and degradation of all the rest of the nation. The Irish Church has been aptly compared to some Irish regiment, in which there was the whole train of officers, from the colonel downwards, but only ONEprivate. Just so with the ecclesiastical establishment; there is the whole apparatus of bishops, deans, archdeacons, prebendaries, canons, rectors, and vicars; there are all these still, and, what is better, there are all the tithes, houses, gardens, glebe lands, cathedrals, and palaces: all these remain; but the PEOPLE—those for whose benefit they were originally intended, they have adhered unflinchingly to their old communion. Why then should not the revenues and church lands follow them—the OWNERS, for whose benefit they were first granted? Why keep up twenty-two bishops where there are scarcely any parsons? or why maintain these parsons, with large endowments, when they have lost their flocks? There are scores, aye, hundreds of well paid rectors and vicars, without a single protestant hearer; there are thirteen hundred and fifty parishes, without even a church to preach in; yet in all these parishes the tithes are levied or compounded for to the utmost farthing.

The anomalous state of the Irish Church has not escaped the notice of foreigners; and in the pleasant and instructive ‘Tour of a German Prince,’ there are some curious details. “I took,” says the writer, “advantage of the acquaintance I made to day to gain more information of the actual proportion between Catholics and Protestants. I found all I had heard fully confirmed, and have gained some further details; among others, the official list of a part of the present parishes and livings in the diocese of Cashell, which is too remarkable not to send it to you, though the matter is somewhat dry, and seems almost too pedantic for our correspondence.

Catholics.

Protestants.

Thurles

has

12,000

250

Cashel

11,000

700

Clonhoughty

5,142

82

Coppowhyte

2,800

76

Killenoule

7,040

514

Boherlahan

5,000

25

Feathard

7,600

400

Kilcummin

2,400

Meckarty

7,000

80

Golden

4,000

120

Anacarty

4,000

12

Donniskeath

5,700

90

New Erin

4,500

30

In thirteen districts 78,182 Catholics and 2879 Protestants.

“Each of these districts has only one Catholic priest, but often four or five Protestant clergymen; so that on an average, there are scarcely twenty persons to each Protestant congregation. Kilcummin is the place I mentioned to you, where there is not a single parishioner, and the service, which according to law must be performed once a-year, is enacted in the ruins with the help of a Catholic clerk. In another, called Tollamane, the same farce takes place. But not a whit the less must the non-attending parishioners pay the utmost farthing of their tithes and other dues; and no claims are so bitterly enforced as those of this Christian church:—there is no pity, at least none for Catholics. A man who cannot pay the rent of the church land he farms, or his tithes to the parson, inevitably sees his cow and his pig sold, (furniture, bed, &c. &c. he has long lost,) and himself, his wife, and probably a dozen children thrust out into the road, where he is left to the mercy of that Providence who feeds the fowls of the air and clothes the lilies of the field.”—Tour in England, Ireland, France, v. ii. pp. 50-51.

Well may this lively tourist exclaim, “What an excellent contrivance is a state religion!”

Oppressiveness of the Tithe System.

Hardship and impoverishment result not less from the amount than the mode in which the ecclesiastical revenues are levied in Ireland. By the Tithe Composition Act, an attempt was made, without at all lessening the amount of the burthen, to avert the occurrence of those disgraceful scenes, which so frequently accompanied the collection of the tithe-tax. Under the authority of this statute, it has been seen, many parishes have compounded with the incumbent for tithe; but as these compositions can only be entered into for a limited term, and as the rate of them varies with the fluctuations in the value and quantity of produce, the whole kingdom may be still considered to labour under the curse of an impost, whose pressure increases with every increase of capital and industry. The expedient of compounding was early and readily adopted in the disturbed districts of Clare and Galway; and throughout the extensive districts of the dioceses of Clonfert, Kilmacduagh, and Killaloe, composition rent has continued to be promptly and willingly paid. But the measure has not been equally successful in other parts. In the county of Carlow, King’s County, Queen’s County, Kilkenny, and part of Tipperary; in fact, through the finest lands of the kingdom, composition has slowly and reluctantly advanced.

One circumstance especially deserving notice in the history of the tenth exaction; is, the abolition of tithes of agistment, which leaves tillage lands alone liable to the burthen. This selfish and partial enactment of the Irish parliament shows clearly enough how necessary it is that the different classes of society should be represented in the legislature; otherwise they are sure to be sacrificed, without regard to justice or humanity, to the exclusive advantage of the ruling power. The abolition of tithe of pasture causes the revenues of the clergy to be principally drawn from tithe of corn, and of the cattle, pigs, poultry, and potatoes of the cotter tenantry. While tithes of agistment were paid, the burden, in part, fell upon the opulent grazier,—the landed aristocracy of Ireland; but now the burden presses with disproportionate weight on the poorer cultivators of the soil. Owing to the increase in the numbers, skill, and industry of this class, the quantity of agricultural produce has been augmented a hundred fold, and in the same proportion has augmented the revenue of the church. While the Irish cultivator has been adding to his income by industry, and by the abridgment of the comforts and enjoyments of his family, he has been constrained, also, to add proportionately to the income of the Protestant priest, whose religion he does not profess, and whose intolerant dogmas long withheld from him his civil immunities.

The amount abstracted from the just rewards of industry is not the entire evil of the tithe oppression. Another class of evils results from the variety of ecclesiastical rights, and consequent variety of laws, and the interminable litigation which these laws incessantly occasion. The perplexities arising from this source are infinite, and it frequently happens the same ground is impoverished by the successive levies of the archbishop, bishop, dean and chapter, the rector and vicar. This is the case in most parts of the diocese of Clonfert, and to show the fleecing and harassing nature of the system we cannot do better than insert an extract from the letter of a clergyman and magistrate of Ireland, addressed to Mr. Secretary Stanley, and read by Lord Melbourne on the motion for the appointment of the Tithe Committee.

“The broken and irregular character of tithes, in the rust of its great antiquity, renders the variety and number of claims on the land both harassing and vexatious; the frequency of calls, and the uncertainty of receivers, are so varied and perplexing as to occasion much annoyance to the poor. There are a vast number of instances in my own parish, where one poor man, whose whole tithes annually do not amount to more than 1s. 8d. per acre and yet subject him to have his cow, sheep, pig, or horse, taken and driven to pound six times in the year for tithes, and liable, on each and every driving, to a charge of 2s. 6d. driver’s fees, besides expense of impounding, and waste of time from his labour in seeking the person duly authorised to give him a receipt. He is liable to be summoned, moreover, and decreed for vestry cess, once in the year, making annually seven calls, on account of the Church, to his little plot of ground; besides, his little holding is liable to two calls in the year for Grand Jury public money, and frequently two calls more for Crown and quit rent. Thus eleven calls are made upon his small holding in the year, besides his landlord’s rent, and for sums trifling in themselves, but perplexing and ruinous in the costs which attend them. Surely such are hardships that ought to be removed.

Throughout the diocese of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh, in which this parish is situated, the Bishop takes one-fourth of every titheable acre of land. The county is very much broken up amongst cotter tenantry, holding small plots of an acre each, with a cabin or cottage upon it. The whole diocese is compounded for at an average rate of about one shilling per acre.”—House of Lords, Dec. 15, 1831.

In England, where, in many parts, a man cannot cut a cabbage, pull a carrot, or gather a bunch of grapes, without giving notice to the parson, the system is sufficiently intolerable; but in Ireland, from the mode of collecting tithes, those evils are aggravated tenfold. The Irish clergy generally employ an agent, called a proctor, who, immediately before harvest, estimates the barrels of corn, tons of hay, or hundred weight of potatoes, he supposes are on the ground, and, charging the market price, ascertains the amount to be paid by the owner. This notable agent generally holds his session on Sunday, at a pot-house, where he meets the farmers. As the terms are seldom agreed upon at the first meeting, others follow, and the reckonings, on these occasions, are always paid by the farmers, which add not a little to their charges. The parson sometimes leases the tithes out to the proctor, at a fixed rent, like a farm; while the latter, who, in that case, is called the middle proctor, not unfrequently relets them to another. In the south, the tithe is set out and sold by public auction on the premises. And, in Connaught, it is customary to call a sale before the harvest, at which the tithe is sold to any person who chooses to collect it.

Under such a system, it is easy to conceive what the Irish must endure. Nothing escapes the vigilance of the spiritual locust, or his agent. No bog, however deep—no mountain, however high—nor heath, nor rock, whatever industry may have reclaimed, or capital fertilized—all is liable to the full penalty of having been made available to the uses of man. From the proctors and middle proctors, neither lenity nor indulgence can be expected. These men, to whom the odious office of reaping the fruits of the industry of others has been delegated, are, probably, strangers in the parish, without motive for cultivating the friendship of the people, and having farmed the tithe for a stipulated sum, it is to be expected they will collect it with the utmost rigour, in order to realize the greatest profit from their bargain. The most distressing scenes are sometimes witnessed from their relentless proceedings, and the tithes not unfrequently collected with the aid of a constabulary or military force. The half-famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food, frequently beholds the tenth part of the produce of his potatoe garden, carried off to fill the insatiable maw of clerical rapacity. “I have seen,” says Mr. Wakefield, “the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only benefactor at the pound gate. I have heard, with emotions which I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village, as the cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant pastures, whilst he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the utmost indifference.”—Statistical Account of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 466.

To spare the rich and plunder the poor is certainly not Christianity; it is more like Church of Englandism, which, by the union of church and state, has perverted the pure and charitable faith of Christ into a tremendous engine of political guilt and spiritual extortion. There is, we are assured, plenty of law in Ireland, as well as in this country, to punish injustice: there is no wrong, we are told, without a remedy; the courts of justice are open, as the hypocrites say in England, for the punishment of either magisterial or clerical delinquents. All this sounds wells on paper, or in the bloated harangues of an attorney-general; but it is mere mockery and insult when offered to the victims of oppression. Law, in both countries, is for those who can pay for it—the rich, not the poor. The poor cotter, oppressed or defrauded by the exaction of the tithe-proctor, to the value of £10, cannot buy a chance of redress in the lottery of the law for less than £60. By victory or defeat he is equally and irremediably ruined. What resource, then, have men whose possessions probably do not amount to half that sum? None. The way to courts of justice, through the impassable barrier of attorneys’ and lawyers’ fees, is over a bridge of gold; and to point out these tribunals for redress, either to English or Irish poor, or even to those moderately endowed with wealth, is, in other words, to point out to a man the shortest way by which he may bring himself to the jail and his family to the workhouse.

Proportion of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.

It has latterly become as essential a part of the system to conceal the number of followers of the Irish Protestant church, as the amount of its revenues. When the last census was taken, it had been easy to ascertain the respective proportions of Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and other Dissenters; but government, for obvious reasons, declined making such classification. The witnesses examined by parliamentary committees in 1825, evinced much diversity of opinion. Mr. O’Connell thought the Protestants of all sects did not exceed a million. Mr. Leslie Foster supposed them to amount to 1,270,000. Mr. Mason, who had spent much time in enquiries of this nature, calculated the proportion of Catholics to Protestants as 3⅙ to 1, which estimate he founded on returns from 300 parishes, or about one-eighth of the whole number. Another account, which professes to be founded on the best information, gives the following estimate:—The census made the population amount to 6,800,000; if divided into fourteenths, it was estimated one-fourteenth belonged to the established church, or 490,000 souls; Presbyterians, and other Dissenters, formed another fourteenth; so that there remained 5,820,000 Catholics. The population has since increased to at least eight millions; and, supposing the proportion continues the same, there are now 571,428 Episcopalians, an equal number of Dissenting Protestants, and 6,857,143 Catholics.

If to the Catholics and Dissenting Protestants of Ireland we add the vast body of Separatists in England, we shall find that together they form an overwhelming majority of the population of the two kingdoms; and that, therefore, the existing Protestant establishment, having only a minority of the people attached to its communion, is not, according to the maxim of PALEY, entitled to the support and protection of government. One writer makes the excess of non-conformists over the conformists, in both countries, to amount to four millions; but as there is no certain data whereby this question can be accurately decided, we decline offering an opinion on the precise numerical snperiority.

How, in Ireland, the followers of the established church have come to bear so small a proportion, and of the church of Rome so large a one, can only be accounted for by the observation of a celebrated writer, that you may persecute a doctrine up to any number of adherents; and the converse—pamper it down to any number. The selfish and intolerant spirit which so long swayed the destinies of the sister kingdom, by drawing a broad line of distinction betwixt the dominant and proscribed faith, rendered defection from the latter next to impossible. A sense of common injustice cemented more strongly the bonds of union among the Catholics, and gave to their civil disabilities the semblance of a martyrdom, which no one, by apostacy, could escape, without suspicion of being influenced by sordid considerations. Hence, a close and indignant sentiment was fostered, sufficient not only to withstand the claims of the reformed worship, but the influence of property, and the coercive power of authority. Fidelity to the religion of their fathers was identified with fidelity to their countrymen; and no one could secede, without being exposed to the double opprobrium of national treachery and selfish hypocrisy. It follows, that the sectarian missionaries, spread through Ireland, have had little success among the Catholics, and the proselytes they have made have been chiefly picked up in the less guarded folds of the established pastors.

The Catholic religion, however, has not only kept its relative position, but has actually gained ground; for, during the last half century, the proportion of Protestants has declined. In 1766, the Protestants formed nearly one-half the population; in 1822, they formed only one-seventh; while the Catholics had more than quadrupled from 1766 to 1822, the Protestants had scarcely doubled. This striking fact will be more evident from the following statement, drawn up partly from parliamentary returns, and partly from the estimate of Dr. Beaufort, and other well-informed individuals.

Year 1766.

Year 1792.

Year 1822.

Protestants

544,865

522,023

980,000

Catholics

1,326,960

3,261,303

5,820,000

Total

1,871,725

3,783,326

6,800,000

The increase of Protestants from 1792 to 1822 is chiefly ascribed to the exertions of the Methodists. It affords a striking illustration of the efficacy of tithes, and large ecclesiastical endowments, in promoting religion; for it is clear, from the above, that the state worship has declined, in spite of its enormous emoluments. Those who are zealous for the promotion of religion, ought not to defend either the Irish or English establishment; for, under both branches of the united church, the number of their members has relatively decreased. Pure Christianity, indeed, can never flourish under the auspices of wealth and power; its precepts and origin are in perfect contrast to the titles, pomps, and vanities of the world. It has no connexion with bishops, nor courts, nor palaces; it was cradled in indigence; it flourished from persecution, it denounced the cant of hypocrites, and never allied itself with the Scribes and Pharisees of authority. They may, indeed, baptize state religions under the name of Christianity, but it has little to do with them; they are only heathen institutions, and their followers more the disciples of Mahomet than of Jesus Christ.

Little more than one-fourteenth of the population of Ireland belongs to the state religion, yet the teachers of this fraction of the community claim one-tenth of the produce that feeds the whole EIGHT MILLIONS! Surely if church property was intended for the maintenance of religion, it was intended for the religion of the PEOPLE, not for an insignificant minority of them.

But the misappropriation of ecclesiastical wealth is far from being the extent of the injustice sustained by the Irish and their real pastors. The important statute of the Session of 1829 was, no doubt, a great boon to the aristocracy and gentry, by qualifying them for seats in parliament and civil offices; still, as various penal statutes in force against the priesthood were left unrepealed by the Catholic Relief Act, they continue to sustain great hardship and opprobrium. Some of the penal acts remaining in force are very unjust and even cruel in their provisions: for instance, if a Catholic priest from inadvertency or misinformation marry two Protestants, or, a Protestant and Catholic, he is liable to a penalty of £500, or, according to a decision of an Orange Chief Justice, he is liable to suffer DEATH. The clergy are not allowed to officiate in any place with steeple or bells; they are prohibited from appearing abroad in the costume of their order; they cannot be guardians, nor receive the personal endowment of any Catholic chapel, school-house, or other pious or charitable foundation. If they do not disclose the secrets of auricular confession, which their religious tenets prohibit them from disclosing, they are liable to imprisonment; if a Jesuit enter the kingdom he may be banished for life, and any person entering such religious order is guilty of a misdemeanor. No Catholic in Ireland is allowed for his defence to have arms in his house, unless he have a freehold of £10 a-year or £300 personal property. In Cork, Drogheda, and other cities and towns they continue to be ineligible to be members of the municipal corporations of those places. And, though a Catholic is liable to parish cess, he is disabled from voting at vestries on questions relating to repairs of churches. Lastly, no Catholic of the United Kingdom is eligible to the offices of Lord Chancellor, Keeper or Commissioner of the Great Seal, Lord-lieutenant, Deputy or Governor of Ireland, or High Commissioner in Scotland; nor to any office in the ecclesiastical courts; in the universities; the colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester.

The Catholic clergy are in number between 2000 and 3000, constantly residing among their flocks and ministering to their spiritual comforts. From the absence of any permanent provision for maintenance, and the general poverty of their followers, they live in indigence and hardship. Their chief dependence is on fees for burials, marriages, and christenings, gifts on confessions, and bequests for the celebration of masses for the repose of the dead. Hence they have seldom the means of comfortable subsistence, are often without a decent place for religious worship, are overpowered by calls for religious exertion, live in misery, and die at last without ever tasting those emoluments which formerly belonged to their church, and are now showered on the Jocelyns, Warburtons, Plunkets, Beresfords, Magees, Trenches and Knoxes, of the Establishment.

Although Dissenters are equally with Catholics separatists from the establishment, they have been much more favourably treated by government and the legislature. The ministers of the Presbyterians, the Seceders, and Protestant Dissenters, are in fact so many pastors paid by the State receiving annually large sums for their maintenance from the Irish civil list and from grants by parliament. The Regium Donum was granted by William III. in the year 1690, to the Presbyterians; it first amounted to £1200, and was augmented by George III. in 1784, to £2200 per annum. In 1792, by authority of the King’s letter, £5000 was charged on the civil list to be annually paid to Protestant Dissenting ministers, and £500 more to that class of Dissenters denominated Seceders. The annual grant from parliament to the Dissenters commenced in the session of 1804. It first amounted to £4,160, and ever since has been gradually augmenting: in 1816, it amounted to £12,228, in 1825, to £13,894, and in 1831, the sum of £14,860 was voted. The total amount of the annual sums which have been paid to the ministers of the three denominations of Dissenters in Ireland, by payments out of the civil list, and by grants out of public taxes, is £751,452: 10: 11/4.

So it is plain the Irish Dissenters have been receiving tribute from the State, if not in tithes, in something else. How they reconcile this provision with their doctrinal profession of the independence of their pastors of all secular interference and support we cannot affirm. There has been some discussion among them, we know, on this very point, and we shall be curious to learn whether profit or principle will triumph.

Management of the First Fruits Fund.

With so large a portion of the national wealth placed at the disposal of the clergy, the very least we might have expected the Legislature to do was to enforce the payment of all the taxes to which by law the Church was liable. We have already seen by what artifice the English ecclesiastics avoided contributing their full share to the First Fruits Fund; we shall now show that a similar but more flagrant evasion of their pecuniary obligations has been long tolerated on the part of the Irish clergy. Having already explained the nature of the annats (page 65) it will be only necessary here to remark that a similar usage formerly prevailed in both England and Ireland; with this difference, that the Irish clergy paid in lieu of the tenth, only a twentieth of the annual value of each benefice to the Pope. In the reign of Henry VIII. when the papal rights were extinguished, an act passed for annexing to the crown the revenue arising from first fruits and tenths, and the same provision was made, as in England, for ascertaining, from time to time, their real annual value. This arrangement continued till the year 1710: when Queen Anne, acting under the advice of her Tory ministers, remitted the twentieths to the clergy, rich and poor, without distinction, and gave the first fruits, alone, to form a fund for building churches, purchasing glebes and glebe-houses, augmenting poor livings, and other ecclesiastical improvements. The management of the fund was vested in trustees, consisting of the higher dignitaries of the church, and principal law-officers of the crown, who were empowered to “search out the just and true value” of the benefices of which they were to levy the first year’s income from each incumbent who came into possession. The valuation under which the first fruits were levied when they were given to the trustees, was the same as in the time of Henry VIII. and was not only very low, but did not include more than two-thirds of the benefices of Ireland. It was of course the duty of the Board of First Fruits to promote the objects of the fund, to have remedied the inaccuracies, and supplied the omissions in the original valuation; but this has never been done, and up to this day the first fruits are levied according to the defective valuation at the time of the Reformation. Owing to this mode of procedure, instead of the produce of the first fruits being the real worth of every vacant benefice and dignity, it is a mere nominal sum paid by the clergy. The bishop of Derry, with a revenue of £12,000, pays only £250 first fruits; the see of Clogher, worth £7000, pays only £350; and the see of Cloyne, worth £6000, pays only £10: 10. It is calculated that, at a fair valuation of Irish benefices, omitting those under £150 a-year, the first fruits would produce £40,000 a-year: whereas, in the ten years ending January, 1830, they produced only £5,142: 15.; from which £740 was to be deducted for salaries. During this period of ten years, fifteen bishoprics and four archbishoprics had become vacant, and the successors thereto liable to the payment of first fruits.

Can it be believed that the Imperial Parliament would sanction such an evasion of their duty by the rich clergy of Ireland? Such, however, has been the fact. Sir JOHN NEWPORT, every session for the last twelve years, has been making motions to establish the integrity of the First Fruits Fund; but his laudable endeavours have seldom met with the support of more than thirty or forty honourable members. But this is not the worst trait in the proceedings of the Collective Wisdom of the Nation: they have actually voted large sums out of the pockets of the people for the very objects for which this fund was appropriated. In the twenty years ending in 1822, the grants of parliament to the trustees of First Fruits in Ireland, towards building new churches, glebe-houses, and purchasing glebes, amounted to £686,000. Thus has £34,300 a-year been levied on this tax-paying aristocratic gulled nation, merely to save the richest church in the world from contributing to its own necessities. How much more has been levied by parochial taxation on the unfortunate population of Ireland, for the repair of churches and cathedrals, we have not the means of estimating. It is well known the sums raised for this purpose constitute one of the many grievances of the sister kingdom, the hardship of which is aggravated by the Catholics being excluded from voting in parish vestries when the church-cess is imposed. Had the Commissioners of First Fruits done what the law not only authorized, but required them to do, there would have been no need of church-rates, nor grants from parliament. Why the Commissioners have not done their duty and made a fair valuation of benefices is manifest enough; they are the patrons, holders, or expectants of large preferments, and a just valuation would be a tax upon THEMSELVES! Ought, however, “the Guardians of the Public Purse” to have sanctioned this selfish breach of trust? Ought they, whose business is to watch over the interests of the people, yearly to have voted away the public money, for objects for which there was already a legal and adequate provision? No innovation, nothing untried was to be attempted; the only measure requisite was that they should enforce the law of the land, for which, on other occasions, they profess such profound veneration. It is to the deficiencies of First Fruits, and the consequent non-residence of the clergy, for want of parsonage-houses and glebes, that the decay of Protestantism has been ascribed by their servile defenders: hence a regard to the interests of our “holy religion” one would have thought a sufficient motive for our virtuous representatives to interfere.

The most curious incident regarding the annats is the result of the endeavours of Mr. Shaw Mason, the Remembrancer of First Fruits in Ireland, to obtain a more authentic valuation. When the subject began to excite attention, this gentleman, the words of whose patent empowered him “to collect, levy, receive, and examine the just and true value of first fruits,” preferred a memorial to the Board, setting forth his authority and expressing his willingness to exercise it as his duty required. The announcement caused not a little alarm, the four archbishops at the time not having paid in their arrears. A report was made to the local government, who, after referring the matter to the attorney and solicitor generals for their opinions, intimated to Mr Mason if he persevered in his design of enforcing the payment of First Fruits at their real value, they would deprive him of his patent office, which he held at the pleasure of the Crown. The subject has been subsequently revived by the marquis of Anglesey, but with no better success; Messrs. Blackburn and Crampton, the attorney and solicitor generals of Ireland, having delivered an opinion in accordance with that previously given by lord Plunket—namely, “that the crown is not now entitled to re-value any benefice of which a valuation has heretofore been made and certified.”

So the matter rests; the rich clergy enjoy, undiminished, their princely revenues, and the public remains liable to the burthen of contributing towards the purchase of glebes and houses for Irish parsons, many of whom have already half a dozen houses, residing in none of them, and 4000 acres of glebe.

Promotions in the Irish Church.

An important document was laid before the House of Commons in the session of 1831, (Parl. Paper No. 328.) It is a return made on the subject of the First Fruits in Ireland, containing a statement of the wealth and other information connected with that establishment. From the information spread over its 134 pages, is given the following abridgement of facts.

Since the month of August, 1812, to which date the returns go back, we find that there were 26 promotions, or translations, to the bishoprics, thus:—Lord John George Beresford, archbishop of Armagh, in 1822, having been raised to the see of Clogher only in 1819, and to the archbishopric of Dublin in 1820; Percy Jocelyn to the see of Clogher in 1819, and Lord Robert Tottenham to the same see in 1822; William Magee to the see of Raphoe in 1819, and William Bissett to the same see in 1822; Nathaniel Alexander to the see of Meath in 1823; Richard Mant to the see of Down and Connor in 1823; no episcopal promotion in Derry; ditto in Kilmore; John Leslie to the see of Dromore in 1812, and James Saurin to the same see in 1819; Lord John George Beresford to the archiepiscopal see of Dublin in 1820, and William Magee to the same in 1822; in Kildare no episcopal promotion; Robert Fowler to the see of Ossory in 1813; Lord Robert Tottenham to the sees of Leighlin and Ferns in 1820, and Thomas Elrington to the same sees in 1822; Richard Lawrence to the sees of Cashel and Emly in 1822; Thomas Elrington, in 1820, to the see of Limerick, and John Jebb to the same in 1822; hon. R. Bourke to the see of Waterford in 1813; in Cork no episcopal promotion; Charles M. Warburton from Limerick to Cloyne in 1820, and John Brinkley to the same see in 1826; Richard Mant to the see of Killaloe in 1820; Alexander Arbuthnot to the same see in 1823; and the hon. R. Ponsonby in 1828; Power-le-Poer Trench to the archbishoprick of Tuam and see of Ardagh in 1819; John Leslie, in 1819, to the see of Elphin; in Clonfert no episcopal promotion; in Killala no episcopal promotion.

It will be seen at once that these names are principally those of aristocratical houses, or of families possessed of parliamentary interest; perhaps the only one of the whole in which such interest did not influence the selection is that of Dr. Brinkley, who was elevated to the see on account of his great talent.

The yearly incomes of the archbishops are stated to be—Armagh, £15,080 : 15 : 6; Tuam, £5,548 : 19 : 11; Cashel, £3,500 and upwards, while of Dublin no return is made; of the others, Clogher is returned £9,000 late currency; Derry, £10,000 and upwards, late currency; Meath, £5,815 : 14 : 5; Raphoe, £5,379 : 14 : 1; Leighlin and Ferns, £5000 to a fraction; Ossory, £3000 to a fraction; Dromore, £4,863 : 3 : 5; Waterford, £5000 exact money; Cork, £3000 ditto; Limerick (renewal fines, nearly as much more, not included) £2,915 : 19 : 81/2; Cloyne, £2000 “and upwards at the least;” Killala, £4,600; from the dioceses in Tuam there is no return made, “as there is no record of the value of the several bishopricks and dignitaries of the province in the registrar’s office.”

A curious fact observable throughout the return is, the number of individuals of the same name as the bishop who had the good luck to get into livings soon after his attainment of the episcopal dignity; for example:—

Knox in possession of Derry at the commencement of these returns; then follow—J. Spencer Knox, June, 1813, rectory of Fahan, £360 a-year; August same year, hon. Charles Knox, rectory of Urney, £700 a-year; June, 1814, W. Knox, rectory of Upper Brandony, £396 : 18 : 6 a-year; same date, hon. Edm. Knox, rectory of Tamlught O’Crilly, no amount specified, but 564 acres of church land in the city and county of Londonderry; James Spencer Knox (again) two more rectories, Magheras and Kilnonaghan, £1,365 : 7 : 71/2 per annum, and 926 acres of church land; April, same year, Wm. Knox, rectory of Fahan, £360 a-year; October, same year, William (the same perhaps) Knox, rectory of Tamlaghtard, £425 per annum; August, 1821, W. Knox (again!) rectory of Clonleigh, £840 a-year, and 427 acres of church land; October, 1822, W. Knox (the fifth time), rectory of Ballinascreen, £623 : 1 : 61/2 and 543 acres; and, finally, in June, 1830, the last presentation returned Edmund J. Knox, rector of Killown, £160 a-year. Altogether, the Knoxes have got since 1812 (mention is not made in these returns of what they had before) £5,230 : 7 : 8 per annum, and 3,555 acres of land, besides the annual income of one of which no return is made. There are two Knoxes in Dromore with 1,082 acres.

W. Magee, see of Raphoe, 1819, May, 1820, John Magee, rectory and vicarage of Mevagh, £375 a-year; July, 1825, John Magee again, prebend of Killyman, £276 : 18 : 51/2, and 450 acres. Let us here follow his lordship to the see of Dublin, whither he was translated in 1822. W. Magee, vicarage of Finglas, March, 1823, no annual value stated; April, 1826, T. P. Magee, rectory and vicarage of Inch, and vicar of Kilgorman, £365 : 9 : 41/2 a-year; T. P. Magee, December, 1826, prebend of Tipperkiven, £127 : 10, and 78 acres; T. P. Magee (third time), same month and year, curacy of St. Michael, Dublin, no amount stated; May, 1829, T. P. Magee (fourth), prebend of St. John’s, no value stated; January, 1830, W. Magee, rectory of Dunganstown, no value returned; April, 1830, T. P. Magee (fifth time), prebend of Wicklow, so much talked of, value not stated. T. P. Magee seems either a very fortunate gentleman, or the brightest ornament of the church, judging from the number and rapidity of his promotions, for in addition to those conferred upon him by his father, we find him appointed, in April, 1830, archdeacon of Kilmacduagh.

Waterford and Lismore.—Hon. Richard Bourke to the see in 1813; we have, in Feb. 1817, Hon. George Bourke, a prebend and rectory; in Sept. 1819, the same individual to two rectories and two vicarages, value £471 : 14; a third time, in Aug. 1819, to the prebend and rectory of Leskan, no value stated; again in December, same year (for although the “Hon.” is here dropped, it is evidently the same favoured gentleman), to the prebendary and rectory of Kilgobenet, no value stated, and yet a fifth time, in August, 1827, to a precentorship and a rectory, value £1,569 : 4 : 7 per annum. There is also the Hon. Joseph Bourke in October, 1829, to a chantorship, value not stated.

In Cork the Hon. R. Laurence was in possession in 1812, since which the promotions of the St. Laurences have been between three individuals: the treasurership in 1815; a vicarage, June, 1818, £461 : 10s. : 8d.; a rectory and three vicarages in the same month and year (not the same person, however), value £1,365 : 17s. : 7d. per annum; a vicarage, in June, 1823, £461 : 10 : 2; at this time Edward made way for Robert, and got instead, three months after, a prebend and four rectories, value £1,162 : 10 : 8 a year, making “a difference” of £700 per annum in his favour; May, 1825, a vicar choralship; and July, 1826, a rectory and vicarage, value not given; in the diocese of Ross, attached to that of Cork, there are ten promotions of the St. Laurences, the value of four of which, the only ones stated, is £1435 per annum.

Kildare.—Dr. Lindsay, in possession of the see in 1812. June, 1815, Charles Lindsay, prebend, rectory, and vicarage of Harristown, and second canonry of St. Bridget’s, £220: April, 1828, Charles Lindsay (again), archdeaconry, value not stated, and March, 1823, Charles Lindsay (fourth time,) canonry of St. Bridget’s, value not stated.

Ossory.—R. Fowler to the see in 1812; in April, 1824, Luke Fowler gets a union, consisting of a prebend, four rectories, and four vicarages, value annually £874 : 4 : 3; and in March, 1828, Luke Fowler gets two more vicarages, no value stated.

Ferns and Leighlin.—Thomas Elrington to the see in 1821. Dates of the promotions of H. P. Elrington: July, 1823, a prebend and vicarage, no value stated: October, 1824, a precentorship, rectory, and vicarage, £1,200 a year; February, 1824, three vicarages and a rectory, £609 : 4. : 7. per annum.

In 1819 we find Power le Poer Trench in the sees of Tuam and Ardagh; then follow, November, 1820, Hon. C. P. Trench, a rectory and vicarage, £461 : 10 : 9; November, 1821, ditto, an archdeaconry; May, 1825, ditto, a prebendary: same date, W. le Poer Trench two rectories, value £315 : 4 : 7; and October, 1830, ditto, a rectory and vicarage, no value stated, but 523 acres of church land.

In Killala and Achonry the Verschoyles are numerous enough to justify a suspicion that they are related to the diocesan; there is one with six vicarages at one promotion; he has also an archdeaconry, a provostship, a prebend, and a vicarage; another of the same name, with a “sen.” attached to it, has four vicarages and a prebend, value £949 : 16 : 5 per annum, and 727 acres of church lands.

Meath.—N. Alexander to the see, 1823; James Alexander to the rectory and vicarage of Killucan, 1828.

R. Mant, Down and Connor, 1823; R. M. Mant, archdeacon, 1828; R. M. Mant (the same), vicarage of Billay, 1823.

In Dromore, James Saurin, to the see in 1819; November, 1821, Lewis Saurin, rectory of Morin; and July, 1827, James Saurin, vicarage of Seagor, £500 a year.

Cloyne.—Bishop Warburton was translated from Limerick, in 1812, and in March, 1822, his second gift of a living went to Charles Warburton, to the value of £323 : 1.; 61/2. annually.

In 1820, Richard Mant was appointed to the see of Killaloe and Kilfenora; a promotion of R. M. Mant is found, three rectories and two vicarages, value £498 : 8 : 2 in July, 1821.

Even a cursory glance at these returns shows the reader how numerous in the church are the Beresfords: of that name there are an archbishop and a bishop; and in the dioceses, six in number, where they chiefly abound, they possess not less than fourteen livings, of which only four have their value annexed, amounting to £1,857 : 11 : 2; and 64,803 acres of land!!

The other names which occur most frequently beside those we have stated are Tottenham, Stopford, Ottiwell Moore, Porter, St. George, Pakenham, Langrishe, Brabazon, Alexander, Hamilton, Pomeroy, Stewart, Torrens, Ponsonby, Wingfield, Dawson, Montgomery, Bernard, and Brooke.

We subjoin the summary of the returns: from which it appears—

1st. That between the month of August, 1812, and the date of this return, 1,383 spiritual promotions, comprehending the same number of benefices, have taken place within the several dioceses in Ireland.

2d. That the 1,383 benefices, to which promotions have been so made, contain 353 dignities, including the archbishoprics and bishopricks, and 2,061 parishes, &c.

3d. That 297 of the aforesaid dignities, and 405 parishes have been taxed, and are paying first fruits to the amount of £9,947 : 11 : 31/2; and that the remainder of said dignities and parishes are either exempted from payment, under the statute of Elizabeth, or have never been taxed and put in charge.

4th. That valuations have been made, under the Tithe Composition Act, in 1,194 of the above-mentioned parishes, to the annual amount of £303,620 : 0 : 61/2.

5th. That 1,034 of the said parishes have glebes annexed to them, amounting to 82,645 acres; and that the see lands on promotions occurring amount to 410,430 acres.

6th. That the total number of acres contained in both glebe and see lands, as referred to in this return, amount to 493,075 acres; and

7th. That the total number of acres belonging to the several sees in Ireland, with the exception of the dioceses of Down and Connor, Raphoe and Dromore, amount to 489,141 acres; the pecuniary values of which have not yet been officially ascertained.

Intolerance towards Dissenters and Roman Catholics.

Before concluding our account of the United Church of England and Ireland, we cannot help shortly adverting to the slow steps by which religious toleration has been established in this country. Looking back to the history of the Dissenters, we see with what difficulty freedom of thought has been wrung from the prosecuting grasp of what is considered a reformed Establishment. It was not till the Revolution of 1688 that the public worship of the Dissenters was tolerated; and the Act of Toleration at that period required them to take certain oaths and subscribe to the doctrinal articles of the Church of England. The same act, so much extolled, requires the places of worship to be registered, and the doors kept unlocked during the time of service. Even liberty of worship, under these suspicious and odious restrictions, it was subsequently attempted to abridge. In the latter part of Queen Anne’s reign, an act passed, called the Occasional Conformity Bill, making it a crime in any person, in any office under government, entering a meeting-house. Another bill, denominated the Schism Bill, passed in 1714, suffered no Dissenter to educate his own children, but required them to be put into the hands of a Church of Englandist, and forbad all tutors and schoolmasters being present at any dissenting place of worship.

The last attempt upon this body was the memorable bill of Lord Sidmouth in 1810. The meditated encroachment upon their liberties was worthy of the sinister statesman from whom it emanated. The Dissenters, to their immortal honour, rushed forward at once to repel this aggression on their rights. Had they suffered their ministers to be placed at the mercy of the Quarter Sessions, the magistrates, no doubt, would not only have judged of their fitness for the ministry of the Gospel, but also of their fitness for the ministry of the Boroughmongers.

This disgraceful spirit of legislation is now only matter for history. The repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts and the Catholic Relief Act have scarcely left any trace of the formidable penal code which, for a long time, interdicted to a large portion of the community not only the enjoyment of their civil immunities, but the free disposal of their persons and property. Both Dissenters and Roman Catholics may still complain of not being eligible to fill the office of lord chancellor, or be a member of the privy council; they may complain of being excluded from the national universities, and may think it a hardship in case they fill any judicial, civil, or corporate office, that they cannot appear in their official costume, nor with the insignia of their office at their own places of worship; but these are trifling grievances, scarcely worth mentioning. They are subject to no test on account of religious belief; and it may be now truly said that, with the exception of JEWS and openly professing INFIDELS, the honours and advantages of the social state—so far, at least, as spiritual dogmas are concerned—are fairly opened to every candidate.

For this salutary triumph we have been indebted solely to secular wisdom, not to any generous concession or enlightenment proceeding from our established instructors. The Church has always shown itself more tenacious of its monopoly than even the Aristocracy. Of the lofty tone of intolerance maintained by some of our high dignitaries, to a recent period, we have a rather amusing instance in the conduct of DR. KIPLING, the late Dean of Peterborough, and which we shall shortly relate. The Rev. Mr. Lingard, the distinguished Roman Catholic historian, had, it seems, in his Strictures on Professor Marsh’s “Comparative View,” &c. used the words “new Church of England” once, and oftener “the modern Church of England.” To consider the Church of England “new” or “modern” appeared a mortal offence in the eyes of Dean Kipling. He wrote a furious letter to Mr. Lingard; quoted a passage from Hawkins; and threatened to prosecute him if he did not, within a limited time, prove what the Dean intimated it was impossible for him to prove. Whether the Dean afterwards relented, or whether Mr. Lingard proved that the Church of England, as being the offspring or daughter of the Church of Rome, which, in many respects, she so much resembles, was “new,” we are ignorant. Did our limits permit, we would insert the Very Rev. Dean’s loving epistle. It would show what a meek, gentle, Christian spirit may still rankle in the hearts of some of our church dignitaries. It would show to what expedients these worthies would resort to uphold their faith, or, more correctly, their temporalities, were they not restrained by the march of philosophy and the public mind. It is impossible to read Dean Kipling’s letter without feeling persuaded that, had Mr. Lingard had no better barrier for his personal safety than the tolerant spirit of the writer, he might still be liable to be hung up by the middle, with an iron chain, and roasted before a slow fire, according to the orthodox piety of olden time.

Men ought always to set their faces against prosecution for opinions, whether instituted under pretence of heresy, sectarianism, Judaism, or even infidelity. Under any of these forms it is the same mischievous and dogmatical principle. What difference, for instance, is there in the principles of a prosecution instituted at this day for Judaism or infidelity, and a Popish prosecution instituted in the reign of Queen Mary on account of the real presence. In both cases difference of opinion is combated by corporeal infliction; the Papist punished by fire, the modern intolerant by fine, imprisonment, or civil disability. The difference in the punishment makes no difference in the motive; in both cases it is combating mind by physical force, and he who employs such a weapon is as deeply immersed in the night of Popery, as Bishop Bonner, who laboured to convert the miserable victims of his cruelty by a vigorous application of birch to the posteriors.

The ingenuous mind revolts from the idea of maintaining opinions by force: to say that any class of opinions shall not be impugned, that their truth shall not be called in question, is at once to declare that these opinions are infallible, and that their authors cannot err. What can be more egregiously absurd and presumptuous? It is fixing bounds to human knowledge, and saying that men cannot learn by experience; that they can never be wiser in future than they are to day. The vanity and folly of this is sufficiently evinced by the history of religion and philosophy. Great changes have taken place in both; and what our ancestors considered indisputable truths their posterity discovered to be gross errors. To continue the work of improvement, no dogmas, however plausible, ought to be protected from investigation; and the only security of the present generation against the errors of their progenitors, is modestly to admit that, in some things, they may possibly yet be mistaken.

The Papists are not the only class of religionists obnoxious to the reproach of uncharitable tenets. HUME justly remarks that toleration is not the virtue of priests of any denomination; and this is amply confirmed by the history of the Scottish, Romish, and English churches. They have all shed blood, tortured, and punished, when circumstances gave them an ascendancy. The reason is obvious. Religion is more the result of feeling than of understanding; and it may be expected that its most intense professors should be more prompt to use the vulgar weapons suggested by passion and violence, then listen to the dictates of reason and humanity.

Crisis of the Irish Church at the close of 1831.

In Ireland ecclesiastical oppression appears to have reached its term of duration. When a people become unanimous, their fiat is omnipotent and without appeal. It is this which will abase the usurpations of the Boroughmongers, and the same power has decided the fate of the Irish Protestant clergy. At the time we are writing there is all but a national insurrection against the tithe system. In Queen’s County, in Kilkenny, Clare, and Tipperary, the resistance to clerical oppression is nearly unanimous—and the spirit is rapidly spreading to other counties. The incomes of many of the clergy have become merely nominal; instead of seizing and selling the produce of others, they are compelled, as a means of temporary subsistence, to bring their own domestic chattels under the hammer of the auctioneer. Yet the law is in their favour; the courts have power to decree and the sheriffs to seize the goods of the refractory. But who will buy—who dare bid at a tithe auction? There is the rub. Laws and acts of parliament are empty sounds—they are mere “ink and parchment unless guaranteed by public opinion.” The police, the magistracy, and an army of 30,000 men are powerless against six millions united.

Ministers, finding the battle is lost, have brought the subject before parliament. But it may be doubted whether their views are yet commensurate with the vastness of the undertaking. The Protestant church may be considered virtually dissolved; in fact and opinion it is gone. It has fallen, not so much from its secular oppression as its monstrous incongruities, and from its failing to answer one object—moral, social, or political—for which a church was ever established and supported. A composition for tithe, for the benefit of the priesthood, is out of the question; nothing remains but a general commutation with the landed interest for the benefit of the public—we say the public, because the fee simple of church property is not in the clergy, but in the community at large. The example of Scotland must be followed and improved upon. An equal provision or NONE for the pastors of all sects, a provision for the poor and for popular education, are the fragments to be seized out of the wreck of the establishment. At all events, in the approaching transition, the tithes must not be suffered to slip into the rents of an absentee proprietary. No! Ireland must have the benefit of the TWO MILLIONS now spent in other climes. It would clothe her nakedness, reclaim her wastes, appease her hunger, and civilize her generous but yet barbarous population.

A system like that described in preceding pages could not, by possibility, be lasting. It contained within itself the seeds of destruction. Yet it has been long and obstinately persevered in through midnight outrage, assassination, and massacre. To enforce this abominable oppression 26,000 persons have been butchered in twentys and tens within the last thirty years. Surely this hecatomb of victims is large enough to appease the Moloch of ecclesiastical cupidity. Horrible as the system has been, the mere proposition for reform has been delayed to the twelfth hour. So long as the people only suffered, their cries were unheeded. But the clergy themselves are now the victims; they have lost their incomes; they did very well without churches and congregations, but they cannot do without tithes; so the legislature flies to their relief. The millions pleaded in vain, but their handful of oppressors is listened to. Is this justice? No! it is only fear and selfishness. Nevertheless, like good Christians, we must pardon injuries—forget the past—and provide for a better futurity.

While we fervently hope to see the condition of Ireland improved by the cultivation of her vast resources, by the improvement of her laws and magistracy, by the annihilation of factious interests, and by a provision for her destitute poor, still we cannot help entering our protest against the repeal of the UNION. Had not the decree against the Boroughmongers gone forth, we might have embraced such an alternative; but as the days of the Oligarchy are numbered, we can see no good reason for separating the destinies of Ireland from those of England. It is useless to disguise—the ultimate object sought by the Repealers is the erection of Ireland into an independent state under the presidentship, kingship, or something else of the “Liberator:” but men, we trust, are too enlightened to be ridden over rough-shod, either by the wiles of priests, of mendicant patriots, or military adventurers. We do not inquire what individuals—but what the people would gain by this revolution? From Britain it would sever the right arm of her power; and what advantages would Ireland reap by a separate existence? She does not possess, within herself, the elements to constitute an united, prosperous, and enlightened community. Supposing, for a moment, she escaped a century of civil war, and forthwith passed under the yoke of the “ex-king of Kerry,” with a deplorably ignorant population for his lieges—a fanatical, but richly endowed priesthood, as they would be with the lands and tithes of the Protestant establishment—for the servile instruments of his sovereignty—what a spectacle would she present! Under such a regime, it is easy to discern insuperable obstacles to every social improvement. For ages she would be no better under her new autocrat, than Portugal under Don Miguel, or Naples under the sway of a Bourbon. Every sincere well-wisher to the greatness and happiness of England and Ireland must deplore the idea of dismemberment: united, they may be a source of mutual light and power; dissevered, they would be the luminary of day and lamp of night struck from their orbits. Such an event holds out no remedy for any specific evil; whatever measures for the good of Ireland could be effected by the senate of College-green, may be effected by the reformed parliament of the united kingdom; and this without the delay, clash, and conflict inseparable from rival legislatures. A dissolution, therefore, of the empire cannot be sought as the mean of public good, but as a mere stalking-horse to selfish aggrandisement.

Under an enlightened general government, England and Ireland may pull together for the mutual advantage of both, and, we trust, by speedy and effective reforms, so unfortunate a catastrophe as a legislative separation will be averted. It cannot be forgotten how Ireland was governed by her own parliament—the most corrupt, selfish, and ignorant set of legislators that ever assembled between four walls. For what then should it be revived? The true policy for tranquillizing the country and disarming faction is obvious; remove grievances and confer benefits. Instead of burthening the yet struggling manufactures and agriculture of the Irish with additional taxes, as was sought to be done by the Wellington ministry, a resource ought to be sought in the crown-lands of Ireland, and in the wasted estates of the Church, in the million of neglected acres possessed by absentee bishops, and in the million and more worth of land and tithe possessed by the collegiate bodies and nonresident incumbents. Here is the panacea for cementing the UNION, producing contentment, and supplying the wants of an impoverished Exchequer.

The besotted tyranny which has impeded the prosperity of Ireland will hardly be credited by posterity. Her population is only half-civilized; in religion, manners, and domestic habits, no better than the rabble of the Peninsula; while her lands in whole districts are as little cultivated as the wilds of Tartary. We do not allude to the bog and mountain wastes; and these, in great part, continue such from an obstinate legislation which tolerates, year after year, the remains of baronial tenures;—but would it be believed that there is, or was, so recently as 1821, a tract of country in the south of Ireland, occupying 800 square miles of territory, in which there is not a single resident gentleman, nor clergyman, nor a single road fit for a wheel-carriage to pass? This is the testimony of Mr. Baron FOSTER; and hear it, Boroughmongers! you, who have expended millions to fortify Canada, as you did the Netherlands, for a rival power, and to provide colonial sinecures and offices in sugar islands, converted into hells for the infliction of torture on your fellow-creatures,—hear, and look at home, how you have governed and elicited the resources of our great dependency, placed at the threshhold, in the very bosom of the empire!

Who can revert to the history of the Oligarchy without indignation? Rotten boroughs and tithes, as much as sinecures, pensions, and exorbitant salaries, have been the great obstacles to sound national policy. The holders and expectants of these have been ever bandied together, no less by a sense of common iniquity than common interest, to oppose every salutary amelioration. On every public occasion, on every general election, the priest and the placeman united to oppose the enemy of imposture and peculation: from these no hope of good could be indulged; but the people have at length risen in their might, and the days of misrule will speedily end.

Conclusion.

We have now fairly brought forward whatever can elucidate the present state of the United Church of England and Ireland, and its claims to the support and veneration of the community. Those whose vocation is to mislead and delude may attempt to impugn our statements and calumniate our motives; but their labour will be vain, unless they can disprove our FACTS. We have trusted to nothing apocryphal, and rarely depend on the testimony of individual observers. Our statements have been chiefly drawn from the admissions of the parties who wallow in the corruptions of which we complain,—from official returns to parliament,—and other accredited sources of information. On the results derived from these we have occasionally submitted reflections, the justice of which we leave to the reader’s consideration.

If such ecclesiastical establishments as we have exposed be much longer tolerated in their existing state, the people will evince a patience and fatuity far exceeding any previous estimate. No doubt there are mysteries in the art of governing, as well as truths in science, that have not yet been discovered. It is impossible to foresee what unheard-of wiles, delusions, and influence, priestly cunning may bring into play to stifle the claims of truth and justice. A nation, which, from groundless fear of change, was deluded into the support of a thirty year’s war against human rights and happiness, and had entailed upon it a debt of eight hundred millions, may, by some new fascination, be brought to tolerate a church that absorbs annually ELEVEN MILLIONS of public income, ostensibly for religion, though it is religion’s most dangerous foe, and not one hundredth part of which rewards the labours of those really engaged in clerical duty. A pretended anxiety for our spiritual welfare, will, however, no longer serve for a cloak to temporal rapacity. The repetition of such detected knavery would be a national insult and impertinence: some new-fangled scarecrows, therefore, must be devised, other than the dangers of irreligion and democratic encroachment, to consecrate hereafter the oppression of tithes and the absurdities of rotten boroughs.

Secular abuses sink almost into insignificance when compared with those of the church establishment. One hundred and thirteen privy councillors receiving £650,164 a-year out of the public taxes, was an astounding fact; but we are sure, and those who have honoured us with attention in the preceding exposition, we are convinced, will believe us when we affirm it would be easy to select a smaller number of sinecure ecclesiastics who receive more and do less than this devouring clan of Oligarchs.

DIGEST OF THE IRISH BENEFICES, FROM THE DIOCESAN RETURNS.

DIOCESES.

Benefices with Cure of Souls.

Number of Parishes constituting Benefices.

Churches.

Benefices without Churches.

Unions.

Glebe Houses.

Benefices without Glebe Houses.

Benefices without Glebe Lands.

Incumbents resident.

Incumbents absent.

Armagh

78

103

81

1

11

74

4

4

67

11

Cashell and Emly

57

131

40

17

31

34

23

15

34

23

Clogher

44

46

51

4

2

31

13

3

25

19

Clonfert and Kilmacduagh

14

61

15

1

14

8

6

0

9

5

Cloyne

78

123

59

20

27

22

55

33

33

45

Cork and Ross

77

107

65

14

18

30

47

28

31

46

Derry

54

57

54

2

2

44

10

3

38

16

Down and Connor

79

123

81

5

26

45

34

28

54

25

Dromore

23

26

25

0

1

16

7

4

15

8

Dublin

87

151

83

11

28

41

46

38

49

38

Elphin

37

91

30

7

17

16

6

15

19

18

Kildare

43

72

28

19

19

12

31

20

18

25

Killala and Achonry

20

52

20

0

12

15

4

1

14

6

Killaloe and Kilfenora

51

129

50

5

36

39

12

9

36

15

Kilmore

33

41

36

0

6

23

10

0

20

13

Leighlin and Ferns

92

182

95

6

45

39

53

38

69

23

Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe

105

165

69

5

39

37

68

51

50

55

Meath

101

211

94

11

42

83

18

6

76

25

Ossory

59

135

47

13

22

35

24

13

33

26

Raphoe

26

31

32

0

1

23

8

2

20

6

Tuam and Ardagh

49

124

47

3

27

33

15

6

31

18

Waterford and Lismore

63

98

38

18

27

17

35

26

22

41

1270

2259

1140

192

453

717

529

343

763

507

REVENUES OF THE CROWN.

ROYALTY, after all, is an expensive government! What is a king without an aristocracy and a priesthood? and what are any of these, unless supported in splendour and magnificence? It is a system in which men are sought to be governed by the senses rather than the understanding, and is more adapted to a barbarous than civilized state. Pageantry and ceremony, the parade of crowns and coronets, of gold keys, sticks, white wands, and black rods; of ermine and lawn, and maces and wigs;—these are the chief attributes of monarchy. They are more appropriate to the state of the king of the Birmans or of the Ashantees than the sovereign of an European community. They cease to inspire respect when men become enlightened, when they have learnt that the real object of government is to confer the greatest happiness on the people at the least expense: but it is a beggarly greatness, an absurd system, that would perpetuate these fooleries amidst an impoverished population,—amidst debts, and taxes, and pauperism.

In treating of the revenues of the crown it will be important to observe the distinction between the ancient patrimony of the sovereign, denominated the hereditary revenues, and the modern parliamentary grant, substituted in lieu of them, called the Civil List. Of the nature of the latter—the various charges upon it in the maintenance of the king’s household and other disbursements—of its extravagant amount during the profligate reign of George IV. and of the total burthen entailed by the royal expenditure on the people, we shall treat in the next chapter. In the present we shall confine ourselves to an exposition of the amount, the application, and management of the hereditary revenues; consisting of the landed possessions of the Crown, of Admiralty droits, Gibraltar duties, Leeward-Island duties, the property of persons dying intestate without heirs, forfeiture in courts of justice, the incomes of bishoprics during vacancies, surplus of the Scotch civil list, profit on waifs, shipwrecks, treasure-trove, and other minor sources. The other branches of the hereditary revenue, arising from the excise, wine licenses, and post-office, it does not fall within our purpose to investigate; they have been carried to the general account of taxes, and disbursed, we believe, as honestly as other portions of the public income.

Parliament having granted a specific annuity, out of the taxes, for the support of the dignity of the Crown, the public was led to believe, during the two last reigns, that the produce of the hereditary revenues had been appropriated to the wants of the state. This, it will be shown in the sequel, was a complete and egregious delusion. It will be seen that the ancient revenues of the Crown were left at the uncontrolled disposal of ministers. That they were chiefly expended in objects personal to themselves, the king, or royal family; in pensions and grants to their parliamentary supporters, their relatives, and adherents; in the purchase of tithe and church-patronage; in occasional charitable donations, ostentatiously granted, under pretext of mitigating the sufferings of distressed artizans and manufacturers; in payments into the privy purse, for the more lavish support of court prodigality; in the building and pulling down of palaces; in payments for defraying the expense of the royal household, and other outgoings, which ought to have been defrayed out of the civil list: in short, it will be seen that, for seventy years, the public was not only burthened with an enormous provision for a civil list, but, by an extraordinary kind of Tory management, failed to derive any advantage from those funds, in lieu of which a civil list had been specially granted.

For obvious reasons, the leading men in the House of Commons always manifested great reluctance to touch on these subjects. Although it is well known that, allowance being made for difference in the value of money, and the charges transferred to other funds, the income of George IV. exceeded that of his predecessor by more than HALF A MILLION, not one of the people’s advocates—not even the more ostentatious patriots—Brougham, Hume, Russell, or Graham—ever brought the shameless extravagance fairly before the country. It is possible, as we have hinted, there may have existed reasons for this complacence towards royal profusion. In spite of the encroachments of the Oligarchy, a king of England possesses great power, and has abundant means of rewarding expectants and supporters: he is not only the fountain of honour, but enjoys, nearly, all the patronage in church and state; and the more virtuous aspirants in public life may have felt reluctant to shipwreck all hope of once basking in the sunshine of the court. However, we feel no restraint from these considerations. Moreover we consider the sovereign, like other state functionaries, only the servant of the public: and the public sustaining a great burthen on his account, under the pretext that the duties of his office are essential to the welfare of the people, they have clearly a right to be informed of the amount and mode of his outgoings. In what follows it will be seen what a lavish expenditure has been tolerated during a period when successive ministers have been loud and vehement in professing a desire to reduce every establishment to the lowest possible scale, and when it has been often openly and boastingly alleged that economy and retrenchment had been carried to the utmost limit compatible with national service. Our exposition will also throw light on the workings of the borough-government in its highest departments, and uncover many streamlets of corruption which meandered through the upper stratum of our boasted Constitution.

The new disposition made of the hereditary revenues by the Civil List Act of 1831, and which continues in force during the life of the king, we shall notice in its proper place; at present we shall give a brief exposition of those ancient endowments of the monarchy which long formed a principal source of ministerial influence and parliamentary corruption. First of the

CROWN LANDS.

These constitute the remains of the ancient patrimony of the sovereign, originally intended to maintain the dignity and defray the expense of the executive government. Formerly, the kings of England, as of other European states, were supported from the soil, and not by the system of revenue which has been organized in latter times. Manufactures and commerce were almost unknown; of money there was little, and scarcely any imposts. Gradually kings found out the means of supplying their wants by loading their subjects with taxes, which rendered the revenue derived from their private domains of less importance; and hence, contemporaneously with the progress of fiscal oppression, we may date the neglect and alienation of the hereditary revenues. The chief remains of these possessions are the crown lands, consisting of parks, forests, chases, manors, fisheries, and royalties; extensive estates, numerous church livings, fee-farm-rents, light-house dues, mines of coal, tin, and copper. The property is situate in almost every part of the kingdom, but principally in the metropolis and vicinity; much of it is in Wales; and there are extensive estates in Ireland. The history and management of these royal endowments, their subserviency to political purposes, and their present state and value, we shall shortly describe. It is a subject of much novelty, and one with which even public men have not taken great pains to be informed. Our information is mainly derived from the Reports of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, from a publication entitled, “Observations on the landed Revenue of the Crown,” written by a nephew of the celebrated Viscount Bolingbroke, and from the able speech in the session of 1830, of Mr. D. W. Harvey, the member for Colchester.

William, of Normandy, possessed a landed revenue of £400,000 a-year. From that period the territorial income of the sovereign declined, till the reign of Henry VIII., when, by the sequestration of the wealth of the religious houses, it was again augmented. The public revenue of Queen Elizabeth amounted only to £500,000, of which £132,000 was the produce of the crown estates. During the Commonwealth a commission was appointed by Cromwell to ascertain the extent of the crown lands throughout the kingdom; and, though the disturbed state of the country, and the jealousy with which the new government was regarded, did not afford him an opportunity of making that property produce as much as it would have done in more tranquil times, yet he disposed of crown property to the amount of two millions sterling. In Cornwall there were 52 honours, manors, and estates belonging to the Crown, of which Cromwell disposed of five or six; but only three or four of the whole number are now remaining in the hands of government. These alienations by the Protector were, after the restoration, made subservient to a system of royal favour and proscription. Those who were artful enough to seize the proper moment for apostatizing from republicanism to royalty were never disturbed in their purchases; while others, who were either too tenacious of their principles, or had committed themselves too deeply by the part they took in the civil war, were compelled to surrender the crown property. Neither Chares II. nor James II. could resist the solicitations of rapacious courtiers, and the hereditary estates were leased, for long terms, to the great families at almost nominal rents.

But the greatest inroads on the crown estates were committed about the era of the Revolution of 1688. Such was the rapacity of the patriots of those days, and their ingenuity in devising new taxes to defray the royal expenditure, that William III. was induced to grant nearly the whole of the crown estates to his supporters in parliament. One family, that of Portland, obtained a grant of five-sixths of the whole county of Denbigh. In the next reign a compact was, for the first time, entered into between the sovereign and the people, by which a civil list amounting to nearly £700,000 was given to Queen Anne, as a commutation for the land and other revenues enjoyed by her predecessors; and the preamble of the Act is worthy of notice, for its object was stated to be “to defray part of the expense of government, and lessen the burthen on the subject by means of the preservation and improvement of the crown lands.” How public burthens have been lessened by this and subsequent engagements with the sovereign for a civil list will be strikingly illustrated in the sequel. For the present let us continue our narrative.

In the agreement with Queen Anne, it was settled that no crown estate should be leased at a rent less than one-third of its clear annual value; the remaining two-thirds being left to the disposal of ministers, who thereby were enabled to benefit their friends. Indeed, they often neglected the injunction of the statute, by granting long leases at a rent of a mark, 6s. 8d., 13s. 4d. or other nominal consideration. These abuses afforded a pretext to Shippen, Lockhart, and other members, disappointed in not being permitted a share in the spoil, for introducing a bill, the object of which was the resumption of the crown property obtained by the heroes of the glorious Revolution. The bill passed the Commons, but found its grave among the delinquents it was meant to reach, and where many similar acts of utility have been entombed.

From this period nothing more was heard of the crown lands till the accession of George III.; when it was settled that no lease of them should be granted for less than one-eighth of their annual value; the other seven-eighths to be taken in fines. Such, however, was the profligacy of ministers, that they first let the land almost for nothing, and, after taking an estimate of it at that rate, sold it for nothing. Thus an estate that was worth £5,000, was leased at a rent of £10, and afterwards sold for £200. An estate, comprising the whole of Piccadilly from Park-lane to Swallow-street, together with all the back lanes, was absolutely sold to the Pulteney family, six years after a lease had been granted at the rent of £12 : 16 : 10. for £500. This lease is now nearly expired. The fine park of Bowood, in Wiltshire, after being leased at £30 a-year, was sold for £468 : 10. The manor of Spalding, of the annual value of £4,000, which, after being held by the trustees of the Earl of Dalkeith for no consideration at all, was leased to the Duke of Buccleuch at £5 per annum, and afterwards entirely severed from the crown without any inquiry whatever. In Yorkshire, the estate of Seaton, and another place, together with the alum-works, were sold to Lord Mulgrave for £27,000, the annual value of which was £2,296, including the alum-works, estimated at £20,000. It does not appear what became of the proceeds of the sale, except that they were paid into the Treasury; they may remain there still, but it is certain they have never been applied to any known public purpose. An estate, forfeited by the Earl of Derwentwater, worth £9,000 per annum, was sold to two of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests for £1,000. This was too gross to escape, and two members of the “Collective Wisdom,” having dabbled in the transaction, were expelled, and two others reprimanded. It is difficult to say whether the Whigs or Tories sported most in these land jobs, but the Whigs had certainly the best of it in the reigns of William III. and the two first princes of the Hanover family.

In 1770 the manor of Newark was granted to the Duke of Newcastle, first Lord of the Treasury, and a nobleman, according to the testimony of the first Earl of Chatham, much addicted to mendacity. The rent reserved on this grant to the Pelhams was £482, and according to law the fine should have been £3374, instead of which only £200 was paid. The lease was renewed by Lord Granville, in 1806, for a term of thirty years, at a rent of £2000; the property now consists of 960 acres, covered with dwellings, tolls of bridges, fisheries, and markets, and yields to the proprietor £4000 a-year; and were it let, without reference to electioneering purposes, would yield £7000 a-year. But the great object of the crown-lessee is to maintain his political influence in the borough; for which purpose this property is under-let in small portions to yearly tenants, who are thus constrained to vote for any person the Duke of Newcastle thinks fit to nominate. A striking illustration of the Duke’s influence was afforded in the year 1829. Sir W. H. Clinton, differing in opinion with the noble boroughmonger, on the Catholic question, he was compelled to resign his seat for Newark; when his lordship, forthwith, posted down Mr. Sadler as the retiring member’s accredited successor. Some of the inhabitants, not liking the idea of a total stranger being crammed down their throats so unceremoniously, rebelled against their lord, voting for Mr. Sergeant Wilde, the opponent of the duke’s nominee. This was not to be borne: immediately after the election notices of ejectment were served on the rebels; the duke justifying his vindictive proceeding on the tyrant’s plea—that he had a right to do “what he pleased with his own;” affording a practical commentary of the vast utility of the constitutional maxim, which declares it to be a “high infringement upon the liberties of the people for any PEERto concern himself in the election of members of the House of Commons.”

Leaving the noble trader in boroughs, we shall proceed with others. In Lincoln, there was a crown estate valued at £937, let to Sir W. G. Guise, at £37 a year, as a means of political corruption. The estate of Rosedale, in the mountain recesses of Yorkshire, was held by forty tenants, whose leases expired in 1816, and have since held, from year to year, to the great deterioration of the land. Instead of dividing this property to suit the tenants, many of whom would have been purchasers, it was put up in one lot, on the last day of December, when the ground was covered with snow. The reserved bid was £70,000; only £37,000 was offered. These reserved bids are injurious, for they prevent competitors from coming forward. Property at Esham was let to Sir John Shaw for £3920: the crown lessee put it up to sale in lots, and obtained biddings to the amount of £25,000 and upwards: this, it must be observed, was during the excitement produced by paper-money and war prices. In 1815 a lease was granted to Sir John Throgmorton, at a rent of £115, of property of which the estimated value, upon oath, was £1104. Another property of great importance, called Sunk Island, had been lately rescued from the sea. In the report of the commissioners it is described as a parcel of sandy land, at the mouth of the river Humber. From 1771, it was leased for thirty-one years. In 1802, another lease was granted for thirty-one years, at a rent of £700 for the first year, £2000 for the second, and for the remainder of the term £3100. In the second year of his lease the tenant went to an expense of £10,000, in making banks and in other improvements, and the estate is now let by him for £10,000 a-year. The Reverend John Lonsdale is the crownlessee, and, apparently, a good judge in land speculations. This estate consists of 6000 acres of the finest soil in the kingdom, tithe free, and worth fifty shillings an acre. In 1812, freehold estates to the amount of £1084 of yearly value were sold at twenty years’ purchase; the manor of Eltham, with royalties, lands, &c. for £569; King’s Cliffe £148; the manor of the Chapter of Beverley, with all rights, courts, demesnes, and tenements belonging, for £224; and part of the race-course of Newmarket for £154. All these were sold at twenty years’ purchase, the land-tax having been previously bought by the Crown at thirty-nine years’ purchase from itself, and sold again at twenty years’ purchase. It is needless to remark that manors are highly desirable investments; with courts and royalties annexed, they give a local distinction and importance to the purchasers.

We shall next enter the domain of Woods and Forests, abounding with similar examples of waste and mismanagement as those already cited. Here, again, we meet with the Duke of Newcastle. A broad riding-way was cut for his Grace through Sherwood-forest: the timber cut down was given to his lordship, and the pailing raised at each side of the way was charged to the public at £1787. Another nobleman had a right of pasturage for one horse, in Wolmar-forest, and, for the pasturage of this single horse, not less than 450 acres of forest-land were appropriated. Rockingham-forest and an estate adjoining were let to Lord Westmoreland at less than one farthing an acre! The interests of the crown in this property were valued, so long ago as 1704, at £50,000; they were bought, by Lord Westmoreland, for £10,038, in 1796, though the money was not all paid till 1809. With so much indulgence and profuse generosity is it surprising the crown lands have contributed so little to relieve public burthens? Sherwood-forest contains 95,000 acres, and, from 1761 to 1786, the disbursements for management exceeded the receipts by £9037. Some trees, which were blown down in the forest, were valued at £2457; but the produce was only £850, the rest being expended in fees and allowances to officers. In the forest of Littlewood there were 5424 acres, and not less than seventy officers. During the last-mentioned period the receipts for the crown property, in Wales, amounted to £123,717; the expense of management to £124,466; so that the exchequer was minus, by the principality, £749!

Very inadequate considerations appear to have been received for the leases of houses in the metropolis. In 1815, there were no less than thirty-one houses, in Piccadilly and the neighbourhood, let for £125 a-year, a property which, in 1786, was valued at £600, and must now be worth many thousands. Nineteen houses were let in Holborn, near the Turnstile, for £564 and £100 premium, which were worth at least from £100 to £130 each. In the Spring-garden-terrace were three messuages, well worth £200 each, all let for £200 and a fine of £500. Other houses, in Piccadilly and Pall Mall, have been disposed of on terms equally low; the rents must be merely nominal, nothing like what the houses are really worth. A house, No. 17, Charles-street, has been let, upon a thirty years’ lease, at £110 a-year. Within a month after the completion of the lease, the tenant let it for £230 a-year; thus clearing more than cent. per cent. by his speculation. The ground-rents of the Crown, in London, produced, last year, £105,000. Reckoning, with the late Mr. Huskisson, the buildings at only five times the value of the ground-rents, the rental of the Crown, when the leases fall in, will be £525,000. What a means of influence in the capital! what accommodation it enables ministers to afford their friends and supporters!

Indeed, it is important to remark who are the tenants of the crown property. Mr. Harvey justly observed that it presented a source of corruption sufficient to contaminate any parliament, and pervert its members to any purpose. Most of the parties involved in the preceding transactions were peers of the realm or members of parliament. Out of four hundred and eight tenants to the rental of £200,000 a year, in 1786, upwards of two hundred were men of TITLE. Among them were the Duke of St. Alban’s, Earl Bathurst, Viscount Bacon, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Lichfield, and many other noble lords; for, to speak truth, they were as “thick as the peerage could make them.” It cannot be supposed these great personages would condescend to the humble office of land-jobbers, unless something very substantial was to be gained by it. It is not unusual for peers of parliament and honourable members to take leases of the crown-estates at a low consideration, and then re-let them to sub-tenants at exorbitant rents; but it is not likely they would submit to the trouble and degradation of acting as middle-men, unless the profit was really magnificent.

We must now turn over another leaf. It has been seen on what very low terms Messieurs the Commissioners let and sold the crown lands; we shall, per contra, show how very lavish they have been when they had any thing to buy,—a residence, for instance, for a brother placeman, or a piece of church-patronage, or a parcel of land to round off the parks, or to improve the view from the palaces, or the unfinished house of an insolvent prince, or a needy peer. Whether they had authority so to apply the proceeds of the land-revenues may be doubted, but that they have done so is certain, and here follows a brief chronicle of a few of their performances.

Within a short distance of Virginia Water was a public-house, the Wheat Sheaf; to remove this vulgarity from the favourite resort of the late king it was bought for £5000, and let to Ramsbottom, the brewer, and a M. P. for £50. At Egham, premises were bought for £1100, for which no person, when they were offered for sale, would give £500. The sum of £21,000 was paid for Mote-park. The house of Lord de Clifford, in Spring-gardens, was bought for £4000 for an auditor’s office, while the government was letting houses of their own in the same place, and equally fit for the purpose, at £100 a year. In Pimlico, £26,000 was paid for premises to enlarge the mews. In Windsor, a house was purchased from the Honourable John Coventry for £7000, and sold afterwards to the Honourable Mr. Westenra for £6000. A sum of £56,566 was lent to the Duke of York to build a house. Government bought it for £81,000, and sold it again to the Marquis of Stafford for £72,000. In 1805, the Black Bear, in Piccadilly, was let under the Crown at a rent of £108; but it became desirable to resume the premises, and the interest of the lessee was valued at £3000. In 1809, the Duke of Richmond disposed of a house to the commissioners for £5000; but they took the precaution of saying to his Grace, you must give us back £700 of this for damage done in 1791, and so the sum paid was reduced, in this way, to £4300. The perpetual advowson of the rectory of St. Mary-le-bone was bought of the Duke of Portland for the sum of £40,000. According to the explanation of Lord Bentinck, his father accepted this diminutive consideration rather than the living should fall into “bad hands,”—the Dissenters, who had offered a larger sum. The bargain has not been very advantageous to the public. The expenses incurred in one year subsequent to the purchase were £10,000. The receipt from pews was only £800, and the rector was paid £2000 a year. But an important object was gained by this contract. Ministers secured the ecclesiastical patronage of one of the largest and richest parishes in the metropolis.

Having given specific examples of the management of crown property, and the purposes to which it has been applied, we shall next advert to the general income and expenditure arising from this source.

The property in Ireland has scarcely yet been noticed. It is of the same description as that in England, consisting of estates, composition-rents, quit-rents, and rents of plus acres. The gross proceeds from these sources, in 1796, were £61,340. Since then part has been sold, leaving the Irish rental in 1829, £56,354.

The average receipts from the crown lands in both kingdoms, from 1793 to 1829, has been £560,000 per annum. Of this income a very small portion indeed has been available to the public service. In the last three years £1,500,000 was received, and not a single farthing was paid into the Exchequer. During the whole term of twenty-six years only £234,000 has reached the Treasury, the remaining balance of upwards of fourteen millions having been expended in the notable bargains of the commissioners already mentioned, in metropolitan improvements, on the royal parks and palaces, in pensions and compensations, and in the salaries of officers and charges of management.

The average expenditure in the three years 1827, 1828, 1829, in the collection of rents, law expenses, and other charges, was £169,020, being, within a trifle, 20 per cent. on the entire produce of the crown lands. The office of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, &c. costs upwards of £18,000; in addition to which £6000 and more is annually paid for law charges, and to auditors and assistants. But the greatest and most objectionable objects of disbursement have been the parks and palaces. The total of the ordinary expenditure on St. James’s and Hyde Parks, Richmond, Hampton-court, Bushy, Greenwich, and Windsor Parks, was, in 1826, £48,810. In 1827, the expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, amounted to £92,200. In 1828 it was £116,143. The sums lavished on the palaces have been really prodigious. For the repairs and alterations of Windsor Castle £771,000 has been granted, and still unfinished. £270,670 has been expended in furniture for the castle, and £10,000 more is required. Of the sum expended £1768 was for kitchen furniture. The total expenditure on the castle in furniture and building is estimated to amount to £1,084,170. The estimated expense of repairing and improving that ill-situated pile, Buckingham-Palace, was £432,926; but this did not include the expense of the SCULPTURE of a marble archway, alone, to cost £35,000, and the commission of architects and clerks, amounting to £63,243 more. Lord Duncannon, this session, required £78,750 additional, to complete this monstrous undertaking, which does not include the charge for furnishing the palace.

The formation of Regent-street was estimated to cost £368,000. From first to last it has cost £1,833,000. The rents of the houses do not exceed £36,000, being under 2 per cent. per annum on the outlay. Had not this undertaking been left to the management of Mr. Nash, it might, by this time, have produced three or four times the present rental. The Charing-cross improvements were estimated to cost £850,000, they have already cost £1,147,000. The Strand improvements are estimated to cost £748,000, but Mr. Arbuthnot now admits there will be an exceeding on this estimate of £95,000.

With the purpose of the street-improvements no fault can be justly found. Some of them already are, and others no doubt will be, both useful and ornamental to the Metropolis; and if the land-revenue had not be drawn upon, recourse must have been had to the consolidated fund. The chief objections that can be urged against them are the disproportion between the original estimate and the expenditure; the questionable taste displayed in some of the plans, and to the individuals employed to superintend their execution. For example, Mr. Nash, according to the report of a parliamentary committee, “became a lessee of the Crown while acting as its agent and surveyor, and in his capacity of the crown-surveyor actually reported on the buildings erected by himself, upon the ground of which he was the lessee.” Other and more serious charges have been alleged against this gentleman, but as they have not been so clearly established we pass them over.

Throughout we have used the term crown lands; they are in fact not the lands of the Crown, but of the public. Ever since the reign of Queen Anne a life-annuity has been granted to the sovereign in lieu of the produce of the hereditary revenues. Hence results the mal-appropriation in lavishing these funds in aid of the royal expenditure. Surely the civil list of the late King was ample enough, not only to defray his personal outgoings, but to maintain his own establishments. The acts of parliament, establishing the administration of the Woods and Forests, require that the revenues arising therefrom shall be expended in objects of public utility. Was the purchase of Claremont, as a residence for Prince Coburg, or the giving of a slice off Hyde-park to the Duke of Wellington, to round the area of Apsley-house, objects of this nature? Or can the parks and palaces be considered such? These last are often very haughtily and insultingly described as solely for the use, recreation, and enjoyment of the King. Let the King then defray, we say, the expense of them. During the late extravagant reign the people were very contemptuously treated as regards these matters. They were often capriciously excluded from the parks; prohibited from being seen in certain walks—restricted from entering here or walking there—and all these fantastic regulations to interdict the enjoyment of their own property, and the expense of maintaining which was defrayed out of their own pockets. Waterloo-place, Regent’s Park, and Windsor-park, afford examples of royal or official whims which will be easily recollected. Under William IV. there appears a disposition to conciliate popular feeling, but the treatment of the public by his predecessor was intolerable.

We shall now lay before the reader a return of the present income and expenditure on account of the crown lands. It is for the year ending 5th January, 1829, and it is abstracted from the last triennial Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. After that we shall subjoin an estimate of the present value of the crown estates, submitted, by Mr. Harvey, to the House of Commons, March 30th, 1830.

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE LAND-REVENUES.

ORDINARY INCOME.

Total balances, 5th January, 1828

£79,057

3

01/2

England and Wales.

Fee-farm rents

£ 6,401

13

8

Leasehold rents

138,164

17

111/2

Profits of mines, manors, &c.

12,315

18

01/2

Light-house-dues, &c.

14,705

0

1

Fines

13,027

15

4

Sales of old materials, &c.

3,471

2

0

188,086

7

1

Ireland.

Quit, crown, and composition rents, and rents of plus acres

56,354

16

7

Island of Alderney.

Rents, tithes, royalties, and harbourdues

127

0

0

Isle of Man.

Tithes, quit rents, and alienation-fines

1,428

7

1

57,910

3

8

The royal forests, parks and woodlands

39,972

15

8

Total ordinary receipts, including balances

£362,926

9

51/2

EXTRAORDINARY RECEIPTS.

Sales of estates and unimprovable rents in England and Wales

139,704

11

11/2

The like in Ireland

22,949

2

1

Deposits upon sales to be paid

169

17

7

Total income for the year ending January 5, 1829

£525,750

0

3

ORDINARY EXPENDITURE.

Ancient stipends, including payments to schools, chapels, churches, &c.

£7,486

7

10

Collection of rents, including allowances to receivers

4,241

9

81/4

Local disbursements by receivers, and allowances to tenants

4,094

1

41/2

Expenses of the establishment of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, surveyors, officers, &c.

18,574

6

7

Salaries to auditors and assistants

837

1

8

Law-charges

6,292

5

8

Payments to architects, surveyors, &c. expenses of journeys, and other bills

2,849

0

2

Fees on acts of parliament, enrolling of leases, &c.

3,637

0

2

Rates, taxes, superannuation-allowances, &c.

10,807

19

61/2

Expenses on the royal forests, parks, and woodlands

83,797

3

73/4

Total ordinary expenditure

£142,616

16

41/4

EXTRAORDINARY EXPENDITURE.

St. James’s, Greenwich, Hyde, Windsor, and other royal parks

68,388

7

3

In purchase of estates and payments to Board of Works for Buckingham-palace

137,623

13

4

Transferred to the Regent-street fund

116,306

9

3

464,935

6

21/4

Balance, 5th January, 1829

60,814

14

51/2

£525,750

0

73/4

ESTIMATEof the Value of the Crown Lands, independently of the Woods and Forests, and of that Portion which may be considered to belong exclusively to the Royal Person.

Mr. Harvey committed an oversight in estimating the Middlesex ground-rents at £50,000 per annum. Last year they produced £105,000, and when the leases fall in will be worth, according to the estimate of Mr. Huskisson, £500,000. Instead of two, their present worth is, at least, four millions.

One hundred and thirty manors and royalties, at £1000

£130,000

Annual rental of estates, £600,000, at 25 years’ purchase

15,000,000

Middlesex, ground-rents £50,000 per annum, at 40 years’ purchase

2,000,000

Rents from houses, say £20,000 per annum, at 18 years’ purchase

360,000

Carried forward

£17,490,000

Brought forward

£17,490,000

Waste lands in forests not fit for oak timber, 86,000 acres, at £5 per acre

430,000

Church livings

100,000

Fee-farm-rents, and other unimproveable payments, in England and Wales, at least £6000, at 25 years’ purchase

150,000

Allotments under 485 inclosure acts, at £500

242,500

Irish estates

2,000,000

Total

£20,412,500

N. B. The above estimate is exclusive of mines of coal, tin, and copper, and also of the Duchy of Lancaster, £30,000. Davenant, in his Treatise on the Lands of England, estimates the common rights of the Crown at 300,000 acres.

The estimate of the value of the land-revenues does not include the royal forests. In some of these are intermingling rights, and the Crown has no property in the soil. Such are New Forest and the forests of Epping, Sherwood, and Dean Forest; all the rights possessed by the Crown consist of the right of herbage for the deer, although in the great forest of Sherwood, comprising a sheet of land of 95,000 acres, not a single deer is kept. In the New Forest, out of 90,000 acres, the Crown has the right to enclose periodically 6,000 acres, which may be dissevered from the pasturage for the growth of timber. The most valuable property undoubtedly consists of the estates and leaseholds alone worth upwards of twenty millions sterling. These might be sold without encroaching on any possession in the least conducive to the dignity and enjoyment of the sovereign. What dignity, indeed, can there be in the king or his servants being jobbers in land, or hucksters in the sale of houses, leases, and ground-rents?

It is not, however, the dignity nor the comfort of the king, but the patronage of his ministers, that is at stake. The preceding narrative has shown what an endless source of jobbing the crown-lands have been for centuries; of jobbing the most foul, rapacious, and iniquitous. Not only have the commons, but the distinguished names of the peerage—the great historical cognomens—been implicated in these peculating transactions. This description is not limited to the times of the Edwards and Henries, when there was no law to contravene the sovereign’s pleasure, or the sordid practices of his servants, but applies to the period subsequent to the Revolution, when the constitution is supposed to have been purified and perfected. Acts of parliament, indeed, were passed prescribing the minimum of rent (relatively to the full value) at which the crown-farms should be let,—namely one-third before the reign of George III. and one-eighth after the accession of the said king, stating, too, that, under the former regulation, two-thirds of the valued rack-rent, and, under the latter, seven-eighths should be paid in the shape of fine. But what of these statutory restraints? They were all set at nought; the “creatures were at their dirty work” again; and, in most cases, the rents reserved and the fines exacted were merely nominal. May it not be said, after this, that ministerial responsibility is a farce, and that it is sheer fatuity to expect justice will be enforced against public defaulters, when the accused and his judges are alike participant in the delinquency?

The sale of the crown-lands would not only cut off a dangerous source of ministerial influence, but render them more conducive to national wealth, and effect a saving in the public expenditure. That costly establishment, the Board of Woods and Forests, is in future, it appears, (House of Commons, Dec. 9, 1831,) to be consolidated with the Board of Works, whereby the expense of two boards will be saved. Mr. Huskisson long depastured in this retreat, and retained to the last a singular partiality for the existing mode of administering the crown property. In the debate on Mr. Harvey’s motion, he observed that the House had no right to dispose of the hereditary revenues of the Crown without its consent. No one could gainsay this constitutional truism. No doubt an act of parliament would be requisite, and every one knows an act of parliament is not law till it receives the royal assent. In this, then, there is nothing peculiar. But the importance ascribed by this wily and selfish politician to the fact, that the royal forests formed a valuable nursery for the growth of timber, seemed a little inconsistent with his favourite principles of free trade. England depends much more on the produce of her looms and steam-engines than of her woods and forests; though we should be sorry, for the sake of merely increasing national capital, to see, throughout the country, the latter entirely superseded by the former. Agreeably with the dogmas of the school of which Mr. Huskisson was long a professed disciple, our supply of timber would be most advantageously obtained from the wastes of Canada and Norway, where it can be cheapest produced; while our own acres are best appropriated to the growth of cheap bread for the artisan and manufacturer.

DROITS OF THE CROWN AND ADMIRALTY.

The next and most important branch of the hereditary revenues of the Crown is the droits of admiralty. These droits, or rights, are received by the king in his capacity of lord high admiral; the duties of which office are discharged by five lords commissioners. The principal sources whence the droits are derived are the following:—all sums arising from wreck and goods of pirates; all ships detained previously to a declaration of war; all coming into port, either from distress of weather, or ignorant of the commencement of hostilities; all taken before the issuing of proclamation; and those taken by non-commissioned captors are sold, and the proceeds form droits of the crown and admiralty.

From this description of the sources whence the droit revenue is constituted, it evidently appears little better than buccaneer or piratical plunder, obtained under circumstances little creditable to any government to sanction. Ships detained previously to a declaration of war, coming into port ignorant of hostilities, or taken before the issuing of a proclamation, are all considered lawful prizes: the sufferers, in these cases, violate a law of which they are ignorant, and of which it is impossible they should have any knowledge. They are caught in a spider’s web impervious to the sight. An ex-post-facto law, or the laws of the Roman tyrant, who placed them so high that they were illegible to the beholder, were not more unjust and tyrannical. In the course of the late war—in the attack on the Danes, and the seizure of the Spanish ships—we had two memorable instances to what base purposes this principle may be applied. In the attack upon Copenhagen, government might be actuated by its fears as well as its cupidity; it might dread the Danish ships of war falling into the hands of Bonaparte; though, in either case, it was equally disgraceful to a great nation to be excited to an act of flagrant injustice and violation of international law. But what can be urged in defence of the attack on the Spanish ships in 1805? The object, in this case, unquestionably, was plunder for the droit-fund. There could be no fear of the Spanish ships joining the enemy, because they were merchantmen, and not ships of war. We were at peace; the Spanish envoy, in London, and the English ambassador, at Madrid, were carrying on a negotiation, and yet, under these circumstances, a squadron of ships of war was fitted out; the homeward-bound Spanish fleet, from South America, loaded with treasure, attacked, the crews massacred, the ships burnt, and the proceeds of this unhallowed enterprise condemned as rights of the Crown!

Posterity, in looking to the foreign and domestic policy of England for the last forty years, under the influence of Tory principles, will be at a loss which most to condemn—the encroachments on the liberties of the people, or the atrocious attacks on the right of other states. The balance of iniquity seems nearly equal. At home, the liberty and property of the people have been assailed by the Bank-Restriction-Act, Seditious Meetings Bills, new Treason Acts, and acts for the curtailment of the freedom of the press. Abroad, we may reckon among the catalogue of offences, the attacks upon Copenhagen and the Spanish fleet, and the affair of Terceira: to which may be added, our slow and reluctant recognition of the independence of the new States of South America—our suspicious neutrality, when the liberties of Italy and Spain were subverted by the interference of foreign armies—our non-interference in behalf of the heroic Poles, in their glorious struggle for national independence—and the promptitude with which we have mostly availed ourselves of every pretext for either openly supporting or covertly aiding the old European despotisms in their machinations against popular rights.

To return, however, to the droits of Admiralty. The monies accruing from the droits, as well as the crown-lands, and other branches of the hereditary revenue, were ostensibly conceded to the public, in lieu of the grant of a fixed sum for the civil list. But instead of being made available to the national service, they have, prior to the commencement of the present reign, always been kept in the back ground, and indirectly expended, without either the people or their representatives having any control over them, further than an occasional return of the objects on which they had been lavished. The management of the fund was not more extraordinary than its application. It was not paid into the Exchequer, like the taxes, but remained in the hands of the registrar of the high court of Admiralty, the receiver-general of droits, the commissioners of prizes, and the Bank of England. There was no responsibility attached to the persons receiving or issuing this money. No account was kept of the receipts and outgoings at the Treasury. It was drawn out of the Bank of England, not on the authority of the privy-seal, but of a warrant under the sign manual only. In short, it was a fund wholly out of the control of parliament, and entirely at the disposal of the ministers of the Crown: it might be expended on the hirelings of the press, in rewarding spies and informers, in purchasing votes of members of parliament, in bribery at elections, in minions or mistresses, or any other purpose of royal or ministerial corruption.

The specific objects for which the Admiralty droits were granted to the Crown were for “guarding and maintaining the rights and privileges of the seas; so that the whole of the fund, agreeably to its original destination, ought to have been expended on the ships, officers, and men of the English navy. How differently it has been applied we shall proceed to illustrate; instead of being devoted to maritime objects, it has been dissipated in rewarding the questionable services of individuals—in discharging the arrears of the civil list—in payments to Sir William Knighton, for the use of the privy-purse—in advances to different branches of the royal family—paying tradesmen’s and physicians’ bills—defraying the expense of visits from foreign princes, and of royal visits to Ireland, Scotland, and Hanover—and, in general, in discharging any casual debt or expense which the caprice or extravagance of royalty and its servants might incur.

In looking over the returns to parliament of the disbursements to individuals, the first that struck us as singular were two payments to the editor of a ministerial newspaper, namely, to Dr. Stoddart, now Sir John Stoddart, and a judge in the island of Malta. Next we came to a grant to Sir Home Popham, to indemnify him for losses he had sustained in his famous smuggling voyage. This gallant officer, it seems, had entered various investments outwards, in a ship called Etrusco, commanded by Sir Home, and bound from one of the ports of Italy to the East Indies. Captain Robinson, appointed on that station for the prevention of smuggling, seized the vessel; and her cargo, value £25,000, being contraband or smuggled goods, was condemned as good and lawful prize. Dr. Lushington having moved for various papers relative to this transaction, it appeared, by a warrant of the Treasury, signed Charles Long and others, as lords of the Treasury, that the loss of £25,000 sustained by Captain Popham, in smuggling, was made up to him by a grant of the same sum out of the Droits of Admiralty. When all the documents relative to the affair were upon the table in the house, and Mr. C. Long and Sir Home Popham, being both members, were present, Dr. Lushington moved “That Sir Home Popham, in being detected in knowingly carrying on an illegal traffic, had acted in contempt of the laws of his country, contrary to the duty of a British subject, and to the disgrace of the character of a British officer; and, further, that the grant of £25,000 by Mr. Long to him out of the Droits of Admiralty, had been a gross misapplication of the public money.” After solemn debate on this question, not a single fact being denied or disputed, ‘the Guardians of the Public Purse’ fully acquitted Sir Home Popham and Mr. Long of all blame, by a majority of 126 to 57! When one member of parliament could thus give to another such a sum of money as £25,000 out of the Droits of Admiralty, it accounts for that loyal clamour which was so often heard in Parliament, of this fund being the private property of the king.

The way in which the Reverend W. B. Daniels, the author of a work on “Rural Sports,” became entitled to £5077 out of the fund for the maintenance of maritime rights, is worth describing.

A Mr. Jacob, the owner of the privateer Daphne, captured, in 1799 or 1800, the French vessel Circe, worth £30,000, which was condemned as lawful prize, and all claim to the contrary disregarded. The year and day for appeal having transpired, the condemnation became final, and £15,000 was shared among the captors. Ten thousand pounds more lay ready to be distributed. At this point of time, information was laid against Mr. Jacob, for having disregarded the 33d of Geo. III. by which the muster of the crew of a privateer before sailing is enacted. On the letter of this law they were convicted; the £10,000 stopped; and the £15,000 recovered; all of which became Droits of Admiralty. The mere ignorance of the law was admitted as no excuse for Mr. Jacob, and the result to him was, besides the loss of his prize, costs to the amount of £1700, and utter ruin. From having been in a respectable trade, he was thrown into gaol, and reduced to beggary. But on whose authority does the reader imagine Mr. Jacob and his family were reduced to beggary? Here it will be necessary to introduce the Rev. Mr. Daniels. This gentleman, after publishing his work on “Rural Sports,” had been confined for debt, and reduced, as Lord Brougham stated, to the condition of a ‘primitive Christian.’ After all other attempts to patch up his broken fortune had failed, he, at last, turned a broker in evidence, and procured two men, of the names of Thatcher and Guzman, one of whom had been convicted of perjury, and the other had been flogged at the cart’s tail, to swear as much as was necessary to convict Mr. Jacob. For this signal service, the Reverend Mr. Daniels received £5077 out of the Admiralty Droits, and the first of his witnesses £87 : 13 : 7, as a gratuity for evidence given!

Besides the payment to Sir Home Popham, and Messrs. Stoddart and Daniels, there are others quite as extraordinary and unaccountable. There is a sum of £2250 granted to Sir George Young, on the 20th of September, 1803, being one-third of the Dutch ship Frederick, taken at the Cape. The item is remarkable, because at the time Sir George is represented capturing ships at the Cape, he was serving in parliament as member for Honiton, filled a lucrative situation, and, on failing in a subsequent election, was appointed governor of that Colony. The Earl of Dunmore is also down for the sum of £2792, under similar circumstances. Lord Stowell is inserted for £932, “for services in deciding upon cases relative to American captures.” There are two grants to Lord Keith of £20,521 and £1800, to make up losses he had sustained from an action brought against him for wrongfully detaining an American ship at the Cape of Good Hope. There is a grant of £700 to one Captain Temple, to defray the expenses of a prosecution for the alledged murder of a seaman, of which crime he had been acquitted; and another grant of £219 to a Turk, for some losses he had sustained at Constantinople.

The objects for which all these grants have been made appear very questionable and mysterious. Let us now come to the larger sums. To that pious nobleman, Lord Gambier, the great patron of Bible Societies, and to Lord Catheart, is the enormous sum of £348,621, as their share of the prize-money at the memorable expedition to Copenhagen. There is another enormous payment to one John Alcock, “to be by him paid over to the merchants, &c. trading to Spain, whose property had been sequestered in 1796 and 1797.” Another singular item of £54,921 is entered as an “indemnification to sundry commanders of his Majesty’s ships for condemnations, by a Court of Vice-Admiralty, at Cape Nicola Mole, afterwards found not to have jurisdiction.” A sum of £887 to Captain Spencer, in the year 1807, pursuant to his Majesty’s warrant; £10,000 and £1900 to William Bourne and others, as commissioners of Spanish and Portuguese property.

The complexion of all these grants is bad enough. We shall now speak of the immense sums taken out of this fund by the different branches of the Royal Family; and the reader must bear in mind that these grants are independent of the enormous incomes they derive from parliamentary grants. The droits have formed an inexhaustible mine for relieving the necessities of the king, the regent, the princes and princesses, in all their embarrassments. The facility with which money was granted by different ministers from this fund, rendered economy on their part wholly unnecessary. Prior to 1812, there had been taken from the droits the enormous sum of £760,000, simply for the payment of the tradesmen’s bills of the king’s household. The sums granted in aid of the civil list, from 1793 to 1818, amounted to £1,324,000. The sums paid during the same period, to different branches of the royal family, amounted to £266,331 : 17 : 3. Besides these sums, £58,000 was granted to defray the expenses of additional buildings and furniture at Brighton. The sum of £14,579, for additional expenses in the household, occasioned by the visits of foreign princes. The expenses of the royal visits to Ireland, Scotland, and Hanover, amounting to £70,000, were paid out of the Admiralty droits. From the same inexhaustible fund is the royal dole of £5000 to the poor of Spitalfields. Doubtless this act of charity would have been more gracious had the donation proceeded from the privy purse instead of from a fund which, if it does not belong to the nation, unquestionably belongs to the ships, officers, and seamen of the navy. The last payment out of the droits we shall notice is one in 1829, to John Calvert, Esq., £9,166, to defray the expenses incurred in fitting up and finishing the house of his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence.

With the exception of the very inadequate payments to captors, we have mentioned the principal purposes to which the droits have been appropriated since the commencement of the late war. The following statement, abstracted from a return to parliament, will show the total produce of this great naval or rather ministerial fund, from 1793 to 1818:—

A SUMMARY ACCOUNTof all Monies received as Droits of the Crown and of the Admiralty, from the 1st of February, 1793, to the 29th of May, 1818.—Ordered to be printed, June, 1818.

£

s.

d.

Registrar of the High Court of Admiralty

5,077,216

9

0

Receiver-General of droits

489,885

10

9

Commissioners for the care of Dutch droits

1,286,042

6

10

Commissioners for the care of Spanish droits

1,293,313

19

7

Commissioners for the care of Danish and other droits

348,261

6

5

Total

£8,494,719

12

7

A period of peace is not favourable to an accumulation of Admiralty droits. Accordingly we find, from the date of the above return up to the last annual return to Parliament, the proceeds from naval droits have not averaged more than £120,000 per annum.

FOUR-AND-A-HALF PER CENT. DUTIES.

Notwithstanding the efforts of political writers to expose the manifold abuses of an antiquated system, an immense number remain, of which the public have no knowledge, and of which they have scarcely any means of obtaining information. Where, for instance, previously to the expositions afforded by this publication, could satisfactory information be obtained relative to the crown lands, the civil list, droits of Admiralty, and the other branches of the hereditary revenues of which we are about to treat? Correct information on these subjects can only be acquired from parliamentary reports and papers, to which few persons have access, and still fewer leisure to peruse and digest their voluminous contents. Unquestionably this was a defect in the political knowledge of the people, which we have attempted to remedy, and we have little doubt that the mystery which has heretofore involved the crown revenues, and concealed their amount and application from the community, will be hereafter dissolved.

After the Admiralty droits, the next considerable branch of revenue, at the disposal of ministers, was the Four-and-a-Half per Cent. Leeward-Island Duties. This fund produces from forty to fifty thousand pounds a-year, and consists of a tax of 41/2 per cent. imposed on produce in the island of Barbadoes and Leeward Isles. It was created by a colonial law of Barbadoes, nearly two hundred years ago, and, by the terms of the act, was to be applied to the erection of public buildings, the repair of courts, and other colonial purposes. In the reign of Charles II. it was seized by the courtiers, and continued to be abused till the reign of Queen Anne; when, on a representation of the abuses of the fund, it was formally renounced by the queen and parliament in favour of the island of Barbadoes, and the original purposes of the act creating it. It again fell into abuse; the natural children of the king and royal dukes, the members of both houses of parliament, their relatives and connexions, having got almost entire possession of the fund. The parties in the smuggling transaction related above are inscribed here. The gallant Sir Home is dead, but his pension of £500 survives, being a reversion payable to his widow. The Countess of Mansfield, the mother of the anti-reforming peer who made so stout a stand against the second reading of the Reform Bill on its first introduction, is quartered on the Barbadoes planters for £1000 per annum.

The late General Crauford was a pensioner, till his death, on this fund, to the amount of £1200 a-year. The way in which this officer entitled himself to £1200 a-year for life is deserving of attention. Many people yet remember the fatal expedition to Walcheren, when forty thousand men were suffered to perish in that pestilential climate, owing to the incapacity of Lord Castlereagh and the duplicity of Mr. Canning. When this business became matter of discussion in the House of Commons; when it was made apparent to every man in England that it was to the squabbles and ignorance of these men that this great national calamity was to be attributed; it was, nevertheless, resolved, by a majority of two hundred and seventy-five, to negative the censure which was moved by Lord Porchester against ministers on that occasion. But the triumph of ministers did not stop here. A vote of approbation of the ministers was absolutely moved and adopted by a majority of two hundred and fifty-five. The member who had the effrontery to move this vote of approbation was General Crauford. But this officer had a further claim on ministerial gratitude: he had recently become connected by marriage with the Duke of Newcastle; he represented and commanded the parliamentary interest of that nobleman; he had eight votes to give to ministers on any occasion.

Many other names, not without celebrity, are inscribed on the 41/2 per cent. duties. The famous pension to Edmund Burke continues to be paid out of this fund. It is entered to “the executors of Mrs. Burke £2500,” and the date of the grant being the 24th of October, 1795, the public, up to this time, has paid, in principal money, £87,500. How much the world has benefited by the labours of Mr. Burke may be collected from the sublime events daily transpiring in Europe. The sole object of this celebrated renegade in his later writings and speeches was to stop the progress of knowledge and liberty—to perpetuate the old feudal despotisms—and he might as well have attempted to stop the progress of the great deep. All he effected was to delay their fall, and so far as he contributed to that he was instrumental in the useless sacrifice of millions of lives. Events have proved this to be the issue of all the efforts of this infatuated oracle—for oracle he is thought by some—and the services of both him and his followers will appear to posterity as ill-timed as the vain endeavours of those who, in the later ages of idolatry, sought to oppose the subversion of a barbarous worship. The defect of Burke and his admirers is their blindness to the fact that the world is undergoing as great a revolution as when the popular mind was converted from Paganism to Christianity.

Lady Augusta de Ameland received a pension of £1292 from the 41/2 per cent. fund to the period of her death in 1830. All we know of her ladyship is that she was united to the Duke of Sussex, in Italy, by a sort of Gretna-Green marriage, and afterwards repudiated in consequence of that offspring of German pride and feudality—the royal marriage-act. Next follow the five Misses Fitz-Clarence, £2500—the natural daughters of the king, by Mrs. Jordan. The Duchess of Gloucester, £1000; the Princess of Hesse-Homberg, £1000; Lord Hood, £1500; Sir William Sydney Smith, £1250; the Earl of Chatham, 3000; and, in trust for Lady G. Tekell, £300; and for the seven children of Lady Lucy R. Taylor, £139 : 10 each. Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope brings up the rear with a pension of £900; she is the niece of the “Heaven-born minister,” and the same lady, we believe, who astonishes travellers by acting the Amazon, dressing in man’s attire, and living somewhere about Mount Sinai or Tadmor, in the deserts of Arabia.

These, we apprehend, are sufficient for specimens. We have passed over several names totally unknown to us, and, we believe, the public. So eager have the higher orders been to be established on this fund, that pensions have been granted upon it in reversion, and others charged upon it have not yet become payable. Of this latter class is the memorable provision for Lady Grenville, of £1500 per annum for life, in the event of her surviving Lord Grenville. Since Lady Grenville obtained this grant, she has succeeded to the great possessions of her brother, Lord Camelford. Lord Grenville holds a sinecure of £4000 out of the taxes as Auditor of the Exchequer. His eldest brother, the late Marquis of Buckingham, besides his great estates, held the enormous sinecure of the Tellership of the Exchequer, worth £30,000 per annum. Lord Braybrooke and Lord Carysfort, who married sisters of Lord Grenville, hold, each of them, through the interest of the family, sinecures that are worth some thousands a-year; and yet, after all, the devoted planters of Barbadoes are to be mortgaged for £1500 more for life. As there has lately been a great strain upon the borough establishment, we really wonder the Grenvilles have not been summoned to its aid: there is no family on whose services the Oligarchy has so just a claim; for they are completely bound up with the system of the last forty years; and now that it is perilled all the veterans, the Sidmouths, Eldons, and the rest, who have retired loaded with spoil, ought to be again brought into active service—without pay!

The whole amount of pensions payable out of the Leeward-Island duties is £27,466, and £15,338 more in salaries. The entire produce of these duties from 1760 to the present is about £2,546,484, more than two-thirds of which sum have been lavished on court favourites and the members and supporters of the Oligarchy. Ministers having been frequently rated concerning the application of this jobbing fund, an act was passed, in 1825, prohibiting the grant of pensions from it in future, and providing that the surplus should be appropriated to the support of the ecclesiastical establishment in the West Indies. By this transmutation, nothing was gained to the public; and the ministers lost no portion of their influence, only their patronage became spiritual, instead of secular. A scion of Mother Church was planted in a distant land, which, no doubt, will emulate its parent in all her manifold virtues. As we have omitted, in our exposition of the Church of England, to give an account of the staff, corps, and endowments of this distant branch of the church establishment, we shall insert it in this place:—

Bishop of Jamaica

£4,000

Archdeacon of Jamaica

2,000

Seven clergymen, at £300 each

2,100

£8,100

Bishop of Barbadoes

4,000

Archdeacon of Barbadoes

2,000

Archdeacon of Antigua

2,000

Thirteen clergymen, at £300 each

3,900

Three catechists, at £100 each

300

12,200

£20,300

These worthy gentlemen, after ten years’ service, are to have retiring allowances: their salaries have hitherto been paid out of the taxes; the 41/2 per cent. fund being so deeply mortgaged in pensions, there is no surplus from it applicable to the purpose. And the proceeds arising from the smuggling transactions in sugar and ginger, in which the Wellington ministers were detected, do not appear to have been applied either to the support of the West-India church-establishment or any other public object. But this is another of those secret modes of raising the wind with which the public is totally unacquainted, and which it will be necessary to explain.

It had been usual to remit the 41/2 per cent. duty in the produce of the Leeward Islands, in sugar and ginger; which, like other commodities from the British plantations, were sold for home-consumption at the long price—the duty included; and the duty paid over, as by private merchants, to the customs. This continued until the year 1828; previously to which, it has been seen, the surplus of the 41/2 per cent. duty had been appropriated to the support of the West-India church establishment. Ministers appear not to have relished the loss of their old fund; they had, it is true, exchanged lay for ecclesiastical patronage, but they seem to have been anxious to secure both. For this purpose, they hit upon a most extraordinary expedient. They first submitted a case to the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, requesting their opinion whether sugars, granted to the king in kind, and not specially subject to any duty, are liable to the payment of any custom-duty? The lawyers, no doubt foreseeing what sort of answer would be most agreeable to their clients, replied in the negative. Upon this, directions were forthwith given to admit the sugars sent in payment of the Leeward-Islands duty without charging the duty of customs, which had been heretofore paid as on all other imported sugars. By this contrivance, Ministers obtained the command of a fund unknown to their predecessors, amounting to betwixt thirty and forty thousand pounds per annum—the amount of duty remitted, and precisely to the same amount the general revenue of the country suffered by the defalcation in the produce of the customs appropriated by parliament to the public service, To what extent this evasion of the payment of parliamentary duties, and the raising of money by the power of prerogative, might have been pushed it is impossible to foresee. Ministers might not only have imported sugars in payment of the 41/2 per cent. duty, custom free, but they might, also, by stretching their principle a little further, have imported sugars generally, for sale, duty free, and, by retailing them at the usual price, and appropriating the duty, raised a fund for pensions and grants to any amount.

The more we reflect on this affair, the more we are astonished. The idea of the ministers of a great country turning smugglers; of resorting to the age of the Tudors and Plantagenets for precedents; of seeking to evade, under shelter of the quibbling opinions of lawyers, the payment of duties imposed by themselves, and devoted to the national service, staggers belief. It establishes, with infinitely greater force than any argument of ours, the vast importance attached, by the servants of the Crown, to those secret and uncontrolled sources of influence we have been exposing, and how essential they deem the exclusive management of them to the working of the machinery of government. To shew that our exposition of the transaction is not exaggerated, we shall insert the opinion entertained of it by Sir James Graham, and expressed in the following resolution submitted by him to the House of Commons, on the 2d of July, 1830:—

“That to exempt from duty any article of merchandize imported for the Crown, but not intended for the use of the Sovereign, is an extension of the King’s prerogative of dangerous example; and that to levy the parliamentary duties payable upon such articles when sold for home-consumption, and appropriate the amount thereof without the knowledge and consent of parliament, is an unconstitutional violation of the privileges of this House.”

It is impossible to ascertain all the funds considered at the irresponsible disposal of ministers during the long reign of the Tories. The appropriation of the surplus of the French claims is another instance of the power of a Treasury Minute to raise supplies in case of emergency. In this case, a finance-committee ascertained that a sum of £250,000 had been, by a mere order of the treasury, paid over, without the consent of parliament, to the commissioners of woods and forests, by the commission for liquidating the claims of British subjects on the French government, and subsequently expended in the alterations at Buckingham House.

We have little further to add respecting the 41/2 per cent. duties. Mr. Creevy, the late member for Appleby, calculated that these duties, from the accession of George III. to the year 1812, had produced £1,600,000. A statement, by the same respected gentleman, of the purposes to which this enormous sum had been applied, is not more extraordinary, we believe, than correct; and with it we shall conclude our account of one of the most famous jobbing-funds of the Crown:—

Pensions to persons in this country

£740,000

Special and secret service-money

326,000

Salaries to the Governors of Leeward Islands

400,000

For civil list expenditure

170,000

To different Secretaries of the Treasury, supposed for electioneering purposes

48,000

SCOTCH CIVIL LIST—GIBRALTAR DUTIES—ESCHEATS—DUCHIES OF CORNWALL AND LANCASTER—FINES AND PENALTIES.

The Scotch Hereditary Revenue forms a fourth fund at the disposal of ministers, over which, previously to the accession to office of lord Grey’s ministry, there was no legislative control further than when grants had been irrevocably made from it, they were, pro forma, submitted to parliament. It yields, annually, above £100,000, and accrues chiefly from crown-rents, customs, hereditary excise, fines, and forfeitures. About two-thirds of the produce are paid in pensions, the remainder in donations to the episcopal clergy, to the Caledonian hunt, for providing coach-houses and stables for the barons of the Exchequer, and other objects of apparently no public utility. Scotland has lately got rid of the Tory incubus by which she was long deluded and oppressed. Prior to this relief she seldom petitioned for political reform, and the spring of her scribbling and clamouring loyalty may be easily divined, since in no other part of the United Kingdom was loyalty so well paid, for in no other part were there such ample funds to reward devotion to ministers. The annual value of places and pensions shared among Scotch freeholders and burghmongers was estimated at £1,750,000, equal to half the rental of the kingdom. In the Third Report of the Committee on Public Expenditure, in 1808, it is remarked that Scotch pensions, which, at the commencement of the reign of George III. amounted only to 19, in the year 1797 had swelled to 185, and, in 1808, to 351, two-thirds of these pensions being granted to females!

A fifth source of royal income is the surplus of the Gibraltar Duties. It is provided, by the original charter, granted to this place, by Queen Anne, in 1704, that, for the augmentation of trade, no duty or imposition shall be imposed upon any vessel trading or touching at the port; and that the goods and chattels of the inhabitants shall enjoy an immunity from taxation. In violation of these chartered privileges various taxes have been imposed, and the chief portion of the proceeds therefrom, during the late reign, were paid over to Sir William Knighton for the use of the king’s privy purse. These taxes were levied without the authority of parliament, merely on the authority of the governor; and some recent impositions appear a tax on liberty of conscience,—one being a capitation-tax, of ten dollars each, imposed on Roman Catholics and Jews. Taxes have also been imposed on licenses to sell spirits, fishing-boats, lighters, and billiard-tables. The surplus of the Gibraltar Duties produced, over and above salaries and charges from 1760 to 1830, nearly two hundred thousand pounds; in the year ending 5th of January, 1830, they produced £11,498, of which £5000 was paid into the privy-purse. The collector of these imposts resides, we believe, in Lincoln’s Inn, and executes his duty by deputy.

The estates of lunatics, bastards, and others dying intestate and without heirs, form a sixth branch of the casual revenues of the Crown, under the denomination of Escheats. The proceeds from this source are considerable, amounting, in the reign of George III. to £323,424. The King’s share of the estate of Mr. Newport, a lunatic, amounted to £113,000. Poor TROUTBACK’s money shared a similar fate—but here “hangs a tale,” which we must explain, and for which purpose we shall first call in Mr. Waggoner.

“Mr. Frederick Matthew Waggoner called in and examined.

Do you know any thing of the proceedings that have been had with respect to Mr. Troutback’s will?—I do; he bequeathed £2000 for erecting an Orphan Hospital, and the whole of his money, amounting, with accumulations, to upwards of £100,000, to trustees, for erecting an additional wing, or separate building, to the charity school of St. John of Wapping, and for maintaining and educating poor children of that parish.

Are there as many poor children as would require the funds to educate?—Yes; more within the parish.

Do you think £5000 a-year would not educate the poor of the parish?—The will is for the education, clothing, and maintenance.

What has been done with respect to it?—We understand that it has been set aside by the Court of Chancery; and that the testator having no next of kin, the money has gone to the Crown.”—Report of the Education Committee, 1816, page 289.

Sure enough the “money has gone to the Crown.” The will was set aside by Lord ELDON, and the property applied to liquidate the royal debts. It was a windfall to the Sovereign, of which, as Mr. Tierney remarked, the public would never have obtained any knowledge, had not the civil list been in arrear, and it became necessary to apply to parliament for an additional allowance. How the civil list became in arrear it may be worth while explaining. In 1816 the late King, then Regent, had incurred an enormous debt in consequence of living, as he mostly did, in a profuse and riotous manner. The Lord Chamberlain applied to the Lords of the Treasury to know how this debt was to be discharged. The Lords of the Treasury, after much consultation, determined that the debt, amounting to £277,000, should be defrayed partly out of the money bequeathed by Mr. Troutback, for charitable uses, partly out of the Droits of Admiralty. Thus, the money piously left to clothe, educate, and maintain poor children, was applied to pay the furniture-bills, tailor-bills, haberdasher-bills, and bills perhaps of a still less creditable description, of the Prince Regent. It vexes one to see to what base purposes the best of things may be perverted. How many poor children of Wapping the money of Troutback would have preserved from the gallows and transportation it is impossible to say; but it is certain, had George IV. been more frugal, or a Prince who thought the welfare of his subjects of more importance than vicious indulgence, the money of Troutback, notwithstanding any informality in his will, would have been suffered to go to the noble objects for which it had been so generously bequeathed.

A seventh source of royal income is from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. When there is no Prince of Wales, or during his minority, and there is no Duke of Cornwall of a proper age to receive the revenues amounting to £15,000 a-year, they are claimed by the crown. The duchy of Lancaster yields an income to the King of £10,000 per annum. Both sums are paid into the privy-purse—the nature of which will be explained in the next chapter.

The remaining branches of the Crown-revenues are too unimportant to claim particular exposition. They accrue principally from fines and forfeitures in courts of justice, from green-wax money, from the sale of spices in the Molucca Islands, and from quit-rents and confiscated estates in the West Indies. We shall subjoin a statement of the produce of these and other branches of the Crown-revenues during the entire reign of Geo. III. from Parliamentary Paper, No. 1, Session 1820.

AN ACCOUNTof the Total Produce of all Funds at the Disposal of the Crown, and deemed not to be under the immediate Control of Parliament, from the Accession of George III. to the Year 1820.

£

s.

d.

Droits of the Admiralty and Droits of the Crown from 1760 to 1820

9,562,614

4

61/2

41/2-per-Cent. West-India Duties, from 1760 to 1820

2,116,484

0

0

Amount of the surplus of Gibraltar Revenues, remitted to England, from 1760 to 1820, after discharging garrison-expenses

124,256

10

7

Scotch Civil-List Surplus, from 1760 to 1820, now appropriated as it may arise, under the Act 50 Geo. III. c. 111, in aid of the Civil-List in England

207,700

0

0

Escheats to his Majesty, in cases of illegitimacy or otherwise, from 1760 to 1820

214,647

15

0

Escheats to his Majesty, being the property of alien enemies, from 1760 to 1820

108,777

17

8

French West-India Islands, funds arising by sale of lands in the islands; ceded at the peace of 1763

106,300

0

0

Minorca, Martinique, St. Croix, and St. Thomas, and from the settlement of Surinam, while the same were in the possession of his Majesty—Revenues arising from these Islands

159,816

0

7

Quit-Rents, &c. in the British Colonies, and from all other sources not before enumerated, from 1760 to 1820—casual revenues arising from

104,865

3

21/2

Total

£12,705,461

11

7

In the reign of George IV. the same sources of casual income yielded about a million and a half, forming, with the income from the Crownlands, during the period from 1760 to 1830, a total sum of at least THIRTY-FIVE millions. All this mass of unappropriated revenue was left at the disposal of the minister of the day, and the parliament exercised no control over it, further than that, for the last ten years, it was permitted, as matter of courtesy, annually or triennally, to look at the accounts after the money had been expended or granted away. The manner in which these great funds were managed and dissipated has been, we trust, sufficiently illustrated in the course of this chapter. With the exception of the sums expended in metropolitan improvements, they have been expended in additional grants to the royal family and in pensions to the aristocracy, to ministers, their friends and supporters. They have formed a practical branch of the English government, of which Mr. Justice Blackstone failed to give any account to his readers, and we have little hesitation in affirming that they had no inconsiderable influence in the ruinous policy of the late reigns. The royal expenditure always formed a gulph which no man could fathom, and the hereditary revenues were a never-failing source for supplying the prodigality of the king and his servants. Of the studied mystery maintained on these matters we shall cite an instance. In 1777, during the American war, the king’s debts amounted to £618,000; papers were produced containing a disguised statement how this incumbrance had been incurred: vast sums were expended in secret service money, and half a million was stated under the head of the board of works: but then, as Mr. Belsham observes, no one could tell on what palace, garden, or park, the money had been laid out. In short, there is too much reason to suppose that the debts of George III. were mainly contracted in support of the system of war and injustice in which ministers were engaged, in obtaining the baneful influence which silences all opposition, which swept away all traces of public liberty, and laid the foundation of present distress and embarrassments.

The parliament of 1820 was guilty of a culpable dereliction of duty in not seizing the opportunity, presented by the commencement of a new reign, to bring under its immediate cognizance and control the hereditary revenues. Instead of availing itself of the occasion, they were left, as before, to the irresponsible disposal of ministers. After what has been said, it will not be difficult to divine the reasons for this omission; but the people had another and opposite interest. To the misapplication of the Crown-revenues may partly be ascribed the long postponement of the great measure of Parliamentary Reform; and, therefore, the public cannot help feeling grateful to William IV. in having patriotically surrendered, during his life, to public uses, nearly the whole of these abused funds, in lieu of leaving them to be lavished on court favourites and hireling legislators.

THE CIVIL LIST.

HAVING fully explained the nature, amount, and application of the ancient hereditary revenues, we next come to the modern parliamentary grant, substituted in lieu of them, denominated the Civil List, which is a sum yearly set apart from the general income for the personal maintenance of the sovereign, and to support the honour and dignity of the Crown.

Since the Revolution of 1688, it has been usual, at the commencement of a new reign, to enter into a specific arrangement with the king, by which the hereditary revenues of the Crown are surrendered in exchange for an equivalent life-annuity. A similar course has been pursued in respect of William IV.; but before explaining the alterations and arrangements introduced into the new civil list, it will be convenient to premise some explanations of the chief departments of the royal expenditure,—the king’s household establishment; the privy purse; pensions on the civil list, and other branches of disbursement; and conclude with some observations on the character and policy of the last two monarchs, and the total expense their profusion entailed on the country.

The first and most important charge on the civil list is the royal household. This forms a ponderous establishment, and affords, by a reduction of useless offices and extravagant salaries, scope for retrenchment. It is the great nursery of indolence, parasites, and courtiers. It is formed upon manners and customs that have long since expired,—upon old baronial customs and arrangements. It not only retains traces of its feudal origin, but it is formed also on the principle of a body corporate; and has its own law-courts, magistrates, and by-laws.

In ancient times, these establishments were supported on a system of purveyance and receipt in kind! The household was then vast, and the supply scanty and precarious. The king’s purveyor used to sally forth from under the gothic portcullis, to purchase provisions, not with money, but power and prerogative. Whole districts were laid under contribution by the jackals of the royal table, who returned from their plundering excursions loaded with the spoils, perhaps, of a hundred markets, which were deposited in so many caverns, each guarded by its respective keeper. Every commodity being received in its rawest state, it had a variety of processes to pass through before it was prepared for the king and his guests. This inconvenient mode of receipt multiplied offices exceedingly; and hence has arisen the butchery, buttery, pantry, and all that “rubble of places,” which, though profitable to the holder, and expensive to the state, are almost too mean to mention.

Let us hear what BURKE said on this subject, in his reforming days:—“But when (says he) the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burthen of them. This is superstitiously to embalm the carcass, not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to preserve it. It is to burn precious oils in the tomb: it is to offer meat and drink to the dead,—not so much an honour to the deceased as a disgrace to the survivors. Our palaces are vast inhospitable halls: there the bleak winds, ‘there Boreas, and Euras, and Cauras, and Argestes, loud,’ howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of deserted guard-rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up the grim spectres of departed tyrants,—the Saxon, the Norman, and the Dane; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries,—who stalk from desolation to desolation through the dreary vacuity and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. When this tumult subsides, a dead and still more frightful silence would reign in the desert, if, every now and then, the tacking of hammers did not announce that those constant attendants on all courts, in all ages, JOBS, were still alive; for whose sake alone it is that any trace of ancient grandeur is suffered to remain. These palaces are a true emblem of some governments; the inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and magistrates still flourish. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us that this was once a place of trade, and sounding with the ‘busy hum of men,’ though now you can only trace the streets by the colour of the corn; and its sole manufacture is in members of parliament.” The royal abodes at present, we apprehend, are neither so ghostly, chill, nor comfortless, as here described, otherwise the public has been saddled with the enormous bills of Messrs. Wyattville, Nash, and Seddon, to very little purpose.

The great branches of the household are under the direction of the lord chamberlain, the lord steward, and the master of the horse. The office of the lord chamberlain is to take care of all the officers and servants belonging to the king’s chambers, except those belonging to the king’s bed-chamber, who are under the groom of the stole. He has the oversight of the officers of the wardrobe, of tents, revels, music, comedians, handicrafts, and artizans; and, though a layman, he has the oversight of all the king’s chaplains, heralds, physicians, and apothecaries. It is his office to inspect the charges of coronations, marriages, public entries, cavalcades, and funerals; and of all furniture in the parliament-house, and rooms of address to the king.

The lord steward has the estate of the household entirely committed to his care, and all his commands in court are to be obeyed; his authority reaches over all officers and servants of the king’s house, except those of the king’s chamber and chapel. The counting-house, (where the accounts of the household are kept,) the treasurer of the household, comptroller, cofferer, and master of the household, clerks of green cloth, &c. are under his control.

The master of the horse has the charge and government of all the king’s stables and horses. He has also the power over equerries, pages, footmen, grooms, farriers, smiths, saddlers, and all other trades any way connected with the stables. He has the privilege of applying to his own use one coachman, four footmen, and six grooms, in the king’s pay, and wearing the king’s livery. In any solemn cavalcade, he rides next behind the king.

Beside these officers, is the lord privy seal, whose office is to put the seal to all charters, grants, and pardons, signed by the king. Before the privy seal is affixed to any instrument, it receives the royal sign manual; it then passes under the signet, which is a warrant to the privy seal; after the privy seal, it receives the great seal from the lord chancellor, which is the finale. The performance of these different formalities costs the public, perhaps, £20,000 a-year, while the whole of the duties might be discharged as well by any honest man and his clerk for about £400 a-year. The remaining functionaries are the lord president of the council, whose office is to manage the debates in council, to propose matters from the king, and to report to him the resolutions thereupon; the commissioners of the treasury are also considered part of the household: but these, as well as some of the preceding officers, more properly appertain to the civil departments of government, and have been so considered in the new arrangement of the civil list.

The little necessity for this immense household establishment was evident during the limitations on the Regency. At that time the regent discharged all the duties of the executive with only his establishment as Prince of Wales. It did not appear then, no more than now, there was any want of attendance to give dignity and efficiency to the first magistrate. Burke mentions, in his time, that at least one-half the household was kept up solely for influence. He also mentions that one plan of reform, set on foot by lord Talbot, was suddenly stopped, because, forsooth, it would endanger the situation of an honourable member who was turnspit in the kitchen! Whether the duties of this important office continue to be discharged by a member of the honourable house we are not sure; but, in looking over a list of the household, we observe that two noble lords occupy situations little inferior in dignity and utility: the duke of St. Alban’s is master of the hawks, salary £1372, and the earl of Lichfield is master of the dogs, salary £2000. These offices sound rather degrading to vulgar ears; but “love,” as the poet says, “esteems no office mean;” and no doubt it is the love of the sovereign rather than £3000 of the public money which actuates these noble personages. In 1811 there were no fewer than twenty-six peers and four commoners who held situations in various departments of the household.

The parade of useless offices is not less great, and still more ridiculous, in the counties palatine of Durham and Chester, and the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the principality of Wales. These have all separate establishments, sufficient for the government of a kingdom, while their jurisdiction is confined to a few private estates. There are courts of chancery, ecclesiastical courts, chancellors, attorney-generals, solicitor-generals, privy councillors, registrars, cursitors, prothonotaries, auditors, and all the other mimicry of royal government. They bring nothing into the public treasury, but greatly add to the patronage of the Crown, whose dignity they degrade. In one part of his kingdom the sovereign is no more than Prince of Wales; go to the north, and he dwindles down to the duke of Lancaster; turn to the west, and he appears in the humble character of earl of Chester; travel a few miles farther, the earl disappears, and he pops up again as count palatine of Lancaster. Thus does the king, like Matthews in the play, perform all the different characters in his own drama.

Before the reign of George III. no such thing as a privy purse was known. The king’s income was always considered public property attached to the office, but not to the person of the monarch. The first time any mention is made of the privy purse, is in Mr. Burke’s bill, in 1782, and then again in the 39th of Geo. III.; but it was not till the time of the regency, when it was vested in the hands of commissioners, that it was recognised as a fixed annual sum, the private property of the king. But though this anomaly has been only recently acknowledged by any public act, it has been deemed a fixed charge on the civil list for the last seventy years. When the sum of £800,000 was set apart for the royal expenditure, the king was at liberty, with the advice of his ministers, to apply what portion of it he thought proper for his private use. The sum at first set aside for this purpose was £48,000; and the king’s family increasing, it was extended to £60,000. No part of this fund is applied to defray the expense of the household, nor of any other function of the regal office; it is limited entirely to personal expenses, and may be more properly denominated the king’s pocket money than his privy purse. Why it should be separated from the general income of the civil list, unless to gratify a puerile avarice in the monarch, it is not easy to conjecture. From this source, and the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the private property of the king is supposed to accumulate.

The next considerable charge on the civil list consists of pensions payable chiefly to servants of the household, and to the personal favorites of the sovereign and his ministers. Up to the time of the 22 Geo. III. commonly called Mr. Burke’s act, court pensions were granted without limit and controul. In that act it was provided the amount granted on the English civil list should be reduced to £95,000; the same principal of limitation was subsequently applied to the Scotch and Irish civil lists; the pensions to be granted on the former being limited to £25,000, and on the latter to £50,000, making the total amount of pensions chargeable on the civil lists of the United Kingdom £170,000. At this amount the civil list pensions stood on the accession of the king. After the death of George IV. the Court Pension list was published, and excited in the public mind a considerable sensation. Most of the “splendid paupers” inscribed upon it had never been heard of beyond the purlieus of the court; two thirds of them were females; many were the late king’s personal friends, or the apothecaries, relatives, and attachés of successive viceroys of Ireland, and of the great burghmonger of Scotland; some were the mothers, sisters, and nieces of peers, ministers of state, and great borough proprietors in England: but in the whole number there was hardly one (Robert Southey perhaps excepted) eminent for science, literature, or the arts, or distinguished by any kind of public worth or claim. Worthless, however, as the elect of court favour were, their annuities have been continued to them during their lives, under an impression that to rescind them might be productive of individual distress, and a departure from established usage on the accession of a new sovereign. But in the sequel it will be seen that the Court Pension list, in future, is not to exceed £75,000 per annum.

The remaining charges on the civil list consist of certain ancient payments for charity; a sum for special service at the disposal of the lords of the Treasury; and the secret service money of the Treasury.

Other charges heretofore paid out of the civil list have been transferred to the consolidated fund; such were the payments to the judges, to the lords of the Treasury, to foreign ministers, to the speaker of the House of Commons, to the universities, and various miscellaneous items to the city of London, and corporations in the country. The amount of these, and also the expenditure under the several heads of the civil list we have described, will appear from the official documents which will be subjoined to this article. At present let us give a brief summary of the progress and augmentation of the civil list, and an account of its present settlement.

From the year 1804 to 1811, the average annual expenditure of the civil list amounted to £1,102,683. On the commencement of the Regency, this branch of expenditure increased enormously. From 1812 to 1816, the average annual expenditure of the civil list was £1,371,000, being an increase of £268,317 over the expenditure of George III. This augmentation arose chiefly from the profusion in the royal household; from the expense of furniture and tradesmen’s bills; of upholsters, jewellers, glass and china manufacturers, builders, perfumers, embroiderers, tailors, and so on. The charge for upholstery, only for three quarters of a year, was £46,291; of linen-drapery, £64,000; silversmiths, £40,000; wardrobe, £72,000. To provide for these additional outgoings, Lord Castlereagh introduced the Civil-List-Regulation-Bill of 1816. By this Bill, no check is imposed on the profusion of the court; it only provides that various fluctuating and other charges, heretofore paid out of the civil list, should be transferred to the consolidated fund, or provided for by new grants from parliament: in other words, that the civil list should be augmented to the amount of its increased expenditure. By this arrangement, an additional burden was imposed on the public, amounting to £255,768, being the total of the charges of which the civil list was relieved.

Among the charges transferred from the civil list was £35,000, payable to the junior branches of the royal family, and which was to be paid out of the consolidated fund; also salaries, to the amount of £3,268, to certain officers and persons. All the charges, for the outfit of ministers to foreign courts, or presents to foreign ministers, incidental expenses in the Treasury, deficiencies of fees to secretaries of state, and in the law department, amounting to £197,000, were to be provided for by new grants from parliament. Various charges for furniture and other articles, heretofore provided by the lord chamberlain for public offices; the expense of collars, badges, and mantles for the orders of the Garter, Bath, and Thistle; and all expenses for repairs of public offices and buildings at the Tower, Whitehall, and Westminster; for works in St. James’s Park and private roads, estimated at £25,000, were to be provided for by new grants; the total deduction of charges being, as before stated, £255,768.

Now it is obvious that to the amount of these charges the income of the Crown was augmented, and that the scale of extravagant expenditure, in the first four years of the Regency, from 1812 to 1816, formed the basis on which the civil list of George IV. was provided. On the accession of the late king, in 1820, no alteration was proposed in the Civil-List-Regulation-Bill of 1816; it passed, as is observed by the writer of a ministerial pamphlet of the day, with “the entire approbation of all parties; that is, “all parties,” without inquiry or examination, concurred in making a permanent addition to the king’s income of a quarter of a million over that enjoyed by his predecessor.

But to judge of the immense disproportion in the incomes of the two sovereigns, it is necessary to advert to the alteration in the value of money. The average expenditure of George III. from 1804 to 1811, was £1,102,683. The average price of wheat, from 1804 to 1811, inclusive, was 87s. 6d. per quarter. The average price of wheat, during the ten years of the last reign, from 1820 to 1830, was 58s. 4d. per quarter; indicating a rise in the value of money, as measured by corn, of above 33 per cent. The price of labour, profits, tithes, rents, and interest, all fell in nearly the same proportion; so that it would not be too much to reckon an income of £67 equivalent to an income of £100 in the period selected for comparison; and, consequently, that the expenditure of George III. of £1,102,683, in a depreciated currency, was not more than an expenditure of £638,797 at the value of money during the last reign. Had, therefore, the civil list of George IV. been fixed at the same nominal amount as the civil list of George III. it would have been virtually 33 per cent. greater; but, besides being fixed at nearly the same nominal amount as that of his predecessor, one-fourth less was to pay out of it; so that the real addition to the income of George IV. was not less than fifty-eight per cent.—an arrangement, we are told, with the “entire approbation of all parties.”

The extravagant nature of the settlement of the civil list of George IV. must be plain: we have compared it with the latest expenditure of George III. and, allowing for the alteration in the currency and the charges transferred to other funds, the difference was more than half a million. George III. was by no means a cheap sovereign; but in considering his expenditure, it ought to be borne in mind that he was liable to many outgoings from which his successor was exempted. Of this nature, were a large family—sums expended in the improvement of Windsor-castle—the charge of furnishing and decorating the apartments in the palaces for the princesses—their removal to and from Windsor, estimated at £20,000—the journeys to Weymouth about general Garth’s affair—and furnishing apartments in Kensington-palace for the Princess of Wales; all which tended to swell the royal expenditure in the seven years selected for comparison.

But it is proper to observe respecting this pattern-king, as many considered George III., that his income never equalled his expenditure. Allowing for the sums granted by parliament to liquidate the debts of the civil list during his reign, amounting to upwards of THREE MILLIONS AND A HALF, it renders the disparity between his actual expenditure and that of his successor less than we have mentioned. George IV. incurred no debts after the settlement of his civil list, and the course adopted to avoid future incumbrances was first, by relieving the civil list of all public charges of an expensive and fluctuating amount; and secondly, by granting to the king an allowance framed on the most extravagant scale of expenditure ever known in this country, and such as experience had shewn to be adequate to his most lavish demands. By these precautions, and with the hereditary revenues always ready to meet any unexpected outgoing, it would have been wonderful had not the scheme realised the expectations of the projectors. Another feature in lord Castlereagh’s bill was the appointment of a new officer under the name of auditor of the civil list. The latter regulation can excite no surprise, for it cannot be forgotten that in all attempts to economize by Tory ministers they generally contrived to keep up the same amount of patronage by new creatins. An instance of this occurred on the abolition of certain sinecures in 1817, when a bill, the 57 Geo. III. was immediately introduced to provide pensions in lieu of them. Another instance was afforded in the consolidation of the revenue departments of England and Ireland, when a vice-treasurer and his deputy were appointed, with a salary of £3000 a-year, apparently for no other object than to keep up the patronage of the Treasury. Again, when the further granting of pensions from the Leeward-Islands-fund was prohibited, ministers set up the West-India church-establishments. The ostensible functions of the auditor of the civil list were to superintend the accounts of the lord chamberlain, lord steward, and master of the horse; but certainly these were the duties which ought to have been performed by the heads of these departments, and for which they receive their salaries. Was it probable the public would be better secured against profusion in the royal expenditure when confided to the watchful vigilance of a commoner than when confided to three peers of the realm? The precaution was futile, but answered the purpose of a pretext for dipping into the pockets of the people. Mr. Herries was the first auditor appointed; his previous office, commissary-in-chief, had been abolished, and, we presume, ministers were at a loss how otherwise to dispose of him.

The Whig ministry have annexed the auditorship to the Treasury, by which a saving of more than £1500 a-year has been effected.

CIVIL LIST OF WILLIAM IV.

Having adverted to the civil lists of the two last reigns, let us next advert to the civil list arrangement concluded with the present King. WILLIAM IV. is so deservedly popular for his firm and enlightened adherence to the great renovating measure of parliamentary reform, that we are sure the people will not begrudge his Majesty any income conducive to his personal comfort and real dignity. But it is not our province to act the part of parasites, who mislead monarchs and ruin empires, but to submit to our readers the truth, and nothing but the truth. We shall then briefly state the arrangement of the civil list established by I Will. IV., c. 25., and which received the royal assent April 22, 1831.

The leading principle of the framers of the act was to relieve the civil list of every charge not strictly connected with the royal expenditure. Hitherto many expenses had been included in the civil list which had no immediate connexion with the king’s household or the regal office; expenses which, in fact, were the expenses of the civil government of the country, and as such ought always to have been under the cognizance, and subject to the control of parliament. All charges of this description have been dissevered and transferred to the consolidated fund, to be provided for out of the general produce of the taxes. In lieu of the civil list consisting of nine classes of payment, they have been reduced to the five following; first, the privy purse of the King, £60,000, and the establishment of the Queen, £50,000, making the total sum allotted to this class £110,000 per annum. Second, the salaries of the royal household, including the departments of the lord chamberlain, £64,450, lord steward, £36,500, master of the horse, £28,500, and master of the robes £850, making the total sum allotted to this class £130,300. The third class consists of the expenditure in the several departments in the second class, amounting to £171,500. The fourth class consists of royal bounty, alms, payments to the poor of London, special service, and home secret service money, amounting to £23,200. The fifth and last class is pensions, which is limited to £75,000. The mode in which the reduction has been effected under this head, was by consolidating the three pension lists of England, Ireland, and Scotland in one alphabetical list, and by providing that pensions to the amount of £75,000 on the first part of the alphabetical list should be charged on the civil list, and the remainder, to the amount of £95,000, be charged on the consolidated fund. By this arrangement the public will receive the benefit of the pensions which fall in from that part of them which are charged on the consolidated fund, while the King has the advantage of the vacancies which occur in those payable from the civil list.

RECAPITULATION.

£

s.

d.

First Class.

For their Majesty’s Privy Purse

110,000

0

0

Second Class.

Salaries of His Majesty’s Household

130,300

0

0

Third Class.

Expences of His Majesty’s Household

171,500

0

0

Fourth Class.

Special and Secret Service

23,200

0

0

Fifth Class.

Pensions

75,000

0

0

£510,000

0

0

An important question now arises—What is the amount of saving effected by the new arrangement? There has been a shifting of weights we have seen, there has been a transfer of charges from one fund to another, but the vital question to the public is, how much less will the support of the new king cost than the old. Let us enquire.

The civil list granted to William IV. is £510,000; the civil list granted to his predecessor (the Irish civil list included) was £1,057,000; the difference is £547,000. But the saving is by no means to the amount of this difference. The civil list of the King has been relieved of four entire classes of disbursement, the expenditure in which amounted to upwards of £400,000, and which are now provided for by annual grants from parliament. Notwithstanding this, we find, on comparing the corresponding classes of the two lists, that there has been an absolute and positive reduction. In the second class the reductions have been to the amount of £10,300; in the third class to the amount of £37,500; in the fourth class to the amount of £3000; and in the fifth class to the amount of £95,000. In the first class there has been an augmentation to the amount of £50,000 on account of the establishment of the Queen. The net reduction in the royal expenditure, below the amount in the preceding reigns, is £95,000.

We have now submitted, as clearly and correctly as we are able, from the official returns to parliament, the new arrangement of the civil list. In our opinion, it is a material improvement on those which have preceded it, and does credit to Earl Grey’s administration. It is simpler in form and more economical. The cutting down of the infamous pension list is not only a saving, but a constitutional improvement in the executive government, by destroying the miasm of the court atmosphere. Other advantages have accrued: the masses of revenue, the nature of which was explained in the last chapter, have been withdrawn from the irresponsible disposal of ministers. By the transfer of charges to the consolidated fund, a sum of no less than £696,000 has, for the first time, been brought within the cognizance and control of parliament, and which cannot fail, ultimately, to lead to a very considerable reduction of expenditure.

Against these advantages we have only two drawbacks to mention. First, it does not appear from the civil list act, the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have been included in the surrender of the hereditary and casual revenues of the crown. The income from these royal appanages, we believe, is about £25,000 per annum. The king enjoys the revenue of the former in the absence of a Prince of Wales, and of the latter in his own right as Duke of Lancaster. They are considered by some as the private property of the sovereign, and, as such, not within parliamentary cognizance any more than the income of his grace of Norfolk, or any other nobleman. But we cannot see the reasons for this construction. The king is only known in his public capacity of chief magistrate, and we apprehend the revenues of Lancaster and Cornwall might have been as legally surrendered as the casual and hereditary revenues. The duchies are notoriously great nurseries of abuse and sinecurism, and have long wanted bringing before the public.

The second objection we have to urge is, our apprehension lest the hereditary revenues have not been sufficiently secured from ministerial grasp. In the twelfth section of the Civil List Act various powers are reserved to the Crown, among others, to grant rewards out of the admiralty droits for meritorious conduct. May not this leave a door open for the future encroachments of the servants of the king on these funds? However, this is a contingency, which can only occur from the supineness of the legislature.

We repeat, therefore, in spite of these drawbacks, that the Whig civil list is a substantial improvement on its predecessors. Many, however, will still think, and we think so too, that the allowance of more than half a million per annum for the maintenance of one man is a very great sum. But it is necessary to bear in mind the state and institutions of the society in which we live. No one can reasonably expect that a king of England should have a less annual income than the greatest of his subjects. Before reducing lower the royal income, we must reduce the incomes of the grandees of the church and aristocracy, by the amputation of tithes and corn laws. Till then we do not imagine his Majesty could well discharge the duties of his high station with a smaller revenue; especially while he has the gorgeous civil list of the citizen king of the French to keep him in countenance. While, therefore, the monarchical and aristocratic institutions of the country subsist, the people will be compelled to make a great pecuniary sacrifice to mere state and graduated rank, and be under the necessity of declining the tender of the worthy Scotchman, who offered to discharge all the duties of the regal office for £300 a year, and find good security for the performance!

ROYAL DEBTS AND EXPENDITURE DURING THE LATE REIGNS.

The state of the civil list has varied so much during the reigns of George III. and IV., that it may be useful to give a brief sketch of the total amount of public money applied to the support of this department of expenditure, and in extricating the Crown and the members of the royal family from pecuniary embarrassments.

At the commencement of the reign of George III. the king accepted the fixed sum of £800,000 per annum in lieu of the hereditary, temporary, and other revenues. This sum was successively augmented by parliament as follows:

1 Geo. III. c. 1.

£800,000

17 Geo. III. c. 21.

100,000

44 Geo. III. c. 80.

60,000

52 Geo. III. c. 6.

70,000

Surplus of exchequer fees, applied by 23 Geo. III. c. 82.

50,000

Surplus of Scotch revenues, applied by 50 Geo. III. c. 87.

10,000

In 1804, when £60,000 was added, the civil list was relieved of annual charges to the amount of £82,000. The debts of the king, paid by parliament, were as follows:

In 1769

£513,511

1777

618,340

1784

60,000

1786

210,000

1802

990,000

1804

591,842

1805

10,458

1814

118,857

£3,113,061

Parliament granted, towards the extraordinary expenses of 1814, £100,000, making £3,213,061; and in January, 1815, there was a further debt on the civil list to the amount of £421,355. To these grants to the king must be added the monies granted to the royal family, and to defray those charges of which the civil list had been relieved, amounting to £9,561,396. Besides which there was applied, either in aid of the civil list, or to liquidate arrears thereon, £1,653,717 out of the hereditary revenues. So far brings the royal expenditure to January, 1815. In the following year the civil list expenditure amounted to £1,480,000; making the total expenditure, from the accession of George III. to January, 1816, £64,740,032.

This brings us down to the period when there was a general parliamentary investigation of the civil list; and when it was settled on the basis on which it continued, without material alteration, till the recent demise of the Crown. As we have before explained the profuse character of lord Castlereagh’s settlement, and the vast augmentation the civil list received, we shall not repeat our statement, further than by recapitulating the chief provisions.

In 1816 the civil list was relieved of public charges to the amount of £255,768, and the future provision for it was fixed at the sum of £1,083,729. £100,000 more was granted for the support of the establishment of George III. at Windsor-Castle, and £10,000 per annum to Queen Charlotte, afterwards continued to the Duke of York, for superintendence. In the same year £60,000 was voted for the establishment of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Coburg. With the exception of the saving of £10,000, by the premature death of the Princess of Wales, in 1817, all these arrangements continued until the accession of George IV. in 1820, when the civil list was fixed at £1,057,000, and so continued to the end of that monarch’s reign.

Having obtained the ordinary charges of the civil list, we next inquire, what extraordinary aids flowed into this insatiable gulph. Like his predecessor, George IV. was constantly receiving, in addition to his regular income, refreshers out of the Admiralty droits, Gibraltar duties, and other branches of the hereditary revenues, either in aid of the privy purse, to defray travelling expenses among his lieges, or to meet extra outgoings in the household. Besides these, many items ordinarily inserted in that annual budget of miscellanies, the civil list contingencies, ought in justice to be placed to the account of the sovereign. Then, again, what masses of money have been swamped in the royal palaces. Upwards of £600,000 has been already granted for the repair and improvement of the Pimlico residence. On Windsor-castle the sum already expended amounts to £894,500; and £190,670 more is requisite to finish this gothic barbarism. It is said that the pavilion at Brighton cost a million of money; and on the cottage in the Great Park half a million was expended. For the two last facts we have no official authority, but they are traits of extravagance not improbable in a king who, in one year, spent £5000 and more in the single article of robes; whose stud of horses, though he seldom journeyed beyond the limits of his own pleasure-grounds, was upwards of 200; and whose old clothes, white kid inexpressibles with white satin linings included, after his death, actually sold in the heap for £15,000! Such are the blessings conferred by a monarch of taste, who, through the agency of servile ministers and a patient people, obtained ample means to gratify his most fantastic desires.

Nothing has been yet said of the burthen imposed by the younger branches of the royal family. The pensions of these are paid out of the consolidated fund, and form a distinct charge from the civil list. The annuities payable at the time of the late demise, exclusive of military pay and official emoluments, amounted to £248,500 per annum.

Every change in the personal relations of the royal family entails additional expense on the community, whether it be a marriage, a christening, or a burial. In the first case, there is a grant for an outfit; in the second, a grant for support and education; and in the last, a provision for the servants of the deceased. The public is now paying upwards £30,000 per annum for the servants of George III., Queen Charlotte, and Queen Caroline. In 1825 an annuity of £6000 a-year was granted to the Duke of Cumberland, to support and educate his son, Prince George-Frederick-Alexander-Charles-Ernest-Augustus of Cumberland, (gracious heaven, what a long name this child has got); in the same year a like annuity to the Duchess of Kent, for Alexandrina-Victoria, which, in 1831, was augmented to her royal highness by an additional grant of £10,000. One might suppose these high personages had never been married, and the fact of having offspring was among the accidents of life for which they were totally unprovided.

People naturally wonder what becomes of the heaps of money abstracted from them in taxes; they are, in fact, only imperfectly acquainted with the costliness of the institutions under which they live, and the profusion with which the produce of their industry and skill is lavished: we shall, however, endeavour to open their eyes on these subjects. Let us see, then, what has been the total cost of the two last reigns; after the preceding explanations the reader will be better able to comprehend and verify the subjoined recapitulation.

SUMMARYof the Royal Expenditure, from the Accession of George III. to the Death of George IV.

From the accession of George III. to January 5, 1815, the income of the civil list, and parliamentary grants to liquidate debts thereon

£51,623,564

Parliamentary grants to the royal family, and for judges and other services, of the charge for which the civil list was relieved

9,561,390

Monies applied out of the hereditary revenues

1,653,717

Debts on the civil list, January 1815

421,355

Civil list expenditure for the year ending January 5, 1816

1,480,000

TOTAL royal expenditure from the accession of George III. to the year 1816

64,740,026

From 1816 to 1820, the income of civil list by 56 Geo. III. c. 46

4,334,916

Windsor-castle establishment during the same period, including allowance for custos

440,000

Parliamentary grants for pensions, salaries, and services, of which the civil list was relieved

1,358,072

Pensions and official salaries of the royal dukes and princesses, including Prince Coburg and Queen Caroline

1,335,344

Monies applied in aid of the king and royal family from the hereditary revenues

350,000

Revenues of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster

100,000

Allowance to Queen Charlotte to her death in 1818

116,400

TOTAL royal expenditure, from 1816 to 1820

8,034,332

Carried forward

£72,774,358

Brought forward

£72,774,358

From 1820 to 1830, the income of the civil list, by 1 Geo. IV. c. 1

10,570,000

Parliamentary grants for pensions, salaries, and services, of which the civil list was relieved

3,397,680

Pensions, salaries, and allowances of the royal dukes and princesses, including Prince Coburg

3,575,000

Monies appropriated to the use of the king and royal dukes, out of Admiralty droits and Gibraltar duties

150,000

Revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster paid into the privy purse

250,000

Allowances to the late servants of George III., Queen Charlotte, and Queen Caroline

350,000

Expense of repairing and improving Buckingham-palace, to 1830

496,269

Grants for the alteration and improvement of Windsor-castle, to January 5, 1830

527,500

TOTAL royal expenditure, from 1820 to 1830

19,316,449

GRAND TOTAL of the Royal Expenditure, from the accession of George III. to the death of George IV

£92,090,807

The pensions and official emoluments of the royal dukes, from first entering into public life to the year 1815, are not included; and there are various fees and perquisites of which they were in the receipt, and annuities to the princesses on the Irish civil list, of which we have not been able to obtain authentic returns. The total amount of the incomes of the king and royal family, for the last seventy years, cannot have been less than £100,000,000 sterling, making the average expenditure of a single family £1,428,571 per annum.

The people of England have been so long familiarized to the lavish expenditure of their rulers, that we fear they are unable to appreciate the importance of ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS of money. The best way to bring the mind rightly to estimate the magnitude of this sum, is, to reflect for a moment on the amount of evil it might have averted, or the good it might have accomplished, had it been judiciously appropriated to the attainment of objects of national utility. An annual revenue of £1,428,571 is equal to one-third of all the sums levied in poor-rates during the two reigns, and would maintain two millions of poor people. By the saving of such a sum how many trumpery taxes might have been repealed, which harass and impede the industrious citizen! What a fund it would form to mitigate the sufferings constantly recurring from changes in the seasons and the vicissitudes of commerce! It is calculated that the annual application of a quarter of a million would enable to emigrate the whole of the redundant industry yearly accumulating from the progress of population. How much more, then might be effected by the application of £1,428,571 per annum. What an impulse it would give to our mercantile navy, by creating employment for shipping in the conveyance of settlers:—what stores—what implements of agriculture, and other necessaries, it would furnish to families! Internal industry would be stimulated; new communities founded; the waste and desolate parts of the earth reclaimed and peopled; and by opening new channels of employment and demand, some of the evils, which most embitter our social state, alleviated.

A republican, perhaps, would contend that nearly the whole of the hundred millions might have been saved to the community, and point to the people of the United States of America for an example of frugal government. Their king only costs five thousand a-year, instead of a million; and their other functionaries are equally cheap and reasonable. As for lords of the bed-chamber, grooms of the stole, master of the hawks, master of the robes, and other masters and lords, they have none of these things. And where is the loss they have sustained? Their government never appeared deficient in dignity or efficiency at home or abroad; and the duties of the executive magistracy have been discharged quite as well as in this country.

There is much truth in this; but the British people seem to have a taste for monarchy, and it is a point now hardly disputed, that every community has a right to choose its own form of government. It is true our chief magistrate is not the most efficient of public servants; neither fighting the battles of the country, conducting its negotiations, nor personally exercising judicial administration. Still, we do not consider him quite so useless in his station as “the gilded globe on the dome of St. Paul’s,” to which the capital “of the Corinthian column” has been rather absurdly compared. Every society must have a head—a king, president, or dictator; and, in fixing the amount of his revenue, it is necessary to have regard to the state and income of his subjects. A richly endowed church and aristocracy demand a richly endowed king to match: simultaneously with the curtailment of the income of the monarch ought the revenues of the priesthood and nobility to be curtailed, by the abolition of tithes, the repeal of corn-laws, and a more equal partition of national burthens.

The superior income of the sovereign, however, does not comprise all the advantages he enjoys over his lieges. The king pays no house-rent or taxes; and if he travels he pays no turnpikes. If he marries there is an outfit; if he has a child there is a portion; if he dies he is buried at the public charge, his widow receives £100,000 a year out of the taxes, and has two splendid mansions wherein to mourn her loss. Thus all the relations and vicissitudes of life are so amply provided for that one is at a loss to conceive what the king can have to pay, or on what objects his immense income can be expended. Here is certainly a mystery. The conclusion seems to be, that the functions of the regal office have degenerated into etiquette; and the exalted individuals who discharge them have become, as one of the number observed, little more than a ceremony, whose duties are nominal, and whose outgoings—great though they be—consist only of trappings, attendance, and pageantry.

In what, for example, consist the duties of a king of the old European fashion?—At first sight they appear great and manifold: he holds courts and levees—opens and prorogues parliament—chooses ministers of state—examines and signs all public grants and documents. These functions appear quite sufficient to occupy the attention of one individual; but if we examine them more closely, we shall find they are vain, shadowy, and unimportant.

What, for instance, is a court?—A pageant, a farce, in which a train of useless officers, gaudily attired, assemble, and those who have obtained an appointment, a pension, or place, express their gratitude by kissing the royal hands!

What is a levee?—A larger muster, a presentation of titled mendicants and others, who move in procession before the king: they bow, and he bows, and sometimes smiles; they pass on, another and another, as “great a fool as t’ other;”—and this is a levee.

How does the king authenticate public documents? He writes W. R., or W. REX, at the top or bottom of a piece of parchment, vellum, or paper: this was done by a machine in the last reign, and many were in hopes that it would have been retained, and a similar contrivance extended to other regal functions, by which the monarch would have been able to retire on half-pay, or with a superannuation allowance.

What is the opening of parliament?—The king going in great state to the house of peers; reading about a dozen lines prepared for him by his ministers, containing nothing either rich or rare, and then returning in the same state.

What is a prorogation?—Much the same as the last; with this difference, that the rogues are sent to kill partridges, instead of being called together to talk, and talk, and nothing but talk.

How does the king choose his ministers? He does not choose them at all; they are chosen by a majority of the parliament, which is chosen by one hundred and fifty-four individuals called boroughmongers, who have been chosen by God knows whom, but who appear to have been a visitation inflicted on the people as a punishment for apathy and gullibility.

Are not kings the fathers of their people?—They are so called, but they are very unlike fathers, since, instead of feeding and protecting their children, their children feed and protect them.

Kings are called the sovereigns of their respective states?—They are so styled, certainly, but this is another fiction of feudality and priest-craft. The sovereignty is in the people; and, as every day affords experimental proof of the truth of this position, there are now few to call it in question.

Such is a catechism of the duties and attributes of what may be denominated feudal kings: as to citizen kings, our experience of them is yet too limited to decide whether or no they are an improvement. But of the elder sort it may be truly affirmed they have little claim on the gratitude of mankind: formerly they were great destroyers of their species, and latterly they have been great consumers of victual. “When we see,” says Rabelais, “the print of Garagantua, that has a mouth as large as an oven, and swallows at one meal twelve hundred pounds of bread, twenty oxen, a hundred sheep, six hundred fowls, fifteen hundred horses, two thousand quails, a thousand barrels of wine, six hundred peaches, five hundred pine-apples, &c. &c. who does not say—That is the mouth of a KING?”

POLICY AND CHARACTER OF THE TWO LATE REIGNS.

Having dwelt so long on the pecuniary affairs of the late reigns, our readers will, perhaps, have patience with us while we submit a few strictures on their political and social bearing.

The personal character of George III., and the predominant maxims of his reign, are too well known to require elucidation in this place; but one part of his policy has either not obtained the attention it deserves, or is not so generally understood. It is thought this prince, like his predecessor, was held in thraldom by the boroughmongers: this is an error. Although the intellectual endowments of the king were not of a high order, he is entitled to the praise of being the first of his race who, if he did not emancipate himself from, at least lightened, the yoke imposed on the executive by the aristocracy.

The great families who had mainly contributed to the Revolution of 1688 claimed, for their services, an exclusive right to the government of the kingdom; having averted the despotism of the Stuarts, they sought to establish a despotism in themselves, and transmit the divine right of power, wrested from the monarch, to their own posterity. Parliamentary reform had not been agitated; and the people being of little political importance, the sovereign was the only obstacle to this oligarchical pretension. Hence their intrigues and encroachments were exclusively directed against the Crown. They sought to render the regal office a mere name; the king a puppet, to be moved by wires, of which they held the strings, to be brought out, like the unfortunate Montezuma, on show days, decked out in the habiliments of royalty, to inspire the multitude with respect for authority. William III. groaned under this system; Queen Anne patronized its opponents; the first and second George, having little knowledge of our institutions, and by nature not much qualified for the exercise of authority, submitted to it quietly; but to the credit of George III., he openly rebelled against aristocratic usurpation. The king perceived, and his mother, the princess-dowager, in concert with lord Bute, demonstrated to him the galling bondage in which his predecessors had been held by the arrogance of the Devonshire, the Pelham, the Portland, and other towering families. “George,” said the princess, “be KING;” and the prince obeyed her constant exhortation, and became so not only in name but reality. The design was laudable, and even constitutional; the king his prerogatives, and the people their representatives, being the whole creed of reformers. But it was only the first, not the second, the king regarded; while grasping at the prerogatives of the Stuarts, he was equally averse to the rights of the Commons.

Lord Bute was appointed the first minister on the new system. Being a man of little capacity, ignorant of public affairs, and the management of parties, he was compelled to retire. But the king did not abandon his object. Partly by the untractableness of his own character, partly by the adroitness with which he played the factions against each other, but most of all from the immense increase in the power of the Crown, from taxation, the augmentation of the peerage, the establishment of the banking interest—aided with the money-jobbers, contractors, and speculators, he succeeded in breaking the aristocratic fetters. His independence may be dated from the American war. That contest was purely his own. It is even said he first suggested the stamp-duty. So much, however, was it considered the king’s personal quarrel, that those who did not concur in it were branded as disloyal.

The last attempt of the aristocracy to reduce the king to a state of pupilage was made in 1783, by the famous India Bill of Mr. Fox. This great measure, framed by Mr. Burke, was intended to establish a counterpoise to the influence of the Crown, by vesting the patronage of India in fifteen individuals chosen by parliament; in other words, by the coalition administration. Nothing could have been devised more effectual for the purpose; for it would have placed the sovereign of England at the mercy of the sovereigns of Bengal, and erected a mound from which the palace of St. James’s might always be maintained in dutiful and respectful obedience. But the king penetrated the snare that was laid for him; and, by a vigorous exertion of court influence and the artful excitement of popular clamour, the bill was thrown out, and the Whigs, driven from power in disgrace, sunk into complete insignificance. Their union with lord North exposed to the country the profligacy and rottenness of their public principles. It was the death-blow to party. “From the moment,” says the bishop of Llandaff, “the coalition was formed betwixt lord North and the men who for many years had reprobated in the strongest terms his political principles, I lost all confidence in public men. I clearly saw that they sacrificed their public principles to private pique, and their honour to their ambition.” The observations of Sir N. Wraxall are to the same purport. Mr. Nicholls, in his “Recollections,” says, “from the death of lord Rockingham they became a faction, and their efforts were no longer employed for the attainment of any great public object.” These writers speak from contemporary impression, and consequently represent the general feeling excited by their conduct.

The subsequent history of this party is too fresh in public recollection to require illustration. There are some Whigs yet, as there are some Jacobites, Bourbonites, and Johannites; for sects and parties hardly ever become extinct, however absurd their dogmas. But upon the whole, both Whiggism and Toryism may be considered defunct superstitions; and the impostures having been unmasked, men are now only shocked at the grossness of the idolatary by which they had been so long enslaved.

Upon the conduct of the Whigs, in their endeavours to controul the executive, one or two observations may be made. That the influence of the Crown, after its enormous augmentation during the American war, required abridgement, there can be no question; but the means employed for this purpose were highly objectionable. The Whigs attempted to throw the weight into the wrong scale; they saw the preponderance of the Crown, but were insensible or indifferent to the humiliation of the People: they looked only to themselves, and instead of raising the popular branch of the constitution, sought only their own aggrandizement, and, by providing sinecures and places for their adherents, balancing the patronage of the monarch. Hence the real friends of the people viewed their policy not only with contempt but abhorrence; for it contained no invitation to popular support—no guarantee for public liberty, and was merely the selfishness of party struggling for the influence and emoluments of regality.

Yet the Whigs have complained of ingratitude, of the people having been deluded from their “NATURAL LEADERS!” But is not this a faithful history of their conduct? Is it not notorious, from the Revolution to the end of the last reign, the people had no alternative, save despotism in the sovereign, or despotism in an oligarchy? Is it surprising that they revolted from both these propositions; that they repulsed with equal scorn the open partizans of absolute power, and those who, under hollow and hypocritical professions, sought to inveigle them out of their liberties, or render them the passive instruments of personal ambition? From such “natural leaders” it was time the people separated, and established a party for themselves. That the secession was at length accomplished, may be ascribed to the persevering and patriotic efforts of sir Francis Burdett and the electors of Westminster, who were the first successfully to erect the standard of revolt from aristocratical domination.

These strictures on the aristocratical factions, it is needless to remark, apply only to their public conduct during the period under review. Both Tories and Whigs have recently undergone a change for the better; the administration of lord Wellington was better than any preceding administration formed from the same class of politicians: many Tories avow sentiments which their predecessors would have repudiated with horror; and the existing Whig ministry we feel confident, from all we can observe up to the moment we are writing, (December 22d, 1831,) is sincerely bent on reforming the popular branches of our institutions, on reducing the government expenditure, and on improving—if that be possible—the condition of the great body of the people of the United Kingdom. The fact is, there has been a progression (sir C. Wetherell would say, a retrocession) of parties; the more liberal Tories have adopted the sentiments of the Whigs, and the Whigs have adopted the sentiments of the more intelligent Radicals. But to what is the change to be ascribed? Why solely to EVENTS—events too obvious to be here enumerated. Had the people remained quiescent, the Whigs would have continued Whigs still, and the Tories would have been unchanged. But the people have become enlightened from experience of the evils inflicted by bad government; they have tasted of the forbidden fruit of knowledge—of that fruit which many would gladly have kept out of their reach; they have, in short, read the Black Book, and the consequence is, they no longer continue the duped spectators of the tracasseries of faction; they will no longer suffer the legislature of a great empire, instituted solely for their service and benefit, to be merely an arena for aristocratic contention, intrigue, and selfish ambition; they care nothing about men—who is in or who is out, but insist on the adoption of measures advantageous to themselves—and these measures are an efficient reform of an insulting mock representation—of an oppressive church—of an absurd and plundering legal system—of monopolies and taxes partial and unjust. More of these subjects hereafter; at present let us return to our task, from which we have deviated in order to escape for a moment the tedium of statistical detail.

The great theme of the panegyrists of George III. is his private virtues. For a king to discharge his duty to the people, it is not sufficient that he is neither passionately addicted to wine, nor women, nor gaming, and that he does not amuse himself occasionally, after the fashion of the East, by cutting off the heads of his lieges. Betwixt private men and those who fill important public stations there is a wide difference. The former may live and die as it has pleased Heaven to make them, and society has no right to complain, provided they observe the laws, and neither burthen the parish nor their friends. But the condition of a king is widely different: he has no privilege to be inept; he is the retained servant of the community, who has grave duties to discharge, and, his fees being enormous, it is not sufficient he is harmless and inoffensive, he ought to be actively beneficial. To judge of the blessings accruing from the reign of George III. it would be sufficient to contrast the state of the country when he ascended the throne with the condition to which it was reduced when his intellectual twilight subsided into total darkness. It is hardly possible to imagine how any career could have been more reckless, profligate, and regardless of ultimate consequences than that which entailed the paper currency, the monstrous debt, the poor-rates, and a vastly increased population dependent for subsistence on the uncertain demands of commerce and manufactures. Private virtues are a poor set-off against national calamities, especially if produced by inveterate obstinacy and error, as was unquestionably the case with the two great ruinous wars—those against America and France—in which George III. was engaged. Although the mental endowments of the king were very moderate, and he possessed no strength or originality of mind to carry him beyond the notions of religion and politics impressed during his education, yet, like others of the same intellectual grade, he had a quick sense of whatever tended to interfere with his own interests. He fully comprehended the effect likely to be operated on the status of his order by the French revolution. When that mighty movement began to manifest itself, he put (says Mr. Nicholls) Burke’s incendiary publication into the hands of every one he met. He said to every courtier who approached him, “If a stop is not put to French principles there will not be a king left in Europe in a few years.” In fact, he was the greatest alarmist in his dominions. Mr. Burke and the duke of Portland were only second and third to him. Mr. Pitt was averse to the war, but acquiesced from that truckling love of place, which was the prominent feature of his own character and that of most of his adherents. In like manner the Grenville Whig administration consented to abandon Catholic Emancipation, on the condition of royal service. But the renunciation was not sufficiently explicit to satisfy the jealous scruples of the king.

To conclude, George III. was not a tool of the boroughmongers, but a leading and active partner in the Oligarchy. He left the Crown to his successor in more complete sovereignty—more independent of aristocratic influence—disputed title—favouritism, or any other control, than it had been held since the conquest. His reign (as Bishop Watson observes) “was the triumph of Toryism. The Whigs had power for a moment—they quarrelled amongst themselves, and thereby lost the king’s confidence, lost the people’s confidence, and lost their power for ever; or, to speak more philosophically, there was neither Whigism nor Toryism left; excess of riches and excess of taxes, combined with excess of luxury, had introduced universal selfism.”

As we consider the next reign nothing more than an elongation of that of George III.—the government being conducted on precisely the same principles and maxims—we shall be very brief in our notice of it.

George the Fourth always appeared to us nothing more than a man of pleasure, whom the accident of birth had made a king. His means of indulgence were ample, and he did not spare them. At first he affected Whigism; but this might arise from his favourite companions in horse-racing, drinking, and intriguing being of that persuasion. Still he appears to have been one of the orthodox sort; for, like the party generally, he only adhered to his Whig principles while out of place, and became a Tory on his accession to power. But the politics of princes and poets are seldom worth investigating; whatever a King of England may profess while heir-apparent, or whatever popular principles may be held by a Whig lord while out of office, the only principles compatible with the borough system, and on which they can act on the assumption of power, are those of TORYISM—that is corruption and intimidation; and this is no new discovery, since Mr. Pitt declared, almost fifty years ago, that no honest man could carry on the government without a reformed parliament.

In the choice of his ministers, as in other things, the king considered his personal ease. At the commencement of the Regency, a slight effort was made to bring into the administration his early friends; but, finding them fastidious, pragmatical, and disposed to meddle in his household establishment, the design was abandoned, and never again seriously resumed. Castlereagh, Canning, Huskisson, and Sidmouth were the most appropriate servants for a voluptuous monarch. These men held no principles that could interfere with his most lavish desires; their objects were limited to the enjoyment of power and its emoluments: how little they cared about the general weal may be instanced in the fact that, though they managed the affairs of the empire during a long period of profound peace, they never set about reforming the most glaring and admitted abuses in its public administration, not even endeavouring to reform the currency, economize the expenditure, reduce the debt, improve the laws, nor the commercial system, for even that originated in another quarter. Their object was only to carry on the government and enjoy the spoil, and this they were ready to do by the aid of any shallow and temporary expedient, totally regardless of the ultimate loss and misery it might entail upon the country. There is one event connected with Canning deserving of notice, since it evinced both discernment and firmness of mind in the sovereign. When the poor drivelling statesmen, Eldon, Bathurst, and Melville—the Polignacs and Peyronnets of the cabinet—refused to act with Mr. Canning as First Lord of the Treasury, as much, we believe, from personal jealousy as aversion to his more liberal ideas, the king stood manfully and magnanimously by his minister; and it is due to some of the Whigs to say, that they did not refuse their aid in the moment of peril. Mr. Canning was the best of his set, but not to be greatly admired for his patriotism: he was clever and accomplished, but a political adventurer merely, whose polar star was his own aggrandizement; had he lived, he would not, we apprehend, have been long premier, and, before his death, he evinced symptoms that showed he would prove neither a very useful nor very profound statesman.

It is not our intention to enter into any personal history or delineation of George IV.; for, in truth, we have nothing to communicate on these points but what is known to all the world. He always appeared to us to afford a striking confirmation of LAVATER’s theory—his physiognomy and conduct being in such admirable keeping. Some have imagined a resemblance between him and the Emperor Tiberius. Both disappointed the expectations formed of them previous to their accession to power. One lived secluded from the sight of his subjects at the island of Capri; the other at Windsor. Women, wine, and mere sensual indulgence formed their chief employment and amusement. Neither of them knew how to forgive, and both were implacable in personal resentments. The persecution, by the King, of the unfortunate Caroline, and all who supported her, was mean, ungenerous, and unrelenting. His love of dress and etiquette was coxcomical, and detracted from the regal dignity. His love of seclusion is not difficult to explain: George IV. was a spoiled child, who, through life, had been accustomed only to do what ministered to his own gratification. In his latter days, neither his vanity nor desires were likely to be flattered by a frequent appearance in public; age had deteriorated his charms and enfeebled his powers, and to mingle among the “high-born dames” of the aristocracy, to select an object to whom to cast the royal handkerchief, was not among his urgent necessities.

To conclude: “GOD is just in all his ways!” George IV., Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Huskisson are all gathered to their fathers, and will soon be forgotten. They lived for themselves, and the public will not cherish any lasting or grateful remembrance of their memories. The monarch expired on a chaise percée—what a death-bed for an “exquisite!” Lord Castlereagh perished by his own hands. Mr. Canning, after indulging in some unseasonable jokes on the infirmities of poor Ogden—of which no doubt he repented—died of internal inflammation. Mr. Huskisson’s death was deplorable. But what ought we to learn from these catastrophes?—Neither to envy the great, nor refuse sympathy to the unfortunate!

CIVIL LIST ACCOUNTS.

No. 1.

Expenditure in the Department of the Lord Steward of his late Majesty’s Household.—Parl. Paper, No. 17, Sess. 1830.

1820.

1823.

1826.

1829.

£

£

£

£

Bread

1,422

1,377

1,946

2,565

Butter, Bacon, Cheese, and Eggs

2,405

2,507

4,264

4,269

Vegetables

307

382

546

679

Butcher’s Meat

5,785

4,741

7,132

7,283

Poultry

3,467

2,624

3,315

2,922

Fish

1,768

1,574

1,619

1,325

Ale and Beer

2,491

2,438

2,746

2,466

Wax Candles

3,011

3,021

3,692

3,813

Tallow Candles

989

663

655

720

Grocery

2,414

2,714

2,686

3,222

24,059

22,041

28,601

29,264

Brought over

24,059

22,041

28,601

29,264

Oilery

1,518

1,606

1,134

1,446

Fruit and Confectionary

622

521

445

1,056

Milk and Cream

718

725

1,046

1,246

Wines, Liqueurs, Spirits, Mineral Waters, Corks, Bottles, &c.

8,732

4,480

5,539

7,161

Lamps

7,030

6,580

5,184

6,758

Washing Table Linen

1,702

1,805

2,290

2,582

Fuel

7,194

7,478

0,314

7,665

Stationary

628

445

572

697

Turnery

206

251

272

340

Braziery, Ironmongery, and Cutlery

367

730

693

769

China, Earthenware, and Glass

1,641

494

1,040

860

Linen

3,317

2

34

337

The Royal Gardens

19,831

13,782

15,187

13,309

Maunday Expenses

283

274

274

272

Royal Yachts

1,107

387

—

—

H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland

—

319

—

—

Board Wages to Servants

3,111

3,286

3,283

3,313

Travelling Expenses of Servants

480

361

318

357

Allowance for Table Beer

608

427

439

301

Salaries to Extra Servants, pay of hired Assistants, &c.

1,354

2,004

1,900

2,622

Board Wages to Yeomen of the Guard

2,230

2,315

2,230

2,230

Compensation in lieu of Articles formerly issued in kind

5,542

3,549

3,183

2,783

Sundries and Disbursements

12,495

7,492

8,213

8,212

Amount paid in each year

104,789

81,372

88,210

93,597

Board of Green Cloth, 15th Sept., 1830.

THOMAS MARRABLE.

No. II.

Expenditure incurred in the Department of his late Majesty’s Robes.

1820

£3,513

0

21/2

1821

5,249

16

11

1822

4,625

12

5

1823

4,632

18

101/2

1824

6,152

6

31/2

1825

4,773

15

2

1826

5,687

15

8

1827

6,819

19

6

1828

5,955

18

3

1829, ending 5th January, 1830

6,673

17

5

Office of Robes, 13th Sept. 1830.

TIM. BRENT.

No. III.

Expenditure of the Master of the Horse’s Department.

1820.

1823.

1826.

1829.

£

£

£

£

These expenses are such as water-rent, pew-rent, sand, wheeler’s work, sweeping chimneys, blacking, spirits of wine, and in short all articles not included in the foregoing heads.

The disbursements included in the charge for travelling expenses are those of the clerks of the stables, for women employed to clean the stable-servants’ rooms, make the beds, &c. and the allowances to servants in lieu of hair-powder, wigs, and silk stockings.

By an act of the Session of 1831 an additional annuity of £10,000 is granted to the Duchess of Kent; £4000 thereof to be paid during the life of her royal highness, and £6000 during the life of the Princess Victoria.

The provision for the queen, by 1 and 2 Will. IV., c. 11, in case she survives the king, is an annuity of £100,000; also Marlborough House and the rangership of Bushy Park.

In case of the demise of any of the four princesses, or upon the marriage of any one of them, on the payment of a marriage portion of £40,000, the interest of such princess so dying or being married shall cease, and the annuity of £36,000 shall accrue and remain in the three other princesses; but none of the above princesses can receive more than £12,000 each, under the provisions of the Act 52 Geo III. c. 57, s. 2.

The Duchess of Gloucester and the Princess of Hesse Hombourg receive, in addition to their annuities out of the consolidated fund, a pension of £1000 each out of the 41/2 per cent. Leeward Island duties.—Parl. Paper, No. 284, Sess. 1831.

Prince Leopold resigned his pension in July, on accepting the crown of Belgium; stipulating for annuities for his servants, and the keeping up of Claremont House.

Liveries

7,729

7,530

9,057

7,560

Forage

6,556

5,010

6,368

6,308

Farriery

1,566

906

1,103

1,217

Horses

6,682

5,392

5,687

3,246

Carriages

8,354

944

3,782

4,029

Harness

798

472

785

702

Saddlery

2,053

1,820

817

1,906

Bitts and Spurs

181

48

117

143

Whips

129

135

133

165

Lamps, Gaslights, &c.

505

580

1,012

1,108

Coals and Wood

838

1,076

1,299

1,251

Stationary

99

53

48

57

Turnery Articles

152

208

190

196

Candles and Soap

165

158

172

167

Washing

120

121

132

140

Ironmongery

48

105

65

79

Allowances for Lodging

—

439

367

477

Sundry other small expenses

637

576

607

649

Travelling expenses and disbursements

1,600

1,487

1,984

1,701

Post horses

649

652

1,488

1,130

King’s Plates

2,126

2,126

2,336

2,338

Stud Bills

6,705

621

1,666

1,196

Hunt Bills

3,654

3,673

4,313

4,588

Treasury and Exchequer Fees

586

400

494

641

51,932

34,532

44,024

40,994

Deduct Proceeds of useless Horses sold

915

2,179

2,856

1,226

Net Expense

51,017

32,353

41,168

39,768

Master of the Horse’s Office, 1st Sept. 1830.

R. W. SPEARMAN.

No. IV.

An Account of the Application of the Monies paid from Admiralty Droits, Gibraltar Duties, and other Funds than Civil List, at the disposal of the Crown, between 1820 and 1830.

£

The expenses of his late Majesty’s journey to Ireland

58,261

The expenses of his late Majesty’s journey to Scotland

21,439

The expenses of his late Majesty’s journey to Hanover

13,206

92,906

Brought over

92,906

The expense of fitting up the state rooms at St. James’s

54,947

The expense of certain repairs to the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park

14,966

The expense of repairing the stables at Brighton

7,113

The expense of furnishing the Royal Mews at Pimlieo

10,083

The amount issued to his late Majesty’s privy purse

86,573

The amount issued by his late Majesty’s command as contributions to charities

17,648

The expense of furniture purchased for Windsor Castle

10,000

The expense incurred on account of the visit of the Queen of Wirtemberg

16,206

The expense of fitting up the apartments of his present Majesty as Duke of Clarence

9,166

The amount advanced to the executors of H. R. H. the Duke of York

6,440

326,055

Of the foregoing Amount, there was applied,—

To Privy Purse

£ 86,573

To Charities

17,648

Services conducted by the Lord Chamberlain

110,024

Services conducted by the Lord Steward

46,956

Services conducted by the Master of the Horse

14,459

Services conducted by the Office of Works

22,080

For the Journey to Hanover

13,206

Expenses of Yachts, Pursuivants, &c. connected with the Journeys to Ireland and Hanover

1,011

For expenses connected with the Journey to Ireland, incurred by the Irish Government

7,653

To the Executors of H. R. H. the Duke of York

6,440

£326,055

Whitehall, Treasury Chambers,

26th October, 1830. }

GEO. R. DAWSON.

No. V.

ROYAL FAMILY.

Return of all Sums of Money paid from the consolidated Fund to the several Branches of the Royal Family, exclusive of the Civil List.—Parl. Paper, No. 186, Sess. 1831.

Pension.

Granted.

Duchess of Kent

6,000

58 Geo. III.

Princess Victoria for education

6,000

6 Geo. IV.

Duke of Cumberland

6,000

{ 46 Geo. III.

{ 47 Geo. III.

Duke of Cumberland

15,000

{ 18 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Prince George for education

6,000

6 Geo. IV.

Duke of Sussex

6,000

{ 46 Geo. III.

{ 47 Geo. III.

Duke of Sussex

15,000

{ 18 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Duke of Cambridge

6,000

{ 46 Geo. III.

{ 47 Geo. III.

Duke of Cambridge

15,000

{ 18 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Duke of Cambridge

6,000

1 Geo. IV.

Duke of Gloucester

14,000

{ 46 Geo. III.

{ 47 Geo. III.

Duchess of Gloucester

9,000

52 Geo. III.

Duchess of Gloucester

4,000

{ 50 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Hombourg

9,000

52 Geo. III.

Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Hombourg

4,000

{ 56 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Princess Augusta

9,000

52 Geo. III.

Princess Augusta

4,000

{ 56 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Princess Sophia

9,000

52 Geo. III.

Princess Sophia

4,000

{ 56 Geo. III.

{ 1 Geo. IV.

Prince Leopold

50,000

56 Geo. III.

Princess Sophia of Gloucester

7,000

{ 46 Geo. III.

{ 47 Geo. III.

TOTAL

£210,000

No. VI.

WINDSOR CASTLE AND BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

Windsor Castle.

Expenditure for the building, which has already received the sanction of parliament

£594,000

0

0

Additional sum which has been sanctioned for additional works by the report of the select committee in 1830, is

177,000

0

0

For the building

771,000

0

0

Amount already granted for furniture, is

£267,000

0

0

Further amount required

13,670

9

2

For furniture

280,670

9

2

The amount which has been already granted for the purchase of land and houses, is

33,500

0

0

TOTAL sum required

1,081,170

9

2

The amount already granted being

891,500

0

0

There is still required

190,670

9

2

On account of which it is proposed to grant in 1831, for the building as recommended by the select committee of 1830

50,000

0

0

To pay the charge already incurred for furniture beyond the grant

3,670

9

2

For furniture required for new rooms

10,000

0

0

63,670

9

2

Leaving to be granted in future years, according to the report of the select committee of 1830

127,000

0

0

Buckingham Palace.

The amount required towards defraying the charge incurred of debt for work done and contracts made prior to the appointment of the select committee in 1831, is

100,000

0

0

Windsor Castle, as above

63,670

9

2

To be granted in 1831

163,670

9

2

Whitehall Treasury Chambers,

27th September, 1831. }

Parliamentary Paper, No. 271.

No. VII.

ANCIENT PAYMENTS heretofore charged on the Civil List of England, Ireland, and Scotland, but now payable out of the Consolidated Fund: with Notes on the Origin of some of these Annuities.

The Clerk of the Hanaper (expenses)

2,000

0

0

The Chief Justice in Eyre, North of Trent

2,110

10

6

The Chief Justice in Eyre, South of Trent

2,155

16

10

The Chief Justices in Eyre are to be abolished on the expiration of existing interests.

Master of the Hawks

1,372

10

0

King James II. by Letters Patent, dated 5th July, in the third year of his reign, granted to Charles Duke of St. Alban’s, and the heirs male of his body, the offices of master and keeper of the Hawks of his said Majesty, his heirs and successors, after the decease of Thomas Felter and William Chiffinch, who then held those offices, and with the same allowances as were enjoyed by them, viz. £30 per month of twenty-eight days, and 10s. a day; and, also, £800 per annum, that is, £50 per annum each for four Falconers, and £600 for the provision and maintenance of Hawks; in all, £1,372 : 10s.

£

s.

d.

Keeper of the Lions in the Tower, including extra allowance for the maintenance of the animals

435

16

3

The King having presented the Tower Menagerie to the Zoological Society, the public, in future, will be saved the salary of the keeper; also the charge for extra allowance to the animals.

Knight Harbinger (to cease on expiration of the existing interest)

140

13

5

Keeper of the Tennis Courts (to cease on expiration of existing interest)

89

1

3

Keeper of Records, Tower, including Clerks

1,236

5

4

Keeper of Records, Court of Exchequer

851

7

0

Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs of London, for Imposts on Wine

95

16

6

University of Oxford; viz.

For a Preacher perpetuity

8

10

0

Professor of Divinity perpetuity

11

13

8

— Law perpetuity

37

5

0

— Physic perpetuity

37

1

0

— History perpetuity

379

10

0

— Botany perpetuity

189

4

0

University of Cambridge; viz.

On a perpetuity

8

10

0

For a Preacher

8

10

0

Professor of Divinity

11

13

8

— Law

37

1

0

— Physic

37

1

0

— History

379

10

0

— Botany

189

4

0

Emanuel College, Cambridge, perpetuity

14

16

10

These university endowments are royal grants, the earliest instituted by Margaret, countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. The professorships of history were established by George I. and the professorships of botany by George III.

Dean and Chapter of Lichfield, perpetuity

6

5

0

Vicar of Lichfield

9

17

3

Master of the Temple

26

3

7

Reader at Hampton Court Chapel

38

1

0

Fellows of Eaton, perpetuity

39

3

8

Dean and Chapter of Westminster, for French Ministers, Savoy

42

9

0

Ministers, Isle of Man

93

19

0

Charles II. by Letters Patent, in the 27th year of his reign, granted an annuity of £100, to be paid for ever, to the poor Ministers of the Isle of Man, out of the Hereditary Excise.

Bishop of Chester, for four Preachers

187

14

0

Queen Elizabeth established four Preachers in the county of Lancaster, to be nominated by the Bishop of Chester for the time being. Letters of Privy Seal have been issued at the commencement of each reign ever since for the payment of £200 per annum to the Bishop of Chester, for the use of these Preachers.

Vicar of the Tower perpetuity

4

1

4

Minister of St. Botolph, Aldgate perpetuity

5

9

0

Churchwardens of St. John the Baptist, for the Poor, perpetuity

6

4

3

Churchwardens of St. Michael, Cornhill for the Poor, perpetuity

10

10

3

Churchwardens of St. Magnus for the Poor, perpetuity

19

1

6

Schoolmaster of Southwell, perpetuity

8

6

6

Corporation of Dartmouth perpetuity

37

1

0

The first grant to this Corporation was dated A.D. 1481; it was for the building of a strong Tower, and for the furnishing and keeping in repair a chain to secure the harbour.

Mayor of Macclesfield

35

1

6

Macclesfield is a Chapelry in the large Parish of Prestbury. The Chapel was built by Edward I. and endowed by Edward VI. with £56 : 6: 8 per annum for ever. James I. in consideration of the smallness of the stipend, added £50 per annum during pleasure. The grant has been renewed at the commencement of each reign, by letter patent, directing £50 yearly to be paid to the Mayor for a “preacher to instruct the people of the town of Macclesfield and the neighbouring villages in the true knowledge of God according to the doctrine of the Church of England.”

Corporation of Lyme Regis

95

19

0

Corporation of Lyme Regis for repairing the Pier

95

19

0

Corporation of Berwick, for repairing a bridge over the Tweed

93

19

0

Christ’s Hospital

360

4

3

College of St. David’s

400

0

0

Representative of Sir John Hynde Cotton, perpetuity

3

19

11

Heirs of Colonel Fairfax perpetuity

71

9

0

A grant of Charles II. dated in 1660, and originally charged on the Custom Duties of Hull.

Heirs of Nicholas Yates, perpetuity

79

11

6

A grant of James II. to Nicholas Yates and his heirs, in consideration of Francis Yates and Margaret his wife, having been particularly instrumental in the preservation of King Charles II. from the hands of the Rebels after the battle of Worcester, and not having received any marks of favour, by reason that the said Francis died soon after the Restoration, leaving his son Nicholas an infant.

IRISH CIVIL LIST.

All charges on the Irish Civil List which follow this, expire on the cessation of existing interests.

Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper

886

12

4

Deputy of the Crown and Hanaper

96

4

0

Constable of the Fort of Hillsborough (hereditary)

216

3

4

Master of the Riding House

200

0

0

Physician to the State

325

2

4

Surgeon to the State

325

2

4

Master and Composer of Music

88

1

0

Deputy and Composer of Music

88

1

0

Attendant on Balls

91

16

4

Kettle Drummer

61

16

4

Serjeant Trumpeter

61

16

4

5 Trumpeters at £17 : 7 each

86

15

0

7 Violins at 17 : 7 each

121

9

0

2 Tenors at 17 : 7 each

34

14

0

2 Hautboys at 17 : 7 each

34

14

0

2 French Horns at 17 : 7 each

34

14

0

4 Bass Viols at 17 : 7 each

69

8

0

Dulcimer

8

9

8

Usher to Council Chamber

266

10

4

House and Wardrobe Keeper, Dublin Castle

535

10

0

Assistant and Wardrobe Keeper, Dublin Castle

132

16

4

Housekeeper of the Phœnix Lodge

39

8

8

Inspector and Director of the Gardens, Phœnix Lodge

39

8

8

The Chief Chamberlain

47

6

0

Chief Serjeant at Arms

92

6

4

Second Serjeant at Arms

354

17

8

Clerk of the Council

1,249

18

4

Compiler of Dublin Gazette

276

18

8

Joint Solicitor in Great Britain

361

7

0

Keeper of Records, Birmingham Tower

461

11

0

Keeper of State Papers

461

11

0

Constable of the Castle of Dublin, including Lodgings

401

11

0

Constable of the Castle of Limerick

336

18

8

Constable of the Castle of Castlemain

184

12

4

Chairman of Committees, late House of Lords

1,332

5

8

3 Messengers, late House of Lords, at £65 : 4 : 8 each

195

14

0

3 Doorkeepers late House of Lords, 65 : 13 each

196

19

0

Housemaid

6

7

4

2 late Masters in Chancery, at £96 : 4 each

192

8

0

Seneschal of his Majesty’s Manors

276

18

8

Customer of Wexford

9

4

8

Customer of Waterford

13

17

0

Searcher of Waterford

6

3

4

Customer of Youghall and Dungarvan

381

11

0

Comptroller of Cork

461

11

0

Comptroller of Kinsale

92

6

4

Customer of Killybegs

92

6

4

Comptroller of Killybegs

92

6

4

Customer of Galway

12

6

4

Customer of Drogheda, Dundalk, and Carlingford

376

3

4

Searcher of Dundalk and Carlingford

4

12

4

Searcher of Carrickfergus

6

3

4

Searcher of Strangford and Donaghadee

929

4

8

Commissioner of the Board of Works

553

17

0

One other of the Board of Works

369

4

8

One other of the Board of Works

369

4

8

SCOTCH CIVIL LIST.

His Majesty’s Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

1,950

0

0

The Hereditary Usher of the White Rod

242

15

0

Ten Chaplains at £50 each

500

0

0

Six Trumpeters at 16 : 16 : 4 each

100

18

0

Limner

276

10

0

Hereditary Keeper of the Palace of Holyrood House

45

10

0

Under Keeper of the Palace of Holyrood House

50

0

0

The Porter of the said Palace

37

15

6

Under Falconer

50

0

0

First Physician

97

0

0

Second Physician

50

0

0

Apothecary

40

0

0

Clock-maker

16

13

4

Master of the Wardrobe

53

0

0

First Underkeeper of the Wardrobe

37

10

0

Second Underkeeper of Wardrobe

20

0

0

Deputy Keeper of Regalia

300

0

0

Clerk of the Stores

30

0

0

Historiographer

184

0

0

Secretary to the Order of the Thistle

276

10

0

Dean of the Order of the Thistle

50

0

0

Usher to the Order of the Thistle

27

0

0

The Principal Masters and Professors of the University of St. Andrew’s

1,010

0

0

The Principal and Professors of the Marischall College in Aberdeen

1,397

0

0

The University of Glasgow, for their Professors

1,360

0

0

The University of Edinburgh, for the Professors and for the Botanic Garden and Museum

1,819

3

0

The Procurator for the Church, for defraying the charges of Church affairs in Scotland, with the salaries of the Officers

1,100

0

0

Charities and bounties to such indigent and necessitous persons as shall be approved of by the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, and to be distributed amongst them quarterly; including £120 as salary to the Almoner and Deputies

2,250

0

0

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

1,950

0

0

John James Edmonstone, Esq. retired allowance as late Sheriff Depute of the Shire of Bute

138

5

0

King’s Plate, to be run for at Edinburgh

100

0

0

King’s Plate, Royal Company of Archers, or Body Guard

20

0

0

King’s Plate, Caledonian Hunt

100

0

0

For the Clerks of the Auditor, until the office shall be regulated on the cessation of the existing interest

230

0

0

Whitehall, Treasury Chambers, }

30th March, 1831. }

PRIVY COUNCIL, DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS, AND CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS.

A BRIEF notice of these subjects will appropriately follow our preceding exposition of the hereditary revenues and civil-list. The number of members of the Privy Council is indefinite, and at the pleasure of the king; the privy counsellors of William IV. amount to 192, comprising the royal dukes, the archbishops, the ministers, the chief officers in the royal household, the heads of the law-courts, and all the principal nobles and commoners who hold, or have held, the more important situations in the civil, military, and diplomatic service of the government. They sit during life, or the life of the king who nominates them, subject to removal at his majesty’s discretion. They are bound by oath to advise the king, without partiality, affection, and dread; to keep his council secret, to avoid corruption, and to assist in the execution of what is there resolved. To assault, wound, or attempt to kill a privy counsellor, in the execution of his office, is felony.

Although the ostensible duties of the council are, to advise the king in affairs of state, yet this duty is seldom discharged; and a privy counsellor, as such, is as little the adviser of the sovereign as a peer of the realm, who is denominated the hereditary adviser of the Crown. The really efficient and responsible advisers of the king are the ministers, especially that portion of them constituting the cabinet. No privy counsellor attends in council, unless expressly summoned for the occasion; and summonses are never sent except to those counsellors who, as members of the administration, are in the immediate confidence of his majesty. The privy council, then, is an institution of state, without salaries and without duties; and, as such, would require no notice in this publication. Authors who amuse themselves and their readers in describing that “shadow of a shade,” the English constitution, make a great parade of the grave functions and high privileges of “his majesty’s most honourable privy council;” but practice is as widely different from theory, in respect of this, as in respect of the representative branch of the government.

Although the privy council ex officio is little more than a nonentity, yet, from extrinsic circumstances, it is a body of great interest, and some account of it is strictly relevant to our purpose. Nearly the whole of the privy counsellors do now, or have held important offices in the state; and, in consequence of these offices, have contrived to concentrate, in their own persons, a miscellany of pensions, salaries, sinecures, and grants, which is almost incredible. The mass of taxes consumed by George III. and IV. having been set forth, we may, as an appropriate sequel, set forth the mass of taxes annually consumed by those “grave and reverend seignors,” who were fortunate enough to enjoy the greatest share of the favour and confidence of those monarchs.

Our task will be much abbreviated by the exposition, in the session of 1830, of the present first lord of the admiralty. In a committee of supply on the 14th of May, SIR JAMES GRAHAM moved “for a return of all salaries, profits, pay, fees, and emoluments, whether civil or military, from the 5th of January, 1829, to the 5th of January, 1830, held and enjoyed by each of his Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council, specifying, with each name, the total amount received by each individual, and distinguishing the various sources from which the same is derived.” After urging a variety of cogent arguments in support of the propriety and utility of his motion, Sir James made the following extraordinary statement, founded on documents in his possession, and which statement was not contradicted.

“He had divided the Privy Counsellors into classes, excepting from each the Royal Family, because they, having a certain income under the assignment of Acts of Parliament, there was nothing mysterious about them; and, in many cases, these assignments had been made under the sanction of bills, which had themselves undergone discussion in the House. He, therefore, excluded them altogether from his calculations upon this occasion. The total number of Privy Counsellors was 169, of whom 113 received public money. The whole sum distributed annually amongst these 113 was £650,164, and the average proportion of that sum paid to each yearly was £5,753. Of this total of £650,164, £86,103 were for sinecures, £442,411 for active services, and £121,650 for pensions, making together the total which he had stated. Of the 113 Privy Counsellors who were thus receivers of the public money, thirty were pluralists, or persons holding more offices than one, whether as sinecurists or civil and military officers. The amount received by the pluralists was £221,133 annually amongst them all, or £7,331, upon an average, to each annually. The number of Privy Counsellors who enjoyed full or half-pay, or were pensioned as diplomatists, was twenty-nine, and the gross amount of their income from the public purse was £126,175, or, upon an average, a yearly income to each individual of £4,347 a year. The whole number of Privy Counsellors who were members of both Houses of Parliament was sixty-nine, and of those forty-seven were PEERS, whose gross income from the public purse was £378,846, or, upon an average to each, £8,060 a year. The remaining twenty-two were of the House of Commons, and the gross amount of their receipts was £90,849, or, upon an average to each individual, £4,128 a year. It appeared then that there were 113 Privy Counsellors receiving the public money, of whom sixty-nine were members of either house of Parliament. He had already stated that sixty-nine were in the receipt of public money by way of salary; the total number of Privy Counsellors in the House of Commons was thirty-one, and of these twenty-two were charged upon the public purse. In this analysis there might be some inaccuracy; but if its accuracy were denied, his answer, short and conclusive, was—grant this motion, and prove the error to the public satisfaction.”

The motion was not granted; in lieu of it the then chancellor of the Exchequer substituted and carried a motion, of his own, for a return of salaries and emoluments above £250, held by all persons in the civil departments of the United Kingdom. The honourable member had moved for the return of the public emoluments of 169 individuals, and Mr. Goulburn overwhelmed him with a return of 2000. It was serving him, as Sir James remarked, when he called for a glass of wine, with a glass of wine diluted with a bottle of water.

In fact, it was a complete avoidance of the object sought by the member for Cumberland. Mr. Goulburn said it would be invidious to produce a return of the emoluments of the Privy Council alone. What! more invidious than to move for and obtain, as was the case in 1806, of a return of the pensions and emoluments of the royal Dukes! Or more invidious than to seek and obtain, as was the case in 1822, a return of the pensions and emoluments of the honourable members themselves! George IV. had often submitted to such invidious proceedings—his income and expenditure too—the amount of his tailors’ bills—his upholstery bills—the outgoings in his household—even down to the consumption of pickles and potatoes—had all been sifted and overhauled, oftener than once, and no one thought it invidious. Receiving annually a great mass of public money, which imposed a heavy burthen on the people, they had a right to look into his majesty’s affairs, just in the same way as they had a right to look into the affairs of these privy counsellors. But the chancellor of the Exchequer wished to screen the most honourables, by mixing them up with the clerks, and tidewaiters, and other subalterns, who serve not so much for present pay, as the hope of obtaining higher and more lucrative appointments. It was a dextrous diversion of the enemy’s attack, worthy of the sublime genius who framed the Irish Tithe Composition Act. Precisely the same manœuvre is resorted to by the apologists of the ecclesiastical establishment to conceal the enormous revenues of the clergy. They have a great repugnance to giving separate statements of the incomes of the bishops, the dignitaries, and aristocratic pluralists; they like to see them all lumped together, those with high connexion and influence, and those with none,—and then, after exaggerating their numbers two-fold, they call upon you to look and sympathize at the miserable pittance allotted to the sons of Mother Church! But this will not do. It is not the average but the disproportion that shocks public feeling. A friendless incumbent or poor clerk cannot make his miserable stipend go a jot farther in the purchase of the necessaries of life, because there is some court bishop or court judge with ten or twenty thousand a year. What the community revolts at is the total burthen imposed by the whole number of spiritual and lay placemen, chiefly by the exorbitant emoluments of a few favoured individuals.

The first lord of the admiralty never published a list of the cormorants of the Privy Council, many of whom still continue members of that august body, in the full enjoyment of their ‘blushing honours;’ but, as they have ceased to exercise the same influence on national affairs since the accession of the Whig ministry, it is unnecessary to notice them here individually, and we shall content ourselves with recording their names in our Place and Pension List.

AMBASSADORS AND DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS.

There is, we will venture to affirm, no branch of our multifarious civil services which required to be more keenly investigated, and more unsparingly cut down than our foreign embassies. The Whigs have paired off a little of the exuberance of these dazzling employments; but their reductions ought to have been carried still lower. The embassy to the court of France is still continued at £11,400 a year, independently of a splendid house to live in, bought with the public money; that to Russia as much, with £1000 a year additional for house rent; to Austria, £11,050; to Turkey, £7,350; to Spain, £7,350; and the ministers to the new states of America have £4,000 a year and upwards: and these exclusive of allowances for outfits, for presents, for the charge of journeys to and fro, for postage, for mourning-dresses, for birth-day fêtes, for illuminations, or any other casual outgoing. No other country makes such extravagant allowances to her ministers. Few native noblemen of any of the courts here enumerated are able to vie, in household expense, with men possessing such princely incomes; and it cannot be politic in England to place her representatives in a point of view so invidious towards the communities among which they sojourn. In fact, it is said that hints have, at various times, been transmitted to the government of this country upon the annoyance which is often felt abroad at the unequalled revenues allowed by Great Britain to her diplomatists at foreign courts, for the support of what she calls her dignity. Now, the best kind of national dignity is that which renders justice, and demands it—that which is upheld by the urbanity and knowledge of the public officers who represent their nation amongst foreigners; and, after the common decencies of respectable life have been furnished, little if any thing is gained, by mere extravagance and ostentation, to the interests or dignity of a great people. America allows her envoys and plenipotentiaries about £2000, and secretaries of legation £321 per annum; and her dignity and interests are adequately sustained and represented.

Nothing, indeed, can be plainer than if men of a high order of talents, but of private station in society, were to be selected for foreign missions, two good effects would follow. The national business would be incomparably better done, and the extravagance of the diplomatic service might be corrected without a murmur. It is far otherwise when men of noble birth but mean capacity, make love to the appointment, and are chosen: that is the secret of our vast expenditure in diplomacy. The borough system has been at the bottom of this abuse, as of every other; and if the puppets of that system did not always succeed in shutting the doors of Parliament against popular representatives, it is certain that they kept the representation of the sovereign elsewhere very snugly and comfortably to themselves.

In the whole range of the public service, nothing accords so well with the taste and acquirements of the aristocracy as this vice-regal mimicry and ostentation. The chief qualifications of an ambassador are that he should be able to bow gracefully, be six feet high, of portly presence, and keep a good table for the entertainment of absentee lords and ladies; as to real business, it is done by the secretaries: and if any thing extra occurs, there is a special mission for the purpose. Some of the most famous jobs in the history of corruption have been got up under the pretext of an embassy. Witness the mission of the late Mr. Canning to Lisbon. It is well known that the son of this gentleman was in a declining state of health, and required a milder atmosphere; when the father was sent ambassador to Lisbon, where there was actually no court, at an expense to the country of eighteen thousand pounds. Again, in 1821, when a negotiation was on foot to bring the Grenvilles into the administration, one of the stipulations was, that a member of the family, Mr. Henry Wynn, should be sent on a mission to Switzerland, with a salary of £4,000, and this large allowance was justified on the pretext that it was necessary to enable the minister to maintain a liberal hospitality towards his countrymen abroad. And sure enough the hospitable disposition of this young gentleman was soon called into exercise, for he had scarcely arrived at his destination before his brother, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Lady Harriet Williams Wynn, and eight more Wynns repaired to Berne, to share the hospitalities of the generous youth, provided out of the taxes of the people of England!

But even these jobs are nothing to those perpetrated in the latter days of Toryism, under the pretext of missions to South America, and to the particulars of which we shall introduce the reader from a parliamentary paper, No. 318, of the session of 1830.

As a sample of the enormous charge of these diplomatic missions, we shall first cite the Mexican embassy. In the year 1825, Mr. Morier received, for five months’ service as Mexican commissioner, £3,655 salary, and £1,670 expenses. In the next year, the same gentleman received, for three months’ service, £3,594; making a total of £8,917 for eight months in two years. This, one would think, quite enough for the cost of one mission, but it was not so: Mr. Ward, the second commissioner, received a much larger remuneration for the same services, in the same year, in the same place. In 1825, this gentleman received £10,920; in 1826, £5,598; in 1827, £2,523, exclusive of £825 passage-money, making, with other items, a charge of not less than £19,808 for twenty-five months’ services of Mr. Ward alone. But even this did not include the entire cost—there was a secretary attached to the mission. This gentleman was a Mr. Thompson, who charged £100 per month salary for his services, and actually, in addition, asked for compensation—for what? Why, for his salary as clerk in the Audit Office while he was absent on other duties. The same modest officer also charged £1,607 for the cost of a trip to Guatemala, which he fancied to take. This made an entire charge of £31,857 in two years for one mission to Mexico.

One object of Mr. Ward’s mission, according to the explanation of Mr. Goulburn, was to ascertain what the expense of these South American embassies might be; and it must be allowed that Mr. Ward went the right way to work to make them very comfortable appointments for his successors, by not fixing the standard at too meagre a scale; and if the gentlemen who succeed him can only get up a book beside, as their predecessor has done, they will be very productive excursions indeed.

The next mission deserving attention is that to Columbia. Our envoy there was a Mr. Cockburn, who, in 1825, received an outfit of £3,000. In 1826, he went to South America, landed at the Caraccas, and never advanced to Bogota: he remained three weeks at the house of the consul, and then returned. For this excursion, he received a year’s salary, £6,000; allowance for house rent, £600; expence of conveying him out, £450. Next year he started again for Bogota, never reached his destination, returned to London after an absence of seven months, to announce his own movements instead of transmitting despatches in the usual way, charging £3,376 for this trip. He thus crossed the Atlantic twice, at the public expense, without ever penetrating to the capital to which he was officially appointed; he was the first year three weeks in America, and the second nine weeks; and for his services altogether he received £13,000. It might be thought after this we had done with this gentleman, but something remains—he applied for farther remuneration, and actually received £1,664 to “complete his allowance;” and then this highly efficient envoy extraordinary rested from his labours on a pension of £1,700 a year.

Next we come to Mr. Chad, who was recalled from Dresden, to proceed forthwith to Bogota. He got £1,666 for an outfit in the year 1828, together with £1,374; and in 1829, £2,062, although he never left London. Mr. Turner got, in 1829, £2,500 for this same mission, besides a large sum for house-rent, he never having been in Columbia at all; and £528 for his voyage out. In this manner Mr. Cockburn received £15,000 for going out, but never entering the capital; Mr. Chad got £5,002 for preparing to go out, but never going at all; and Mr. Turner, £4,955 for undertaking the voyage: whether this last gentleman has arrived at his destination, or absconded, or deviated into a more pleasant tour through Switzerland or Italy, does not appear. So much for the Columbian mission.

Next let us advert to the mission to Buenos Ayres. The first on the roll is Lord Ponsonby, who received an outfit of £2,500, salary £5,000, and an allowance for house-rent £500. These allowances are a little extravagant, but his lordship, unlike the Chads and the Cockburns, did arrive at his post. We cannot say the same of his successor, Mr. Henry Fox, the near relation of a well-known duchy sinecurist Mr. Fox received an outfit of £1,500 for Buenos Ayres, in 1828, at the time he was in Italy, in the receipt of a salary; and, in 1829, an advance of £1,000, though it did not appear, when the return was made, he had yet taken a step towards his American journey. There is similar profusion in the missions to Brazil and Panama, but the instances we have cited are sufficient specimens of the lavish proceedings in this branch of the foreign department. It is to be hoped our Whig ministers, who showed up these doings with great gusto while out of place, will not follow the profuse example of their predecessors in office.

CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS.

These form minor diplomatic appointments, ostensibly established to watch over the interests of commerce, assist and facilitate the transactions of merchants in foreign parts. The duties being light, and the remuneration considerable, they form a favourite branch of ministerial patronage, and situations therein are mostly obtained by individuals connected with the aristocracy or possessing parliamentary influence. At present the chief objections to the consular establishments are their superfluous number—the expenses they entail on the country in extravagant salaries, pensions, and superannuations—and the unfitness of many persons forced into the situation from the operation of the influence to which we have adverted. In the United States of America, for example, we have eight consuls, besides consuls-general, enjoying salaries of £800 a-year. Both in America and Europe the office of consul-general is unnecessary; at all events such a functionary might be dispensed with, where we had a regular ambassador and his staff at an enormous charge. Where, for instance, can be the utility or necessity of having a consul-general in Paris? We have an ambassador there, with a salary of £10,000 a-year, a secretary of the embassy, and many other individuals attached to the legation in that city; and amongst them, no doubt, a fit individual might easily be found to do the duty at a salary of £500 per annum, for discharging which the present consul-general receives £1200. At Naples we have a consul-general, with £1200 a-year, when the whole trade of the kingdom, with all the ports in the world, does not exceed £1,000,000 per annum. But then the climate of Naples is salubrious, and it is sometimes convenient to have a sinecure retreat there for an indolent official or satiated epicure of the “higher orders.” The consul-general at Washington has a salary of £1600 a-year. This appears wholly indefensible. In dear countries there is some necessity for high salaries to meet the increased expenditure; but in cheap countries like America there can be no pretext for an exorbitant allowance. £1600 a-year is equal to the salary of the chief justice of the United States, and this amount is paid to a consul-general—an officer who, in fact, has nothing to do.

A change of questionable utility was introduced in 1825, in the mode of remunerating consuls; in lieu of payment by fees, fixed salaries were substituted: but, under some pretext or other, fees still continue to be exacted, and the charges altogether imposed by these functionaries on commerce are very considerable. The money paid to the consuls of Columbia alone amounts to a charge of four per cent. on the traffic carried on between the two countries. The whole amount of our exports and imports to South America is about eleven millions; and our consular and diplomatic establishments in these states cost £60,521, the former £27,241 and the latter £33,100. In the trade with some states these expenses are particularly exorbitant. For instance, the consular and diplomatic per-centage on our trade with Mexico is £1 : 0 : 7, on that with Guatemala £10 : 17 : 2; our exports and imports to the former amounting to £731,000, the diplomatic cost to £4,400, and the consular expense to £3000; while our trade to Guatemala amounts only to £13,813, and the consular expense is £1500. There is no necessity for these charges, which result solely from negligence and abuse in the foreign department, from extravagant salaries, from the appointment of consuls to places where none are required, and from the plural appointments of consuls, vice-consuls, and consuls-general, when a single individual would be amply sufficient for the discharge of official duty.

The little duty these gentlemen discharge may be inferred from the fact that many hold other situations, apparently requiring their entire personal attention, while others hold the appointment of consul in America or distant parts of Europe, and reside constantly in the metropolis. In 1792 the total charge of our diplomatic and consular establishments, including pensions, amounted to £113,927; in 1829, the same establishments cost £366,000; and the charge of the consular department alone was £121,820, being nearly £8,000 more than the charge of both establishments just before the French revolutionary war. We shall conclude the chapter with subjoining a few documents abstracted from parliamentary papers, which will illustrate and authenticate our previous exposition, and show the present state of this branch of the national expenditure.

SALARIESand Pensions to Ambassadors and Consuls.—Parl. Paper, No. 305, Session 1830.

Year.

Salaries to Ambassadors.

Salaries to Consuls.

Pensions to Retired Foreign Ministers.

Pensions to Consuls.

Charge for Diplomatists and Consuls.

1822

£144,135

£30,076

£52,206

£1,190

£305,772

1823

139,366

29,740

52,503

1,036

332,453

1824

136,511

33,091

53,547

890

361,728

1825

132,301

52,625

55,938

1,368

418,637

1826

142,584

49,975

53,450

3,370

459,538

1827

132,553

51,100

62,318

3,370

412,159

1828

133,163

50,26

56,772

4,270

407,117

1829

132,149

49,342

54,719

4,870

366,004

SALARIESand Allowances for House-rent of Diplomatic Servants abroad.—Parliamentary Report, No. 337, Sess. 1831.

Residence.

Character.

Salary.

Allowance for House-rent

France.

Ambassador

£10,000

Secretary of Embassy

1,000

First Attaché

400

Russia.

Ambassador

10,000

£1,000

Secretary of Embassy

1,000

First Attaché

400

Austria.

Ambassador

9,000

900

Secretary of Embassy

900

First Attaché

250

Turkey.

Ambassador

6,500

Secretary of Embassy

800

First Attaché

250

Spain.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

6,000

500

Secretary of Legation

550

First Attaché

250

Prussia.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

5,000

500

Secretary of Legation

550

500

First Attaché

250

Washington.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

4,500

500

Secretary of Legation

550

First Attaché

200

Naples.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

4,000

400

Secretary of Legation

500

First Attaché

——

Portugal.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

4,000

400

Secretary of Legation

500

First Attaché

——

Brazil.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

4,000

500

Secretary of Legation

550

First Attaché

250

Holland.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

3,600

400

Secretary of Legation

500

First Attaché

——

Belgium.

Envoy and Min. Plenipo.

3,600

400

Secretary of Legation

500

First Attaché

——

Sweden.

Envoy

3,000

400

Secretary of Legation

500

Denmark.

Envoy

3,000

400

Secretary of Legation

500

Bavaria.

Envoy

3,600

500

Secretary of Legation

500

Sardinia.

Envoy

3,600

500

Secretary of Legation

500

German Diet.

Min. Plenipo.

2,600

300

Secretary of Legation

400

Attaché and German Translator

200

Wurtemburg.

Min. Plenipo.

2,000

300

Secretary of Legation

400

Saxony.

Min. Plenipo.

2,000

300

Secretary of Legation

200

Carried forward

£103,550

7,800

Brought forward

£103,550

7,800

Tuscany.

Min. Plenipo

2,000

300

Secretary of Legation

400

300

Switzerland.

Min. Plenipo

2,000

250

Secretary of Legation

400

Greece.

Minister Resident

2,000

200

Secretary of Legation

400

Mexico.

Min. Plenipo

3,600

400

Secretary of Legation

600

First Attaché

200

Columbia.

Minister Plenipotentiary

3,600

400

Secretary of Legation

600

First Attaché

300

Buenos Ayres.

Minister Plenipotentiary

3,000

300

Secretary of Legation

500

Albania.

Agent

1,000

Salaries

£124,150

9,950

These salaries and allowances for rent are exclusive of charges for outfit, journeys out, postage, and other incidental expenses, which swell to a considerable amount the civil contingencies of the year. After three, four, or seven years service, it has been usual to grant retiring pensions to foreign ministers of £2000 or £1500 a-year; but from a letter of Lord Palmerston’s, dated August 31, 1831, it appears ministers have determined to act on the following resolutions of Sir H. Parnell’s finance committee of 1828:—“1. That no person whatever shall be entitled to receive a diplomatic pension until the expiration of fifteen years from the date of his first commission, nor unless he shall have actually served ten years. 2. That no person shall be entitled to a pension of the first class (£2,000 a-year), unless he shall have actually served three years as ambassador at some foreign court. 3. That pensions to envoys and ministers plenipotentiary at the greater courts shall not exceed 1500 a-year, and shall not be granted until after five years’ residence in that capacity at a foreign court. 4. That pensions to envoys and ministers plenipotentiary at other courts, and to ministers, shall not exceed £1000 a-year after a similar period of residence. 5. And last, that pensions in the remaining class shall not exceed £800 a-year under the same conditions as to time of residence.”—Parliamentary Paper, No. 337, Sess. 1831.

THE ARISTOCRACY.

ALMOST imperceptibly to ourselves, we are drawn through the different departments of our undertaking in heraldic order: first, we explored the Church in all its ramifications; next the revenues of the Monarch; afterwards the monarch’s chief council, and his representatives in the persons of his ambassadors, envoys extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary; and now we come to the Aristocracy, which, according to the established rules of precedency, ought to follow the Clergy and the Crown.

Before entering on the more serious details of our present subject, we cannot help pausing a moment, on the threshold, to felicitate ourselves and readers on the triumphs already achieved by the progress of knowledge. Three centuries are only a step in the history of nations, yet, within that period, how many fictions of feudality and priestcraft have been dissipated, and which are now only reverted to as sources of amusement, like the delusions of witchcraft and demonology. Only think of the supremacy of the Clergy, in the fifteenth century, when they enjoyed almost impunity for every crime, by exemption from secular jurisdiction. It strikingly demonstrates the influence of mind over ignorance; for ecclesiastics, at that era, as much excelled the laity in mental attainments as in the magnitude of their possessions. Such pre-eminence is either lost or fast disappearing: in science and information they are manifestly behind other classes of the community; their moral influence is insignificant; the chief advantages they retain are their revenues, and the permanent enjoyment of these not being founded on any claim of right or social utility, public conviction has decreed against them, and the general verdict waits only to be carried into execution,

Among the fictions of Regality the most preposterous was the claim of divine right, which has become too common place a drollery even for mirth. Still it cannot be forgotten, that, so recently as the last of the Stuarts, this dogma had many disciples, and some remains of this singular faith are now to be found. An attempt has been made to erect a new idol in the pretensions of Legitimacy: but, in an age of discussion, imposture cannot long maintain its ground, and this was soon trampled under foot. Previously to the introduction of this idolatry, the English had shown their contempt for hereditary right by the transfer of the crown to the Prince of Orange; the French subsequently by the expulsion of Charles X. and the adoption of Philip I.; and the non-interference of the European powers in the mighty movement of 1830 has put an everlasting seal on this species of secular superstition.

Let us next advert to the fictions of the Third Estate: by some accident the English Aristocracy have contrived to retain a greater proportion of their ancient influence and endowments than any other privileged order of the community. The circumstances to which this may be ascribed appear principally the following. First, the English nobility had the good sense to give up in time a portion of their more revolting usurpations, by which they have been enabled to preserve entire, in a more palmy state of enjoyment and for a longer term, the remainder, than any similar class in Europe. Secondly, at an early period of our annals they obtained a hold on popular support, by aiding the people in resisting the encroachments of the clergy and the prerogatives of the Crown. Lastly, and latterly, the more enlightened portion of them have conciliated the favour of the influential classes by the adoption of liberal principles, and by impressing them with the belief that a conservative principle identifies the immunities of their ‘order’ with the general peace and welfare. Some of these sources of respect and power are manifestly losing ground in popular estimation. For what services the Aristocracy have rendered to civil liberty they have been amply remunerated by the long exercise of the political franchises of the People, by the receipt of enormous rents, and by the absorption of public taxes. The assumption of a community of interest with the People is partly belied by their own legislative acts, in which they obviously consider they have an interest different from that of other classes of society. In short, the time has arrived, when the power and institutions of the privileged orders may be fitly passed in review; they have already conceded many immunities, and it is not improbable the period has arrived when they will be called upon to make further concessions to the spirit of the age.

There was a time, as every body knows, when LORDS were petty despots on their-domains. They had their dungeon-castles, in which they could, at their own arbitrary will, torture, imprison, and even execute, their fellow-creatures. They could, when it suited their sovereign pleasure, sally forth on the public highways, and, with impunity, rob and maltreat whatever luckless traveller they happened to meet. They had even immunities still more revolting to human feeling. One, it is true, can hardly bring the mind to believe that such monstrous usages as those which gave rise to borough-English and child-wit ever existed; yet that they did is unquestionable, and the memorials of these customs, subsisting in the borough of Stafford, in the county of Essex, and other parts of the kingdom, place the facts beyond dispute. By the former usage the lord claimed the trifling perquisite, on the occasion of a marriage on his estate, of sleeping the first night with the bride; and the latter designates a penalty which a woman had to pay who had suffered herself to be begotten with child without the lord’s permission. Thank heaven our seigneurs have abated something of their ancient privileges; still the bare knowledge that such usages once existed—that they are associated with the name—is sufficient to make the mere titles of lord, baron, and duke, an offence—an insult to human reason—an abomination—which modern and civilized Europe ought no longer to tolerate.

Having adverted to a few of the ancient impostures and usurpations, chiefly to show to what a depth of degradation human nature may be reduced, we shall proceed to illustrate the immunities and advantages enjoyed by the Aristocracy, and which they have been enabled to arrogate and maintain by a monopoly of political power. It is a subject of vast importance, and one, we believe, when fairly placed before our countrymen, about which there will hardly exist diversity of opinion.

In contemplating the English government, one peculiar feature may be remarked in every branch of our civil and ecclesiastical polity: in each branch there is an entire departure from the original object of its institution. In the ecclesiastical state, no such abuse as clerical sinecurists was formerly known; every order had some duties to discharge, for which they received their incomes: but now we find that the episcopal, dignified, and one-third of the parochial clergy receive FOUR OR FIVE MILLIONS annually, for which it is hard to say any service whatever is rendered to society. The House of Commons, originally intended to represent the property, intelligence, and population of the state, has become the mere organ of the Aristocracy; who, according to the constitution, ought not to have the least influence over its deliberations. The executive, by the delegation of its powers to ministers and judges, exhibits a similar dereliction from civil and military duties: and, lastly, in the House of Peers we find a corresponding abandonment of civil functions; the dukes, earls, and barons had all, formerly, as their names import, important duties to discharge in the commonwealth.

The object of reform is not to destroy the established church, pull down the two houses of parliament, nor invade the rights of the Crown; but to restore, as far as the altered state of society will allow, those different orders to the exercise of their legitimate authority.

Of the different innovations on the ancient system, there is none more flagrant than those of the Aristocracy: it has swallowed up not only the rights of the people, and the prerogatives of the Crown, but also the immunities of the church. At no former period of history was the power of the Aristocracy so absolute, nor did they enjoy a tithe of their present advantages. During the Norman Kings, and the first kings of the house of Plantagenet, down to the passing of Magna Charta, though the power of the Crown, in many instances, proved but a feeble barrier to the encroachments of the barons, yet, when united with the influence of the clergy, it was at all times able to set some bounds to their authority. After the passing of the Great Charter, the growth of manufactures, and the diffusion of knowledge among the people, gave rise to the Commons. This order, unknown to the preceding period, gradually rose into great importance, and ultimately became able not only to prescribe bounds to the Aristocracy, but also to the Monarch. Under the tyranny of the Stuarts, the Commons brought one monarch to the block, and abolished the House of Peers. But its ascendancy was of short duration. The return of Charles II.—the restoration of the rotten boroughs, which had been struck out of the representation during the protectorship of Cromwell, to the right of returning members of parliament,—the introduction of parliamentary corruption in the reign of Charles II.—more systematically and openly practised under William III. and perfected under the administration of Walpole, in the reign of George II.—completely annihilated the powers of the Commons, and gave to the Aristocracy its uncontrolled and irresponsible ascendancy.

Having obtained the power, the Aristocracy have exercised it as uncontrolled power usually is exercised, namely, solely for their own advantage: they have rid themselves of what duties were anciently annexed to their order, and monopolized nearly all the honours and emoluments of society.

The ancient nobility had not only to provide a sufficient military force for the defence of the kingdom, but they had also the administration of justice, the coining of money, and, in short, the whole internal government of the country committed to their care. On such conditions, their estates were originally granted: these they retain; but as to the duties annexed, they have placed them on the shoulders of the other classes of the community. It is the Commons now, who either discharge, or pay for being discharged, all the duties of the state. If we only examine the list of taxes, as we shortly intend to do, we shall find that the aristocracy have, comparatively, exempted themselves from impost, while the burthen falls exclusively on the people. The duties imposed by the corn-laws are a tax paid directly for the support of this order; while, with the exception of the land-tax, a trifling impost, all other duties, the assessed taxes, excise, customs, stamps, post-office duties, fall with disproportionate weight on the middling and working classes, and scarcely touch the massive incomes of the nobility.

This is one of the great evils resulting from the political supremacy of the peerage. Instead of bearing the burthen of taxation, which, in fact, is the original tenure on which they acquired their territorial possessions, they have laid it on the people. Nothing can be more unjust and oppressive. The comforts of one class ought never to be encroached upon, while another class remains in the enjoyment of redundant luxuries. It is the legitimate object of good government to prevent the extremes of wealth and indigence, and diffuse equally, through all classes, the bounties of nature. But the aristocratic system is the reverse of this principle. It weighs chiefly on want and penury; it tramples on those already depressed; and crushes, almost to annihilation, the most useful classes by its unceasing exactions.

It is not our purpose to investigate the utility and origin of an hereditary privileged class. It is, no doubt, a questionable hypothesis—not supported at least by the cotemporary illustration of many noble families—that wisdom and fitness for the administration of national affairs are inheritable endowments. Besides which, men seldom take pains to cultivate superfluous acquirements: consequently, it is a strong objection to hereditary honours, that those born to them have no necessity for cultivating the virtues by which, perhaps, they were originally acquired. A principal motive for the institution of hereditary right has ceased to be of weight. Originally it was intended to guard against disputed succession, and prevent the division of powers essential to the security of communities and property. But the introduction of the representative principle in governments, the more general diffusion of intelligence, of habits of order, of respect for individual claims, has rendered these precautions no longer essential to the maintenance of social institutions. Leaving, however, the general discussion of the question, we shall proceed to notice, categorically, the real and practical grievances entailed on the commons of England by the advantages and immunities of the Aristocracy.

I.

RIGHT OF PRIMOGENITURE AND ENTAILS.

For the last ten years a great deal has been written and said, and justly too, on the evils of monopolies; but hardly any one has touched upon the monopoly of land. Many, even of the Aristocracy, have been zealous and persevering in their endeavours to establish unrestricted freedom in commerce; they perceived the advantages of liberty in the exchange of commodities, but they have been indifferent or silent on the advantages of liberty in the exchange of the soil. Yet, what is the right of primogeniture and the law of entail, but a monopoly as grievous and pernicious as that of the Bank of England and East India Company? What right had an assembly of half-civilized men, some five hundred years ago, to tie up the great estates of the country in perpetuity; to enact that, whatever changes of society might intervene, they should never be subdivided, nor severed from their lineal heirs as long as they endured? Was not this creating a monopoly? Did it not interpose insuperable obstacles to the sale and division of property—keep up the price of land to an artificial height—impede fair competition—limit the market of buyers—and impose restrictions on the freedom of those who might be disposed to sell?

Moreover, the statute De donis, or of “Great Men,” as it is frequently called, perpetuated a LANDED INTEREST; that is, an order of men with interests distinct from those of the community, and who, armed with the power of the state, have been able to treat with special favor their peculiar class, by imposing upon it lighter burthens, by protecting it from competition, and other expedients which tended directly to their own greatness and emolument by the sacrifice of the general welfare.

The motives which originated this feudal institution, as before observed, have, in great part, ceased to exist. In the disorderly era of Edward I. the right of the first-born to the undivided possession of his ancestor was a law of peace; and, by consolidating indisputably the power which the entire property gave in the hands of a single person, it was a law of security. To divide the inheritance was to ruin it, and to expose the dwellers upon it, who depended on the proprietor for protection, to be oppressed and swallowed up in the desolating incursions of neighbouring and ferocious rivals. In the existing state of society no such pretexts can be urged. The poor as well as the rich enjoy personal security, and the owner of a single acre of land is as secure in the enjoyment as the owner of 100,000. The right of primogeniture, however, still subsists; and as, of all institutions, it is the most adapted to flatter the pride of great families, it will be tenaciously upheld by the Aristocracy. In other respects it is an unmixed evil; it is even injurious to the real interests of the landowners; for nothing can be more contrary to the welfare of a numerous family than a right which, in order “to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the children;” and reduces them to the alternative of obtaining subsistence either as mendicants or depredators on the bounty and involuntary contributions of the community.

The same reasoning applies to ENTAILS, which are the natural consequence of primogeniture. They were introduced to preserve the lineal succession of which primogeniture first gave the idea, and to hinder any part of the original patrimony from being conveyed out of the proposed line, either by gift, devise, or alienation, either by the folly or by the misfortune of any of its successive possessors. When great landed estates were a sort of principality, such curtailed inheritances might not be indefensible. Like what are called the fundamental laws of some communities, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands from being endangered by the incapacity or extravagance of one man. But, in the existing state of Europe, when property is so well secured, when small as well as great estates derive their security from inviolable laws, nothing can be more absurd than such defensive restrictions. They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and to all that it contains; but that the property of the present generation should be fettered and regulated by barbarians who died centuries ago. Entails, however, are still respected in England; and it is only in particular cases, by means of legal fictions, prompted by the spirit of commerce, and new views of social expediency, that estates tied up by them can be alienated. They are deemed essential to the maintenance of the monopoly of the aristocracy in the enjoyment of political power, honour, dignities, and offices; having usurped many advantages over their fellow citizens, lest their poverty should render them ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have others. It is, however, an oppressive and indefensible grievance. In the present state of society there is no utility in guaranteeing to particular families the perpetual enjoyment of vast masses of property—that this property shall not be liable to the ordinary vicissitudes of life—that it shall not, like personal estates, either be deviseable or saleable—and that all, except members of the privileged order, shall be irrevocably interdicted from ever becoming proprietors of the soil—of that soil which is the common inheritance of the whole community.

Other evils result from this feudal institution. Primogeniture enriches one, and leaves all the other members of a family destitute. Hence they are thrown, like mendicants, on the public for support; but they are unlike mendicants in this—that the public has no option, whether they will support them or not. The Aristocracy, usurping the power of the state, have the means under various pretexts, of extorting, for the junior branches of their families, a forced subsistence. They patronize a ponderous and sinecure church-establishment; they wage long and unnecessary wars, to create employments in the army and navy; they conquer and retain useless colonies; they set on foot expensive missions of diplomacy, and keep an ambassdor or consul, and often both, at almost every petty state and every petty port in the world; they create offices without duties, grant unmerited pensions, keep up unnecessary places in the royal household, in the admiralty, the treasury, the customs, excise, courts of law, and every department of the public administration: by these and other expedients, the junior as well as elder branches of the great families are amply provided for out of the taxes. They live in profusion and luxury; and those by whom they are maintained alone subsist in indigence and privation.

It is only in the less civilized states of Europe, in Hungary, Bohemia, Poland and Russia, that primogeniture is retained. Countries enjoying the benefits of political regeneration have abolished this remnant of feudality, and introduced the law of equal partibility. The happy effects of this reform are visible in the condition of France and the Netherlands; in the greater harmony subsisting among the different classes of society—in the absence of the miserable jealousy and exclusiveness that embitter domestic intercourse in England—in the public spirit, unanimity, and personal independence of the inhabitants, produced, no doubt, by a conviction of common interests, reciprocal obligations, and equal participation in all the advantages and enjoyments of the social state.

II.

PRIVILEGES OF PEERS.

There are other laws originating in the same aristocratic spirit, and directed to the maintenance of similar exclusive privileges, as those described in the last section. Such are the Insolvent Laws. Lest the dignity of a peer should be violated, his person is privileged from arrest for debt. Why should this be tolerated? He is not ostensibly entrusted with representative functions, like the members of the lower house. He represents only himself, with the exception of the sixteen peers of Scotland and the twenty-eight peers of Ireland. Why, then, should his person be protected from imprisonment, if he is so inexcusably improvident, with all the advantages he enjoys, as to incur debts he cannot pay? A Scotch peer, though not one of those sitting in parliament, is privileged from arrest, as appears from the case of Lord Mordington. This lord, who was a Scotch peer, but not one of those who sat in parliament, being arrested, moved the Court of Common Pleas to be discharged, as being entitled, by the Act of Union, to all the privileges of a peer of Great Britain; and prayed an attachment against the bailiff; when a rule was granted to show cause. Upon this, the bailiff made an affidavit, that when he arrested the said lord he was so mean in his apparel, as having a worn-out suit of clothes, and a dirty shirt on, and but sixteen-pence in his pocket, he could not suppose him to be a peer of Great Britain, and, therefore, through inadvertency, arrested him. The Court discharged the lord, and made the bailiff ask pardon.

A peer, sitting in judgment, is not required to give his verdict upon oath, like a commoner, but upon his honour. What a stigma on the other classes of the community! Just as if a peer alone had honour, and all others were base perfidious slaves, from whom truth could only be extorted when they had been forced into the presence of their Creator.

A member of the lower house is the deputy or representative of others, and cannot delegate his powers; but a peer represents only himself, and may vote by proxy on any question, even though he has never been present to discuss its merits.

If a thief breaks into a church, and steals the surplice or cushion, it is not like stealing a ledger or cash-box from a shop or counting-house—it is sacrilege. If a man scandalizes a peer by speaking evil of him, it is not common scandal, it is scandalum magnatum, that is, great scandal, subjecting the offender to indefinite punishment.

If a peer job in the funds, as many of them do; or if he get up bubble companies, as some of them have done, to dupe credulous people; and if he involve himself in debt by these fraudulent practices, you cannot imprison him to enforce payment; neither can you make him a bankrupt, and sequestrate his estates. The property of a peer, like his person, has a dignity about it, and must not be violated. You may knock down Nathan Rothschild, though he is a very rich man, or a worshipful alderman, or even a right honourable lord mayor, and the justices will only charge you a few shillings for the liberty you have taken; but if you knock down a peer, though he is ever so insolent, it is almost as bad as murder.

Peers being great landowners, therefore land, as well as their persons, enjoys immunities which do not attach to chattel property. A noble lord may run into as much debt as he pleases, and then, with impunity, defraud all his creditors. He may live in the utmost profusion; he may borrow money to support his extravagance, or for providing portions for younger children, making the most solemn promises, or even giving his written engagement to repay it; or he may raise loans, and with these loans buy houses and land, and when he dies leave the houses and land purchased with this borrowed money to whom he pleases: and in all these cases the lenders who have trusted to the honour of a peer have no power to touch a shilling worth of his real estates.

These are a few of the privileges of peers; we shall proceed to illustrate other results of aristocratic legislation.

III.

INJUSTICE OF ARISTOCRATIC TAXATION.

Nothing can demonstrate more incontestibly the necessity of the different interests in society being represented in the general government than the course of fiscal legislation. The political power of the state, we need not repeat nor explain, is in this country consolidated in the aristocracy. If we only glance at public burthens we shall see with what admirable adroitness they have been distributed, so as to press as lightly as possible on those who imposed them, and with disproportionate weight on those who had no share in their imposition. Does not this show better than all the general reasoning in the world the utility of universal representation; otherwise, whatever interest is unprotected will assuredly be sacrificed, and this injustice will be perpetrated by the dominant party, however exalted this dominant party may be by birth, by station, by education, by wealth, or other adventitious circumstance.

Let us appeal to facts in illustration of this principle. The landed interest is the primary interest of the Aristocracy; whatever tends to enhance the value of land or its produce tends directly to augment their incomes. Hence, their leading policy has been to protect agriculture, to encourage husbandry, by abstaining from burthening it with imposts, to impose no additional tax on land, and above all things to secure the home market against competition from abroad. For this latter purpose they have passed laws the most unjust and outrageous; the importation of some articles they have absolutely prohibited; others they have loaded with heavy duties; so that they have been able to sell their own produce at a monopoly price.

The following list of articles of foreign production, and the import duties to which they are subject, will show to what extent the landowners have availed themselves of political power to promote their own interests, by excluding foreign competition.

£

s.

d.

Bacon, per cwt.

1

8

0

Beer, per thirty-two gallons

2

13

0

Butter, per cwt.

1

0

0

Bristles, not sorted, per lb.

0

0

3

Bristles, sorted

0

0

4

Cider, per ton

21

10

4

Cheese, per cwt.

0

10

6

Cucumbers, ad valorem

20

0

0

Eggs, for every 120

0

0

10

Hay, per load

1

4

0

Hair, cows and oxen, per cwt.

0

2

6

Hair-powder, per cwt.

9

15

0

Hops, per cwt.

8

11

0

Hemp-seed, per quarter

2

0

0

Hemp, undressed, per cwt.

0

4

6

Lard, per cwt.

0

8

6

Madder, per cwt.

0

6

0

Mules and asses, each

0

10

6

Horses, each

1

0

0

Oil, rape and linseed, per ton

39

18

0

Peas, per bushel

0

7

6

Perry, per ton

22

13

8

Potatoes, per cwt.

0

2

0

Seeds, clover, hay, &c.

1

0

0

Spirits, foreign, per gallon (I. M.)

1

2

6

Rum, per gallon

0

8

6

Tallow, per cwt.

0

3

2

Tares, per quarter

0

10

0

Timber, per load

2

15

0

Wheat 16s. 5d. a quarter to 1s. according as the price rises from 61s. to 70s. a quarter.

Barley 13s. 10d. a quarter to 1s. according as the price rises, from 32s. to 40s. a quarter.

Oats 10s. 9d. a quarter to 1s. according as the price rises from 24s. to 31s. a quarter.

Beef, lamb, mutton, pork, sheep, and swine are prohibited to be imported, by 6 Geo. IV. c. 117.

While the landowners have been strenuously exerting themselves to close, hermetically, if possible, the home market against foreign agricultural produce, they have, with admirable consistency of policy, been at the same time endeavouring to throw it wide open for the admission of foreign manufactures. This places their conduct in a most conspicuous light. Surely, if a free trade in manufactures was for the benefit of the community, so was a free trade in the produce of the soil. But, then, our feudal Solons do not deal in cotton, nor silk, nor hardwares; they are only dealers in corn, and that makes all the difference. The working and effects of this abominable system has been justly and spiritedly versified in the following lines:—

- Ye coop us up and tax our bread,

- And wonder why we pine;

- But ye’re fat, and round, and red,

- And fill’d with tax-bought wine.

- Thus twelve rats starve, while three rats thrive,

- (Like you on mine and me);

- When fifteen rats are caged alive

- With food for nine and three.

- Haste! havoc’s torch begins to glow,

- The ending is begun;

- Make haste! destruction thinks ye slow;

- Make haste to be undone!

- Why are ye call’d ‘my Lord’ and ‘Squire,’

- While fed by mine and me:

- And wringing food, and clothes, and fire

- From bread-tax’d misery?

- Make haste, slow rogues, prohibit trade,

- Prohibit honest gain;

- Turn all the good that God hath made

- To fear, and hate, and pain.

- Till beggars all—assassins all,

- All cannibals we be;

- And death shall have no funeral

- From shipless sea to sea.

- —Corn-Law Rhymes.

It is not a difficult problem to ascertain the annual burthen imposed on the community by the corn-tax. It appears, from the resolutions submitted to the House of Commons by Lord Milton, that the average price of wheat in this country, in the year ending February 1830, had been 64s. 2d. per quarter. The average price on the Continent and in America, during the same period, had been 46s. 3d. per quarter. Now, if there were no restrictions on the importation of corn, the price in England would be nearly the same as in Poland or in the United States; but, in consequence of the boroughmongers’ tax, the price is about 20s. per quarter higher: so that, if the annual consumption of corn by the community be 48 millions of quarters, they pay exactly so many pounds additional, in order to swell the rents of the landowners.

A tax upon bread is the most oppressive and unjust that could be imposed on the industrious classes. A man with £50 a-year consumes, individually, as much bread as a man with £50,000, and consequently sustains as great an annual loss by the artificial enhancement of its price. All taxes on articles of ordinary consumption fall in the same disproportionate manner. They are like a fixed per-centage on income, levied indiscriminately on every person, without regard to large or small revenues. Sugar, tea, and malt are articles of general use; and the labourer and artisan contribute exactly in the same proportion as a lord on their individual consumption of those commodities. In fact, it is to duties of this description the Aristocracy have always shown a marked partiality; the excise, it is known, being the most productive branch of the revenue. Mr. Pitt used to say that the high price of labour in England arose chiefly from the excise; three-fifths of the wages of a poor man passing into the exchequer. But no such proportion of the incomes of the Aristocracy flows into the public treasury.

Yet it is the incomes of the landed interest, as we shall briefly illustrate, which form the most legitimate and unexceptionable fund for taxation. A person who employs himself in making a pair of shoes or inexpressibles adds nothing to the value of the leather or cloth beyond the price of his labour. Land, however, is a more profitable material to work upon; yielding not only a produce adequate to defray the expenses of its culture, but also a surplus; and this surplus constitutes the landlord’s rent. But the soil of every country belongs to the people; consequently, the rent or surplus revenue it yields is not so much the property of a particular class of individuals as of the whole community. It follows that the landowners are only so many pensioners or sinecurists, paid out of a revenue which originally constituted the sole fund out of which all the exigencies of state were provided. Instead of the “Lords of the Soil” taxing every article we eat and drink, and impeding, with vexatious imposts, every operation of industry, they ought to have laid a direct tax on rent, which would have been easily and economically collected. They have acted quite the reverse. The Land-Tax continues to be levied at this day according to the defective valuation in the reign of William III.; and, in 1798, it was made perpetual at 4s. in the pound on the inadequate estimate of the rental at the Revolution. In France the foncier, or land-tax, amounts to one-fourth of the whole annual revenue; in England it does not amount to a sixtieth part. The proportion of our excise, customs, and assessed taxes to similar taxes in France, is as forty-five to twenty; while the proportion of the public revenue of the former to that of the latter is as three to two.

Need we say any thing further to illustrate the tendency of aristocratic taxation, or the selfish purposes to which the political power of the Oligarchy has been perverted? Yes, we shall briefly add a few more facts.

When the income-tax was imposed, or rather when it was screwed up by the Whigs, in 1806, lands and tenements were assessed at 2s. in the pound. Precisely the same assessment was laid on incomes arising from professions, trade, or other vocation. Thus was as heavy a tax levied on revenue not worth five years’ purchase as on revenue worth thirty years’ purchase; in other words, the tax was six times heavier on the industrious than on the unproductive classes of the community. A merchant, attorney, tradesman, or shopkeeper, whose income depended entirely on his personal exertions—which ceased at his death—and by savings from which he could alone make a provision for his children after his decease, was taxed six times to the amount of the landowner, by whom the burthen was imposed—whose property was entailed, and protected from all liability for debts however extravagantly incurred.

If the Boroughmongers ever charge themselves with any burthens, they are always prompt to get rid of them the first opportunity, though they touch them ever so lightly, and have been rendered necessary by their own infatuated measures. Thus, immediately after the peace, before any reduction in the public establishments, or in the amount of the monstrous debt they had contracted, the income-tax was abolished. Again, the duty on horses employed in husbandry has been long since repealed, but the malt-tax is still continued, and the beer-duty—the most unfair and oppressive of all duties—was only repealed within these two years.

From some duties the peerage is exempted altogether. A lord of parliament sends and receives all letters free of postage; he usually franks the letters of all his relatives and friends; he enjoys, also, the privilege of sending a letter from London by the post on Sunday—a sort of sabbath-breaking which would be considered impiety or perhaps blasphemy in another person.

It would be tedious to go through the whole roll of taxes, to show how indulgent our legislators have been to themselves and how unjust towards the rest of the community. If a lord by inheritance succeed to an estate worth £100,000, he has not a shilling to pay to government. If a rich merchant dies, and bequeaths as much to his children, they are taxed to the amount of £1500, or, if there is no will, to the amount of £2250. If a poor man buy a cottage for £10, he has 10s. or one-twentieth part of the purchase-money, to pay for a conveyance. If a nobleman buy an estate worth £50,000, the stamp-duty is only one-hundred-and-eleventh part of the purchase-money, or £450. A similarly unequal tax is incurred in borrowing small sums on bond or mortgage, while special favour is shown to those who borrow large sums. If a man has eight windows in his house he is assessed 16s. 6d.; if he has one more he is charged 4s. 6d. for it. If a lord has 180 windows he is charged £46 : 11 : 3; and if he has one more he is charged only 1s. 6d.; and he may have as many more additional windows as he pleases at the same low rate of assessment. If a poor man’s horse, or his ass, pass through a toll-bar there is something to pay, of course; but if a lord’s horse pass through, provided it is employed on the lord’s land, there is nothing to pay. If a cart pass through a toll-bar, loaded with furniture or merchandize, there is something to pay for the cart, and something extra to pay according as the wheels are broad or narrow; but if the cart is loaded with manure for his lordship’s estate, the cart is free, and the wheels may be any breadth the owner pleases without liability to extra charges. If a stage-coach, or hackney-carriage, which a tradesman sometimes indulges in, pass through a turnpike, it must pay toll every time it passes; but the carriage of a lord or gentleman may pass through 100 times a day, if he please, for once paying. The tax on a nobleman’s carriage is, per year, six pounds; the tax on a glass-coach, which a poor man keeps to get a living by, and which is hired by those who cannot afford to keep a carriage, is, per year, about £160; the tax on a stage-coach, which is paid by those who cannot afford to hire even a glass-coach, is, per year, about £260. A Paddington stage, running every hour, pays, daily, for mile-duty, 12s.; while some stages run more than 100 miles daily; if 100 miles, then the daily mile duty is 25s., which must all be paid by the passengers who cannot ride in their own carriages, which travel without duty. Riding or walking, eating or drinking, there is inequality. If a poor person refreshes himself with a glass of spirits (though beer would be better for his health and pocket) he is taxed seventy per cent; but if he takes a glass of wine, which is a lord’s drink, he is only taxed seventeen per cent. Lords do not smoke, though they sometimes chew, therefore a pipe of tobacco, which is a poor man’s luxury, is taxed 900 per cent. If a poor servant-girl advertises for a place of all work, she is taxed 3s. 6d.; if a lord advertises the sale of an estate he pays no more. The house-tax falls heavily on the industrious tradesman, but lightly on the lord and esquire; the former must reside in town, and occupy spacious premises, which make his rent large, and the tax being proportionate, it deducts materially from income, while the latter may reside in the country, occupy a fine mansion, and not be rented more than £50 per annum. Lastly, lords, sinecurists, pensioners, and gentlemen may retire to Paris, Florence, or Brussels, for any thing they have to do, or any good they are capable of doing, by which they avoid house-tax, window-tax, and almost every other tax; but the tradesman and shopkeeper are adscriptæ glebæ,—they must stick to their counting-houses and warehouses, and expiate, by toil and frugality, the follies and extravagance of their rulers.

These are a few specimens of our fiscal regulations, and must, we imagine, demonstrate, practically, to merchants, copyholders, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and the middling and working orders generally, the advantages of having a friend at court—that is, of having political rights—that is, of having real representatives—that is, of not being taxed without their consent—that is, of having a reform in the Commons House of Parliament, instead of leaving public affairs to the exclusive management of noble lords and their nominees.

IV.

ARISTOCRATIC GAME-LAWS.

A salmon from the pool, a wand from the wood, and a deer from the hills, are thefts which no man was ever ashamed to own.

—Fielding’s Proverbs.

We learn from this old Gaelic apophthegm,—the sentiment is very ancient,—that an exclusive right to game and other feræ naturæ does not rest on the same basis as property. Mankind will not be easily convinced that stealing a hare or partridge is as criminal as stealing a man’s purse. While this continues the popular feeling, it is vain to multiply acts for the preservation of game. Laws, to be efficacious, should be in accordance with public opinion; if not, they only disturb the peace of society, excite ill-blood and contention, and multiply instead of diminishing offences.

Since the preceding edition of this work was printed in 1831, the legislature, by the Game Act of last session, has torn out one of the leaves of The Black Book: we then declared that, for this single object—that of getting rid of the demoralizing, detestable, ferocious, and preposterous game code; we said “for this one object alone, without adverting to the church, the rotten boroughs, the dead weight, or other national grievance; only to sweep away this one national stigma would be well worth the three days’ fight of the Parisians, or even the four days’ battle of the Belgians.” Our declarations may have hastened the abatement of one of the most insolent oppressions ever exercised over a civilized people, and accelerated the introduction of the new measure by which qualifications to kill game are abolished, and game is allowed to be sold like other commodities, by taking out a license. These concessions have removed the chief objects of our former animadversion, and, therefore, what we have to say will be rather for the benefit of the next than of the present generation; our purpose will be to place on record a specimen of the revolting tyranny exercised over the people of England by an usurping Oligarchy even to the last days of its existence.

Be it known then that the Boroughmongers, down to the twelfth hour of their reign, persisted in claiming for game greater protection than had ever been awarded to property; they persisted in having it considered as something more inviolate and sacred than household goods; they arbitrarily fixed on certain fowls of the air and beasts of the field, and these, in their sovereign pleasure, they decreed should be endowed with peculiar privileges distinct from all others; in a word, that they should be aristocrats like themselves, and it should be highly criminal in any base-born man to kill them, or eat them, or buy them, or sell them, or carry them, or even to have them in his possession, or to have in his possession any engine or instrument by which the dear and favoured creatures might be slain, maimed, or injured. In pursuance of these lordly whims they framed a code of laws to which we will venture to say, in subtlety and refinement of insult, nothing equal could be found in the records of the vilest despotism ever established to experiment on the limits of human endurance; we will venture to say that, in no other country in the world, with the least pretence to freedom and civilization, was there to be found a body of laws so partial, so repugnant to the common sense and subversive of the common rights of mankind, as the game laws of the English aristocracy!

To enforce their haughty immunities the Boroughmongers fixed on certain fantastic conceits, which they called qualifications to kill game. These qualifications were not founded on any rational consideration of wealth, intelligence, or social usefulness. A rich merchant or manufacturer had no right to kill game; his warehouses might be filled with valuable merchandize; he might give employment to thousands of people, as some of them do in the North, yet he had no privilege to meddle with the aristocrats of the air nor of the field! His wealth was base—it was not feudal, it had not been acquired by war, plunder, and confiscation, and did not qualify to spring woodcocks, no, nor even to pop at a snipe, nor a teal, nor a quail, nor a land-rail. A parson, however, who had a living worth £150 per annum, though his estate was only for life, might kill as much game as he pleased.

But the sages of the King’s Bench (blessed be their names!) were more indulgent than the boroughmongering parliament: they determined that even plebeians should have a little sport, and accordingly ruled that a qualified person might take out a tradesman, stock-broker, clothier, attorney, surgeon, or other inferior person to beat the bushes, and see a hare killed, and he should not be liable to penalty. But beware of the man-traps and spring-guns of the law; if any of the aforesaid ignoble beings ventured to meddle, without first being invited by a lord or gentleman so to do, he was fined, or else imprisoned in the House of Correction. Ah, these boroughmongers, how they have stabbed us! how they have kicked us! how they have laughed at us!

Although an unqualified man was not allowed to kill game, it might be thought, by a rational mind, he would be permitted to buy it of those who were. No, he was not. What, the lords of the soil become dealers and chapmen! degrade grouse and black-cock into mere commodities of traffic, like broad cloth and calico! Impossible! Therefore they passed laws that game should neither be bought nor sold; that higglers, victuallers, poulterers, pastry-cooks, and other mean persons should not carry it, nor have it in possession, nor should any unqualified person have in his possession any deadly or dangerous weapon for its injury or destruction. If an unqualified person were suspected—barely suspected, mind—of having game, or any dog, gun, or snare for killing or wounding it, his house might be SEARCHED, and if any net or snare, pheasant, partridge, fish, fowl, or other game were found, the offender might be forthwith carried before a justice and fined, or sent to the House of Correction, and there whipped and kept to hard labour. If a man only happened to spoil or tread on the egg of a partridge, pheasant, mallard, teal, bittern, or heron, he was fined or imprisoned. But if he went forth in the night for the third time, with the full intent of catching an aristocrat bird, a coney, or other game, he was transported beyond the seas for seven years, or imprisoned, and kept to hard labour, in the House of Correction for two years; and if he ran away in order to avoid this merciful infliction, or resisted the land-owner or his servants, either with club, stick, or stone, rather than be apprehended, he was guilty of a misdemeanour, subjecting him either to transportation or imprisonment.

Now, mark the commentary afforded by the NIMRODS themselves on these arrogant and savage enactments. Within very few years three parliamentary committees were appointed to inquire into the state and administration of the game-laws; the results of their inquiries were—that poaching could not be prevented—that buying and selling game could not be prevented—that the game-laws were the fruitful sources of crime and immorality, and filled the gaols with delinquents, and that the only means of remedying the evils were by allowing game to be openly sold like other commodities, and by altering the qualifications, so that every owner of land might not only have the liberty to kill game on his own estate, but be empowered to grant a similar indulgence to any other individual. Instead of acting on the knowledge so communicated, or the suggestions recommended; instead of repealing the laws which were the sole cause of game being so highly prized, and of the deadly nocturnal encounters between keepers and poachers; instead of doing any of these, the only measures that were carried—and which, by the by, still remain in force—were the 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, and the 9 Geo. IV. c. 69, which greatly augmented the sanguinary character of a code already too ferocious, and the everlasting opprobrium of the misnamed free and enlightened community by which it was tolerated.

But observe what was disclosed respecting the sale of game, about which the descendants of the Normans appeared so extremely fastidious. From the inquiries of the committee of the House of Lords, in 1828, it was discovered that game was a regular article for sale in all the principal markets of the metropolis: the penalties, indeed, which were imposed on the traffic were easily evaded; since, by one sapient and moral act of our legislators, the 58 Geo. III. if a person, who had incurred them to any amount, would only inform of some other person who had bought or sold game within the preceding six months, his penalties were remitted and he received the informer’s reward, for this neighbourly, and, as it was often practised, friendly treachery. One salesman sold, on the average, 500 head of game in a week; in one year he sold 9628 head of game. The sale was mostly on commission, at two-pence or three-pence a head. It naturally excited surprise how all these waggon loads of game could be conveyed to London, and by whom supplied. The poor labourer, mason, or weaver, who perilled his life, his limbs, and his health, in the covert attempt to catch a hare or partridge, could not possibly be adequate to support a commerce like this. No, it was not done by poaching exactly; the wholesale dealers were the law-makers themselves—those who had interdicted the traffic—NOBLE LORDS and MEN OF TITLE, who had condescended to supply the London poulterers and salesmen with game, on commission, as a means of augmenting their territorial revenues.

This perhaps is enough by way of record of the proceedings of the boroughmongers and their game laws, which Mr. Justice Blackstone denominated a “bastard slip of the forest laws.” But the fact is, they were a refinement in insult on the savage code of William Rufus. The territorial jurisdiction of the forest-laws, though extensive enough in all conscience, had its local boundaries; at least, it did not extinguish the old common-law right every proprietor exercised to kill and have all animals, feræ naturæ, found on his own land. These inroads on the most obvious rights of property and the common sense of mankind, were left for a much more recent period,—a period subsequent to the glorious Revolution of 1688: for, though the Qualification Act was passed in the reign of Charles II. the statutes which first made it penal to sell game, or for an unqualified person to have game in his possession, were not passed till the reigns of William III. and George II.

V.

INCOMES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.

We are not partizans of Agrarian laws, and we believe the number of political reformers of any sect is extremely diminutive who wish to see or who ever expect to see a Spencean division of property. Industry, perseverance, sobriety, and prudence will mostly acquire wealth, and deserve to acquire it, and to enjoy it, and to transmit the enjoyment, after death, to those they most esteem. These are elements of society which few, indeed, would ever wish to see violated. They are primary laws of social organization, of which every one almost instinctively feels the justice and utility.

Neither are there many, we apprehend, who wish to abolish civil distinctions. A legislator sufficiently wise and experienced to discharge his high functions; a judge or magistrate qualified by probity and learning to adjudicate civil and criminal wrongs; a great public officer meriting and filling a high civil appointment; or a great commander, able and brave, to direct the military power of the state: these are all distinctions which every one must respect and venerate; and if it be necessary to distinguish the holders by other symbols than the official titles—by a velvet cap, a coronet, or ermined robe, with two, three, or four guards, or a golden epaulette—they will respect and venerate these too. Nay, there are not many, we believe, who care because there is “my lord” this, or “his grace” of that, or the “most noble” t’ other thing; these are not matters of pith and moment—they are too childish, we would hope, either to mislead the beholder, or corrupt the possessor.

It is not civil distinctions, but the nuisance of civil usurpations the just and enlightened wish to see abated. An aristocracy of office, of acquirement, and desert, is a natural aristocracy; but an aristocracy of birth is a feudal barbarism which honours the shadow in place of the substance, and dissevers merit from its just reward. Hereditary right to property we can comprehend, but hereditary right to be legislators, bishops, post-captains, military commanders, and secretaries of state, shocks common sense. One is a private immunity, transmissible from father to son; the other are public functions, which can never be alienated to any order of men; they belong to the living, and cannot be bequeathed and regulated by the dead; they are adjuncts to the present not to a past generation.

The claims of property are so self-evident, and have formed, in all ages and in all places, (Sparta alone perhaps excepted,) so inseparable an adjunct to the social state, that one would have thought their utility would never have been called in question. Yet it is a fact—and it has not escaped the observant attention of the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—that there are many in both France and England who dispute the advantages of so old fashioned an institution. The followers of ST. SIMON and Mr. OWEN are deeply impressed with the evils resulting from the individual or competitive system, and to escape them would fly to remedies by which they would be augmented a hundred fold. Crime, penury, and ignorance exist to a frightful extent; they have always existed—but evils which are now partial would, under the proposed “New State of Society,” become universal. Without the stimulus of property there could be no industry—no eminence moral or intellectual. Who would sedulously devote themselves to the useful arts, to agriculture, manufacture, medicine, or navigation, if superior application, superior enterprize, or superior endowments were not rewarded?

For competition Mr. Owen would substitute co-operation. But do not the several classes of society already co-operate to the common advantage of all? One class is occupied in rural industry, another in manufactures and commerce, another in science and letters. Each is rewarded—not always perhaps, but mostly—in proportion to desert: but the claims of merit would not be recognized under Mr. Owen’s system; the indolent would reap the rewards of the industrious, the vicious of the more deserving. This is not co-operation, it is corporation, the principle of the old monastic institutions and commercial monopolies—associations of whose stagnating, debasing, and injurious tendency the world has already had sufficient experience.

We always respect the motives of men whom we see constantly devoting their means and energies to the good of mankind, and should, therefore, regret to utter any thing harshly of Robert Owen. There is at all events no imposture about him: his propositions are brought openly forward, and he challenges inquiry and discussion: submitted to such a test, good may result from them, but they cannot possibly be productive of lasting evil. There is one suggestion we cannot help offering to this gentleman,—namely, that if he were to aim at less, he would accomplish more. The idea of abrogating the empire of the laws, of abolishing the right of property, and of resolving old communities into little bartering co-operative societies, are projects too wild and puerile to be thought of a moment. But, if in lieu of these, Mr. Owen would endeavour to improve the system of education throughout the country by impressing on parents and teachers, more strongly than it now is, the vast influence of external circumstances in the formation of the juvenile character, some good might result from his zealous exertions.

We have thought it advisable to preface this section, by glancing at some of the novel opinions abroad on a delicate subject, lest our present purpose might be misconstrued.

Our intention is to say something of the possessions of the Aristocracy, and we were apprehensive lest it might be imagined we meditated spoliation, or beheld, with jealous eye, the magnitude of their acres and rental. All such constructions we disclaim. It is nothing to us, nor is it much to the public, that the marquis of Stafford has £360,000 per annum; the duke of Northumberland, £300,000; the duke of Buccleugh, £250,000; and that there are other dukes and marquesses with nearly as much. Such magnificent revenues are not enjoyed by noblemen alone. There are lords of the loom in Lancashire and Yorkshire who have accumulated incomes nearly as great, and, perhaps, not more humanely nor honourably. But, if such masses of wealth be evils, they are evils which would remedy themselves, were they not fostered and upheld by vicious legislation. Abolish the laws which consecrate these vast accumulations and minister to family pride and personal caprice, and the mere diversities in the characters of succeeding possessors would soon disintegrate the great properties.

It is neither the mansions nor parks of the peerage that excite popular cupidity; it is the hereditary monopoly—not by constitutional right, but usurpation—of the political franchises of the people which begets hostile feelings; because it enables the privileged legislators to tax others and not themselves—to engross all public honours, offices, and emoluments—in a word, to make all the great social interests of a vast community, of which, in number, intellect, and even wealth, they constitute a most insignificant portion, subservient solely to the purposes of their own vanity, folly, indulgence, and aggrandizement. Here is the national grievance; and let us inquire whether, from the adventitious circumstance of property, they have any claim to inflict this great wrong on society.

The most authentic data for ascertaining the distribution of the property and revenue of the different classes of society are the returns under the property-tax. But it is to be observed that these returns only include the annual value of property liable to the tax, and, consequently, do not exhibit the annual value of the smaller incomes, nor the amount of that great mass of revenue accruing from the wages of labour. Bearing this in mind, we shall submit a statement of the annual income arising from property, professions, public annuities, profits in trade, pensions, and offices: and the amount of the gross assessments on the several descriptions of revenue arising from the different sources of income. The return is for the year ending April 5th, 1815—the last of the income-tax—and is abstracted from the Parliamentary Paper, No. 59, Session 1823. We have omitted shillings and pence, which make some trifling inaccuracies in the totals, and, to render the statement more intelligible, have added the titles of the schedules and rate of assessment from the 48 Geo. III. c. 65. The rise in the value of the currency has probably depressed the nominal amount of incomes below the contemporary increase in produce and industry; but, as this change affected all classes alike, with the exception of annuitants and those enjoying fixed money payments, it has not materially altered the relative proportions of revenue, as exhibited by the returns of 1815, possessed by the different divisions of the community. Here follows the statement:—

Schedules.

Annual Value.

Gross Assessments.

(A.)—Lands, tenements, and hereditaments, for every 20s. of the annual value 2s.

60,138,330

5,923,486

(B.)—Occupiers of lands, dwelling-houses, and tenements, 1s. 6d.; Scotland, 1s.

38,396,143

2,734,450

(C.)—Annuities and dividends arising out of any public revenues, 2s.

28,855,050

2,885,505

(D.)—Increase and profits from professions, trade, or vocations, 2s.

38,310,935

3,831,088

(E.)—Public offices, pensions, and stipends, 1s. 6d.

11,744,557

1,174,445

Total

£177,451,015

£16,548,984

The most important item for our purpose is the property charged in schedule A. consisting of lands and tenements which were assessed on the rack rents, and profits from mines and quarries. Under this head the assessment charged on land, houses, mines, &c. appears, from the parliamentary return, to which reference has been made, to have been as follows:—

£

Lands chargeable under the general rule

39,405,705

Houses so chargeable

16,250,399

Particular properties chargeable on the annual profits, viz. tithes, manors, fines, quarries, mines, iron works, and non-enumerated profits

4,473,224

£60,138,330

From this it appears that the entire rental returned in the last year of the property-tax was £39,405,705, and which has been reduced since the peace, in the opinion of Mr. Lowe, to twenty-five millions. Now the question is, what portion of this rental is received by the four hundred and eighteen members of the House of Peers. The Scotch and Irish peers, to the number of one hundred and eighty, who only sit in the Upper House, by their representatives, we exclude from consideration; the object being to get at the incomes of those who exercise the political power of the empire. For this purpose it will be necessary to analyze the component parts of the landed interests, and separate the peers from those who share with them the territorial revenues of the kingdom.

The number of baronets is 658, and many of them enjoy landed incomes as great or greater than lords. Then there is the squirearchy, more numerous than Pharoah’s host, who draw freely from the surplus produce of the soil. To these must be added the great loan-contractors, merchants, manufacturers, and others, appertaining to the monied, mercantile, and trading classes, many of whom possess extensive estates, and who rival, and, in part, have superseded the ancient nobility. Dr. Colquhoun supposed the gentry, and the classes we have enumerated, as enjoying large incomes, to amount to 46,861, and their incomes, from land and other sources, to amount to £53,022,110. Besides which, allowance must be made for the estates of the younger children of noble families, and for lands appertaining to lay and ecclesiastical corporations, and to charitable foundations. From all these considerations we should conclude that the rental of peers, sitting in parliament, does not exceed three millions per annum. Some of the members of the Upper House, we are aware, enjoy vast revenues, but the average income of each, from the soil, does not exceed £7,177.

Mr. Hallam says the richest of the English aristocracy derive their possessions from the spoils of the Reformation. He ought, also, to have added the spoils of the crown-lands, for they have helped themselves freely to the possessions of both church and king, as well as the people. The Bentinck, the Pelham, and other families inherit vast properties from leases and alienations of the royal domains. The houses of Cavendish and Russell, it is well known, made their acquisitions at the Reformation. The foundation of the Fitzwilliam estates was advantageous purchases at the same era. The Lonsdales have dug out their wealth from coal mines. The Buccleugh property has been an accumulation from heiresses, including here in England the possessions of the duke of Montague. The Gower estates have, also, mainly come by marriages; but the grand augmentation was by the canal-property of the late duke of Bridgewater, to which are now to be added the Sutherland estates of the present marchioness—a principality in themselves. The Grosvenor riches came mainly from an heiress, who brought, in marriage, the London building land about two generations back. The Northumberland estates are, principally, the old feudal inheritance of the Percys. In the whole peerage there are only eighteen commercial families, and these form the only houses which can be said to have acquired their wealth by habits of peaceful and honest industry.

Granting, then, that by means of marriages, and other favourable circumstances, some few of the nobility have accumulated vast revenues, still there are others whose poverty is notorious, and, altogether, they do not enjoy a landed revenue exceeding three millions per annum. What right, then, it may be inquired, have an Oligarchy of 418 persons, possessing so small a share in the general wealth of the community, to monopolize political power. Three millions per annum is not one-hundredth part of the annual revenue of the kingdom. Yet, to a body of men, having so diminutive a stake in the general weal, are confided the destinies of the empire.

The revenues derived by the peerage from the taxes and church revenues have been estimated to amount to £2,825,846 per annum, being nearly equal to their territorial revenue. This vast addition to their legitimate income they have been able to acquire from having usurped the franchises of the people. Whether the sum they draw from the church estates and the public is more or less, it is not our present purpose to investigate. Our object has been to demonstrate that the wealth of the peerage, of which they can justly claim the possession, is insignificant, when compared with the entire wealth of the country; and that the aristocracy, by direct or indirect means, exercising the political power of the state, the government, as at present constituted, neither represents the number, intellect, nor property of the community. The two former propositions have been often demonstrated, but the latter was a desideratum in general information.

There is another mode of viewing the distribution of the revenues of society, which it will, perhaps, not be unpleasing to our readers, if we submit to their consideration. The whole social fabric rests upon the industrious orders, and, we believe, they are only imperfectly acquainted with the magnitude of their power and resources. The late Dr. COLQUHOUN, who was a bold, but, as experience has proved, a very shrewd calculator, formed an estimate of the number and income of the different classes into which the community is divided. From the data exhibited by this gentleman, in his “Treatise on the Resources of the British Empire,” we have drawn up a statement which will afford a curious insight into the subject about which we are occupied. It is hardly necessary to remark that the Doctor’s conjecture of the incomes of the clergy is greatly below the truth. Indeed, it is to be observed that all statistical tables, drawn up prior to the restoration of a metallic currency, are chiefly useful in showing proportions, and do not express the present numerical value of either income or property.

Different Classes of Society, and their respective Incomes.

DESCRIPTION OF PERSONS,

Number of Persons, including their Families and Domestics.

Total Income of each class.

ROYALTY

300

£ 501,000

NOBILITY

13,620

5,400,000

GENTRY, including baronets, knights, country gentlemen, and others having large incomes

402,535

53,022,590

CLERGY:—Eminent clergymen

9000

1,080,000

Lesser clergymen

87,000

3,500,000

Dissenting clergy, including itinerant preachers

20,000

500,000

STATE AND REVENUE, including all persons employed under government

114,500

6,830,000

PENSIONERS, including those of Greenwich, Chelsea, and Kilmainham Hospitals

92,000

1,050,000

LAW:—Judges, barristers, attorneys, clerks, &c.

95,000

7,600,000

PHYSIC:—Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, &c.

90,000

5,400,000

AGRICULTURE:—Freeholders of the better sort

385,000

19,250,000

Lesser Freholders

1,050,000

21,000,000

Farmers

1,540,000

33,600,000

TRADE:—Eminent merchants

35,000

9,100,000

Shopkeepers, and tradesmen retailing goods

700,000

28,000,000

Innkeepers and publicans, licensed to sell ale, beer, and spirituous liquors

437,000

8,750,000

WORKING CLASSES:—Agricultural labourers, mechanics, artizans, handicrafts, and all labourers employed in manufactures, mines, and minerals

7,497,531

82,451,547

Paupers, vagrants, gipsies, rogues, vagabonds, and others supported by criminal delinquency

1,548,500

9,871,000

The preceding statement affords room for curious and important inferences. The industrious orders may be compared to the soil, out of which every thing is evolved and produced; the other classes to the trees, tares, weeds, flowers, and vegetables, drawing their nutriment, supported and maintained on its surface. Leaving out of consideration the professions of medicine, law and religion, and the unproductive or ornamental parts of society, let us attend to the number and incomes of the following orders:—

Numbers.

Incomes.

Freeholders of the better sort

385,000

£19,250,000

Lesser freeholders

1,050,000

21,000,000

Farmers

1,540,000

33,600,000

Eminent merchants

35,000

9,100,000

Shopkeepers

700,000

28,000,000

Innkeepers and publicans

437,000

8,750,000

WORKING CLASSES

7,497,531

82,451,547

These may be considered the active machinery—the solid substratum—upon which the social pyramid is based. When mankind attain a state of perfectibility; when vice, crime, and ignorance are more circumscribed; when we shall seldom require physic to cure diseases, laws to punish offences, or the terrors of superstition to deter from evil; these will be the chief classes in existence. They are the chief classes which ought to exist in a perfect state. The other classes have mostly originated in our vices and ignorance. As mankind become more perfect, or, which is the same thing, as knowledge is more extensively diffused, then will the honorary, legal, medicinal, and ecclesiastical classes disappear: having no employment, their name and office will cease in the social state.

It is from the useful classes the public revenue, for the maintenance of the army, navy, and general government is chiefly extracted. We have before shown the iniquitous principle on which our fiscal regulations have been framed, owing to the political ascendancy of the Aristocracy. Nearly all our taxes are taxes on the ordinary transactions of business, or on the ordinary articles of consumption; and press on the industrious like an inquisitorial and remorseless income-tax, levied without distinction of small or large revenues. It has been the gradual working of this oppressive system that has mainly produced the revolting extremes now observable in the condition of different classes of the community, that has enabled one class to riot in profusion and the wanton enjoyment of redundant incomes, while others have been steeped in indigence, subjected to unceasing and unrequited toil, and barely able to procure the commonest necessaries. That this is not assertion merely, we will demonstrate by an appeal to facts; we will show that the imposts, which constitute almost the entire revenue, are chiefly levied on the property, avocations, and consumption of the working and mercantile orders of the community. The produce of the customs and post-office is usually referred to as an exponent of commercial activity; that of the excise as the index of internal comfort and enjoyment—and for this reason; that the last, which constitutes considerably more than one-third of the public income, is chiefly contributed by the great body of the people.

Statement of the Gross Produce of Taxes for the Year ending 5th January, 1831, chiefly paid by the Industrious Classes.—Annual Finance Accounts, Session 1831.

The custom duties are for the United Kingdom; the duties of excise, taxes, and stamps are for Great Britain only.

Windows

£1,185,478

8

41/2

Inhabited houses

1,361,825

0

51/4

Probates of wills and letters of Administration

903,938

10

0

Legacies

1,223,260

11

6

Bills of exchange

458,511

8

6

Bankers’ notes, including compositions for duties thereon

110,647

3

8

Receipts

220,960

16

10

Marine insurances

220,007

15

6

Fire insurances

768,855

6

9

Stage coaches

418,604

9

61/2

Post-office

2,053,720

11

21/4

Tea

3,387,097

13

91/2

Coffee

579,844

19

7

Sugar (exclusive of drawbacks)

4,776,568

0

0

Malt

3,505,453

14

7

Hops

121,451

8

11/2

Beer (duty ceased October 10th, 1830)

2,390,310

18

41/2

Spirits (British)

3,708,713

0

61/2

Spirits (Foreign)

4,081,281

11

3

Licenses

737,497

11

01/2

Soap

1,513,149

19

91/2

Butter

102,881

18

10

Cheese

55,093

12

9

Corn, grain, meal, and flour

798,082

6

7

Eggs, bacon, and hams

20,700

14

0

Tallow

180,947

0

0

Tobacco and snuff

2,938,050

10

10

Wines of all sorts

1,575,438

6

9

Coals and culm, carried coastwise, (duty ceased March 1, 1831)

979,197

5

6

Total

£40,337,574

19

71/2

Thus on the gross receipt of revenue for Great Britain of £54,995,262, the sum of £40,337,574, is levied either wholly or very disproportionately on the necessaries of the industrious orders, and does not touch the luxuries of the great, unless the articles of wines, snuff, and tobacco can be considered such. The duties on wills and legacies, on bills, notes and receipts, on fire and marine insurances, on postage and stage coaches, fall heavily on the mercantile and manufacturing classes. The taxes on articles of daily use and consumption operate, as before observed, like an undiscriminating income-tax, augmenting in the exact ratio of every individual’s unavoidable expenditure. This monstrous state of our fiscal system is solely owing to non-representation, and consequent monopoly of political power by the Aristocracy, which has enabled them to throw the public burthens on the productive classes. Those who are the chief source of the wealth of the community, and who defray the charges of the general government, have had no efficient control over its administration; nay, have often not been treated with ordinary courtesy, and by an usurping Oligarchy the inferior orders have been considered little better than an ignorant rabble!

- “How various and innumerable

- Are those who live upon the rabble!

- ’Tis they maintain the Church and State,

- Employ the priest and magistrate;

- Bear all the charge of government,

- And pay the public fines and rent;

- Defray all taxes and excises,

- And impositions of all prices;

- Bear all the expense of peace and war,

- And pay the pulpit and the bar;

- Maintain all churches and religions,

- And give their pastors exhibitions!”

The aristocratic privilege of an exclusive right to impose taxes, and comparative exemption from their pressure, is strikingly evinced in the present partial mode of rating to the inhabited house duty, the splendid seats of the nobility and gentry. In Chester, which contains many residences of a very high class, there is but one mansion, (Eaton, we believe,) assessed so high as £300 a-year. That magnificent palace would be under-assessed probably at £10,000. In Westmoreland, which contains Lowther Castle, as fine a place or nearly so as Eaton, there is not one house assessed so high as £200. In Durham, which contains Raby Castle, and Lambton Castle, and Wynyard, and Ravensworth, and Brancepeth Castles—to say nothing of other mansions—the two first we believe, nearly equal to either of those before mentioned—there is not a single house assessed so high as £100, and but two above £70 per annum, which last is about the rate of assessment of our friend Loudon in his little cottage at Bayswater. In the rich and fine county of Hereford, containing Eastnor Castle, there is not a single house assessed so high as £90 per annum, and but three at or above £70. In Leicestershire, which contains Belvoir Castle, there is not an assessment so high as £200 per annum. In Northamptonshire, containing Althorp and various other fine seats, there is but one house rated so high as £110 per annum. In Northumberland, which contains Alnwick Castle, there are but two assessments of £200 and upwards. In Oxfordshire, which contains the stately and far-famed Blenheim, there is but one assessment so high as £300. Lastly in Yorkshire, which contains Wentworth Castle, and Harewood House, and Castle Howard, to say nothing of other numerous and splendid seats, there is not a single house assessed so high as £400 per annum, and but four so high as £300.

Compare these assessments of the Aristocracy with the sums levied on the Shopocracy, as the middle orders have been termed, in the metropolis and manufacturing towns, and we shall find additional reasons for the political representation of all interests in the great council of the nation.

VI.

INCREASE OF THE PEERAGE.

The members of the Upper House, succeeding to legislative functions by hereditary right, are exempt from the salutary influence which controls the deliberations of a representative assembly. Their interests are purely oligarchical, and severed from the general interests of the community. It cannot, therefore, excite surprise that any augmentation in a body of exclusives like this—separated from the mass of society by education, by family pride, by privilege, and usurped power—should be viewed with dislike and apprehension.

Other reasons render an increase in the aristocratic branch of parliament inimical to general feeling. It has been ascertained that the nobility afford a striking illustration of Mr. MALTHUS’s theory of population. Possessing, in abundance, the comforts and conveniences of life, they are placed in those circumstances most favourable to a full development of the procreative principle, and it is a singular confirmation of the doctrine of the enlightened writer that noble families are actually as prolific as those of the United States of America. Peers are mostly marrying men. After visiting the European capitals, and committing a few follies and eccentricities, they usually settle down at about twenty-five or twenty-eight years of age, and the results, on the average, are a progeny of five children, or about twenty-five per cent. more than other people. The eldest inheriting the estate, the rest would be destitute, were not the parents, by means of their vote and borough-interest, able to quarter them on the public. Hence it is the people contemplate, with feelings corresponding to those entertained by an Irish absentee who sees the increase of his cotter tenantry, any unavoidable addition to the peerage; knowing that, in consequence of primogeniture and entail-laws, another family will be thrown upon them for support, and that their own chance of honourable promotion in the army, navy, civil departments, or other branch of national service, is impeded by new rivals, with whom exists no prospect of equitable competition.

Having explained one or two of the popular objections to an increase of the peerage, we shall briefly notice the extraordinary augmentation it has undergone during the reigns of George III. and George IV.

A creation of peers generally takes place on the accession of a new family, the commencement of a new reign, or when some political measure is to be carried. On the death of Elizabeth, the peers only amounted to fifty-six. James, being the first of a new dynasty, raised the number to one hundred and five; and Charles I. to one hundred and thirty-five; Charles II. created fifteen dukes, (six of whom were his natural children,) one marquess, thirty-seven earls, three countesses, two viscounts, and twenty-nine barons. At the Revolution of 1688, William III. to ingratiate himself with the great families, raised eight powerful earls to dukedoms; created eighteen earls, three viscounts, and nine barons. Anne increased the peerage to one hundred and seventy. The accession of the Hanover family rendered new creations necessary: George I. either created or elevated no fewer than forty-nine peers. George II. left one hundred and eighty-four. It is evident that the great increase of the peerage was in the reign of George III. being more than doubled. In 1777 a batch of peers was drafted from the Commons to the Lords, to effect a ministerial majority. This expedient was frequently resorted to by Mr. Pitt. In 1797 ten peers were made. He nearly created the order of marquesses: he made ten marquesses in England where there was but one, and nine in Ireland where there was none—all men eminent, of course, for their services. Knighthood was still more profusely lavished. In short, he was as prodigal in wasting the honours of the Crown as the money of the people, and for a similar purpose.

The peers created during the reign of George III. have been classified as follows:—

Quarterly Review, No. 84, p. 314.

Landed commoners

46

Irish peers

56

Scotch peers

24

Law

25

State

25

Army

13

Navy

10

Younger sons and younger branches of peers

17

Renewals

7

Confirmations

7

Peeresses

5

235

Extinctions

74

Addition

161

George IV. added 64 members to the Upper House. In this number are included individuals who have been raised to the peerage, or in whose favour an abeyance has been terminated, as well as peers of Scotland and Ireland who have obtained English baronies. No notice, however, is taken of Scotch peerages which have been recently restored, nor of the creations of peers of Ireland; of claims to English peerages which have been admitted, nor of elevations of English peerages to higher honours. The average rate at which peers have been created during the last two reigns has been about four per annum; and was the same rate of increase to continue for the next century, it would double the existing number of parliamentary lords.

Toryism being the ascendant school of politics during the last reigns, the character of the peers created was of course determined by that of the minister from whom the honours were obtained. The effect of this was strikingly evinced on the first introduction of the Reform Bill into the House of Lords. Of the old peers of the United Kingdom, there was a majority of two for the second reading of the bill. Of the new peers of the United Kingdom created subsequent to 1792, the majority was against the second reading of the bill, and their number was only balanced by the creations under the Whig ministry. The subject will be made clear from the following statement copied from a recent publication.

Voted against the Bill.

Voted for the Bill.

Peers of the United Kingdom created previously to the end of 1792

79

81

Peers of the United Kingdom created subsequently to 1792 (including the creations during the administration of Earl Grey)

66

66

Archbishops and Bishops

21

2

Representative Peers for Scotland

12

4

Representative Peers for Ireland

19

4

Royal Dukes

2

1

199

158

It thus appears that of 54 votes against the bill there were 43 which were the votes of—

- 21 Bishops against 2; being above 10 to 1.

- 12 Scotch peers against 4; being 3 to 1.

- 19 Irish against 4; being nearly 5 to 1.

The inference from which representation is that the bill was defeated in 1831 by the bishops, and the Irish and Scotch peers, who had obtained their promotions or been elected under Tory influence.

The necessity of an augmentation of the peerage to balance the anti-reform interest created subsequent to 1792, became manifest; it was not only essential to strengthen the ministry and carry the bill, but also to effect those ulterior improvements in public administration of which this great national measure is justly considered the parent.

The abolition of an hereditary peerage in France cannot fail to have the greatest influence on the future status of the ‘order,’ and will probably lead to the abolition of an institution in other countries so little consonant to the existing state of society. Because one man is a great lawyer, statesman, or commander, it is no pledge that his lineal descendant will be gifted with the same endowments as those which entitled his progenitor to the exercise of legislative functions. A senate, or upper chamber for life, consisting of individuals eminent for wisdom, experience, or national services, is a defensible institution; but to make them hereditary, and erect legislators into a caste, is quite as preposterous as to make the functions of the astronomer royal hereditary, or the colleges of surgeons and apothecaries. Such manifest irrationalities must speedily disappear from European communities.

VII.

SOURCES OF ARISTOCRATIC MONOPOLY.

The magnitude of the territorial revenues of the Aristocracy is not such as to be in extreme disproportion with the incomes of many others in a community of great commercial opulence, and forms not any portion of the vice of their institution. Whether some noble lords have augmented their rental out of the spoils of the Church and the Crown is a question merely of historical curiosity, and can never be of any practical utility: it is occasionally adverted to as a set-off to oligarchical pride and pretension; beyond which it has no available application. By the law of England, the quiet possession of an estate for sixty years gives a clear and valid title; and we believe there are few noblemen who cannot adduce legal proof of the undisturbed enjoyment of their parks and mansions for a much longer period. So far, then, as the acres are concerned they are perfectly safe; whatever political changes may intervene—and great ones are impending—the legitimate incomes of the peerage can never be endangered, unless they blindly and pertinaciously oppose a regeneration which the wants of the age render indispensable; unless they emulate, in fatuity and crime, CHARLES CAPET and his guilty accomplices.

Aristocratic monopoly and abuse do not result from enormous landed revenues, but from hereditary rights of legislation, from primogeniture and entail-laws, and from nomination boroughs. None of these, however, are essential constituents of an upper chamber; only two-thirds of the nobility are entitled, by birth, to seats in parliament; primogeniture and entails are feudal barbarisms void of utility in modern society; and the usurpation of the franchises of the people is such a manifest subversion of constitutional immunities, so inimical to the general freedom and prosperity, that it cannot be defended on any pretext of justice or expediency. Abolish these corruptions, and all things will work together for good, without spoliation, without civil convulsion; and the Devonshires, the Lansdownes, and Northumberlands enjoy, undisturbed, their wide-spread domains, and retain, without murmur or complaint, their social distinction and supremacy.

The great fount of evil has been the decayed boroughs; these have been the Pandora’s box, from which have flowed national calamities, desolating wars, lavish expenditure, and the monstrous debt and dead weight. They have been the obstacles to every social melioration—civil, commercial, legal, and ecclesiastical. By means of them, the nobility have been enabled to double their private revenues, appropriating to themselves the dignities and livings of the church; pensions and grants out of the public purse; and filling, with their connexions and dependants, every lucrative office in the army, navy, and public administration. There are only two descriptions of offices, namely, those requiring talent and industry, the duties of which cannot be discharged by deputy, that the boroughmongers have denied themselves. Unfit for the higher stations in courts of law, they have condescended to fill the profitable situations of clerk, registrar, messenger, usher, or receiver, and carry bags and wands in the trains of those whose ability alone made them their superiors, and to whom they were compelled to pay this homage as a penalty for their own indolence and cupidity.

In consequence of the boroughs, all our institutions are partial, oppressive, and aristocratic. We have an aristocratic church, aristocratic bar, aristocratic taxation, aristocratic corn-laws, aristocratic laws of property, and, till recently, aristocratic game-laws; in short, the aristocratic spirit pervades every thing—all is privilege, prescription, monopoly, association, and corporation. But why, it may be asked, has it so long continued,—why did not a wealthy, spirited, and enlightened community exert itself long before to abate the general oppression? The chief reason was this—we had also an ARISTOCRATIC PRESS! By this little key-stone was the entire Gothic arch of antiquated abuse and imposture upheld.

How has it happened the Aristocracy have been so extremely sulky in regard to the memorable events of July 1830; that they have kept their purse-strings so tight; that they kept aloof from all participation in the general exultation? Did they consider, as Napoleon did, that “a revolution in France is a revolution in Europe?” This second national uprising, however, was attended with no popular massacre, no confiscation, no obtrusion of infidelity; all was brave, wise, and moderate—merely a great community rising, with one accord, to defeat an insane attempt to subject it to the yoke of despotism and superstition. Yet they sent forth no carmen triumphale on the sublime occasion. Is it possible that they contemplated, at a distance, the mighty swell which was to submerge their own proud pretensions? If it were so, does it not show that their interests are personal; that they are not in common with the people; that they are merely a corporation in the state, and that they feel their corporate immunities imperilled? But what is it which renders them insulated monopolists—strangers in the land? It is not the magnitude of their estates, for they are not objects of popular concern. No; it is not what they rightfully possess, but what they have surreptitiously obtained—the franchises of the people, and the money of the people, which make them fastidious and apprehensive. Be just and fear not, is our advice, and they are still safe!

LAW AND COURTS OF LAW.

THE independence of the judges has so long formed a current theme of praise, that it appears almost presumptuous to call it in question. Yet the difference between them and other functionaries is not so apparent as is generally assumed. It is true, the judges hold their situations for life, unless guilty of some flagrant impropriety; but the same may be said of other appointments under the Crown, the possessors of which are seldom disturbed, so long as they correctly discharge their duties; or if they are, they invariably receive a superannuation allowance, or compensation, equivalent to the loss they have sustained. As respects, then, the tenure of office, the sages of the law cannot arrogate a great pre-eminence over other placemen: as respects those causes which ordinarily influence individual conduct—the lure of ambition—the temptation of lucre—and the seduction of indolence—they have still less to pride themselves. A judge, like a bishop, may be translated from a lower to a higher dignity—from a judgeship to a chief-justiceship, from that to a peerage or a seat in the cabinet; he may be removed from an office of £5,500 per annum to one of £10,000, and boundless patronage: he may be taken from a court where he is overwhelmed with the claims of duty, to one where the most important duty he has to discharge is to receive his salary. How then can it be alleged the judges are independent and exempt from ministerial influence, when the ministers have similar alluring temptations to hold out to the bench as other functionaries, and similar means of rewarding subserviency?

Other causes operate unfavourably on judicial appointments. Instead of the individuals elevated to the bench being a selection from the entire Bar, of men the most distinguished for ability, probity, and experience, the choice of the ministry is limited to men of their own party. A Tory minister never chooses a Whig judge; nor the contrary. This tends to lower the character of the judges in public estimation, by clearly evincing that politics, as well as legal fitness, have a share in ministerial promotions. It also instils into the minds of both expectant judges, and of men already on the bench, a party feeling fatal to strict justice on political questions. So well established is this fact, lord Brougham has remarked that it is notorious, whenever a question comes before the tribunals, whether it be upon a prosecution for libel, or upon any other matter connected with government, the council, at their meetings, take for granted that they can tell pretty accurately the leaning of the court, and predict exactly which way the consultations of the judges will terminate. It is very unfortunate the judges should be always on the ministerial side of politics; but there is no help for this, while they continue to be selected on the exclusive principle. They have their opinions on public questions as well as other men; they know they fill a certain situation, and they cannot forget by whom they were placed there, or for what reason.

With these remarks we shall leave the venerable occupiers of the Bench, on whom we had no intention of offering any observation; but in some way their situation obtruded itself on our notice, on first entering on the consideration of the important subject of this chapter. We shall now proceed briefly to notice the more prominent abuses in the laws and their administration.

The whole body of English Law is divided into two kinds—the Common and the Statute Law. The Common Law is founded entirely on custom or precedent, and the decisions in the courts of justice. It is not founded on Acts of Parliament, nor on legislative enactments; it is recorded in no public document; the only memorials of its existence are to be found in traditional maxims, records of pleas, books of reports, or the treatises of men eminent in the profession. It is evident that laws originating and preserved in this manner, must be vague, obscure, often absurd, and even contradictory. The Common Law is, in fact, a monument of the opinions, errors, knowledge, and ignorance of every period of society; it has flowed down the stream of time, accumulating like a mighty river, and carrying along vestiges of the learning and ignorance, folly and wisdom, of every age through which it has passed.

How unworthy such an incongruous mass must be of the present age; how inapplicable to the usages of society; and how difficult it is for any individual to obtain a knowledge of such an onus camelorum, it is unnecessary to describe. Unsuitable as such a system of law is, to fulfil the ends for which all laws were originally intended, it forms a very considerable part of the laws of this country. It is in virtue of the common law that the eldest son inherits from his father; that property may be purchased and transferred by writing; that a deed is void if not sealed and delivered; that money lent upon bond is recoverable by action of debt; and that a breach of the peace is punishable with fine and imprisonment. These are doctrines not established by any written statute or any legislative enactment, but depend solely upon immemorial usage.

So much for the Common or Unwritten Law; next for the Statute-Law, which exhibits a still more frightful chaos. Statute-Law consists of all those acts, edicts, and statutes, made by the king, with the consent of the lords and commons in parliament assembled. The oldest of these now extant, and printed in the statute-books, is Magna Charta, as confirmed in parliament by 9 Hen. III. There were doubtless many acts before that time, the records of which are now lost; and which most probably were the foundation of some of the maxims in the old Common Law.

No man in England professes to be acquainted with the Statute-Law—not even the Lord Chancellor nor the Lord Chief Justice. It is such a prodigious compilation, that a knowledge of it is wholly unattainable. No one knows exactly what is law in England; though every individual is presumed to be acquainted with it, and ignorance is admitted as no excuse for its violation. Any one may become a legislator for the whole country; he has nothing to do but to turn to the statute-book; he will there find laws in abundance, of which no man has any knowledge; he may adduce them as the law of the land; he cannot be contradicted, unless some subsequent statute can be found by which it is repealed, and which it would probably require a year’s labour to discover. In some respects the statute-book may be compared to the scriptures. It contains many good maxims and excellent precepts; but, as a whole, it is contradictory, obscure, and inapplicable to the age. What one part affirms, another part denies. Laws may be adduced from it, like texts from the Bible, proving any thing and every thing, adapted to all times, principles, and occasions: one affords profitable employment for one hundred thousand wrangling lawyers; the other profitable employment for as many polemical divines: one is termed the perfection of human wisdom; the other a bright emanation from the Deity!

How ignorant the most eminent in the profession are on the subject we may gather from a speech of the late Lord Stanhope, on the revision of the Statute-Book. Some of the most striking facts mentioned by his lordship we will here insert. Conformably with a motion of his lordship, the judges were directed to prepare a bill, reducing into one act all the acts imposing the punishment of pillory. At the end of the bill the judges inserted some observations, stating that pillory was the punishment for some offences not merely by statute but at common law; and also they could not say whether there might not be statutes on the subject which had escaped their attention. Their surmise was just; for Lord Stanhope afterwards discovered two more statutes, passed in the reign of Geo. II. which had wholly escaped their researches. Here then was an instance of the twelve judges not being able to discover all the acts inflicting a single punishment.

The same noble lord, wishing to ascertain how far the judges were agreed as to what was the law on several particulars, put to them various questions. For instance, he asked whether a person digging the brick earth from his own field, there manufactured into bricks, and sold, thereby made himself a trader liable to the bankrupt-laws? The judges of the Common Pleas were clearly of opinion one way, the judges of the King’s Bench were as clearly of opinion another. Lord Thurlow was reputed a most admirable common lawyer; but he was worsted on one occasion, in a dispute which he had with Lord Stanhope, on the subject of a statute; Lord Stanhope proving to be right, and old Thrumbo wrong. This, says Lord Stanhope, was a great feather in my cap. One day as these noble lords were sitting together on the woolsack, Lord Thurlow said, “I should be ashamed of myself if I was not accurately acquainted with the common law; but as to your d—d statute-book it is impossible to be acquainted with it.” His lordship also related another anecdote of the celebrated Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton. Lord Stanhope consulted Mr. Dunning on a certain statute regulation relative to the excise, and his answer was, “Now I’ll tell you all about it; but I never do answer these general questions when applied to by others. I always tell them, shew me the statute to which you refer, and I will expound it for you, but that is all I can do.” Now this was doing about as much as we could do ourselves, or as much as any person could do who has a tolerably clear head, and not much disturbed by worldly affairs.

The fact is, the lawyers and judges, in many cases, are as ignorant of the law as their clients and suitors. When a statute is produced, they can expound it, as Mr. Dunning terms it; so perhaps may any person who can read and understand the English language; but as to knowing whether it is the law of the land, whether it has been repealed or modified by any subsequent enactment, they are frequently as ignorant as the gaping spectator who looks upon them as infallible and inspired guides. We do not, however, accuse them of wilful ignorance; we do not say that, like the Fellows of Eton College, they are willingly ignorant of the statutes; they are generally men of laborious pursuits, who spare no pains to obtain a knowledge of the law; but we accuse them of a culpable indifference to the defective state of the statute-book, of either by their silence or open hostility opposing every attempt to reduce it into an intelligible form, originating either in a rooted prejudice against the reform of any thing and every thing, or solely from a wish to maintain the pecuniary interests of a multitudinous and rapacious profession.

When a legal question is brought before the courts, deviating in any degree from the ordinary routine, it is seldom decided instanter. The counsel open the case,—they, in fact, instruct the judges,—they refer to precedents and statutes, as they have been instructed by their attorneys, who have, perhaps, been instructed by their clients; the judges then say they will take time to consider; and after going home and moleing their way through a labyrinth of reports and acts of parliament, they obtain a twinkling of light, return into court, and adjudicate the subject in dispute to the best of their ability.

Such is the immense number of law-books and their ponderous size, that it would require the age of the patriarchs to acquire a knowledge of them. They are literally Ossa piled on Pelion, a huge unformed mass, which no man can fathom. There is a little Aldine compilation, Viner’s Abridgement, comprised in twenty volumes folio, which it is considered necessary for every lawyer almost to know by heart. Gracious heaven! only think of that! Mind, too, this is a mere abridgement—bare memoranda of the great originals; and had it been continued to the present time, it would have amounted to more than one hundred folio volumes, necessary to be carried either in the head or the pocket of every English lawyer. The most condensed edition of the Statutes at Large yet given to the public, occupies thirty-nine volumes in quarto; seven volumes and a half of which comprise the acts from Magna Charta to the end of the reign of George II., the remaining thirty-one and a half being filled with those of the two last reigns. Since the Union with Ireland, a huge closely printed volume has been published every one, two, or three years, and the average number of public acts passed in each of the last twenty-eight years amounts to one hundred and forty. It is calculated that at the end of the present century, the statutes will occupy one hundred ponderous quarto volumes, and the number of public acts will amount to fourteen thousand. The present generation complain of being overwhelmed with law, but what will be the situation of posterity?

We have said nothing yet of Reports of Cases. These form an indispensable part of a lawyer’s knowledge. It is well known that decisions in courts of justice become a part of the law; and when a point has once been decided, it must be determined in the same way again, unless the precedent can be proved clearly erroneous. Reports of these decisions are published annually; they already amount to upwards of two hundred and eighty volumes, exclusive of those which relate to election, admiralty, and ecclesiastical law. But this is not all: they are going on increasing amazingly; every year adds eight more to the original stock; so that in twenty years there will be one hundred and sixty, and within the century seven hundred and twenty additional volumes, making one thousand volumes of reports, which, with one hundred quarto volumes of statutes, will form a lawyer’s library, that it is not only necessary he should read, but digest, and, if possible, understand.

This is English law, the perfection of human wisdom! Let us, however, pause a moment, to reflect on this mass of legal lumber, this grossly absurd system of legislation. It is considered a settled maxim in jurisprudence, that every state within the limits of its own territory ought to exact, and its subjects to yield, obedience to all its laws. The foundation of the obligation on the part of the people is that the legislative authority on its part is presumed to have made the laws so CLEAR, that every member of the community either knows them or must be culpably inattentive if he do not. This principle is undeniable. It would never do to allow ignorance to be an excuse for the violation of laws. But how can any person be acquainted with English law? How can the legislature have gone on for centuries legislating on such an absurd presumption, and presuming that every individual in the empire was acquainted with their enactments? How can men of business read, digest, and understand one thousand volumes of reports, and one hundred quarto volumes of statutes? How can the people understand the law, when even the judges, whose whole lives are devoted to the subject, are in the most pitiable state of perplexity, uncertainty, and contradiction? Can any thing in the whole world be imagined more completely absurd and ridiculous? Had the whole system been blindly scraped together from every age, nation, and tribe in the universe, from the farthest extremity of Siberia to the remotest deserts of Garamantes, it could hardly have presented a more confused and hideous jumble than the Statute and Common Law of England.

One cause of this profuse, headlong, and inconsistent course of legislation has been the reckless facility with which parliament has multiplied laws on a given subject, when a general enactment might have been framed adequate to the several occasions. Since the beginning of last century 4000 bills for enclosures of wastes in as many parishes have been passed, proving to demonstration the want of a general law on the subject; while, in the whole of that time, not a step has been taken towards enacting such a law, and so saving the community the prodigious waste of private funds and public time consumed in the passing of so many different statutes. The same observation applies to the innumerable acts passed for lighting towns with gas, and for the purposes of police and local improvements. Upwards of fifty acts have passed relative to game; forty-eight relative to parliamentary elections; and seventy-six indemnifying Dissenters for not qualifying themselves for offices and employments. There are many acts of a temporary and local nature. No fewer than sixty acts have passed for the recovery of small debts in different parts of the country, and fifty of them during the last two reigns. There are some acts relative to the baking of bread, and prohibiting the bakers from selling it unless it has been baked twenty-four hours. About the packing of butter there are somewhere about a dozen different acts; as though it were necessary to instruct people to pack butter by act of parliament. One act on this subject relates to the packing of butter at Malton, in Yorkshire; another to the packing of butter in the city of York, a few miles distant; and another on the same subject for Ireland. Innumerable laws have been enacted relative to the woollen, linen, and cotton manufactures; the whale, cod, herring, and pilchard fisheries; cheese, lace, sugar, glass, and almost every article of wear or consumption has been the object of parliamentary regulation. The whole of the statutes on wool amount to 987; on the subject of gold and silver 290; on tobacco 460; on the fisheries 970; and on a variety of other subjects in proportion. Relative to the poor there are 350 public acts; besides 135 local acts. By some of these acts the poor are farmed out, by others flogged. Of these local acts five passed in the reign of George II.; the remaining 130 in the reigns of George III. and George IV. Besides the number of acts, other causes of the confusion and perplexity of the Statute-Book arise from the immense number repealed and re-enacted, and then partly repealed again, with a “so far as,” and “so forth;” also from the mass of altering, amending, and explaining acts; of acts, for instance, for “removing doubts,” for “rectifying mistakes,” for “relieving from the provisions,” for “deferring the commencement,” for “facilitating the execution,”—to say nothing of acts of total repeal. No fewer than 1874 acts were repealed in the reigns of George II. and III.; 419 in the former; and 1455 in the reign of the latter; which made Lord Stanhope remark, “they had been passing bills by waggon loads, and repealing them by cart loads.”

Some efforts were made during the reign of George IV., under the auspices of Sir Robert Peel and the Marquis of Lansdowne, to reduce the Statute-Law within more reasonable limits. The parliament, dissolved in 1826, repealed, modified, or consolidated upwards of 1000 statutes. One act, the 3 Geo. IV. c. 41, repeals upwards of 200 statutes, or parts of statutes, relative to the export and import of merchandize; the commerce of aliens and denizens, the guaging of wine, and other mereantile regulations. The Custom Act consolidated 450 acts of parliament into one; the Jury Act 30; the Bankrupt Act 20; and the acts on larceny, malicious mischief, and forgery, have effected a considerable compression. From a table of repealed acts prefixed to Evan’s Collection of Statutes, it appears that during the short interval from the 4th to the 10th of George IV., 1,126 acts of parliament were wholly, and 443 partly, repealed, making a total of 1569: of these 1344 related to the empire at large, and 225 solely to Ireland. Still the evil is of such magnitude that there is scarcely perceptible diminution in its amount; nor do we anticipate—for reasons we shall hereafter explain—any decided improvements in jurisprudence, either from the consolidatory acts, or from the other projects of legal reform now in progress.

Nothing has tended so much to swell the Statute-Book as the enormous increase in taxation, and the consequent increase in the number of Revenue-Laws. During each of the last twenty-eight years, the number of acts passed, which relate strictly to the revenue, has amounted to forty; and those which are connected with them indirectly, and but for them would never have existed, to nearly twenty more; which comprises about half the whole number of laws annually enacted. The acts lately in force with regard to spirits alone amounted to 140; an attempt has been made to consolidate them, but as new acts are yearly being added, both as regards spirits and custom duties, the merchant and trader will soon be involved in as great a labyrinth as ever. The stamp-acts amount to more than 150, and they still remain unconsolidated. So do the innumerable acts relative to the coin. Soap, candles, and the distilleries are under excise lock and key; and, in many instances of exciseable manufacture, it is impossible to carry on the different steps of the process with advantage, from the delay and interruption from the visits of the excise. What a bungling piece of legislation have been the attempts to regulate the malt-duties, hackney-coaches, and the vend of coals!

On the middling classes these laws are peculiarly oppressive;—and yet they have been unceasingly told, that a reform in parliament would do no good! Would it not, we ask, relieve them from the vexatious inquisition and endless interruption and restraint on the operations of trade under which they now labour? Would it not, in short, cause an entire revision of that cumbersome and absurd system of jurisprudence which we have attempted to describe;—reduce the Statute-Book to one-hundredth part of its present bulk; consolidate the almost innumerable local acts into more general laws; and abolish all those unjust and impolitic enactments which interfere with industry and commerce. Such numerous laws are no doubt useful to the profession; they afford a fruitful and endless source of litigation; they are glorious things, as Lord Stanhope remarked, for attorneys, conveyancers, special pleaders, barristers, and so forth, but most inglorious and calamitous for the people.

We shall only make one or two more remarks on Statute-Law, and these refer to the language and manner in which acts of parliament are drawn up. It is evident that all laws ought to be intelligible to those on whom they are intended to operate; otherwise, it is wilfully creating an ignorance which will not be admitted as any excuse for their violation. It is difficult to see why laws could not be so clearly and simply worded as to be intelligible to ordinary capacities, without the assistance of either attorney or lawyer. They involve no abstract theorem of science; they are a mere statement of facts, requiring something to be done or not to be done; which, really one would think, might be made intelligible without the continual assistance of interpreters, at an enormous expense. The obscurity and perplexity of statutes arise principally from a perverse deviation from the ordinary language of civil life, an overwhelming verbosity and endless repetition of “he, she, they,” “him, her, it, and them,” the “aforesaid,” and “so far as,” the “so forths,” &c. which render the whole so involved and perplexed, that one would suppose the legislature, instead of endeavouring to render the laws as lucid as possible, had purposely involved them in the greatest possible darkness. From the habitual indulgence of fiction and tautology the minds of lawyers—for they are lawyers who draw up acts of parliament—become so inveterately alien to truth and simplicity that they cannot be otherwise if they would; and, accordingly, we find in those cases, when their intention has really been to be intelligible, that their language involves so much complexity—there are so many crochets and puzzles—that they entirely fail in their purpose, and defy comprehension by ordinary minds. We shall give an instance of this from one of Sir Robert Peel’s consolidatory acts, the 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 28; which is the more remarkable, because the express object of it is to obviate obscurity and misapprehension, by giving a simple and general rule for the interpretation of criminal statutes. The clause to which we allude is the 14th, and expressed as follows:—“Whenever this or any other statute relating to any offence, whether punishable upon indictment or summary conviction, in describing or referring to the offence, or the subject matter on or with respect to which it shall be committed, or the offender or the party affected or intended to be affected by the offence, hath used, or shall use words importing the singular number or the masculine gender only, yet the statute shall be understood to include several matters as well as one matter, and several persons as well as one person, and females as well as males, and bodies corporate as well as individuals, unless it be otherwise specially provided, or there be something in the subject or context repugnant to such construction; and wherever any forfeiture or penalty is payable to a party aggrieved, it shall be payable to a body corporate in every case where such body shall be the party aggrieved.”

An unlearned person might possibly guess at the intended meaning of this explanatory rule, and a lawyer no doubt—and this would be deemed by him its chief excellence—would be able to draw from it a dozen different interpretations, according as they best suited the purposes of his client.

Things the most heterogeneous are frequently jumbled together in the same act of parliament, and the title is often as remote as possible from the subject matter of the statute. These are called “Hodge-podge Acts,” and are very numerous. Who, for instance, would expect to find the regulations under which petitions may be forwarded to members of parliament, in an act for laying an additional duty upon tea and sugar? The commencing clause of the statute, under which Vauxhall and other theatres and places of entertainment are licensed, is as follows:—“Whereas, the advertising a reward with no questions asked, for the return of things lost or stolen, is one great cause and encouragement of robberies, be it enacted,” &c. Many may recollect that Sir R. Peel, on introducing to parliament his bill for amending the larceny-laws (March 9th, 1826), cited the title of one single act, which embraces no fewer than the following bizarre miscellany:—the continuing several laws therein mentioned; the carrying of sugars in British-built vessels; the encouraging the importation of naval stores; preventing frauds in the admeasurement of coals in the city of Westminster; and preventing the stealing or destroying of madder roots. Another act he referred to forms a still more whimsical olio, and is intituled “An Act for better securing the duties of customs on certain goods removed to London; for regulating the fees of officers in His Majesty’s customs in the province of Segambia, in Africa; for allowing the Receiver-General of Fees in Scotland proper compensation; for the better preservation of hollies, thorns, and quick-sets in private grounds, and trees and underwood; and authorising the exportation of a limited quantity of barley from the Port of Kirkgrow.” Such acts run very much like cross-readings in a newspaper, and those who wish for further amusement of the sort will find it in Mr. Wickens’s publication on the Division of Labour in Civil Life, where the subject is pursued to a greater extent than our limits will admit.

Notwithstanding the laborious and tiresome precision of statutes, they frequently comprise the most egregious blunders. There is a singular instance of one in the 53d George III.: by the 18th section, one half the penalty is to go to the king and the other half to the informer; but the penalty happened in this case not to be a fine, but fourteen years’ transportation; so that fourteen years’ transportation were to be equally divided between Messrs. Byers and Co. and his Majesty!

Perhaps our readers may deem this too old a blunder to illustrate the deliberative wisdom of the law-makers of the reign of William IV. If so, we shall give them an example of legislative aptitude from one of the most important acts of the session of 1830—that for Consolidating and Amending the Laws on Forgery. This statute was drawn, we believe, by Messrs. Hobhouse and Gregson, and was some years in preparation, under the auspices of Sir R. Peel; it received the tinkering of Sir James Scarlett, between whom and the gentlemen by whom it was framed, some difference of opinion respecting its provisions arose, which could only be terminated by an appeal to Lord Tenterden, who felt himself bound to decide, notwithstanding his well-known partiality, against Sir James. Well, this act so patronised, elaborated, revised, quarrelled about, and arbitrated, is at length brought forth, passed, and is now the law of the land; and we will venture to say a more defective and bungling piece of legislation is not to be found in the great book of conundrums and absurdities itself. What the public expected was an act that would comprise the entire statute-law of forgery; unless this was attained, little benefit could result from adding one more statute to the 400 previously existing. Instead of consolidating the law, it merely embodies the whole or part of the provisions of twenty-seven statutes out of the mass; all the acts relative to the forging of stamps, seamen’s warrants, plate-marks, and on the post-office, remain scattered, as heretofore, through the boundless waste of the Statutes at Large, to be applied or not, as it may happen, by judges and lawyers. Incompleteness is not the worst defect in this statute; some of its provisions are obviously incompatible, and the commencing part of the act seems to have been entirely lost sight of when the concluding part was agreed upon. For proof of this compare the following sections, nearly the first and last, in the statute.

“§ II. And be it enacted, That if any person shall forge or counterfeit, or shall utter, knowing the same to be forged or counterfeited, the great seal of the United Kingdom, his Majesty’s privy seal, any privy signet of his Majesty, his Majesty’s royal sign manual, any of his Majesty’s seals appointed by the twenty-fourth article of the Union to be kept, used, and continued in Scotland, the great seal of Ireland, or the privy seal of Ireland, every such offender shall be guilty of high treason, and shall suffer death accordingly.”

§ XXIX. And be it enacted, That this act shall not extend to any offence committed in Scotland or Ireland.”

Here we see in the second section a specific punishment assigned for the commission of an offence in Scotland; and in a subsequent section it is expressly declared the act shall not extend to any offence committed in Scotland or Ireland. What the judges will make of this inconsistency, when it comes before them, it is impossible to foresee: we suppose we shall have another act or two to “explain” or “amend,” &c.; and so our legislature proceeds, heaping one act upon another, making delightful work for lawyers, and “raining,” as Mr. Bentham expresses it, “snares among the people.”

Sir James Scarlett, to be sure, is not a paragon of legislators any more than of attorney-generals. The act for Improving the Administration of Justice will not be soon forgotten by the profession: this act, among other changes, altered the period of commencement of the terms. But no sooner was the act in force than it was discovered to be pregnant with the most ludicrous errors; the framer of the statute was clearly ignorant of the changes of the moon—of that common astronomical knowledge which is contained in every almanack; the consequence was that the courts would have been involved in the greatest confusion, had not another statute been precipitately brought in to remedy the blunders of the first.

One cause of such blundering legislation is to be found in the vicious mode of transacting business in the House of Commons. It is well known law-making is a sort of after-dinner amusement, which commences when gentlemen have taken their wine—when the theatres have closed—and the night-houses are thrown open for the reception of customers. It cannot be matter of surprise if, under such unfavourable circumstances, the nocturnal occupations of the Collective Wisdom exhibit strange examples of forgetfulness, haste, and confusion. We, indeed, are often astonished things are not worse, when we reflect on the course of parliamentary proceedings—no division of labour, or exclusive devotion to legislative duty—all chance medley, helter skelter, volunteer and amateur exertion—the chief manager straining every nerve to get through public business before the setting in of the Dogdays—stratagems to steal a march to avoid some economical proposition for a reduction of the estimates—packing a house for a job or private bill—jaded ministers dropping in late from their offices or a protracted cabinet-council—country gentlemen from a tedious morning-waiting at the Treasury for places and appointments—lawyers from the courts—and the sons of riot reel in at midnight, from the saloons and club-houses, in quest of divertisement—and thus business goes on, and a house is formed of men distracted with their individual avocations, or suffering from lassitude and over-excitement. They talk and talk, it is true, without end, as people mostly do when not fully master of their subject; but their ideas are crude—there has been no preparation or concentration of thought—and all their doings bear evident marks of the intellectual chaos from which they spring. We had a ludicrous illustration of what we are stating in the session of 1830: the House was in a committee, and had been hotly debating, as usual, to no purpose, for the space of six hours, when the chairman got up, and with great gravity said, “he should be extremely obliged by any honourable member informing him what they had all been talking about!”

Such mode of legislation has striking results: it impoverishes the people by litigation, and multiplies and augments the emoluments of a mercenary profession. In the number and magnitude of inns of court, law institutions, and other public buildings the legal classes rival the ancient religious houses; and their unavoidable and constant intervention in all the affairs and transactions of civil life gives them an influence equal to that of the priesthood in the ages of superstition. In the metropolis are nine superior courts, four ecclesiastical courts, twenty courts for recovery of small debts, besides courts of oyer and terminer, courts of general and quarter sessions, coroner-courts, and courts of petty sessions for the purposes of police. Attached to these courts are eight hundred officers, exclusive of judicial functionaries. To these may be added 500 barristers-at-law, 3000 certificated attorneys, 130 conveyancers and equity draftsmen, 67 special pleaders, 84 proctors, 40 public notaries, 6000 clerks and assistants, besides doctors-at-law, serjeants-at-law, and king’s counsel, making a legal phalanx, in the metropolis, of nearly 10,000. In the country they are not so concentrated, but more numerous. From “Clarke’s Law List” it appears there are, in the country, including England and Wales, 4500 attorneys and conveyancers who have taken out certificates. The number of clerks and assistants cannot be estimated at less than 9000; so that the number of persons in the country, in the legal department, is 13,500; and if we add 10,000 for persons of a similar description in the metropolis, we have a total of 23,500 persons, whose sole employment is to render the laws intelligible, and justice attainable to the people of England and Wales.

This estimate, we are persuaded, is a great deal below the truth: many attorneys in town employ more than twenty clerks, and the majority of them employ three or four. Perhaps it would not be too much to estimate the total number of counsel, attorneys, clerks, assistants, &c. in England and Wales, at thirty thousand. In this enumeration are not included the justices of peace, amounting to 4,500, nor the judges in the different courts, the sheriffs, nor any portion of the magistracy, whose office it is to administer justice, and who employ an innumerable number of clerks and assistants. The classes we have mentioned form only that branch of the profession who owe their origin, in a great measure, to defects and obscurities in our judicial administration. It is the duty of the legislature to render the laws so clear, and the form of proceeding so simple, that persons of ordinary comprehension would generally be able to understand the one and pursue the other, without the aid, in every case, of a legal adviser.

The adage says—Many hands make light work; but the maxim is reversed in law; and the swarm of practitioners is a principal cause of the multiplication of suits, their protracted duration, and consequent pressure of business in the courts.

Dr. Colquhoun estimated the total income of the legal classes, when the amount of property and professional practice was greatly less than at present, at £7,600,000 per annum; and two-thirds, probably, of this sum are absorbed by legalists resident in London.

However, this can be only considered a vague approximation. In our list of places we shall give an account of the emoluments and incomes of the chief justices, the lord chancellor, the judges, and several other well-known individuals; but the incomes of the profession generally, of counsellors, special pleaders, conveyancers, and attorneys, are so various, that it is impossible to fix on any average amount. Sir Samuel Romilly, it is credibly reported, netted £15,000 annually from his professional avocations. There are other counsel who, probably, make ten or twelve thousand a-year; others, a half, a third, a fourth, or twentieth part of that sum; and others, again, who make nothing. Sir James Scarlett has received as much as £400 with a brief on the northern circuit; and Sir E. Sugden, we believe, received £3000 with his brief, in the case of Small v. Atwood. In the incomes of attorneys are great diversities. Some few, in London, make ten or eleven thousand pounds a-year; a great many more about three or four thousand pounds; and some obscure practitioners do not clear more than £100 a-year. Their clerks experience similar variety of fortune. Some are starving on a paltry £50; others living comfortably on £200; and others sumptuously on a £500 salary.

The emoluments and salaries of the masters, registrars, and clerks in Chancery; of the judges in the Admiralty, and ecclesiastical courts, and of the law-officers of the Crown, have been more than doubled since the commencement of the revolutionary war. In 1792 the salary of the chief justice of the King’s Bench was £4,000; of the Common Pleas £3,500; of the chief baron of the Exchequer, £3,500; all these have been respectively augmented to £10,000, £8,000, and £7,000 per annum; and the salaries of the puisne judges and barons of the three superior courts have been raised from £2,400 to £5,500 per annum each. All the judges have patronage—that of the chief justice very valuable; they have, also, some fees remaining, though the principal portion has been commuted. It has been related of these exalted personages, that, at the time sixteen journeymen boot-closers were committed to Newgate for a conspiracy to raise their wages, they were sitting in their chambers in Serjeant’s Inn conspiring to raise their own salaries, in consequence of the rise of the necessaries of life. This anecdote reminds us of the fable of the Wolf and the Shepherd. A wolf, says Plutarch, happening to put his head into a hut, where some shepherds were regaling on a leg of mutton, exclaimed—Ah! what a clamour you would have raised had you caught me at such a banquet! The demeanour of the sages of the law would be something similar; they would declaim eloquently on the evils of conspiring when committed by workmen, though it might be done by themselves with impunity.

An important fact connected with legalists is, the enormous increase in their number within the last ten years. In 1820 we were engaged in an inquiry similar to the present; and we find, in the interval, the number of attorneys in the metropolis has augmented fifty per cent. There has, no doubt, been a corresponding increase in the country, and in other branches of the profession; and far exceeds the contemporary increment in property and population. It arises, we presume, from the increasing number and perplexities of the laws, which have rendered additional guides, commentators, expounders, and interpreters indispensable; or, it may have arisen from the large fortunes suddenly amassed by dealers in legal subtleties, which have tempted more than a fair proportion of the community to embark in so lucrative a calling. Whatever may be the cause, it is not creditable to our judicial administration; nor is it a flattering symptom of social happiness and improvement.

The increase of litigation, and, consequently, of profit to the profession, is demonstrated by the increase of business in the superior courts, as is shown by the following statement of the number of causes entered for trial:—

Years.

King’s Bench.

Common Pleas.

Exchequer.

1823

1474

445

162

1824

1695

472

222

1825

2164

500

157

1826

3112

1021

245

The vast number of bankruptcies and insolvencies of late years must have tended enormously to the emolument of the legal profession, and have rendered them the richest class in the community. The number of persons who took the benefit of the Insolvent Act, amounted in 1820, to 2482; in 1825, to 3665; and in 1830, to 4379. The number of bankrupts, in 1814, was 1612; in 1820, 1381; in 1826, 2582; in 1829, 1654. All these breakings up yield an abundant harvest of spoil to the gentlemen of the long robe. In most bankruptcies the solicitors, the bar, the commissioners, the accountants, and auctioneers divide the assets. Very few estates pay any thing worth a man’s while going after. Under the late administration of the bankrupt-laws, a man had nothing to do but to get into credit to as large an amount as possible—buy goods in every place—turn merchant—ship off such goods to every quarter of the world—fly kites in every possible way—keep no books, or those so confusedly that no man, called in by the name of an accountant, could make head or tail of them—carry this system of buying, and exporting, and kite-flying to its utmost extent—purchase goods on credit at any price, and for the greatest length of time—declare his insolvency—go into the Gazette; the solicitors, the bar, the commissioners, the accountants, and the auctioneers would set to work; the larger the amount of the man’s debts so much the better for the legal, accounting, and auctioneering agents. In such case, the professional men called it a good fat bankruptcy: and, if they could get it into chancery, so much the better; and, in general, it was contrived that a good fat bankruptcy should get into chancery. The result, in general was—ten or twelve years’ meetings of commissioners, actions, bills in chancery; and at length, when the legalists had absorbed the estate, they tired, and the creditors were told, “Here, gentlemen, are the accounts!”

Mr. Montague justly characterised a commission of bankruptcy “a tribunal in which the minimum of justice was administered at the maximum of expense.” All the commissioners were either very old or very young men, whose only pretensions were the friendship of the chancellor, or the friendship of some friend of the chancellor, or others connected with the government. They were all either counsel or solicitors, whose sole object was to gain as much money in as little time as possible. Some of them understood the art of accomplishing this so well as to have been known to boast of pocketing thirty guineas a day. These, however, were only ignoble quarry, compared with the great fee-gatherer himself. It appears, from a parliamentary return, that the several sums sacked by the purse-bearer to the lord chancellor, in the year ending 30th April, 1830, amounted to £4081. In the same year, the sealing of 4861 writs, at 3s. 3d. each, produced £789, which was shared between his lordship, chaff-wax, sealer, and porter. From returns in the same year, the masters in chancery appear to net £4000 per annum, their chief clerk upwards of £1000, and the copying clerk £500 and more. Mr. Wellesley, in a book lately published by him, on the court of chancery, states that the litigation into which he had been forced had cost him £20,000 in four years, and a sum of equal amount had been paid out of the estates of his children. Mr. Davies, the late tea-dealer, of Philpot-lane, was put to an expense of £32,000 by a chancery commission, appointed to ascertain whether he was in a sound state of mind. Sir E. Sugden stated, not long since, that the equity proceedings, under the will of Mr. Thelluson, had been as productive to lawyers as many principalities to their sovereigns. The cause of Small v. Attwood, it is calculated, will swamp £100,000 in law expenses. But we must return to the subject from which we have digressed.

The fraud, impoverishment, and desolation resulting from the administration of the Debtor-Laws are almost incredible. In the processes issued against the person, lawyers and attorneys are the parties who chiefly profit. From returns of affidavits of debts, it appears, in two years and a half, 70,000 persons were arrested in and about London, the law-expenses of which could not be less than half a million. In the year 1827, in the metropolis and two adjoining counties, 23,515 warrants to arrest were granted, and 11,317 bailable processes executed. Thus were eleven thousand persons deprived of their liberty on the mere declarations of others, before any trial or proof that they owed a farthing! So gainful is the trade to attorneys, that they frequently buy up small bills for the purpose of suing the endorsers, and bring nine or ten actions on each. One house alone has brought five hundred actions in this way, and most of them for sums under £20.

The sum on which arrest is allowed has been gradually augmented to £20; but this is too small, and the consequence is, the prisons are crowded with debtors for the most paltry amounts. The number of persons committed to the five principal prisons of the metropolis, exclusive of crown debtors, and those imprisoned for contempt, averages 5000 per annum. Of these more than one-third are for sums under £20. In the years 1826-27, the Court of Requests for the city of London imprisoned 753 persons for various terms, from twenty to one hundred days, for sums under £5. In the same year, the Court of Requests for Southwark ordered 9758 executions, and 1893 persons were actually imprisoned for debts amounting only to £16,442. From 1823 to 1831 the Southwark Request Court committed to the Borough compter and county gaol 8096 persons; of these 3139 were for debts not exceeding twenty shillings.

The minor tribunals for facilitating the recovery of small debts we do not think entitled to the praise usually awarded them. They foment domestic animosities, promote law-suits, and encourage a trumpery system of credit, which is ultimately ruinous both to the retail tradesman and his customers. Neither are they so economical a resource as is generally imagined; the costs of proceedings in them usually amounting to a tax of twenty-five per cent. payable either by creditor or debtor. A debt can seldom be recovered in the Marshalsea or Palace Court for less than £8, even if no resistance is offered. In the several courts of request for the city of London, Middlesex, Westminster, and the Borough, the expenses of recovering a debt of 40s. or under, is at least 11s.; above that sum, twice as much. Such a system can be no advantage to trade; it only tends to fill the coffers of attorneys and clerks of courts, by the ruin of the industrious classes. Only think of the fees received in the request court of Southwark amounting, in one year, to £4255, of which £2475 arose from debts of 40s. or under. In four years, the fees received, in the request court of the City, amounted to £7322. Our legal institutions are chiefly beneficial to those under whose auspices their rules and modes of procedure have been framed and regulated. Hence the circuity and expense of law-suits. No prudent man ever thinks it for his interest to sue for a debt below £15; the costs in prosecuting for a small debt being equal to a large one, owing to the proceedings being the same, and the pleadings as voluminous for the recovery of a few shillings as £100. In the King’s Bench, the expenses of recovering a debt under £5, even if no defence is made, and judgment goes by default, are not less than £15; if defendant appear, and, as is not uncommonly the case, puts in a dilatory plea, they are increased to £20; and, by taking out a writ of error, they are still further augmented. The following receipt has been often given to debtors, who wish to be troublesome, and to weary out their creditors by an expensive process:—

When arrested and held to bail, and after being served with a declaration, you may plead the general issue, which puts you on for trial sooner than any other plea; but, if you wish to vex your plaintiff, and put him about, put in a special plea; if you are in custody, order your attorney to plead in person, this will cost you £1 : 1, and run your plaintiff to £30 expense. If you do not intend to try the cause, you have no occasion to do any thing more till the plaintiff gets judgment against you, which he must do the term after you have put in a special plea. The plaintiff is obliged to send you a paper book, which you must return to his attorney with 7s 6d. otherwise you will not put him to more than half the expense. When he proceeds and gets judgment against you, then order your attorney to search the Final Judgment Office, in the Temple; when searched, and found they have got final judgment signed against you, then give plaintiff’s attorney notice for him and your attorney to be present with the master at the time the plaintiff taxes the costs; at which time your attorney must have a writ of error with him to give to the plaintiff’s attorney before the master, at the time the master taxes the costs; it will put the plaintiff to great expense, which he will have to pay, or go the ground over again. The writ of error will cost you £4 : 4 by a London attorney; but, if you wish to be more troublesome, make the writ returnable in parliament, which will cost you £1 : 1 more, and your plaintiff £100. If he has the courage to follow you further, you may then file a bill in Chancery or Exchequer; if he does not then give his answer, your bill will get an injunction against him: you may then get an attachment from the court where your bill was filed, and take his body for contempt of court. The costs incurred by plaintiff and defendant, respectively, will then be as follow:—

Plaintiff’s Costs.

Defendant’s Costs.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

Answer to Special Plea

30

0

0

Special Plea

1

1

0

Answer to Writ of Error

100

0

0

Paper Book

0

7

6

Answer to Bill in Chancery

100

0

0

Writ of Error

4

4

0

Answer to Bill in Exchequer

84

0

0

Returnable in Parliament

1

1

0

To Bill in Chancery

12

0

0

£314

0

9

To Bill in Exchequer

6

6

0

£54

19

6

This is a fine exemplification of law, and shows how much greater are the advantages offered to finesse and knavery than to integrity and plain dealing. Some restraints are laid on frivolous writs of error by 6 Geo. IV. c. 96, but in other respects the above outline is a substantially correct exposition of the legal resources available to the unprincipled debtor for harassing his creditor.

SUMMARY OF LEGAL ABUSES AND DEFECTS.

In the preceding exposition our principal objects have been to give a general idea of the laws of England; secondly, of the number and gains of the individuals engaged in their administration; thirdly, of the abuses and defects in those laws especially intended for the benefit of trade; and, lastly, we have brought together a multitude of facts, to exemplify the emoluments and salaries of judges and the fees of lawyers and attorneys, in order to show the mass of interest-begotten prejudices that must interfere with, if not be absolutely arrayed against efficient reform in the judicial system. After proceeding thus far, we still despair of bringing the remainder of our subject within reasonable limits. Lord Brougham, after an extraordinary speech of six hours’ duration, was compelled to leave various departments of legal delinquency unexplored, though equally claiming the attention of his powerful mind. All that our circumscribed space will permit is an indication or digest of the more prominent defects, and this we shall endeavour to comprise in the present section. Abuses often exist only because they are concealed, and the first step to their reform is general publicity.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.—These are virtually appointed by lords lieutenant of counties; for, though the lord chancellor issues the commission, it is the lord lieutenant who designates the persons comprehended in it. Hence an important source of aristocratic influence; which is exerted in raising to the magisterial bench gentlemen who have distinguished themselves by their political opinions or activity in local contests. The tenure of office is fully as secure as that of the judges; whatever be the conduct of a justice, he is seldom removed; and lord Eldon laid it down as an inflexible rule never to strike a magistrate off the list, either for private misconduct or party feeling, until he had been convicted of some offence by the verdict of a court of record, and such conviction, it is notorious, is almost unattainable. Hence these petty judges may be considered as so many irremoveable and irresponsible functionaries, and the great power confided to them in the administration of the game laws, the punishment of theft and assaults, and the granting of licenses is very liable to be abused. Numerous instances of abuse were cited by lord Brougham, in his great speech of the 7th of February, 1828. Still we do not agree with this eminent personage in thinking, as he seems to incline, that a stipendiary magistracy, consisting of lawyers, would, in lieu of the unpaid magistracy, afford the best security for a pure and independent administration of justice. Costly justice, no doubt, is better than cheap injustice. But lawyers have their prejudices as well as sporting parsons and sporting squires; and we think justice would be quite as corrupt when paid for as when administered gratuitously, unless there were responsibility. This would be best obtained by the entire publicity of justiciary proceedings;—here is the best guarantee against abuse in all functionaries of whatever rank or degree. Clergymen might be disqualified for the magisterial office as for other lay functions, and greater facilities afforded for removing from the commission of the peace justices guilty of misconduct. With these reforms the magistracy would be made a much less objectionable branch of domestic judicature, especially as a material source of their misdoings has been curtailed by the opening of the beer trade and the improvement of the game laws.

DIFFERENT LAWS IN DIFFERENT PLACES.—Nothing can be more inconsistent that the different modes of inheritance and tenure in the different districts of the country. In the county of Middlesex the eldest son succeeds to the estate; cross over the Thames, into Kent, and all the sons succeed to the ancestor’s inheritance in equal shares; proceed a little to the westward, and another law prevails, the youngest son inheriting the land to the exclusion of the other children. What can be the motive for perpetuating these divers usages—the relics of a barbarous age—in a country subject to the same general government? But even the customs of gavelkind and borough-English are not so inconvenient as those which regulate the customary tenures in a thousand different manors. In one manor copyhold property is not devisable by will; in another it may be so conveyed. In one manor a devise is not valid, if made longer than two years before the testator’s decease; so that it is necessary for wills to be renewed every two years; in another one year; in a third three years are the period; while in many there are no such restrictions. In some manors the eldest daughter succeeds to the exclusion of her sisters, as the eldest daughter (in default of male heirs) succeeds to the crown of England; in other manors all the daughters succeed jointly, as co-parceners, after the manner of the common law. In some manors a wife has for dower one-third of the tenement, as in case of freehold. In others she has, for her free bench, one half; and again, in some, she takes the whole for life, to the exclusion of the heir. The fines on death or alienation vary; the power and manner of entailing or cutting off entails vary; the taking of heriots and lords’ services varies. There are as many or more of these local laws than in France, in the Pays de Coutûme, of which four hundred have been enumerated, so as to make it the chief opprobrium of the old French law, that it differed in every village. Is it right that such varieties of custom should be allowed to have force in particular districts, contrary to the general law of the land? Is it right that, in London, Bristol, and some other places, the debts due to a man should be subject to execution for what he owes himself, while in all the rest of England there is no such resource; although in Scotland, as in France, this most rational and equitable law is universal?

All these varieties of tenure and diversities of liability are only so many traps to the ignorant and unwary, and so many impediments to the transmission and circulation of property. They embarrass commerce, by making it difficult—in some cases impossible—for a man to get the full value of his property, or dispose of it at all. For copyhold property is not liable even for specialty debts, nor can it be extended by elegit; and thus, absurd and unjust as is the law which prevents freehold property from being charged with simple contract debts, it goes further in this instance, and exempts the copyhold from liability, even to those of the highest nature, a judgment itself not giving the creditor any right of execution against it. The obvious remedy to be adopted in this case is to give all parts of the country the same rules touching property; and, therefore, lord Brougham, in his memorable speech, proposed an assimilation of the laws, affecting real estates, all over the kingdom, to take place after the elapse of a fixed period.

DIFFERENT LAWS FOR DIFFERENT PERSONS.—Sir Wm. Blackstone was very fond of asserting that the Crown and people were, in law, on an equal footing, and that the King, in a court of justice, was no more considered than a subject. This is not correct. It is true a person injured, in his property, by the Crown, may proceed by a petition of right, having first obtained the consent of the attorney-general; but the attorney-general may refuse his fiat, and then the subject is without remedy, except the hopeless resource of an impeachment of the officer of the Crown. Again, in cases where the Crown is interested, the Crown has a right, at the mere suggestion of the attorney-general, to call for a trial at bar; and thus the subject be obliged to bring all the witnesses up, from Cornwall, perhaps, or some other remote county. After all this expense is incurred, by reason of the Crown demanding a trial in London, where the other party is not known, and not in Cornwall, where both parties are known, the Crown may withdraw the case from the consideration of the jury, after the examination of all the witnesses, even at the moment that the jury are, with their backs turned, deliberating about their verdict.

But it is said the Crown pays expenses; the subject, however, has his own expenses to pay. As the Crown is above receiving costs, so it is exempt from paying them. The reason of this practice it is not easy to discover. One cannot see how the dignity of the Crown is exalted by not receiving costs, when they reflect that, by the Crown, is meant the revenue raised from the people for the public service, and that, consequently, the non-payment of costs to the Crown is an increase of the people’s burthens. But, even if we admit the propriety of the Crown’s receiving none, it would by no means follow that it should pay none to the subject, who is in a widely different predicament. All this, however, arises out of notions derived from the feudal times, when the Crown was in a situation the very reverse of that in which it stands at present, its income then arising almost entirely from a land-revenue. There is now no reason why it should be exempt from paying, or disabled from receiving, in all cases where costs would be due between common persons. Indeed, there has been of late years an exception made in the crown-law on this head, but so as to augment the inequality complained of. In all stamp prosecutions, the costs of the Crown are paid by the unsuccessful defendants; so far does it stoop from its former dignity; but not so low as to pay the defendant a farthing of his costs, should he be acquitted.

We shall only mention one more case to illustrate the legal disparity between the King and the people. Whenever a special jury is summoned in a Crown case, and all the twelve jurors do not attend, a tales cannot be prayed to let the cause proceed, without a warrant from the attorney-general; so that it is in the power of your adversary to refuse this at the time it may be most for his advantage so to do; while you have no option whatever, in case it should be for his interest to proceed, and for yours to delay. A singular instance of oppression, under this usage, was related by Lord Brougham, in the celebrated speech to which we have referred. A person named Lowe, with four smugglers, was prosecuted in the Court of Exchequer. The accused were acquitted on the second trial, and Meade, one of the witnesses against them, and others connected with him, were prosecuted for perjury; eighteen indictments were found at the sessions, and the Crown at once removed the whole, by certiorari, into the Court of King’s Bench. There they were all to be tried. Meade was the first tried, and clearly convicted. The other seventeen were then to be tried, and Mr. Sergeant Jones called them on; but the Crown had made the whole eighteen special jury causes; a sufficient number of jurymen did not attend; Mr. Sergeant Jones wanted to pray a tales, and the Crown refused a warrant. “Thus,” says lord Brougham, “an expense of £10,000 was incurred, and a hundred witnesses were brought to London, all for nothing, except, after the vexation, trouble, and delay already endured, to work the ruin of the prosecutor, who had been first harassed upon the testimony of the perjured witnesses. The poor Yorkshire farmer, whom the villain had so vexed, had no more money to spend in law; all the other prosecutions dropped; Meade obtained a rule for a new trial, but funds were wanting to meet him again, and he escaped. So that public justice was utterly frustrated, as well as the most grievous wrong inflicted upon an individual. Nor did it end here; the poor farmer was fated to lose his life by the transaction. Meade, the false witness, and Lowe, the farmer, whom he had informed against, and who was become the witness against him upon the approaching trial, lived in the same village; and one evening, in consequence, as was alleged, of some song, or madrigal, sung by him in the street, this man (Meade) seized a gun, and shot Lowe, from his house, dead upon the spot. He was acquitted of the murder, on the ground of something like provocation, but he was found guilty of manslaughter, and such was the impression of his guilt upon the mind of the court, that he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. A case of more complicated injustice—one fraught with more cruel injustice to the parties, I never knew in this country, nor do I conceive that worse can be found in any other. We may talk of our excellent institutions, and excellent some of them certainly are, though I could wish we were not given to so much Pharisaical praising of them; but if, while others, who do more and talk less, go on improving their laws, we stand still, and suffer all our worst abuses to continue, we shall soon cease to be respected by our neighbours, or to receive any praises, save those we are so ready to lavish upon ourselves.”—pp. 50-1. So much for the even-handed justice, lauded by Mr. Justice Blackstone, between the Crown and the people!

FINES AND RECOVERIES.—It is well known if a person has an estate in fee, that is, the absolute and unconditional possession of it, he can sell or devise it as he thinks proper; but, if he has an estate in tail, he cannot deal with it in this manner. He must first go through certain forms, in order to make himself absolute master of his estate: he must levy a fine, as it is called, which destroys the expectant rights of the issue in tail; or he must, by means of a recovery, get rid of those rights and of all remainders over. But this must be done through the Court of Common Pleas, at certain seasons of the year;—and why, it may be asked, should there exist a necessity for going there? Why force tenants-in-tail into court for mere form’s sake? In case of bankruptcy the necessity for these forms is not felt. A trader, who is tenant-in-tail, commits an act of bankruptcy, and, by the assignment under the commission, not only the interest vested in him is conveyed, but all the remainders expectant upon it are destroyed for the benefit of his creditors, and the estate passes to the assignees, free of all restriction. Why, then, may not the possessor of an estate do that for himself which the law permits to be done for an insolvent tradesman and his creditors? So, too, a man and his wife cannot convey an estate of the wife without a fine or a recovery; neither can the wife be barred of her dower without a similar proceeding. There is certainly nothing very real in a fine, and, as to recoveries, they proceed upon a mere fiction. They go upon the ground of compensation in value being made to the remainder claimants, whose right they cut off, and who, but for this fictitious suit, would have a right to take the estate after the decease of the tenant-in-tail. They are said to recover compensation in value; and from whom do they recover it? Why the common vouchee, who is the crier of the court of Common Pleas, and who, like the man at the Custom-House, obliged to take all the oaths other people do not like, lies groaning under the weight of all the liabilities he has incurred to all the claimants in tail since he became crier, and answerable for the millions of property, the rights to which, in remainder, have been barred, he not being worth a shilling!

The abolition of these ridiculous forms was recommended upwards of one hundred and fifty years since, and still remained to be enforced by the eloquence of lord Brougham. They have no earthly use but to raise money by way of fees; and which, besides creating expense and delay, and oftentimes preventing tenants-in-tail from passing their property by will, which they cannot do if they die before suffering the recovery, they give rise to questions in law, often puzzling, always dilatory and expensive. The mere forms of fines and recoveries cost £70,000 per annum over and above what deeds, operating in the same manner, would cost; and a round sum must be allowed for the litigation which doubts on these assurances are yearly occasioning. Mr. Campbell introduced a bill for abolishing fines and recoveries, which has been hanging on the tenter-hooks during the two last sessions of parliament, owing to the rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords.

AGREEMENTS FOR LEASES AND CONVEYANCES.—A pregnant source of legal suits is the law with respect to sales, leases, and other conveyances. Thus, if you agree with a person to give him a lease, though he, under the agreement, becomes your tenant, he is your equitable tenant only, but not your legal tenant. He may be possessed of a written agreement, signed and sealed, for a lease of ten years, and may occupy under it, but he has no lease which a court of law can take notice of; and, if an ejectment is brought, he must go out. He may go into a court of equity on his agreement, if that is any comfort to him; he may apply for a decree against you to perform your agreement; but till then his claims are not recognized in a court of common law. If an injunction be brought, the expenses are further multiplied. Why, it may be asked, should not the agreement, such as here described, be as good as a lease; when, in substance, it is the very same thing, and only wants a word added or left out to make it the same in legal effect? A case, illustrative of this subject, happened to lord Brougham, on the York circuit. An agreement had been entered into, and possession given; but, because it did not contain words of present demise, it was no lease, and therefore the tenant could not stand a moment against the ejectment that was brought, but was driven into the Court of Chancery, where the other party could just as little stand against him. How much inconvenience, expense, and delay, then, might be saved, if such an agreement were pronounced equivalent to a lease!

Again, on the same principle of avoiding multiplicity of suits, why, in ejectments, should two processes be requisite to give the plaintiff his remedy? As things now stand, after a man has succeeded in one action, and established his title to the possession, he must have recourse to another, to recover that which he ought to have obtained by one and the same verdict that established his title—the mesne profits. Why could not the same jury settle the matter at once? Why is an individual driven to maintain two actions for the purpose of obtaining one and the same remedy? Or why should not the jury that tries the right also assess the damage? Mr. Tennyson’s bill, which was intended to remedy some part of this evil, is only permissive; it ought to have been compulsory. It is partial, and it is only recommendatory, and its recommendations are not always attended to, because the lawyers, having the choice, do not think fit to pursue that which is the least profitable; they choose the two actions, when one would suffice for the interests of justice—for the interests of the plaintiff and defendant—for all interests, except those of the practitioners.

ARREST FOR DEBT.—Unless in cases of grossly improvident conduct, or fraudulent concealment of property from the just claims of creditors, imprisonment of the person for debt, either on mesne process or in execution, seems not defensible. In practice, the power of arrest is often perverted to purposes foreign to its ostensible object. It has been resorted to as a means not of recovering a just claim, but to prevent a just claim being preferred; and the same artifice of a false allegation of debt has been frequently employed to remove a person out of the way who happened to be troublesome, or that some criminal intention might be effected during his incarceration. But, however wicked or spiteful the motives of any one in so employing the process of the law, there being a probable cause of detention, and the process not being abused, no action lies against the wrong doer. If he have no accomplices, so as to fall within the charge of conspiracy, he is safe. To the wealthy all these inconveniences are trivial; but how does such a proceeding operate on a poor man, or a tradesman in moderate circumstances? He has no facilities for obtaining bail; if he has, he pays one way or another afterwards for the favour; and, if he cannot procure it, he must go to prison. And on what ground of common sense does the law in this matter rest? Why should it be supposed that a man, owing twenty pounds, will leave his house, his wife, his children, his country, his pursuits, and incur, voluntarily, the punishment awarded for great crimes, by banishing himself for life? Yet the law always proceeds on the supposition that a man will run away the moment he has notice given him of an action for debt. Some men might possibly act thus, but their conduct forms the exception, not the rule; and it is neither wisdom nor humanity to denounce a penalty against all men in order to meet a case not likely to occur once in a thousand times. Non-payment of debt, if a crime at all, is a crime against property only: and, perhaps, it would be enough to allow property to answer for it: and there is this peculiarity between it and other crimes against property, that it is committed with the mutual consent of the parties. Goods sold on credit are mostly charged extra; this extra charge is the premium exacted by the creditor on account of the risk of repayment; and, having thus fixed the equivalent for his chance of loss, it seems supererogatory in the law to grant him, in addition, the power of ex post facto punishment, of the amount of which he is the sole judge, merely because he has failed in a voluntary adventure, into which he had been tempted to embark, from the prospect of reaping a greater profit than is charged by the ready-money tradesman. Creditors rarely derive any advantage from imprisonment beyond the indulgence of vindictive feeling, which it is inconsistent with the true ends of public law to encourage. Those who do benefit by it are usually the most unfair and ungenerous, who, by a sudden arrest, often embarrass and prejudice all the other parties interested. To the debtor, the consequences are peculiarly hurtful—personal degradation—augmented incapacity and diminished inclination to satisfy his prosecutor—and the contraction of habits inconsistent with future intregrity and industry.

INCONSISTENT LIABILITIES OF PROPERTY FOR DEBTS.—In proportion as, before the debt has been proved, the person and property of the party charged should be free from all process not necessary to prevent evasion; so, after judgment, ought the utmost latitude be given to obtain satisfaction from all the defendant’s property whatever—land, goods, money, and debts—for to himself they no longer belong. To allow any distinction between one kind of property and another seems the height of injustice. Yet this is of hourly occurrence in the frustration of a creditor after he has obtained judgment, and taken out execution. His debtor has a landed estate; if it be copyhold, the creditor cannot touch it in any way whatever; if it be freehold, he may take half by elegit, and receive the rents and profits, but no more, in the lifetime of his debtor. The debt for which he has received judgment may be such that the rent of the land will not even keep down the interest; still he can take nothing more; he cannot turn the land into money: so that, when a man sues for a thing detained unlawfully, (a horse, for instance,) you give him money which he does not ask; and when he asks for money by suing for a debt, you give him land which he does not want. But if his debtor die before judgment can be obtained, unless the debt is on bond, he has no remedy at all against any kind of real property of any tenure; nay, though his money, borrowed on note or bill, has been laid out in buying land, the debtor’s heir takes that land wholly discharged of the debt!

But not only is land thus sacred from all effectual process of creditors, unless the debtor be a trader, the great bulk of most men’s personal property is equally beyond reach of the law. Stock in the public funds—debts due in any manner of way—nay, bank-notes, and even money—are alike protected. A man may owe a hundred thousand pounds in any way, and judgment may have passed against him over and over again; if he have privilege of parliament, live in a furnished house or hotel, and use hired carriages and horses, he may have an income from stock or money lent, of twenty thousand a-year, and defy the utmost efforts of the law; or if he have not privilege, he may live abroad, or within the Rules, and laugh at all the courts and all the creditors in the country. So absurd are the laws in this respect, that if a person borrow a thousand pounds, and the creditor has obtained judgment, the sheriff’s officer appointed to levy upon his personalty may come into his room, and take a table or a desk; but if he sees the identical thousand pounds lying there, he must leave it—he touches it at his peril:—“For this quaint reason,” says Lord Mansfield, “because money cannot be sold, and you are required, by the writ, to take your debt out of the produce of goods sold.”

Lord Brougham, in concluding his observations on these barbarous, absurd, and aristocratic laws, eloquently apostrophises—“who is the innovator—he who would adhere to such rules in violation of the manifest intent and spirit of our old law, or he who would re-adjust them so as to give it effect? In ancient times there were none of those masses of property in existence which are exempt from legal process. When the law, therefore, said, “Let all a man’s goods and chattels be answerable for his debts,” it meant to include his whole personalty at the least. Things have now changed in the progress of society; trade has grown up; credit has followed in its train; money, formerly only used as counters, has become abundant; bankers’ accounts have been invented; paper currency and the funds have been created. Three-fourths of the debtor’s personalty, perhaps nine-tenths, now consist of stock, money, and credit; and the rule of law, which leaves those out of all execution, no longer can mean as before—“Let all his personalty be liable”—but, “Let a tenth-part of it only be taken.” Can there be a greater change made upon, or greater violence done to, the old law itself, than you thus do by affecting to preserve its letter? The great stream of time is perpetually flowing on; all things around us are in ceaseless motion; and we vainly imagine to preserve our relative position among them, by getting out of the current and standing stock still on the margin. The stately vessel we belong to glides down; our bark is attached to it; we might “pursue the triumph, and partake the gale;” but, worse than the fool who stares, expecting the current to flow down and run out, we exclaim—Stop the boat!—and would tear it away to strand it, for the sake of preserving its connexion with the vessel. All the changes that are hourly and gently going on in spite of us, and all those which we ought to make, that violent severances of settled relations may not be effected, far from exciting murmurs of discontent, ought to be gladly hailed as dispensations of a bountiful Providence, instead of filling us with a thoughtless and preposterous alarm.”—Speech on the present State of the Law, p. 109.

But the imperfect recourse against the debtor’s estate, although the grand opprobrium of the debtor-laws, is by no means its only vice: the unequal distribution, in case of insolvency, is scarcely a less notable defect. Only traders, or those who voluntarily take the benefit of the act, are compelled, when insolvent, to make an impartial division of their property. All others may easily, and with impunity, pay one creditor twenty shillings in the pound, and the others sixpence, or nothing. So, when a man dies insolvent, his representatives may, by acknowledging judgments, secure one creditor his full payment at the expense of all the rest. Thus, lax and impotent as the law is against property, wide as are its loop-holes for fraud and extravagance to escape by, utterly powerless as is its grasp to seize the great bulk of the debtor’s possessions, against his uselessPERSONit is powerful and unrelenting. The argument used is, that the concealed property may thus be wrung from him: the principle, however, of the law, and on which all its provisions are built, is, that the seizure of the body works a satisfaction of the claim; and this satisfaction is given alike in all cases—alike where there is innocent misfortune, culpable extravagance, and guilty embezzlement. “Surely,” says the great Advocate, whose words we are copying, “for all these evils the remedy is easy. Let the whole of every man’s property, real and personal—his real, of what kind soever, copyhold, leasehold, freehold; his personal, of whatever nature, debts, money, stock, chattels—be taken for the payment of all his debts equally, and, in case of insolvency, let all be distributed rateably; let all he possesses be sifted, bolted from him unsparingly, until all his creditors are satisfied by payment or composition; but let hisPERSONonly be taken when he conceals his goods, or hasmerited punishment by extravagance or fraud. This line of distinction is already recognised by the practice of the Insolvent Courts; but the privilege of the Rules is inconsistent with every principle, and ought at once to be abrogated as soon as arrest on mesne process is abolished.”

INSECURITY OF PROPERTY.—Our aristocratic legislators have always manifested the greatest repugnance to admit the slightest change in existing institutions, under an alleged apprehension it might endanger the security of individual possessions. Nothing, however, can be imagined less secure than the condition of real property, as explained by the Law Commissioners, in their report to Parliament. It staggers one to comprehend how the law of any country could get into such a state, or how it has worked or been so long tolerated. The deeds, it seems, are endless, countless, and exceedingly complex, and, after all, do not give a legal title to the subject. A lord chancellor has been heard declare that there was scarcely a legal title to an estate in England. This defect appears to be remedied by a system of trusts, under which every thing, if not actually in the stomach, is at least within the jaws of the great Leviathan of Chancery. Then there seems to be no way in which the exact tenure of any piece of property can be ascertained, except by getting and studying all the deeds which may have ever been executed respecting it. And, after all, a flaw may be overlooked, and a flaw once is a flaw for ever: for time cures little or nothing in a legal title.

LAWS OF MARRIAGE.—The contract of marriage can only be lawfully entered into by strictly complying with certain religious ceremonies. Unless a special license has been obtained, banns must be previously published, and the nuptials must be solemnized in a church or chapel of the establishment, and by a minister of the establishment. These obligations sometimes entail great hardship on parties by whom they have been unintentionally violated. Parents may rear families, and honour them as legitimate, and afterwards discover they have been living in concubinage, and nourishing a spurious offspring, merely from having been mistaken in supposing a priest to have been ordained, or a chapel to have been licensed. No allowance is made even for Dissenters, though their faith is tolerated; they must join in the ritual of the privileged worship, however repugnant to their conscience, on pain of their marriages being invalid. But mark the inconsistency of the law: parties have only to cross the border to Scotland, where marriages may, with impunity, be contracted in contempt of English ceremonies—without publication of banns—or the payment of surplice-fees, and such marriages are recognized as lawful in an English court of justice.

Another hardship may be mentioned, though it cannot be ascribed to the ecclesiastical monopoly of marriages by the established clergy, but to the decisions of the courts on the law of settlement. The hardship to which we allude is the fact that an English woman, marrying a native of Scotland or Ireland, loses all claim to parochial relief in England, and may be passed, like an Irish or Scotch vagrant, to the birth-place of the husband.—7 Barnw. & Cress. 615.

Now, too, that religious disabilities are abrogated, measures ought to be adopted to mitigate the severity of the law in regard to marriages celebrated by Roman Catholic priests; and, in certain cases, to render valid marriages solemnized by ministers of that persuasion. In Ireland, by the law as it now stands, a Catholic priest, in celebrating marriage between a Protestant and Catholic, commits a capital felony, punishable with death. By another statute, for the same offence, he is subject to a penalty of £500: so that, agreeably to the observation of a distinguished Irishman, a Catholic priest may be first hanged, and called upon after to pay a fine of £500. The poor Irish, who flock over to this country, from early habit mostly prefer being married by a Catholic priest. Such marriage is invalid, even between two Catholics. The consequence is, the husband may desert his wife when he pleases, and leave his children utterly destitute; for they have no claim on parochial aid in England, not even if they have an English mother.

COSTS OF LAW-SUITS.—It is related by Swift, of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, that his father was ruined by gaining a law-suit. Notwithstanding the imputed selfishness of mankind, their addiction to litigation is a strong proof of disinterestedness, or at least shows they care less for money than the indulgence of vindictive feeling, or the acknowledgement of an unprofitable right. The doors of courts of justice are armed with terrors, threatening destruction to all who enter therein, yet they are beset with applicants for admission. Law, proverbially uncertain, is morally certain of inflicting loss on all parties; for, victor or vanquished, we are sure to be out of pocket. This singular issue results from the rule which allows no more than taxed costs to a successful litigant, leaving him to pay the difference between them and the law-charges of his legal adviser. It often happens that a person who sues for a debt of £10 or £15—and the majority of suits are for such diminutive sums—and gains the day, with costs—is minus three or fourfold as much for his own share of the expenses. But on this point we shall extract a passage, the first sentence of which we are sure—coming as it does from such high authority—is well worth the ordinary fee of 6s. 8d. to every one with the least disposition to unnecessary litigation. Speaking of the excess of costs which a suitor is obliged to pay his attorney, over and above what he can recover from his antagonist, Lord Brougham says,—

“This is so certain, and so considerable, that a man shall in vain expect me to recommend him either to bring forward a rightful claim, or to resist an unjust demand for any such sum as twenty, or even thirty pounds—at least, upon a calculation of his interest, I should presently declare to him he had much better say nothing in one case, and pay the money a second time in the other, even if he had a stamped receipt in his pocket, provided his adversary were a rich and oppressive man, resolved to take all the advantages the law gives him. I have here before me some samples of taxed bills of costs, taken quite at random, and far from being peculiar cases in any one respect. There is one of £428, made out by a very respectable attorney, and from which the master deducted £202; of this sum £147 were taken off, which had been paid for bringing witnesses. In this other, amounting to £217, £76 were taxed off; and, in a third, of £63, there were nearly £15 disallowed; it was an undefended cause, to recover £50: had the defendant been obstinate and oppressively inclined, he would have made the extra costs a good deal more than the whole debt, although the suit was in the Exchequer, where the taxation is known to be more liberal. We had lately, in the King’s Bench, a bill of above £100, to recover £19, and probably, of that £100 not above £60 would be allowed. As things now stand, a part of this master evil is inevitable; for if practitioners were sure of receiving all their bills, they would run up a heavy charge wherever they knew the case to be a clear one. But, as the fundamental principle for which I contend is to alter no part of the law by itself, or without considering all the other parts, there can be no difficulty, consistently with this doctrine, to enlarge the allowance of costs as soon as other amendments have prevented the abuse of litigation by professional men. Some erroneous rules of taxation may, even in a partial or insulated reform, be altered. Whatever is fairly allowed, as between attorney and client, should be allowed between party and party, except only such needless charges as have been ordered expressly by the client himself. There can surely be no reason for disallowing, as a general rule, all consultations, often absolutely necessary for the conduct of a cause, generally more beneficial than much that is allowed; nor can it be right that so little of the expense of bringing evidence should be given, and that the cost of preparing the case, by inquiries, journeys, &c. should be refused altogether. The necessary consequence of not suffering an attorney to charge what he ought to receive for certain things, is that he is driven to do a number of needless things, which he knows are always allowed as a matter of course, and the expense is thus increased to the client far beyond the mere gain which the attorney derives from it.”

Thus it appears attorneys are placed in a similar predicament to what medical men were, prior to Lord Tenterden’s decision in their favour, when they were compelled to seek a remuneration for attendance on their patients, through the medium of unnecessary draughts, or exorbitant charges for drugs. It is due, indeed, to the respectable part of the legal profession to say that they are not entirely to blame for the monstrous bills they deliver to their clients. A shameful system of extortion prevails in the courts, and many of the fees exacted by the officers, during the see-saw of a cause, can be considered nothing but legalized robbery of the suitor. In the Common Pleas, the prothonotaries charge 8d. per folio of seventy-two words, on all pleadings entered; and if the declaration and issue, or declaration and judgment, be of different terms, the 8d. is doubled. In the King’s Bench 4d. per folio is charged. The entry, by them so called, is, in fact, nothing more than imprinting a stamp by a clerk in the office; the attorney performing the drudgery of engrossing or entering the proceedings on the roll. The charges for passing records and setting down causes are a grievous burthen. They are passed by an officer, whose clerk charges from 30s. and upwards. If the cause is not tried on the day on which it is set down, the marshal must be paid for his deputy marking the cause as a remanet; for the first of which he charges 6s. and for all after the first 4s. After the holidays, a fee of 10s. 6d., 6s. 8d., or 3s. 4d., according to usage, is extorted, at each office, for opening them. All these court-fees tend to swell an attorney’s bill, though he has advanced the money for them, as well as the lawyer’s fee, out of his own pocket.

LAW OF DEBTOR AND CREDITOR.—If there was any country in which a man, in order to recover a debt of £6 or £7, must begin by expending £60 or £70—where, at the outset, he had to run the risk of throwing so much good money after bad—it would at once be said that, whatever other benefits or advantages that country enjoyed, at least it was not fortunate in its system of law. But if it were added that, in addition to spending £60 or £70, a man must endure great difficulties, anxiety and uncertainty, infinite bandying to and fro, and moving about from province to province, and from court to court, before he could obtain judgment, then our envy of the country where such administration of the law existed, would be further diminished. And if, in addition to all this, after expending £60 or £70 in looking after the recovery of £6 or £7, a man’s adversary should have the power of keeping his property out of the way, and beyond reach, so that, after all, the plaintiff should not receive some part of his debt, the case would be still worse. And further, in addition to this, if, in the same country, in cases where a man was so circumstanced as to be able to recover and receive his debt, and where the debtor was solvent, and prepared to pay, the individual should receive, it was true, his £6 or £7, but should not receive the whole £60 or £70, which he had spent in costs, although there was judgment in his favour, but should receive the amount wanting £20, so that he should have spent £13 or £14 out of his pocket, over and above the amount of the debt which he recovered, after being exposed to a variety of plagues, and the annoyances of these proceedings; if he were told of such a case, would not the natural inquiry be, “Whether it was possible that such a country existed?”—We should immediately pronounce that, if so, it must be in a most barbarous state; that it must be a poor country, for no commercial country, having interests extensive and important, would endure such a state of things. Nevertheless, the country where this state of things exists is that in which we now live!—England!

This pointed and forcible delineation of the working of the debtor-laws—indisputably the worst in Europe—will be readily comprehended from our previous illustrations. It is the substance—the bare bone and muscle—of a splendid passage in Lord Brougham’s second great philippic on legal abuses. The abilities of this extraordinary man have raised him to the head of the judicial administration, and few have profited more than he has done by existing defects; yet it is to him, next to Bentham and Romilly—posterior in time, but hardly in power—the country is mainly indebted for the reforms in progress, and the improvements which must, ere long, be introduced through the entire legal system of the empire.

ABSURDITIES AND DELAYS IN ADMINISTRATIVE JUSTICE.

Magna Charta says that justice shall neither be denied, sold, nor delayed. With the single exception of guarding the country from foreign aggression, the only object for which governments have been instituted is the administration of justice. It is to attain this end that all taxes and contributions from the people were originally intended. They were not meant to support useless placemen and pensioners, nor to maintain standing armies, nor to defray the interest of debts contracted in unnecessary wars; but to protect every individual in the community from oppression. Justice ought not only to be speedy, but, above all things, cheap. To render the expense of legal process exorbitant, is not delaying—it is absolutely denying justice to all but the rich: it is affording the protection of the law to those least in need of its aid, and refusing it to those most exposed to oppression.

In England, justice is not only delayed, but, from its dearness, often unattainable. These evils result from causes much too numerous and complex to be here specified; but the most palpable appear to be the unequal distribution of business in the several courts of law—the consumption of the time of the judges in matters either irrelevant or derogatory to their more important functions—the monopoly of practice vested in different classes of practitioners—the retention of useless, absurd, and antiquated forms of procedure—the confusion, obscurity, and inconsistencies in the laws themselves—and, in short, from the entire fabric of judicial administration being inadequate and unsuitable to the wants of the age, and only adapted to a state of society wholly different from that which now exists.

To point out the manifold absurdities of the legal system we shall make no pretension; still we cannot help noticing the more striking anomalies.

If, for example, twelve judges were necessary to administer justice, centuries ago, why not nearly double the number at the present? Consider the augmentation in wealth, commerce, and population; consider the increase of lawyers, attorneys, criminals, and suitors; why not a corresponding increase in judges? But then there were only twelve apostles to preach the gospel, therefore there must be only twelve judges to preach the law. What a reason for JOHN BULL—yet he swallows it.

If circuits have been gradually altered from septennial to annual, and from annual to twice in a year, and three times in the home circuit, why not go on? Why not have gaol deliveries as frequently in the country as in London? Why should a man be confined six months before trial in Yorkshire, and only six weeks in London? Why, again, should a person, charged with an offence in one part of the metropolis, be imprisoned only four or five weeks, while, under precisely similar circumstances in another part, he is imprisoned two or three months? Are we never to have uniformity in justice—are the claims of common sense to be for ever stifled by the logic of lawyers, the allegations of custom, antiquity, and local usage?

If the lord-chief-justice require three or four assistants, why not a lord chancellor similar aid? Does it require more grave deliberation to adjudicate trumpery suits of £10 or £15 than suits which can never be commenced for less than £100? Does it require a greater mass of collective wisdom to administer a written, fixed, and known law than one only inscribed on sand—remarkable for complexity—often to fabricate on the spur of the occasion—and having no immutable standard beyond the varying conscience and intelligence of the judge? Shame on the legislature, which tolerates, year after year, a system so repugnant to reason!

If it be necessary to have circuits to administer common law, why not equity? This is the practice in some of the states of North America; and why should not the precedent be followed, although the people of those countries be so deplorably unfortunate as neither to have a national debt, an established Church, nor hereditary Peerage.

If the evidence of a Gentoo, a Jew, or a Turk may be received in judicial administration, why should the judges suffer the ends of justice to be defeated by rejecting the testimony of an Englishman who happens not to believe in the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, but who is assuredly as good a Christian as the infidels we have mentioned?

Why should justices of peace, in quarter sessions, have such great power over the person and none over property? Is it a less serious thing to transport a poor man from his country, his wife, and his children, for fourteen years, than to decide a few pounds’ debt, a trespass, tort, or other civil injury? If the country magistracy are not learned enough to administer the laws of property, why not simplify them? or, why not let them have the aid of an assistant barrister, and thereby expedite justice, save enormous expense to suitors, and lighten the pressure of business at the assizes? Would not this be a more practicable and economical improvement in domestic judicature than the introduction of an entirely new machinery of local tribunals, as a great, but, as we humbly think, in this point, a mistaken man has recently proposed?

Again: the meaning of wills, bonds, and other legal instruments being of such vast importance, why are they not punctuated and drawn up according to the ordinary rules of composition, to prevent misapprehension? Is the contrary course followed as more conducive to obscurity and litigation?

Lastly, we may inquire, why do attorneys and solicitors delay their suits and impoverish their clients by cramming their briefs into the bags of what are called king’s counsel, or leading counsel, who are so overwhelmed with business that they have seldom time to read them—to master the law respecting them—or be present in court when the cause comes on, while there are hundreds of worthy men at the bar, with leisure, talent, and industry, but failing opportunity, name, or connexion, who are condemned to penury and obscurity? Are lawyers all ARISTOCRATS; are they like the rich clergy, without bowels for the more unfortunate brethren of their own order?

These are a few of the incongruities in the administration of justice which present themselves to the contemplation of an impartial observer. But the Court of Chancery has unquestionably been the least defensible part of our judicial system, and the most pregnant in abuse and delay. Before this tribunal a cause might be pending for years, and, even after it had gone through, and was so far matured as to be what the lawyers call ripe for decision, it might wait three years for judgment. Mr. Williams relates a singular instance of dilatoriness in this court: the suit involved considerable property, of which part was a windmill. A bill was filed in 1703; in 1796, the cause had progressed as far as the master’s office, where it was stationary till 1815, when it was found, on inquiry, the windmill had disappeared, and there was no longer any trace of its existence. Time, it seems, had been at work, while equity wes sleeping. The immense mass of property locked up in chancery almost exceeds belief. In the year 1756, the amount of suitors’ effects fell short of three millions; in 1829, they had accumulated to £38,886,135. Of this enormous sum there is more than one-third which, from the procrastinated delay of suits, should either have belonged to persons deceased without representatives, or persons living, but ignorant, from the books not being open to them, of their claims altogether, or, if acquainted with their claims, ignorant in what manner or names their property is vested.

Now, to people living out of the atmosphere of corruption and intrigue, there appeared little difficulty in suggesting remedies for this monstrous oppression. 1. By separating the political from the judicial character of the lord chancellor, and clothing him with that independence in the exercise of his legal functions, which is considered so great an excellence in the status of the common-law judges. 2. By separating the appellate jurisdiction in the House of Lords, and abolishing the absurdity of appeals from the lord chancellor on the bench to the lord chancellor on the woolsack. 3. By the relieving of his lordship of his duties in bankruptcies, which was the more reasonable, since the exercise of jurisdiction therein was comparatively of recent occurrence. Lastly, by a thorough reform in the offices of the masters and registrars.

These reforms were recommended over and over again by Mr. M. A. Taylor, Mr. John Williams, and others during the ascendancy of the Tories; and the only reasons we could ever discover why they were not adopted may be comprised in a very small compass. Our readers are aware what a tempting acquisition the see of Canterbury is to all aspiring churchmen; and what an itching the Philpotts and Blomfields have to clutch the magnificent revenues and patronage of the arch-diocese. Well, what Lambeth is in the Church, the Chancellorship is at the Bar. It is the glittering prize of ambitious, intriguing, and time-serving lawyers; it is the goal of desire to all gentlemen of the long-robe, for every one has more or less confidence in his good fortune and abilities, and few but hope to reach it at last. Hence there was little prospect of effective reform in equity, while Tory law-craft was so predominant in the legislature. But the dynasty of the anti-reformers has expired in principle, if not in its personal representatives; and the accession to power of Earl Grey’s ministry has been signalized by some vigorous innovations on judicial abuses. Lord Chancellor Brougham was pledged by his previously expressed opinions to the Herculean task, and he has entered upon it by clearing off the vast arrear of business accumulated by his predecessors, and by projecting efficient reforms in the constitution of his court. The establishment of a Court of Bankruptcy has removed one of the popular objections we have enumerated to the practice in chancery; but this is only one of a series of renovating measures intended to apply to the offices of the masters and registrars, and other branches of the equity department. We shall conclude the section with a few remarks on the economy, and next on the judicial improvement effected by the first of Lord Brougham’s legal reforms.

The bankrupt business of the metropolis has hitherto been transacted by seventy commissioners, appointed for that purpose by the Lord Chancellor, who held their offices during pleasure. They were paid by fees out of the bankrupt estate. The average income from these fees to every commissioner, by a return made to the House of Lords, was £389 : 5 : or, according to the secretary of bankrupts’ return, in round numbers, £380. The total expense, therefore, of the seventy commissioners, at an average of £380., was £26,000. The other expenses under the old system, together with the sum paid to the commissioners, were estimated by Mr. Vizard at £70,000.

The salaries of the judges, commissioners, and registrars under Lord Brougham’s act are:—

Chief Judge

£3,000

Three Puisnes, at £2,000

6,000

Six Commissioners, at £1,500

9,000

Two Registrars, at £800, (exclusive of fees)

1,600

Eight Deputy Registrars, at £600

4,800

Secretary of Bankrupts (exclusive of fees)

1,200

First Clerk

500

Second Clerk

300

Total

£24,000

The office fees of suing out a commission under former practice were as follows:—search for docket, 1s.; bond, 7s.; petition for commission, 11s.; fiat answering petition, or filing affidavit, £1 : 2; commission and hanaper fee, £5 : 2 : 8; tin-box, 2s.; if a private suit, £2 : 2 : 6; messenger, when the Chancellor was in the country, £1 : 5; office copy of petitioning creditor’s affidavit, 3s. 2d. Under the new act a fiat is substituted for a commission, for which the fee is £10, and various other sums payable to secretary of bankrupts. A sum of £20 is payable to the secretary of bankrupts’ account by the assignees. It is impossible, however, to exhibit an accurate comparison of the expense of proceedings under the old and the new system; some of the charges are contingent, others terminable, and others depend on the number and length of copies, affidavits, folios, &c. Compensations are to be provided for fees and offices abolished, and the remuneration to the official assignees is discretionary in the commissioners.

The opinion of some persons is that the expenses of a proceeding in the smaller bankruptcies, where the assests do not exceed £4000, will be nearly equal to what they were under the former system; but it is impossible to arrive at an accurate conclusion on this point, till the new machinery has been brought fairly into operation. It is certain, however, that there will be no future harvest of spoil, like that of Howard and Gibbs, when £20,000, was netted; nor even like that of Chambers, when £10,000 was swamped by the legal, accounting, and assignee agencies.

One striking advantage of the Bankruptcy Court is, that it substitutes a tribunal effective for its purpose for one notoriously ineffective. There will be also greater responsibility in the judges, as well as increased despatch in their proceedings. A saving of time is a saving of expense to suitors, as well as of that which is more painful than expense—doubt and anxiety. So far the improvement is positive. But ought not a tribunal, which costs £24,000 a-year in fixed salaries, to have been final in its adjudications? Why such a gradation of appeals from a commissioner to a Sub-division Court, from thence to the Court of Review, and upwards—though the cases of such higher appeals are limited by the act—to the Lord Chancellor and the House of Lords?

The branch, however, of the new arrangement about which we have any serious misgivings, is not the judicial, but the ministerial or accounting department. Will the official assignees be less costly and more expeditious than the creditor assignees have been? May they not be as dilatory in settling accounts as masters in Chancery? or may they not in certain emergencies employ the proceeds of the bankrupt estate in a stockjobbing or mercantile adventure in preference to the payment of them promptly into the Bank of England?—Nous verrons, as the French say.

OPPRESSIONS UNDER THE EXCISE-LAWS.

We have already made some remarks on the multiplicity and inquisitorial nature of the Revenue-Laws. Excise informations, of which we are going to give some account, are the practical consequences of these laws.

These informations are filed in the Court of Exchequer for real or supposed frauds on the revenne. The prosecutions are almost invariably instituted either on the testimony of hired spies or the Excise-officers. They form a principal source of emolument to the law-officers of the Crown. Every prosecution costs the country about fifty guineas. Of this sum ten guineas are for a brief to the Attorney-General; to the Solicitor-General, ten guineas; to two counsel, eight guineas each; to two other counsel, four guineas each. And to these sums must be added another item of £7 : 13 : 6 for the court-crier. Let the case be ever so simple, this is the usual array of counsel which appears for the Crown; and against which the accused has to contend. In one year there have been no less than 761 informations under the Excise-Laws, and the law-expenses on each case were not less than £120, making an annual sum of more than £120,000. The solicitor for the excise has almost unlimited power in these matters, and exercises the functions of both judge and jury. The petitions that are sent to the Board are referred to him; and which for the sake of his own emolument it is generally his interest to reject. The nature of such proceedings will be best illustrated by examples, selected from many others, which have been brought before the Parliament.

The first case we shall mention is that of Jeremiah Abell, a small farmer, in Norfolk. This man was prosecuted by the Excise for penalties to the amount of £1000, on account of an alleged smuggling transaction. He was able to prove, most distinctly, by seventeen witnesses, against the single testimony of the informer, that he was thirty miles from the place where the offence was sworn to have been committed. When the case was tried, his counsel most unaccountably consented to compromise the matter with the Board for £300, contrary to the express injunction of the defendant. Afterwards, the matter slept for a year, when Mr. Abell was taken into custody; and, at the time his case was mentioned in the House, he had been confined sixteen months in Norwich goal. Of his innocence there could not be the slightest doubt. He had the most satisfactory evidence to prove that the informer was at Norwich at the very time he had sworn to have been thirty miles from that place, watching the defendant and six others engaged in smuggling.

Mr. Henty, another sufferer, and a most respectable gentleman of Sussex, had a very narrow escape from a gang of wretches patronised and employed by the Excise. He was found guilty of an attempt to defraud the revenue, and sentenced to pay fines and costs to the amount of £2400. The evidence on which he was convicted was of the most infamous description, and such as none but the agents of an odious system would ever think of employing. One of them was accused of an atrocious murder at Greenwich; others were afterwards convicted of perjury; some transported for robbery; and others (there being seven witnesses in all) we believe, were hanged. The conduct of the Excise in this case was the more unjustifiable, because they had been apprised of the characters of these miscreants: nevertheless, the solicitor commenced his prosecution against Mr. Henty, and on their evidence he was found guilty. When an indictment for perjury was preferred, the Excise came forward, and offered bail for them; and no doubt they would have absconded, and Mr. Henty been deprived of all means of proving his innocence, had they not been committed to prison on a charge of felony.

Frequently, Excise prosecutions originate in the conspiracies of base wretches, who, for the sake of the reward, or to gratify their malice, unite to ruin particular individuals. As an instance of this sort, we select the following:—A man took a range of obscure and dilapidated buildings in London, for the pretended purpose of becoming a brewer of ale, and immediately set to work to draw honest tradesmen into his snares. By an act of parliament, a penalty is imposed on those who sell treacle or molasses to brewers. This miscreant, to accomplish his purpose, used to frequent those shops which were left under the superintendence of apprentices and children; he procured a small quantity of these articles to be sent to him, and then gave information that the parties had sold them to a licensed brewer. Another case of the same stamp:—A respectable and industrious tradesman of Colchester, Mr. Underwood, had on some account or other incurred the hatred of a notorious smuggler, who made a vow that by some means he would accomplish his destruction. This, he thought, could not be more effectually done than by putting him in the hands of the Excise. He accused Mr. Underwood of being engaged in a contraband trade. Two informations were filed in the Exchequer; one for the condemnation of Mr. Underwood’s vessel, the other to recover the penalty of the bond which all masters enter into not to be concerned in any smuggling transaction. When the case came to be heard, the smuggler admitted that the information was false and malicious, and, of course, Mr. Underwood was acquitted; but he had incurred expenses to the amount of £327 in triumphing over the malice of his enemy. He had no redress for his loss; and his only resource was to commence an unprofitable prosecution against the smuggler for perjury. At the same place, a brewer, having lent a friend his copper, was prosecuted for that friend’s brewing a quarter of malt. The penalty for his friendship was £100; and the first intimation of it being incurred was an appalling bill of forty or fifty folios in length. He applied to the Board, who consented to remit the penalty, provided he paid £30, and what small costs might have been incurred in the prosecution. Three months after, he received a bill from a solicitor, in which these small costs were charged £46.

Persons are frequently dragged into the Court of Exchequer without knowing for what offence, when it had been committed, or who is the informer. In the case of Mr. Waithman, a handkerchief was brought into his house not worth thirty shillings, by a person in his employ, at the solicitation of a friend in the country. An information was laid against him, and a penalty of £200 demanded, which was afterwards softened down to £100, as a particular favour to the worthy alderman.

We shall only mention one more case of Exchequer process; that of a Captain Bryan. This gentleman was called on for a penalty of £200, two years after he thought the transaction had been entirely settled. On a petition to the Board, the penalty indeed was remitted; but a bill of costs was brought forward by the solicitor to a nearly equal amount. The misfortune of this gentleman originated in mistake in the report of the ship’s cargo. The error was explained to the commissioners of Excise, who appeared perfectly satisfied, and the Captain concluded the matter was at an end. Two years were suffered to elapse, when the unsuspecting Captain was surprised with an Exchequer process, showing that an action had commenced against him to recover the penalty for the infraction of the Excise-Laws. The Captain, as we have said, petitioned; the penalty was remitted: but the solicitor brought in his bill of costs to the amount of £160 : 5, and his own solicitor’s costs amounted to £89 : 5 : 9 more.

A serious evil resulting from the Excise system is the power vested in the Commissioners of Excise or Lords of the Treasury to mitigate penalties or stay proceedings against offenders at their discretion. This enables them to make the most odious distinction between persons supposed to be friendly or hostile to the government. We had a singular instance of this in the case of Mr. ABBOTT, brewer and magistrate, of Canterbury. This man had for a long time been selling, according to Lord Brougham’s statement, rank poison in the beverage of the people. It appears he had been selling a liquor resembling beer, manufactured from beer-grounds, distillers’ spent wash, quassia, opium, guinea pepper, vitriol, and other deleterious and poisonous ingredients. The officers of Excise having examined this worthy magistrate’s premises, found 12 lbs. of prepared powder, and 14 lbs. of vitriol or copperas, in boxes, which, if full, would have contained 56 lbs. Proceedings were instituted against him by the Board. The penalties he had incurred amounted to £9000; and the case being notorious and atrocious, the Commissioners appeared determined to levy them with rigour. Mr. Abbott, however, was a loyal man and an active magistrate; and he prevailed upon some other loyal men to write on his behalf to the Lords of the Treasury. Among other persons who stepped forward in behalf of this virtuous magistrate, were the very reverend the Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Gerard Andrewes, Mr. Baker, M.P., and the late Sir William Curtis. All these were loyal men and true; and, in their letters to the Lords of the Treasury, spoke in the highest terms of the public and private virtues of the good Mr. Abbott. Mr. Baker styles him “my much esteemed and valued friend, Mr. Abbott.” Sir William Curtis was still more eloquent and touching; stating that he was a very long acquaintance of fifty years, and a “most honourable and virtuous old man.” The reverend Dean went on in the same strain; stating that he was a “good neighbour of his, and an useful magistrate;” and that he should regret were his “usefulness and respectability diminished by a matter that concerned ONLY ALE-DRINKERS!”

Only think of this! Here is a man, a very reverend dean, who regrets that a good neighbour of his should be dragged before the public merely for poisoning ale-drinkers. Had Mr. Abbott been poisoning wine-drinkers, we imagine his crime would have appeared very different in the eyes of the reverend dean. It is related of a right reverend bishop, in the House of Lords, that he once remarked that he did not know what the people had to do with the laws but to obey them. One is at a loss to conceive where these notions have been taken up; they certainly belong to another age, or at least to another country than England. For our part, we can only ascribe this unseemly insolence of the clergy to the undeserved respect which they have been accustomed to receive from the people, and which has begotten in them a feeling of superiority to which, above all men, they have the least claim, either on account of their knowledge or virtues, or any other qualification useful or ornamental. The views of some of them in respect of the people are very little more elevated than those of the nobles of Russia towards their boors. We remember an anecdote of a Russian officer travelling through Germany, who, on account of a trifling delay or provocation, shot his postillion. The circumstance exciting some noise, the officer was given to understand that, though such things might do very well in Russia, they could not pass in Germany with impunity. The officer, considering the interruption impertinent, demanded the price of a German postillion, and said he would pay for him. This was not much worse than Dr. Andrewes’s notion of the social importance of ale-drinkers.

To return, however, to the good Mr. Abbott: so many testimonies, from such quarters, to his various excellences were not to be neglected. The Treasury, without seeking any more evidence, but merely at the instigation of their political friends, ordered the proceedings to be stayed, and penalties to the amount of £9000 were softened down to £500.

The recent case of Leaf and Coles, the extensive dealers in contraband silks, is an instance of the power of the Treasury to mitigate penalties. The transactions of these persons had been to an enormous extent, to the great detriment of the home manufacture of silk, and the ruin of the fair trader. The penalties Leaf and Company had incurred by their illicit practices amounted to £25,000; the Treasury, or, more correctly, the attorney-general, compromised with the delinquents for £20,000, and returned them their smuggled silks valued at £5,000 more. It was no case for mercy; justice and the interests of commerce required that the utmost forfeiture should have been exacted.

The examples we have given will, we apprehend, be sufficient to exemplify the nature of Excise informations. The proceedings of the Court of Star Chamber, of the Inquisition in Spain, or Lettres de Cachet in France, were not more diabolical and oppressive than those which often occur in this country to uphold an oppressive system of taxation. Much of the evil results from the endeavours of the Aristocracy to throw a disproportionate share of public burthens on the industrious classes, by taxing heavily all articles of general consumption. Tea, spirits, and tobacco are the chief articles in which frauds on the revenue are attempted; and these are respectively taxed 100, 520, and 900 per cent. on the cost price. It is the high amount of duties which renders smuggling and adulteration so profitable that all attempts to suppress them prove unavailing. Three-fourths of the whole quantity of tobacco consumed in Ireland is smuggled; and one-third of the tea sold in England is the produce of adulteration. What blessed effects are these of our fiscal regulations; especially coupled with the fact that the expense for the prevention of smuggling alone amounts to £700,000 per annum.

PROSPECTS OF LEGAL REFORM.

England is not less a law-ridden than a priest-ridden country; and we regret that Lord Brougham cannot devise plans of reform having a less tendency to increase the number and emolument of a profession already too predominant. It has been remarked, by the venerable father of jurisprudence in Europe, and we may add America—Mr. Bentham, that lawyers oppose improvement from the same motives workmen oppose the introduction of machinery,—they are apprehensive it would lessen their employment. Undoubtedly it would have this effect; for the great object sought to be attained is to simplify and expedite judicial proceedings, by which, unnecessary delay and expense may be avoided. The late Mr. Roscoe, in his Life of Leo X. (vol. iv. p. 179,) relates an anecdote of that pontiff which is applicable both to the law and priestcraft of this country. Cardinal Bembo having on one occasion quoted a passage from the Evangelists, he was interrupted by his Holiness, who said “It is well known to all ages how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us.”—Our lawyers may say the same: the cart-load of legendary rubbish they profess to expound is, doubtless, very profitable to them, but a serious loss and inconvenience to the community.

It by no means follows, because there are laws, there should be a host of legalists to interpret them. The causes which render English laws difficult and unintelligible are obvious, and have been explained. It arises from the unfathomable chaos in which they exist, their multiplicity, their contradictions, and the uncouth and nonsensical jargon in which they are expressed. All these are defects which would be speedily obviated by a government that represented the mind, the wants, and interests of society. The Statute-Book, and the mass of decisions engrafted upon it, we verily believe, might be compressed into an octavo volume, and rendered so plain and readable as to form an appropriate class-book in every seminary of education in the kingdom. Sad calamity this for the gentlemen of the bar! Their occupation would be curtailed; their wigs and gowns cease to be venerable; and all their learned lore be as much out of date as the cocked hats and ruffles of the last generation, Can we wonder, therefore, at their hostility to improvement? They have a great stake—not in the country, but the law; and we may generally reckon upon them for our opponents: though it is rather too much that they should accuse (as some of them do) the reformers of being irrational and visionary, while their own mountebank profession is the reverse of both reason and common sense.

Between jurisconsults in this country and on the Continent there is a marked difference: by the latter, law has long been treated as a rational science; by the former, it is considered nothing more than a mass of precedents, conundrums, forms, and technicalities—an art or mystery, by dabbling in which men may soon become rich. A few illustrious exceptions there are, no doubt, to this description; but this is the general character of the fraternity; their object is to gather fees, not study the principles of jurisprudence. Hence it is not from the profession we anticipate a systematic and effective reform in our judicial administration;—though, if any unlearned person venture to suggest improvements, the whole craft is in arms, and ready to devour him. So far as the practice of the profession is concerned, lawyers are the fittest persons to expound it; but so far as regards any thing new,—a code, for instance, or a different mode of administering justice,—they are the last persons in the world who ought to be consulted. For our parts, we should as soon think of advising with the disciples of IGNATIUS LOYOLA about the institutions of the order of Jesuits as with lawyers on the subject of legal reform.

Yet it is to lawyers the great work of legal amendment is confided, and from them alone are the people to expect reform in our judicial system. Nothing but disappointment, we fear, will flow from this source. All the law-lords, with the splendid exception of Lord Chancellor Brougham and, perhaps, Plunket, are opposed to reform. Sir James Scarlett suggested some minor improvements, during his attorney-generalship—the best of which was the limiting the power of arrest for debt to £100 and upwards; but it is evident he views, with no favourable eye, innovations on the great field of his triumphs. Only think of this gentleman’s defence of special pleading, the absurdities of which are enough to make a horse laugh; a drizzling maze of empyrical inventions, circuitous procedure, and unintelligible fiction, calculated for no purpose but to fortify monopoly and wrap justice in deceit and mystery. With such obstacles and prejudices what can be anticipated but delay and evasion without end, and ultimate failure at last?

The Common-Law Commissioners are not expected to conclude their inquiries in less than three years, and the Commissioners of Inquiry on the Laws of Real Property in less than twelve years. At the expiration of these periods what may be anticipated? The accumulation of innumerable volumes of reports, and the useful suggestions they contain, buried in as impenetrable a mass as the laws whose abuses they are meant to set forth; and, after all this expenditure of time, labour, and money, it is probable no measures of reform will be founded upon them. They will share the fate of the Chancery Report, made six years ago, of the volumes without number of Reports on Public Charities, on the state of Ireland, the state of the finances, the poor, and other national subjects, in which there is much research and many useful suggestions, but they are never reduced to practice.

Next let us advert to the reformatory labours of the late Secretary of State. The consolidation acts of Sir Robert Peel are, no doubt, improvements; but the progress of the Right Hon. Gentleman was much too dilatory, and his plan of proceeding deficient in comprehensiveness. The entire body of criminal law ought to have been taken up at once by a select body of individuals competent to the undertaking, and digested into a simple and uniform code, accessible and intelligible to the whole community. Granting, some thirty years hence, Sir Robert might have finished his task, still it appears to us the criminal law would be nearly in as great a state of obscurity, contradiction, and perplexity as at present. We shall cite an example, from the Forgery Act, to illustrate the working of this tinkering legislation.

In the twenty-third section of the act it is provided that the punishments of the 5 Eliz. c. 14, so far as they have been adopted by other acts, shall be repealed, and other punishments substituted in lieu of them. Now, as these other acts remain on the statute-book, without reference to the 1 Will. IV. c. 66, by which they have been altered, how is it possible this fact should be known to any person who happens to refer to them? This appears to us a convincing proof of the perplexities which will pervade the criminal statutes after the process of consolidation has been completed. They will be a sealed book, as heretofore, to all but lawyers and judges: in short, the legislature appears to proceed on the principle that laws are framed for the benefit of the profession only, not for the people; but surely the penal code, which affects every member of society, ought to be constituted for a very different purpose. Again, how little is the advantage of consolidating the statutes, if the decisions engrafted upon them, and which are as valid a portion of the law as the statutes themselves, are not incorporated? It will be all labour in vain, and “confusion worse confounded!”

In our humble opinion a different course might be pursued with advantage in the great work of legal reform. In the first place, it appears inquiries are not so much needed as remedies; abuses in our judicial system are not far to seek—they are obvious, and so are the means of reforming them. Why, then, not dispense with those voluminous reports and endless researches? A commission might have been appointed to consolidate and simplify the criminal law—another the civil law—another the law of property—and another the laws which regulate civil and criminal procedure, and each commission ought not only to have incorporated the statutes relative to the several departments of jurisprudence, but also the decisions of the judges founded upon them, and which have become part of the law of the land. When each commission had finished its task, their labours might have received the fiat of the legislature. It is only, we imagine, by some such effective measures the laws of England can be made, within a reasonable time, worthy of the opulent and enlightened community for whose benefit they are intended.

But it is high time we concluded this long article. When the first Common-Law Report was presented to the Duke of Wellington, his only remark is said to have been—“Too much of it,—too much of it,—a d——d deal too much of it.” We fear a remark of the same tenor may escape some of our readers, owing to the prolixity of our lucubrations. But the importance of the subject must form our apology. The dearness and delay of justice are national grievances of long standing. It appears, from Whitlocke’s Memorials, Oliver Cromwell presented a petition to the Collective Wisdom of his day, praying that “a speedy consideration might be had of the great oppressions, by reason of the multiplicity of unnecessary laws, with their intricacies and delays, which tend to the profit of some particular men, but much to the expence and damage of the whole.” The Lord Protector, later in life, triumphed over every difficulty; but the lawyers gave him most trouble, and he was constrained at last to acknowledge they were too many for him.

*∗* The subjoined statements are principally abstracted from Returns to Parliament in the session of 1830 and 1831, and will confirm and illustrate the preceding exposition of our judicial administration. In some of the documents we have left out the shillings and pence to save room, which makes trifling inaccuracies in the summing up.

JUDGES’ SALARIES.

SALARYand ALLOWANCESreceived, in the Year 1792, by each of the JUDGESof the Exchequer, King’s Bench, and Court of Common Pleas; and the Salary and Allowances paid in 1829.

1792.

1829.

£

£

In addition to these salaries, the second judge of the King’s Bench receives an ancient fee of £10 per term, or £40 per annum, in respect of his labour in giving charge to the grand jury, and pronouncing judgment against malefactors; payable out of the fines, forfeitures, penalties, and compositions in the Court of King’s Bench.

The Chief Baron and Barons of the Court of Exchequer receive, in addition to the above salaries, an annual allowance of £17 : 10 : 8 for stationery, payable, by the Usher of the Exchequer, out of annual grants by parliament.

KING’S BENCH:

Chief Justice

4,000

10,000

Puisne Judges, each

2,400

5,500

COMMON PLEAS:

Chief Justice

3,500

8,000

Puisne Judges, each

2,400

5,500

EXCHEQUER:

Chief Baron

3,500

7,000

Barons, each

2,400

5,500

In addition to the Salaries and Allowances paid in 1792, the Judges of the several Courts were remunerated by Fees, the amount of which, received by each, is not known. The Judges derive no emolument from such source at present.

COURT OF CHANCERY.

RETURNof the Total Amount of the Effects of the Suitors of the Court of Chancery, in the Years 1756 to 1829 inclusive.

£

s.

d.

In the year 1756 the total amount of suitors’s effects was

2,864,975

16

1

—— 1766

4,019,004

19

4

—— 1776

6,602,229

8

6

—— 1786

8,848,535

7

11

—— 1796

14,550,397

2

0

—— 1806

21,922,754

12

8

—— 1816

31,953,890

9

5

—— 1818

33,534,520

6

10

—— 1819

32,848,815

13

4

—— 1820

33,258,897

17

11

—— 1821

34,693,735

10

10

—— 1822

35,683,034

5

6

—— 1823

36,988,481

19

9

—— 1824

37,635,924

13

0

—— 1825

38,224,834

18

4

—— 1826

38,223,602

0

1

—— 1827

38,060,055

4

1

—— 1828

38,266,438

9

10

—— 1829

38,386,135

19

5

AN ACCOUNTof the several Sums of Money received by the PURSE-BEARERto the Lord Chancellor, during Three Years, commencing May 1st, 1827; distinguishing the Amount received from Public Seals and from Private Seals.

Years.

Total.

Public Seals.

Private Seals.

£

£

£

1828

3604

481

3123

1829

3766

320

3445

1830

4081

396

3685

In the third column are included the receipt and docquet fees, which are paid whether the instrument is sealed at public or private seal.

There were sealed, at private seal, from 1st May, 1827, to 30th April, 1828, 3704 writs, at 3s. 3d., amounting to £601 : 18; from 1st May, 1828, to 30th April, 1829, 4937 writs, at 3s. 3d., amounting to £802 : 5 : 3; and from 1st May, 1829, to 30th April, 1830, 4861 writs, at 3s. 3d., amounting to £789 : 18 : 3. This sum of 3s. 3d. is thus appropriated:—the Lord Chancellor, 2s.; sixpenny-writ duty, 6d.; chaff-wax, 3d.; sealer, 3d.; porter, 3d.

MASTERS IN CHANCERY.

AN ACCOUNTof the Sums of Money received by Master STRATFORDand his Clerks, from his Office, in one Year, ending in 1830.—Parl. Paper, No. 361, Session 1830.

£

£

The Master:

For copies of papers and other proceedings, including particulars

2071

Warrants

676

Swearing affidavits, answers, and examinations

48

Reports and certificates upon orders made upon petitions or motions

200

Reports and certificates made upon hearing causes

184

Sales and other matters

84

3265

The Chief Clerk:

On copies of reports, &c.

118

On swearing affidavits, &c.

6

On reports and certificates made upon petitions or motions

60

On reports and certificates on hearing causes

46

Sales and other matters

258

Gratuities

583

1074

The Copying Clerk:

For copies

431

For transcripts and ingrossments

17

448

Total

£4789

The master’s salary, received quarterly from the Exchequer, is £87 : 6 per annum; and for robe-money, from the Hanaper-office, £6 : 8 : 10 per annum.

The master’s salary, received from the suitors’ fund, in the Accountant-General’s Office, half-yearly, is £600 per annum.

The clerks have no salaries; they are remunerated solely by fees, partly belonging officially to the chief clerk, and partly by a participation of the master’s fees, regulated by usage or particular agreement between him and his clerks; and varying in different offices.

*∗* Returns were made, to the House of Commons, of the emoluments of the other Masters in Chancery; but, as the sources whence they arise and their amount are similar to Master Stratford’s, we omit them, to save room.

AN ACCOUNTof the Sums paid in the Year 1829, and the Total Sums paid from 1826, for COMPENSATIONSfor LOSSof FEES,under Authority of 6 Geo. IV. c. 96, intituled, “An Act for preventing frivolous Writs of Error.”

Total, from

1829.

1826.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

We should like to be informed what course the cursitors intend to pursue, in consequence of the alterations made by the act of 1830, for the more effectual Administration of Justice in England and Wales. By that act, the cursitorial department of Wales is annexed to the four cursitors for London and Middlesex. But surely these gentlemen, who, for several years, have been receiving an annual compensation for the losses sustained by the Writ of Error Act, will make some return to the public from the additional gains accruing to them from the new arrangement.

The Hon. Thomas Kenyon, filacer, exigenter, and clerk of the outlawries in the Court of King’s Bench

5,463

7

0

16,590

8

8

Henry Edgell, Esq. clerk of the errors in the Exchequer Chamber

2,521

16

111/2

8,339

19

5

Cursitors for London and Middlesex:

Robert Talbot, Esq.

1,176

11

51/2

3,629

18

53/4

Hon. William Henry John Scott

1,176

11

51/2

3,629

18

53/4

William Villiers Surtees, Esq.

1,176

11

51/2

3,629

18

53/4

Richard Wilson, Esq.

1,176

11

51/2

3,629

18

53/4

Ushers of the Court of Exchequer:

Richard Grey }

15

1

6

50

16

6

John Morris }

William Broadhurst }

Lewis Williams }

William Stewart Rose, Esq. clerk of the pleas of the Court of Exchequer

65

4

0

100

4

0

£12,771

15

31/2

£39,601

2

6

Filacer, exigenter, and clerk of the outlawries in the Court of King’s Bench, appointed by the Lord Chief Justice.

Clerk of the errors in the Exchequer Chambers, appointed by the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

Cursitors for London and Middlesex, appointed by the Lord Chancellor.

Ushers of the Court of Exchequer, appointed by the Chief Usher, who holds his office in fee, under grant from the Crown, temp. Henry II.

Clerk of the Pleas of the Court of Exchequer, appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

Number of Persons committed for Debt to the several Prisons of the Metropolis in the Year 1827, and the Sums for which they were committed.—Parl. Paper, No. 76, Session 1828.

For sums above £100.

For sums between £50 & £100.

For sums between £50 & 20.

For sums under £20.

In custody

Total.

Jan. 1, 1828.

King’s Bench Prison

474

354

550

213

1591

674

Fleet Prison

206

141

223

113

683

253

Whitecross-street Prison

206

273

816

600

1893

378

Marshalsea Prison

20

30

166

414

630

102

Horsemonger-lane Prison

57

58

134

923

1172

105

Total

963

856

1889

2263

5969

1512

*∗* From Parl. paper, No. 632, Sess. 1830, it appears 1563 persons were committed to Whitecross-street prison for various terms from one to ten days; the total amount of their debts was £2,071 : 10 : 2; the amount of their costs £746 : 6 : 6.

Number of Persons DISCHARGED FROM PRISONunder the Acts for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors since the constitution of the present Court in 1820; and the Number who have been ordered to be DETAINED IN CUSTODYfor contravening the provisions of the Acts for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors.

Ordered to be Discharged Forthwith.

Ordered to be Discharged at some future Period.

In the Year

In London.

On Circuit.

Before Justices.

TOTAL.

In London.

On Circuit.

Before Justices.

TOTAL.

TOTAL.

1820

830

—

1,495

2,325

61

—

96

245

2,482

1821

2,347

—

2,516

4,863

219

—

208

427

5,290

1822

2,074

—

2,499

4,573

161

—

221

382

4,155

1823

1,811

—

2,047

3,858

181

—

202

383

4,241

1824

1,745

318

1,255

3,318

142

18

115

275

3,593

1825

1,955

1,342

73

3,370

126

161

8

295

3,665

1826

2,429

1,865

89

4,383

110

183

5

298

4,681

1827

1,929

1,988

89

4,006

90

128

10

228

4,234

1828

1,913

1,459

112

3,475

127

131

6

264

3,739

1829

2,067

1,580

100

3,747

158

152

10

320

4,067

1830

2,056

1,823

111

3,990

189

191

9

389

4,379

1831 to June 30th

781

749

90

1,620

107

28

2

137

1,757

43,528

3,652

47,083

The commissioners in the remarks appended to this return, observe that “they have not the means of ascertaining the number of Insolvent Debtors who have paid dividends,” but they “communicate the subjoined statements which may perhaps assist, in some measure, towards the subject under inquiry:

“Total number of cases in which assignees have accepted and taken their appointments

10,271

“Total of Assignees to whom money has been paid out of Court

1,783

“N.B. Of 10,271 assignees, 8,492 have filed no accounts. Of the accounts filed there are 932, in which a balance in hand appears arising from monies not received out of Court.”—Parl. Pap. No. 141, Sess. 1831.

We believe the plain English of the above is that 47,083 persons have passed through the Insolvent and Circuit Courts; that the average expense of the discharge of each is £256; that their debts together amount to at least four millions, and that the dividend received by the creditors on this immense sum was about ONE FARTHING IN THE POUND. What an admirable system of Debtor Laws for this commercial, manufacturing, and trading community!!!

We are aware this statement is not strictly accurate, but it is an approximation to the truth. There are no means of ascertaining precisely the average dividend realized from the estates of insolvents, since there are no official returns of the sums received by assignees out of court, nor of the amount derived from the property of insolvents acquired subsequently to their discharge. But it is well known the Insolvent Debtors’ Act has degenerated into little more than a series of unprofitable forms and ceremonies; the getting-up of the schedule is such that very little accrues to the creditor from the assets; and the short imprisonment of the debtor operates neither as disgrace nor improvement. The act certainly empties the gaols; but if this be an advantage it would be much better policy never to fill them, rather than resort to a preventive which does not correct the defaulter, and only renders him a worse member of society. Offers of compromise are not so frequent in consequence of the act; and Sir Peter Laurie stated to a parliamentary committee, that tradesmen charge ten per cent. more for their commodities on account of the facilities it afforded to the escape of debtors. This is a pretty heavy tax on the paying part of the community—for those who do pay must make up for the loss sustained by those who do not—tending greatly to lessen consumption, and consequently the returns and profits of vendors.

Tradesmen are mostly inclined to severer laws towards debtors; they appear not to be aware that all laws would become unnecessary by a simultaneous decline in the custom of credit. That credit can be avoided entirely, even in retail trade, we do not believe: this is the opinion of the best informed merchants and tradesmen of the metropolis; persons of the greatest respectability often take the longest credit, to the great profit of their domestics: but what we reprobate is its universal practice; its not being the exception but the rule of trade—and then having recourse to oppressive and inefficient laws to supply the place of individual prudence.

PROGRESS OF THE PUBLIC DEBT AND TAXES.

THE annual income of a nation consists of the united produce of its agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. Taxes are a certain proportion of the annual income levied for the public service. In other words, they are a certain proportion of the income of the labourer, the farmer, the merchant, and manufacturer, abstracted for the use of the government. The portion of income the different classes can appropriate to this purpose, without creating national poverty and misery, is limited. If taxation be carried beyond this limit, the necessaries of life of the labouring classes will be abridged, the profits of trade and agriculture will be so far reduced, that capital will diminish, or cease to be employed, or transferred to countries where it will be more productive. England, in the privations of the people—the protracted stagnation of industry, only interrupted by transitory gleams of prosperity—the embarrassments of the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing classes—the emigration of capital—and the inability of the farmer, unaided by the artificial high prices produced by corn-laws, to cultivate the soil—exhibits all the evils of a country suffering from the pressure of overwhelming taxation.

Some, indeed, contend that taxation has no share in producing these calamities. The fallacy of this will easily appear. Taxation being a certain portion of the income of every individual, the evils it produces will be obvious, by considering the different effects produced by this portion of the annual income remaining in the hands of individuals, and being paid to government. In the former case, the income of every individual would be increased, the labourer and artizan would have a greater command over the necessaries of life; the profits of the farmer, merchant, and manufacturer augmented; their capital increased, consequently commerce and the means of creating employment extended. But this is not all; supposing public burthens reduced, there would be fewer placemen, pensioners, collectors of taxes, soldiers and sailors to be supported. These classes might be returned to the plough or the loom, and occupied in the pursuits of commerce and the cultivation of the earth. There would be no want of capital for these undertakings. The abolition of taxes would create capital. In short, the general effect of a reduction of taxes is this: the power of production and consumption, or, in other words, the quantity of employment and the means of subsistence are augmented.

It is a favorite dogma with some, especially those who live on the public, that taxes return to those from whom they are collected; which is about as good as the defence of a housebreaker, who, convicted of carrying off a merchant’s property, should plead he did him no injury, for the money would be returned to him in purchasing the commodities he dealt in. But it may be asked of those who maintain this position, in what manner are the taxes returned? Certainly, taxes are paid in money; this money is again paid to the servants of government; these again pay it to the cultivator of the soil and manufacturer; and in this manner, it may be said, that taxes return to those from whom they were collected. But on this latter part of the operation it must be observed, that before either the cultivator or manufacturer can re-possess himself of his portion of the taxes, he must part with a certain quantity of his commodities in exchange; so that tax-paying revolves itself at last into the industrious giving a certain portion of their produce for the maintenance of government.

Here is the true source of the privations and embarrassments of the country. The portion of every man’s produce levied for the support of government, of pensions, placemen, sinecurists, and standing armies, has invaded the funds necessary for the comfortable subsistence of the labourer, and for carrying on the trade, commerce, and agriculture of the kingdom.

Having alluded to the general effect of taxation, let us consider those measures by which the present enormous load of debt and taxes has been incurred. The principles on which government has been conducted have not varied since the Revolution of 1688 to the present time. The wars waged have generally commenced for trivial and unattainable objects,—and these objects have generally not been attained; under pretence of guarding against distant and improbable dangers, the country has been involved in present and imminent ones; passion and pride, rather than any views of national advantage, have been the actuating principles of government; and as they engaged in war rashly, they persevered in it obstinately, and rejected more favourable terms of pacification than they were afterwards under the necessity of accepting. In short, our wars have been wars of ambition and oligarchical selfishness, of pride, folly, and despotism, originating in, and carried on by, the corrupt state of the representation. Let us endeavour to give some idea of the cost of these parliamentary wars from the Revolution, as evinced by the increase of taxation and the National Debt.

WILLIAM THE THIRD’S REIGN, FROM 1688 TO 1702.

The public income at the Revolution amounted to £2,001,855. At the death of William it had increased to £3,895,205, being nearly doubled. This argumentation arose from various new duties; especially the excise on salt, the distillery, and the malt-tax. The other sources of revenue were the customs, land-tax, poll-taxes, a tax on births, marriages, and burials, hearth-money, the post-office, and other smaller duties. The total sums raised by taxes and by loans, during this reign, were as follow;

Customs

£13,296,833

14

6

Excise

13,649,328

0

51/2

Land-taxes

19,174,059

8

31/2

Polls

2,557,649

7

71/4

Burials, births, marriages, and bachelors, &c.

275,517

18

1

Various articles, including permanent loans and temporary loans unpaid

23,093,980

16

71/2

£72,047,369

5

63/4

Of the fourteen years of this reign, nearly ten were years of war. The military and naval expenses amounted to £44,847,382, being more than one-half the whole expenditure of government. After all the blood and treasure expended by William, his ambition and revenge remained unsatisfied; and the ostensible object of the war, the curbing the ambition of Louis XIV. unattained. Speaking of the conclusion of this contest at the treaty of Ryswick, Smollett observes,—“Such was the issue of a long and bloody war, which had drained England of her wealth and people, almost entirely ruined her commerce, debauched her morals by encouraging venality and corruption, and entailed upon her the curse of foreign connexions, as well as a national debt, which was gradually increased to an intolerable burthen.”—Continuation of Hume, vol. i. p. 330.

The funding system, and the mode of raising money by lotteries and exchequer-bills, commenced in this reign.

QUEEN ANNE’S REIGN, FROM 1701 TO 1714.

The revenue, at the commencement of this reign, amounted to £3,195,205. At the period of the union with Scotland, in 1709, the revenue of England amounted to £5,691,803. The sums received into the Exchequer, during twelve years and three-quarters, were—

Customs

£15,113,811

Excise

20,850,909

Land-tax

12,285,909

Miscellaneous, including Post-Office, Stamps, and smaller loans of the Revenue

5,261,346

Amount of Loans

59,853,154

Total

£122,373,531

Of the thirteen years of this reign, twelve were years of war. The military and naval expenses amounted to £58,560,581. The object of Queen Anne’s wars, like those of her predecessor, purely continental. They were terminated by the disgraceful treaty of Utrecht, in 1712, when our allies were ignominiously abandoned. The peace establishment of this period is estimated at £1,965,605.

GEORGE THE FIRST’S REIGN, FROM 1714 TO 1727.

On the death of Queen Anne, the National Debt amounted to £52,145,363; but though her successor enjoyed a period of uninterrupted tranquillity, no effort appears to have been made to reduce it. On the 31st of December, 1727, the principal amounted to £52,092,235; the interest to £2,219,551. The aggregate sum which passed into the Exchequer of George I., during a reign of twelve years, three months, and ten days, amounted to £79,832,160. The revenue at the time of his death amounted to £4,162,643.

GEORGE THE SECOND’S REIGN, FROM 1727 TO 1760.

The prosperous state of the country, for the first twelve years of profound peace at the commencement of this reign, might have admitted of a considerable reduction of the debt, had not Sir Robert Walpole, a profligate statesman, been minister. Instead of expending the surplus revenue in the liquidation of the debt, it was employed in parliamentary corruption. During ten years, from 1707 to 1717, secret service money amounted only to £337,960. From 1731 to 1741 it cost the nation £1,453,400. This augmentation is ascribed to the increased pay Sir Robert gave to the honourable members for their votes and speeches in support of his administration. The whole of the debt paid off in this long peace, amounted only to £5,137,612, the interest of which was £253,516.

The wars of George II. commenced in 1739, and were concluded at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. The total expense of these contests is estimated, by Dr. Colquhoun, at £46,418,680. The nation gained nothing by all this expenditure of treasure. The war originally arose with Spain: that nation claiming the right of searching all English vessels navigating the American seas. This subject, which formed the ground of the war, was never mentioned at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle no more than the right of search, which originated the war with the United States of America, was mentioned at the treaty of Ghent. The only advantage the English gained was the glory of placing Maria Theresa, grand duchess of Tuscany, on the throne of Germany, in opposition to the King of Prussia.

In the interval of peace, to the commencement of war in 1755, there was a trifling reduction of the debt to the amount of £3,721,472, and the interest of the capital was reduced from 4 to 3 per cent.

The expense of the second war, called the seven years’ war, amounted to £111,271,996. This contest first commenced about the respective boundaries of the French and English in the deserts of Canada. It has been called the war of catskins—the possession of a few furs being really the object which involved the two countries in hostilities. On this frivolous pretext commenced a war then unexampled in magnitude and expense; its ravages extended to Europe, and even to the other side of the globe in the East Indies. It is worthy of remark, too, that on the continent, George II. took the part diametrically opposite to the part he had taken in the former contest. The war of 1740 was for the humiliation of the King of Prussia; the war of 1755 for his aggrandizement!

It will be proper to notice particularly the state of the debt, finances, and peace establishment at the conclusion of this reign. They are thus stated by Dr. Colquhoun:—

Public Revenue.

Peace Establishment.

Customs

£1,985,376

Civil List

£836,000

Excise

3,877,349

Navy

900,000

Stamps

263,207

Army

900,000

Land-tax, (deducting deficiencies)

Ordnance

80,000

1,737,608

Miscellaneous

50,000

Miscellaneous

650,000

Total

£8,523,540

£2,766,000

Principal.

Interest.

Debt at the conclusion of the peace of 1762

£146,682,843

£4,840,821

GEORGE THE THIRD’S REIGN, FROM 1760 to 1820.

Mr. COKE, of Norfolk, when he characterized this monarch’s reign as the most sanguinary and disastrous of the English annals, was not far from the truth. In the course of it were three principal wars: the American war, the revolutionary war, and the war of 1815. All these wars were waged against human liberty and happiness; and the two last commenced on a principle which we would fain hope is now disclaimed by every government in Europe—namely, the right of one nation to interfere with another in its domestic affairs. We will state the cost of each, as shown in the sums raised by taxes and loans.

AMERICAN WAR.

Years.

Revenue.

Loan.

1775

£10,138,061

1776

10,265,405

£2,000,000

1777

10,604,013

5,500,000

1778

10,732,405

6,000,000

1779

11,192,141

7,000,000

1780

12,255,214

12,000,000

1781

12,454,936

12,000,000

1782

12,593,297

13,500,000

1783

11,962,718

12,000,000

1784

12,905,519

12,879,341

1785

14,871,520

10,990,651

£142,975,229

£93,869,992

The American war terminated in 1783; but as the loans of the two following years were raised to wind up the expenses of that struggle, it is proper they should be included. The total expense of the American war will stand thus:—

Taxes

£142,975,229

Loans

93,869,992

Advances by the Bank of England

110,000

Advances by the East-India Company

3,200,000

Increase in the unfunded Debt

5,170,273

£242,265,494

Deduct expense of a peace-establishment for eleven years, as it stood in 1794

£113,142,403

Net cost of the American war

£129,123,091

This, then, is the sum expended by the Boroughmongers in an attempt to enslave the colonies. George III. boasted that he was the last man in his dominions to subscribe to the peace with America: he left his people burthened with a debt of one hundred and thirty millions, as the price of the obstinacy of one man, and an abortive attempt to impose on a brave people the tyrannical principle of taxation without representation.

The second war was still more atrocious than the first; it was a war not merely against liberty, but the principles of liberty; it was a barbarous and gigantic effort of the privileged orders to prevent the amelioration of society, and to render mankind the eternal victims of ecclesiastic and aristocratic oppression. As the war of 1793 was more diabolical in its objects than the contest with America, so we should say, had its calamities only extended to its authors, has it been more justly ruinous in its consequences. Let us endeavour to estimate the cost of this liberticide and Vandal contest. We shall state the sums raised by taxes, and the debt contracted each year from its commencement, and then deduct the probable expenditure of the country, had no such war existed.

The account of sums raised by taxes is taken from Dr. Hamilton’s Inquiry into the National Debt, p. 203, third edition. The amount of debt contracted, including navy and exchequer bills funded, is also taken from the same writer, p. 320. The short peace of Amiens, and the interval betwixt the exile and return of Bonaparte from Elba, may be considered rather a suspension of hostilities than a period of peace; therefore we have considered it as one uninterrupted war from 1793 to 1815, having the same objects—the maintenance of the usurpations of the Clergy and Aristocracy.

Years.

Taxes.

Loans.

£

£

1793

17,656,418

25,926,526

1794

17,170,400

———

1795

17,308,411

51,705,698

1796

17,858,454

56,945,566

1797

18,737,760

25,350,000

1798

20,654,650

35,624,250

1799

30,202,915

21,875,000

1800

35,229,968

29,045,000

1801

33,896,464

44,816,250

1802

35,415,296

41,489,438

1803

37,240,213

16,000,000

1804

37,677,063

18,200,000

1805

45,359,442

39,543,124

1806

49,659,281

29,880,000

1807

53,304,254

18,373,200

1808

58,390,255

13,693,254

1809

61,538,207

21,278,122

1810

63,405,294

19,811,108

1811

66,681,366

29,244,711

1812

64,763,870

40,743,031

1813

63,169,845

54,780,324

1814

66,925,835

63,645,930

1815

69,684,192

70,888,402

£952,929,653

£764,859,036

After making some deductions on account of the operations of the loyalty loan, and the transfer of annuities, the total debt contracted from 1793 to 1815, amounts to £762,537,443. If to this sum be added the increase in the unfunded debt during that period, and the additional sums raised by taxes in consequence of hostilities, we shall have the total expenditure, owing to the French war, as follows:—

The unfunded debt in 1793

£14,902,635

The unfunded debt in 1815

65,096,695 increase as above.—Dr. Hamilton’s Inquiry, p. 338.

This sum is obtained by deducting, from the total amount of taxes during the war, the taxes which would have been raised had the expenditure of 1793 continued.

Debt contracted from 1793 to 1815

£762,537,445

Increase in the unfunded debt, from 1793 to 1815

50,194,060

War-taxes from 1793 to 1815

614,488,459

Total expense of the French war

£1,427,219,964

Two objections may be made to the fairness of this statement. First, the amount of debt redeemed during the war, by the operation of the Sinking Fund, ought to be deducted from the amount of debt contracted. The second objection arises from the mode of negotiating loans. In each loan, the capital funded exceeds the sum actually advanced to government. In some loans, government acknowledges itself debtor £100, when only from £54 to £60 is actually received. Hence it follows that, from the debt contracted since 1793, ought to be deducted the difference betwixt that debt and the sums which passed into the Exchequer.

After admitting deductions from the charges of the war on this account, and the operation of the sinking fund, we must be allowed to make a trifling addition. The loans raised for Ireland, guaranteed by Britain, amounted to £103,032,750: the sums actually received on account of these loans to £64,750,000. The revenue of Ireland, in 1791, amounted to £1,190,684. Owing to the increase of the Irish revenue during the war, the war-taxes of Ireland cannot be estimated at less than £80,000,000. After these deductions and additions the account will stand thus:—

Sums raised on account of loans

£506,081,267

Sums raised on account of Irish loans

64,750,000

War-taxes in England

614,488,459

War-taxes in Ireland

80,000,000

Increase in the unfunded debt

50,194,060

1,255,513,786

Deduct sums paid to the Commissioners for the reduction of the debt

173,309,383

Total

£1,082,204,403

The statement is now divested of every extraneous item, and, reducing it to its lowest amount, one thousand and eighty-two millions two hundred and four thousand four hundred and three pounds remains as the sum actually received and expended on account of the war with France, from 1793 to 1815. On an average of the twenty-two years, from 1793 to 1815, it is a war expenditure of nearly fifty millions; and this is the sum which the tax-ridden, law-ridden, priest-ridden, deluded people of England yearly contributed out of the produce of their industry, agriculture, and commerce, to prevent an independent state altering the form and meliorating the abuses of its government.

Can we wonder, after the tremendous sacrifice in pursuit of this unrighteous object, at the terrible calamities with which the country is afflicted? Can we wonder at our exhausted, impoverished, and embarrassed condition? More than one hundred millions expended in an abortive attempt to enslave the American colonies; more than one thousand millions expended to re-establish feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny in France. This forms the financial history of the public debt and taxes—of the ELEVEN HUNDRED MILLIONSexpended in the wars of despotism. And what has been the result of this lavish waste of national resources? The answer is—the three immortal days of Paris—the triumph of Belgium—the regeneration of Europe—and the complete—the full—the glorious establishment of those very principles the English Aristocracy vainly sought to exterminate.

When we look back to the history of the last century—the wars of madness, ambition, and tyranny which have been waged; when we reflect on the millions expended in these wars—the fruits of unexampled industry, skill, and enterprise; when we think of our present situation—the piercing privations of the bulk of the community—the discontent and disunion among all classes—the abuses pervading every department of our social and general administration—Ireland on the point of rebellion or separation;—when we think, we repeat, on these things, and contrast them with the situation of glory and happiness England might have attained under a wise and honest government, administering her exhaustless resources in the promotion of the arts of peace, instead of slaughter, bondage, and devastation; we feel not less indignant at the wickedness of our rulers than the apathy which has so long tolerated their folly and their crimes.

EXPOSITION OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

ALTHOUGH the feudal system was a barbarous social institution, it possessed the advantage of entailing on the fomenters of war its unavoidable cost and calamities. The old barons used to arm themselves and vassals at their own expense, and support them during the contest. There was then no standing army nor permanent revenue,—those who tilled the land fought the battles of the country. Under such a system, wars could neither be very long in their duration, nor very remote in their objects. Foreign expeditions suited as little to the national resources as the avocations of the people. The only time that could be spared to settle public quarrels was between seed-time and harvest, and the only treasure they could be provided with before-hand was the surplus produce of the preceding year. Hence, wars were generally either carried on languidly, or were of short duration. Their operations were frequently interrupted by truces, and sometimes discontinued through mere feebleness. A warlike leader was often stopped short in his victorious career, either from the want of resources, or the necessity of allowing his followers to return home to provide subsistence for the following season.

The state of the sovereign was as little favourable to protracted contests as the condition of his lieges. His revenue was derived partly from lands reserved as a royal demesne, and partly from feudal casualties, and afforded a slender provision for maintaining the royal dignity, and defraying the ordinary expenses of government, but was altogether inadequate to the support of numerous and permanent armies. Supplies from the people were obtained to a certain extent; but the people neither possessed the means, nor, happily, had acquired the habit of granting liberal supplies. Princes, under any emergency, real or supposed, or actuated by any scheme of ambition, had recourse either to borrowing or pawning. The loans which they raised were partly compulsory, and, as the repayment was ill secured, the rate of interest was high. Sometimes the jewels of the crown were pledged, and sometimes the crown-lands were mortgaged. In this manner, the revenues of most of the powers of Europe were anticipated and encumbered.

A new state of society introduced a new mode of supporting war. Instead of borrowing on their own credit, sovereigns learnt to borrow on the credit of posterity. The issue of war no longer depended on a single battle or successful irruption, but on the length of the public purse. It was not money, however, that formed the sinews of war, but credit. Credit superseded money, and modern policy found out the expedient of supporting wars for temporary objects, and entailing the burthen of them on future generations. This system possessed too many facilities to be abandoned, or not to be carried to the utmost extent of which it was capable. And, accordingly, we find wherever the system of borrowing and funding has been introduced, it has gone on with an accelerated velocity till the payment of the principal became quite chimerical, and governments were obliged to compound with their creditors for the interest.

The debt of this country, which was inconsiderable at the Revolution, has increased, in less than a century and a half, to its present magnitude. The increase during every reign, except the pacific reigns of George I. and George IV. has been greater than the preceding. The increase, during every war, has been greater than during the preceding. The increase, during the latter period of every war, has been greater than during the earlier period. The increase, by every hostile interference or warlike demonstration, has been greater than administration held forth when the measure was undertaken. The part of the Debt paid off, during peace, has borne a small proportion to that contracted by the preceding war.

These are the general characteristics which have marked the progress of the funding system: it has been the national spendthrift vice that has operated on the public welfare like the addiction to some baneful passion in an individual; indulgence augmented appetite, till, at length, the malady has reached a state of virulence which precludes all hope of cure or alleviation. As to the liquidation of the debt, that is an idea we believe not a single person to entertain; all that the most reasonable look forward to is postponement, until such a crisis in public affairs occurs, as will demonstrate to all parties the expediency of coming to terms—of a compromise, for mutual safety and advantage. We are now in the seventeenth year of peace, and, comparatively, no portion of the debt has been redeemed by actual payment; the reduction in the annual charge has been chiefly effected by the conversion of stocks of a high into those of a lower denomination,—a mode of procedure accompanied with serious suffering to particular classes of annuitants, and accomplished by ministerial combinations in the money-market, for artificially forcing up the prices of stocks, hardly justifiable. Before, however, adverting particularly to the redemption of the debt, let us give a few explanations of the funds and government paper.

By the term Fund is usually meant a real sum of money or store of treasure, reserved for a specific purpose, but so far as the term is applicable to the debt of England, it is purely an abstraction. In lieu of calling the Debt the Funds, it is more correct to call it the Public Annuities or the National Annuities. The obligation to pay a perpetual annuity of an enormous amount is, in fact, all that remains of that vast mass of capital swallowed up and lost under the donomination of the Debt, and which has been dissipated in the ruinous foreign wars and domestic profusion detailed in the last and preceding chapters.

The Sinking Fund—of which we shall, by and by, give a curious history—means a sum of money set apart for the purpose of discharging the public debt. Generally speaking, we mean, by the Funds, those large sums which have been lent to government, the record of which is preserved in the books of the Bank of England, and for which the lenders, or their assigns, receive interest from the public revenue. The term Stock is used nearly in the same sense; but is more strictly applicable to the different branches of the Debt, bearing different or the same rate of interest; as the 3 per Cents Reduced, or the 31/2 per Cents, and which together constitute the aggregate public debt. It is, also, applied to the sums which form the capital of the Bank, the East-India Company, the South-Sea Company, and other public companies, the proprietors of which are entitled to a share of their respective profits.

Although the public creditor cannot demand payment of the capital debt, the mode of transferring it, even in small sums, is so conveniently arranged, and the dividends so regularly paid, that it is considered an eligible property. The value of the Funds is liable to considerable fluctuation. It depends chiefly on the proportion between the interest they bear and the profit which may be obtained by applying capital to other purposes. It is influenced by the plenty or scarcity of money; and it is impaired by any event which threatens the safety or weakens the credit of government. It is always much higher in time of peace than in time of war; and is affected by every event, and even by every report, in time of war, favourable or unfavourable. False reports are frequently raised by knavish people for that purpose.

In the early part of the Funding System, a separate account was kept of each loan, and of the tax imposed for payment of the interest. This method was afterwards found inconvenient, as the produce of some of the taxes fell short of the expected sum, while that of others exceeded it, and the multiplicity of funds produced confusion. To obviate this inconvenience, the different funds were united, and to each various branches of revenue were appropriated, charged with the payment of the annuities.

Besides the funded debt, is a large sum due by government under the name of the Unfunded Debt. It arises from any national expense, for which no provision has been made, or the provision has proved insufficient, or not forthcoming at the time wanted. During the latter periods of the late war, and for a few years following the return of peace, its amount considerably exceeded fifty millions; in 1815 it was at the highest, and had reached a sum greatly beyond the entire amount of the debt at the accession of George II., being more than 671/2 millions. Of late years the amount of the unfunded or floating debt has not exceeded half that sum. The form in which it mostly exists is that of Exchequer bills. These were first issued in 1696, and being intended as a temporary substitute for money during the recoinage at that period, some of them were so low as £10 and £5. There are none issued now under £100, and many of them are for £500, £1000, and still larger sums. They bear interest, at a certain rate per day, for £100; and, being distributed among those who are willing to advance their value, they pass from hand to hand like bank-notes. After a certain time, they are received in payment of taxes, or other moneys due to government; and the interest due on them, at the time, is allowed in the payment. The Bank often engages to receive them to a certain extent, and thereby promotes their circulation; and the daily transactions between the Bank and the Exchequer are chiefly carried on by bills of £1000 deposited in the Exchequer by the Bank, to the amount of the sums received by them on account of government. New Exchequer-bills are frequently issued in discharge of former ones; and they are often converted into funded debt, by granting capital, in some of the stocks, on certain terms, to such holders as are willing to accept it.

Besides Exchequer-bills there are Navy-bills issued from the Navy-Office, to answer any purpose in that branch of public expenditure; and they bear interest after a certain date, if not discharged. Ordnance-bills or Debentures are issued from the Ordnance-Office, for supplying deficiencies in that branch of expenditure. Victualling and Transport Bills are issued from the respective offices in the same manner. In addition to the principal branches of the unfunded debt, there is always a number of demands on the public for bills accepted by the Treasury, army charges, and miscellaneous services of various kinds. These are daily fluctuating, and their amount at any particular time cannot be easily ascertained.

Our next object will be to exhibit a brief statement of the progress of the Debt, and its successive augmentations and diminutions during different reigns and periods of war and peace, and the total amount at the present time.

SUMMARYof the Progress of the Debt from the Commencement of the Funding System, at the Revolution, to the 5th January, 1831.

Principal.

Interest.

Parliamentary Paper, No 35, Session 1819.

Annual Finance Accounts, p. 145, Session 1831.

National Debt at the Revolution of 1688

£ 664,263

£ 39,855

Increase during the reign of William III.

15,730,439

1,271,087

Debt at the accession of Queen Anne

16,394,702

1,310,942

Increase during the reign of Queen Anne

37,750,661

2,040,416

Debt at the accession of George I.

54,145,363

3,351,338

Decrease during the reign of George I.

2,053,128

1,133,807

Debt at the accession of George II.

52,092,235

2,217,551

Decrease during the peace

5,137,612

253,526

Debt at the commencement of the war of 1739

46,954,623

1,964,025

Increase during the war

31,338,689

1,096,979

Debt at the end of the war, 1748

£78,293,312

£3,061,004

Decrease during the peace

3,721,472

664,287

Debt at the commencement of the war, 1755

74,571,840

2,296,717

Increase during the war

72,111,004

2,444,104

Debt at the conclusion of the war, 1782

146,682,844

4,840,821

Decrease during the peace

10,739,793

364,000

Debt at the commencement of the American war, 1776

135,943,051

4,476,821

Increase during the war

102,541,819

3,843,084

Debt at the conclusion of the American war, 1783

238,484,870

8,319,905

Decrease during the peace

4,751,261

143,569

Debt at the establishment of the Sinking Fund, 1786

249,175,323

10,774,398

Increase from 1786 to 1793

5,131,112

94,577

Debt at commencement of the war of 1793

254,306,435

10,868,975

Increase to the peace of 1801

293,591,441

12,438,767

Debt at the peace of Amiens, 1801

547,897,876

23,307,742

Increase during the peace

81,569,653

3,735,883

Debt at the renewal of the war, in 1803

629,467,529

27,043,625

Increase during the war

491,940,407

16,940,954

Debt at the peace of 1815

1,121,407,936

43,984,579

Increase during the peace, to 1819

108,987,631

5,202,771

Debt, January 5, 1819

1,230,395,567

49,187,350

Deduct Debt redeemed by Sinking Fund

389,637,049

15,815,001

Net unredeemed Funded Debt of the United Kingdom, January 5, 1819

840,758,518

33,372,349

Net unredeemed Funded Debt of the United Kingdom, January 5, 1831

757,486,996

27,399,575

The unfunded debt, consisting of Exchequer-bills, amounted, January 5th, 1831, to £27,271,650, the interest of which, added to the interest of the funded debt, and the charges of management make the aggregate annual charge on account of the funded and unfunded debt, £28,349,754.

The diminution in the annual charge of the Debt, during the seventeen years of peace, may be ascribed, in a considerable proportion, to the reduction of the rate of interest on the 5 and 4 per cent. stocks, and on Exchequer-bills, and to the falling in of terminable annuities. A further diminution was effected in the session of 1830, by the conversion of the New Fours into a three-and-a-half per cent. stock. Altogether, the savings effected by these conversions amount to three millions and a half per annum; and the total reduction in the annuity, payable to the public creditor, amounts to four millions and a half. It appears, then, the diminution in the annual charge of the Debt has not been the result of ministerial economy and retrenchment, but of the internal state of the country—the redundancy of unemployed capital, which by lowering the rate of interest, and thereby enhancing the price of the funds, enabled government to offer to the holders of stock, of a high denomination, the option of being either paid off at par, or the acceptance of a lower rate of interest.

A desirable fact to ascertain is, the permanent charge entailed on the community by the war of 1793. From the extensive inquiries of the Finance Committee of 1828, this subject may be correctly illustrated. The annual augmentation of the permanent charge of the debt, between 1792 and 1816, was £22,744,360. To this must be added, the charge for the half-pay and pensions of the army and navy and civil retired allowances, called the dead weight, amounting to £5,363,640 per annum. We must, also, allow for the increase in salaries, in civil and colonial establishments, which were a consequence of hostilities. The results will be best expressed in a tabular form.

Permanent Burthen entailed on the Country by the Revolutionary War, from 1793 to 1815.

Interest of the debt contracted during the war

£22,744,360

The annual charge for half-pay, pensions, and superannuation allowances, amounting, in 1830, to £5,363,640; but consisting almost all of life annuities, may be computed equal to a permanent burthen of

2,250,000

Exclusive of this last item, the expenditure of the army and navy is greatly augmented since 1792, partly from the extension of our foreign possessions, and partly from the augmented military force kept up in Ireland and Great Britain.—On account of the war, say

2,500,000

Increase of Civil List, salaries and pensions

2,000,000

Other charges not enumerated

1,000,000

Total

£30,494,360

Such is the amount of the annual burthen entailed on the country by the last war of the Aristocracy. Yet the Oligarchy have the meanness to refuse £250,000 a year for the purposes of emigration. They have even the baseness to complain of the amount of poor-rates; they grumble to pay a few millions per annum for the relief of the aged, the infirm, and destitute, while they have wantonly burthened the community with a perpetual incumbrance of upwards of THIRTY MILLIONS per annum in war and devastation. Although they have thus mortgaged for ever national resources, happiness, and enjoyments, they aggravate the calamities they have created, by clinging with the grasp of death to enormous salaries, sinecures, and unmerited pensions. Can any one who has a head to think, or heart to feel, suppress indignation in contemplating this unexampled record of infatuation, injustice, and oppression?

PLANS FOR THE REDEMPTION OF THE DEBT.

Having given a general illustration of the nature of the Funds, and of the progress and present amount of the Debt, our next object will be shortly to notice the empyrical projects set on foot and countenanced by the Aristocracy for its redemption.

Although the Sinking Fund, established under the auspices of Mr. Pitt, was founded on an egregious misapprehension, yet, if we examine the subject attentively, we shall find that ministers had similar reasons for adhering to it that they had for adhering to any other branch of expenditure. First, the keeping up of a Sinking Fund was a pretext for keeping up taxation. Secondly, the management of the fund was a pretext for keeping up a certain amount of patronage, fees, and emoluments. Lastly, the Sinking Fund left a surplus sum at the disposal of ministers, ready to be applied to any casual object they might think expedient. They might employ it to subsidize foreign despots, to enter on new wars, or to supply deficiencies in the civil list, or any other department of expenditure. That the money was voted for other purposes formed no security that it would not be so applied; experience having shewn that ministers never hesitated to encroach on the Sinking Fund when it suited their necessities.

These, we apprehend, formed some of the reasons for maintaining the Sinking Fund, long after its fallacy had been demonstrated. Some reluctance, too, was no doubt felt to abandon a scheme of finance which had been panegyrized by many distinguished individuals; and, in fact, the history of the Sinking Fund is the most striking proof of the gullibility of our “great men,” that can any where be found; and it is chiefly for the purpose of illustrating the superlative abilities of hereditary legislators, that we are induced to devote any space to the exposition of such a barefaced subject.

Mr. Pitt’s plan of a Sinking Fund was, to set apart a portion of the surplus revenue, to accumulate by compound interest, and, after the expiration of a certain period, to apply the aggregate amount of interest and principal to the liquidation of the debt. To show the fallacy of this scheme, it will be necessary to premise a few explanations on the nature of interest.

Interest is of two kinds, either simple or compound; simple interest is that which is allowed for the use of the principal only; compound interest, called also interest on interest, is that which is allowed for the use of both principal and interest taken together. If money be lent at simple interest, suppose five per cent. per annum, it will double itself in twenty years; that is, if the interest be forborn that time, it will equal the principal. If money be laid out at compound interest, on the same terms, it will double itself in little more than fourteen years; so that the different rate at which money increases by simple and compound interest is very considerable. To illustrate this by an example, we will suppose £100 lent at five per cent. compound interest, for one hundred years. At the expiration of the first founteen years (omitting the fraction of a year) it would amount to £200; at the expiration of the second fourteen years to £400; at the expiration of the third fourteen years to £800; and so on, doubling itself at the expiration of every fourteen years, till, at the expiration of the one hundred years, it would have increased to the sum of £14,112; while, had the same money been put out at simple interest, it would have amounted only to £600; £500 being the interest of £100 for one hundred years, at five per cent. per annum.

Now, it is on this power of money to accumulate, at compound interest, that the Sinking Fund was established. Dr. Price, an expert arithmetician, calculated that a penny, or a farthing, we forget which, laid out at compound interest at the birth of Christ, would, at the time he wrote, have accumulated to several globes of gold, each globe as large as the earth. This was really prodigious; and the Doctor was so pleased with the result, that he thence conceived the idea of redeeming the national debt. He thought that if a sum of money, no matter how small, could only be once laid out at compound interest, it would, in a century or so, amount to a sum equal to the debt itself, and by means of which the debt might be discharged. All the Doctor wanted was TIME; money he did not want, except a farthing or a penny to begin with. Nothing could be more alluring; to pay off the debt by so small a sum as one penny, seemed, next to a sponge, the cheapest way imaginable.

Doctor Price communicated his scheme to Mr. Pitt, who appears to have been as much captivated as the Doctor with the discovery. This was in 1786; a time favourable for the experiment, the country being at peace with all the world, commerce and agriculture just recovering from the depression of the American contest, and, what was more, there was a surplus revenue of nearly a million to begin with. This sum, it was resolved, should be set apart to “fructify” by the miraculous powers of compound interest, agreeably to Dr. Price’s calculations. Commissioners were appointed to take charge of the sacred deposit, which, on no pretext, was to be violated: and thus did the Sinking Fund, which, like little David, was to bring down the Goliah of the debt, commence.

All at once, however, the people were seized with a strange panic; from entertaining the most gloomy apprehensions that the debt would never be paid, they began to fear it would be paid too soon; the globes of gold had so bewildered the public mind, that it was apprehended, from the sudden payment of the debt, the country would be overwhelmed with money and unemployed capital. To avert so dire a calamity, Mr. Pitt announced his intention to pay off £4,000,000, annually, and no more. Here the subject rested for some years, and we must beg leave to rest also. Having stated fairly the principle of the Sinking Fund, we must now expose its fallacy as applicable to the reduction of the debt. It is due, however, to Dr. Price to observe that there was nothing wrong in his principles, that the effect of compound interest was correctly as he had calculated, and that he was only wrong, like many other well-meaning theorists, in his application of them.

The first objection to the scheme of Dr. Price was the length of time that must elapse before it attained its object. Any plan for the reduction of the debt, founded on an adherence to a particular system of finance, the continuance of a certain amount of taxation, or the duration of peace, was hardly likely to be realized in practice. These were all liable to change; yet a permanency in them was necessary to complete the original plan of the Sinking Fund. The sum set apart was on no pretext to be violated; war might arise demanding additional sacrifices, the ability of the country to support taxation might decrease, or there might arise new chancellors of the exchequer with new schemes of finance, yet none of these were to interfere with the fund. That a plan depending on such contingencies should be realized appears highly improbable.

Waving, however, the objection as to time, we will suppose the plan in actual operation; we will suppose a million set apart to accumulate by compound interest, till it equal in amount the debt it is intended to liquidate. Now, it is obvious, if the debt be very large, the Sinking Fund must be very large also; but, supposing the debt amounts to 800 millions, one cannot conceive how any Sinking Fund, long before it equals in amount the debt it is intended to discharge, can be employed, or in whose hands it can be invested. Suppose the fund amounts only to 200 millions, how can any government employ such a sum? To whom are they to lend it? If they lend it to individuals they will want security, not only for the interest but the principal. But the only adequate security would be land; commercial security would hardly be satisfactory; and, it is obvious, if landed security alone be accepted, the advance of 200 millions would make government the mortgagees of nearly all the land in the kingdom. Such a state of things is chimerical, and, consequently, any Sinking Fund founded upon it must be chimerical also.

Instead of reducing the debt in this way, it is easy to conceive another far more economical and equally efficacious. Suppose the money forming the fund had not been raised in taxes, but left in the hands of the people to be employed in trade and manufactures; then suppose, at the expiration of a certain time, a sum is levied in taxes equal in amount to what the Fund would have attained; it is obvious, on this supposition, the debt would be equally reduced; but, in this case, there would be no Sinking Fund,—no commissioners,—no drawing money in shape of taxes, and returning it again in shape of loan;—in a word, there would be no delusion.

Though the principle here illustrated is that on which the Sinking Fund was founded, it is not that according to which it has been conducted. The money forming the fund has never, in fact, been lent to individuals, but employed in the purchase of stock at the market-price. The interest of stock so purchased has been added to the fund, and the total employed in the purchase of more stock; so that, by continually adding the interest of the debt redeemed to the principal of the fund, the effect has been the same as money accumulating at compound interest. If we compare this mode of employing a Sinking Fund with the former, we shall find that, if the first was chimerical, the second was useless, serving no object further than entailing an unnecessary expense on the public for management.

Suppose at the end of the year there is a surplus revenue of one million in the Exchequer; then, agreeably to the system pursued by our statesmen for many years, this million is paid to commissioners, who employ it in the purchase of stock, the stock so purchased and interest forming together the Sinking Fund. But, instead of the million being vested in Commissioners, suppose it is employed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the purchase of stock, where, it may be asked, would be the difference? In both cases the same amount of debt is redeemed, and the interest of the redeemed debt, being laid out in the purchase of more stock, accumulates in a compound ratio.

It is in the latter way the Americans have managed the reduction of their debt; and by which they have almost effected its extinction. When there is a surplus in the treasury, after defraying the charges of government, it is applied directly to pay off such portions of the debt as have been advertised to be paid off, and on which the interest afterwards ceases to be paid. Indeed, the principle is so plain that it is astonishing how it can ever have been misapprehended. It is obvious to the meanest capacity that, if a sum of money be owing, on which interest is payable, the gain is equal, whether we pay a part of our debt, or lend, to a third person, a sum of equal amount. Government, however, acted as if there were some substantive difference in the two cases, and they were supported for years in the egregious blunder by the “Collective Wisdom of the nation.”

We have not yet conducted the reader to the chief absurdity in the Sinking Fund. We have been all along supposing an actual surplus revenue, and considering the most advantageous mode of employing this surplus; but the fact is, there never was any such surplus, except during the first few years after the establishment of the fund. Every year government incurred debt, and this debt it attempted to pay by borrowed money; that is, it borrowed money of A to pay B, and in this consisted the GRAND BUBBLE of the Sinking Fund.

The late Professor Hamilton was the first writer who exposed the delusion of the Sinking Fund, and showed incontrovertibly that it was by the application of a surplus income only that the debt could be reduced. By persisting in the financial error we have endeavoured to explain, an enormous expense was incurred in the charges of management, and this was not the extent of the evil. The Sinking Fund was a principal cause of the augmentation of the debt. So enormous was the blunder, that no one felt any concern about the increase of this national incumbrance; whatever might be the amount, it was conceived the Fund would be adequate to its redemption. Hence public credit became as unlimited as public credulity. Men, in other respects enlightened, were deceived, and it would be easy to cite, from the speeches of distinguished living statesmen, the most extravagant encomiums of this great fiscal deception. But the subject has ceased to be of intense interest, and is chiefly valuable as an additional testimony of those epidemic aberrations to which human nature, in all ages, has been exposed. Even Lord Grenville has lived to discover and acknowledge he was deceived by the Sinking Fund; and this appears not the only error of the Pitt system, of which his lordship appears likely to survive the refutation.

We have still left the more lamentable part of the business unnoticed; the public has not only incurred a great loss from the charge of managing the Sinking Fund, but also from the additional sums borrowed for its maintenance.

In every loan the contractors have a profit at the expense of the public, and the greater the loan the greater their gain, and consequently the public loss. From 1793 the Sinking Fund was supported by borrowed money; besides the loan for the public service, an additional sum was raised for the Fund. Had there been no such Fund, the annual loans would have been less by the amount of the sum paid to the commissioners for the redemption of the Debt. The question then is, supposing the sum borrowed for the Fund, since 1793, be 250 millions, how much has the public lost by the operation?

Professor Hamilton answered this question. He ascertained the total loss to the public, by annually borrowing additional loans to support the delusion of the Fund, at THIRTY MILLIONS. The interest of thirty millions, at five per cent. per annum, is a million and a half. A million and a half then is the gain of the loan-contractors, and the annual loss entailed on the country by the farce of a Sinking Fund.

A question may be here asked,—If we had had no Sinking Fund, in what way were we to look forward to the redemption of the Debt? Our opinion is that, in case of a surplus revenue, it ought to have been applied to the purchase of stock at the market price, and a portion of the Debt cancelled equal to the amount of stock purchased. But we are not much in favour of government having a surplus revenue to dispose of, but think it better that taxes should be remitted to the amount of the surplus; or, in case the times are favorable to an effort for the reduction of the Debt, that it should be made by a direct assessment on the community expressly for the purpose. The advocates of a surplus revenue think it tends to support public credit; but the surest mode of supporting public credit is to contribute, in all possible ways, to promote public prosperity. Public credit obviously depends on the abundance of public wealth; in other words, on the ability of the community to support the burthens necessary to pay the interest, or ultimately the principal of the debt; and this ability is augmented, not by taking money from the people, but by leaving it in their pockets: it is not by tying up capital in a sort of mortmain, in the hands of government commissioners, that national wealth is amassed, but by leaving it to be employed in the extension of commerce, manufactures, and agriculture. Every shilling levied in taxes takes from productive capital, thereby impoverishing the country, and lessening the security of the public creditor.

In short, we trust the people have learnt wisdom by experience, and they see the policy of keeping every administration in a kind of strait waistcoat, neither suffering them to have a surplus revenue, nor surplus military force, nor surplus power of any kind, beyond the current exigencies of the state, at their disposal. Without this precaution, the country is sure to be drawn into some wanton and profligate crusade. All governments are prone to war, because it augments patronage and emolument, and gratifies pride, insolence, and ambition. If we have not been involved in hostilities ere this, it has been more owing to the protecting Ægis of our pecuniary embarrassments than the absence of inclination in our rulers. Can it be supposed we should not have been embroiled about Portugal, Turkey, France, Italy, or Belgium, had not the Exchequer been empty? A surplus revenue, however, under the pretext of a Sinking Fund, at all times supplies the needful, and it is easy to foresee, from past experience, were such a fund tolerated, it would be dissipated in domestic profusion or foreign aggression. As to really applying the fund to the redemption of the debt, it is mere delusion: the Oligarchy, notwithstanding the solemn ejaculations of many of them about preserving, inviolate, public faith, have got a more efficient receipt for reducing the Debt than paying it off, as soon as the necessities of their unprincipled system demand the application.

DEAD-WEIGHT ANNUITY PROJECT.

We are induced shortly to notice this project, because it is the most recent, and, we believe, the last attempt which will ever be made to play tricks of legerdemain in matters of finance.

In the year 1822 a plan was adopted for relieving the country, in some degree, from the immediate pressure of the Dead Weight, by extending the payment of it over a longer series of years than the natural duration of the lives of the individuals holding half-pay, pensions, and allowances, under this denomination, would extend to. For this purpose an annuity of £2,800,000 was appropriated, out of the existing revenue, for 45 years, and vested in trustees for the discharge of the then payments, which, for that year, were estimated at £4,900,000, subject to yearly diminution by the death of annuitants. It was computed, that, according to the ordinary duration of human life, these annuities for the lives of the then holders would be equal to the annuity of £2,800,000 for forty-five years. The trustees, were, therefore, empowered to sell, from time to time, such portions of this annuity as would provide the funds required for the payment of the dead weight, according to a computation made of the amount which would, probably, be due in each year. The act by which this arrangement was sanctioned took effect from the 10th of October, 1822.

The trustees failed in their first negotiation, which was entered into with some public companies, and ultimately made an engagement with the Bank of England, for supplying the funds required for six years, by the transfer to that corporation of an annuity of £585,740, part of the above £2,800,000. The terms of the sale were settled by actuaries on either side, according to the current value of the public stocks. The sum which the Bank undertook to provide in the period specified was £13,089,419, the last payment upon which was made in July, 1828.

Now, to the measure of raising money by the sale of a temporary annuity there is no objection, when practised by the state, no more than by an individual: it may be resorted to, in order to meet an extraordinary charge; and to diffuse the charge at a diminished rate, for each year, over a longer space of time. But the framers of the dead weight expedient sought by the means of it to create an addition to the income of the state, whereby a Sinking Fund of five millions might be provided, notwithstanding a considerable reduction of the taxes then existing. It was in this the delusion consisted. The money for the reduction of debt was certainly forthcoming, by the sale of the annuity, and, therefore, positively applicable to the purchase of stock in the market; but the sale of the annuity was itself a creation of debt, and it was, therefore, not correct to call that a Sinking Fund which only served to extinguish, in one shape, a debt which it established in another.

Such an intricate contrivance was evidently a revival, in a new shape, of the fundamental error of the Sinking Fund, namely, an attempt to extinguish debt by borrowed money, and, like that famous juggle, it entailed an unprofitable charge on the country for management. As the objectionable part of the project has been abandoned, under the recommendation of Sir Henry Parnell’s Finance Committee, it is not necessary further to expose its fallacy. We may, also, congratulate our readers on the virtual relinquishment of the Sinking Fund; since, by the 10th Geo. IV. c. 27, which came into operation July the 5th, 1829, it is provided that the sum, in future, applicable to the reduction of the debt, shall be merely what happens to be the actual annual surplus revenue above the expenditure of the United Kingdom. The actual surplus revenue, for reasons assigned in the last section, will, we trust, be kept at a minimum, at which point, or below, it seems to have arrived; being at present (Jan. 1832) something worse than nothing, or, as algebraists term it, a “negative quantity.”

A mere detail of the fiscal blunders and oversights of the Oligarchy would form a most ludicrous display of human folly and presumption. It can never be forgotten that the Omnipotent Parliament of 1810 actually passed a resolution that a pound note and a shilling were equal in value to a guinea, though the latter was openly and publicly sold for twenty-eight shillings! Then think of the conduct of the “Guardians of the Public Purse” in granting annuities on lives. The Tory statesmen of Oxford and Cambridge appear to have been wholly ignorant that the average duration of human life, especially in females, had greatly extended of late years; and, in consequence, up to the year 1829, and until they were apprised of the circumstance by a private individual, continued to grant life annuities on the most disadvantageous terms, and by which, for many years, an annual loss of £100,000 was sustained by this tax-paying community.

It would be easy to cite similar examples of the waste of public treasure through mere incapacity in our rulers; but it is necessary to conclude. Our exposition of the origin and downfal of the great Sinking Fund bubble, which deluded the country for nearly half a century, cannot fail to be amusing and instructive. If we revert to the history of the Boroughmongers, we shall find that their system has been carried on for many years by a series of moral, political, and financial bubbles. The French war was all a bubble. It commenced under the pretext of protecting property and averting infidelity and immorality. These, however, were mere bubbles; the real objects being to prevent reform in the representation, the administration of justice, and the tithe oppression. Abuses in all these were endangered by the principles of the revolution; but then, government could hardly go to war on the barefaced pretext of supporting them, so they went to war on the pretext of supporting religion and social order. New circumstances require new delusions. The country is now at peace; but we shall be marvellously surprised, if some new bubble is not blown to justify interference with the regenerated states of the Continent and the New World.

NEW SUGGESTIONS FOR LIQUIDATING THE DEBT.

All idea of liquidating the Debt, by the operation of the Sinking Fund, being abandoned, it may be concluded this great national incumbrance is destined to be a perpetual burthen entailed on succeeding generations. This, it must be confessed, holds out a discouraging prospect for the future. Let us, however, inquire if it be not possible to imagine a course of public affairs which would tend to the just and natural extinguishment of the Debt; or, secondly, let us inquire if such changes in the monetary system of Europe may not supervene, as would constitute an equitable claim for a reduction in the amount of the annuity payable to the public creditor. Although there are few questions in public economy that have excited more intense inquiry than the progress and final issue of our funding system, still we think there are one or two views of the subject which have been overlooked by political writers, and which we shall beg leave briefly to submit to our readers’ consideration.

Lord Goderich has justly remarked, (House of Lords, May 7, 1830,) that it is not the magnitude of the capital of the debt, but the amount of the dividends which form a question of interest. A public creditor is not, like a private creditor, entitled to demand payment of both principal and interest: all to which he has compulsory claim is the regular payment of his dividend. A greater amount of capital is only important to the public inasmuch as it imposes a heavier burthen in the charges of management payable to the Bank of England. The vital consideration is the amount of the perpetual annuity entailed on the country: whatever tends to lessen this charge relieves the public; and let us see what system of policy would most effectually promote so desirable a consummation.

The interest of money has been gradually falling for centuries; and, from the augmentation of capital, it is not possible to assign the minimum;—it may be depressed to one, or even a half per cent.; or money may become so redundant, that, instead of the payment of interest for the use, a premium may be given merely for its safe custody. How far this reduction may be still carried depends entirely on the management of public affairs. Let us suppose our rulers have resolved, all at once, to carry on the government on principles of justice and wisdom, without regard to the partial interests of the Church, the Aristocracy, or any other section of society; let us suppose they are resolved to give full scope for the augmentation of national wealth, by the abolition of commerical and charted monopolies—by the repeal of the Corn Laws, and of all such taxes and restrictions as impede the development of industry: let us suppose that government is resolved to make all reasonable concessions for the attainment of internal quiet and contentment, by the extension of the elective franchise—the improvement of the judicial administration—the abolition of partial and oppressive laws—the reduction of exorbitant salaries, the extinction of sinecures, the rescinding of unmerited pensions, and the relinquishing of unprofitable and useless colonies: let us further suppose that government is resolved to pursue a system of impartial justice towards Ireland, remove all pretext for popular agitation, and cultivate, to the utmost advantage, her vast resources: lastly, let us suppose that government is so wholly intent on promoting the general welfare, that they are resolved to remove all restrictions on the freedom of discussion, and allow the utmost latitude, without regard to considerations personal to themselves, for the free investigation of every question in the least relevant to the public happiness; especially of such questions as elucidate the causes of the poverty and privations of the great body of the community.

Now, supposing such a liberal and enlightened policy to be pursued by the government, the consequences would be most extraordinary. Contentment and confidence would prevade all, and every obstacle to the full development of industry removed, commerce, manufactures, and agriculture attain an unexampled state of prosperity. The country would be inundated with wealth, and the mass of unemployed capital would be so great, that interest would be merely nominal. But would not ministers take advantage of such a favourable crisis in national affairs to reduce the Debt? Assuredly they would. All the stocks would rise above par, and they might either pay the public creditor his principal, or compel him to accept a lower rate of interest. It is in this way, merely by the operation of good government, by adopting measures to promote internal concord and prosperity, that the Three per Cents might be reduced to two, one, or even a half per cent.; and this is what we call the just and natural extinguishment of the Debt!

The unsettled state of Europe may postpone for a time the decline in the interest of money; but such is the intelligence and desire of accumulation pervading all classes, that we consider it an event of certain occurrence. Under this impression, we do not concur in the wisdom of the plan adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1830, for the conversion of the Four per Cents. Agreeably to Mr. Goulbourn’s scheme, an option was given to the holders of the New Fours to accept a Five per Cent. stock, irredeemable for a long term of years. The chief saving to the public from this arrangement was a diminution in the amount of the capital of the debt; but this, as before remarked, is an unimportant consideration, and only affects the amount of per centage payable to the Bank for management. The great object for a financer to aim at is a reduction in the public annuities; but this reduction is foreclosed, by creating an irredeemable fund; and the country is precluded from deriving advantage from the augmentation of national wealth and consequent declension of the interest in money.

Let us next advert to the other contingency to which we alluded, as likely to operate, an equitable reduction in the monetary charge of the debt—namely, a rise throughout Europe in the value of the precious metals. That such a rise is in progress is highly probable, for the following reasons:—1. The unsettled state of South America during the last twenty years, and consequent interruption to the working of the gold and silver mines. 2. The increased consumption of the precious metals, from the diffusion of greater wealth and luxury. 3. The increased demand for them, owing to the increase of population, commerce, and commodities. 4. The general substitution of a metallic for a paper currency in England, America, and the continental states. All these causes obviously tend to enhance the value of the representative medium; and, should they continue to operate, they must eventually work a dissolution of money engagements; for it cannot be supposed that if a pound weight of silver attain as great an exchangeable value as in the reign of the EDWARDS, that either nations or individuals shall be bound by contracts made under circumstances so widely different. Such a revolution in the instrument of exchange, or even an approximation to it, could never have been foreseen, either by creditor or debtor; and the fulfilment of his obligations by the latter being rendered impracticable, by vicissitudes which he could neither foresee nor control, both equity and reason would relieve against them.

The practical application of this reasoning, to the reduction of the Debt, is too obvious to need explaining. It is a crisis wholly distinct from such as occur from the issue or withdrawal of Bank paper, or the rise or fall of mercantile credit. These are the local and ordinary fluctuations of the commercial world with which all mankind are familiar; but a rise or fall in the universal standard of value, from the general causes mentioned, is an event of a different nature. It is unnecessary, however, to pursue the subject further till the fact of a general rise in the value of the instrument of exchange has been ascertained, and the returns which the Marquis of Lansdowne moved for in the session of 1830, relative to the produce of the American mines, will tend far to its elucidation.

We have thus shortly explained the two sources whence, by possibility, relief may come to this tax-paying community; but we candidly confess we have not much faith either of them will be realized. That the Oligarchy will ever pursue such a course of policy as is most likely to diffuse general intelligence, contentment, and wealth, is inconsistent with all experience of their former conduct. Unfortunately, the government, in its unreformed state, only embodies the partial interests of the Aristocracy, and those interests are incompatible with the general interests of the community. Hence we conclude, the Manichæan principle of the constitution will triumph to the end of the chapter, and that the funding system will ultimately terminate by a violent death. The nature of its final dissolution, the hypocrisy and injustice by which it will be preceded, and the calamities it will entail on the country, we shall set forth in the next and concluding section.

CATASTROPHE OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

The natural and inevitable tendency of debt, either in nations or individuals, is bankruptcy. Efforts will be made, by the Oligarchy, to avert, as long as possible, this lasting reproach of their unprincipled policy; they will try to economize in this, and retrench in that; they will be like beasts of prey environed by the hunters, they will seek escape on all sides, but, finding every outlet closed against them, they will then resort, as the only refuge from the difficulties in which they have wantanly involved themselves, to their last expedient—an attack on the funds. Perhaps it will not be this session of parliament, nor the next; but, that the period is approaching, we feel as confident as that we are now writing. It is the most feasible of all projects: it would attack a mass of property, and of individuals that are incapable of resistance, who are not represented, and who would sink as silently as a stone dropped into the great deep. Moreover, it would be the salvation of the system; it would not touch the Church, nor the Aristocracy, nor the Rotten Boroughs, nor the Sinecures, nor the Barracks; all the abuses of administration would be saved and perpetuated, for the affliction of the world and posterity. We do, however, trust there is sufficient justice and humanity in the nation to avert the perpetration of this national crime, which would afford complete impunity to those whose mal-administration has, alone, rendered it necessary. The man who first suggests a confiscation of the funds, under the pretext of equitable adjustment, unaccompanied with a radical change in our institutions, ought to be ejected from political communion as the worst enemy of Reform and the People. Let us, however, shortly consider the degree of injustice, the extent of suffering, and the misgovernment that would be perpetuated by the adoption of such a mean of surmounting the public difficulties.

Three points present themselves for consideration: 1st. The obligation imposed on the community to keep faith with the public creditor. 2d. The extent of distress and suffering which would be occasioned by a breach of this obligation. 3d. And lastly, The facilities it would afford for the perpetuation of an usurped and pernicious power.

With respect to the first, it is certain that funded property stands on a higher and more legitimate basis than any other description of property in the kingdom. It is created by recent acts of parliament, of the meaning and import of which there can be no difference of opinion: the present possessors of this property hold it by fair and lawful assignment, and the whole nation are living witnesses of the contract and execution. The estates of the Church, of the Aristocracy, and even of individuals, are not secured and attested by such strong and solemn authority. The Church has, at least, only a life-interest in its possessions, and this under the express stipulation of discharging the religious duties of the community. The estates of the nobility are of extremely dubious origin, mostly obtained by plunder and confiscation, and then held under the tenure of defending the country in war, of coining money, administering justice, and preserving the peace; all which duties they have long ceased to discharge. Next, as to the estates of individuals: they have, in many instances, been obtained without valuable consideration, or are held by a fraudulent and imperfect title; none of which can be alleged against funded property. It follows from this that there is no description, even of real property, which might not be seized with a greater semblance of justice than that of the fundholder, and that any the least encroachment on the funds would be a more flagrant outrage on all those ties by which property is made sacred and secure, than could in any other way be perpetrated.

We come next to the second consideration,—The extent of distress and suffering consequent on a breach of faith with the national creditor.

It is a most mistaken idea to suppose that the great mass of funded property belongs principally to monied men and capitalists. These have rarely much property in the funds; if they have, it is only a portion of their unemployed capital, which they occasionally lodge there for a few days or weeks, to accomplish some stock-jobbing speculation, or till they find for it a more profitable investment. Neither has the Aristocracy or Church considerable deposits in the funds: most of the former, from waste and extravagance, are steeped in debt and mortgage, and, notwithstanding their enormous incomes, from rents, tithes, and taxes, they have hardly a shilling to spare for necessary expenses; and the rich Clergy, from similar want of prudence and economy, are in a not less embarrassed predicament. The great bulk, therefore, of property permanently invested in the public securities is trust-property; property left for charitable uses; property belonging to suitors in Chancery; small sums belonging to officers retired from service in the army and navy; the funds of friendly societies and savings’ banks; and a vast number of small annuitants, consisting of minors, orphans, widows, old maids, bachelors, and families retired from business and the world, whose sole dependence is on the receipt of their half-yearly or quarterly dividends, and who having vested the whole proceeds of a weary life on the faith of the nation, any attack on the funds would, to them, be as sudden and overwhelming as a stroke of lightning.

On this part of the subject we have authentic data to proceed; we know, from accounts laid before parliament, the number of public annuitants, and the amount of property vested in the funds on account of benefit societies, savings’ banks, and suitors in Chancery. From a parliamentary paper, (No. 41, Session 1830,) it appears the total number of persons receiving half-yearly dividends, on the different stocks, constituting the Public Debt, amounts to 274,823; of which number there are who received,—

Not exceeding

£5

83,609

persons.

Not exceeding

10

42,227

persons.

Not exceeding

50

97,307

persons.

Not exceeding

100

26,316

persons.

Not exceeding

200

15,209

persons.

Not exceeding

300

4,912

persons.

Not exceeding

500

3,077

persons.

Not exceeding

1000

1,555

persons.

Not exceeding

2000

450

persons.

Exceeding

2000

161

persons.

Several annuitants have property in two or more separate stocks, as in the three per cents. and three-and-a-half per cents. so as to receive dividends quarterly: suppose nearly one-third are of this description, and, instead of 274,823, there are only 200,000 national creditors, who share among them the whole interest of twenty-eight millions, payable on the public debt; in which case each receives, on an average, only £140 a-year.

Think of the consequence of extinguishing, or even abridging these petty incomes! What impoverishment and destitution it would create among widows, orphans, the aged, and infirm. How many funds, destined for charitable uses, or for mutual assurance against misfortune, and amassed with difficulty out of the earnings of the industrious, would be violated! From official returns, in 1829, it appears there are, in the United Kingdom, half a million of contributors to Savings’ Banks, whose deposits amount to upwards of 17 millions. In 1830 the number of depositors in Savings’ Banks in England only, was 367,812; their total investments £13,080,255, averaging £34 to each depositor. The number of members of Friendly Societies, in 1815, amounted to 925,429; and the property belonging to them, vested in the funds, amounted to 40 millions. These funds have been raised and guaranteed by special acts of parliament, so that to encroach on them would be a shameless and flagrant violation of the public engagements.

It is not, however, the public annuitants only that would suffer by the measure we are considering; the calamity in its direct and indirect consequences would fall almost exclusively on the middling and industrious orders. Nearly the whole interest payable on the Debt is expended in support of the domestic trade, manufactures, and agriculture of the kingdom. A large portion of the revenue of the higher classes is consumed abroad, in the support of menial servants, or in articles of luxury, which create hardly any traffic or employment; whereas the incomes of the public annuitants are chiefly spent among ourselves, in the employment of the artisan and labourer, and in dealings with the grocer, baker, butcher, linen-draper, victualler, builder, carpenter, &c. It follows that any diminution in a revenue so expended would inflict incalculable mischief on the whole internal trade and economy; it would be the most hurtful of all remedies that could be applied to our embarrassments; for there is no other description of property, the violation of which would cause such wide-spread misery, distress, and mercantile stagnation. A man, therefore, who brings forward such a scheme must not only be an enemy to the general welfare, but he must be thoroughly depraved, and an alien to all those principles of justice and feelings of humanity which fit an individual for social communion and intercourse.

We come to the third and last consideration, namely,—The facilities a breach of national faith would afford for the perpetuation of usurped and pernicious power.

If established authority be adverse to the general interests, whatever tends to its continuance and support is pernicious;—whatever adds to the power of the weak and unprincipled is criminal. If the government of this country be so administered as to be unjust and oppressive, whatever tends to avert its reform or prolong its existence must be reprobated by every patriotic mind. Now it is certain that to tolerate any the least attack on the funds would place an uncontrolled and almost unlimited power at the mercy of the administration. Should ministers be once allowed openly to reduce or to tax the public annuities, or to encroach upon them under any form, they would possess an inexhaustible resource for domestic profusion and future war. The whole interest of the Debt would be at their mercy, and, in gradually reducing it, they would have the means, for a century longer, to pursue the same career of folly and injustice which they had pursued in the century that is past. Thus the Debt, instead of an incumbrance, would be a real treasure, to which they could resort on every emergency. No matter how small the tax at first imposed; if the principle be once admitted, they might gradually augment their exactions on the public creditor; the machinery would be made, and would only require working; in a word, it would be merely retaining the money in their own hands, instead of paying it half-yearly to the fundholder.

The first step in this proceeding would be the most delicate, and require great caution and considerable hypocrisy in the execution. First, probably, only a tax of one per cent. or even a quarter per cent. would be proposed, accompanied with deep expressions of regret on the imperious necessity that had rendered necessary such a painful alternative. Having got the handle to the axe, they would proceed with a slow but sure step, screwing up the fund-tax, like the income-tax, till at length it equalled, in amount, the dividends, or, in a word, expunged the Debt!

Such a villainous procedure would, doubtless, raise a great outcry; many would exclaim against the violation of public faith, and of the injustice of sacrificing a part for the whole; but ministers would easily find excuses. They would first eat up all their former declarations on the great advantages of national integrity, and would expatiate on the great advantages of national bankruptcy. They would plead the alteration in the currency as one pretext for their injustice; they would urge the great law of self-preservation, which forbids either individuals or nations to bind themselves to their own destruction; they would enlarge on the impolicy and unreasonableness of adhering to engagements that would destroy the sources of productive industry, and, ultimately, entail ruin on all classes, even the annuitants themselves. Lastly, they would plead the example of other states, of their “magnanimous and august allies,”—the members of the Holy Alliance and Protocol conferences,—all of whom had been once or twice bankrupt, and necessitated to compound with their creditors. The knavery and sophistry of such reasoning would be apparent to all; but the majority being benefited by the injustice, it is probable they would be inclined to wink at the transaction, and the poor fundholder become the scape-goat of the community.

It may appear improbable, at first sight, that a government, founded on the basis of a regard to “property, morality, religion,” and an abhorrence of “blasphemy,” should resort to such a disgraceful expedient, to such unprincipled sophistry; especially, too, as a breach of national faith would be a violation of the principle to which they have been accustomed, on all occasions, to ascribe the prosperity, glory, and independence, of the empire. This, certainly, at first view, appears improbable; but, if we examine the subject more closely, we shall find that it is not without precedent, and that it would be less inconsistent with former practices than former professions of our rulers.

First, there is the Bank Restriction Act of 1797. This measure, in its nature, was full as unprincipled an attack on the rights of private property and the sacredness of previous engagements as a breach of national faith could possibly be. Secondly, there are various suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act—the passing of bills of indemnity for all sorts of crimes—the forging of French assignats—the attack of Copenhagen—the blowing up of the Spanish ships, and the affair of Terceira: all these measures are so atrocious, so repugnant to every principle of law, humanity, and justice, that it would be chimerical, in the highest degree, to suppose that the men who could advise and participate in them, would be scrupulous in the observance of their engagements with the public creditor.

Yet the shame, the disgrace, the infamy of a breach of faith would be so great; it would lay bare so completely the unprincipled policy of the last forty years; it would so entirely unmask the principles of the Oligarchy, exposing them to such execration and derision, that we may expect it to be staved off to the last day; and when, at length, it is attempted, it will be disguised, under a thousand pretexts, to hide its deformity from the world. Come, however, it must; for there is no other alternative likely to be adopted; the contest is betwixt rent and tithe, and high official emoluments on one hand, and the payment of the dividends on the other: to pay the latter the former must be sacrificed. But can any one doubt the issue of the conflict? Can it be doubted which party will go to the wall, should the Borough proprietors continue to monopolise the franchises of the people? The lords of the soil possess all political power; they have the boroughs, the barracks, and the powder-mills at their command; they will take care of THEMSELVES; and, judging from the facts we have enumerated, there is no reason to suppose their love of justice is so extreme as to induce them to abandon their ALL to preserve inviolate public faith.

Before, however, the fundholders are sacrificed, all other classes will be degraded: so loth will be the Boroughmongers to touch their great stalking-horse of public credit, that they will endeavour to support it on the ruins of the other orders of society. First, probably, as being most exposed to their attacks, the poor-rate will be attempted; next in order come the other unrepresented interests of the community, the profits of all the productive classes—the farmers, merchants, and tradesmen. If the degradation of these classes, if the appropriation of the whole of their revenue, except that portion necessary to a bare subsistence, be insufficient, then the fundholder will be assailed, rather than rent and tithe should be materially reduced. This is what we call the CATASTROPHE OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM. Without a parliamentary reform all classes will be sacrificed to the preservation of the Aristocracy. When the full payment of the dividends encroaches on the sources of their own incomes, they will be forcibly reduced, and the only favour shown to the fundholder will be that of being last devoured!

We have thus briefly traced what appears likely to be the catastrophe of the funding system, the consequence of an attack on the funds, its flagrant injustice, the distress and suffering it would occasion, and the lasting impunity it would afford to corruption and misgovernment. We were anxious to do this at the present moment, because if by any unforeseen event the hopes of the nation should be a second time shipwrecked in regard to the “Bill,” and the Tories regain their ascendancy, it is not improbable the desperate expedient of robbing the fundholder would be tried, in order to silence the cry of a starving population for economy and reform. We trust, however, the public will be on its guard against this horrible project; like all frauds, it will be clandestinely and insidiously introduced; therefore it behoves them to be constantly on the alert. So long as the Debt is safe, it is the best ally of the People, but the moment it is violated, it is the best ally of Corruption.

If a general sacrifice be required to save the country, a change in the representation is an indispensable preliminary. The House of Commons, in lieu of representing the people, represents only the government which it ought to control, in the various branches of the executive, the aristocracy, the church, the army, navy, and public offices. Embodying such partial interests, the general weal must be invariably compromised, and no equitable settlement can be made. Admit the intelligence and property of the nation to have their due weight in the public councils, and the best and most salutary measures must necessarily be adopted, and equity and safety found for all.

This is all the people require; they do not want pity nor charity; and those who, during their periodical sufferings, are constantly preaching PATIENCE to a famishing population, would do well to change the word for JUSTICE from their rulers. Justice from oppression is a virtue; patience under undeserved suffering a crime!

TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION AND FINANCE.

WE cannot do better than preface the subjects of this chapter by stating a few general principles of taxation and finance; they are principally taken from Adam Smith and Dr. Hamilton, and for the most part are so self-evident that it is superfluous to adduce any argument in their support or elucidation; and the others may be inferred by a very obvious train of reasoning. Yet measures inconsistent with them have not only been advanced by men of reputed abilities, but have been acted on by successive administrations, annually supported in parliament, and extolled in political publications. This may create a necessity for a few explanatory observations, and which we shall subjoin in a separate paragraph immediately after each consecutive proposition.

I. The annual income of a nation consists of the united produce of its agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and industry. This income is the source from which the inhabitants derive the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life; distributed, according to their stations, in various proportions, and from which the public revenue, necessary for civil government and external administration, is derived.

In every nation a part of the annual income must be withdrawn from the inhabitants for the support of the army and navy, the administration of justice, and other public purposes. The sum thus withdrawn, however reasonable and necessary, is abstracted from the funds which supply the wants of the people, and, consequently, lessens their means of enjoyment. Taxation, therefore, though necessary, is a positive evil, and it is a poor set-off to allege against this evil that it may, when gradually augmented, operate as a motive to greater industry and economy in the people. The natural desire of advancement in life and to participate in its pleasures, are sufficient inducements to frugality and industry without the artificial goad of the tax-gatherer. But taxes have not only encroached on luxuries, but on the comforts and necessaries of the productive classes, and it is mere sophistry to allege that they are either harmless or beneficial; that they either return by other channels, or are a spur to industry. That which is taken and consumed can never be returned by any channel; and that can never form a spur to industry, which lessens the rewards by which industry is excited and put in motion.

II. The portion of national income, which can be appropriated to public purposes, and the possible amount of taxation, are limited; and we are apparently advanced to that limit.

That the amount of taxation is limited, and that we have reached that limit, is pretty evident from the generally low rate of profits and wages. The burthens which peculiarly press on productive industry have been enumerated (p. 279). “When,” says Mr. M‘Culloch, “the taxes which affect the industrious classes are increased, such increase must either immediately fall wholly on profits or wages, or partly on the one and partly on the other. If it fall on profits, it makes, of course, an equivalent deduction from them; and if it fall on wages, it proportionally depresses the condition of the great body of the people.” We have arrived at the anomalous state in finance when two and two do not make four. Were additional taxes imposed, instead of increasing, they would probably diminish the total amount by impairing the sources from which they would be derived. The effect of augmented taxes beyond national ability was finely exemplified in the case of Ireland. The revenue of Ireland, in 1807, amounted to £4,378,000. Between that year and the conclusion of the war taxes were imposed, which, according to the calculations of chancellors of the exchequer, were to produce £3,400,000, or to augment the revenue to the extent of £7,700,000. What was the result? Why, that in the year 1821, when that amount ought to have been paid into the Treasury, the whole revenue of Ireland amounted only to £3,844,000, being £553,000 less than in 1807, previously to one farthing of these additional taxes having been imposed. Take another example of the effect of a seasonable reduction of taxes in the United Kingdom. Between the years 1823 and 1827 taxes were repealed to the amount of £9,182,571, but the nett loss sustained by the revenue was only to the amount of £3,308,316: the enormous difference of £5,874,255 being made up by increased consumption. The Whig ministry repealed duties to the amount of £4,477,000 in 1831, but the depression in all the great branches of national industry has prevented the loss sustained by the revenue from being supplied by increased consumption in the proportion experienced by their predecessors.

III. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to individuals is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of an estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observance or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation.

IV. The tax which every individual is bound to pay ought to be certain and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor and to every other person. When it is otherwise, the tax-payer is put more or less in the power of the tax-gatherer, who can either aggravate the tax on any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some perquisite or advantage to himself.

The Assessed Taxes, especially the inhabited house duty, and most duties of Excise, contravene this principle.

V. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. A tax may either take out or keep out of the pockets of the people a great deal more than it brings into the public treasury in the four following ways:—First, the levying of it may require a greater number of officers, whose salaries may eat up the greater part of the produce of the tax, and whose perquisites may impose another additional tax upon the people. Secondly, it may obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so. Thirdly, by the forfeitures and penalties which those individuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully to evade the tax, it may frequently ruin them, and thereby put an end to the benefit which the community might have received from the employment of their capitals. Fourthly, by subjecting the people to the frequent visits and odious examination of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression; and though vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man would be willing to redeem himself from it.

Our Excise and Custom Duties, which form the great sources of public income, are mostly a violation of this principle of Dr. Smith. The two principal objects of our aristocratic legislators have been, first, to tax necessaries, not luxuries; secondly, to tax industry, not property. Thus they have been cutting away, not at revenue, but the sources of revenue; they have been reaping the seed, not the ripened fruit, and have finally exemplified the Fable of the Goose which laid golden eggs. Those who recommend a direct tax on property are right; nothing less will enable the country to meet its pecuniary difficulties, and get rid of the waste and folly of our fiscal administration.

VI. In time of war taxes may be raised to a greater height than can be easily borne in peaceable times; and the amount of the additional taxes, together with the surplus of the peace establishment, applied for defraying the expense of the war.

It is not intended to affirm that the power of a nation to bear taxes is increased in consequence of its being engaged in war. The contrary is always the case. Labour, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, are the sources from which all revenue is derived. Some of them may be ameliorated, but they are depressed on the whole, and do not attain the solid prosperity they would have attained, had not war intervened. But the necessity of the war, real or imaginary, has a powerful influence on the public mind, and reconciles the community to submit to privations, which, in peaceable times, would be accounted insupportable. The latter is the sense in which the proposition is intended to be understood.

VII. The expense of modern wars has been generally so great, that the revenue raised within the year has been insufficient to pay it; hence the necessity of having recourse to the system of funding, or anticipation.

Various causes may be assigned for the increased expense of modern wars: the nature of our military weapons; the entire separation of the character of the soldier from that of the citizen; the system of colonies and foreign settlements, in consequence of which a contest, that a few centuries ago would have been decided by a battle on the frontiers of the contending nations, now extends the ravages of war to every part of the globe: and, since the imaginary system of the balance of power has prevailed, large sums have been granted by states, like England, more opulent than wise, as subsidies to others, supposed to be interested in the common cause. While these causes have led to great expense, the increase of national wealth has supplied the means, and the Rulers of this nation, in particular, by artfully supporting the illusion of a Sinking Fund, and a well regulated system of transfer of stock, have been able to draw forth a larger proportion of the wealth of the people than any other government in the world.

VIII. In every year of war, where the funding system is adopted, the amount of the public debt is increased; and the total increase of debt, during the war, depends on its duration, and the annual excess of the expenditure above the revenue.

IX. In every year of peace, the excess of the revenue above the expenditure ought to be applied to the discharge of the national debt; and the amount discharged during any period of peace depends upon the length of its continuance, and the amount of the annual surplus.

X. If the periods of war, compared with those of peace, and the annual excess of the war expenditure, compared with the annual savings during the peace establishment, be so related, that more debt is contracted in every war than is discharged in the succeeding peace, the consequence is a perpetual increase of debt; and the ultimate consequence must be, its amount to a magnitude which the nation is unable to bear.

XI. The only effectual remedies to this danger are the extension of the relative lengths of the periods of peace; frugality in peace establishments; lessening the war expenses; the increase of taxes, whether permanent or levied during war.

XII. If the three former of these remedies be impracticable, the last forms the only resource. By increasing the war taxes, the sum required to be raised by loan is lessened. By increasing the taxes in time of peace, the sum applicable to the discharge of debt is increased. These measures may be followed to such an extent, that the savings, in time of peace, may be brought to an equality with the surplus expenditure in time of war, even on the supposition that the periods of their relative duration shall be the same, for centuries to come, that they have been for a century past.

The difficulty, and even impossibility, of a further increase of taxes has been considered. Every new imposition, as the limit to taxation approaches, becomes more oppressive and more unproductive; and if Government adhere to an expenditure beyond the ability of the country to support, it is impossible to escape national, or more properly government bankruptcy. So long as the practice was followed of defraying almost all the war expenses by loans, and imposing taxes only for the payment of interest, the burdens of war were so lightly felt, that the promptness of the Aristocracy to engage in war was scarcely under any restraint. Had the supplies been raised within the year, and most of them by direct taxation, the pressure would have been so great, that it would have probably stimulated the people to restrain their rulers from engaging in hostilities for remote and delusive objects. Justice to posterity required this. Every generation has its own struggles and contests. Of these and these only it ought to bear the burden; and the great evil of the Funding System is, that it enables nations to transfer the cost of present follies to succeeding generations.

XIII. When taxation is carried to such an extent that the supplies adequate to meet a war expenditure are raised within the year, the affairs of the nation will go on under the pressure of existing burdens, but without a continual accumulation of debt, which would terminate in bankruptcy. So long as taxation is below this standard, accumulation of debt advances; and it becomes more difficult to raise taxation to the proper height. If it should ever be carried beyond this standard, a gradual discharge of the existing burdens will be obtained; and these circumstances will take place in the exact degree in which taxation falls short of or exceeds the standard of average expenditure.

XIV. The excess of revenue above expenditure is the only real Sinking Fund by which public debt can be discharged. The increase of the revenue and the diminution of expense are the only means by which this Sinking Fund can be enlarged, and its operation rendered more effectual; and all schemes for discharging the National Debt, by Sinking Funds operating by compound interest, or in any other manner, unless so far as they are founded on this principle, are illusory.

Both these propositions have been sufficiently established in our exposition of the Funding System.

ABUSES IN THE EXPENDITURE OF GOVERNMENT.

The labours of Mr. Hume and Sir Henry Parnell are an instance of what the ability and perseverance of a few individuals may accomplish. It is not, however, so much the good effected as the evil prevented that entitles them to the gratitude of the country. Under the long leaden and unprofitable administration of Lord Liverpool, all the great branches of public expenditure had been annually augmenting; and how far this progression would have extended, had not Mr. Hume, supported by a small phalanx of honest persons, commenced his exposures, it is impossible to say. His mode of attack could not be parried: though an unofficial man himself, he showed as intimate acquaintance with the details of the public accounts as John Wilson Croker, Peregrine Courtenay, or any other veteran placeman. Even Sir T. Gooch and Lord Wharncliffe were constrained to admit the value of his services, and the reductions effected in the public departments, prior to the formation of Earl Grey’s ministry, are chiefly attributable to him and the gentleman we have mentioned.

In the course of this section we purpose to bring together some of the more palpable abuses in the government expenditure, and for a knowledge of many of which the public is indebted to a valuable work of Sir Henry Parnell, On Financial Reform. We intend to avail ourselves of this gentleman’s publication, though we cannot say the member for Queen’s County is an object of our exclusive admiration: he is too much of a doctrinaire for us, and appears to repose too implicit confidence in the dogmas of the Ricardo school,—the disciples of which know as much about the internal state of the country, and the causes and remedies of its embarrassments, as the natives of Kamschatka. But this infirmity of the honourable Baronet does not impair the utility of the facts he has published, nor depreciate the important information collected by the Finance Committee of 1828, over which he so ably presided.

The following is Sir Henry Parnell’s list of the several departments entrusted with the business of expending the public money, pursuant to the general appropriation of it by parliament:—

1.

The Treasury, including the Commissariat Department in 1827,

£80,542

2.

The Exchequer

48,000

3.

The Audit-Office in 1828

32,977

4.

The Bank of England, do

267,597

5.

The Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, do

10,350

6.

The Civil Department of the Army, do.

108,837

7.

Do. of the Navy, do.

179,647

8.

Do. of the Ordnance (the Tower and Pall Mall,) do.

57,961

£779,911

The expense of the Treasury department was, in 1797, only £44,066; so that it has nearly doubled; although the revenue, the superintending of which constitutes the chief business of the treasury, was as great as in 1827. Does not this show the profusion with which salaries have been increased, and offices multiplied? There are no fewer than fifteen clerks in the treasury, who receive salaries amounting to £1000; five of these fifteen receive £1,500 a-year each and upwards. Their duties are little more than nominal; they seldom attend their offices but to look over the newspapers; many of them hold two or more offices and sinecures; yet with all their official appointments, so little are they engaged in the public service, that they may be mostly seen driving about town in their stanhopes, and whiling their time in the club-houses.

The Exchequer.—This is one of the most absurd and lucrative establishments under government. As the chief duty of the exchequer is that of superintendence, in taking care that there are no issues of public money by the Treasury contrary to parliamentary direction, it ought to be discharged by a very few officers, or altogether abolished. However, neither economy nor common sense are objects sought to be attained. The forms by which business is carried on are extremely antiquated and ridiculous, and as remote from modern practice as the conveyance of merchandize by packhorse and bells is from the cheapness and despatch of a rail-road. Our limits will only admit of a brief description of the constitution of this office, and the mummery and nonsense daily perpetrated there.

The Exchequer is divided into seven different departments; the tellers, the pells, the king’s remembrancers, the lord treasurer’s, the auditor’s office, the tally-court, and the pipe-office. The pipe-office alone has seven subsidiary absurdities; among these are the clerk of the nichills, the clerk of the estreats, and the cursitor baron; besides which, are eight sworn attornies, two board-end clerks, and eight clerks attached to the sworn attornies. From the inquiries of a parliamentary commission, it seems these are nearly all sinecurists. Two of the witnesses examined had been in the office, one eight and the other twenty-five years, and they stated, during that time, five out of the eight attornies never came near the office, living in the country at a considerable distance from London. The duties of their clerks were not more onerous. Three of them were at school long after being appointed to their situations. One of them admitted that, subsequently to his nomination, he was five years at school at Chelsea, two years in a conveyancer’s office, and that he now practised as a barrister, and might look into the office once in a month. The board-end clerks laboured under similar lack of duties; and as to the clerk of the nichills, the name is sufficient to indicate his heavy and responsible functions.

One of the duties of the Exchequer is, yearly to send down five great rolls of parchment to the sheriffs, containing accounts of supposed debtors to the crown during the last 300 years. The sheriff is bound to summon a jury, in order to ascertain what money is due to the crown on the roll. The sending of the roll down and up again, occasions considerable expense, and is as useless a task as the labours of Sisyphus. The farcical ceremony of passing the sheriffs’ accounts is of a piece with the rest, and resembles a game on the draught-board. Under the pretence of testing the account, the practice is to throw, in the presence of the cursitor baron, small copper coins behind a hat, from one little square of the cloth on the table to another; when the sheriffs’ accounts are correct, a person cries out “tot;” when inaccurate, another person cries “nel;” and according as these words are uttered, the copper coins are shifted from one part of the chequers to another. All these antics were, probably, of use prior to the invention of arithmetic and book-keeping, but are now as irrelevant as the idle pageant of a coronation or lord mayor’s show.

The manner in which the public money is paid in to the tellers is a similar burlesque on real life. There are four tellers, and each has a little pew or cabin, in which he or his deputy sits, with a suitable complement of clerks, for the purpose of receiving the produce of the taxes nominally paid to him, but in reality to the clerks of the Bank of England, three of whom attend in an adjoining room to receive the money paid out of the Bank to be paid into the Bank again. The tellers, under the mockery of receiving the stamp, excise, and other duties, sign a parchment, written in a mixture of Latin or Saxon, or other jargon, which is as unintelligible to any one but a teller as the unknown tongues of Mr. Irving. They next pass a roll through a pipe into a room below, and there it is cut into a particular shape, and carried to the auditors of the Exchequer. A wooden tally was formerly used, which, within the last two years, has been exchanged for one of parchment. But the inconvenience and absurdity of the formality is so great, that Exchequer payments have been lately abolished, and they are now managed by clerks of the Treasury.

From Madox’s History of the Court of Exchequer, it appears, scarcely any alteration has been made in this department since the reign of Henry II. The reason is obvious enough. There are vested rights, claims of seniority, and reversionary interests in the way; and no reform can be introduced till all these expectancies are satisfied, and it has been the policy hitherto to take special care such expectancies never shall be satisfied, by promptly filling up every vacant appointment the moment it occurs. The most valuable sinecures in the Exchequer are held by peers and their relatives, and the emolument, fees, and patronage are so great, that it can hardly excite surprise the carnival doings we have described have been so carefully preserved.

For the gratification of tax payers we subjoin a statement of the sums annually swamped in the “great Exchequer job.”

£

s.

d.

Auditor’s Office

Salaries

13,004

9

21/2

Contingencies unknown from the want of documents, in an office professing to check all the other departments of the state.

Pells’ Office. Salaries

£7,606

9

10

Contingencies

70

15

3

7,677

5

1

Carried forward

£20,681

14

31/2

Brought forward

£20,681

14

31/2

Tellers’ Offices.

Marquis Camden’s Salaries

5,700

0

0

Contingencies

312

2

11

6,012

2

11

Earl Bathurst’s Salaries

5,800

0

0

Rt. Hon. Charles Yorke’s Salaries

5,768

5

4

Spencer Percival, Esq.’s Salaries

5,396

14

0

Four Money Porters

1,020

4

0

Contingencies of the four departments, exclusive of stationery, the expense of which is unknown

113

4

3

£44,792

4

91/2

Of this sum about one-fourth is paid for sinecures, so complete, that in the words of the return, “the Teller is empowered by his patent to appoint a deputy, who transacts all the business of the office. The Teller himself does not, nor has it been usual for him, to execute any part of it whatsoever.”

The Auditor is virtually a sinecure; the money porters, who perform the heavy drudgery of carrying slips of paper and parchment, are paid indifferently well; and there are five heads of offices who have deputies to act for them “in the general superintendence of the office during any occasional absence.”

The following gives an account of the salaries received for “responsibility,” and of those paid for work.

£

s.

d.

Total expense in salaries

44,296

2

41/2

Four Tellers at £2,700 per annum

£10,800

One Auditor

4,000

Five Heads of Departments

5,400

Four Money Porters

£1,020

4

0

Deduct as wages

320

4

0

700

Salaries

{ for Sinecures or “Responsibility”

20,900

0

0

{ for Work

23,396

2

41/2

The Commissioners of 1831 recommend that the whole of the present machinery should be entirely swept away, and suggest the erection of a new office upon a new system—but then, agreeably with the established routine in such cases, the public will have to provide double—salaries for the new, and pensions and compensations for the old officials!

The Audit Office.—This is as snug and delightful a retreat as any in the public departments. Were a proper system adopted in keeping the public accounts, this office might be dispensed with. In 1806, an attempt was made to improve the audit department, and the way this was set about is a very apt specimen of the mode of reforming government abuses in those days. A chairman of the Board was created, salary £1,500; four new members, each £1,200; a secretary, a foreigner, £1,000; six inspectors, each £600; and eight additional examiners; with numerous other appointments, which increased the expense from about £14,000 to £38,000; and after all the establishment was made less efficient than under the old and less expensive system.

Civil Department of the Army.—The office of paymaster of the forces is a sinecure. The business is performed by a deputy and three cashiers. As each of these persons has a power of drawing money out of the Bank of England on his own order, the effect of the office being a sinecure is to diminish considerably the security of the public. It is also attended with this further inconvenience, that it multiplies the number of imprest accountants, and thus augments the difficulty of establishing a proper system of keeping the public accounts.

The account called Army Extraordinaries is liable to great abuse and mystification. Under this head, payments are made which have nothing to do with the army; the sums voted by parliament seldom exceed £900, while the sum expended commonly amounts to three millions. This scheme serves to conceal from the public a great deal of wasteful and illegal expenditure; for instance, the sum paid at home to colonial agents, and the sum drawn from abroad for colonial expenses, although they are wholly for civil colonial purposes, are paid as army extraordinaries, and without any previous vote of parliament; which is thus, according to the testimony of Sir H. Parnell, mislead by the annual production of an account with “a perfectly false title.”

The employing of Commissioners of Accounts abroad was suggested in consequence of the great accumulation of accounts during the war; but, since the conclusion of it, the motives which originated the plan have gradually ceased to have any force, and therefore the public ought to be saved the expense of such useless functionaries. Where too is the necessity for incurring the expense of having army agents? The accounts of the paymasters of regiments are examined at the War-office, and not by the agents; and all the agents do for the public is to receive money from the paymasters of the forces, and to pay with it the drafts of the regimental paymasters: the other duties are private, and for the benefit of officers of the army.

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.—This establishment might be appropriated to much better purposes than the nursing of some dozen or so artillery and engineer officers. Long after the peace the Academy was maintained at an annual expense of £20,000 and upwards; the average cost to the public of the cadets admitted to commissions in the army, in 1820, was £920 each. The charge for civil officers, professors and masters, for the year ending in 1831, was £3402. Even this is too much; especially as the knowledge taught at the Academy is quite elementary, and might just as well be learnt at any private military school. If instruction were made to begin at the Academy just where it stops at present, that is, when the cadets are seventeen or eighteen years old, then there might be some reason in keeping it up; because the instruction afforded to officers might be of such a description in the higher branches of military art, as could not be attained elsewhere.

Department of the Navy and Dock Yards.—The first lord commissioner of the admiralty has a salary of £4,500, with an official residence, and four other commissioners £1,000 a-year with an official residence each; the first secretary £3,000, the second do 1,500; the comptroller of the navy has £2,000, with a residence, the deputy-comptroller of the navy has £1,200; besides which, are an immense number of commissioners of the navy, and commissioners of the dock-yards with salaries of £1,000 each. A most objectionable office kept up by the Tories was the treasurership of the navy—a mere sinecure; it has been consolidated by the Whigs with the vice-presidentship of the Board of Trade.

The expenditure in the Royal Dock-yards and arsenals is most lavish in storekeepers, clerks, chaplains, surgeons, measures, master-attendant, master-shipwright and others, many of whom are apparently kept up for mutual superintendence, and forming a gradation of office and multiplication of expense wholly unnecessary. Not a single trade is carried on without a master; there is a master-smith, bricklayer, sail-maker, rigger, rope-maker, painter, and others; they have each £250 a-year, and many of them have not above four or five men under their superintendence. How differently private and public business is conducted, was strikingly shown in the evidence of Mr. Barrow. There is a private builder who employs 250 shipwrights: he has one foreman, one measurer, two clerks, and ten labourers. In Woolwich yard, which comes the nearest to it, there are 248 shipwrights, eighteen clerks, six masters’ of trades, eight foremen, eight measurers, eleven cabin-keepers; besides surgeons, boatswain, wardens, and other people. The whole establishment of the officers, clerks, and other salaried persons at the dock-yard, amounts to £155,000, and the amount of wages paid for work done by artificers and labourers, &c. is £502,000. It thus appears that for every three pounds and a quarter paid to the men, there is a pound paid for superintendence.

The Paymaster of the Marines has a salary of £1,000, for the discharge of duties which might be very well annexed to the Navy-office. “As to the reasons,” says Sir H. Parnell, “that are given to the contrary, they are so plainly nothing more than ingenious pretexts for maintaining a lucrative office, that it would be a waste of time to notice them.”

The naval accounts, as indeed all the accounts of the public offices, are kept on a confused and most inconvenient principle, from the want of a well-arranged plan of book-keeping. Each description of expenditure has its distinct set of books, making thirty-three in all, and tending greatly to the increase of expense by the multiplication of clerks. At present the payment of officers and seamen’s wages is made in the presence of four clerks, in order to have three clerks checking the accuracy of every sum paid by the fourth. As these clerks are selected from different branches, and as each keeps a book, so many books are kept in triplicate, that they amount, in the whole, to 1580 supernumerary volumes.

Increase in Peace Establishments.—The following comparison of the peace establishments of 1792 and of 1831 is very instructive.

Year 1792.

Year 1831.

Annual Finance Accounts, p. 21. Sess. 1831.

Army

£2,330,349

£ 6,991,163

Navy

1,985,482

5,309,605

Ordnance

444,863

1,613,908

Total charge

£4,760,694

£13,914,676

It thus appears the peace establishment of 1831 exceeds that of 1792 nearly threefold, and that, since 1815, upwards of 250 millions have been expended on soldiers, sailors, ships, and artillery; although we have been all the time in a state of general tranquillity. The only ground on which it is attempted to justify the expenditure, so enormously great in comparison with that of any former peace establishment, is the expediency of being at all times prepared for war. So that after expending upwards of eleven hundred millions in the purchase of a secure and lasting peace; after sacrificing millions in fortifying Belgium against French aggression; after erecting splendid and costly monuments to commemorate the glorious triumphs of Waterloo: after all these efforts, glories, and sacrifices, we cannot yet sit down in safety, without bristling on all sides with cannons and bayonets. Is this, we ask, any proof of progression in human affairs? Is this the boasted “settlement of Europe?” Are these the blessings of legitimate and constitutional monarchies? Are nations, in their relations to each other, always to exemplify the condition of man in a state of nature, with couched lance, watchful eye, and trembling heart, fearing to be the victim of beasts of prey or of the tomahawk and scalping-knife of his not less savage fellow-creature? If these are all the guarantees of social happiness which aristocratic governments can give, we say,—Away with them! let us try new men, new principles, and new institutions!

A principal cause of the vast increase in the military expenditure of the country is the number and establishments of the army. From the inquiries of the Finance Committee, it appears that, in 1792, the number of all ranks in the army was 57,251; and that, according to the statement of Sir H. Parnell, they were distributed as follows:—

Officers and Men

Great Britain

17,007

Ireland

11,901

East Indies

10,700

Canada, Nova Scotia, and Bermuda

6,061

Gibraltar

4,221

West-India Islands

6,886

New South Wales

475

57,251

In 1828, the number of all ranks was 116,738; the distribution was as follows:—

Great Britain

29,616

Ireland

23,969

Colonies

37,037

East Indies

26,116

116,738

The chief part of the increase is accounted for as under:—

Increase in the New Colonies

17,112

Increase in the Old Colonies

849

Increase in Great Britain

9,094

Increase in Ireland

10,363

Increase in the East Indies

14,287

51,705

Allowing that the extent of our foreign possessions has rendered necessary an increase in the army, this does not apply to the household troops, as they are never sent abroad in time of peace. Yet it is in this branch of the service, and in dragoons, that there has been the greatest augmentation. The following statement shows the increase of life and foot guards and cavalry at the two periods:—

RANK and FILE.

Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers in 1830.

Total of Men and Officers in 1830.

Increase in Rank and File in 1830.

1792.

1830.

Life Guards

411

688

187

875

277

Horse Guards

261

344

86

430

83

Dragoon Guards

696

2,268 }

1,506

9,326

{ 1,972

Dragoons

2,080

5,152 }

{ 3,072

Foot Guards

3,126

5,760

848

6,608

2,634

Total Number

6,574

14,212

2,627

17,239

8,038

These are the most expensive classes in the army, and chiefly kept for domestic use. The sums saved by the reduction of the cavalry force would be very considerable, since the expenses of every horseman are nearly as great as those of the junior clerks in the public offices, some of whom have been so unsparingly reduced that their superiors might enjoy, undiminished, their overgrown emoluments. The expense of a dragoon and horse, exclusive of forage, &c. is £57 a year, and of a life and horse guardsman £75 a year; whilst the charge for infantry of the line is only £31 per man.

The guards are chiefly intended for the maintenance of the peace in the metropolis, for the protection of the Bank, the Tower, and royal palaces. But there can be less need of this expensive corps now we have a military police, for the security of property and persons, and ready to aid the established authorities in case of civil commotion. Surely 4000 constables, trained, organised, and barracked, and under the entire control of Ministers, might enable them to dispense with at least one regiment of the household force.

Many millions have been unnecessarily expended, since the Peace, on our maritime establishments. In 1830, 30,000 seamen were voted, and £1,657,601 to defray the charges of their wages and victuals. With the exception of Russia and the United States, the naval force of every other power is less than at the breaking out of the war in 1793. Neither Spain nor Holland has any navy of consequence; and France, which at the commencement of the Revolution had eighty efficient ships of the line, has now not more than forty. What occasion, then, can there be for Great Britain to expend annually £1,300,000 on her dock-yards, and incur a naval expenditure, altogether, of more than five millions?

Expenditure of the Colonies.—These are a tremendous burthen on the resources of the mother country, chiefly to provide governorships, secretaryships, registrarships, agencies, and sinecures for the Aristocracy and their connexions. No parliamentary document shews what the whole expense is that is paid by English taxes on account of the colonies. It is generally estimated that from two to three millions are paid for the army, navy, and various civil charges; but in addition to this the public pay full two millions more for sugar and timber than they ought to pay, in consequence of the increased prices occasioned by the protection given to the colonists by the higher duties imposed on these articles when imported from foreign countries.

There are only three ways that the Colonies can be of any advantage. 1. In furnishing a military force; 2. In supplying the parent state with a revenue; 3. In affording commercial advantages.

Instead of furnishing a military force, the colonies are always a great drain upon our military resources, particularly in war, when they occupy a large portion of the army and fleet in their defence. With respect to revenue, it has been declared, by the act of the 18 Geo. III. that no taxes or duties shall be levied on the colonies, except for their use. As to commercial advantages, if the colonial trade were quite free, our commercial relations with the colonies would resemble the intercourse between ourselves and independent countries; and, with our unrivalled superiority in capital, manufactures, machinery, and skill, what have we to fear from unrestricted competition? What have we lost by the independence of the United States? Nothing: the nobility have lost provincial governorships; but the population of both countries has been enriched and benefited by the vast augmentation in their mercantile intercourse.

The rage for colonies has been one of the great big blunders of our national policy, originating in the vain glory of conquest and aristocratic cupidity. England has neither conferred nor derived social happiness from territorial acquisitions. We may have imparted strength to others, but have received in return only the disease of monopolies and vast individual accumulations. How, indeed, could the results have been more favorable? A great nation, possessing within herself the resources of wealth and civilization, what advantage can she derive from exhausting her energies in rearing to maturity and fostering ingratitude in the unfledged offspring of future empires? Between old and infant communities there is not reciprocity of interest; the latter participate in the benefits of the experience, laws, institutions, warlike power, and riches of the former without yielding countervailing advantages: it is strength allying itself to weakness—the full-grown oak bending to the palsying embrace of the creeping ivy.

So convinced are we of the fatuity of our conduct in this respect, that we are sometimes inclined to think that we should have been a happier community had our sway never extended over the border. Scotland has benefited by the Union: her soil has been fertilised by our capital, and her greedy sons have enriched themselves by sinecures and pensions, the produce of English taxes; but what has England gained from the connexion? The generous and intellectual character of her Saxon race has not been improved by amalgamation with Scotch metaphysics, thrift, and servility. Again, what benefits have we derived from the conquest of Ireland? Her uncultivated wastes, too, will be made fruitful by English money, unless the connexion be prematurely severed: but what boon in return can she confer on England? Her miserable children have poured out their blood in our wars of despotism; our rich Aristocracy have been made richer by the rental of her soil; and the aggregate power of the empire has been augmented: but we seek in vain for the benefits communicated to the mass of the English population. Certainly we do not recognise them in the degraded situation of the “men of Kent,” depressed by competition with the Hibernian peasantry; neither have the moral habits of our rural and manufacturing population been bettered by commingling with the wretched and half-civilized emigrants from Munster and Connaught.

But these, at best, are only unprofitable lamentations; it is vain to repine at remediless evils; the union of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is, we presume, indissoluble: we are married, as the saying is, for better and worse, and we must make the best of an unprofitable alliance.

The chief advantage to be derived from colonies is in rendering them a desirable refuge to a redundant population. But the Aristocracy decline making them subservient to the purposes of an extensive plan of emigration, because of the expense; it would be a sacrifice not for the benefit of themselves, but of the industrious orders, and this they begrudge; they prefer subduing the clamours of a starving people by special commissions and improved man-traps rather than by providing the means by which the unemployed labourer and artisan may transport his superfluous industry to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the shores of Australia.

Although the Oligarchs are so parsimonious when the welfare of the people is concerned, they are reckless enough about expense when it ministers only indirectly to their own gratification and ambition. It appears, from the inquiries of the Finance-Committee, that the collective expenditure of five of our colonies has exceeded, on an account of ten and more years, the colonial revenues applicable to the discharge of it, so as to have constituted a deficiency of £2,524,000, and that this deficiency was paid by the Treasury, although the surplus expenditure had been incurred without previous communication with ministers; nor does it appear ministers had any previous knowledge either of the amount of the colonial revenues or the charges upon them. Can any thing more strikingly show the careless and lavish system on which the affairs of the nation have been conducted? We subjoin an abstract of the returns to parliament of the colonies to which we have alluded. It will be seen that the surplus revenue of the crown colonies above the civil expenditure amounted to £1,453,842, and this was all which remained applicable to a military expenditure of £3,733,939, leaving £2,280,097 to be paid out of the assessed taxes, the excise, and custom-duties of the people of England.

Statement of the Revenue and Expenditure of Five Crown Colonies referred to in Mr. Herries’s Letter to Mr. Wilmot Horton, of the 24th March, 1827.—Parl. Paper, No. 352, Sess. 1830.

Colonies.

Years.

Revenue.

Civil Expenditure.

Military Expenditure.

Ceylon

13

4,384,407

3,097,571

2,570,107

Mauritius

12

1,723,114

1,829,508

795,575

Cape of Good Hope

11

1,333,441

1,062,670

277,015

Malta

10

2,378,114

2,384,197

88,994

Trinidad

12

405,513

396,711

2,248

£10,224,589

8,770,747

3,733,939

Of these colonies, three of them—Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope—are chiefly of use to the East-India Company, who ought to defray the charges of their military protection. Many other of our colonies are equally valueless as objects of national utility. Of what use is the retention of the Ionian Islands, with Malta and Gibraltar in our hands? The settlements at Sierra Leone and on the west coast of Africa ought to be abandoned, having entirely failed in the attainment of the object intended. No reason can be shown why Canada, Nova-Scotia, and other possessions on the continent of America, would not be as available to British enterprise, if they were made independent states. Neither our manufactures, commerce, nor shipping would be injured by such a measure. On the other hand, what has the nation lost by Canada? According to Sir H. Parnell, fifty or sixty millions have been already expended; the annual sum payable out of English taxes is full £600,000 a-year; and there has been a plan in progress for two or three years to fortify Canada, at an estimated cost of three millions. Either the Boroughmongers or the people must have been absolutely mad to tolerate for so many years such useless waste of public resources.

The Slave-Trade.—On this subject Sir H. Parnell says,—“The great sum of £5,700,000 has already been expended in carrying into effect the measures of government for co-operating with other countries in putting down the slave-trade, and the annual current expenses amount to nearly £400,000. But the attempt appears to have altogether failed. The governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, according to the Parliamentary Papers, make no efforts whatever to enforce the laws for putting down the traffic; and the persons in authority in Cuba and Brazil not only neglect to execute the laws, but in some cases have been engaged in it themselves. So that our treaties and laws, where such parties are concerned, are so much waste paper, and spending money to try to give effect to them is perfect folly. The African Institution say, in their twentieth report, ‘The slave-trade has increased during the last year; and, notwithstanding the number of prizes taken, it continues to rage with unabated fury.’ Surely here are sufficient reasons for saving £400,000 a-year, now expended to so little purpose.”—Financial Reform, pp. 231, 232. Human suffering is equally painful to bear, whether inflicted on this or the other side of the globe, on black or white men, and we should be sorry, even for the sake of economy, that any measures should be adopted tending to revive the hellish traffic in Negroes. But, after all, we ought to look at home. The horrors of the ‘middle passage’ did not transcend those of the infernal FACTORY SYSTEM: in the former adults were the chief victims sacrificed to the Moloch of wealth; in the latter it is helpless infancy. If one remonstrate with any of the CRŒSUSES of the North on the cruelty of exacting such long and severe hours of labour from children and apprentices, their only defence is,—“If we did not do it, others would—we should be undersold in the market.” So with them it is a mere question of political economy—of profit and accumulation of capital—not of humanity. But we shall take leave to tell these lords of the loom that they have another alternative; they might be content with amassing something less, as a passport into the aristocratic circle, than a million or a million and a half of money by mutilating, misshaping, and abridging the lives of God’s creatures: but this they will not do; they will persist in realizing their cent. per cent., and rather than forego it will have their ‘pound of flesh,’—they will see orphans’ eye-balls start from their sockets, and their tendons crack, through unwholesome long-protracted toil—and this too in a country where society is hourly threatened with dissolution—where internal peace and the security of property are endangered by the multitude of unemployed artizans!

Expense of Civil Government.—The expense of conducting the civil government of the country, including the king, the three secretaries of state, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the Mint, and judicial establishments, is about £2,000,000. The progressive increase of expense, in some departments, is as follows:—

Year 1706.

Year 1829.

Home Department

£14,423

£31,916

Foreign Department

34,495

65,681

Colonial Department

9,111

39,824

£58,019

£137,221

Thus, it appears, the charge of these three departments has more than doubled since 1796—a period of hostilities.

Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.—The vice-regal government of Ireland costs the country £100,000 per annum. This is extravagant, as it is well known that Irish affairs are chiefly managed at Whitehall. The keeping up this mimic sovereign tends to keep up those symbols of separation and hostility which a more rational policy would endeavour to obliterate. For any other purpose, in the present state of intercourse, we might as well have, once more, a lord-president at York—a king in Edinburgh—or a separate court for the marches of Wales, at Ludlow, or Monmouth. What then can be urged to justify the lord-lieutenancy? It has been alleged indeed by Irish secretaries, who receive £4000 a-year, that it is beneficial to the tradesmen of Dublin, among whom the money granted for the vice-regal establishment is expended. So then the community must be robbed of £100,000, that the Dublin shopkeepers may profit the odd farthings. This is the favourite round of arguing by corruptionists; they always deem it a sufficient justification for pillaging the people, if a portion of the spoil be returned to them in the way of alms or Christmas doles. By acting on this principle, the pride and interests of aristocratical government are both favoured; and the people, injured by its rapacity, are insulted by its compassion. But in this way the influence of the lord-lieutenant’s salary is, as regards the prosperity of a great city, contemptible: his whole salary, if spent in Dublin, is not equal to half the receipts of one of the ten thousand gin-shops in London. If, however, the effect was greater, the process is dishonest. If the lord-lieutenancy is necessary as an instrument of government—which has never been satisfactorily proved—it ought to be retained; if not, there is no earthly reason why the shopkeepers of Dublin should be supported by taxing the shopkeepers of the other towns of the empire. The viceroyship is a precious jewel in the eyes of the Aristocracy, and that it will not willingly be abandoned, we believe; but where pretexts are seen through easily, it is, perhaps, prudent to abstain from them. The man who merely robs you, does not offend you so much as the man who both robs you and insults your understanding by an awkward attempt at deceiving you.

Expenses of a Coronation.—The ministers of George IV. asked Parliament for a grant of only £100,000, to defray the expenses of his coronation; but the ceremony turned out something like palace-building, the actual cost greatly exceeding the estimate, amounting to £238,000. The jewels of the crown were valued at £65,000, and 10 per cent. interest was paid to Rundell and Bridge for the loan of them. Either for the gratification of the monarch or his courtiers, the crown was kept four years, at an annual charge to the public of £6500; and it was only in consequence of a seasonable motion of Mr. Hume the royal bauble was at last divested of its borrowed plumage.

Upon the coronation of William IV. the Whigs certainly curtailed materially both the folly and expense of the feudal pageant, to the no small mortification of the antiquated admirers of chivalry, Punch, and Bartholomew fair. But it is time the oiling and kissing and other tom-foolery, perpetrated in the Abbey by the right reverend bishops, were omitted, and the whole reduced to a simple and economical process of inauguration. The king, the magistrates, and public officers take the needful oaths on the accession, and a coronation confirms nothing; it affords no stronger guarantee either on the part of the king or the people; it is an unmeaning ceremony, fit only to be exhibited among slaves, or a priest-ridden rabble, by an Eastern despot. It is something still more objectionable. Formerly it might be of use, when it was really what it professed to be—a solemn compact between the king and his lieges; but it has since degenerated into a mere mockery of sacred things, of religious rites, vows, and pledges.

Kingly governments are sinking fast in general estimation, and it is bad policy to depreciate monarchy lower by obtruding it in its most absurd and revolting forms. Instead of expending a large sum on a senseless spectacle, we would beg in lieu to suggest that the commencement of every new reign be commemorated by the building of a bridge, the construction of a rail-road, the completion of a Thamestunnel, the foundation of an university, or any other undertaking of national utility.

WORKINGS OF TAXATION.

An important circumstance has been remarked by sir H. Parnell connected with the pressure of taxation, namely, the effect of monopolies and protections in raising the prices of commodities which are the subjects of them. These monopolies and protections impose, by increased prices, burdens on the public which neither fill the exchequer, nor forward any purpose of national utility, but support favoured trades. If the effect of the corn laws is, at least, to raise the price of corn five shillings a quarter, this advance on the annual quantity consumed, taken at 50,000,000 quarters, creates a charge on the public of £12,500,000 a year. If the protecting duties on East India and foreign sugars advance the price of sugar only one penny a pound, this advance on the quantity annually consumed, namely 380,000,000 pounds, is, on the public, £1,500,000 a year. If the East India Company’s monopoly makes the price of tea (exclusive of duty) double what it is at New York and Hamburgh, as is the case, it imposes a tax of at least £2,000,000 a year in the form of increased price; and the monopoly of the timber trade, enjoyed by the shipowners and Canada merchants, costs the public at least £1,000,000 a year: so that by these monopolies and protections 17 millions a year are taken from the pockets of the people, just as if corn, sugar, tea, and timber were taxed to that amount, and the produce paid into the Treasury.

Relief to the country is not so much to be expected from a reduction in the amount of taxation as the adjustment of its pressure. The taxes which have been repealed are considerable, and further reductions, with the present scale of expenditure, might render loans necessary to supply the deficiency. The people, however, may be greatly benefited by a commutation of taxes, and by imposing those essential to the expenditure of government on the classes and interests best able to support them. We shall in this section shortly notice a few of the taxes which require either to be repealed or modified.

To begin with SOAP, which, as the cholera spasmodica has reached our shores, is rendered more than ever essential to health and cleanliness. On hard soap (the revenue on soft soap is next to nothing) the duty is three pence per pound, or 110 to 130 per cent., in some cases more. The duty is too high, and the regulations for collecting it lead to frauds of the grossest description. There is no duty in Ireland, and it is notorious that a large quantity of soap is smuggled back again from that country into England. There is no fixed rule for the collection of the tax: there are no less than seven different modes of levying it: in London there is one way, in Liverpool another, in Hull a third, and so on. This is meant to avoid fraud, and the result is to invite it, and, of course, to harass the fair trader. Mr. Thomson mentioned two Liverpool houses (House of Commons, March 26, 1830) which contrived to carry on an extensive business with government capital, by a dexterous management of the drawback allowed on the exportation of soap to Ireland.

The duty of £4 : 10 per ton on HEMP is injudicious; for it is a tax on a raw material not produced at home, and of the first necessity for shipping and domestic uses. But while we tax the article in its raw state, we admit it in a manufactured form for the use of the marine, if purchased and manufactured abroad: thus giving a premium to the foreign manufacturer and discouraging our own. The timber duties are liable to similar objections, but the subject has been so frequently before the public we shall pass on to the SILK DUTIES, which, as justly remarked, are a fine specimen of fiscal absurdity.

First, there is a duty on manufactured silk, to protect the weaver; then, there is a duty on thrown silk, to keep him down, and to protect the silk-throwster; then, there is a duty on raw silk, to contract the operations of both weaver and throwster. Common sense would say, abolish the raw silk-duties at all events; but Common Sense has never been finance minister, and indeed very seldom in the Cabinet in any capacity.

The MALT LAWS will of course be revised. It is an act of justice due to the malster, to the public, and to the agriculturist. The duty on TEA must stand over till the East India Company’s charter is settled, when we may expect something better than an infusion from sloe-leaves to breakfast; prior to the settlement of the Charter any reduction in the duty would only tend to augment the dividends of the proprietors. The duty on GLASS does not admit of delay; the gross produce is about one million, but nearly half of this sum is either returned or lost in the charges of collection. Lord Althorp proposed to repeal the glass duty, but having been bothered out of the tax on stock-jobbing by Messrs. Goulburn and John Smith, he was compelled to retain it, as also the duty on tobacco.

The duties on different kinds of PAPER vary from 50 to 150 per cent. They form a portion of the mass of taxes imposed on knowledge and the diffusion of information. The payment of the duties is the least part of the evil; the paper-maker is harassed like the malster by an infinity of forms—in giving notice to the exciseman—in reweighing the paper before the supervisor—in lettering the rooms of his manufactory—in numbering his vats, chests, presses and engines—in taking out licenses—and in procuring and pasting labels on every ream—and for neglect of any of which he is liable to ruinous penalties. Why is the paltry PAMPHLET DUTY retained? It produces only about £1,000 per annum, which is much less than might be obtained by compelling noble lords and honourable members to pay the postage of their private correspondence. Yet for this insignificant sum the booksellers throughout the kingdom are hampered with forms of entry at the Stamp Office, which, if they do not observe, they must pay forfeit, or what is worse, memorialise the Honourable Board, alias the Honourable Solicitor of Stamps. The duty on ADVERTISEMENTS ought to be regulated, but in what way we are unable to suggest. It is certainly unfair that a short advertisement should pay as much as a long one, or that an advertisement for a place, office, or employment should pay as much as one for a loan of money, or the sale of an estate.

The produce of the duty on SEA POLICIES has diminished, although the amount of ship’s tonnage entered inwards and outwards has increased. The high rate of duties has driven insurers to make their policies in America, Holland, and Germany, where they could insure at a cheaper rate. In these times of low profits a difference in price of one-quarter or one-half per cent. is sufficient to influence the determination of commercial business. The case of FIRE INSURANCES is still more flagrant. The premium in London on common risks is 1s. 6d. and upon that 3s. duty must be paid to government. A tax of 200 per cent. obviously prevents many from insuring; those who are willing to pay 1s. 6d. per cent. to the offices do not like to pay twice as much more for pensions and palace buildings. The consequence is that it is only the great properties which are insured, the smaller are left to Providence. A man with a large house and valuable furniture insures, but a man with a cottage does not: thus prudence is taxed where it ought to be specially encouraged.

The unequal mode of assessing the inhabited house duty has been before alluded to; also the mileage duty on stage-coaches (pp. 267-280) and the unfair advantage possessed by real over chattel property. The estates of the aristocracy pass to their descendants without payment of either probate or legacy duty; but the property of the merchant, trader, or mechanic, being mostly personal, is subject to both, and cannot be left to children and friends without payment of a tax, varying from one to ten per cent. The whole of the STAMP DUTIES require regulation, and the public has long indulged a hope that the task ere this would have been accomplished. The duty on deeds and other legal instruments should be more regular in its ascent, and not fall so heavily on property of small value. The representatives of a deceased person must swear to the amount of his property without deducting debts; and although the duty is afterwards returned (but with considerable trouble and expense), it frequently inconveniences the poorer classes, who may not have the immediate means of paying the probate duty, without which they cannot act. The license duties fall very unequally; many classes, and these best able perhaps to bear a deduction from their incomes, are wholly exempt. Then why should an attorney be subject to an annual duty, while the barrister, physician, and medical practitioner escape altogether? Or why should the large fundholder, or the army and naval half-pay, and civil superannuation people, receive their dividends and pensions without giving a stamp, especially as government will not receive its own taxes without charging the payer with the receipt-duty.

Ireland has been so impoverished by tithes and absenteeism that her contributions to the wants of the state have been personal rather than pecuniary. She was exempt from the property tax, and still is from the assessed taxes. Why, however, the gentry should escape direct taxation as well as agistment tithe, cannot be so easily explained, unless from the circumstance of Ireland having been till lately a close borough. There may be valid grounds for exempting a poor country from duties on articles of consumption; but income arising from property is really more valuable (will go farther) in a poor country than in a rich one.

TAXES ON NEWSPAPERS.—The heavy duty on newspapers, whether considered as a source of revenue, or, in its injurious tendency, to restrict the diffusion of intelligence, is the most objectionable part of our fiscal system. A fourpenny stamp, on an article which sells for sixpence, is a tax of 200 per cent. Some of the weekly papers endeavour to evade this onerous impost, by selling a larger paper at a higher price, which reduces the per centage, the duty not being an ad valorem one; but they are subject to the disadvantage of a more limited sale, owing to the higher price of their publications.

A reduction in the duty would be more than compensated by an increase in the circulation of papers; but then the object of the government has been not so much to realize revenue as to control public opinion. Our limits do not admit of our treating this subject so fully as it deserves; nor is it necessary, after the able and conclusive exposition it has undergone in other publications; we shall, however, submit a few brief observations:—1. On the influence of the high stamp-duties on the state of the newspaper press. 2. On the consequences of restricting the sale of cheap political pamphlets, subjecting them to the same duty as the regular journals. Our arguments will be addressed to those who feel an interest in social improvement, not to those who seek only to thrive by abuse and oppression.

The first and most obvious effect of the high duty is, by enhancing the price, to curtail the benefit of newspapers, whether as the source of innocent amusement or useful instruction, to the more opulent classes. But the newspapers depending for support upon what may be termed the proprietary of the country, they will, of course, be conducted on such principles and in such spirit as is likely to be most agreeable to the interests, the prejudices, and passions of their subscribers. Hence the predominant character of the press has been ARISTOCRATIC: and it seldom compromised the favour of its chief patrons by the fearless exposition of any political abuse, superstitious error, commercial or chartered privilege, private vice, or public oppression, in which they were especially interested.

But the Press being under the influence of the opulent, it leaves the indigent, as we shall term them for brevity, without protection. They may be calumniated with impunity, as they often are; their motives, views, and conduct may be distorted, and they have no effective means—no organ—by which they can set themselves right with the community. Hence it is that the great mass of society—the industrious and trading classes—those numerous and useful orders, which constitute the bone and muscle of the social state—are no more represented—their interests are no more maintained, by the daily journals, than they are by the Commons’ House of Parliament.

Of late years a great deal has been said of the advantages of commercial freedom and unrestricted competition; but is a monopoly of knowledge less pregnant with mischief than a monopoly of corn or other article of general consumption? The exclusive privileges of Oxford and Cambridge have been objected to as well as of the Bank and East-India Company; but how does it happen there is so little outcry against the Press? The reason is obvious enough; the Press is the common crier; but, though loud and prompt in proclaiming the abuses of others, it has been marvellously silent concerning its own. How much the monopoly of the great brewers was reprobated, even by most of the journals; but the public injury, from this source, was limited and unimportant, contrasted with that originating in the monopoly of the Press. No doubt the beverage of the people was diluted and adulterated, but this evil, at the worst, was local in its effects; it was not like the Press, whose despotic authority is not limited to the metropolis, nor the provinces, nor even the empire, but extends to every corner of the globe.

The provincial press takes its tone and character from the London prints; some of the country papers follow in the wake of the Times, some the Morning Chronicle, some the Sun, some the Courier, and some other journals; but all have their guide and prototype in the metropolis, from whom they cut or copy their opinions. From this sort of paternity and connexion arises a most portentous danger to the liberties and prosperity of the empire. The Press has been designated a fourth estate, next in influence and importance to King, Lords, and Commons. But, Great GOD! only think of what this fourth estate consists—twelve daily papers established and carried on solely for gain—whose proprietors are unknown—whose editors are unknown—whose reporters are unknown—in short, belonging and attached to which there is not the slighest thread of responsibility, whatever may be the character and magnitude of their delinquency. Upon this vacillating and intangible pivot one-fourth—aye, a great deal more—of the government of this great empire depends. What nonsense it is to complain of the Treasury boroughs, of Gatton, or Midhurst, or of rotten boroughs with only a dozen electors, while an overwhelming influence like this is tolerated! What dolts ministers would have been, had they exclusively concerned themselves about the influence to be derived from these sources, and not availed themselves of the more potent agency which might be derived from the Press. And do we suppose that Government alone may avail itself of this power; that great commercial companies, loan-mongers, speculators in the funds, and getters up of bubble companies may not resort to similar aid? Assuredly not; for we know the contrary; we know that the Press has been the great agent not only in the oppressions of the Oligarchy, but in the fraudulent devices by which one portion of the community has plundered another.

Only place at our disposal, out of the secret service money, £20,000 per annum; a few judgeships and offices in the Colonies; a few leases of houses and crown lands in the metropolis; a few livings and dignities in the Church; a few places in the Customs, Excise, and judicial administration; and a few appointments to the magistracy and shrievalties in the country: let us, we repeat, have these things in our gift, and we will engage to make the boasted FOURTH ESTATE of this realm as subservient as the most corrupt and despotic minister could desire. We do not mean to affirm we would render the Press undisguisedly prostituted to the Government; we would further its ends in a much more adroit and effective manner; nor would we go openly with bribe in hand, for, in that case, the sly rogues would bruit our offer, knowing they would gain more by proclaiming it, and boasting of their incorruptible integrity, than accepting our tender: we would not adopt any such vulgar mode of procedure; nevertheless, we would accomplish our employer’s purpose. If the premier wished to interfere with France, or Belgium, or to get up a war of any sort, we would render the undertaking popular to his heart’s content; if he wished to set his face against the reform of domestic abuses, we would convince ninety-nine out of every hundred that our institutions had stood the test of ages, and are the best the wit of man ever devised; if he wished to hunt down a troublesome individual, we would render the caitiff an exile from all decent and respectable society; if he wished to destroy all public spirit in the people, we would throw such discredit on every meeting and association for a patriotic object, that the parties thereto should appear nothing better than gaping idiots or poverty-stricken knaves, whose sole purpose was the plunder of the RICH!

All this we would do, and more, and the great beauty of our doings would be that they should be so dexterously managed that they would neither bring scandal on ourselves, our employer, nor the agents of our Diabolism. The only machinery necessary to put in motion would be simply a well-directed MENSONGE, with which gentlemen connected with the “respectable part of the Press” are well acquainted. It would consist of an artful and incessant grinding of paragraphs—an amplifying and improving, or, if an opponent, a garbling, curtailing, and suppressing of speeches—the omission, misrepresentation, or blazoning, as the case might be, of all public meetings and proceedings—in short, in picturing every thing and person on the broad sheet in such a way that they should be viewed through a multiplying glass, or the right or wrong end of the telescope, as might best suit the purpose of our employer.

All this we should be able to effect without fear of detection or exposure: we would manage the Press with less noise than the famous William Holmes in the olden time managed the orgies of St. Stephen’s; the close monopoly affords every facility for bribery and concealment; and though these diverging rays of intelligence, the country papers, would partake, equally with the rest, of the impulse given at the primal source, they would be as unconscious of the presence, as unparticipant in the favours of the great operator at the focal point.

Perhaps our almost allegorical description of the relation in which the journals stand to the community may not be fully comprehended by all our readers; but it would be a more invidious task than we should like, to illustrate our subject by practical examples. What we have said applies to the Press in its corporate and irresponsible capacity; of the individuals connected with it, they are, we believe, as estimable as any other class; and some there are, we know, animated by an almost enthusiastic devotion to popular rights and social happiness. It is not their faults exactly that they are placed in a false position, in respect of society; that from the operation of the stamp duty excluding competition, they have been raised into great and hazardous undertakings, which renders it almost madness, and something like breach of trust to the proprietors, to indulge their private sentiments at the risk of compromising the partial interests on which the prosperity of the journals confided to their management notoriously depends.

This is the most that can be said in extenuation of their timid, see-saw, and compromising conduct; and after all, it does not lessen the magnitude of the evil under which the public suffers. That this evil exists, and to an enormous extent, we shall establish, from the present state and management of The Times. This journal exercises an irresponsible power, dangerous to the interests of society; and were this power exercised in opposition to the government—which, by the by, is not likely, as this journal has evinced a fixed determination to stick to the dynasty de facto, whether Tory or Whig—it would be dangerous even to the government. Had we the option, whether, as an instrument of the general happiness, we would prefer the return of 100 honest members to parliament from the unrepresented towns, or we would have the Times at our beck, we should unhesitatingly say, give us the beldame of Printing-house-square, with her good name, her Medusean front, her quiver of poisoned arrows, her subtlety, literary tact, experience of town, and general acquaintance with all the springs of life and action. The influence she is enabled to exercise over public opinion is incredible, and can only be appreciated by those habituated to observe social movements, and the agency by which they are produced.

It is because a newspaper has such power, which may be directed to a beneficial or malignant purpose, that we consider the state of the Press objectionable. Irresponsible authority is as objectionable in the gentlemen of the Press as in the Boroughmongers, and for the remedy of this literary usurpation we know nothing so well adapted as the opening of the trade, by means of minor publications. The suppression of the cheap political pamphlets by lord Castlereagh always appeared to us both unjust and impolitic. Sedition and licentiousness might have been effectually restrained without destroying an instrument which, ultimately, might have been made subservient to the attainment of the most salutary ameliorations. It is the imposition of the stamp duty, not the demand of security of which we complain; the former completely interdicting, to a vast majority of the community, a source of amusement and intellectual improvement.

Some of the most dangerous popular errors, we are convinced, were eradicated solely by the agency of the cheap tracts. Among these we reckon the prevailing opinions on Catholic Emancipation. Before the establishment of the weekly pamphlets the mass of the population was decidedly anti-catholic, and hardly less obstinate in their prejudices than Lord Eldon or Sir C. Wetherell. A prodigious change was effected in the character of the people in another respect. During a scarcity, or high prices, the rage of the labouring classes was mostly vented on the butcher, baker, and farmer; such senseless outrages are now never heard of. The introduction of machinery, for obvious reasons, was opposed by the mass of the people. It was impossible they should at first be reconciled to inventions which, though tending to the general advantage, by the multiplication of commodities at a cheaper rate, yet, if they did not deprive some classes of the means of subsistence, degraded them into lower stations. It was natural, therefore, they should resist this innovation; and, in so doing, we believe, they did no more than the legal, ecclesiastical, or any other class would have done, had their interests been sacrificed, though that sacrifice were made for the general good. It was necessary, however, the principle should triumph. The people resisted; severer laws were made against frame-breakers, and a terrible sacrifice was made at York: but all this would have been ineffectual, had not another cause interfered. This cause, we verily believe, was the introduction, by Mr. Cobbett, of the two-penny trash; which demonstrated that, however injurious the employment of machinery might be to particular branches of industry, yet, inasmuch as it augmented the supply of food and clothing, consequently rendered them cheaper to all classes, it must be ultimately beneficial. We are convinced if pamphlet writing had continued unchecked during the last twelve years, the effects of the knowledge it would have spread, and the discussion it would have excited, would have saved the country from the ‘Swing fires,’ and those outrages against the machinery and property of individuals who suffer as much as their unfortunate work-people from the manifold difficulties in which we have been involved by a long course of misgovernment.

Much has been said about the pernicious, dangerous, and absurd doctrines which were propagated. It might be the case; with important truths, error also might be inculcated; ideas beneficial to society might be accompanied with others of a contrary tendency. This, however, was matter of opinion; and a more proper subject for discussion than coercion. Admitting that cheap publications were injurious as well as beneficial, it afforded no argument whatever for their suppression. The same objection might be made to plays, novels, romances, and almost every other publication; the same objection might be urged against the amusements of the theatre: all these, no doubt, are productive of evil as well as good to the community; but who ever, on that account, thought that they ought to be suppressed? Who ever expects to see any improvement unaccompanied with some countervailing disadvantage? The only principle in this, as in every other case, is to balance the good against the bad; and it was on this principle the fate of the cheap publications ought to have been determined.

It is unnecessary, we think, to say any thing more in defence of political pamphlets. We were desirous of submitting a few observations, because it is generally understood Ministers have some measure in contemplation by which the future state of the Press is to be regulated. There appear only two courses open to them to pursue; either we must have a restricted or free trade in politics. Public opinion has declared against the former,—it would require a literary preventive service to enforce it, and after all the people would obtain the contraband commodity, though, perhaps, both dear and deleterious; whereas, by open competition, the cheapest and best, in the long run, would possess the market.

We have not dwelt much on the fiscal part of the subject; it has been better done by others than we could do it, and, moreover, is exhausted; beside we have not so bad an opinion of Ministers as to think that the loss or gain of the revenue will form a material item of consideration when the question is whether a great community shall be informed, or remain in ignorance of its real and permanent interests.

There is one point we have omitted to notice; namely, the opinion entertained that the reduction of the stamp-duties would inflict serious pecuniary loss on the newspaper press. We cannot foresee such result; our impression is, that both the public income and the newspaper proprietary would gain by the alteration. Under the existing system the circulation of the journals is chiefly confined to the opulent; were the price reduced one-half many would take in two or more papers who only take in one: hundreds of thousands who are restricted to an hour’s inconvenient and hasty perusal, or obliged to resort to a coffee-house, news-room, or alehouse, would become subscribers to a paper for their exclusive use, or for the morning, after-dinner, or evening amusement of their families. The consequence would be a prodigious increase of sale, and, of course, revenue. The Times, which now circulates 7000 or 8000, would circulate 20,000 or 30,000, and the Morning Chronicle and other journals would have a corresponding augmentation of demand. That there would be increased competition we believe, but it would be a competition of opinion rather than of profit. The old journals would retain their supremacy,—the result of great capital—admirable business arrangements—literary connexion—valuable correspondence in every part of the globe—and long established channels of circulation. Against such advantages new rivals might contend, but they would contend with the odds greatly against them, and if they succeeded, their success would be the result rather of the special favour of the gods than of any other favouring circumstance.

To conclude, we think, by a reduction of the newspaper duties, a vast social benefit would be conferred, without inflicting loss on any class of individuals, or even the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It would be like the discovery of some new and useful invention, which brings within the reach of the whole community an article of luxury or comfort that had previously been confined to the richer classes. Were newspapers sold for threepence, every respectable family could afford its daily journal, and every working man his weekly one; their circulation would be as great in England, in proportion to the reading population, as in France or the United States. The advantages that would result—moral, social, and political—are too obvious to be enforced.

EAST-INDIA COMPANY.

AMONG the monopolies and privileged communities which impede individual enterprise and national prosperity, the East-India Company and the Bank of England stand pre-eminent: these have formed the outworks, the strongholds, of the Borough System; and, by their connexions and interests, added greatly to that mass of influence by which the latter has been supported. Both these powerful associations have become more like petty states, acknowledging a feudatory dependence to the supreme power, than companies of traders, originally incorporated for commercial purposes. Both have risen from very humble beginnings, and perhaps it would not be easy to strike the balance of turpitude by which their power has been respectively acquired. Both have been nurtured under the fostering care of the Oligarchy, to which, under particular emergencies, they have been indebted for assistance; and, probably, it is from a knowledge of this paternal obligation, that these chartered bodies feel such a lively interest in the permanency of the existing system, and that whenever any popular movement indicates proceedings hostile to the government, they are instantly alarmed, and the Bank and the India-House immediately placed in a defensive attitude.

Both the Bank and the East-India Company claim particular attention, from the period having arrived about which their charters expire; and the legislature, either in the session of 1831 or the following year, will have to determine their future immunities, and the relative position in which they are to stand to the government and the community.

Before entering on the exposition of the present state of the East-India Company, it will be proper to give a brief outline of the history of this powerful association, and briefly indicate those extraordinary events by which a few traders in mace, nutmegs, and ginger, have been able to extend their sway over 120 millions of inhabitants, whose happiness depends on their wisdom and justice. In giving this notice, we shall enter into no detail of Asiatic triumphs, of battles and sieges. We have little taste for these things at best, but still less when the combatants are unequally matched,—when we should have to present a counterpart to the conquest of Peru and Mexico by the Spaniards,—exhibit the conflicts of wolves and sheep, and show how a handful of crafty, hardy, and unprincipled Europeans wrested a mighty empire from the feeble grasp of the artless and effeminate Hindoos. Leaving out, therefore, with one or two exceptions, military details, which in justice ought never to have formed part of the history of the East-India Company, we shall confine ourselves principally to the civil transactions of this association.

The first attention to the India trade appears to have been attracted by the success of the Dutch merchants. These rapacious traders, having supplanted the Portuguese in that part of the world, had an entire monopoly of the trade, and availing themselves of the exclusive possession of the market, exacted exorbitant prices for the productions of the East. To frustrate their avarice, and obtain some share in this lucrative traffic, the merchants of London despatched a mission to the Great Mogul, to obtain from him a grant of commercial privileges to the English. The success of this mission was not known till the year 1600; but, in the mean time, the lord mayor, aldermen, and other principal merchants of the city, to the number of 101, assembled in Founders’ Hall, and established an association for trading to India, for which they subscribed a capital of £33,133. To this society, and in the year mentioned, Queen Elizabeth granted the first charter of incorporation, with the exclusive privilege to trade to all parts of Asia, Africa, and America, for fifteen years, and the company to be managed by a chairman and twenty-four directors chosen annually. The capital of the corporation amounted to £70,000. They fitted out four ships of the burthen of 240, 260, 300, and 600 tons. The value of the ships’ stores and provisions, of the merchandize forming the cargoes, and of the bullion, was estimated at £68,373.

This expedition was tolerably successful, brought home valuable cargoes of merchandize, and succeeded in establishing factories at Bantany, and on the Molucca Islands. But, notwithstanding the success of this undertaking, no great effort was made to follow it up, and for several years after, the trade and capital of the Company gradually declined. In 1606, only three ships were fitted out. In 1608, the Company having subscribed a capital of £33,000, for a fourth voyage, the whole of their ships were either wrecked in India, or on their voyage home. Next year they were more fortunate, and their ships bringing home a valuable cargo of mace and nutmegs, they divided a profit of 211 per cent. Encouraged by this success, the Company solicited the renewal of their charter, and seemed resolved to push the trade with spirit. They built the largest ship that had ever been constructed in England for commercial purposes, being no less than 1000 tons burthen. King James and his court attended the launch, and named her The Trade’s Increase.

Unfortunately this vessel was lost, and Sir Henry Middleton, her commander, soon after died of grief. The trade subsequently declined, for which various causes may be assigned. The rivals of the Company, the Dutch and Portuguese, made use of every expedient avarice and treachery could suggest, to impede their success; besides which, we may add, the erroneous principles on which the different voyages were undertaken. Instead of the trade being conducted upon a joint-stock on account of the whole Company, every individual was privileged by the charter to subscribe as much or as little as he pleased, or nothing at all, for every voyage. The disadvantages of this system in an incipient and difficult undertaking became apparent; and, in 1612, it was determined to have no more separate voyages, but to open a subscription for a joint capital to continue for four years. Upon this principle the affairs of the Company assumed a new aspect; and in a very short time they had established more than twenty factories, in different parts of the Mogul’s dominions, and the islands in the Indian seas.

In 1616, when they proposed to raise a new capital, all ranks crowded into the subscription, which, at the time of closing it, amounted to £1,629,040, being the largest capital that had ever been subscribed in any part of Europe for a joint-stock trade. Among the subscribers were 15 dukes and earls, 13 countesses, 82 knights, including judges and privy counsellors, 18 widows and maiden ladies, besides clergymen, physicians, merchants, tradesmen, and others without any denomination; in the whole 954 subscribers. The stock of the Company sold for 203 per cent. The total value of their property, at this time, was estimated at £400,000. And it was stated by the deputy-governor, that they gave employment to 10,000 tons of shipping, 2500 seamen, 500 ship carpenters, and 120 factors in India.

In 1652 the Company obtained considerable privileges in Bengal through the skill of their surgeons, in curing a certain disease in the Mogul court, and which disease was little known in Europe, though afterwards of frequent occurrence in sea-ports and large capitals. In 1655, the trade was thrown open for three years, but closed again in two years on it being alleged that evils had resulted from the free-trade. In 1669 the Company received two canisters containing 1431/2 pounds of tea, which is supposed to have been the first importation of this article from any part of the Indies. It was partly given away in presents, and partly consumed in the India-House for the refreshment of the committees.

In 1676, the trade of the Company having been very successful for many years, they were enabled, out of their accumulated profits, to double their capital to £739,782, upon which the market price of their stock, which had been under par, immediately rose to £245 per cent. The ships in their employ amounted to from 30 to 35, of from 300 to 600 tons, and carrying from 40 to 70 guns. In the year 1680, the company sent a ship to trade with China. The whole of that trade had heretofore been monopolized by the Dutch and Portuguese. About this time they acquired the privilege to coin money, not resembling British money, at Bombay and other places in India. The Company consisted of 600 members, who were entitled to votes in proportion to their shares; hence it happened that some had to the amount of sixty votes:—every member, moreover, had liberty to carry on trade on his own private account, to the extent of one-fifth of his stock in the Company’s capital.

In 1698, the English factory obtained permission to purchase three small villages, extending in all about three miles along the east bank of the Ganges, and about one mile back from it, for which they agreed to pay annually to the Nabob 1195 rupees. This diminutive acquisition was the handle to the axe and commencement of the territorial aggrandizement of the Company, by which they were afterwards enabled to hew down the entire Mogul empire. The ground on which these villages stood forms the site of the great city of Calcutta, containing 600,000 inhabitants.

Some jealousy, about this time, began to be entertained at the increasing power of the Company; and the Government intimated to the association that a large sum would be expected for the public service, in consideration of a parliamentary confirmation of their privileges. They offered to advance £700,000 at an interest of 4 per cent. provided their charter was fully confirmed by parliament. Meanwhile several opulent individuals offered to advance £2,000,000, provided they were invested with all the privileges of the India trade, as heretofore enjoyed by the Company. Parliament accepted the larger sum, though at double interest, and a bill was ordered to be prepared for incorporating the subscribers. The Company, not to be outdone by their opponents, then proposed a loan of £2,000,000, but this availed them nothing. The government was favourable to the opposing interest, and it prevailed. So great were the advantages anticipated by the nation from the new association, that the subscription of two millions was filled up within a few days after the books were opened. The greatest part of this sum was subscribed by foreigners. The king himself was an adventurer to the extent of £10,000.

The charter of the original Company had not yet expired, and a most ruinous contest ensued betwixt the rival associations. More than sixty ships are said to have been employed by the contending interests in the India trade. The glut of India goods, joined to other causes, produced by this rivalship, reduced the value of the stock of the old Company, which had been as high as 500 per cent., to 39 per cent. Both parties at length seem to have discovered the ruinous tendency of this contest, and an union was effected in 1702, by a tripartite indenture, wherein Queen Anne, the old Company and the new Company were partners. According to this instrument, the two Companies bind themselves to have at least one-tenth of their exports in English manufactures, and after the expiration of seven years they are to be called “The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies,” which is their present designation.

In 1766, the Company, in consequence of their territorial acquisitions, raised their dividend from 6 to 10 per cent. and shortly after to 121/2 per cent. In India this year, their power was exposed to hazard by the abolition of the double batta, or allowance to officers in the field: it originated a serious mutiny in the army, but was subdued by the firmness of Lord Clive, and many officers cashiered. The celebrated Hyder Ali, who from a subordinate rank had raised himself to the throne of Mysore, began about this period to menace the sway of the Company.

In 1779, the time for the renewal of the charter approaching, the Company prudently prepared for that event, by a present to the public of three seventy-four gun ships, besides a large sum of money in bounties to 6000 seamen. Notwithstanding this bonus, in 1781 notice was given to the Company by Government, that on the expiration of the charter their exclusive privileges should cease, unless they would agree to pay £1,000,000 into the exchequer, restrict their future dividend to 8 per cent. and pay three-fourths of the surplus profits, over and above that dividend, into the Treasury. After much discussion, the demand for the renewal of the charter was reduced to £400,000, the other conditions remaining unaltered; and the Company were required to submit all political despatches to ministers, who were to decide on all questions relative to peace and war.

In 1789 the decennial settlement of lands commenced in Bengal and Bahar, and was completed in 1793, when the settlement was made perpetual. By this settlement, which produced such an important change in the landed tenure of a vast territory in India, the zemindars, who were in fact the revenue agents of the Mogul government, usually hereditary and possessed of great power and influence, but not owners of the soil, which they could neither sell nor alienate, were declared the actual land-owners, and from them the principal revenue of India was to be derived in the shape of land-tax. The poor ryots or peasantry, who were, next to the sovereign, the real owners of the land, as much as the feudal nobility of England or Hungary, and who could not be dispossessed of it so long as they paid their public assessments, were at once transmuted into the tenants of the zemindars or tax-gatherers. The objects of this sweeping innovation were financial and of disastrous issue. The zemindars, obliged to go through the legal formalities to collect their levies from the ryots, were unable to pay their taxes to the government, whose proceedings were summary. Their lands were gradually sold for the arrears of taxes, and passed into the hands of absentee landlords; in a few years almost all the zemindars disappeared. No improvement took place in the condition of the ryots, who were more oppressed by the middlemen above them than they had been by the tax-gatherers of the Mogul.

About this period, the affairs of the East-India Company, and the transactions in Hindustan, began deeply to interest the public, and every session of parliament produced new investigations on this important subject. From merchants, the Company had risen into sovereign princes, and, instead of being occupied with the ginger and pepper trade, they were wholly absorbed in schemes of territorial aggrandizement. Occupied unceasingly in war—buying and exchanging territory—making treaties of partition—hiring troops to the native princes—establishing monopolies—and fomenting hostilities among the nabobs and subahdars, that these short-sighted princes, after weakening each other by their animosities, might fall an easy prey to the superior policy of the common invader. These avocations ill comported with the commercial character, and it was a little inconceivable how men, whose knowledge, it may be supposed, was principally confined to making out invoices, bills of landing, or book-keeping by double entry, could discharge these royal functions.

In 1783, Mr. Fox introduced his famous India Bills, the general objects of which were to divest the company of their administrative functions—to prohibit them from making war, unless in self-defence—from making treaties of partition—hiring troops to the native princes—and every illegal present was to be recoverable by any person for his own benefit. These provisions sufficiently indicate the prevalent abuses. They were opposed by Mr. Pitt, then out of place, an oppositionist and reformer. The question agitated the whole nation; and such was the outcry raised by the Company against the pretended violation of their charter—representing such a precedent as endangering the security of all the corporations in the kingdom,—that they finally prevailed, and the bills, though passed in the Commons, were rejected by the Lords.

Next year a dissolution of parliament and change of ministers having taken place, Mr. Pitt introduced a new bill for the better government of India. Many of the provisions of this bill were similar to those of the bill of Mr. Fox. The most important difference related to the appointment of the Board of Control. The commercial affairs and territorial possessions of the Company were to continue in their hands, subject to the superintendence of a board of commissioners appointed by the Crown.

The next subject of any interest is the trial of Warren Hastings. This gentleman had presided over India thirteen years, and arrived in England on the 16th of June, 1785. On the 26th of the same month, Mr. Burke, who had brought heavy accusations against him in the preceding session, gave notice of his intention to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanours, alleged to have been committed in India. After long debates in this and succeeding sessions, the prosecution was sanctioned by the Commons, and, in 1787, articles of impeachment were sent to the Lords. The trial was protracted from year to year, till the 23d of April, 1795, when the accused was acquitted, on the payment of his fees, of all the charges preferred against him. The Company, in consideration of the services of this officer, discharged the expenses he had incurred by the prosecution, amounting to upwards of £70,000, and settled upon him an annuity of £5000.

In 1793 the charter of the Company was renewed, and their exclusive privileges continued to them until the first day of March, 1814. In this act a clause was inserted to restrain the belligerent propensities of the Company’s servants, but it appears not to have been much regarded. In 1792 Tippoo Saib was despoiled of half his dominions, and compelled to deliver two of his sons into the hands of the Marquis Cornwallis, as hostages for the performance of a treaty by which he engaged to pay £1,600,000 in money to the Company. In 1799 this prince was again attacked by Lord Mornington, now Marquis Wellesley, under pretext of having entered into negotiations with the French, and some of the native princes, for the entire expulsion of the English from India. This war completed the destruction of the sultan. His capital of Seringapatam was taken by assault, himself slain in its defence, and his dominions dismembered. His descendants are now supported by pensions payable by the ci-devant dealers in mace and cloves.

The Company having obtained possession of the different members of the Mogul empire, in 1803, completed their conquests by attacking the Mogul himself in his capital of Delhi. This monarch and his family were also placed upon the pension-list of the Company.

We shall only mention a few more facts connected with the Company’s history till the opening of the trade in 1814. By the act of 1784 the fortunes acquired in India were to be ascertained on the return of each servant of the Company to England; this clause was repealed two years after by 26 Geo. III. c. 57. By the 29 Geo. III. c. 65, they were authorised to add one million to their capital stock. The new stock being subscribed at 174 per cent. produced £1,740,000, which raised their joint-stock to five millions. In 1793 they were authorized to add another million to their capital by subscription, making it £6,000,000, its present amount. This additional stock produced £2,000,000, being subscribed at 200 per cent.

In 1797 valuable concessions were made to the Americans with regard to the India trade. They were permitted to carry on trade with the Company’s territories in India, in articles not prohibited by law, on paying only the duties paid by British vessels. These advantages were not neglected by the Americans. In a few years the trade of the United States in India equalled nearly one half the trade of the Company. It was singular policy to admit a foreign state to the participation of the India trade while our own merchants were excluded.

In 1803, during the alarm of an invasion, the Company, at a general court, came to a resolution to present to government 10,000 tons of shipping to guard the coast, and to be maintained at their own expense. In the years 1808 and 1809 the Company lost four outward-bound and six homeward-bound ships. The value of the ships and cargoes was estimated at two millions.

We have now mentioned the more important facts in the history of the East-India Company to the year 1813, when the exclusive privileges of this association were in part abolished. Prior to that time private traders were not wholly excluded from the India trade. By the 17th clause of the act of 1793, the Company were obliged to appropriate 3000 tons of shipping for carrying out goods belonging to private merchants and manufacturers. The act of 1813 continues to the Company the revenue and territorial acquisitions in India, and the exclusive monopoly of the China trade; but the trade to India, subject to certain restrictions and regulations, is thrown open to the enterprise of individuals. These immunities were conceded to the Company until the 10th of April, 1831, absolutely, and afterwards, until three years’ notice be given by parliament, and the debt due from the public to the Company be paid.

INDIAN WARS AND TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS.

No external dominion in the East can endanger the security of the Anglo-Indian empire. All the native princes have either been absolutely conquered, reduced to a state of dependence, or have been so completely humiliated and divested of offensive power, as to render entirely hopeless every chance of successful opposition to the British government. In 1815 the Ghorkas, who possess the kingdom of Nepaul, on the northern frontier of Hindustan, made a show of contesting the sovereignty of the Company, but they were completely defeated by Lord Hastings, and compelled to purchase peace by the cession of a large tract of territory. The Burmese were the last nation who gave us any uneasiness. They have been represented as a warlike people, and at one time meditated nothing less than an eruption into the province of Bengal. Rangoon, their capital, was occupied by a British force; and in 1826, after a teasing warfare, they submitted to the terms imposed by the invading army, by which the Company has become possessed of the provinces of Arracan and Tenasserim, including nearly the whole line of coast which previously belonged to the Burman empire.

Of the Mahratta chiefs, Scindia alone retains the full military as well as civil government of his territory. The courts of Holkar and of Guicowar, the rajah of Berar and of the smaller principalities, exercise the civil functions of royalty, but are not tolerated in the possession of an armed force. They have each, by the cession or conquest of a part of their territories, purchased military protection from the Company. The Rajpoot chiefs, who occupy the north-west frontier of Hindustan, are tributary either to the Company or to the states of Scindia and Holkar. Of the Mahometan governments, the king of Oude, the Nizam, the rajahs of Mysore and Travancore, and the nabob of Bhopaul, are the principal states whose civil independence is recognized, and these are in such a defenceless condition as to be entirely dependent on the forbearance of the Company for the continuance of their sovereignty.

From foreign rivalry and interference the English have no cause of apprehension. The only colonies which now belong to other European nations are Pondicherry and Chandernagore, to the French; Goa, to Portugal: Tranquebar and Serampore, to the Danish government; and Chinsurah, to the Dutch.

The population of the territories directly subject to Great Britain has been estimated at 80,000,000 of souls; while the population of those states which enjoy civil independence, but have been deprived of a military force, has been computed to amount to 40,000,000. The territory extends over an area of 585,000 square miles; and the total territory dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the Company, amounts to about 1,180,000 square miles. Such is the mighty empire, for the government and interests of which parliament will be shortly called upon to legislate.

We have not yet adverted to the means by which this vast dominion has been acquired. In our narrative of the commercial progress of the Company we forbore to enter into the black page of Indian wars and politics. Unparalleled crimes, violated treaties, blood, treachery, and devastation, form the chief materials of Indian history:—crimes, abhorrent even to a nation of barbarians, disgraceful to a civilized state, and horrible when perpetrated by the agents of a Christian country. There was not a single state, we are assured by Burke, prince, or potentate, with whom the Company had come in contact, that they had not sold; not a single treaty they had ever made, that they had not broken; not a single prince or state, who ever put any trust in the Company, who was not utterly ruined; and that none were, in any degree, secure or flourishing, but in the exact proportion to their settled distrust and irreconcilable enmity to this nation.

Indian delinquency is of no grovelling kind; it soars far above all precedent of ancient or European turpitude. Faith, justice, and humanity, were mere pretexts for rapine and violence. When these would not serve for the spoliation of the native powers, imaginary crimes were laid to their charge. Plots and rebellion, which, in England, have often been the pretexts for destroying the liberties of the people, in India were the pretexts for plunder and devastation. These, when no other offered, were the standing resources of the Company. When money had been thought to be heaped up any where, its owners were invariably accused of treason, and the only security for their allegiance was sought in reducing them to indigence. In England poverty is considered symptomatic of a traitorous disposition, in India it was riches; and the native prince had no chance of living free from the endless accusations, exactions, and even torture, of his oppressors, till he had stripped himself of the sordid wealth which excited their cupidity.

The most profitable merchandize of the Company was the nabobs and subahdars or viceroys. These princes, the rightful sovereigns of Hindustan, were sold and re-sold like cattle in a fair; even the Great Mogul himself, the descendant of Tamerlane, was included in the general traffic. This potentate, venerable for his years, and accomplished in all the oriental literature, was sold to his own minister. He was knocked down for the revenue of two provinces. Some princes were sold to their own children; the Company, exciting the children to a parricidal war against their parents, put them in possession of their dominions, on condition of hereafter being tributary and dependent on the Company. We could mention several instances of this mode of carrying on the royal slave-trade, but we will pass them by, in order to relate a more sweeping sale of Governor Hastings.

This man, who on one occasion received a present of £100,000 from the nabob of Oude, was the great salesman of Indian territory. We have seen that all the expenses of his prosecution were paid, and he was rewarded with an annuity of £5000 per annum for his faithful services in India. The province of Bengal, over which he presided, and the territory annexed to it, is larger and more populous than France, and formerly contained a landed interest, composed of a numerous nobility and gentry, of freeholders, lower tenants, religious communities, and public foundations. Under the English administration, these provinces had fallen into great decay, and a strong representation was made of its causes. Mr. Hastings, instead of administering any remedy to the disorders, determined, at one blow, to dispossess all the ancient proprietors. The incredible fact is, he set up the whole landed interest of a kingdom larger than France to public auction. He set up, says Burke, the whole nobility, gentry, and freeholders to the highest bidder. No preference was given to the zemindars, the ancient proprietors. They were compelled to bid for their own property against every usurer, jobber, speculator, or European servant; or they were obliged to content themselves, in lieu of their extensive domains, with their house and such a pension as the state auctioneer thought fit to assign. Several of them, in lieu of their hereditary lands, contented themselves with a pension, of which, under a new stretch of rapacity, they were subsequently deprived.

For the calamities inflicted on this devoted region by avarice and ambition, few compensatory advantages have been rendered. Scarcely a single trace is to be found of the superiority of our civil administration, nor a record of usefulness and generosity. Almost every village in England attests the former sovereignty of the Romans by the ruins of some work of power or utility; but the future Hindoo will in vain seek for mementos of our sway, in the bridges we have built, the navigations we have opened, or the highways we have constructed. All former conquerors of Hindustan—the Arab, the Tartar, and the Persian, left behind them some monument of either state or beneficence; but were we to be driven out of India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by any thing “better than the ourang-outang or the tiger.” Our only principle of government has been a system of IMPOSTURE, and our countrymen have visited India not to benefit the natives, but themselves. Their object is to amass fortunes, and they resort thither in endless flights, like birds of prey and passage. All discussion, all enquiry, all familiar intercourse with the people they prey upon is discouraged, lest it should betray the secret of our strength, and the delusion upon which the Indian empire is established.

Our military triumphs have been as void of true glory as our civil administration. The feeble and indolent Hindoos were an unequal match for the energy, artillery, and tactic combinations of Europeans: the greatest obstacles they could oppose to their invaders were the fatigue of long marches and a destructive climate. To meet them in the field was synonymous with defeat, dispersion, or capture. Hence our most signal victories, in the East, have been little more than so many battus—the “slaughter of some hundred deer.”

In the “Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Munro,” recently published, we have striking illustrations of Indian warfare. The Mahrattas were always reckoned among our most formidable opponents, and the battle of Assaye, the most brilliant of the eastern triumphs of the Duke of Wellington. Yet it appears these warriors, in this famous conflict, kept so far aloof from close collision with our troops, as to inflict no wound either with bayonet or bullet. Speaking of this battle, in a letter to Colonel Read, Sir T. Munro says, “At the battle of Assaye, the severest that took place in the course of the war, I do not recollect, among all our killed and wounded officers, one that suffered from a musket-ball or a bayonet, a convincing proof that the Mahratta infantry made very little serious opposition. Its discipline, its arms, and uniform clothing I regard merely as the means of dressing if out for the sacrifice.”

In the “Correspondence” are several letters from the Duke of Wellington, then Colonel Wellesley, which throw an instructive light on the reckless, plundering, and destroying system which marked our Asiatic triumphs. In one letter Colonel Wellesley recommends, in dashing style, the “cutting up” and “hunting out” the natives. To be sure these were thieves, and it might be quite in keeping with Indian justice to do execution upon them without trial, judge, or jury.

In another letter Colonel Wellesley signalizes the exploits of a brother officer, by the following graphic description:—

“Colonel Montresor has been very successful in Bulum; has beat, burnt, plundered, and destroyed in all parts of the country. But I am still of opinion that nothing has been done which can tend effectually to put an end to the rebellion in Bulum, and that the near approach of the rains renders it impossible to do THAT, which alone, in my opinion, will ever get the better of Kistnapah Naig.”

We may recognize, in these military sketches, the same fierce and determined spirit which so promptly turned Huskisson to the right about, and dismissed from the Irish viceroyship that gallant soldier the Marquis of Anglesey. Bonaparte was certainly as regardless of human life as any pestilent conqueror that ever desolated the face of the earth; but there is one letter of Colonel Wellesley, which, it must be allowed, evinces as much barbarous indifference to the common feelings of humanity as ever Napoleon did in the worst of his Egyptian slaughterings. We shall give the letter entire. The colonel was at the time pursuing his operations against Dhoondee.

“Camp at Soodnetty, Aug. 1st, 1800.

DEAR MUNRO,—

I have received your letters of the 22d and 23d; I have sent orders to the commanding officers at Hullihall and at Nuggar to furnish ammunition in moderate quantities, on the requisition of your amildars; in any quantities you please, on your own. Don’t press Hullihall too much, as I know they are not very well supplied there. Take what you please from Nuggar. I have taken and destroyed Doondiah’s baggage and six guns, and driven into the Malpurba (where they were drowned) aboutFIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE:I stormed Dummull on the 26th July. Doondiah’s followers are quitting him apace, as they do not think the amusement very gratifying at the present moment. The war, therefore, is nearly at an end; and another blow, which I am meditating upon him and his bunjarries, in the Kentoor country, will most probably bring it to a close. I must halt here to-morrow, to refresh a little, having marched every day since the 22d July; and on the 30th, the day on which I took his baggage, I marched twenty-six miles; which, let me tell you, is no small affair in this country.

“My troops are in high health and spirits, and their pockets full of money, the produce of plunder. I still think, however, that a store of rice at Hullihall will do us no harm, and, if I should not want it, the expense incurred will not signify.”

The man who could write this deserves that his name should be inscribed on the same roll with Attila and Zinghis Khan. It is only, however, a proof of the brutalizing tendency of war; for we never heard that Colonel Wellesley had either less or more humanity than the usual run of conquering heroes. But how horrible to boast of having driven five thousand people into a river, where they were drowned! Then with what gusto the future Prince of Waterloo talks of plunder, and of burning, and destroying. These excerpts are enough to illustrate Asiatic triumphs.

GOVERNMENT AND PATRONAGE OF INDIA.

The present frame of India government was established under the act of 1784, and modified, by subsequent acts for the renewal of the charter, in 1793 and 1813. Under the authority of these acts, by the institution of the Board of Control, such superintendence of the affairs of India is vested in the ministers of the Crown as precludes misgovernment without their concurrence. The Board is appointed by the King, and consists of twelve commissioners, of whom the two Secretaries of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are ex officio members; the president of the Board is the responsible officer, but the assistance of two other members is necessary to render its proceedings valid. The Board is invested with a control in all matters relating to the government of India, whether civil, military, or financial. It has access to all records, and may require abstracts and statements respecting all affairs not strictly commercial. No despatches relating to government or revenue can be forwarded to India without its approval. It may even originate instructions, and the Court of Directors, though they may remonstrate, cannot alter them. All despatches received from India must be immediately submitted to the Board; nor can any public disclosure of their contents take place, except under its authority. No war can be undertaken in India without its sanction. It may grant licenses to individuals to reside in India, and to ships to trade, when such licenses have been refused by the Directors. So extensive, indeed, have been the powers committed to it, that, whatever may have been the complexion of the Company’s measures in India, their responsibility is shared by the Board of Control, and, through it, by the king’s ministers at home.

Subordinate to the Board of Control are the administrative bodies emanating from the Company. The first in responsibility and power is the Court of Directors, consisting of twenty-four members. They are elected by the General Court of Proprietors, who meet four times a-year, and to whom it belongs to declare the dividend, to appoint a committee to frame by-laws, to control all grants above a certain amount, and to receive reports from the Directors respecting the general state of the Company’s concerns. No proprietor is entitled to a vote unless he be possessed of £1000 East-India stock; and the qualification of a Director is £2000 stock. Six Directors go out annually in rotation, so that four years is the period of service for each Director; no Director can be re-elected until he has been out of the direction for at least one year; thirteen Directors form a Court, and the presence of that number is necessary to give effect to all orders and instructions which do not emanate from the secret committee. The business of the Company is chiefly conducted by committees and sub-committees, to which are permanently allotted certain defined duties, and which are composed of Directors appointed in the order of their seniority.

In India, the administration of each of the three presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay is vested in a Governor and Council, consisting of three members. The Commander-in-Chief may be a member of Council, without regard to the term of his residence; but no civil servant of the Company can become member of Council until he has served ten years in India. The Government of Calcutta is supreme over the other governments in matters relating to peace, war, and revenue. All the proceedings of the governments in India must be recorded by minutes, with a statement of the reasons upon which they have been founded, for the purpose of checking maladministration. The governments are entrusted with the entire control over the army, and with the imposition of taxes, in all the dominions of the Company, except the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay; and their regulations have the authority of law, until reversed by instructions from home. The Governor-General is empowered to apprehend all suspected persons, and either to send them home to be tried in England, or, having forwarded copies of all depositions in their case, to retain them for judgment in India. Except in case of invasion, or of the most urgent necessity, the Governor-General is restrained from declaring war until the sanction of the Directors and of the Board of Control has been received. The commercial and financial concerns of the Company in India are superintended by a Board of Trade and a Board of Revenue. The collection of the revenue is conducted by British collectors, aided by British assistants; but all the inferior business of this department is transacted by natives.

There are three different classes of courts of justice in India. In the first are the King’s Courts, or Supreme Courts of Judicature, whose jurisdiction extends to all British-born subjects residing in the provinces, but, in suits between natives, is limited to the immediate vicinity of the presidencies. The courts which administer justice in those cases in which the natives are concerned are of two kinds, civil and criminal. Each kind consists of a supreme court, with courts of circuit and subordinate tribunals, down to institutions analogous to our Courts of Request and petty sessions. In all the courts Europeans preside, except those of the lowest description, in which there are native judges. Justice is administered according to the Mahummudan law, modified by a regard to Hindoo usages and by the regulations of the British Government. The natives have lately been rendered capable of sitting on juries, and it may be hoped that the introduction of this institution will tend to exalt the character of the people, to curb that disposition to pervert justice which is the great political vice of the East, and to supply the deficiencies under which an European judge must always labour, in weighing the evidence of a people with whose habits and ideas he can be only partially acquainted.

Such is a brief outline of the system under which the Indian empire is administered. Like most constitutions, it sounds well on paper, and does not appear liable to serious objections; but the general government at home is a striking instance how widely the principles of a constitution may differ from its practical administration. It is only an intelligent Hindoo, or some one actually cognizant of our India policy, who could give adequate testimony to the good or evil it confers on the native population. Unfortunately the authorities at Calcutta do not tolerate the publication of an Extraordinary Black Book there, nor hardly a Times newspaper, otherwise one might become acquainted with the working of the Leadenhall administration.

One of the best criterions of good government is the excellence of the judicial system. That of India has always been represented corrupt and oppressive. The administration of justice is the most lucrative profession in the east as well as in England. According to a statement of Mr. Hume, in the House of Commons, suitors in India are obliged to pay to government on the sum sued for from 50 to 7 and 6 per cent. and a fine is levied on all debts sued for, decreasing as the amount increases! Every document requisite to the progress of a suit, the citations, examinations, and depositions of witnesses, are all to be written on stamped paper; thereby increasing the expenses to an enormous total. These expenses amount to a virtual denial of justice, and, in the course of a long life, a man could scarcely expect to see any termination of suits; in a word, it is the English chancery system—that admirable contrivance for spunging clients—operating in India. The police is established on the Sidmouth or Villele system. A corps of spies is attached to every preventive establishment, and there is no Habeas Corpus Act to expedite judicial sentences. Persons are frequently taken up, and months elapse before any information is exhibited against them. In the interval they are confined in crowded and unhealthy prisons, where death not unfrequently overtakes them; or, after enduring the aggravated misery of imprisonment, nothing whatever appears against them, and they are liberated. For these blessings the Hindoos pay annually about £1,785,000, which is a greater expense than all the law-officers in Europe.

Leaving for the present any further strictures on the general government of India, let us advert to the important subject of India influence and patronage.

The whole patronage of India, civil and military, is vested in the Court of Directors, with the exception of the appointments of bishops, and of the judges of the Supreme Courts of Judicature. The Governors in India and the Commander-in-Chief are named by the Company, but their appointment must be sanctioned by the king. The king also possesses the power of removing any civil servant from his office in India. With these exceptions, the entire civil, naval, and military patronage of India vests in the Company, and exceeds in amount the patronage of the Crown before the French revolutionary war. Of the extent of this patronage we may form some idea from the number of persons in the Company’s service. We have no means of stating exactly the number of persons employed by the Company, but the following is an estimate when the revenues and possessions of the east were much less than at present.

Civil Service.

{ Persons either in the service of the Company or connected with and employed in their affairs in England

2,146

{ Persons in India employed in the judicial, clerical, diplomatic, commercial, and revenue departments

1,056

{ Seamen employed and reared in the Company’s service in 115 ships, about

25,000

Military and Naval Service.

{ British military officers in the Company’s service commanding European troops

1,000

{ British officers and cadets in the Company’s service commanding native troops

3,000

{ British non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the service of the Company

16,000

{ British officers in the Company’s naval department in India

113

Natives in the service of the Company.

{ Natives employed in various departments in the civil service of the Company

12,362

{ Natives employed in the Indian armies

140,000

{ Natives employed in the naval service estimated at about

800

Total

201,477

All the salaries in India are on a much more extravagant scale than in England. Of the above 201,477 persons in the service of the Company, at least 6000 in the civil and military departments at home and abroad, enjoy emoluments from £200 to £10,000 a year, exclusive of the Governor-General. The salary of the Governor-General of Bengal is £25,000 a year, and three counsellors with a salary of £10,000 a year each. The salary of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta is £8000 a year, with three other judges at £6000 a year each. By the act of 1813, the salary of a bishop in India is £5000 a year, and of three archdeacons £2000 a year each. The expense of outfit, &c. of different officers was fixed by the same act, as follows:—

Governor-General of Fort William, in Bengal

£5000

Each of the members of council there

1200

Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces in India

2500

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at Fort William

1500

Each of the Puisne Judges there

1000

Governor of Fort St. George

3000

Each of the Members of Council there

1000

Commander-in-Chief there

2000

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court there

1200

Each of the Puisne Judges there

1000

Governor of Bombay

2500

Each of the members of council there

1000

Commander-in-Chief there

1500

Recorder there

1500

Governor of Prince of Wales’s Island

1200

Recorder there

1000

Bishop

1200

Each of the Archdeacons

500

The allowance for the outfit, &c. of those officers is about one-fourth the amount of their salaries, exclusive of other emoluments. According to a statement in the East-India Register, the allowances per month to general and regimental officers when in the field, were on the Bengal establishment, as follows:—

General officer on the staff

£662

10

0

Colonel not on the staff

156

5

0

Lieutenant-Colonel

123

15

0

Major

93

15

0

Captain

51

7

6

Captain-Lieutenant

43

17

6

Lieutenant

31

15

0

Ensign

25

0

0

Adjutant

28

7

6

Quarter-Master

14

12

6

Surgeon

51

7

6

Assistant Surgeon

31

15

0

The allowance to officers on the Fort St. George and Bombay Establishments, was nearly the same as the above. The sums granted by way of superannuation allowance to officers and servants of the Company are very considerable. They are fixed according to the following scale, by the 53d George III. c. 155.

Proportion of salary.

If an officer or servant shall have served with diligence and fidelity in the Company’s service for ten years, and being under 60 years of age, shall be incapable, from infirmity of mind or body, to discharge the duties of office }

One-third.

If above 10 years and less than 20

One-half.

If above 20 years

Two-thirds.

If such officer or servant shall be above 60 years of age, and he shall have served 15 years or upwards, without infirmity of mind or body }

Two-thirds.

If 65 years of age, or upwards, and he shall have served 40 years or upwards }

Three-fourths.

If 65 years of age, and he shall have served 50 years or upwards }

The whole.

From the preceding details, some idea may be formed of the immense value of India patronage, and the wide field it opens for providing for children, relatives, and dependents. The trade of the Company has never been an object of so much importance as the military appointments to an army of 150,000 men, the filling up of vacancies in the judicial and police departments, and the numerous situations in the collection and expenditure of a revenue of 24 millions per annum. It is the annual value of these different situations which constitute the real profit of the Company.

It is evident that the excellence of our administration in India will depend upon the employment of individuals recommended by integrity and talent. In theory this principle appears to have been admitted by the Directors in 1793, when, by one of their by-laws, it was enacted that each Director, ten days after his election, should take oath to receive no emolument, perquisite, or pecuniary gratification, for any appointment in India. Little regard was paid to this obligation, and so early as 1798 it was notorious that a very extensive and systematic traffic was carried on for places in India. Several attempts were made, real or pretended, by Committees of the House of Commons, also by committees appointed by the Court of Directors, to discover the individuals implicated in these practices. On one occasion it was proposed that each Director should take oath he had not received any reward for any appointment he had made; but this was rejected by a large majority, and the sale in offices continued by public advertisement and otherwise, till at last an office was openly established for the sale and purchase of India patronage.

The practice was shameless and notorious; but it does not appear to have been completely laid bare, till the memorable disclosures in 1809, relative to Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York. In that year it was discovered that the improper disposal of India patronage had not been confined to the honourable Directors, but extended even to the right honourable President of the Board of Control. The then president was Lord Castlereagh. This minister, by the agency of a common place-broker, attempted to purchase, for a writership in India, a seat in parliament for his friend Lord Clancarty. Here was corruption three deep. It was a dereliction of his duty as a minister of the Crown; a shameless abuse of his trust as President of the Board of Control; and a daring attack on the purity (bah!) of the Commons’ House of Parliament. Such was the description of this transaction given by the late Lord A. Hamilton. Lord Castlereagh, however, was defended on the ground of the notoriety of the practice. Some of the members said that selling seats in the House of Commons was as notorious as the sun at noon-day: this could not be denied, for it was well known that the Secretary of the Treasury was in the constant practice of buying seats for the adherents of ministers. This being the case, there appeared injustice in making an example of the President of the Board of Control; and the motion was got rid of by moving the order of the day.

The fact of Lord Castlereagh having a writership at his disposal to purchase a seat in the House of Commons, shows how ministers may avail themselves of even subordinate appointments in India. The Directors have the patronage of the East at their disposal; but, indirectly, ministers participate in its advantages. The latter we have seen have a negative on the appointments of the principal servants of the Company, besides which the general superintendence they exercise over India affairs, through the medium of the Board of Control, renders it highly improbable the Directors should neglect to provide for any individual backed by a ministerial recommendation; more especially as the favour might be so easily returned.

We may conclude this part of our subject with remarking that the whole patronage and influence of India is so much added to that of the general government of the empire. The India-House is little more than a branch of the general administration, where a part of the business of the Government is transacted, and with which it is almost as much connected as with the Home-office or Treasury department. The case of the notorious Paul Benfield strikingly illustrates the reciprocal workings of the two systems. This man, whose “offal,” Burke said, “ought to have fed the region kites,” had at one time no fewer than eight members in parliament, and he attempted to bring in one of his agents for the City of London. These members were returned at Benfield’s expense to support the Pitt Ministry; and in return for this support Mr. Pitt allowed Benfield to set up some imaginary and exaggerated pecuniary claims against the Nabob of Arcot.

The great mass of influence arises from appointments in India, but the political influence of the Company is very considerable from the vast number of individuals employed in their different warehouses and establishments in London. All the influence they possess is employed in support of their parliamentary interest. Whenever a labourer comes into the service of the Company he is required to state for what place he has a vote for a member of parliament: his name is then registered with this specification; and on an election he is told that he will be spared from his situation to give his suffrage, if he will vote according to orders; disobedience being supposed to be punished by dismissal from his office. The number of individuals thus kept in political subjection to the Company is about four thousand.

This practice needs no comment. It sufficiently identifies the East-India Company with Government, and we may consider the revenue of Hindustan, as well as the revenue of England, as forming a part of that immense expenditure by which the Borough System has been supported.

TERRITORIAL REVENUES OF INDIA.

The fiscal system of India is distinguished by a peculiarity which is without parallel in Europe. The rental of the soil, in lieu of being monopolized by an oppressive aristocracy, is applied to defray the charges of government, the support of a military force, and the expense of the judicial administration. The Hindoos are, happily, unacquainted with the custom-duties, the excise-duties, and assessed taxes, which weigh down industry and abridge enjoyments in England. In the East, the state takes about one-fifth of the gross produce of the land, and that satisfies nearly all its wants. Other taxes are inconsiderable; as the transit-duties, stamps, licenses, and judicial fees. The monopoly of salt and opium is also a source of income. But the principal source of revenues is the land-tax, which constituted the only rent payable by the cultivators of the soil, under the Hindoo and Mohummudan sovereigns.

The gross revenues of India, in the year 1827, amounted to £23,383,497; the expenditure, inclusive of the interest of the debt, to £23,323,179. The chief items of expenditure are the military, civil, and revenue establishments; salaries, pensions, superannuation-allowances, and stipends payable to deposed princes.

The total amount of territorial debts in India, in the same year, was £42,870,876; the interest of the debt £1,749,068. By some writers the debt of India is considered to operate in the same way as the debt in England; by rendering a large class of persons interested in the permanency of the British power. This is a one-sided view of the question, which it is hardly worth while stopping to answer. Creditors may feel an interest in their debtors, of the same kind as that which subsists between a lord and his vassal; but this sort of relation does not tend to increase mutual attachment. A government, by incurring debt, may create a partial interest in its stability, but this advantage must be far more than counterbalanced by alienating the vast majority, in consequence of the additional burthens which the debt renders necessary; and, in the foreign transactions of such a government, its power and influence are weakened by a knowledge of its financial encumbrances.

Leaving, however, this matter, as irrelevant to our immediate purpose, let us continue the inquiry into the finances of India. The Company have never been able to realize a surplus revenue from their territorial possessions. All the income they have derived from Indian taxation has been expended in defraying the salaries of their servants, in the maintenance of a numerous army, and other establishments necessary to the preservation of their power. The only source of surplus income for the payment of the interest of their capital stock, and other outgoings, has been the commercial profits arising from their exclusive privileges. The nature of these profits it will be proper to explain, as well as the mode in which the China trade is conducted, in order to prepare the way for a few observations on the renewal of the Company’s charter.

COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH THE CHINESE.

The foreign trade with China is restricted to the port of Canton by the Chinese government. It is a source of considerable revenue to the government of China, and of the most valuable patronage, which is sold by the government to the highest bidder. Hence it follows that the local authorities are greatly interested in maintaining the trade, which, from the same cause, is subjected to heavy taxes and extortions. The inhabitants, also, of Canton and its neighbourhood, as well as the numerous classes employed in the culture and manufacture of tea, have a deep interest in the trade; every interruption of which causes great individual distress.

Foreigners are interdicted by Chinese regulations from going within the walls of Canton. The place of their abode is a small suburb, and their residence there is authorized only for the period of the shipping season; but these limitations are not rigorously enforced, the Company’s servants going when they please to Canton, and some private merchants residing there throughout the whole year. Security must be given for the payment of the custom-duties before a ship is permitted to trade, and this security also includes responsibility for the good conduct and submission to the laws of the ship’s company. The only persons whom the Chinese government accepts as security is a sort of mercantile corporation or fraternity, called the “Hong merchants,” formerly ten in number, but reduced by bankruptcies to seven. These become security for the Company’s ships in rotation; the whole of the Company’s trade being apportioned among the seven Hong in shares.

Besides the members of the Hong, other persons, designated as “Outside merchants” and “Shopmen,” are allowed to trade with foreigners; their traffic is chiefly with the officers of the Company’s ships, private traders, and the Americans. They are not allowed to trade in certain articles, as tea, raw silk, cloths and woollens, all of which are, by Chinese edicts, reserved exclusively to the Hong.

The Hong merchants are by law mutually responsible to each other for a limited amount, but this regulation is not invariably enforced. They are stated to be fair and liberal in their conduct. A similar opinion, though with less confidence, has been expressed respecting the outside merchants. No one is responsible for the debts of the latter, and foreigners are warned of this by official notifications.

The Company’s trade at Canton is managed by an establishment of supercargoes and writers, twenty in all, with two inspectors, whose duty it is to examine into and report upon the qualities of all teas offered for sale to the Company. Three or four of the senior supercargoes are annually formed into a Select Committee, who, under the orders of the Court of Directors, conduct the whole of the Company’s affairs in China.

Most of the witnesses examined by Parliamentary committees concur in stating that business at Canton may be conducted with greater facility and expedition than in almost any other part of the world; much of which is said to be owing to the transactions connected with each ship being all managed by the same person, the security merchant. It was further stated that the Hong had occasionally aided the operations of commerce by advancing money on loan to foreigners.

COMMERCIAL PROFITS OF THE COMPANY.

The commercial profits of the Company are chiefly derived from their monopoly of the trade in tea. The following statement shows the difference between the prime cost of tea at Canton and its price at the East-India sales in London, from which an estimate may be formed of the profit on this article:

Tea purchased at Canton.

Prime cost.

Average price per

Years.

lbs.

£

lb.

1824-25

28,697,088

1,900,866

1s.

4d.

nearly.

1825-26

27,821,121

1,729,949

1s.

33/4d.

nearly.

1826-27

40,182,241

2,368,461

1s.

2d.

nearly.

1827-28

33,269,333

2,086,971

1s.

3d.

nearly.

Sales in England.

Sale price.

Average price per

Years.

lbs.

£

lb.

1825-26

27,803,668

3,872,685

2s.

10d.

nearly.

1826-27

27,700,978

3,485,092

2s.

6d.

nearly.

1827-28

28,120,354

2,358,955

2s.

5d.

nearly.

1828-29

28,230,383

3,286,272

2s.

41/2d.

nearly.

It thus appears the Company charge considerably more than 100 per cent. additional to the prime cost on all the teas consumed in the kingdom. It is almost the only article of traffic in which they realize a profit. Their exports to China consist principally of woollens, by which branch of trade they sustain an annual loss, though, as we shall show presently, this loss, by an evasion of the Commutation Act, is thrown upon the British public.

The Company has lately sent little merchandize to India, except military stores, which, being charged to the territorial account, do not enter into a statement of commercial profits. It imports, however, to a considerable amount, from that country, raw silk, indigo, and other articles. Whether there is profit or loss in the trade it is difficult to determine from the accounts submitted to parliament.

In addition to the profits on its trade, the Company is entitled to a certain duty upon goods imported by the private and privileged trade, warehoused and sold through its medium. From the gross profits arising from this trade, a large deduction is to be made for the expense of freight and demurrage, amounting, in 1829, to £662,964. After paying all the other expenses of the commercial establishment, interest on the bond-debt, &c. the dividend remains to be provided. The capital stock of the Company is £6,000,000; so that at 101/2 per cent. it requires a net profit of £620,000 per annum to pay the dividend.

Now these preliminaries bring us to the consideration of a very important issue between the public and the East-India Company. The Company, we have seen, has not realized a surplus revenue from their territorial acquisitions; that has been all expended in the charges of war and government. Commercial profits, then, are the only source from which the Company has a surplus-revenue to pay the dividends and support their home-establishments. But, it appears, the profits of the Company on the several branches of trade, are either none at all, or very unimportant, except in the single article of TEA. So that, in fact, it is the people of England who pay the dividends of the proprietors, and other outgoings, in the monopoly price of their teas. Let us inquire whether this is conformable to the agreement between the Company and the public.

The Commutation Act, the 24th Geo. III. c. 38, provides that there shall be at least four sales in every year, at which there shall be put up such quantities of tea as shall be judged equal to the demand; that the tea so put up shall be sold, without reserve, to the highest bidder, provided an advance of one penny per pound shall be bid upon the prices at which the same shall be put up; and that it shall not be lawful for the Company “to put up their tea for sale at any prices which shall, upon the whole of the teas so put up, at any one sale, exceed the prime cost thereof, with the freight and charges of importation, together with lawful interest from the time of the arrival of such tea in Great Britain and the common premium of insurance, as a compensation for the sea-risk incurred therein.”

Here are the terms of the contract between the community and the merchants of Leadenhall: the latter are to supply the former with a quantity of tea adequate to their demand, and, to prevent extortion in the price, all the items of charge which the Company, in addition to the prime cost, are allowed to include in the put-up price, are distinctly specified; but there is no item for the Company’s dividends, and it was certainly never intended they should be paid out of the profits of the tea-trade. All the legislature contemplated was to reimburse the Company the prime cost of their teas and reasonable charges, but never that they should be enabled to realize an exorbitant profit applicable to their general expenditure. That this profit has been realized is proved from a statement submitted to the Committee of the House of Commons, which shows that the profits on the China trade for the last fifteen years amounted to £16,971,316. Had the trade with China been open, the Company must have been satisfied with the ordinary mercantile profit; they could not have taxed the public to the amount of upwards of one million per annum, to provide a fund not only for the payment of the dividend upon India Stock and the interest of their bond debt, but also materially to aid their wasteful Indian expenditure.

There is another transaction, though not so important as the preceding, on which the principle of the Commutation Act has been contravened. The Company have long taken credit for having persisted in the export trade to China at a considerable loss; and this their advocates would have the community to believe has been done for the sake of promoting the sale of British manufactures. From the statements of Mr. Marjoribanks (Report on the China Trade, page 32) it appears the losses on the Company’s exports, from 1820 to 1829, averaged about £17,000 per annum, and that for the twenty-six preceding years they amounted to £64,000 per annum. But at whose expense does the reader imagine these losses have been incurred? Why, at the expense of the people of the United Kingdom. The way this has been effected is by adding the losses on exports to the price of the tea in China; thus if the Company export goods to the value of £1000, which, when sold in China, produce only £800, the quantity of tea purchased with this sum is valued by them at £1000, and this amount is charged in the upset price; although, as we have ssen above, that they are restricted by Act of Parliament from putting up their tea at more than “prime cost.” There cannot be a more direct violation of the statute, which seems to have been framed with the express view of guarding against such practices. The servants of the Company endeavour to justify these proceedings on the ground of the exports being made for the express purpose of providing funds in China for the purchase of tea; but this is no apology for the infringement of a positive contract. Besides, there can be little doubt that the loss on the export trade results from the wasteful and injudicious manner in which it is conducted; otherwise how does it happen that the Americans carry on the same trade in the same commodities with a profit?

In 1813 the trade to India was thrown open to private merchants, but was still, in some measure, impeded by enactments which required that all ships passing to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope should exceed 350 tons of burthen, and which rendered it necessary to procure a license to trade from the Court of Directors, or, upon their refusal, from the Board of Control. They also provided that certain articles of Indian produce should be brought to the port of London alone. British ships were still prevented from trading between ports without the kingdom, and places within the limits of the East-India Company’s charter. These restrictions were much relaxed in 1823. The export of military stores to India is reserved to the Company, but ships, without limitation to burthen, may clear out, unlicensed, for any place eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, except for minor ports between the Indus and Malacca. A license is still necessary to proceed to any other except the four principal settlements—Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Prince of Wales’s Island, within these limits. Vessels returning from India may now be admitted to entry in any of the warehousing ports of Great Britain, and trade is permitted between foreign ports and places within the limits of the Company’s charter.

The Company reserve to themselves all the trade between the United Kingdom and China, excepting only a small portion allowed by way of privilege to the commanders and officers of their ships. Licenses are granted by the Company to all Indian ships, denominated “Country Ships,” to trade between India and China, and to export from China a limited quantity of tea, with permission to dispose of it to any intermediate port between China and the port in India to which the ship may be destined. These licenses do not include the Cape of Good Hope, the Company themselves supplying that settlement with tea at high prices, notwithstanding the agreement they made some years since to put up their teas for sale at the Cape at an advance not exceeding six per cent. on the costs and charges of importation.

Let us now advert to the different results arising from the different principles on which the trade to India and China has been conducted.

The effect of opening the trade to India has been greatly to increase its amount. The highest value of goods exported to India in any year between 1792 and 1811 did not exceed £2,475,987 (the exports of 1808). It will be seen, hereafter, that this amount is less than one half of the value of the present exports. The increase has chiefly taken place in the export of cotton-manufactured goods. Previous to 1813 the amount of cotton goods exported to India was very trifling. They now fall very little short of £2,000,000 in value annually. This augmentation may partly be attributed to the extraordinary improvement which has taken place in our manufactures, attended by a great reduction of prices, and to the extension and consolidation of the British power in India.

The following statements show at once the comparative exports and imports of the Company and the free and privileged trade in their transactions with India and China.

Exports by the Private Trade.

Years.

Total to India and China.

By the Private Trade.

£

£

1825

3,918,071

2,574,660

1826

4,468,883

2,625,888

1827

5,201,599

3,903,006

1828

5,212,353

4,085,426

Exports by the East-India Company.

Years.

Merchandize for Sale.

Stores.

Total.

£

£

£

1825-26

754,832

501,518

1,256,350

1826-27

826,055

907,833

1,733,888

1827-28

494,922

807,354

1,302,276

1828-29

636,441

462,369

1,098,810

Imports from India and China.

Years.

By the Company.

By the Private Trade.

Total.

£

£

£

1825

5,375,492

5,178,925

10,554,417

1826

5,076,360

5,162,509

10,688,869

1827

6,148,077

4,514,661

10,662,738

1828

5,576,905

5,643,671

11,220,576

These statements show clearly the benefits which have resulted to the community from the opening of the trade to India, and the outlet it has afforded to British industry and manufactures. From the first, it appears, the exports by the private trade to the East nearly doubled in four years; while from the second it appears the exports of the Company, during the same period, and under similar favourable circumstances, have declined rather than augmented. What more can be required to establish the advantages of free trade, and the greater results which may be anticipated from the frugality, activity, and enterprise of individuals than from the expensive, negligent, and drowsy proceedings of chartered monopolies?

It is worthy of observation that the most enlightened servants of the Company doubted whether the natives of India would ever be brought to consume largely European manufactures. Experience has falsified their representations. Similar results may be confidently expected from the opening of the trade to China.

RENEWAL OF THE CHARTER OF THE EAST-INDIA COMPANY.

Such improvements in the national representation, as would insure an honest and enlightened government, would render unnecessary any great changes in the scheme of our Indian administration. Ministers, having the control of the affairs of India, are responsible for their management; and, provided the people of England had an adequate control over them, there would be little risk of misgovernment, either in Great Britain or her great dependency. But if a system is tolerated, which admits of the accession to power of corrupt and incapable men, the calamity is felt in every part of the empire. Hence, the happiness of the vast population of Hindustan, no less than that of the United Kingdom, is identified in the great question of parliamentary reform.

The government of India, it appears to us, must always be so constituted as to be subordinate to the general government. Equality would generate rivalry; rivalry, hostility; and this last be the source of mutual weakness and annoyance. All these evils are obviated by the supremacy of the Board of Control. The sovereigns of Leadenhall-street can never compete with the sovereigns of Downing-street; yet, though the dependence of the former is secured, it is not so far merged in the latter as to preclude them from the exercise of a distinct and separate administration.

Another advantage results from the existing system in the division of India patronage. Supposing the Company deprived of their territorial authority, by whom could the immense patronage of India be exercised? It was the principle of the India bills of Mr. Fox to vest the patronage of India in a Board, emanating from parliament and independent of the Crown; but, in the present constitution of the House of Commons, this was only adding to the power and emolument of the Aristocracy. Again, to vest India patronage in ministers would be not less objectionable; it would form an enormous addition to the overwhelming influence of the Crown. The Court of Directors, however, though they have some interests in common with the Oligarchy and executive government, are not directly identified with either; they are a different power, based on different interests; their constituency are neither pot-walloppers, burgage-holders, nor freeholders—they are proprietors of India Stock; and this is a qualification from which neither the peerage nor the House of Commons derive their ascendancy. Under this arrangement a diversion of influence is obtained, and the danger to public liberty, which might result from consolidating the patronage of India with that of the United Kingdom, is in some measure averted.

In our opinion, then, the Company ought to retain their political sovereignty, and for this plain reason—that we do not see by what other constituted authority their functions could be discharged with less danger to the community. But though we think the general plan of the Indian government cannot be greatly improved, we are not insensible to the defects in its practical administration. The different departments of the Company’s administration, we have little doubt, are more pregnant with abuse, if that be possible, than the borough system itself. But this is a question wholly distinct from that we have been investigating, and into the merits of which we are not prepared to enter. There are, however, a few points bearing on this branch of the subject so notorious, that we cannot forbear noticing them, trusting that they will receive modification in the approaching renewal of the Company’s charter.

For instance, it appears a monstrous abuse that the Directors, who are only chosen for four years, should virtually exercise their functions for life. Of the twenty-four directors, six are obliged to retire every year in rotation; but, instead of withdrawing entirely, they secede for one year only, being sure, as a matter of course, of being re-elected for another four years when the period of probation expires, and so on to the end of their lives, through the influence of their co-directors: for which purpose their names are enrolled on what is termed the “House List,” in Leadenhall-street.

The number of proprietors of India-Stock is about 2,200. In the choice of directors, £1,000 stock gives one vote; £3,000 stock two votes; £6,000 stock three votes; and £10,000 stock four votes. This is the principle of the select-vestry system, without the same justification. There is nothing analogous to it in the election of members of parliament, and it is as unsuitable in the choice of the governors of an empire, as if the members of the House of Commons were each to have votes proportioned to the magnitude of their rent-roll.

Among the prerogatives which the Company exercise, one is justly objectionable, namely, the power of denying to British subjects permission to reside in India. By the 53d Geo. III. c. 155, heavy penalties are imposed upon any British subject who shall proceed to India without license from the Directors or Board of Control. The local governments are also empowered, if they see fit, to send home any European residing there, even though in possession of a license. It is also enacted that no British subject shall reside in the interior, at a greater distance than ten miles from the presidencies, without a certificate of leave from the local authorities. Till a very late period, no European was allowed to hold lands either as proprietor or upon lease. By a recent regulation, however, of the present governor-general, the indigo planters have been permitted to take leases of lands from the natives for the cultivation of the plant.

Such restrictions are an arbitrary abridgment of the rights of locomotion and enterprise, for which we have never seen any adequate justification. No danger can possibly result from the free settlement of Englishmen in India. The whole European community scattered through this vast region, exclusive of those in the service of the company, does not exceed 3,000, and any increase in their number, so as to excite apprehension, is wholly improbable. Were it not so, the Company can have no right to exercise an authority injurious both to their fellow subjects and the native population, merely for the sake of perpetuating their own power.

Neither is there policy nor justice—if such principles can ever be disjunctive—in keeping in a state of civil and political disfranchisement that numerous and respectable class denominated “East-Indians.” These are Christian men, born of English parents, or the descendants of English parents; yet not being considered “British subjects” in the decisions of the Supreme Court, are withheld from the benefits of the laws of England. Their thraldom is most irksome and anomalous. In conformity with the tenor of parliamentary enactments relative to Hindustan, professors of the Hindoo religion are governed in their civil relations by Hindoo law; professors of the Mohummudan religion by Mohummudan law; and both Hindoos and Mohummudans are subject in criminal matters to Mohummudan law—both civil and criminal being modified by the regulations of the East-India Company. But the unfortunate East-Indians do not fall within the circle of any of these codes of jurisprudence. Not being Hindoos they cannot regulate social duties by Hindoo law; not being Mohummudans they cannot regulate them by Mohummudan law; and not being British-born subjects they cannot enjoy the benefits of English law. They are, in fact, placed without the social pale, and governed in the relations of life by whatever rule any judge may frame on the spur of the occasion. But this does not include the whole of their grievances: they are proscribed from all superior and covenanted offices in the Civil, Military, and Marine services; they are not considered eligible even to those subordinate employments in the Judicial, Revenue, and Police Departments, which are open without reserve to the Hindoo and Mohummudan. We cannot believe the charter of the Company will be renewed without these unjust distinctions being modified, and the East-Indian race considered, as they ought to be, by the double ties of civil rights and consanguineous claim, the connecting link between the parent state and native population.

Lastly, the operations of the Press in India require a more constitutional guarantee than the fiat of the governors and governor general. During the viceroyship of Lord William Bentinck, the literary and political press of Calcutta has made rapid progress, and has not been disturbed by the arbitrary interference of government. But this is too important an engine to be dependent on the uncertainties of individual character. Those who have embarked their property in the India press ought to have a more valid protection than a system of licenses and censorships, which may be granted or refused—enforced or suspended, as suits the varying purposes of the president and council.

Having shortly noticed the political part of the India question, let us come to the commercial branch of the subject. This is the main point of interest to the people of Great Britain. Comparatively to them, the future territorial government of Hindustan is unimportant,, but every inhabitant of the United Kingdom is deeply interested in a free trade to China; and we sincerely trust this interest will not be compromised—that there will be no renewal of the Company’s charter, without an entire abolition of their commercial monopoly.

A defence of some kind may be always devised by artful persons for every abuse and every oppression; but we cannot collect from the inquiries of the Parliamentary Committees that the least plausible case has been made out to justify the commercial privileges of the Company. There is nothing in the constitution of the Chinese government, in its peculiar policy, in the local usages of the natives, nor in their anti-commercial spirit to interdict the opening of the trade. Both the public officers of China and the people are a thrifty race, and the same motives of interest which actuate the British merchant, concur to induce them to desire a more extended mercantile intercourse with this country.

Why then should this spirit—the mutual interests of two empires—be cramped by the costly and cumbersome incubus of Leadenhall-street? The Court of Directors have sufficient to engage their attention in the discharge of their political functions, without being fettered by mercantile pursuits; and the sooner they divest themselves of the remnant of their commercial character, the better for both England and Hindustan. The Company has become a great political government, and is no more adapted to the pursuits of commerce than the imperial parliament.

The trade with China neither requires the capital nor united action of a privileged association. The French, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes, the Austrians, and Americans, all resort to Canton, and none of them carry on the intercourse through the intervention of an exclusive company. The Dutch trade, which is the most important, used to be conducted by a privileged company, but it is now thrown open. The free trade of the Americans with China has greatly augmented since 1814;—and, what is most extraordinary, they actually export to Canton British manufactures—manufactures which the English merchant is interdicted exporting, and which the Company cannot export with a profit, owing to their circuitous and costly mode of transacting business—to the unfitness of their institutions for commercial purposes.

But any over-weening conceit in which the Company may have indulged as to the superior advantages resulting from their exclusive management of the China trade, must be destroyed by their existing differences with the Chinese authorities. It is not the Americans, nor the Dutch, but their own establishment at Canton which is embroiled with the native government. So far as information has yet been communicated, the fault appears all on their side; the Chinese, by the reduction of one-third of the duties on British ships, in 1830, and by taking off an additional duty imposed on cotton, have manifested a strong desire to cultivate the friendship of England. These concessions, however, have been met by a series of insults and encroachments on the part of the Company’s servants, which are the more provoking, because they appear to have been wanton, puerile, and unnecessary. For instance, they have persisted in the use of sedan chairs, and the introduction of “foreign women” into Canton, contrary to the express usages of the country, and the rules laid down by public proclamations. The dignity and firmness with which the gentlemen of the “Select Committee” endeavoured to support these innovations have been quite in keeping with the innovations themselves. They first issued a “protocol”—yes, by the powers, a protocol in China!—intimating their determination to suspend all commercial intercourse with the Chinese, August 4th, 1831: but this announcement failing to make the expected impression on “the Celestial empire,” they issued another, intimating their intention not to suspend commercial intercourse at the period mentioned. We believe the desire of the “Select” now is to have a couple or two of British frigates at their disposal, to bombard Canton; or—if that be possible—to throw a few Congreve rockets into Pekin, or against the Great Wall. But the Emperor may be perfectly easy on this head; if his Celestial Majesty knew as well as we do how essential an ingredient his tea-plant is in the dividends of the East-India proprietors, he would laugh—if such a movement be consistent with Chinese gravity—at the fulminations of Messrs. Lindsay and his brethren, who appear to have performed, at the British factory, the parts of Captain Bobadil and Ben Jonson’s “Angry Boy” with marvellous precision.

After such experience of the mercantile abilities of the Company, and of their address and wisdom in managing their Chinese intercourse, we imagine it cannot be any longer a question whether their commercial privileges ought to be renewed. We think decidedly not. The interests of the public are directly opposed to the monopoly. For years we have been paying double the prices for our teas we ought to pay; double the prices that are paid on the Continent and America; where there are no privileged associations. And for what purpose are the people of the United Kingdom subjected to this extortion? Why, in addition to our other burthens, should we be made to pay two millions per annum for the benefit of the Company? We are becoming a sober people—a tea-drinking nation, and why should this improvement in national character be obstructed by overgrown monopolists? The reason is this: The finances of the Company are embarrassed. They cannot pay their DIVIDENDS out of fair mercantile profits, and they seek to pay them out of the produce of a poll-tax levied on the people of England!

Here is the gist of the matter at issue between the Company and the public. The question is not the policy of a free-trade with China; on this point no well-informed person can entertain a doubt: the interests of commerce, the interests of the people at large, and the public revenue of the country would all be promoted by free trade; but then how are the Company’s dividend, the interest of their bond debt, and other out-goings to be paid? They have no surplus territorial revenue; the profits of the TEA-TRADE are the sole dependence of the proprietary. This is the rub! But what, it may be asked, have the community to do with the pecuniary difficulties of a junta of ambitious and improvident speculators? What is India to England? Some thousands of adventurers have amassed princely fortunes there by rapine and extortion, and have returned to spend them in this country, to add to the aristocracy of wealth already too predominant. Beyond this we have derived no advantage from our eastern acquisitions—neither true glory nor national happiness. Why should we then be called upon to make a sacrifice? If the Company cannot maintain their association without public support; if they cannot carry on trade to advantage, without privileges hurtful to the community; if they cannot enter into fair competition with individuals, let them retire from the contest—let them DISSOLVE, and leave commerce to be pursued by others on more prudent and economical principles.

Only think of the situation of that most patient of all animals, the British public, in this business. The boroughmongers levy a hundred per cent. tax on tea for the support of extravagance and the payment of their dividends, and the Company a monopoly tax to the same amount, and for similar purposes. How finely is JOHN BULL crucified between the exclusives of Leadenhall and the oppressors of Downing-street! If to these agreeables, we add the extra sugar-tax he is compelled to pay for the benefit of the West-India flaggellants, with what gusto he must needs swallow his morning and evening beverage; what fervent ejaculations he must utter over his cups for their prosperity and the permanence of oligarchical government!

There is, however, one resource to the Company, in lieu of the profits of the exclusive trade to China—they may RETRENCH. Like their prototype, the Borough-System, they are embarrassed from a long course of war and prodigality, and they must economize. The people of England will never submit to be taxed for the maintenance of their territorial sovereignty and patronage. They must reduce still further than they have yet done their military, civil, judicial, and revenue establishments; they must curtail enormous salaries, and their “dead weight;” be less lavish in granting pensions, superannuations, and allowances to relatives and dependents. And if all this is not enough, they must reduce their dividend, and instead of bartering offices and appointments in India for the benefit of themselves, sell them openly and fairly to meet their expenditure. At all events, they may rely upon it, that they will not be allowed to tax the community, neither one, two, nor three millions per annum after the 10th of April, 1834.

In support of the allegations at the close of this article, we ought to have mentioned a few facts confirmatory of our opinions, which we were well enabled to do from the inquiries of parliamentary committees.

We have said that we are becoming a “tea-drinking nation;” here is the proof from the statement submitted to the Commons’ Committee, by Mr. Crawford, of the comparative consumption per head, of tea and coffee in Great Britain, France, and the United States.

Tea.

Coffee.

lbs.

oz.

dwts.

lbs.

oz.

dwts.

Great Britain

1

7

8

0

10

14

France

0

9

13

United States

0

9

4

2

1

11

Several statements were submitted to the Committee, with a view of showing the amount of the tax entailed on the community by the Company’s exclusive privilege; by one witness it was estimated at £1,500,000 per annum; by another at £1,727,934, and by a third at £2,588,499.

For a comparative statement of the prices at which teas are sold by the Company, and on the continent, and in America, we must refer to the statement of Dr. Kelly, No. 4709, of the Lords’ Committee. The prices at the Company’s sales in London, exclusive of government duty, are about double those in the countries mentioned.

From a statement of Mr. Melvill, auditor-general to the Company, it appears, the gross revenue of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay in the year 1828, was £22,551,617; of this revenue, £15,384,528 was the produce of the land-tax: the charge of collecting the revenue, pensions, &c. £5,524,728, and this enormous charge although three fifth parts of the revenue arise from the direct tax on land! The charge for collecting the revenue of the United Kingdom—which is justly considered extravagant enough—amounted, Jan. 5th, 1831, on the gross income of £59,308,872, to £3,713,944.

The following returns, by the auditor-general of the Company, exhibit a statement of the military charges, the general civil charges, and the judicial charges of the three Presidencies for the year 1828:—

Military Charges.

General Civil Charges.

Judicial Charges.

Bengal

£4,747,224

£1,791,508

£1,247,436

Madras

3,926,267

360,484

377,158

Bombay

2,111,222

542,202

312,222

Total

£10,784,713

£2,694,204

£1,836,816

Can any one believe the Company will not be able to find resources from such lavish outgoings, without a monopoly profit on the consumption of tea?

As every information which relates to the Company will speedily be of intense interest, we subjoin a few more statements; they were prepared by the Company for the Parliamentary Committee on East India affairs, and laid before that committee. It will be seen from the estimates of the auditor that the charges of the Company at the expiration of their charter will exceed their revenues by £827,300; so that there will be no surplus to pay the dividends without the monopoly profit on tea. But, we again beseech the sovereign Directors not to “lay that flattering unction to their souls,” but to look to their wasteful expenditure, especially the civil branches of it.

It appears from the returns of the revenue of the United Kingdom for Jan. 1832, that the expenditure exceeds the income by £21,000; and from the depression in all the great branches of national industry, there is little prospect of the country being able to support additional burthens. How then can it be expected, the people will suffer themselves to be heavily taxed to support the Indian empire—a foreign dependency, chiefly valuable for the patronage it vests in 24 merchants. Rather than such a sacrifice should be made, it would be better to abandon Hindustan to its native sovereigns—the Mogul, the Nabobs and Subahdars.

ESTIMATEof the Revenues and Charges of India, under the several heads, whether payable in India or in England, as they will probably stand at the expiration of the Company’s Charter.

REVENUES.

Bengal.

Madras.

Bombay.

Penang, Malacca, and Singapore.

Total.

£

£

£

£

£

Mints, Post-office, stamps, judicial

431,250

80,895

53,939

566,075

Land revenue

6,785,000

3,127,931

1,501,047

39,638

11,453,617

Customs

697,910

458,403

334,365

1,490,678

Ceded territory, (including the Burmese cessions)

479,167

479,167

Salt

1,820,832

314,590

16,705

2,152,127

Opium

1,427,917

1,427,917

Marine

29,709

5,877

15,280

50,866

Subsidies

308,579

308,579

Bank profits

7,191

7,191

11,671,785

4,303,466

1,921,327

39,639

Total estimated revenues in India

17,936,217

The rate of exchange observed in this account is 1s. 11d. the Sicca rupee.

CHARGES.

Bengal.

Madras.

Bombay.

Penang, Malacca, and Singapore.

Total.

£

£

£

£

£

Civil charges (including provinc. battalions), &c.

687,846

246,441

406,440

93,798

1,434,526

Mints, Post-office & stamps

145,592

45,876

32,268

223,736

Judicial

855,906

281,135

213,226

1,350,267

Land revenue and customs

1,331,145

839,428

486,620

2,657,193

Ceded territory (including Burmese cessions)

103,500

103,500

Salt

730,360

64,901

795,261

Opium

560,587

560,587

Marine

72,525

14,120

145,885

232,530

Buildings, &c.

327,922

62,170

99,701

489,793

Military

3,258,536

2,249,012

1,274,719

14,583

6,796,150

Amount which it is estimated will be annually set apart to meet the claims upon the Tanjore revenues

57,500

57,500

8,073,919

3,860,584

2,658,859

108,381

14,701,743

Interest on debts

1,967,966

177,086

18,054

2,162,206

10,040,985

4,037,570

2,676,913

108,381

£

Total estimated charges in India

16,863,949

Expense of St. Helena

90,054

Political charges incurred in England, including invoice amount of stores consigned to India

1,720,405

Cost of remitting funds from India to meet the territorial advances in England, being the difference between 1s. 11d. per Sicca rupee, the rate which it is here supposed the remittances would realize, and the average rate at which the advances in England are made

89,109

(N. B.—These advances are estimated at £1,000,000 per annum, and are exclusive of the political charges defrayed in England.)

Grand total of charges

18,763,517

Deduct revenues

17,936,217

Estimated excess of charge

827,300

The following are the proportions of the above Charges, which may be payable in England: viz.—

£

£

Interest on debts, part of the £2,162,206 stated under that head

875,000

Expenses of St. Helena

90,054

Political charges incurred in England

1,720,405

2,685,459

(Errors excepted.)

East-India House,

29th July, 1831.

JAMES C. MELVILL,

Auditor India Accounts.

TERRITORIAL DEBT OF INDIA.

Prospective Estimate of the Territorial Debt of India at the close of the Company’s present Term, calculating the Sicca rupee at 1s. 11d. instead of the rates of exchange fixed by the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India.

Bengal.

Madras.

Bombay.

Total.

£

£

£

£

Debts at 4 per cent.

208,275

28,359

292,22

328,854

Debts at 5 per cent.

28,453,287

2,446,420

30,890,707

Debts at 6 per cent.

8,621,874

273,090

182,951

9,077,915

Debts at 8 per cent.

44,237

377,508

170,881

592,626

Debts at 10 per cent.

1,773

1,773

Treasury notes

125,851

125,851

Total debts bearing interest

37,455,304

3,125,377

446,052

41,026,733

Debts not bearing interest

5,321,933

831,236

429,102

6,582,271

Total territorial debt

42,777,237

3,956,613

875,154

47,609,004

(Errors excepted.)

East-India House,

29th August, 1831.

JAMES C. MELVILL,

Auditor India Accounts.

BANK OF ENGLAND.

THERE is a class of politicians in this country with just one idea; and that idea is, there is nothing good in public economy unless it be conducive to the accumulation of capital. The distribution of wealth is a consideration of no importance; their only object being to heap it up in masses, no matter how disproportioned, provided the total amount is augmented. For this purpose, they have been always recommending the indefinite enlargement of farms, the substitution of machinery for manual labour, and the establishment of banks of credit and paper-money. That their principles are true in the abstract, and that the application of them, within certain limits and under certain circumstances, would be beneficial, we have little doubt; but their unqualified and precipitate adoption would, in our opinion, be productive of disastrous consequences. In every case, we believe, they tend to augment the aggregate wealth of the community, but not the aggregate amount of social happiness. National happiness, however, is more important than national wealth; and a system which would compromise the former for the attainment of the latter, sacrifices the end to the means. The direct tendency of the principles of the Economists is to destroy the intermediate links of society; or, more correctly, to consolidate them in one end of the chain;—to replace the feudal aristocracy, from which Europe has suffered so much, with a monied aristocracy more base in its origin, more revolting in its associations, and more inimical to general freedom and enjoyment.

The history of banking affords an apt illustration of the practical tendency of the unqualified dogmas of the Ricardo school. Banking has always been the favourite invention of these theorists, as tending most effectually to the extension of credit, the development of industry, and accumulation of capital. These are its natural results; but such advantages may be more than counterbalanced by an alloy of accompanying evils. In England, we consider the system of credit founded on bank paper to have been the chief auxiliary and main stay of the reckless and unprincipled government of the last forty years. It was this which enabled ministers to build up the baseless superstructure of the Funds, which must ultimately fall, not on its guilty authors, but on those who have unwarily confided in their delusive representations. It was this which enabled them to destroy the currency of 1797, to substitute, for 26 years, in place of the universal medium of exchange, a forced inconvertible representative, which raised prices to an unnatural height, altered the standard of value, by which all existing contracts and engagements were violated; and then, when the profligate errors so committed were to be repaired, the country was again dragged through a series of changes and calamities not less unjust and ruinous than those it had previously suffered. These are not the only evils of the banking system; it has demoralized the country and exercised a baneful influence on internal economy, by giving an undue ascendancy to particular branches of industry—the commercial and manufacturing, for instance; it has given an artificial impulse to population,—multiplying the number of the people beyond the means of permanent employment and subsistence; it has created a vast monied interest, whose sole element is war, gambling, and speculation; it has been a principal cause of over-trading, of mercantile revulsions and vicissitudes, and the endless source of frauds, litigation, arrests, insolvencies, and bankruptcies.

These evils, it will be alleged, are not inherent in banking, but have been the consequences of banking not being conducted on sound principles. What the sound principles of banking are the professors of the “science of exchanges” have not yet distinctly laid down. One of the sound principles of the Bullionists in 1810 was that bank paper should always be convertible into coin at the will of the holder. But experience proved that this was no effectual guarantee against over-issues. The paper of the Bank of England and of the provincial banks was so convertible in 1825; but it did not avert the commercial crisis which arose out of the redundant issue of their notes and bills of exchange. The fact is, the political economists are wise after the event, like many other people with much less pretensions to depth and comprehensiveness. While the banking system was in its full career of fallacious prosperity, they never forewarned the community of its disastrous consequences; they were as little gifted with foreknowledge as others, and, like others, only learnt from experience. Similar results have flowed from other branches of their science. They discovered that a saving might be effected by farming on a great scale, and by manufacturing on a great scale; but they could discern nothing further: they could not discern the political, the social, and moral calamities which would flow from the aggregation of great capitals in agricultural and manufacturing industry.

It is this want of foresight of practical evils which ought to make us cautious in adopting the maxims of the Economists. France has recently passed through the same ordeal as England. During the summer of 1830, she suffered from precisely the same causes as those which produced such wide-spread distress in this country in 1811, 1815, and 1825; and the sudden collapse of an extensive system of banking, credit, and mercantile paper, by occasioning great pecuniary embarrassments, threatened, at one period, to impede the full triumph of her glorious revolution.

We shall, however, leave these general topics to come to our more immediate object,—the origin and present state of the powerful corporation in Threadneedle-street—the great foster-parent of banking, credit, and paper-money in this country. In treating of the Bank of England, there appear to be three objects particularly deserving of attention. First, a brief outline of the history and connexion of the Bank with government. Secondly, the enormous profits it has derived, and the immense wealth it has accumulated from that connexion. Thirdly, its present state and influence. We shall treat on these subjects as briefly as possible, so as to put the reader in possession of the most important facts necessary to a knowledge of them.

The Bank had its origin in war and taxation; and was originally projected by one Paterson, a Scotch speculator, who was afterwards engaged in the disastrous project of colonization at Darien. William III. who introduced standing armies, the excise-laws, the funding system, and other calamities, wanted money to carry on a vigorous war against the French. An act passed, inviting people to make voluntary advances to the amount of £1,500,000; and, for securing the payment of the interest, taxes were laid upon beer, ale, and other liquors. Upon condition of £1,200,000 of this sum being advanced within a certain time, the subscribers were to be incorporated; and, this being done, the incorporation took place, and the subscribers were formed into a trading company, called, “The Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” The charter of corporation was executed July 27, 1694; and directs, among other things, that a governor or deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, shall be chosen for conducting the establishment; that thirteen or more of them (the governor or deputy-governor being always one) shall constitute a court for the management of the affairs of the Company; that the qualification of the governor shall be at least £5000 stock; deputy-governor £3000; directors £2000 each; and every elector £500; that four general courts shall be held every year, when the majority of electors present may make bye-laws for the government of the corporation; and that “no dividend shall at any time be made by the said governor and Company save only out of the interest, profit, or produce arising by or out of the said capital, stock, or fund, or by such dealing as is allowed by the act of parliament.” For the £1,200,000 lent to government, they were to receive yearly £100,000; £96,000, the interest at eight per cent. and £4000 for the charges of management. Their loan to government might be redeemed on a year’s notice; and, in that case, the charter and company to expire.

Such is the origin and constitution of the Bank; on which, one or two remarks may be made. It is clear, from the act of incorporation, (the 5 & 6 William and Mary,) that nothing more than the establishment of a company of traders, or pawnbrokers, was intended; and that it never was surmised that they would ever form a part of, or have any dominant influence in, the government. The act specifies, very particularly, the sort of trade they were to carry on: they were not to trade in goods or merchandise, but to employ their capital in advancing money on goods and pledges, in discounting bills of exchange, and the buying and selling of gold and silver bullion; with a permission, however, to sell such goods as were mortgaged to them, and not redeemed within three months after the expiration of the time of redemption.

But, still further to confine these traders and pawnbrokers to their province, and prevent any further connexion with the executive, of which the parliament of that day appears to have been somewhat apprehensive, the same law of William and Mary imposes a penalty upon the Directors if they purchase, on account of the corporation, any crown lands, or if they advance to his Majesty any sum of money, by way of loan or anticipation of any branch of the public revenue, other than on such funds only on which a credit is or shall be granted by parliament. Contrary to this clause, and notwithstanding the penalty, the Directors continued to make advances from time to time, on treasury bills, to the year 1793. In that year, Mr. Bosanquet was governor; he had some doubt of the legality of these advances, and applied for a bill of indemnity: the Bank having then become an essential part of the government, this was easily obtained; and an act was passed to protect the governor and company from any penalties they had incurred, or might incur in future, on account of any advances to government.

There are few facts in the early history of the Bank meriting particular notice. During the great re-coinage of 1696, the company was involved in considerable difficulty, and was even compelled to suspend payment of its notes, which were at a heavy discount. Owing, however, to the skilful management of the directors and the assistance of government, the Bank got over this crisis. But it was at the same time judged expedient, in order to enable the copartners to withstand any subsequent pressure, to augment their capital to £2,201,171.

In 1745 the alarm occasioned by the advance of the Highlanders under the Pretender, led to a run on the Bank; and, in order to gain time, the Directors resorted to the expedient of paying in shillings and sixpences! During Lord George Gordon’s riots in 1780, the Bank incurred considerable danger. Had the mob attacked the establishment at the commencement of the riots, before it was put into a state of defence, the consequences might have been fatal. Subsequently a military force has been nightly placed in the Bank as a protection in case of emergency.

The next circumstance deserving notice is the increase in the denomination of the notes issued by the Company. For above sixty years, no notes were issued for a less sum than twenty-pounds; and these were made payable to the bearer on demand; and for the amount of which notes, in the legal coin of the realm, the Company was liable to be sued and arrested. As the Bank enlarged its advances to government, it became necessary to lower the denomination of its notes. A different reason has been assigned; but this, no doubt, is the true one. It is clear, indeed, that the real capital of the Bank being a limited sum, it could only have money to lend to government by increasing its fictitious capital; in other words, by extending its issue of paper; which again could only be done by lowering the denomination of its notes. While £20 notes alone were issued, their circulation, from their amount, being limited to the commercial and trading classes, no great quantity of paper could possibly be emitted; but when notes of the value of 15, 10, 5, and 1 pound were issued, their circulation extending through all classes of the community, the issue of Bank paper would proportionately increase. Government, therefore, in order to obtain advances from the Bank, readily permitted the issuing of notes of smaller value. In the war of 1755, the Bank began to put out notes of the value of £15; and before the conclusion of that war, notes of the value of £10. At the commencement of the Anti-Jacobin war, in 1793, they were still further indulged, and allowed to issue £5 notes; and, lastly, in the year 1797, came the £1 and £2 notes. Rents, wages, salaries, taxes, and every thing else, could now be paid in Bank paper; and the Restriction-Act having protected the Bank from the necessity of taking up their own notes, they were issued in prodigious quantities; and in exactly the same proportion the Bank enlarged its advances to Government. The following statement, extracted from the report of the Committee of the House of Lords, in 1819, of the amount of Bank paper in circulation in different years; and of the amount of the sums advanced to government on exchequer-bills, and other government securities, will show the connexion which has subsisted between the issue of paper and advances to government:—

Bank Notes.

Advances.

1794

£10,963,380

£ 8,786,514

1795

13,539,160

11,114,230

1796

11,030,110

11,718,730

1814

25,511,012

33,607,300

1815

27,155,824

27,156,000

1816

26,681,398

26,042,600

1817

27,339,758

25,399,510

1818

27,954,558

27,002,000

Having shown the causes which led to the issue of small notes, and the connexion betwixt the issue of Bank paper and advances to government, we shall now mention some other points connected with the history of this Company.

Without the assistance of the Bank the immense fabric of debt and taxation could not have been reared. Of this government appears to have been soon sensible, from the numerous laws enacted for its protection and encouragement. To prevent competition from the Mine Adventure Company, which had commenced banking, and began to issue notes, it was provided by the 6th of Anne that no other banking company of more than six persons, should issue notes payable in less than six months. Innumerable acts have passed, imposing the penalty of death for forging Bank notes; others, the punishment of transportation, on persons uttering, or having them in their possession. The English code has been made the bloodiest in the world, in order to uphold the Oligarchy and the paper system, and its laws more savage than those of Draco. But of these, and also the Restriction Act, we shall speak shortly; let us now only attend to those laws for upholding the credit of its paper.

After the Restriction-Act, the Bank ceased to be an independent company; it might be considered a government office, of which the governor and directors had the management; and which issued a forced government paper. Paper issued under such circumstances would necessarily depreciate; and this was an evil which it was of importance to government, as far as possible, to prevent. Having by force kept bank-notes in circulation, it seemed a slight extension of the same desperate principle to attempt also by force to maintain their credit. Various laws were passed for this purpose. After the Restriction-Act, a law passed to protect debtors from arrest, who tendered payment in notes, though they still continued liable to a common action for debt, to compel payment in guineas. This was the first attempt of the boroughmongers to render Bank-paper a legal tender, and equivalent to gold. In 1810, when paper had depreciated 30 per cent., and guineas sold for from 25s. to 28s. in bank-notes, a law passed to punish persons pursuing this traffic, and imposing penalties on those who sold them for their real value in paper. Tenants, who offered notes for rent, were protected from distress, though liable to a common action of debt or ejectment. At length, in 1811, Lord King having given notice to his tenants to pay their rents in guineas, the legal coin of the realm, an act passed to protect persons, tendering payment in notes, from all further proceedings. This was nearly the climax. Bank paper was now a legal tender to all intents and purposes; and by the fiat of the Oligarchy, old rags were metamorphosed into gold. Even this was not enough to satisfy the omnipotent parliament; they actually passed a resolution, declaring a one-pound bank-note and a shilling equal in value to a guinea, though the latter was openly selling for twenty-seven shillings!

Let us now revert to the capital part of Bank legislation—the Restriction-Act. By turning to the preceding page, and observing the amount of the Bank advances to government in the year 1796, and reflecting on the various laws enacted in favour of the Company, it will appear that an intimate connexion and mutual dependence had been created betwixt the Bank and Government, before the Restriction-Act, in 1797; that law, however, fairly incorporated the Bank with church and state. The causes which produced the stoppage were briefly these:—From the commencement of the year 1797, great apprehensions were entertained of a French invasion: the people were alarmed for the stability of the government: consequently for the stability of the Bank, which depended upon the government: a run upon the Bank ensued; the credit of the establishment was endangered; and suspicion, which PAINE justly denominates credit asleep, was now awakened. The run on the Bank continued hourly to increase, till Saturday the 25th of February, 1797. This was the last day the Bank was compelled to pay their notes on demand, agreeably to the tenor of their notes, and the conditions on which they had been issued. The alarm not being likely to subside, and the run continuing to increase till the latest hour the Bank was open, on the next day, Sunday, an order was issued from the Privy Council, requiring the Bank to forbear issuing any more cash, till the sense of parliament could be taken on the subject. This order, as might be expected, was instantly obeyed, a few days more would have drawn out of the Bank coffers the last farthing of cash and bullion. The Company wished anxiously to conceal the amount of specie in their possession at the time of the stoppage: but, by an ingenious calculation of Mr. Allardyce, this point was subsequently ascertained almost to a certainty. It appears, that, on the 25th of February, the last day of payment, the notes in circulation amounted to £8,640,250, and the total amount of cash and bullion in the Bank, to only one million two hundred and seventy two thousand pounds.

The Bank, like true traders, has always manifested great anxiety about the credit of the house, and endeavoured to make it appear that the stoppage did not originate in the necessities of the Bank, but the necessities of the government. In the resolutions of a court of directors, on the 25th March, 1797, affixed to the second report of the Bank committee of 1819, it is said, “That the restriction on cash payments was altogether a measure of state necessity.” Whether it originated in the necessities of the Bank, or of the boroughmongers, or both—the latter appears most probable—it is not very material to inquire: but it appears that on the last day of payment the Bank had little more than a million of cash and bullion to pay more than eight millions of their notes; and how, under such circumstances, the Bank could have met their creditors, or what could have protected them from arrest for debt, but the interference of government, it is not easy to conceive.

But the fact is, the stoppage was concerted betwixt Mr. Pitt and the directors. Sometime before the order in council was issued, Mr. Bosanquet and other directors had had repeated interviews with that minister to consult how the run could be stayed, and the Company saved from impending bankruptcy. The last interview was on the 22d of February; the Directors were then in a terrible fright; they told the minister they were “alarmed for the safety of the house;” and asked him, when “he would think it necessary to interfere.” Pitt interfered on the following Sunday; a singular day for the consummation of this extraordinary transaction. Immediately after, the Bank had recourse to a great deal of dissimulation to disguise their insolvency from the public. On the 2d of March, six days after the stoppage, a court of proprietors was called. Mr. Bosanquet, who waited on the Minister to express his fears for the “safety of the house,” and to know when Government would interfere, was present. After expatiating on the THENprosperous state of Bank affairs, this gentleman told the proprietors that he earnestly hoped they would soon be permitted to pay their notes, as usual, in cash. Thanks were then voted to the directors for complying with the order in council, which empowered them to violate their engagements to the public with impunity, and refuse payment for their notes. All this was excellent. Mr. Bosanquet “earnestly hoped” that they would be permitted to do that which he had earnestly petitioned Mr. Pitt they might be protected from doing; and the proprietors gravely thanked the directors for complying with their own earnest request!

The Order in Council, requiring the Bank to issue no more cash, was issued on the 26th of February. The Restriction-Act received the royal assent on the 3d of May, and was to continue in force till the 24th of June, that is, only for fifty-two days. On the 22d of June, two days before the expiration of the original act, it was renewed till one month after the next session of Parliament. This was the first renewal; the second renewal was in 1798, to continue till one month after the signing of a definitive treaty of peace. Peace came in 1801; but, before the expiration of the month, the third renewal was passed, to continue till the 1st of March, 1803; before that time, notwithstanding peace continued, a fourth renewal passed to continue till six weeks after the next session of Parliament. In the interim war broke out; the fifth renewal followed as a matter of course, and to continue till the singing of a definite treaty of peace. In 1814, plaguy peace came again to put these delusions to the test; but before the expiration of the six months, the sixth renewal passed, to continue only one year. In 1816, the country being at peace, every one expected the law would expire: when lo! it was renewed the seventh time, for two years! In 1818, it was again renewed, for the eighth time, for one year; and in 1819, it was renewed for the ninth time, and the Bank protected from payment of its notes in statutable coin for four years.

This was the last renewal, the Bank in 1823 resuming payments in specie, after a suspension of twenty-six years. It was thought by many, and confidently predicted by some, such an event could not possibly happen. These views were fallacious, originating in misconception; all that was requisite to enable the Bank to fulfil its engagements were a general peace, public confidence, and such a favourable state of the exchanges as would enable it to obtain a supply of the precious metals adequate to meet the probable demand for gold in lieu of paper. These circumstances concurring at the period fixed for the resumption of cash-payments, the Bank resumed its ancient course of business, and an event to which such undue importance had been previously attached, was actually consummated without exciting the least interest or attention.

One of the greatest calamities resulting from the suspension of cash-payments by the Bank, and consequent inundation of the country with small notes, was the vast increase in the number of prosecutions for forgery. It appears, from returns to parliament, that, in the interval from 1797 to 1818, the Bank instituted 998 prosecutions either for forging, uttering, or having forged notes in possession. The results of these prosecutions were a dreadful sacrifice of human life; and it has been calculated that four hundred victims were offered up in the space of twenty-one years to the MOLOCH of paper money. As a set off against this terrible calendar, it is proper to mention that there was an abatement in the number of Mint prosecutions.

Another evil may be justly charged to the vast amount of paper issued by the Bank of England; the great extent of their circulation gave them a complete control over the national currency, which enabled them, at their own arbitrary discretion, merely by contracting or enlarging their issues, to determine the prices of all articles of consumption and merchandize. Thus was a company of traders, without responsibility or peculiar fitness for so grave a function, and whose conduct experience proved not to be always influenced either by absolute wisdom or disinterestedness, empowered to entail on the body of the people a plenty or scarcity of the necessaries of life, and on the commercial public the most sudden and disastrous vicissitudes.

Our next object will be to give an account of the BANK PROFITS, and the enormous wealth it has acquired since the suspension of cash-payments.

The profits of the Bank arise from various sources. First, from the interest of their notes in circulation, which, in some years, as in 1817, amounted to more than twenty-nine millions. Secondly, from balances of public money. These balances arise from the public dividends, payable by the Bank, but unclaimed, and from the produce of different taxes paid into the Bank, and which have not been drawn out for the service of government. On an average of ten years, from 1806 to 1816, the balances amounted to £11,000,000, on which the Bank gained an interest of five per cent. per annum. The amount of public balances has since fallen considerably; in 1825 they amounted at an average to £5,247,314; and in 1829 to £3,862,656.

The third source of profit is the interest on their capital and savings. The Bank’s permanent capital amounts to £14,686,800, lent to government at an interest of 3 per cent. The fourth source of profit is from the management of the public debt. From a late act for the management of the debt, the Bank is paid £340 per million per annum, when its amount shall be 400 millions, and not exceed 600 millions: and £300 per million on such part of the debt as exceeds 600 millons.

Besides these sources of profit, the Bank derives a profit from its trade in bullion, the destruction of its notes, and the private deposits of individuals. It also has a profit, at the rate of £805 : 15 : 10 per million, for receiving subscriptions on loans contracted for by government. All these form the gross profits of the Bank; from which, in order to form an estimate of their annual gain, it is only necessary to deduct the amount of their expenses, the stamp-duty on their notes, and the interest of their cash and bullion, which constitute their unproductive capital.

First, as to the expenses of the Bank. The Committee of Public Expenditure stated, in their Report in 1807, “that the number of clerks employed in the Bank, exclusively or principally in the public business was,

In 1786

243

1796

313

1807

450

whose salaries, it is presumed, may be calculated at an average between £120 and £170, for each clerk, taking them at £135, which exceeds the average of those employed in the South-Sea House, the sum is

£60,750

at £150, the sum is

67,500

at £170, the sum is

76,500

either of which two last sums would be sufficient to provide a superannuation fund.”

The total expense for managing the public business, the salaries of the governor, directors, &c. as stated by the same report, are as follows:—

Salaries to governor, deputy-governor, and directors

£8,000

Incidental expenses, about

15,000

Additional buildings and repairs

10,000

Law expenses, and loss by frauds and forgeries, about

10,000

Largest estimate for clerks

76,500

Total

£119,500

Owing to the increase of Debt and other causes, Mr. Ricardo supposed that the number of clerks employed in the public business had increased from four hundred and fifty to between five and six hundred. The expenses estimated by the committee, in 1807, at £119,500, he calculated to have increased, in 1816, to £150,000. He states, the total number of clerks employed by the Bank in the whole of their establishment, at one thousand. Half of this number is employed in the public business, and the other half in the private business of the Bank. The expenses of the Company may be supposed to bear some proportion to the whole number of clerks employed. And, according to this rule, Mr. Ricardo says that, “as £150,000 has been calculated to be the expense attending the employment of five hundred clerks in the public business, we may estimate a like expense to be incurred by the employment of the other five hundred, and therefore the whole expenses of the Bank, at the present time, about £300,000, including all charges whatsoever.”—Secure and Economical Currency, p. 71, 2.

This estimate includes every charge: the expense of managing the public business, the salaries of the governor, directors, and clerks: stationery, incidental expenses, additional buildings, and repairs; together with law-expenses, loss by frauds, forgeries, and every other expense incurred in conducting the business of the establishment.

The next subject forming a part of the outgoings of the Bank is the stamp-duty. The Bank, till lately, has always been particularly favoured in the composition which they paid for stamp-duties. In 1791 they paid a composition of £12,000 per annum, in lieu of all stamps either on bills or notes. In 1799, on an increase of the stamp-duty, this composition was advanced to £20,000, and an addition of £4000 for notes issued under £5, raised the whole to £24,000. In 1804, an addition of not less than 50 per cent. was made to the stamp-duty; but, although the Bank circulation of notes under £5 had increased from one and a half to four and a half millions, the whole composition was only raised from £24,000 to £32,000. In 1808, there was a further increase of 33 per cent. to the stamp-duty, at which time the composition was raised from £32,000 to £42,000. In both these instances the increase was not in proportion even to the increase of duty; and no allowance whatever was made for the increase in the amount of the Bank circulation.

It was not till the Session of 1815, on a further increase of the stamp-duty, that the new principle was established, and the Bank compelled to pay a composition in some proportion to the amount of its circulation. The composition is now fixed as follows:—Upon the average circulation of the preceding year, the Bank is to pay at the rate of £3,500 per million, on their aggregate circulation, without reference to the different classes and value of their notes. The establishment of this principle it is calculated caused a saving to the public, in the years 1815 and 1816, of £70,000. By the neglect of this principle, which ought to have been adopted in 1799, Mr. Ricardo estimated the public to have been losers, and the Bank consequently gainers, of no less a sum than half a million.

The last subject for which an allowance is to be deducted from the gross profits of the Bank, is for their unproductive capital, namely, their cash and bullion. At the stoppage in 1797, the Bank stated in their accounts, laid before parliament, that their cash and bullion, and their bills and notes discounted, together amounted to £4,196,080. They also gave a scale of discounts from 1782 to 1797, and a corresponding scale of the cash and bullion in the Bank for the same period. By comparing these numbers with each other, and some parts of the evidence, Mr. Allardyce discovered the whole secret the Bank wished to conceal—namely, the amount of cash and bullion in their coffers. According to this gentleman’s calculation, as before mentioned, the cash and bullion of the Bank, on the 26th February, 1797, was reduced as low as one million two hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds. Subsequently the Bank increased its stock of cash and bullion; and on the average of the eighteen years, from 1797 to 1815, Mr. Ricardo conjectured it amounted to about three millions.

We have now mentioned all the circumstances necessary to form an estimate of the net profits of the Bank. We have mentioned all the sources whence the gross profits are derived, and also the different items of their disbursements. Proceeding on these principles, Mr. Ricardo calculated the clear gains of the Bank from the time of the suspension of cash payments, in 1797, to the year 1816. The results of his calculations were communicated to the Bank Committee of the House of Lords in 1819. We shall insert his statement, exhibiting at one view the amount of bonuses and increase of dividends to the proprietors, the new stock created, and the increased value of the original capital. It is Mr. Ricardo who is interrogated.

“Do you believe the following account to be an accurate account of the profits of the Bank since the Restriction, namely,

In bonuses and increase of dividends

£7,451,136

New Bank-stock (£2,910,600) divided among the proprietors

7,276,500

Increased value of capital of £11,642,000, (which on an average of 1767, was worth £125, and which is now worth £250,) that is

14,553,000

Making in all, on a capital of £11,642,000, a gain in 19 years of

£29,280,636

I have no reason to doubt it; I believe it is accurate as far as I recollect.”

—Minutes of Evidence, p. 191.

This statement, we conceive, needs no explanation. In bonuses and an increase of dividends, the Bank gained £7,451,136. The new Bank-stock created, at £250 per cent. is worth £7,276,500. The original capital of £11,642,000, has increased in value £14,553,000. The total gain of the Bank on a capital of eleven millions, is more than twenty-nine millions. This is the Bank prize-money, the SPOIL OF WAR, the clear gains from the loans, lotteries, and taxation of the “Pitt and Plunder system.” The brief history of the Bank, for nineteen years after the stoppage in 1797, is this: they have hanged and transported about EIGHT HUNDRED PERSONS, and in addition to their old dividend have made a profit of near THREE HUNDRED PER CENT!

COLQUHOUN had some reason when he said the Bank was the richest establishment in the world. We here see the amount of its vast profits during twenty years of blood, rapine, and injustice. The ability of the Bank to expend nearly a quarter of a million in hanging and transporting their fellow-creatures can no longer excite surprise. At the conclusion of the war in 1815, the Bank could have divided more than one hundred per cent. without encroaching on their permanent capital: in other words, they could have granted £100 to every holder of Bank-stock to the amount of £100, and yet not encroached on the original capital of the Company. If they made a division of one hundred per cent. bonus, they would still have had an unappropriated income of £542,000, which would have enabled them to increase their permanent dividend from ten to fourteen and a half per cent. If they had divided only a bonus of seventy-five per cent. they would retain a surplus capital exceeding that of 1797, and an unappropriated income of £673,000, which would enable them to raise their dividend from ten to fifteen and a half per cent. If the profits of the Bank had continued, and no addition been made to the present dividend of ten per cent. the accumulation of the surplus profit in forty years would have given to the Bank a disposable fund of more than one hundred and twenty millions.

According to the charter, all profits and advantages arising out of the management of the Bank ought to be divided, from time to time, among the proprietors, in proportion to each person’s share and interest in the stock of the Company. This law has never been observed by the Directors: the concern has been carried on, and no statement of its affairs, nor the surplus savings, has ever been submitted to the proprietors. Mr. Allardyce, in 1801, and subsequently Mr. Young and other proprietors, have attempted at different times to compel the Governor and Directors to make a declaration of the affairs of the Bank; but these gentlemen appear to have considered it more prudent policy to conceal, as far as possible, their gains from the public. The rotten-boroughs have not been more intimately identified with the past system of misgovernment than the Bank of England. It is to the war, commenced by the Oligarchy in 1793, the Bank is indebted for its enormous wealth and inordinate gains. It is to this war the Bank was indebted for the Restriction-Act, which enabled it to raise the circulation of its notes from 12 millions to 27 millions. It was the war which raised the unredeemed public debt from 220 to 850 millions; of this debt the Bank has had the management, and for which it has received from the public about £300,000 per annum, whereas the receipt on account of the debt in 1792 was only £99,800. It is to the war, too, the Bank was indebted for the increase in the amount of public deposits. In 1792 the deposits were probably less than four millions. In and since 1806, to the peace, they exceeded eleven millions. From this source alone, Mr. Ricardo calculated that, in the ten years from 1806 to 1816, the Bank gained £5,500,000. It is to the war the Bank has been indebted for an annual dividend and bonus on its capital to the amount of 10, 12, and in some years as high as 17 per cent. Lastly, the Bank is indebted to the war for clear savings, from the year 1797 to the year 1816, to the enormous amount of £29,280,636.

We are not greatly in favour of ex post facto laws, nor bills of pains and penalties, but should there ever be any thing like an equitable adjustment, a refunding or surrendering of surreptitious gains, the Bank will certainly have to yield up the most freely next to the Church and the Aristocracy.

At the end of this article are inserted several accounts laid before Parliament by the Bank in 1830, exhibiting their own statements of their past proceedings, the profits they have realized, and their existing transactions with the Government. Between the estimate of the Bank of the amount of their profits and the estimate of Mr. Ricardo, we do not find any material discrepancy. The Bank make their aggregate gains, exclusive of their ordinary dividend of 7 per cent. £16,619,526. If to this sum we add the difference between the value of their capital of £11,642,400 in 1797, and the value of their present capital of £14,553,000, we shall find that the prosperous career of the Bank has not been exaggerated.

The charter of the Bank, when first granted, was to continue for eleven years certain, or till a year’s notice after August 1st, 1705. The charter was further renewed in 1697. In 1708 the Bank having advanced £400,000 for the public service, without interest, the exclusive privileges of the Corporation were prolonged till 1733. After further renewals, in consequence of advances in 1800, the charter, having then twelve years to run, was prolonged till the expiration of twelve months’ notice to be given after August 1st, 1833, and till the payment by the government of the debt owing to the establishment. The last renewal is by 40 Geo. III. c. 29, and in consideration of an advance to the public of three millions for six years without interest.

It is reasonable to expect the Bank charter will not be again renewed without an entirely new arrangement far more favourable to the public interests than that now subsisting. The Bank annually receives about £257,000 for its trouble in paying the dividends. It holds balances of public money, free of interest, averaging three or four millions. These balances are employed in discounting bills at the rate of four per cent. yielding a revenue of £160,000, which, being added to the £257,000, makes an annual sum of £417,000 derived from its dealings with the Treasury. This has been always deemed a most extravagant remuneration, and has never been defended even in the House of Commons, except on the groundless plea, that it was binding on the public so long as the present charter had to run.

These do not constitute the whole of the advantages of this long favoured establishment: it enjoys various exclusive privileges in carrying on the trade of banking. By the act of Anne, before cited, no corporate body or partnership, consisting of more than six persons other than the Bank of England, is allowed to carry on the business of banking. After the panic of 1826, this privilege was so far relaxed as to allow the establishment of banking firms of more than six partners, at places exceeding the distance of sixty miles from London; provided such firms had no establishment as bankers in the metropolis.

Why should these restrictions be tolerated in favour of an overgrown corporation, which has already profited so much by its exclusive immunities? They form, moreover, the chief obstacle to the improvement of the system of banking in both the country and metropolis, by discouraging the establishment of joint-stock associations. Could banking firms be opened in the metropolis with an indefinite number of partners, on the plan of the Scotch banks, their credit would rest on such a sure and extended basis, that they might fairly compete with the establishment in Threadneedle-street for a share of the public business; Government would be relieved from its dependence on a single fraternity; and, in lieu of paying the Bank £257,000 per annum for the payment of the dividends, it is not improbable the whole sum might be saved, and the business transacted for the sake of the profit which might be realized from holding the balances of the public money and unclaimed lottery prizes and dividends.

The Bank has never conducted its affairs either on such liberal or enlightened principles as to become entitled to peculiar favour from the community. Notwithstanding the enormous profits of this great corporation, it has constantly manifested an eagerness for gain, and impatience for the profitable employment of its capital, which could hardly have been exceeded by a private establishment. In 1822, with a view of extending their discount, they lowered the rate of interest from five to four per cent., and extended the term of discount from sixty to ninety days. In 1823, they contracted for a portion of the dead-weight annuity, by imposing upon themselves the obligation of advancing an annual loan for several years; which engagement was clearly at variance with the legitimate principles of banking. At the close of the same year, they announced their intention to lend money on mortgage, which was a deviation from one of their oldest established rules. Lastly, in 1825, they came forward with a proposition to lend money on government securities, and upon their own stock.

By these expedients they were enabled greatly to extend the circulation of their notes; but their resources, contrary to all sound maxims, were tied up in inconvertible securities, so that they were less able to discharge their proper functions as bankers. What was worse, the greedy example was followed by the country bankers; and thus the race commenced between them, which could push out the most paper, till they brought upon the country the disastrous mercantile revulsion of 1825-6.

THOUGHTS ON A NEW BANK OF ENGLAND.

Notwithstanding the errors of business and of political meddling with which the Bank Directors may be justly charged, it may be doubted whether the country would be benefited by any attempt to set up a rival establishment. A banking firm of undoubted stability is essential to the functions of government for the receipt and disbursement of the public revenue, and for the management of the national currency. But would it be possible to form an association, better adapted for these purposes than the Bank of England? In the first place with respect to the circulating medium. The Bank enjoying the exclusive privilege of issuing notes in the metropolis, it possesses a complete control over the circulation directly in London and indirectly in the provinces; and it can only arise from a mistaken cupidity or culpable remissness of duty in the Directors if the general circulation is either redundant or deficient—if it is not maintained precisely in that state which the wants of commerce and the course of the exchanges require. But such corrective power over the currency can only be advantageously exercised by a single association. Supposing two chartered bodies had concurrent authority in the issue of notes, they would either pursue their business in opposition or concert: if the former, then would there be a contest between them, which could get out the greatest amount of paper; if the latter, then the case would not be altered from what now exists—it would still be virtually one body, only acting under two denominations, the New Bank of England and the Old Bank of England.

Next as to experience in banking business. In this the Bank could not possibly be excelled by a new establishment. The Direction, it cannot be denied, consists of the élite of the commercial world; moreover they inherit, in virtue of their offices, all the wise saws, maxims, and precepts accumulated by their predecessors for the last hundred and forty years, and which, we presume, are carefully treasured up for reference in the Bank parlour, inscribed on tablets or other tangible record.

The last and most important consideration, with respect to any new association, which should undertake to be the national banker, would be the security it could afford. A sum of four or five millions, which is the average amount of the government balances, ought not to be entrusted to any mushroom establishment. On this head the Bank appears wholly unexceptionable. Just let us see by fair appraisement how much the “Old Lady” would yield, providing all her effects were brought under the hammer of alderman Farebrother. Lot the first, is that solid capital of £14,686,800, lent to Government at three per cent. and which at the present market price of £195 per hundred pound stock is worth exactly £29,619,260. The second lot is the surplus of profits, &c. after paying all outstanding demands; owing to the extreme reserve of the Old Girl the value of this assortment cannot be stated—common report says betwixt two and three millions: according to her Ladyship’s inventory in 1819 (No. II. at the end of this article,) she had a nice balance in her favour of £5,202,320. Supposing we take the Old Dame at her word—here are two articles alone worth £34,821,580. Besides which, is the immense pile in Threadneedle-street, consisting of innumerable vaults, rotunda, cashier, court, committee and tellers’ rooms, and a floor of apartments more spacious and intricate than the Cretan labyrinth, together with the site of eight acres, fittings up and Corinthian columns included—all which could not be appraised at a less sum than two millions, and with the preceding constitutes a substantial security to the amount of nearly thirty-seven millions, and must be amply sufficient to satisfy the most scrupulous tax-payer in the kingdom.

Though the Bank of England possesses the recommendations we have mentioned to the office of national banker, yet the Government is not dependent upon or at the mercy of the Corporation. When the charter has expired, the Bank proprietary become nothing more than a common partnership trading upon a joint-stock. Government, by granting a charter of incorporation to a new association, and transferring to it the exclusive privileges of issuing notes, of retaining the public balances, and of paying the public dividends, might, at one blow, destroy two-thirds at least of the business and revenue of the Threadneedle-street establishment. This we advert to lest it might be thought on the renewal of the Bank charter, the Directors had power to prescribe their own terms to Government: the power is all on the other side—in the hands of ministers, and if they do not exercise it for the public benefit, they will not have faithfully discharged their duty to the community. The relation in which the Bank stands to the public is nothing more than that of a number of private individuals entitled to no special favour; whatever privilege they enjoy, they ought to pay for; for whatever work they perform, they ought not to receive more than a reasonable compensation. Upon this principle let us inquire what ought to be the main conditions of the future contract between the Bank and Government.

First, the Bank ought to account to the public for the profits arising from the exclusive privilege of issuing notes, after deducting a reasonable sum for trouble and incidental expenses.

Secondly, the Bank ought to pay a per-centage for the average amount of public balances it holds and employs in banking.

Thirdly, if the composition paid by the Bank in lieu of stamp duties be inadequate, it ought to be augmented.

Fourthly, the Bank ought not to charge a greater sum per million for the payment of the dividends than is an equitable consideration for trouble and loss of time.

Fifthly, the Bank being invested with important public trusts, and having the control of the national currency, and as any error of judgment committed by the Directors, might be productive of disastrous consequences, it is highly expedient their affairs and proceedings should be at all times known, so as to be constantly open to public and parliamentary observance and discussion.

Sixthly, if the suggestion which has been made and appears judicious, be adopted, of making a Bank of England note a legal tender when offered by the country banks, the concession of so great and advantageous a privilege would justly claim a bonus from the Bank to the public; especially as it would tend to augment the circulation of their notes, and accelerate the spread and establishment of their branch institutions.

Lastly, the Bank charter ought only to be renewed for a short term of years. For this three reasons may be assigned. First, it would tend to keep the Bank dependent upon and under the control of the legislature. Secondly, the peculiar and changing state of the country at the present moment is a strong objection both against granting and accepting long leases by public bodies. Thirdly, there is no public reason for renewing the charter for a long term. In this respect the Bank and East India Company materially differ; the affairs of the former are all at home, and may be wound up any time in six months; the affairs of the latter extend to the other side of the globe, and require years.

Upon the conditions we have thus shortly sketched, the Bank charter might be renewed, with advantage to the Corporation, the Government, and the community.

Dividends on Bank Stock, from the Establishment of the Company to the present time.

Years.

Dividend.

Years.

Dividends.

1694

8 per cent.

Lady-day

1747

5 per cent.

1697

9 —

Lady-day

1753

4⅛ —

1708 }

Varied from 9 to 51/2 per cent.

Michaelmas

1753

5 —

1729 }

Lady-day

1754

41/2 —

Lady-day

1730

6 —

Michaelmas

1764

5 —

Michaelmas

1730

51/2 —

Michaelmas

1767

51/2 —

Lady-day

1731

6 —

Michaelmas

1781

6 —

Michaelmas

1731

51/2 —

Lady-day

1788

7 —

Lady-day

1732

6 —

Lady-day

1807

10 —

Michaelmas

1732

51/2 —

Lady-day

1823

8 —

No. 1.

A RETURNof the Number of Persons convicted of Forgery, or passing Forged Notes and Post Bills of the Bank of England, in each Year, from 1791 to 1829, inclusive.

Years.

Capital Convictions.

Convictions for having Forged Bank Notes in possession.

Total Number of Convictions each Year.

1791—1796

nil.

nil.

nil.

1797

1

1

1798

11

11

1799

12

12

1800

29

29

1801

32

1

33

1802

32

12

44

1803

7

1

8

1804

13

8

21

1805

10

14

24

1806

nil.

9

9

1807

16

24

40

1808

9

23

32

1809

23

29

52

1810

10

16

26

1811

5

19

24

1812

26

26

52

1813

9

49

58

1814

5

39

44

1815

8

51

59

1816

20

84

104

1817

33

95

128

1818

62

165

227

1819

33

160

193

1820

77

275

352

1821

41

93

134

1822

16

16

1823

6

6

1824

5

5

1825

2

2

1826

18

4

22

1827

24

24

1828

10

10

1829

13

1

14

The Bank of England does not possess the means of stating or distinguishing the punishments inflicted for the said crimes.

No. II.

AN ACCOUNTof the total Amount of Outstanding Demands on the Bank of England, and likewise the Funds for discharging the same; 30th Jan. 1819.

Dr.

The Bank,

30th January, 1819.

Cr.

£.

By Advances on Government Securities; viz.

£.

The Bank capital, on which the shareholders divide, has been increased from £1,200,000 in 1694 to £14,553,000 in 1832. This increase has been effected either by additional subscriptions of stock, or by adding to their capital accumulated profits. In 1781 the Bank added to their capital, from profits, 8 per cent. or, £862,400; in 1816, which was the last addition, 25 per cent. was added, or, £2,910,600, raising their capital to the present amount of £14,553,000.

To Bank Notes out

26,094,430

To other Debts; viz. }

7,800,150

Drawing Accounts Audit Roll }

On Exchequer Bills, on Malt, &c. 1818. }

8,438,660

Exchequer Bills deposited }

Bank Loan, 1818 }

[oc]

Supply, 1816, at £4 per cent. }

And various other Debts }

Growing Produce of the Consd. Fund to 5th April, 1819, and Interest due, and Loans to Government on Unclaimed Dividends }

33,894,580

Balance of Surplus in favour of the Bank of England, exclusive of the Debt from Government, at £3 per cent.

By all other Credits, viz.

Cash and Bullion }

30,658,240

£11,686,800 }

5,202,320

Exchequer Bills purchased, and Interest }

And the Advance to Government, per 56 Geo. III. cap. 96. at £3 per cent. }

Bills and Notes discounted }

£3,000,000 }

Treasury Bills for the Service of Ireland }

Money lent, and various other Articles }

£ 39,096,900

39,096,900

By the permanent Debt due from Government, for the Capital of the Bank, at £3 per cent. per annum

11,686,800

By the Advance to Government, per Act 56 Geo. III. cap. 96, at £3 per cent. per annum

3,000,000

Bank of England,

22d February, 1819.

WILLIAM DAWES,

Accountant General.

No. III.

AN ACCOUNTof Money paid or payable at the Bank of England, for the Management of the Public Debt, in the year 1829, together with an Account of all the allowances made by the Public to the Bank, or charged by the Bank against the Public, for transacting any Public Service in the year 1829, describing the nature of the service, and the Amount charged thereon in the said year, and including any Sum under the denomination of House-money, or House Expenses; and also, any Sum under the denomination of Charges of Management on South-Sea Stock, and stating the aggregate amount of the whole.

£.

s.

d.

Charge for Management of the Unredeemed Public Debt for one year, ending the 5th April, 1830, being the annual period at which the accounts are made up, as directed by the Act of 48 Geo. 3, c. 4.

248,417

17

23/4

Charge for Management of the Unredeemed Public Debt for one year ending the 5th April, 1830, on sundry Annuities transferred to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, for the purchase of Life Annuities per Act of the 48 Geo. 3, and subsequent Acts

2,922

11

9

Charges of Management, being part of an entire yearly fund of £100,000 enjoyed by the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, originally by the Act of the 5th and 6th of William and Mary, c. 20, confirmed to the said Governor and Company by several subsequent Acts, and lastly, by the Act of the 39th and 40th Geo. 3, c. 28, as per return made to the Honourable House of Commons, on the 21st of June, 1816

4,000

0

0

Charges of Management, being part of an entire yearly fund on £4,000,000 South Sea Stock, purchased by the Governor and Company of the Bank of England of the South Sea Company, and transferred by them to the said Governor and Company, in pursuance of the Act of the 8th Geo. 1, c. 21, and which charges of management were assigned by the said South Sea Company, to the said Governor and Company, out of a Sum of £8,397 : 9 : 6 per annum, then paid by the Public to the said South Sea Company, for charges of management on their funds, as per Return made to the Honourable House of Commons, on the 21st June, 1816

1,898

3

5

£257,238

12

43/4

Bank of England,

11th of March, 1830.

T. RIPPON,

Chief Cashier.

No. IV.

AN ACCOUNT of all distributions made by the Bank of England amongst the proprietors of Bank Stock, whether by money payments, transfer of 5 per cent. annuities, or otherwise, under the heads of bonus, increase of dividend, and increase of capital, betwixt 25th February, 1797, and 31st March, 1830, in addition to the ordinary annual dividend of 7 per cent. on the capital stock of that Corporation, existing in 1797, including therein the whole dividend paid since June, 1816, on their increased capital; stating the period when such distributions were made, and the aggregate amount of the whole.

In June, 1799:

£10 per cent. Bonus in 5 per cents. 1797, on £11,642,400, is

£1,164,240

May, 1801:

£5 per cent. Bonus in Navy 5 per cents, 1797, on £11,642,400, is

582,120

November, 1802:

£21/2 per cent. Bonus in Navy 5 per cents, 1797, on £11,642,400, is

291,060

October, 1804:

£5 per cent. Bonus in Cash, 5 per cents, 1797, on £11,642,400, is

582,120

October, 1805:

£5 per cent. Bonus in Cash, 5 per cents, 1797, on £11,642,400, is

582,120

October, 1806:

£5 per cent. Bonus in Cash, 5 per cents, 1797, on £11,642,400, is

582,120

From April, 1807, to Oct., 1822, both inclusive.

{ Increase of Dividend at the rate of £3 per cent. per annum on £11,642,400, is, 16 years

5,588,352

From April, 1823, to Oct., 1829, both inclusive.

{ Increase of Dividend at the rate of £1 per cent. per annum on £11,642,400, is, 7 years

814,968

In June, 1816

Increase of Capital at 25 per cent. is

2,910,600

From Oct., 1816, to Oct., 1822, both inclusive.

{ Dividend at the rate of £10 per cent. per annum on £2,910,600, increased Captal, is, 61/2 years

1,891,890

From April, 1823, to Oct., 1829, both inclusive.

{ Dividend at the rate of £8 per cent. per annum on £2,910,600, increased Capital, is, 7 years

1,629,936

Aggregate amount of the whole

£16,619,526

Annual Dividend payable on Bank Stock in 1797, on a Capital of £11,642,400, at the rate of £7. per cent. per annum

814,968

Annual Dividend payable since June, 1816, on a Capital of £14,553,000, to October, 1822, inclusive, at the rate of £10 per cent. per annum

1,455,300

Annual Dividend payable from April, 1823, to 31st March, 1830, both inclusive, on a Capital of £14,553,000. at the rate of £8 per cent. per annum

1,164,240

WILLIAM SMEE, Depy. Acct.

Bank of England, 26th April, 1830.

No. V.

AN ACCOUNTof the Amount of Bank Notes in Circulation on the undermentioned Days; distinguishing the Bank Post Bills, and the Amount of Notes under Five Pounds, with the Aggregate of the whole.

Notes of £5. and upwards.

Bank Post Bills.

Bank Notes under £5.

TOTAL.

£.

£.

£.

£.

1792 February 25

10,394,106

755,703

11,149,809

August 25

10,281,071

725,898

11,006,969

1793 February 26

10,780,643

647,738

11,428,381

August 26

10,163,839

674,375

10,838,214

1794 February 26

10,079,165

618,759

10,697,924

August 26

10,060,248

567,972

10,628,220

1795 February 26

12,968,707

570,456

13,539,163

August 26

10,939,880

518,502

11,458,382

1796 February 26

10,266,561

643,133

10,909,694

August 26

8,981,645

549,690

9,531,335

1797 February 25

8,167,949

474,615

8,601,964

August 26

9,109,614

524,587

9,34,015

10,568,216

1798 February 26

10,856,188

551,549

1,442,384

12,850,085

August 25

9,997,958

553,236

1,639,831

12,191,025

1799 February 26

10,576,510

607,907

1,451,728

12,636,145

August 26

11,260,675

653,766

1,345,432

13,259,873

1800 February 25

13,106,368

723,600

1,406,708

15,236,676

August 26

12,221,451

823,366

1,690,561

14,735,378

1801 February 26

12,975,206

954,982

2,647,526

16,577,514

August 26

11,715,665

759,270

2,495,386

14,970,321

1802 February 26

12,038,970

803,499

2,616,407

15,458,876

August 26

12,801,746

772,577

3,312,790

16,887,113

1803 February 26

11,796,424

820,039

2,960,469

15,576,932

August 26

12,413,924

776,030

3,846,005

17,035,959

1804 February 25

12,054,943

848,894

4,673,515

17,577,352

August 25

11,766,628

743,841

4,813,525

17,323,994

1805 February 26

11,403,290

1,029,580

4,801,596

17,234,466

August 26

11,182,188

718,510

4,395,480

16,296,178

1806 February 25

11,994,350

725,736

4,428,360

17,148,446

August 26

14,141,510

702,425

4,228,958

19,072,893

1807 February 26

12,274,629

724,485

4,206,230

27,205,344

August 26

15,077,013

725,262

4,231,837

20,034,112

1808 February 26

13,746,598

742,671

4,103,785

18,593,054

August 26

12,440,930

795,102

4,129,234

17,365,266

1809 February 25

12,730,999

944,727

4,338,951

18,014,677

August 26

13,255,599

880,104

5,221,538

19,357,241

1810 February 26

13,650,592

907,620

5,871,069

20,429,281

August 25

16,078,390

1,145,832

7,221,953

24,446,175

1811 February 26

15,110,688

1,133,419

7,140,726

23,384,833

August 26

15,203,611

1,016,303

7,573,201

23,723,115

1812 February 26

14,523,049

1,059,854

7,415,294

22,998,197

August 26

14,873,705

987,880

7,621,525

23,482,910

1813 February 26

14,567,267

1,034,882

7,705,322

23,307,471

August 26

14,975,479

1,015,616

8,033,774

24,024,869

1814 February 26

15,632,250

1,091,242

8,371,923

25,095,415

August 26

18,066,180

1,246,479

9,667,217

28,979,876

1815 February 25

16,394,359

1,184,459

9,094,552

26,673,370

August 26

16,332,275

1,115,079

9,576,695

27,024,049

1816 February 26

15,307,228

1,336,467

9,036,374

25,680,069

August 26

16,686,087

1,286,429

9,103,338

27,075,854

1817 February 26

17,538,656

1,376,416

8,143,506

27,058,578

August 26

20,388,502

1,712,807

7,998,599

30,099,908

1818 February 26

19,077,951

1,838,600

7,362,492

28,279,043

August 26

17,465,628

1,627,427

7,509,782

26,602,837

1819 February 26

16,307,000

1,622,330

7,317,360

25,246,690

August 26

16,972,140

1,468,920

7,216,530

25,657,590

1820 February 26

15,402,830

1,421,160

6,745,160

23,569,150

August 26

16,047,390

1,633,730

6,772,260

24,453,380

1821 February 26

14,372,840

1,615,600

6,483,010

22,471,450

August 26

16,095,020

1,634,260

2,598,460

20,327,740

1822 February 26

15,178,490

1,609,620

1,384,360

18,172,470

August 26

15,295,090

1,610,600

862,650

17,768,340

1823 February 26

15,751,120

1,742,190

683,160

18,176,470

August 26

17,392,260

1,763,650

550,010

19,705,920

1824 February 26

17,244,940

2,198,260

486,660

19,929,800

August 26

18,409,230

2,122,760

443,970

20,975,960

1825 February 26

18,308,990

2,334,260

416,880

21,060,130

August 26

17,091,120

2,061,010

396,670

19,548,800

1826 February 26

21,100,400

2,487,080

1,367,560

24,955,040

August 26

18,172,160

2,040,400

1,175,450

21,388,010

1827 February 26

18,787,330

2,052,310

668,910

21,508,550

August 26

19,253,890

2,270,110

483,060

22,007,060

1828 February 26

19,428,010

2,329,880

416,890

22,174,780

August 26

19,016,980

2,417,440

382,860

21,817,280

1829 February 26

17,402,470

2,444,660

357,170

20,204,300

August 26

17,164,940

2,030,280

334,190

19,529,410

1830 February 26

17,862,990

2,284,520

320,550

20,468,060

Bank of England,

11th March, 1830.

WM. SMEE,

Dep. Acct.

POSTSCRIPT.

Our strictures on the Bank of England have been thought a little too severe. It is hardly necessary to remark that we have spoken of the Directors in their corporate, not in their individual capacities. The Bank has frequently been controlled by circumstances which it had little share in producing, and the ultimate consequences of which, actual experience could alone demonstrate. The Directors are often placed in an awkward dilemma, in which their duty to the proprietors, whose servants they are, prescribes one thing, and the interest of the public another; it is not surprising, then, if it sometimes happen that the common weal suffers in order that the dividends may be augmented. What we are now stating applies with equal propriety to the East-India Company. We should just as soon think of charging the present Directors of either association with the delinquencies of their predecessors, as of laying on William IV. the crimes of Richard III. or Henry VIII. The able men mostly chosen for the management of both companies, and the successful manner in which their affairs have been conducted for the benefit of their respective constituencies, often appears to us a strong argument in favour of that principle of representation for which the nation is now contending.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS, COMPANIES, GUILDS, AND FRATERNITIES.

THE boroughs, the church, and corporations, have long formed the feet of clay, on which the Tory Oligarchy has been borne up. It has had other supports in judicial abuses and commercial monopolies, but these have been the main pillars of its strength. Now, however, that Gatton and Old Sarum are on the eve of being divested of their mysterious influence, it is not improbable that the kindred nuisance of municipal bodies, of town-councils, guilds, fraternities, and brotherhoods will be abated, either by intire abolition, or thorough reform in their institutions. They have had their day and their use: at present they are only shadows of former power—historical landmarks which, like the remains of a Roman encampment or baronial residence, serve to indicate an age, that with its customs, manners, and establishments is fast descending into “the tomb of the Capulets.”

The public mind, however, is not likely to be a precipitate innovator either on corporate or other institutions consecrated by “hoar antiquity.” In addition to the strength they derive from early associations, they are fortified by the difficulty of concentrating general attention on a specific object. More than half a century was consumed in discussion and exposition to prepare the people for the removal of the disabilities of the Catholics, and upwards of two centuries in rousing such an united expression of feeling as is essential to the attainment of Parliamentary Reform. The stream of popular opinion is of immense volume, requiring energetic and long-continued efforts, to direct it into new and more fertilizing channels.

Decayed boroughs and corporations, where they are not identical, may be justly deemed of twin origin, and resemble each other in their chief characteristics. Formerly the commonalty of bodies corporate, in the same manner as the parliamentary electors of a borough, included the whole of the free inhabitants, who represented the property, intelligence, and population within their jurisdictions. But this municipal concentration of wealth and power has ceased to subsist; corporations no longer embody the opulence, numbers, or respectability of the cities and towns in which they are placed; they have degenerated into mere juntos, having no more community with the people than the voters of Malmsbury or Calne with the general mass of the inhabitants. Such is the state of the corporations of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Bristol, Bath, Liverpool, and Leeds; they consist of little knots of persons, not uniformly of the first class either for wealth or intelligence, who have succeeded to their corporate immunities by right of paternity, conviviality, congeniality of politics or religion, or some other claim very different from that of popular suffrage. So constituted, they form petty oligarchies in the midst of their respective communities, with which they wage a constant war of oppression and annoyance, and to whose welfare they are often as much opposed as the great parent oligarchy of the Boroughmongers has long been to that of the nation.

The late elections offer a striking example of the hostile interests which separate corporations from their fellow citizens. In all the places mentioned above, the municipal bodies made the most strenuous efforts to return anti-reform candidates. It was the same at Oxford and Cambridge, the clerical corporations of the Universities not yielding to their lay-brethren in the expression of aversion to “the BILL.”

Now, whence does this arise? How does it happen that the privileges of the chartered bodies are always felt to be at variance with the general weal, and that corporators and boroughmongers are always found in close alliance? A common danger ordinarily unites men in a common defence, and this, we apprehend, is the cause of the coalition. Both parties are sensible of their social insignificance; both are conscious of having long monopolized the rights of others; and both feel that reform would be destructive of their exclusive interests and pretensions. Hence their confederacies on all occasions. Abuse must ever depend upon abuse for support. The compact is a diabolical one,—it is the same which sometimes bands together the outcasts of society,—a general consciousness of turpitude, with a consciousness of the necessity of fraternizing for common safety.

It is not merely as the uniform opponents of civil and religious liberty, nor as the petty local oppressors and prosecutors within their precincts, nor as the vexatious enemies of the freedom of industry, that corporations are to be charged as arch-delinquents to society. They are justly obnoxious to imputations of a darker complexion. It is well known that corporate bodies are the principal trustees of charity estates all over the kingdom; they are, also, the trustees of town and church-lands, of loan-monies and of immense funds bequeathed for the purposes of education, and for the clothing and maintenance of the orphan, the aged, and infirm. It is in these capacities their chief malversations consist, in the jobbing, peculation, and wasteful administration of the vast funds entrusted to them for pious and charitable uses. But before adverting to this part of the subject and to the general abuses of corporate establishments, it will be convenient to premise a few observations on the origin of municipal institutions, and also of those subordinate associations denominated guilds and fraternities.

ORIGIN OF CORPORATIONS, GUILDS, AND FRATERNITIES.

According to Dr. Smith, the origin of municipal corporations was very little posterior to that of cities and towns. After the fall of the Roman empire the proprietors of land generally lived in fortified castles on their own estates, while the towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who appear to have been of servile or nearly of servile condition. This is apparent from the tenor of many ancient charters that concede to townspeople the right to give away their daughters in marriage, and bequeath their property to their children without consent of their lord, and which could hardly have been deemed immunities to any class of people had they been previously raised above the condition of bondsmen or villains. Their occupations were not more elevated than their social state, and consisted in travelling with their goods from place to place, and fair to fair, like hawkers and pedlers of the present times. In these peregrinations, they were subject to various exactions by the lords of the manors, through which they passed under the denomination of passage, pontage, lastage, and stallage. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord who had, it seems, upon certain occasions authority to do this, would grant to particular traders, especially those living on their own demesnes, a general exemption from taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of base condition, were upon this account denominated free-traders. They in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll-tax; for, in those times of barbarous violence, protection was never afforded without compensation.

Under the favouring auspices of the monarch, the townspeople, by successive encroachments, emancipated themselves from the yoke of personal servitude to the barons. They also commuted the various imposts to which they were liable for a fixed tribute or rent, for the due payment of which the burghers were jointly and severally responsible. Nor was this all. They were generally, at the same time, erected into a commonalty or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates or town-council, of making by-laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of conservative discipline, by obliging them to watch and ward. These immunities had become essential to their new condition of freedom; for having cast off the yoke of former masters, they were left to provide for their own internal order and security.

It would be neither compatible with our limits, nor is it essential to our purpose, to continue at greater length the history of corporations. Those who are desirous of more detailed information, may consult Madox’s “Firma Burgi,” and Brady’s “Treatise of Cities and Boroughs.” There can we apprehend be little doubt of the republican character of their first institution; every free burgess being a member of the corporation, and participating either directly or by representation in municipal government. They also shared in the general government of the country, by the privilege conceded to them in the thirteenth century of sending citizens and burgesses to parliament. The successive steps by which their immunities were principally curtailed were, 1. The Mortmain Acts, which interdicted the bequest of property, both to lay and ecclesiastical corporations, for charitable uses; 2. The restriction of monopolies in the sale of manufactures and commodities—which had become extremely oppressive to the rural population, and enabled the burgesses to indemnify themselves for the exactions they had suffered in a preceding age under the sway of the feudal proprietary; 3. and lastly, was the introduction of the statute of Quo Warranto in the reign of Edward the First, which compelled corporations to produce the charter or title under which they exercised their jurisdiction. The popular constitution of corporate bodies was ultimately destroyed through the agency of this law. Its professed object was to restrain the undue assumptions and remedy the disorders and irregularities in the exercise of municipal privileges; but it was perverted into a fruitful source of revenue by succeeding monarchs, especially by Charles II., who by compelling the surrender of all the charters in the kingdom, and granting for money new powers to select bodies in corporations, introduced or confirmed all these usurpations which are still maintained against the common rights of the people.

This was not the only result; for, by a manœuvre of the Collective Wisdom of the day, the chief part of the inhabitants of cities and towns were deprived of their political, as well as municipal franchises. A book was written, by Dr. Brady, to prove that the word commonalty in a charter meant corporation, or the “governing part” of the people; and, in pursuance of this new doctrine, the committees of the House of Commons, in the course of about twenty years, deprived the body of the people of a great number of boroughs of their elective rights, and confined the franchise to a small corporation, consisting generally of less than twenty-four persons. One part of the injustice is likely to be remedied by the Reform Bill, which will deprive close and self-elected juntos of the power they have long exercised with great profit to themselves, of making members of parliament, and restore to the inhabitants generally their ancient privilege of choosing representatives.

Let us next advert to the origin of the Guilds, Companies, or Fraternities, which still exist in the principal cities and towns, especially in London, Bristol, Preston, and Newcastle; and which form a curious and interesting branch of our domestic history. These societies, or mysteries, are of very ancient institution, and may be traced with certainty to a period anterior to the Conquest. In the British Museum are preserved several Saxon deeds which Dr. Hickes has transcribed into his Thesaurus, exhibiting the ordinances of two Saxon guilds. From these ancient documents, it would appear, that guilds were originally established by the mutual agreement of friends and fellow-workmen, and had no further object than the relief of the brethren in times of distress, and perhaps, the protection of the associated members against the lawless attacks of powerful neighbours. Certain pious offices, however, were the never-failing concomitants of these institutions, and they were mostly dedicated to some patron saint. After the Conquest, they were established for the express promotion of religion, charity, or trade, and were supported either by specific contributions from the members in money or goods, or by lands assigned to them by the founder. In order to erect a corporation, no other authority in ancient times was requisite in many parts of Europe, but that of the town corporate in which it was to be established. In England, indeed, a charter from the king was likewise necessary. But this prerogative of the crown seems to have been reserved, rather for extorting money from the subject than for the protection of the common liberty against such exclusive companies. Upon paying a fine to the king the charter seems generally to have been readily granted; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter, such adulterine guilds as they were called, were not always disfranchised on that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurped privileges. The immediate inspection of all corporations, and of the by-laws which they might think proper to enact for their own government, belonged to the town-corporate in which they were established; and whatever discipline was exercised over them proceeded commonly not from the king, but from the parent corporation of which these subordinate ones were only parts or members.

The rules of several of the ancient fraternities are preserved, and they obviously include the same objects of mutual assurance against the misfortunes of life which now form the basis of the institutions of Friendly Societies. Sir F. Eden, indeed, appears strongly inclined to trace the origin of benefit clubs to the guild foundations. The following ordinances of St. Catharine’s guild at Coventry, which was founded in the reign of Edward III affords strong confirmation of this conjecture, and are well deserving the attention of the antiquarian. They are cited at length by Dugdale, who speaks of them as very memorable, and “manifesting the decent government, ceremony, devotion, charity, and amity of those times.”

“If a member suffer from fire, water, robbery, or other calamity, the guild is to lend him a sum of money without interest.

If sick or infirm through old age, he is to be supported by his guild, according to his condition.

No one notorious for felony, homicide, lechery, gaming, sorcery, or heresy is to be admitted.

If a member fall into bad courses, he is first to be admonished, and if found to be incorrigible, he is to be expelled.

Those who die poor and cannot afford themselves burial, are to be buried at the charge of the guild.”

The chaplain is not to frequent common taverns. Mass was said, every day, and there were four solemnities or feast-days every year.

The guilds were encouraged by persons of rank. From the Northumberland Household Book, we learn that the Earl and Countess of Northumberland and their eldest son were members of St. Christopher’s Guild, at York; and paid annually each 6s. 8d. They each received yearly from the guild two yards of cloth; whether this was an article usually allowed to the members of such societies, or whether it was merely a compliment to a person of distinction cannot be ascertained.

The ancient associations, whether distinguished by the name of Guild, Fraternity, Mystery, Company, or Brotherhood, seem to have been no less addicted to feasting and conviviality than their descendants of Merchant Tailors’ or Drapers’ Hall. They generally assembled once a year, for the purpose of acting some interlude or pageant. There is a curious description in the Liber Niger of the anniversary feast of the guild of the Holy Cross at Abingdon; from which Blomefield probably took the following account which he has given of that festival. He says “the fraternity held their feast yearly on the third of May, the invention of the Holy Cross; and then they used to have twelve priests to sing a dirige, for which they had given them four pence a-piece; they had also twelve minstrels, who had 2s. 3d. besides their dyet and horse-meat. At one of these feasts, (A.D. 1445,) they had 6 calves valued at 2s. 2d. a-piece; 16 lambs, 12d. a-piece; 80 capons, 3d. a-piece; 80 geese, 2d. a-piece; 800 eggs, which cost 5d. the hundred; and many marrow bones, creame and floure; besides, what theyre servants and others brought in: and pageants, plays, and May-games, to captivate the senses of the zealous beholders.” Nor were the Guildhalls, of which vestiges may be found in many of our most insignificant villages, exclusively appropriated to the festivities celebrated at the expense and under the patronage of the companies. As most of these common-halls were well provided with household utensils, especially those requisite for culinary purposes, it was not uncommon for the inhabitants of a village, upon weddings and christenings, to hold their feast at the Guildhall. Sometimes, however, the smaller parochial guilds were so poor, that they could not afford to have a mustering place, but met at the members’ houses. In general they were in a better condition and possessed or hired a hall near the church, which, Sir John Cullum remarks, was “convenient for them, as their business was to pray as well as eat.”

However, we have not yet adverted to the main objects for which the fraternities were instituted, and which were neither convivial, pious, nor charitable; they were meant for the advancement of trade, and the perfection of the mechanical arts. It was for these purposes the numerous companies in the city of London were first incorporated; exclusive privileges being granted to them, that they might perfect themselves in their respective mysteries or occupations, so that the public might be guarded against fraud and adulteration, and not suffer either from the knavery or unskilfulness of traders and workmen. In the early stages of industry and commerce such a policy might be defensible. It tends, by a recognized division of labour, to improve useful vocations; and, moreover, as the members of these associations were also united on the principles of a Friendly Society, that circumstance gave them a claim to the protection of authority. But the immunities conceded to them ought to have been limited to a term of years, and not made perpetual; they ought to have been terminal, and granted on the same principle as the rights of a patentee, or of an author of a literary production. Without this precaution the incorporated companies were sure to degenerate into so many combinations against the public; whose interests and policy would be to preserve to themselves an exclusive market, to guard against competition from superior and cheaper workmen, and to retail their own industry and commodities at monopoly prices. These results were, in fact, speedily experienced, and we find the trade societies at a very early period notorious for the fraud and extortion they practised on the body of the community. For instance, we read that in the year 1285 Edward I. took away the charter of the city of London, and dismissed the mayor from office for taking bribes of the bakers to permit them to make their bread short of weight; but, it is added, the city soon after recovered it, by making concessions and presenting the king with a purse of money. It is not an easy task to maintain individuals at all times in a course of honesty, but it is far more difficult when they are confederated. The example just cited was anciently a frequent mode of replenishing the royal treasury; the charters were seized under the pretext of some delinquency, and then returned after a pecuniary mulct; the offenders being allowed to resume their iniquitous career.

Although the civil immunities of the guilds are nearly worn out, we sometimes meet with attempts to annoy the public by re-asserting them, both in the country and the metropolis. An effort of this kind was made some years since by the Merchant Tailors of Bristol, which terminated in the ruin of their society. The history of the Company is singular, and, as it will illustrate our subject and exemplify the present state of many similar fraternities in the kingdom, we shall shortly advert to it.

The company of Merchant Tailors derived its origin from a charter of Richard II., dated 16th October, 1399. It was granted to two burgesses of Bristol, in consideration of their having founded a chapel to celebrate divine service for the good of the king and the brotherhood. The fraternity was incorporated, with power to choose a master from their number, and to purchase lands and tenements for the maintenance of the society’s chapel. In the hall of the company are preserved the various deeds by which its possessions have been conveyed down from the original trust to the present feoffees. The last conveyance of the buildings, estates, and other property was in 1802, and was executed, among others, to Mr. Isaac Amos, who is the only surviving member. This gentleman, who is a resident housekeeper in Bristol, gives the following reasons for the condition into which the society has fallen.

About forty-five years ago the association, which was then composed of a great number of members, insisted that every person carrying on the trade of a tailor in Bristol was under a legal obligation to become a freeman of the company, for which the fee of 40s. was payable by such as were qualified by apprenticeship or birth, and £30 by others who purchased their freedom. This claim was resisted, and a suit instituted by the company to try the question, which was determined against them. From that time it has ceased to be an object to become a member of the company, which has accordingly received no accession to its number, and Mr. Amos has outlived all the old members.

The company having lost all claim to fees, its sole dependence has been the rents and premiums accruing from estates. These are considerable, and situate in several parishes of Bristol; they have been demised on leases of 99 years, with heavy premiums, and the reserved rents amount only to £55 per annum, An almshouse has been established for the reception of the decayed members, and is supported out of the funds of the society. The hall, formerly the scene of the festive celebrations of the worshipful fraternity, has been converted into a source of profit, by being let out for the use of any ephemeral pageant—lectures on astronomy—the French players—or a sparring exhibition; and the spacious kitchens are hired to dress dinners for the ancient lodge of Freemasons, the society of Odd Fellows, or some other of the whimsical associations which are found among the Bristolians. The last public act of the society was to let a piece of ground in Horsefair, for which a rent of 10s. was reserved, and a premium of £200 received; what became of the premium cannot be ascertained, as the practice has been to destroy the accounts immediately after being audited. Indeed, it is a curious incident in the latter days of the company, that Messrs. Palmer and Amos were for some time the only surviving members, and that until the death of Mr. Palmer, they were alternately master and treasurer, and each, in his capacity of master, audited the treasurer’s accounts!

We have thus shortly adverted to the history and present state of one of the ancient guilds, and some curious legal questions here present themselves, namely, in what capacity does the society now exist, and to whom do its possessions belong? Whether the Merchant Tailors’ Company has existed at all as a corporation since the dissolution of such religious fraternities under 39th Henry VIII. may, perhaps, be a subject of doubt, as there appears neither a re-grant nor recognition on the part of the Crown to set up the civil part of the establishment in its corporate capacity. If the company is to be considered as a corporation, it is apprehended that, as a corporation aggregate, it must have become dissolved by the death of all its members but ONE; and, in such case, as the use was limited so as to become vested in the corporation, an escheat of its property may be considered to have taken place. If it is not to be considered as a corporation, but a mere self-constituted community of individuals, it seems doubtful whether the legal estate was carried out of the feoffees, and whether the trust has not entirely failed and become extinguished by the non-existence of the object for which it was created, namely, the Company of Tailors; and hence arises the difficulty in whom the title to the property, hitherto regarded as belonging to the company, has legally vested. These points can only be resolved by a competent tribunal, and we doubt not their decision would involve the existence of many similar associations in the kingdom.

MANAGEMENT AND REVENUES OF THE CITY COMPANIES.

In the city of London are upwards of seventy companies of an origin and institution analogous to the Merchant Tailors of Bristol. The several professions and trades in the city are incorporated into distinct fraternities, consisting mostly of a livery and freemen, governed by a master, wardens, and court of assistants, which last appears an encroachment on the rights of the freemen: indeed, courts appear to have been unknown prior to the accession of the Scottish dynasty, when they were obtained probably through corruption or intrigue. Persons exercising any trade in the city, not free of one of the companies, are liable to penalties. The livery are chosen from the freemen, and enjoy important privileges in the election of members of parliament and the principal city officers. Refusing to serve on the livery subjects to a penalty, and a fine is payable by each person taking up his livery, varying from £3 to £200.

The power of the incorporated trades to inflict penalties for not being of their fraternity is, occasionally, productive of hardships, for which it is impossible to discover any pretext of utility. Not long since a poor old Irishman was getting a scanty living in the city by shaving and hair-cutting, but not being a freeman, for the profits of his trade were inadequate to the purchase of that qualification, he was proceeded against by the ancient Corporation of Barbers. The fine was inflicted; and the worshipful Company actually took their unfortunate brother of the soap-suds in execution, and kept him in prison about four months. How much longer he would have been an inmate of the “stone jug,” as the gaol is called, cannot be conjectured, had not Mr. Barrett made several applications to the clerk of the company, and procured his liberation. Another instance is worth mentioning, but in doing so we do not mean to cast any imputation upon the company exercising the power of exclusion, which they undoubtedly possess. A poulterer was sued in the Mayor’s Court for having a stand in Leadenhall-market—not because he was not a freeman of London, but because he was not a freeman of the Poulterers’ company—and the customary penalties were ordered to be paid. Whitecross-street prison became the refuge of the unsanctioned poulterer, who still remains locked up for the infraction of the company’s by-laws.

Such arbitrary interferences with the freedom of industry are wholly indefensible at this period; and we are glad to learn that Sir James Scarlett intends to bring before the Legislature the subject of corporation abuses. Undoubtedly the companies were originally instituted for the double purpose of protecting the community against fraud, and their respective mysteries from deterioration; with the exception, however, of the Apothecaries and Goldsmiths these duties have ceased to be exercised. Indeed, as the companies are now constituted, it is impossible such functions could be discharged; in many of them not a single member is of that trade the name of the company imports, which, we believe, is the case of the Merchant Tailors’ and Mercers’, most of whom are merchants of the first class, bankers, and insurance-brokers. Like ancient bodies generally the duties have been suffered to expire, while the appropriation of the revenues, salaries, and fees has been carefully preserved, or enormously augmented.

The revenues of the city companies are very great, and principally arise from the management of charitable trusts. The aggregate incomes of the twelve principal companies is supposed to amount to £500,000 per annum. Out of these revenues the splendid halls of the fraternities have been erected, sumptuous entertainments given, and the enormous emoluments of their clerks, amounting in some instances to £3,000 or £4,000 a-year, paid. As trustees they have the letting of a large portion of the houses, offices, wharfs, and warehouses in the metropolis; in the country they have numerous manors and estates, messuages, tenements, church livings, and impropriate tithes, and vast sums vested in the public funds. The masters, wardens, and assistants are the virtual disposers of this property; they have the letting of the lands and tenements; they contract for repairs, alterations, and improvements; they present to the livings and receive the tithes and dividends. They also select the objects of their charities; and interpret the will, deed, or letter patent by which they were created. The commonalty of the Companies have no share in these functions; the power is engrossed by the parties mentioned, who elect themselves, forming a secret and perpetual conclave, into which no one is admitted, unless connected by ties of friendship or consanguinity.

It is the arbitrary exercise of these unauthorized powers that has tended to generate the hostile spirit which now subsists between the governing juntos and the liveries of several of the companies. Some intelligent and spirited gentlemen of one of the principal companies, the Merchant Tailors’, have, in fact, hoisted the standard of rebellion against their oppressors, and are fully intent, either by legal or more effective means, of obtaining a restitution of usurped rights. From what we know of the chartered privileges of some of the companies we are well convinced of the validity of the claims of the non-contents, and we heartily wish them success in their laudable exertions. It would, indeed, be a lasting reproach to the general body of the livery of London, and not at all in accordance with the reputation they bear for intelligence and independence, if, while the great Oligarchy of the state is about being reformed, they suffered the little miniature types among themselves to continue, without undergoing a similar process of regeneration. But it is not merely the recovery of just rights, they have objects of substantial utility to attain. The trust-revenues of the companies are enormous; for want of due responsibility in the administrative committees they are, for the most part, lavishly and improvidentially squandered; in lieu of being judiciously appropriated to the objects for which they were charitably bequeathed, they are expended in personal indulgence, in political intrigue, in conciliating the favour of strangers, and in providing lucrative appointments for relatives and dependents. The courts too ought to be opened, and self-elected cabals no longer have the power of passing oppressive by-laws, of declaring new forms of eligibility, of arbitrarily accepting or rejecting candidates for their livery, or imposing upon them new and exorbitant fines.

Constituted as these bodies are, no opportunity is afforded to detect or punish their delinquencies. They form, in short, a great blot in our social economy, which, by some oversight, has escaped those gradual reforms that have been partially, at least, introduced into other departments of public administration. Of the power and constitution of the several branches of the general government, and of the way in which the functions of each is administered, ample information, for the most part, is laid before the public; but of the proceedings of corporations no one knows any thing. There is no publicity—no control—nor responsibility any where. All that is known of them is that they have a perpetual generation among themselves—that they have many good things in their gift, which they either appropriate to their own use, or bestow on those with whom they are intimately connected—that they have much feasting and banquetting at other people’s cost, and that they maintain a reserved and pompous demeanour towards those from whom they originally derived their power, and for whose benefit they were created.

The members of the Merchant Tailors’ Company, to whom allusion has been made, have endeavoured, through the medium of the press, and by instituting proceedings in a court of law, to reform the abuses of their Company, and to stimulate the members of the other incorporated trades to corresponding exertions. From a statement published by these gentlemen in The Free Inquirer it appears that the annual revenues of the twelve principal companies of the city of London exceeds five hundred thousand pounds; one hundred thousand of which is expended in luxurious entertainments, by a select class, called councillors or assistants; and near forty thousand pounds is divided yearly by the Twelve Legal Pillars, who condescend to stand for and act as clerks, to the no small annoyance of those who make inquiry into their own corporate property.

In addition to the twelve worshipful brotherhoods, as they are designated, there are sixty minor companies—the Stationers, Apothecaries, Dyers, Armourers, Sadlers, Cordwainers, &c. whose united incomes yield another half million; the disbursement of which no one hears of, no printed account has ever been known to be circulated, and no answer is ever made to any but the privileged class; as this revenue cannot be allowed much longer to remain in such profound secrecy, and in such corrupt hands, Mr. Franks has suggested that it be formed into a general fund for the education of the youth of both sexes, and the support of the poor of the city.

The chief facts to be borne in mind relative to the city companies are the following:—

- 1.—That the whole of the companies, with the exception of the Goldsmiths, Stationers, and Apothecaries, have ceased to exercise any control over the trades they bear the title of, or to which they may be considered allied.

- 2.—That nearly the entire site of the city of London belongs to these powerful and disgracefully-conducted monopolies.

- 3.—That most of the property has been jobbed or under-let to the private friends of the respective courts.

- 4.—That the courts of the companies are mostly controlled by stock-jobbers, parsons, and lawyers.

- 5.—That the whole of the bequests, in lands, houses, and money, left in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, has increased from fifty fold to a hundred fold.

- 6.—That the population of all the parishes within the jurisdiction of the city of London amounts only to 123,198.

- 7.—That the annual revenues of the City Companies exceed £1,000,000.

Of these Companies, there is scarcely one in the immunities of which the liveries at large are allowed fairly to participate, and in which the election of the master, warden, and courts are made conformably with the constitutional laws and charters. They are mostly managed by cabals, consisting of two or three families and their favourites, who have succeeded to the possessions and privileges of their societies, with a regular, and, apparently, as indefeasible a claim as any legitimate despot succeeds to his sovereignty. To these authorities the liveries have hitherto bowed, with the patience of serfs, and submitted not only to be deprived of the more substantial enjoyments of their respective corporations, but also to be disseized of their elective franchises, in the appointment of masters, wardens, assistants, and committees.

The chief reason which can be alleged for this supineness, is the ignorance in which the liverymen have been kept of the rights and powers they legally possess. With one or two exceptions, the charters of the companies have never been published, but, for reasons too obvious to mention, have remained under an impenetrable veil, either among the records in the Tower of London, or the strong boxes of the several courts of assistants, whose uncourteous demeanor, together with that of their clerks and underlings, to members seeking information, is only equalled by the patient endurance of the latter, in submitting for so long a period to their usurped authority. The advantages that would result to the liverymen and freemen by the restitution of their ancient rights, those rights of superintending their fiscal administration, and of choosing their officers and courts, (if the last be a legal part of their institution) are both numerous and important.

In the first place, the governors would be made responsible to the governed, and a few individuals no longer be allowed to pervert the revenues and influence of the societies to their own private purposes of favouritism, intrigue, and aggrandizement.

Secondly, and agreeably to their original institution, every member would be equally and alike a brother of the fraternity, eligible to elect and be elected to all places of trust, patronage, and emolument.

Thirdly, exclusive and disqualifying by-laws, intended to deprive the general body of the liverymen of their rights, could not be enacted; neither could arbitrary and oppressive fees on apprenticeships, freedoms, and liveries, be enforced: these unjustifiable extortions have been often screwed up and levied, merely to minister to a lavish expenditure in objects wholly foreign to the interests of the fraternities.

Finally, an efficient and watchful control would be established over the management of the numerous charitable trusts, and ample revenues of the companies.

The last would be one of the most important advantages resulting from the re-establishment of the general rights of the fraternities. The practice of self-auditing and self-election has long precluded the members of the companies from a knowledge of their own affairs; and it is only by the recent inquiries of the Charity Commissioners, that authentic information has been obtained of the magnitude of their revenues, patronage, and possessions. From these inquiries it appears that nearly the whole of the land and houses in London has been left in trust of the City Companies, for charitable uses; that they also possess, in the same capacity of trustees, in the country, numerous manors, estates, messuages, church livings, and tithes of parishes; that the revenues arising from this property amount, in several instances, to £20,000 or £30,000 per annum, and that not one-twentieth part of this income is expended on the poor, or other objects for which it was benevolently bequeathed. It is seldom the courts increase the amount of their eleemosynary disbursements; notwithstanding the vast augmentation of value in the trust-property, they neither multiply the objects of their charities, nor increase the allowances originally fixed by the donors, in total ignorance of the future produce of their bequests. The objects on which the surplus revenues are principally expended, consist of the expenses of committees, law-agency, and surveyors’ charges; in pretended repairs and improvements; in ostentatious buildings; in luxurious feasting for the parties and their friends; and in extravagant pensions and gratuities to favourite servants and dependents. For these purposes the revenues are never too much—generally too little,—and they are compelled to resort to the monstrous expedient of taxing their disfranchised brethren, to supply the deficiency.

CORPORATIONS OF CITIES AND TOWNS.

A reform of municipal institutions is an undertaking only second in importance to that of the general government. The power of the barons against which corporations were directed, has yielded to that of the state, and the remnants of these confederacies, by the assertion of ancient immunities, tend to disturb the peace and order of the realm. They are too insulated amidst the general wealth and population to strengthen the executive power. They represent no great social interest; the real aristocracy of cities and towns keeps aloof from them, either from disgust at their petty cabals, or contempt for their paltry duties. Instead of being the enlightened governors within their respective limits, they are only oppressors; instead of being faithful trustees, they are notorious plunderers of the widow and orphan; instead of being the centres of local government, of police and judicial administration, they are the sources of disorder, tumult, and prosecution. Wherever we find a corporation, we may generally rely on finding a town ill-governed—the inhabitants divided into rancorous parties—the prisons dilapidated and without discipline—the quarter and petty sessions of the peace ill-conducted—and every office of dignity or authority, from the worshipful recorder to the turnkey, filled up, not from the fitness of the individuals selected, but from personal connexion or influence. All these evils have mostly their origin in one source—the absence of popular control: with hardly an exception the members of all corporations are self-elected; hence their interests are partial, not public; hence every office is made a job of, every magisterial function, whether the granting of a license or the adjudication of an assault, is made a favour or an offence.

That these prefatory criminations have some foundation, we shall endeavour to show by briefly glancing at the constitution and management of some of the principal corporations. Our notice will necessarily be very brief, and not at all proportioned to the magnitude of the subject; but perhaps we shall be able, aided by our previous representations, to give a general idea of the existing state of municipal institutions, which may lead to more perfect and comprehensive inquiries. We shall commence with the corporation of the city of London, not only because it is under our more immediate observance, but because it is the first in rank, antiquity, and importance.

The corporation of London, we believe, is more popular in its constitution than any other in the empire. It is formed, as is well known, on the model of that of the state, consisting of three orders; but it is superior to the state, in the absence of those gross incongruities in its constituent bodies which impair the excellence of parliamentary representation. We may also observe respecting the city corporation, that it is more pure and perfect in its practical administration than any other municipal body of the kingdom. We are well aware what we are now stating; we make the assertion with a full knowledge of city jobbing—of the London Bridge committee—of the Gresham Lectures—of Mansion House dinners—and of the well known fact that from £4,000 to £5,000 per annum is expended by the committees of the Common Council alone; still we affirm that in no other corporation, nor in the general government, nor in the Colonies, is so much work performed at so small a cost. The duties of the corporation are very great, not only in matters relative to the magistracy, police, and local improvements of the city, but also in those which relate to the commerce, navigation, and shipping of the port of London; and in the due discharge of many of which the kingdom at large, as well as the metropolis, is deeply interested. That these functions should be all executed without expense, without remuneration direct or indirect, is what no reasonable person can expect.

Notwithstanding these excellences, the metropolitan corporation is full of anomalies, or, if the reader pleases, defects. We cannot stop to enumerate all these, nor to comment upon them, but we will mention the two principal.

First, as regards the local boundary or civil jurisdiction of the corporation. This comprehends only the nucleus or inner circle of this vast metropolis; all the living portion, the great mass of the opulence, respectability, and population of the capital, is placed without the curtilage of corporate authority, which includes within its legislative cognizance little more than an assemblage of shops, counting-houses, offices, wharfs and warehouses. The evils that result from this cause, whether as respects the conflicting powers of the county and city magistrate, the police, or the composition of the elective bodies of the city, are too well known to require description.

The second great anomaly we shall notice, is that which respects the qualification of the city constituency. As this is now regulated by the statute of the 11th George I. neither residence nor householdership confers the right of suffrage either for a member of the corporation or of the House of Commons. Freemen and liverymen constitute the only two classes of electors, the former of the aldermen and common council; the latter of members of parliament, lord-mayor, and chief city officers. Now it certainly appears indefensible that a householder should not share equally in the local government with the freemen and liverymen. The rights of both freemen and liverymen may be obtained without any direct or permanent interest in the weal of the city. Freedoms are acquired by purchase or gift, as well as by birth or apprenticeship. The rights of the livery or badgemen depend on still less valid qualifications; they are conferred or not at the pleasure of the courts of assistants; or the franchises of the livery may be acquired by purchasing a certain dress, in some companies at an exorbitant price, and in others no money will purchase it, unless the party be known to have imbibed a certain political or religious faith.

If there be injustice in withholding elective rights from householders, the civic disfranchisement of resident freemen is still less defensible. Several of the livery companies were only made such within the last century. None of the companies form a part of the corporation; nor is it necessary the liverymen should be resident in the city; yet in them is exclusively vested the power of choosing the city officers and the members of parliament. Such an anomaly exists in no other city in England. Of the twenty-four cities represented in parliament, there is not one, with the exception of London, where the freemen are disqualified by statute from choosing their representatives.

The utility of the existence of many civic immunities at all is very questionable; they are often an obstacle to the general prosperity and the free exercise of industry. According to the present law of the corporation respecting resident housekeepers carrying on trade in the city of London, they are called on to pay £34: 11; they cannot continue without being also free of a company, which increases the amount of money paid to £50. The Reform Bill, by conferring the parliamentary franchise on householders, will correct some portion of the injustice we have represented.

Corporation of Bristol.—This corporation ranks the second in the kingdom, and its defective constitution has been practically exemplified during the late tragical proceedings. The civil government of the city is vested in the corporation, consisting of a high steward, the mayor, recorder, aldermen, sheriffs, common council, town-clerk, chamberlain, and subordinate functionaries. The mayor and sheriffs are chosen annually on the 15th of September. The sheriffs are elected from the members of the common council, which body is limited, by the charter of Queen Anne, to forty-two. There are twelve aldermen chosen by the twelve wards into which the city is divided. They are constituted preservers of the public tranquillity, with the power of justices of the peace, and enjoy all the privileges and authority of the aldermen of London.

In point of opulence, the Corporation of Bristol is supposed to rank among the most wealthy bodies corporate of the kingdom. In 1778, Mr. Barrett estimated the annual income of the Corporation at £14,000, arising from the several estates they possess, from those for which they act in trust, with the rents of the several markets, the profits arising from town duties, and other sources of income. It has subsequently increased, Mr. Evans conjectures, in his History of Bristol, to £18,000. There is little doubt it is a great deal more from the augmented value of property, and the Corporation having abandoned, without the city, the former practice of letting their estates on lives, with merely fines for renewals. A considerable portion of the city estate is derived from the charter of John, and claimed by them under the title of “lords of the waste,” and including what is now Queen-square, Princes-street, King-street, and part of St. Augustine’s Back, the Key, Grove, and the Back. Out of the Corporation income £1,500 is annually given to the mayor for the better support of the dignity of his office, and £500 to each of the sheriffs. Between £3,000 and £4,000 is expended in salaries and other expenses incidental to the municipal government of the city. The finances of the Corporation are managed by the chamberlain of the city, which office is one of considerable trust and importance. He gives a bond of £3,000 for the execution of his duties with care and fidelity, and is obliged, by the statute, to render an account of the revenues of the Corporation, together with their application, in one month after the feast of St. Luke.

Bristol is a county corporate; that is, besides the city properly so called, certain lands and districts adjacent are comprised within its jurisdiction. The freedom of the city is obtained by hereditary right, by serving an apprenticeship of seven years if the indenture be registered at the council-house, by marrying a freeman’s daughter, and by purchase. The last charter granted to the city of Bristol is dated the 24th of July, 1710, by which the former grants and privileges are confirmed, and the mayor and other officers of the Corporation allowed to execute their respective offices without the approval of the Lord Chancellor, which by the charter of Charles II. was ordered to be first obtained. Had the constitution of the Corporation been popular enough to conciliate the confidence of the citizens, it is impossible the civic authorities should have been so void of resources as they appear to have been during the late riots. Beside, the Corporation is accused of not administering their numerous charitable trusts either wisely or faithfully. The Free Grammar School in Unity-street is a monstrous abuse. It was endowed by Robert Thorne, for the “better education and bringing up” of the youth of the city. Under the auspices of the Corporation it has been perverted into a splendid boarding-school establishment, to the great emolument of the Rev. Dr. Goodenough, and accommodation of the children of the magnates of Bristol.

Corporation of Liverpool.—Liverpool is an ancient borough by prescription, but incorporated by a series of charters granted from the reign of King John in 1208, to the reign of George II. By the latest charter it is provided that the body corporate shall consist of forty-one persons, composing the common council, out of whom shall be annually chosen a mayor, recorder, and two bailiffs. All who have passed the chair are styled aldermen. The mayor, recorder, and aldermen are magistrates for Liverpool, and the four senior aldermen are coroners.

Previously to the reign of Charles II. the freemen at large exercised the right of choosing their own corporate officers; but since that period, here, as in many other places, the corporate body assumed the power of filling up all vacancies within themselves. The free burgesses have, however, reclaimed part of their rights. Members of parliament are chosen by the free burgesses not receiving alms. All persons who are born free, who have served an apprenticeship under freemen, or who have obtained their freedom by grant or purchase from the corporation, have the right of voting. A freeman of Liverpool is also a freeman of Bristol, and of Waterford and Wexford in Ireland.

The principal points that have, from time to time, been in dispute between the burgesses and corporation are these:—1. The right of making by-laws by the common council, without the assent or participation of the burgesses. 2. The plan adopted by the common council of electing their own members, or filling up vacancies in their own body. 3. The balancing of the corporation accounts without public audit by the burgesses at large. These points have been the subject of expensive litigation; the right of making by-laws was decided in favour of the burgesses by the verdicts of two juries at Lancaster; on which occasion Mr. Erskine was their counsel. A third trial was moved for by the corporation, which the Court of King’s Bench, on what grounds does not appear, thought proper to grant. But the expenses incurred in these proceedings, which were sustained by individual burgesses, added to the consideration that the law has prescribed no limit to the authority of a court in remanding a cause for trial whenever it is not satisfied with the verdict, deterred the burgesses from further prosecution of their claim; and the common council, notwithstanding the opinion of the two juries, still continue to exercise the exclusive power of the corporation in the same manner as before these proceedings were instituted.

Annual accounts, however, of the corporation receipts and expenditure are now regularly published. The income of the corporation amounts to £60,000, chiefly from fines for renewal of leases, rents, town dues, anchorage, weighing machine, &c. The mayor, the recorder, and the aldermen are magistrates for Liverpool, and the four senior aldermen are coroners for the time being.

Corporation of Bath.—The civil constitution of this city as now administered was established by the charter of Queen Elizabeth, dated the 4th of September, 1590, by which the municipal government is vested in a mayor and four aldermen at the least, and not exceeding ten at the most, assisted with twenty of the chief citizens, to be called a common council, and a majority of these (whereof the mayor for the time being is to be always one) may make laws, let the city lands, impose fines, and create, from among the inhabitants, free citizens and burgesses, whom they may bind with an oath to obey all lawful commands. On Monday before the feast of St. Michael, the mayor, aldermen, and common council, are to choose from among themselves the mayor for the ensuing year, and also elect a recorder, common clerk, chamberlain, constables, and other inferior officers, with two sergeants of the mace. Persons refusing to take these offices (except those of recorder and town-clerk) may be fined. The mayor is constituted coroner of the city and clerk of the market.

Previous to this charter all preceding grants to Bath were vested in the whole of the citizens, who enjoyed the privilege of attending all meetings for making regulations for the internal government of the city, of being consulted in the formation of local institutions, of assenting to the appointment of parliamentary representatives, and of investing strangers with the rights and privileges of citizenship. These powers, for greater convenience, were usually delegated to a chosen body of themselves, the mayor always presiding at their head. But, in the course of time, the body so chosen to represent the citizens assumed a prescriptive right to the exercise of their delegated powers, independent of the suffrages of their fellow-townsmen, and, in order effectually to fortify their usurpation, they obtained the charter of Elizabeth, by which the popular constitution of Bath was subverted, and instead of it was substituted a perpetual oligarchy of self-elected individuals.

From this time the freemen of Bath were divided into two classes; the smaller one, which included only those who were of the community, (after Elizabeth’s charter denominated the Corporation,) and the more numerous class, distinguished from the stranger or inhabitant of other places by the grant of some trifling local privileges; of these the chief seems to have been a certain interest or privilege of pasture in the grange of Barton or Bath-common.

The freedom of the city is obtained either by servitude or purchase, or both. The term of servitude must be seven years, under a freeman, residing in the city, who is to cause the indenture to be registered within one month after the sealing of the same, in default whereof the apprentice does not gain his citizenship at the conclusion of the term. The freedom by purchase can be granted by the corporation, on the payment of a sum not less than £5 (£70 is, we believe, generally paid) into the coffers of that body; of this, however, the resident freemen do not participate.

The income of the corporation arises from several sources; such as the private baths in Stall-street; the rent of the pump amounting to £840, (Warner’s History, p. 337;) assessments for supplying the inhabitants with water from the adjoining hills: fines on the renewal of leases; and the profits of the weighing machine in the Saw-close.

The ecclesiastical patronage is confined to the rectorship of Bath, with Widcombe annexed, and the mastership of St. John’s Hospital, both valuable benefices.

The mayor is allowed the sum of 400 guineas to defray the expenses of his mayoralty, chiefly incurred in support of ancient hospitality.

The inhabitants of Bath are not represented in parliament, but the corporation, whose members are usually kept below the number to which they are restricted by their charter, returns two representatives.

About the middle of last century, the different trades exercised in Bath were in the hands of distinct fraternities, the members of which wore gowns, had their processions and feast-days, and claimed exclusive privileges in the pursuit of their respective vocations. These societies had all sprung up about the year 1600, without charter or act of parliament. In 1765, they were all extinguished by the firmness of one Glazeby, a tailor, who persisted in following his calling within the prohibited jurisdiction. A trial ensued in a court of law, when it was determined these mushroom companies had no legal existence.

There have been some royal grants to Bath subsequent to the charter of Elizabeth, but their provisions do not materially affect the constitution of the city as then established. In 1794, the number of city justices was augmented from two to nine, and power was granted to two aldermen, during the sickness, absence, or inability of the mayor, to appoint another alderman to act in that capacity.

Corporation of Preston.—Preston is a market town, borough, and parish. It was incorporated by Henry II. in 1160, and the privileges and free customs granted by this and subsequent royal grants were confirmed by charter of 36th of Charles II.

The body corporate consists of a mayor, recorder, seven aldermen, and seventeen capital burgesses, who, together, form the common council of the borough. The mayor, and two town-bailiffs, and two sergeants are elected annually, upon the Friday preceding the festival of St. Wilfrid, who was formerly lord of this town, and they are invested, on the 12th of October following, by a jury of twenty-four guild burgesses. The members of the council, with the exception of the mayor, retain their seats for life, or during the pleasure of a majority, and vacancies are supplied by the remaining members. The town sends two representatives to parliament, and affords the nearest practical example of universal suffrage in the kingdom; every male inhabitant, whether housekeeper or lodger, who has resided six months in the town, and who has not, during the last twelvemonth, been chargeable to any township as a pauper, having a right to vote for two candidates at elections. This principle was established by a decision of the House of Commons, on an appeal, in the year 1766, and has ever since been acted upon.

The burgesses are entitled by the charter of Henry II. to have a GUILD MERCHANT, with the usual franchises annexed, of safe transit through the kingdom, exemption from toll, pontage, and stallage; liberty to buy and sell peaceably; and power to hold a guild for the renewal of freedom to the burgesses, the confirming of by-laws, and other purposes. This privilege is still made the occasion of great festivity. For a long time after their first institution, the guilds were held at irregular periods, but they have now for more than a century been celebrated every twentieth year; the last was held in 1822. The several trades of Preston are incorporated. Twenty-five chartered companies go in procession on the guild festival.

Corporation of Lichfield.—The city of Lichfield was anciently governed by a guild and guild-master, which had their first establishment in the reign of Richard II. in the year 1387. Soon after the dissolution of the guild, by act of parliament, 2 Edward VI. a charter of incorporation was granted to this city by the same king; which was to consist of two bailiffs and twenty-four burgesses; twelve of whom had been masters of the guild. Several other charters were granted by succeeding sovereigns, the provisions of which were confirmed by that of Charles II. and the constitution of the city as now existing determined.

This charter, dated November 5, 1664, directs that two bailiffs shall be annually elected by the brethren on St. James’s day; that the senior bailiff shall be nominated by the bishop, keep a part of the seal and be escheator; that the bailiffs, at the expiration of their offices, shall be justices the succeeding year, and shall, together with the then bailiffs, hold courts of record, &c. have the use of fines and dues; that there shall be twenty-one brethren elected from among the citizens, and so called to aid and assist the bailiffs, as the common-council of the city; that the bailiff, or any of the brethren, shall be liable to be removed by a majority of the body; and upon the death or removal of any, others shall be elected by the like authority. It empowers the bailiffs and brethren to hold courts of gaol delivery; to award judgment of death or other punishment; and also to elect a recorder, steward, and common clerk: but none of these officers are to act without having first obtained the approbation of the Crown. They may also annually elect a sheriff, and any one refusing to serve may be fined or imprisoned, and excluded from all the privileges of the city.

Under the authority of the charters granted to this city, the several fraternities and Companies were formed of saddlers, glovers, whittawers, tanners, smiths, bakers, coopers, cutlers, &c. A list of these and their by-laws may be found in Harwood’s History of the “City and Antiquities of Lichfield.”

Corporation of Stafford.—The earliest incorporation of this borough was by charter of King John, in 1208. This charter was confirmed, and new privileges granted, by that of Edward VI. under which the government is constituted of a mayor, recorder, ten aldermen, ten common-councilmen, a town-clerk, and two sergeants-at-mace. The borough sends two members to Parliament, and has done so since the 23d of Edward I. The right of election is in the mayor, aldermen, and resident burgesses, not receiving parochial relief. The sons of burgesses, and those who have served apprentice seven years in the borough, have a right (upon the demand thereof) to be made burgesses. Though the electors claim to be independent of the personal influence of a patron, it appears, from the declarations of a lately elected member, they are accessible to an influence of a not less undignified description. The ancient custom of Borough English, by which the youngest son succeeds to property, in preference to the elder children, prevails in Stafford.

Corporation of Northampton.—Northampton is both a town incorporate and a borough. It was first incorporated by Henry II. and since confirmed by several successive charters under different reigns, and the privileges of the town much enlarged. By a charter granted in the first of King John, the burgesses were freed from all toll, lastage, and murage throughout England, with the privilege of enjoying these and other liberties in as ample a manner as the citizens of London, paying into the king’s exchequer £120 at Michaelmas, in every year. These liberties were continued and enlarged by further grants of Henry III. and Edward I. By charter of Henry VII. the mayor and his brethren, late mayors, are to name and choose forty-eight persons of the inhabitants, which forty-eight persons, together with the mayor and his brethren, and such as have been mayors and bailiffs, should hereafter yearly elect all the succeeding mayors and bailiffs. Before this period, it is stated, in Whalley’s History of Northamptonshire, vol. i. p. 433, that the mayor and bailiffs were elected by all the freemen in St. Giles’s church-yard, the election being often attended with tumults and quarrels. By charter, bearing date 3d August, 15th Charles II. the government of Northampton is committed to the mayor and two bailiffs, and such as have been mayors and bailiffs, and a common council of forty-eight burgesses, usually called the company of forty-eight; and of these, together with the recorder, chamberlain, and town-clerk, the corporation now consists. Those who have served the office of mayor are called aldermen. The recorder and town clerk are usually continued for life, but are re-chosen every year, and at their first appointment must be approved by the king. The mayor for the time being, with the last mayor, and one other member of the corporation, elected by the mayor, aldermen, and bailiffs, are justices of the peace within the town for that year. Freemen not resident may be elected to offices in the corporation, and must pay a fine if they refuse to serve.

Northampton sends two representatives to parliament. The electors, by prescription, are every freeman of the town, whether resident or not, and every inhabitant householder not receiving alms. By a resolution of the House of Commons, persons receiving an annual donation at Christmas are disqualified from voting. This, Oldfield remarks, in his History of Boroughs, vol. ii. p. 329, is not only repugnant to what may be called the common law of committees, but expressly contrary to the decisions on the Bedford petitions in 1755 and 1792; when it was determined that persons receiving charity were not thereby disqualified from voting, but that receiving alms was a disqualification.

Corporation of Gloucester.—The town of Gloucester was erected into a city and bishopric, in 1542, by charter of Henry the Eighth. The inhabitants obtained several other charters before and subsequently to this period; but that by which the city is now governed was granted by Charles the Second, in 1672, and cost the citizens upwards of £600. By this charter, the corporation must consist of thirty members at the least, but not to exceed forty, of which the mayor and aldermen are twelve, and the rest form the common council. Vacancies are to be filled up by the remaining corporators; and this principle of self-election seems to have been generally introduced into the charters of municipal bodies granted in this and the three preceding reigns, and was intended, as the charters allege, to avoid the tumults which had heretofore accompanied elections on more popular principles. The mayor, bailiffs, and chamberlain, are chosen by twenty electors, consisting of the mayor, aldermen, senior sheriff, and senior members of the common council. The other principal officers of the city, either by charter or prescription, are the high steward, the recorder, the two members of parliament, the town-clerk, and the twelve aldermen, out of whom the mayor is chosen. That alderman who was last elected is generally coroner, and president of the hospitals.

Every soon of a burgess is free-born, and, as such, is entitled to his freedom. Each burgess has free common all the year in the Townham and in Portham, after the hay is carried away, which franchise was purchased of the abbey of St. Peter, A.D. 1237: also in Oxclose, Meanham, and Little Meadow, after the first vesture is taken off. The freemen had also, anciently, certain exclusive privileges of fishing in the Severn.

Corporation of Leeds.—Leeds was first incorporated by Charles I. in 1626. A second charter was given to it by Charles II. in 1661, and a third by James II. in 1684. But, in 1689, the second charter was restored by William III. under which the town is at present governed. The corporation consists of a mayor, twelve aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen, who fill up the vacancies in their body, and annually elect the mayor from the aldermen by a majority of votes; but the election is merely pro formâ, as the senior alderman is always chosen. There are also a recorder and town-clerk. The mayor and aldermen are justices of peace within the borough, which is co-extensive with the parish, and divided into ten chapelries or townships, including the town properly so called.

The character of the Corporation of Leeds does not form an exception to that of municipal bodies throughout the kingdom; it is exclusive and intolerant: latterly it has received a slight infusion of Whiggism; still we believe the great and influential body of Dissenters have failed to derive any advantage from the abrogation of the sacramental test, and continue excluded from all part and parcel in its councils and proceedings. The relation indeed in which the Corporation stands to the inhabitants at large, precisely corresponds to that of the general government to the people of the empire. It is placed in the midst of a numerous, intelligent, and opulent population, of whose interests and sentiments it has long ceased to be the organ or representative; the same want of reciprocity between the governors and the governed is the pervading characteristic of the sway of the Oligarchy. We need not add that both require to be adjusted.

It is unnecessary, we apprehend, to extend our enquiries to other corporate bodies; those of which we have given an account will be sufficient to afford an insight into the general state of municipal franchises and institutions. Our preceding exposition may not be strictly correct in every particular, but we have had access to and availed ourselves of the best information open to the public. There is one circumstance indeed peculiar to all these privileged confederacies—and it is a very suspicious one, to say the least of it—they are all apprehensive of investigation into their chartered immunities. We had an instance of this in the treatment the Rev. Mr. Seyer received from the Bristol Corporation. This gentleman was desirous of publishing a correct version of the charters of that city, apparently for no other purpose than as a literary or antiquarian curiosity. He applied to the corporation for permission to inspect the originals in their possession; the question was debated in common-council, and the application refused. Who could tell what might be the result? The citizens might claim some obsolete franchises, or the worshipful body lose part of their revenues. The example of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was relied upon. After Mr. Brande had published the history of that place, the corporation lost a large portion of the town-duties. It is true the Corporation of Newcastle had wrongfully levied these duties—but what of that? They had always been received, and paid without grumbling, till they incautiously permitted the historian to look into their archives, and expose their injustice.

We shall conclude with submitting two propositions for the reform—for we would not have them abolished—of Corporate Bodies.

First, we would apply to corporations the same talisman of PUBLICITY, both as respects their proceedings and finances, which has contributed so much to improve the administration of national affairs. An act of parliament for this purpose, we are convinced, would be attended with the most beneficial consequences. We are aware of no good reason why corporate bodies should be exempt from the obligation imposed on the king’s ministers. The corporation of a city or town stands in the same relation to the inhabitants as the imperial government to the people of England. The Chancellor of the Exchequer brings forward his annual statements of debts and credits, of income and expenditure, and lays them before the nation, and the same duty ought to be discharged by every chamberlain, or other equivalent officer, to the whole city, borough, guild, or fraternity, by which he is appointed. Such a reform would check negligence and abuse, and maintain a spirit of inquiry into the administration of all corporation funds.

Secondly, we would abolish the system of SELF-ELECTION, and render corporations responsible to the intelligence and proprietary of the communities of which they have assumed the control and government. The practice of breeding-in is as unfavourable to the growth and improvement of public bodies as of animals and vegetables. A mutuality of feeling, a reciprocration of favour and obligation, are necessary between the different classes of every society, from that of a city or town to the entire kingdom. As it is, corporations form so many petty oligarchies, scattered through the country—the mere cess-pools of all that is corrupt, servile, and intolerant—and the exercise of whose sway, within their respective local jurisdictions, is more insulting and oppressive than that of the feudal lords, whose domination they have supplanted.

These changes may be considered by the apostles of an expiring faction as a violation of chartered rights, or “corporation robbery,” but happily we have reached a crisis when eloquent declamation on these topics can no longer command a numerous audience.

THE CITY’S ESTATE.

The Chamber of London annually makes a return to parliament of the income and expenditure of the corporation. We subjoin an abstract of the receipts and expenditure of the city, as published by the auditors, Messrs. Williams and Barrett, for the year ending December 31st, 1828.

ABSTRACT OF THE RECEIPTS.

£.

s.

d.

Balance in hand on the 31st December, 1827

549

10

83/4

Rents and Quit Rents

46,853

19

10

Markets, Tolls, Offices, and Bequests, heretofore called Rent Farms

62,301

7

41/4

Brokers’ Rents and Admissions

2,557

0

0

Freedoms Sold

8,900

0

0

Freedoms, Enrolments, &c.

1,391

1

10

Casual Receipts

1,851

13

51/2

Rents and Navigation of the River Thames

1,272

11

6

Sales and Alienations of Offices

50

0

0

Fines for Leases

1,791

16

8

Insurances of Officers’ Lives

304

16

9

Interest on Government Securities

1,055

19

11

Sale of Premises

82

10

0

Money borrowed

46,000

0

0

£174,962

8

01/2

ABSTRACT OF THE PAYMENTS.

£.

s.

d.

Orphans’ Fund

11,500

0

0

Rents and Quit Rents, Taxes, &c.

2,359

15

11/2

Mansion-House Expenses

2,964

5

0

Expenses of Magistracy and Police

9,938

7

5

Expenses of the several Prisons

20,296

4

1

Conservancy of the River Thames

4,281

18

9

Artificers’ and Tradesmen’s Bills

6,350

11

4

Market Charges

3,794

7

10

Law and Parliamentary Expenses

5,907

11

2

Return of Duty on Corn imported

559

3

3

Charitable Donations, Pensions, &c.

1,757

2

5

Salaries and Allowances

22,744

14

1

Disbursements—Court of Aldermen

395

19

10

Disbursements—Court of Common Council

9,704

19

101/2

Purchase of the Right of Alienation of the Officers of the Lord Mayor’s Household

7,719

9

10

Bequests

786

5

6

Interest and Annuities

13,696

19

2

Purchase of Securities

1,879

2

10

Debts discharged

16,250

0

0

Removal of Fleet Market

31,000

0

0

Balance in hand, 31st December, 1828

173,976

17

6

985

10

61/2

£174,962

8

01/2

R. CLARK,Chamberlain.

DR. BRADY’S INTERPRETATION OF COMMUNITATIS.

At page 455 we alluded to the interpretation given by Dr. Brady of the word “commonalty,” and the use made of that interpretation to deprive burgesses at large of their elective rights. So far as this matter is connected with the existing state of corporate bodies we do not attach much importance to it; for we think the merit of public institutions ought to be tried by their aptitude to present circumstances, without reference to antiquity or their derivative authority; and whether corporations claim the power they exercise from right or usurpation, is of comparative indifference. The real question is, can they be reformed and made more conducive to social utility? Other persons view these subjects in a different light, and it is for them we refer to Dr. Brady’s commentary. It was made the foundation of a sweeping measure of disfranchisement, and still continues the only legal defence of municipal oligarchies. The subject will be readily understood by the following quotations.

Warwick.

“1628. May 31, Mr. Hackwill reported from the Committee of Privileges the case for this borough:

Question,

Whether the election to be made by the Mayor and Common Council, or by the Commons in general?

Upon the Question it was resolved,

That the right of election for the Town of Warwick belongs to the Commonalty.”

Commons’ Journals, 4 Chas. I.

The following are Dr. Brady’s remarks on this decision of the Committee of the House of Commons:

“The ground of this popular error was, That this Committee (notwithstanding the two great antiquaries, Sir Robert Cotton, and Mr. Selden, and the oracle of law [so called] Sir Edward Coke, were members of it) did not truly understand the meaning of the words communitatis civitatum et burgorum, the commonalty of cities and burghs; which always signified the mayor, aldermen, and common council, where they were to be found, or the steward or bayliff, and capital burgesses, or in short the governing part of cities and towns, by what persons soever they were governed, or names and titles they were called and known, which hath been sufficiently evinced by what has been said before in this Treatise, on that subject. So that, if the communities of cities and burghs had been truly understood, the Committee ought to have determined, and the House resolved, That the right of election in very many, if not in most, or all cities and burghs, ought to have rested in the governing part of them, which is always a select number.”

—Treatise of Cities and Boroughs, By Robert Brady, Doctor in Physick, 1704.

Dr. Brady possessed considerable shrewdness, and his situation of Keeper of the Records in the Tower afforded him opportunity for learned research, but it did not become him to speak contemptuously of such men as Cotton, Coke, and Selden; nor had he good grounds for the inference he made, as appears from the following extract from another part of his “Treatise:”—

“In the 29th of Edward the First, John Blund was chosen Mayor per Commune Consilium Elye Russell tune Majoris, and the Aldermen there named, and the Sheriffs, per assensum Duodecim proborum hominum singularum Wardarum, by assent of Twelve good Men of every Ward. In the 31st of the same King, also in the 32d and 33d, John Lincoln and John Blund were the third and fourth time chosen, by Twelve bouos & legales homines de qualibet Warda summonitos; twelve good and lawful men summoned out of every Ward.”

—Ibid. p. 22.

By a reference to page 12 of Newell’s “Evidence of the Elective Franchise in London,” it will be seen that Brady has not given the 27th and 28th of Edward the First, because both those records prove that those elections were made by the whole commonalty; he also puts the 31st of Edward I. in the sleight of hand way,—In the 31st of the same King—and there leaves it, for the reader to suppose that the election in that year was made in the same way as in the 29th, while he must have known that the record of that year shews, that the election was made by the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and the whole commonalty. He also states that John Lincoln and John Blund were a third and fourth time chosen, whereas John Lincoln never was a mayor at all. This is quite enough for the accuracy and authority of this learned “Doctor in Physick.”

PLACES, PENSIONS, SINECURES, COMPENSATIONS, REVERSIONS, HALF-PAY, AND SUPERANNUATIONS.

SO far we have penetrated into the recesses of the Oligarchy! Our first entrance was into Holy Church, passing, with fear and trembling, through the venerable cathedrals, the collegiate establishments, the stalls, chapters, cloisters, and parsonages—glancing, as we proceeded, at the lawn sleeves, silk aprons, shovel-hats, surplices, hat-bands, and gloves. Next we ventured into the precincts of royalty, surveying the pomp and gorgeous pageants of courts and palaces; loitering, as we went along, in the pleasant retreats, in the woods and forests, the manors, chases, and crown-lands; afterwards we entered the domains of feudality, looking over the inheritances and possessions of the Percys, the Wentworths, Cavendishes, Pelhams, and other lords of the soil. Next, we plunged into the rookery among the wigs and gowns, the owls and owlets of Westminster; passing over thence into the treasury, the exchequer, and admiralty; from which we proceeded eastward into the purlieus of the India House and Threadneedle-street; and finally concluded our exploratory researches among the muniments, charters, trusts and revenues of Companies, Guilds, and Corporations.

After all this long and devious tour, without mentioning sundry off-sets and ramblings by the way, our readers, we fear, are only yet imperfectly acquainted with the System; they comprehend only its geography—its general departments and divisions—and know nothing of the various living creatures—the birds and beasts, and creeping things it contains. Our next object, therefore, will be, to introduce them into the menagerie of placemen, pensioners, sinecurists, reversionists, compensationists, superannuationists, and what not; first, describing their classes, genera, and species; and, afterwards, concluding with a catalogue of their names and qualities. This department of our work will be found a museum of rarities, embracing every link in the human creation, every description of men, women, and children. Like the ark of Noah, there has been nothing too great or mean in nature to find admission. It exhibits all the vice, the caprice, and injustice, of aristocratic government: the highest services to the state almost without notice, and the greatest gifts of the Crown lavished on profligacy, servility, and intrigue. It exhibits indolence and luxury devouring the bread for which poverty and industry have toiled, and for which they are now starving. It exhibits the strength, arcana, and machinery of the English government. It is a real picture of our boasted constitution—if not by law, as by practice established; and is a source whence a foreigner may draw far more correct notions of the checks, balances, and supports of the government, than from the visionary and panegyrical descriptions of Blackstone and De Lolme.

Before giving a list of the public cormorants, let us briefly describe their orders and degrees, beginning with the host of placemen filling the public offices.

From returns to parliament, it appears there are 22,912 persons employed in the public departments, whose salaries amount to £2,788,907. This does not include the immense number of persons employed in courts of law, the royal household, nor the colonies, and which, if included, would almost double the number of functionaries and their emoluments. The following exhibits a statement of the principal branches of revenue, in which this vast army of tax-gatherers and collectors is distributed, and a comparison of their relative numbers and emoluments in 1797 and 1827.

YEAR 1797.

YEAR 1827.

Offices.

No. of Persons.

Salaries.

No. of Persons.

Salaries.

The Custom returns for this year are incorrect, owing to the returns for the Port of London having been destroyed by fire in 1814. The persons employed in the Port of London, in 1815, were 2,043. The return of the amount of salaries, at the two periods, is accurate. To obviate another objection, it must be observed, that in 1806-7, and 18, fees to the annual amount of £40,000 were abolished, and equivalent salaries substituted. This, however, accounts only for a very small part of the enormous increase in the charge of this department.

Customs

United Kingdom

6,004

£338,648

11,346

£964,750

Excise

United Kingdom

6,580

413,281

6,491

768,795

Stamps

United Kingdom

521

78,746

519

134,065

Taxes

United Kingdom

291

58,331

347

74,190

Post-Office

Great Britain

957

54,030

1,377

85,970

Post-Office

Ireland

153

9,278

333

21,961

An important consideration is the comparative remuneration of placemen in 1797 and at present. In the year 1797 there were 16,267 persons employed in the public departments; and they received £1,374,561 a year. In 1827 there were 22,912 persons, and they received £2,788,907: the average income of each individual was £84 in 1797, and about £121 in 1827, being at the rate of thirty-three per cent. increase of salary.

Now, can any just cause be assigned, why the whole mass of salaries should not be reduced to the rate of 1797, thereby effecting a saving of upwards of one-third in an expenditure of £2,788,907 per annum. All the reasons which have ever been alleged for an augmentation in the pay of public servants have ceased to exist. The price of wheat in consequence of the corn laws is rather higher in 1832 than in 1797; but manufactured articles and articles of domestic use are mostly one-third or two-thirds cheaper than in 1797. How much better circumstanced are placemen now than in 1810; in that year there were 22,931 persons receiving £2,822,727, averaging about the same income as in 1827: but, at the former period, wheat was 105s. a quarter; while, at present, it is 61s. a quarter. Why should those who live on the taxes enjoy such advantages over those who pay them? Rents, profits, wages, every description of income, the produce of industry and capital, has fallen at least one-third since 1810, and why should not those who are paid by the public be compelled to retrench in an equal ratio? Do not let a suffering community be insulted by the declaration, that there is no room for retrenchment—that it has already been carried to the utmost limit. Here is the proof to the contrary; here it is shown that, without the least injustice to individuals, in the single item of SALARIES, one million per annum might be saved, which is nearly equal to the produce of the window-duties, and more than double the produce of all the taxes on newspapers, advertisements, and knowledge!

After all, it is not the clerks—the mere underlings of office—that we wish to see exclusively curtailed; it is the vultures of the system whom we wish to see scotched—the chairmen of boards—the commissioners of stamps, of the excise, the customs, and assessed taxes—the joint secretaries of the Treasury—the tellers of the Exchequer—the great officers of the king’s household—the judges, masters, registrars, secretary of bankrupt, prothonotaries, filacers, and custos brevium in the courts of law—the comptrollers, paymasters, treasurers, solicitors of taxes, and solicitors of stamps: it is these, the great birds of prey, whom we first wish to be brought down, and then the inferior race may be pounced upon.

The increase in salaries is not confined to civil offices; it extends equally to military, naval, and ordnance pay and allowances. In all these branches of service, there has been a great augmentation in consequence of the rise in the price of provisions, which is a reason that can be no longer urged against reduction. In 1792, the pay of a private soldier in the regular infantry was only £9 : 2 : 6 for 365 days; it is now £18 : 5. The pay of the regular cavalry has been increased in the same proportion. The pay of a commander in the navy, in 1792, was 20s. per diem; in 1829, 60s. per diem. The allowance to the widow of a colonel, in 1792, was £50 per annum; in 1827, £90 per annum. A similar scale of augmentation has been applied to almost every other class; but the time has arrived when they ought all to be reduced to the rate before the war. The productive orders of society have long since been compelled to retrograde, and those who live on the produce of their industry must follow them. While the tide was at flood all officers and placemen were wafted too high on the beach; now the tide has fallen, they must either voluntarily glide or supinely wait to be forced into the common channel.

One of the greatest abuses in the public service is pluralities. When a single individual can adequately discharge the duties of half a dozen different offices, the duties of these offices must be either very small or unimportant, and consequently some of them might either be abolished or united, and the salaries saved or reduced. It is unnecessary to cite examples of either civil, judicial, or military pluralities; they will be found in abundance in our List of Places. The Whig ministers have consolidated some offices: they have also abolished some offices, and reduced the salaries of others: the changes they have introduced or contemplated we shall notice in a separate section; but it does not appear they have determined to act on the general principle of reducing all salaries and emoluments to the standard existing prior to the war. There is, however, no good reason why this course should not be followed. Look at the enormous fall in the prices of Sheffield cutlery and Birmingham hardwares recently published! All articles of domestic use and consumption, except bread, have fallen in a corresponding proportion, and many of them have fallen greatly below the prices they were at in 1797. In 1797 the average price of sugar, per cwt., was 60s.; in 1832 it is only 23s. per cwt.; in 1797 coffee was 124s., in 1832 it is 33s. 6d.; sheeting calicoes in 1797 were 1s. 6d. per yard, in 1832 sixpence; broad cloth 22s. 6d. per yard in 1797, in 1832 nine shillings; iron per ton in 1797 £23, in 1832 £5 : 10. While the prices of these articles have fallen from 60 to 75 per cent. below what they were in 1797, the price of corn has risen. In 1797, the average price was 44s. per quarter at Mark-lane; in January 1832 it was 61s. 6d. These are the different results of free and restricted trade—free, as respects manufactures—restricted as respects the produce of the soil.

The price of tea has been kept up from the same cause—monopoly in the East India Company. The high price of corn is no reason whatever for not returning to the standard before the war, because the high price is voluntary—the result of the selfish and pernicious policy of the Aristocracy—of those who chiefly profit not only by the exorbitant price of corn, which they have artificially created, but by exorbitant salaries.

MILITARY AND NAVAL HALF-PAY AND CIVIL SUPERANNUATIONS.

The sums expended under the head of Dead Weight, consisting of retired full-pay, half-pay, civil superannuations, and allowances to the army and navy, are equal to the revenue of many powerful states. The number of military officers, on full-pay, is 6,173: the number of military officers on half-pay, is 6,009. In the navy, there are 5,528 officers: of this number, 200 are admirals, of whom only ten are in actual service; 803 are captains, of whom only seventy-nine are employed; 836 are commanders, of whom only seventy are employed; and 3,689 are lieutenants, of whom only 669 are employed. The total sum annually paid in retired full-pay, half-pay, superannuations, pensions, and allowances to officers in the army and ordnance; to militia-adjutants, local-militia-adjutants, and serjeant-majors; to foreigners on half-pay, and to foreigners receiving pensions, &c. is £3,314,632:17:7. The total sum annually payable under similar heads in the navy, is £1,583,797 : 16 : 10. The Dead Weight altogether, including the superannuations, grants, and pensions, in the Metropolitan Police, Excise, Customs, Treasury, Stamp, Tax Offices, Revenue, and Military Boards, £5,363,640 : 7 : 111/2.

Such, in addition to the public debt of eight hundred millions, the conflagrations and special commissions, is the fatal bequest of aristocratic government; of that government which vainly sought to avert domestic reform by foreign war and intervention!

There is, however, something so peculiar in the Dead Weight, that it deserves more particular investigation. It might have been thought, during a period of peace and reduced establishments, and more especially by the deaths of annuitants, that the burthen imposed on the community under this head would have been lightened. But it is not so; the Dead Weight is too good a thing for the Aristocracy to be suffered to expire, and it seems likely to be, at least, co-existent with the system which created it. In 1822, this precious entail of the Borough-mongers’ war expenditure amounted to £5,289,087, which is only less, by £74,553 per annum, than it was in March, 1830. All the time government was loud and unceasing in professions of economy, of a desire to reduce every possible charge,—to make every possible saving; yet, in face of all this, one great and most objectionable branch of expense, under circumstances most favourable for reduction, was actually suffered to increase!

All the extravagance of which we complain has resulted from a negligent—not to say deliberate—and indefensible system of profusion. We do not complain of the expense of maintaining those who are actually worn-out or disabled in the public service, no more than we complain of supporting, by a poor-rate, the aged and infirm in civil life; but we may justly complain of supporting those who are in health and strength,—who never served their country, and have no claim on its gratitude. The half-pay of the Army and Navy, on the present plan, is decidedly objectionable. It is not a remuneration for past service; since every holder of a commission, though he has held it only for a day or an hour, is as much entitled to claim half-pay, when not actually employed, as another who has served for twenty years. Such being the rule of the service, ought not government to have adopted every precaution against the multiplication of claimants; ought it not to have guarded against new admissions into the naval and military departments, while there remained officers in abundance on half-pay able to fill up every vacancy? Their conduct has been the reverse of so obvious a principle. Thousands of new commissions have been given away in the Army and Navy, while, at the same time, we had upwards of 16,000 officers in both branches of service totally unemployed. Hence the perpetuity of the Dead Weight. The Aristocracy look upon the Army, the Navy, the Church, and Public Offices, as so many branches of their patrimony, and that a reduction in them would lessen the amount of patronage, diminish the funds for the maintenance of younger children, illegitimate offspring, collateral relatives, favourites, and dependents.

Besides the granting of first commissions, other causes have operated to keep up the amount of the Dead Weight. Previous to the year 1820, no half-pay was payable to officers holding any other office, civil or military, under the crown; but this regulation did not extend to officers on full-pay, the receipt of which was compatible with the holding of civil employment. Another regulation, previous to 1818, was that widows should not be allowed pensions, unless their husbands had been on full pay; and all widows having pensions ceased to receive them if they married. Further, in the Navy, a widow lost her pension if her income from any other source equalled twice its amount. All these regulations have been abrogated; and the consequence has been an annual increase of charge to the amount of £147,624; and a loss to the public from 1818 of upwards of £1,300,000.

What we have said will, we apprehend, be sufficient to enable our readers to comprehend the nature of the Dead Weight, and the causes of its longevity. We shall proceed with other subjects, first referring to the Appendix for a more detailed statement of the Half-Pay and Superannuation Expenditure.

SINECURES, REVERSIONS, AND PENSIONS.

Sinecures are offices without employment! The bare description is sufficient to decide the fate of appointments like these; but how infatuated the government must be, which obstinately retains them amidst a discontented and famishing population. Let us shortly inquire into the origin and present state of these corruptions.

Sinecures have mostly originated from changes in the usages of society, from alterations in the management of the revenue, the administration of justice, and partly from the unions of the three kingdoms. They ought all to have ceased with the duties attached to them; but have been kept up for sake of patronage. Of the first description of sinecures, the office of master of the hawks, in the royal household, held, with a salary of £1,392, by the Duke of St. Albans, is an example. The chief-justices in Eyre, with salaries amounting to £4,566, have been kept up for centuries, after such a mode of administering the laws had terminated. In Scotland and Ireland is a host of offices of which the holders, without employment or responsibility, have only to receive their salaries and emoluments. Of this class are the offices of Vice-admiral of Scotland, held by general Lord Cathcart; the Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, held by the late first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville; the offices of Keeper of the Signet and Register of Sasines, held by the brother of Lord Melville: the office of Chancellor of Scotland, held by lieutenant-general the Earl of Rosslyn; and the office of Justice-general of Scotland, held by the late Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Montrose. All these are absolute sinecures, with salaries varying from £1500 to £5000 per annum. The offices of Chief Justices-in-Eyre, now held by Lord Clarendon and the Right Hon. T. Grenville, are to cease with existing interests; but when that will be no one can tell, since many of these lucrative appointments have been made hereditary in particular families, or patent offices granted for a long term of years.

Next to absolute sinecures are offices of which the salaries are vastly disproportioned to the employment, and of which the duties are discharged wholly by deputy. This forms a very numerous class. As specimens may be mentioned, the Auditorship of the Exchequer, held by Lord Grenville, with a salary of £4000; the Registrarship of the Admiralty, held by Lord Arden, with an income, during the war, of £10,500; the four Tellerships of the Exchequer, each with salaries of £2700; and the four Clerkships of the Pells, with salaries of £1500, held by the Bathursts, Dundasses, and Percevals. In the departments of the Army, the Navy, and Revenue, are numerous sinecures, which ought to have been long since extinguished.

But the COURTS OF JUSTICE present the most rank and unweeded garden of lucrative offices without employment, or of which the employment is executed by deputy. Among the foremost of these is Lord Ellenborough, who is clerk in the Court of King’s Bench, with an income of £9,625; he is also custos brevium of the same court. This pompous man threw out an insolent threat, last session, on some comment being made on the heavy contributions levied by legal sinecurists on suitors for justice. Lord Kenyon is joint custos brevium with Lord Ellenborough, with an income of £2,696; and his lordship’s brother, the Hon. Thomas Kenyon, is filazer and clerk of outlawries, with emoluments averaging £7,000 a year. Next, is the Duke of Grafton, sealer in the King’s Bench, £2,888, though we dare say his grace never sealed a writ in his life, nor ever once entered the dark and dirty hole in Inner Temple Lane, where that function is performed by his representative. Charles Short, clerk of the rules and orders of the King’s Bench, receives from fees, £5,172 per annum. What can be the grave and responsible duties of Mr. Short to entitle him to this enormous tribute, we cannot precisely state. Again; there is John Waters, clerk to the chief justice, from fees, £2,169. Lord Tenterden receives £10,000 a year as chief judge of this court; but his lordship’s office is no sinecure, whatever may be the offices held by his son and nephew, who receive, respectively, £2,985, and £1,000 per annum.

Let us next step into the Court of Common Pleas; we pass over the judges, whose salaries are well known, and perhaps not greatly to be complained of. Not so with others. The three prothonotaries have returned their emoluments at £7,800, “or thereabouts,” arising from “ancient fees, payable solely by suitors.” Mr. Mansfield, filacer of the court, receives £1,450 for filing writs and affidavits, taking bail, and other small matters. Keene Fitzgerald, Esq. clerk of the warrants, £1,252; W. Woodroffe, Esq. associate of the chief justice, £1,198; the custos brevium, Sir E. Mostyn and partners, from fees on actions, £1,122; and last, and not least, William R. H. Brown, Esq. warden of the Fleet Prison, “£2,000, or something upwards,”—the words of the return. The Court of Chancery has been called the “Mint of justice;” but it is, in fact, a mint for coining into enormous fees the effects of minors, legatees, bankrupts, widows, orphans, and lunatics. The office of the chief fee-gatherer of the court is about to be regulated; that is, in lieu of gleaning £15,000 a-year from writs, petitions, supersedeas, &c. the Lord Chancellor is to be paid a fixed salary to an equal amount. The emoluments of the Rev. Thomas Thurlow amounted, in the year 1830, to £8,502, as patentee of bankrupts; and the emoluments of the same Reverend Person, in the same year, as clerk of the hanaper, amounted to £2,500. The sinecures, or offices nearly sinecures, in this court, are so numerous, that we must be content with indicating them in clusters, referring to the List of Places for particulars. The ten masters, whose chief duties consist in three or four hours’ attendance per day, in adjusting accounts and swearing affidavits, receive each, on the average, £4,500 per annum; and their chief clerks, each, £1,400 a-year. The Six Clerks, as they are termed, are nothing more than sinecurists, and their incomes average £1,200 each. The Registrar levies £4,861 in fees, for copying proceedings in equity, and the master of the Report Office as much, though his duties are of the same humble description, performed by hireling quill-drivers, who receive less than a curate’s stipend. Our task would never be finished, were we to pursue our inquiries minutely through the entire labyrinth of law in the United Kingdom. Edinburgh presents similar enormities in judicial administration, in the fees and emoluments of keeper of signet, and register of sasines, the clerks of sessions, sheriffs’ clerks, &c. Dublin has also her flight of vultures perched on the temple of Astræ, under the denomination of masters in chancery, prothonotaries, clerk of the hanaper, and clerks of papers, and what not. In the provinces justice is impeded by clerks of the peace, appointed by lords lieutenant of counties, and who have princely emoluments. Then what purlieus of sinecurism there are in the counties palatine and duchy courts of Lancaster, Durham, and Cornwall, in the nominal capacities of chancellors, registrars, receivers, attorney and solicitor-generals, auditors, king’s counsel, ushers, and other mimicry of the regal and imperial government!

Knowing, as we do, what a gradation of pillage the course of justice is in this country; knowing how the unfortunate suitor is fleeced at every step of his proceeding, by the harpies of the law; knowing all this, we do often wonder at the proneness of our countrymen to litigation, and cannot behold, without both surprise and indignation, the readiness with which they furnish pabulum to the monstrous legal extortions we have shortly indicated. We hear much said about the “hells” of St. James’s-street, and of the “hells” of Bond-street, where brainless creatures are stripped of their fortunes; but are these more ruinous and plundering than others, under a very different name, in the vicinity of Chancery-lane, Temple-bar, and Palace-yard?

We pass on to another description of sinecures, under the titles of governors, lieutenant-governors, town-adjutants, town-majors, constables, gunners, wardens, lord-wardens, and God knows what beside, of the cities, towns, forts, castles, garrisons, &c. of Great Britain and Ireland. Berwick-on-Tweed, Chester, Hull, Blackness-Castle, Dover-Castle, Edinburgh-Castle, Walmer-Castle, and Tilbury-Fort, are examples of these appointments, and which cost the country upwards of £35,000 per annum. Numerous commissioners of revenue, comptrollers, inspectors of taxes, and distributors of stamps, are little more than sinecurists, the duties, where any exist, being discharged by deputies. But the chief nidus of sinecures is in the Colonies. The duties of nearly all offices in the West Indies, civil or judicial, are discharged by deputy, while the principal resides in England. They form an immense branch of patronage to the crown. It is impossible to estimate correctly their total value, the incomes being paid in fees, received by the deputy, who stipulates to pay a fixed annual sum to the principal. The total value of colonial sinecures, exclusive of those at the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, and Malta, has been estimated at £76,546.

The subjoined statement, taken from the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Public Expenditure in 1809, shews the net value of the principal sinecures in the gift of the Crown, and otherwise. It is now twenty-two years since this report was made; and during that long iuterval, we doubt whether the profits of a single sinecure have been saved to the public: some which we have noticed are to cease on the termination of existing interests. The offices of patentee of bankrupts, and clerk of the hanaper, and of justice-general in Scotland, and a few more, have been abolished; but then the holders are to have compensations; so that, we repeat, we doubt whether, by the extinction of sinecures, the community has been saved a farthing; and this monstrous abuse is just as flagrant as ever, to the everlasting reproach of the members of both houses of parliament, who have not raised their voices, not only once but many times, against the further toleration of this shameless robbery, under any shape or pretext. Here is the return to which we have referred:—

£

Sinecures in the English Law Courts, mostly in the gift of the Judges

62,462

Sinecures in England, not in Law Courts

115,589

Sinecures in Scotland

25,523

Sinecures in Ireland

76,435

To which add Colonial Sinecures

76,546

£356,555

Having spoken of Sinecures, we come next to their natural offspring—REVERSIONS. It was very natural that the holders of situations, to which large emoluments and no duties were attached, should not only wish to preserve them during their lives, but also, if possible, transmit them to their relatives and friends after death: hence originated grants in reversion. Another reason, however, may be assigned; ministers not having situations in sufficient abundance to satisfy all their adherents, endeavoured to satisfy them by anticipation. Those for whom they could not immediately provide, they satisfied by obtaining grants from the king, making them the heirs of places at the death of the present possessors. Sometimes these reversions were granted to two or three persons at once; first to one, and if he or she should die, to another; and if he or she should die, to another; in this way have been granted most of the places on the Irish establishment for sixty or seventy years to come, and many of the most valuable legal sinecures in England.

The absurdity of this practice is sufficiently obvious. Nothing could be more ridiculous than to appoint persons to offices who were, perhaps, yet in the nursery, and of whose future capabilities it was impossible to have any knowledge. To be sure, many of these reversionary situations had no duties attached to them, and, of course, it could not be of much importance by whom they were discharged.

From the large emoluments of Sinecures, and the granting them in reversion, have originated some ludicrous incongruities. Many noble lords and their sons, right honourable and honourable gentlemen, fill the offices of clerks, tide-waiters, harbour-masters, searchers, gaugers, packers, craners, wharfingers, prothonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these offices are filled by women and some by children. The Countess of Mansfield receives £1000 a year from the Barbadoes planters; and the duchess dowager of Manchester £2928 a-year, as late collector of the customs outwards! Not long since a right honourable lady, a baroness, was sweeper of the Mall in the Park; another lady was chief usher in the Court of Exchequer; and the Honourable Louisa Browning and Lady B. Martny were custos brevium: some of these offices, we see, from the Law List, have been recently merged in and executed by the husbands and children of these high-born dames. Then of noble Lords; the Beresfords hold the appropriate offices of wine-tasters, storekeepers, packers, and craners, in Ireland; the Duke of Grafton, and Lords Ellenborough and Kenyon, with deputies to help, are clerks, sealers, and keepers of writs. Lord Henley is master in chancery; the late lord Walsingham was in the petty office of comptroller of first fruits in the Court of Exchequer; and Lord Wm. Bentinck, now located in India as governor-general of Bengal, is clerk of the pipe, part of whose office it is to attend or assist the man who holds up Lord Chancellor Brougham’s train!

We could enumerate a great many more, but they will be noticed in our List; we shall pass on to PENSIONS.

As nearly as can be collected from the various official returns submitted to Parliament, it would appear there are upwards of fifteen hundred pensioners, who receive about £805,022 per annum. This is exclusive of colonial pensions, and of all grants, allowances, half-pay, and superannuations for civil, military, and naval services. We subjoin a statement of the objects and sources from which this vast sum is paid.

£

This and the preceding items are taken from the Fourth Report of Sir H. Parnell’s Finance Committee, page 67, Session 1828.

Parliamentary Paper, No. 127, Session 1830. This item, perhaps, ought to be omitted, being only, we presume, a temporary allowance to individuals, many of whom had just claims on the hospitality of the country.

Pensions payable out of the consolidated fund of England and Ireland

455,444

Pensions payable out of the hereditary revenues of the Post Office and Excise

22,439

Pensions to American loyalists

5,056

Pensions to Toulonese and Corsican emigrants

14,380

Pensions to St. Domingo sufferers and Dutch naval officers

1,820

Pensions to ambassadors and other foreign ministers charged on the civil list

57,377

Court pensions on the English civil list, about

95,000

Pensions on the Irish civil list, about

75,000

Pensions on the Scotch civil list

35,000

Pensions to Spanish refugees, who had co-operated with the British armies in the Peninsular war

18,040

Pensions payable out of the 41/2 per cent. Leeward Island duties

27,466

Total of Pensions

£805,022

The funds out of which pensions are paid are so numerous that we are not sure, though we have all the official returns about us, some of them have not escaped our researches. However, we had rather be under the mark than be accused of exaggeration. Exclusive of sinecures, and the millions expended on objects nearly as unjustifiable, a Pension Roll, in times like these, to the amount of £805,022, is enough to make a man start from his seat, especially if he reflect, for one moment, on the dreadful state of the labouring population of the empire. In our humble opinion the salaries of public servants ought to be their only reward, and the granting of pensions is altogether unjustifiable, unless for casualties in the service of the country; but when they are squandered on persons of whom the public knows nothing, nor for what, they are an unbearable grievance. Who, for instance, knows any thing of the services of the Giffords, the Cockburns, the Bathursts, Arbuthnots, Hays, Fitzhums, and scores more who are living on the earnings of the industrious. Foreigners, too, are on the Pensions List; men have been brought from all parts of the earth, from America, from Germany, from France, and myriads from Scotland, to eat our bread, and devour the wages of labour and the profits of trade and agriculture.

It would be quite impossible, within reasonable limits, to enter into an analysis of the Pension List; but there is one class of pensioners who have got upon our backs in such a peculiar way, and they have such peculiar claims on national gratitude, that we must needs crave the reader’s patience while we shortly describe their origin and pretensions.

In the year 1817, there was a pretty general call for retrenchment, and a Select Committee of Finance, consisting mostly of placemen and pensioners, recommended as a sort of tub to the whale, the abolition of a few of the more obnoxious sinecures. Three acts were accordingly introduced to abolish certain useless offices; as supervisor of his Majesty’s printing-press, compiler of the Dublin gazette, master of the revels, chief justices in Eyre, clerk of the pipe, receiver of the bishop’s rents, and some others were to be abolished: all which are subject to existing interests. But mark the sequel: having recommended the abolition of these sinecures, the committee next recommend the creation of others; having cut down the places without any duties to perform, they create so many new pensions of retirement and superannuations, as actually to entail a greater burthen on the country after this mock retrenchment than before!

With this view, the 57th Geo. III. c. 65, was introduced. The act begins by reciting that, “the abolition and regulation of various offices, which deprive the crown of part of the means by which his Majesty has been heretofore enabled to recompense the service of persons who have held high and efficient civil offices;” and it modestly enacts, that, from henceforth and evermore, all the high and low “efficient public officers” of the country, from the first lord of the treasury down to the secretaries of the treasury, under-secretaries of state, clerk of the ordnance, first and second secretaries of the Admiralty, all included, shall be supported by pensions paid out of the pockets of the people. This was reforming with a vengeance! A committee, appointed expressly to abolish useless places, finishes by recommending the purchase of them, and the establishing of a perpetual fund to reward the holders thereof; most of the members of the committee themselves being the parties to be benefited by this admirable mode of retrenchment.

This truly extraordinary Pension Act assumes, as a principle, that the different sinecures are the absolute property of our hereditary legislators and their dependents; and thence concludes, because these offices are abolished, they have a claim to be provided for in some other way. “Here is a considerable mass of property,” they say, “taken from our grasp, and it must be made up to us by equivalent pensions.” This is exactly the principle, and what must the constitution of the government be which sanctions, by its authority, so monstrous an assumption?

What right had these “high and efficient public men” to compensation at all? The sinecures were abuses, and they ought to have been swept away without equivalent. If other classes are injured by reform or improvement, what compensation do they receive for their loss? The workman suffers by the substitution of machinery, the merchant and manufacturer by the vicissitudes of commerce, and the farmer by alterations of the currency; but they receive no equivalent; no fund is provided to make up the loss of their capital and industry. How many individuals have been ruined by the introduction of the steam-engine; yet no one thinks of making up the loss of the sufferers. No one thinks of establishing a perpetual fund to compensate the loss of the stocking-weavers, printers, cloth-dressers, or coach-proprietors: no one would think of compensating the loss of the publicans and brewers, from the throwing open of the beer trade. Yet the rights of all these classes are as sacred as those of the pensioners and sinecurists. They have all vested interests in their pursuits; they have all served apprenticeships or laid out their capital: and if the sacrifice of their property be a public good, they are as much entitled to compensation as the “high and efficient public men.”

Absurd as the principle is, it pervades the whole system: all abuses are private property, and you cannot reform them without raising an outcry that the interests of some class or other are violated. If you meddle with tithe, you are violating the property of the church. If you attempt reform in courts of justice, you are attacking the emoluments and patronage of the judicial classes. If you attack the rotten boroughs, you are accused of invading the property of the aristocracy. And, lastly, if you touch sinecures, they are the property of our “high and efficient public” men.

Under such a system there can be no reform; there can be only transformation of abuse; you can only transmute a sinecure into a pension, or an enormous salary into a superannuation; but, as to extirpating the evil altogether, it is chimerical. That can only be done by a reformed Parliament, which shall have no vested interests in the abuses it undertakes to remove.

Having explained the origin and principle of the Pension Act, let us next glance at some of the worthies who, up to this time, under the designation of “high and efficient public men,” have fastened their greedy talons on the earnings of the industrious. First on the list is Lord Sidmouth, £3000 a year for life: his lordship, besides, has Richmond-park Lodge, and for many years has been receiving, as deputy-ranger, from £1000 to £2000 per annum, out of the rents and profits of the crown lands. The sinecure of clerk of the pells was many years held by his son; and there are several other Addingtons in the church, and on foreign missions. Altogether £5000 a year may be put down as the reward of the famous circular, the memorable letter of thanks, to the Manchester magistrates, for the massacre of the 16th of August, and other high and efficient public services of Henry Viscount Sidmouth.

The next is the honourable Robert Ward £1000, late auditor of the civil list, we believe, and who has run through various ranks and degrees as clerk of the Ordnance, M.P. for Haslemere, &c. This gentleman is only to receive half his pension, if he hold office of less annual value than twice its amount.

The right honourable Henry Goulbourn £2000, the Duke’s luminous and most efficient chancellor of the Exchequer. Then follows a Mr. Hamilton £1000, of whom we know nothing, unless he be a late consul or clerk of the Treasury. Afterwards we have Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, M.P. for Totness, colonial agent for the Cape of Good Hope, and late secretary of the India Board. This is the “family man,” with a wife and fourteen children, for whom Canning once made so melting an appeal to the guardians of the public purse;—they must be provided for. Mr. Courtenay is the cousin of a peer—let him be put down for £1000, and his sons have the first vacancies in the Mint, the Treasury, or Exchequer!

Now, right honourable John Wilson Croker, come forth; don’t be ashamed; who can begrudge any thing to the paymaster of the widows’ charity, and a twenty-one years’ secretary of the Admiralty, with £3000 per annum. Put John down for £1500 a year for life—but stop; do not let him receive his pension, any more than his brother pamphleteer, Peregrine Courtenay, if he hold offices yielding £3000 a year.

Joseph Planta, Esq. we congratulate you; enrolled among the high and efficient public men; a secretary of the Treasury, with £3500 a year, and a pension for life of £1000 a year. Mr. Planta, you are a happy man; your calling and election are sure, and you are now placed beyond the risk of accident, by “flood or field.” Next to Castor and Pollux, whom you have so good a right to follow, you have been one of the most humble and industrious labourers in the borough vineyard.

We pass over Canning and Huskisson; at the time of their death, each was down for £3000; they were amongst the most greedy and audacious of corruptionists; but they are gone to their audit elsewhere;—not, however, without leaving long trails of calamities behind, of which more hereafter.

Next is a Hobhouse £1000; but we pass over him also to come to the last and greatest of our “high and efficient public men,” the right honourable Lord Bexley. How ought a statesman like this to be rewarded: the great Sieur Vansittart, the steadfast coadjutor of the “Thunderer,” the astounding financier, the man of infinite resource, who, in the period of our greatest tribulations, did, by the mere force of native genius, make a pound note and a shilling equal to a guinea, when the former was depreciated thirty per cent. Put Nicholas down for £3000 a year for life, and make him a LORD!

Here ends the muster-roll of “high and efficient public men.” There are other names; but these are enough to illustrate the application of the Pension Act of 1817, and the supplementary act to it in 1825, and which acts ought to have been long since repealed by the Whig ministry.

There is another description of pensioners whom we must shortly touch—the noble and learned lords:—Here is Lord Eldon still preying upon us, at the rate of £4000 a year. Surely £15,000 a year, and upwards, for more than a quarter of a century, and a disposition naturally parsimonious, afforded the means of making a comfortable provision for old age. Lord Manners, another ex-chancellor, draws £3,892 a-year; Wynford £3,756. Then there is lord Tenterden impending, and Bayley and others menace us in the distance. Lyndhurst for a time hung out a flag of distress, but, after receiving £505 : 14 : 111/4 (Finance Accounts, p. 122) as temporary relief, he retreated into the court of Exchequer. Brougham, or his friends for him, have put in a claim for £6,000 as a retiring pension,—but avast there, good lord! Surely such doings must have an end! At this rate the whole Bar may file through the judgeships, and come upon us, after a quarter’s service, for pensions for life, each of which, at the present rate of labourers’ wages, would maintain eight hundred persons.

COMPENSATIONS AND RETIRED ALLOWANCES.

A most indefensible principle has long been acted upon by the Government,—namely, if a person has only once been so fortunate as to have had the fingering of the public money, he shall for ever after be supported out of the public purse. It is exactly the principle of the poor-laws; let a man obtain a settlement, and he thenceforward claims subsistence from the parish, and let a placeman once get into a government office, and he immediately, and for ever, sets up the pauper’s claim of being fed and clothed at the charge of the community.

Exactly upon this principle was framed the infamous Act of 1817; most of the pensions, we have seen, were granted conditionally; provided the parties were not in office, then they should receive their £1000, £1500, or £3000 per annum, as a trifling allowance, to keep the poor creatures from starving while unemployed! What a pity such old and faithful servants should perish of hunger, especially as they could not possibly have had an opportunity, from the lowness of their wages, to lay up a store for a rainy day! Still we like even-handed justice to all mankind. Many object to that mode of administering the poor laws, which allows a labourer in health and strength his parishpay, merely because he happens to be out of work. But why not extend the same rule to state paupers? Why should such able-bodied men as Croker, Planta, and Courtenay entail upon the industrious classes such heavy rates, merely because they are just now in want of a job?

The practice of granting compensations and retiring allowances is just as indefensible as granting pensions. We have now before us two official returns of the session of 1830, the bare titles of which are enough to make one sick: one is—“Returns of all Persons who receive Compensation Allowances for the loss of their Offices until otherwise provided for;” the other a “Return of the Number of Clerks and Officers who have been SUPERANNUATED, and who have been again introduced into the service.”

What practices are these? on what principle can they be justified? A merchant or banker retires from business, reduces his establishment, or is forced into the Gazette, by alterations in the currency, or commercial vicissitudes, and what compensation does he give to his clerks and servants thrown out of employment? None: nor do they expect any, having previously received salaries equivalent to the value of their services. Let us revert to our former illustration; suppose that, by the discovery of a new machine, a certain manufacture can be carried on at a cheaper rate, and, of course, the public be benefited by its substitution for manual labour, owing to the less price at which they could obtain the manufactured articles. Again; suppose that, by some new mode of managing the business of government, a number of offices may be abolished, and, of course, their salaries saved to the community. Here, then, are two cases exactly similar; in one, a number of working people are thrown out of employment; and, in the other, a number of the officers of government. The public is benefited alike in both cases: in one, by saving of salaries; and, in the other, by the less price at which it purchases commodities. But how differently these two classes of sufferers have been treated. One receives a pension or compensation, perhaps to the amount of his salary; and the other is suffered to perish for want of employment, and his privations aggravated by contributing to the maintenance of persons whose claims at all events are not greater than his own.

The same gross injustice is perpetrated in lord Brougham’s Bankruptcy Court Act. Under this act, the monstrous sinecures of patentee of bankrupts and clerk of the hanaper, held by the Rev. Thomas Thurlow, and yielding £11,000 a-year, are abolished; but then the reverend sinecurist is to be compensated during his natural life by an equivalent annuity, payable out of bankrupt estates. This is not the worst part of the arrangement. Lord Eldon had granted these valuable sinecures in reversion to his son, William Henry John Scott, or William Henry Scott, (for with admirable precision he is called by both names in the 52d clause of the statute,) on the death of Thomas Thurlow; and thus during two lives the public will have to pay £11,000 per annum, without even the pretext of service, and when these lives drop, probably some device will be hit upon for inserting a third, in the same manner as the Dead Weight and other government annuities are perpetuated. Even the commissioners of bankrupts, many of whom had only just finished eating their commons, and whose very names were offensive as synonymous with all that is sponging, imbecile, and parasitical—even these are to receive pensions for life. And last, and not least, the purse-bearer to the Lord Chancellor is to be compensated by an equivalent life annuity. Only think of this, the lord chancellor having a purse or sack-bearer to carry his fees—just as if we lived in the time of the Henries or Edwards, and such a contrivance as bank notes had never been heard of. Really we are startled at the Gothic barbarisms of the system at every turn, whether we look into the law-courts, the Exchequer, the royal household, or the Church Establishment, and we almost despair of ever seeing it brought into usefulness and symmetry.

Much as we desire to see legal reforms, we had rather they were altogether postponed than accompanied with such interminable incumbrances. A bill is now in the house for abolishing fines and recoveries, but a long train of vested interests and expectances are to be satisfied and compensated before it can be carried. Our opinion is, we had better stop at once than proceed at this rate; we are evidently in a slough, and the further we go, the deeper we are in the mire. It is obviously better policy to leave abuses in a state of sufferance than to sanction their existence by act of parliament.

It was chiefly by a profuse grant of pensions and compensations to the members of the Irish parliament—which immaculate body Mr. O’Connell is so anxious to see revived—that Mr. Pitt, through the agency of lord Castlereagh and marquis Cornwallis, was enabled to accomplish the Union. From page 488, it appears that more than £75,000 is annually paid to persons for the loss of office, in consequence of that legislative movement. Sir Jonah Barrington relates that, “Among other curious claims for Union compensations, appears one from the Lord-lieutenant’s rat-catcher at the castle, for decrease of employment; another from the necessary-woman of the privy council of England for the increased trouble in her department; with numerous others of the same quality.” Besides compensations, there was super-added a liberal grant of peerages, and £1,500,000 was raised to compensate refractory members for loss of boroughs; Lords Ely, Shannon, Clanmorris, Belvidere, and Sir Hercules Langrishe, received £143,000, the first noblemen being paid £90,000 for their six members!

It is, however, to the fatal wars of the Aristocracy we are principally indebted for the immense number of compensations, as well as every other national calamity. The vast extent of our establishments, during the period of hostilities, and their reduction since the peace, has made one very considerable portion of the community sinecure dependents on the other for support; and the extent to which the public is now burthened, in providing for non-effective services, is almost incredible.

It appears from the inquiries of Sir H. Parnell’s committee, that the non-effective of the army, navy, and ordnance costs the country £4,904,499 a-year; while the effective of the same costs £15,616,354: so that nearly one-third, or thirty-three per cent., is paid for no manner of service whatever. Again, in the civil departments of the government, the sum of £4,371,000 is paid for salaries, and other effective services; and £440,000 for compensations, and other non-effective services, the latter being actually one-tenth part of the former.

Such a monstrous system could never have grown up, except under a most negligent and lavish administration, directly interested in the corruptions it tolerated. It would be easy to cite examples of the most shameless abuses, in granting compensations and retired allowances. The attempts to fasten the sons of Earl Bathurst and Lord Melville on the public, under these denominations, must be still remembered. In the official returns, to which we have alluded, we find Mr. Penn, a clerk of the customs, was superannuated upon £750 a-year for his important services; but though superannuated for the customs, he was made agent for Ceylon, at a salary of £1050. In 1822, Alfred Johnson, agent-victualler at the Cape of Good Hope, retired on a pension of £400, and reappeared in 1826 as secretary to the commissioners of the navy at Plymouth. Thomas Alexander, store-keeper at Martinique, was superannuated in 1815, at £175 a-year, and just ten years after debouched again as store-keeper at Mauritius, at £400 salary.

Of those who are receiving compensations until otherwise provided for, the following may be taken as specimens. Henry Hallam, Esq. late commissioner of stamps, £500 a-year; Charles Jolly, examiner of taxes, £230; J. D. Smith, landing waiter, £375; Alexander Cleghorn, inspector of imports, £416; John Hughes, an unattached barrack-master, £182; W. R. Marshall, clerk of survey, Woolwich, £450; Pierce Edgecumbe, clerk, Chatham-yard, £416. Separately these pro tempore allowances are not of much consequence; but when the number of them comes to be considerable, it raises the total amount to a serious sum. After all, it is not clerks and other small fry whom we first wish to see cut down; it is the great consumers of taxes—the high Aristocracy, who, with extensive domains, enjoy valuable sinecures, and receive enormous salaries, and especially such pensioners as Eldon, Bexley, Grenville, Wynford, Sidmouth, and others of that calibre, whom we desire to see curtailed.

Commissioners of Inquiry.—These form a numerous and burthensome class, most of them receiving salaries of from £1000 to £1500. They are a sort of servants of servants; being set on foot by those who ought to be the servants of the people, to do the work which they themselves have been deputed to perform. The ostensible objects of most of the commissions now in operation are, to inquire into the laws and judicial administration, to inquire into the state of public charities, the national records, the duties, salaries, and emoluments in courts of justice in Ireland, the management in certain branches of the revenue in Great Britain, and the state of the Scotch Universities. The labours of some commissions, it cannot be denied, have been productive of the most beneficial results; others have been instituted merely as pretexts for jobs, to extort more plunder from the people. The unpaid services of parliamentary committees have contributed, more than any other form of inquiry, to the exposition and amendment of public abuses.

SALARIES AND PENSIONS EXCEEDING ONE THOUSAND POUNDS.

Great as are the salaries, pensions, and emoluments of individuals, it must be constantly borne in mind that these constitute the smallest part of the advantages, or perhaps we may term it corruptive influence, to which official men are exposed. The most important, the most seductive, and most tempting adjuncts to public offices of the higher grade are the vast patronage, the power and personal consideration they confer on the possessors. In this consists the great difference between government employments and the pursuits of trade and commerce. There are, we doubt not, individual merchants and manufacturers who do—or at least have—realized an annual profit equal to the salaries of a first lord of the Treasury, Secretary of State, the Chief Justice, or even the Lord Chancellor. But observe the difference in their respective situations; observe the dazzling and glittering elevation of the state functionaries; observe the good things they have at their disposal—the benefices, bishoprics, commissionerships of customs and excise; the clerkships, registrarships, and secretaryships, worth from £1000 to £10,000 a-year—and think of the opportunities afforded by these splendid gifts for enriching their families and friends—and think, too, of the delightful incense of adulation and obsequiousness the dispensers of such favours must inhale, and of the host of fawning sycophants, expectants, and dependents, they must every where raise up around them. Here are the real sweets of office, the delicious flavour of which can never be tasted by a mercantile man, however successful in his vocation.

What is it which makes individuals seek anxiously to be placed in the magistracy, or sacrifice a fortune for a seat in the House of Commons? It is not the direct salary or emoluments, for there are none; it is the power and the chance of obtaining power, and the personal consideration it gives. A directorship in the Bank of England, or in the East-India Company is comparatively unprofitable, except from opening a wide field for valuable appointments and individual influence. But if objects like these can rouse up to an intense degree human cupidity, how much more must it be excited by a chance of obtaining the great prizes of state, which yield not only great direct emolument, but boundless patronage, and an authority and pageantry almost regal!

In considering, therefore, the salaries of civil and judicial officers, it is always necessary to bear in mind that they form only a single element in the multifarious advantages of their situations. The patronage of most public officers would be ample remuneration; and were it limited to that alone, we have no apprehension there would be a dearth of candidates for official employments, no more than there are for the magistracy, shrievalties, custos rotulorum, lord lieutenancies, and other unpaid services.

We have been drawn into these observations from reflecting on a singular public document before us, and of the contents of which we shall give the reader some account. We have hitherto spoken of placemen and pensioners generally; we shall now direct attention to the highest class, whose emoluments exceed £1000 per annum, and of which a return has been made to parliament. Why Sir James Graham restricted his motion to tax and fee-eaters of the transcendental order, it is not easy to conjecture; perhaps it is the intention of the Whig ministry to make £1000 the maximum of official remuneration,—a proposition which the community would hail with great thankfulness as one of the most effective blows ever aimed at sinecurism, deputyships, and aristocrat idlers. Our opinion indeed is that, with a few exceptions, the emoluments of no public officer ought to exceed £1000; few persons with higher incomes will work, and they only tend to generate a taste for luxury, equipage, club-houses, gambling, and the frivolities and dissipation of fashionable life.

To come, however, to an analysis of the return to which we have alluded. It comprises 956 individuals whose incomes amount to £2,161,927, averaging £2261 each; there are forty-two persons whose incomes are not less than £5000 each, and whose united incomes amount to £339,809; and there are ELEVEN individuals whose incomes are not less than £10,000 each, and who altogether receive £139,817 per annum. Of the whole 956 names the following is a classification, showing the total income of the several classes, and the average income of each individual.

CLASSIFICATIONof 956 Placemen and Pensioners whose Salaries, Profits, Pay, Fees, and Emoluments exceeded, January 5, 1830, £1000 per Annum.

No. of Officers.

Description.

Total Emoluments.

Average Income.

350

Civil Officers

£698,805

£1997

50

Court of Chancery

137,216

2744

112

King’s Bench and other Judicial Officers

338,651

3023

100

Ambassadors and Consuls

256,780

2567

134

Military Officers

240,847

1794

36

Ordnance and Artillery

50,155

1390

19

Naval Officers

39,835

2076

147

Colonial Officers

378,996

2578

8

Officers of the House of Commons

20,642

2567

The lawyers evidently profit most by the system; their average emoluments exceed those of any other class; the civilians of all classes are better remunerated than the military; and the officers of the army rather better than those of the navy. The worst paid are employés in the Ordnance; this branch of the service requiring men of science and application, is not sought after by the great families, and hence we observe the working of our aristocratical government in this department as in every other; the most meritorious and arduous duty not being performed by the Oligarchy and their dependents, it is rewarded by the fewest number and least valuable prizes.

It is not, however, by averaging the incomes of public functionaries that we see the iniquities of the System in its most conspicuous light. In the state, as in the church, the most flagrant abuse consists in pluralities, in the power which individuals of title, influence, and connexion have to heap upon themselves, families, and friends, a multiplicity of offices. Next to this abuse is that of patronage. We know that the direct income of a lord of the Treasury, or a secretary of state, is very considerable, and that of a lord chief justice or lord chancellor is enormous; but what is that to the value of their patronage. All their immense patronage is so much direct revenue, and we know that it is applied as such in making provisions for sons, sons-in-law, and collaterals. We might cite the Bathursts, Manners, Abbotts, Scotts, and others; but we think the subject has been already sufficiently illustrated, and further proof will be found in our Place and Pension List.

Of all classes who prey on the community the lawyers require to be most narrowly watched. By the classification above it is evident they have contrived to have more sumptuous pickings than any other description of employés, official, military, or naval. They are talkers by profession, and the gift of tongues enables them to set forth their claims and withstand reduction of emolument with superior effect and clamour. The claim for legal fees has been a principal obstacle to judicial reform, and it has only been by the most extravagant concessions this obstacle has been surmounted. The lavish settlement for the sinecures in equity under the Bankruptcy Court Act we have before noticed. It has been the same in the common law courts. Under the 1 Will. IV. c. 58, commissioners were appointed to ascertain the value of legal fees received in the superior courts, and fix a rate of compensation for them according to their average amount in the ten preceding years. But it was found on inquiry that several fees and emoluments had been received in the courts, the legality of which it was difficult to determine. Here then was a case of doubt, and the question was, who were to have the benefit of it, the public or the profession. The “Guardians of the Public Purse” certainly ought to have guarded the weal of the former; but they did not. Under the same legal intelligence, we presume, as that which advised the continuance of the payment of the Russo-Dutch loan, another act was passed the 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 35, by which it was provided that all fees, whether legal or extortionate, which had arisen or been received within the preceding fifty years, should be allowed by the commissioners. Further, if any more doubts arose as to the legality or reasonableness of such fees, to whom does the reader imagine the commissioners were to refer?—To the lords of the treasury, to Mr. Gordon, or to some other impartial tribunal perhaps—No! by all that is inept and ridiculous, they were to refer to the judges of the court in which the questionable fees had been received, and by whom the fee-gatherers are appointed!

REDUCTIONS OF THE WHIG MINISTRY.

It is much more agreeable to our nature to praise than to blame, and we regret the subject of this section is not more copious. From some paragraphs in the newspapers we were led to infer the Whigs had effected great things in the public departments; but on examining more authentic sources of information we find that all they have effected is, to adopt the expressive phraseology of the Paymaster of the Forces, a mere flea-bite. It is only by a general reduction, as contended at the commencement of this chapter, of one-third or other fractional part in all public salaries, pensions, fees, and emoluments, that any material improvement can be accomplished. Next to this, a plan of direct taxation ought to be substituted for the expensive, trumpery, and inquisitorial fiscal system matured under Mr. Pitt and his successors. We have before alluded to this subject, and shall leave it to proceed to our more immediate object.

First, it appears that the salary of the Lord Chancellor is to be regulated, but it is not said it is to be reduced. We affirm, however, it ought to be reduced, and greatly too. It is monstrous that a man who, perhaps, the day before was squabbling at the circuit mess, or pleading some paltry cause for a five-guinea fee, should be at once thrust into an office worth £15,000 a year. It is an income enough for a KING, and is a great deal too much for a king’s clerk. The salaries of the other equity judges, as also of the judges of the common law courts, ought all to be reduced; they are enormously too high, and wholly unsuited to the times.

The salary of the First Lord of the Treasury is to be continued at £5000 per annum, but if the office is held in conjunction with the chancellorship of the Exchequer, the salary of the latter is to be reduced one-half, making the net income of the two £7500. Here not a farthing is given up, but a contingent saving may be effected by the Whig successors in office, for whose benefit no doubt this admirable arrangmeent is intended.

The salary of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is £5,398: it is to be reduced to £5000 net—Here, JOHN BULL, £398 is saved—take it and be thankful!

The junior lords of the Treasury are paid £1220 each: they are to be reduced to £1200—Here, JOHN, is a whole twenty pounds saved. This is economy at any rate. Upon my word this is cutting away right and left in grand style! But here follows something more substantial. The joint secretaries of the Treasury are to receive £2500 in lieu of £3500; the three principal secretaries of State £5000 in lieu of £6000; and the under-secretaries of State £1500 in lieu of £2000. My Lord President of the Council is to receive £2000, by which £840 : 17 : 4 is saved—a sum not to be sneezed at in these times, and for which many a man would be truly thankful. My Lord Privy Seal, who is my Lord Grey’s son-in-law, is to receive the net income of his predecessor in office: but lord Durham is a noble-minded man, and has declined receiving any salary. The first Lord of the Admiralty to be reduced from £5000 to £4500; the first secretary from £3000 to £2000, with an addition of £500 after five years’ service. Nothing is said about the junior lords of the Admiralty. The income of the President of the Board of Control to be reduced from £5000 to £3500; that of the paid commissioners from £1500 to £1200; and that of the secretary from £1500 to £1200. The Judge Advocate General is to be reduced to a net salary of £2000, which is enough during peace, when standing armies are unlawful. The reductions at the Ordnance Board are too meagre to merit special notice. The salary of the Postmaster General is to be continued, in consideration of his real duties, and of the laborious duties of Sir F. Freeling, who is amply remunerated at the rate of £5000 a year. The rangership of the parks, a sinecure, to be abolished. The Master of the Mint to receive £2000 in lieu of £3000. The Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland to receive nothing except fees. The chief secretary of Ireland to receive £5500—a responsible office—but too highly paid and out of proportion with the incomes of the Premier and Home Secretary. The auditorship of the Civil List has been annexed to the Treasury, by which a saving of £1500 a year has been effected. The offices of receivers general of the taxes, except in the London district, have been abolished, and their duties annexed to the offices of inspectors of taxes. Other offices abolished or reduced, are considerable; among them the Vice-Treasurer, king’s Stationer, and Post-Master-General in Ireland; the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance and Clerk of Deliveries; Treasurer of the Military College and the Treasurer of the Military Asylum; sixty inferior offices in the Post-Office department; four Commissioners of the Navy and Victualling departments, two Commissoners of the Dockyards, seventy-one clerks, and the Paymaster of Marines; two Commissioners each of the boards of Excise and Customs: in all 210 officers have been reduced. Considerable savings have been made in diplomatic and consular charges and naval superannuations. The Board of Woods and Forests and Board of Works have been consolidated. Several offices too have been consolidated, which will be noticed in the List.

Upon the whole, after going more minutely into the subject than we had done at the commencement of this section, we are bound honestly to declare that the Whigs merit the gratitude and confidence of the country for the reductions effected; they have not been idle, and some allowance must be made for the momentous question they have had to battle in the Legislature, from the moment of first entering into office. They have, however, delayed too long the repeal of the vile Pension Act of 1817.

Having treated on the several subjects of this chapter, it only remains to recapitulate: the public documents, from which the several accounts have been taken, having been already cited, need not be repeated in the subjoined summary. It will also be observed, that the expenditure of the Crown and Royal Family is omitted, that having been fully detailed in a former part of this work.

A Statement of the Annual Expenditure of the United Kingdom, in Salaries, Pensions, Sinecures, Half-pay, Superannuations, Compensations, and Allowances.

Salaries of 22,912 persons employed in the public offices

£2,788,907

Retired full-pay, half-pay, superannuations, pensions, and allowances in the army

2,939,652

Retired full-pay, half-pay, superannuations, pensions, and allowances in the Navy

1,583,797

Retired full-pay, half-pay, superannuations, pensions, and allowances in the Ordnance

374,987

Superannuated allowances in the civil departments of government

478,967

Pensions

777,556

Pensions in the nature of compensations for the loss of offices in England

12,020

Pensions in the nature of compensations for the loss of offices in Ireland, chiefly in consequence of the Union

89,245

Annual value of sinecure offices

356,555

Commissioners of Inquiry

56,299

£9,457,985

Can any one believe that, in these few items, a saving of at least three millions might not be effected? And with a saving even to this amount, how many oppressive taxes might be repealed! If we further extend our view to other departments of the government, and to the courts of law, the civil list, the colonies, the monopolies of the Bank and East-India Company, the established church, and the corn-laws, what an ample field presents itself to our consideration for the relief of this suffering and oppressed community.

But will government ever avail itself of these vast resources as the means of national amelioration? Not under the existing system. Effective retrenchment, without a previous parliamentary reform, is a chimera. To retrench is to weaken; the true policy of the Oligarchy is to spend, not to save. There are, no doubt, scores, nay, hundreds of offices and establishments useless, indeed, to the people, but invaluable to their rulers. The greater the sinecure, the greater its importance to the Aristocracy; and the very reason urged by the people for its extinction, is the strongest argument for its retention by their oppressors. Could government only reward its servants according to their deserts, what inducement would there be to enter into its service? Who would incur the odium of such employment! How could it obtain adherents? How could it so long have had zealous supporters in every part of the empire, and carried on a detestable system, subversive of the rights, and incompatible with the happiness of the community?

Ever since the death of Fox and Pitt there has been scarcely an individual with the least pretension to the endowments of a statesman in the administration. Look over the roll of the Percevals, Vansittarts, Castlereaghs, Jenkinsons, Cannings, Sidmouths, Huskissons, and Scotts, and say, if there is one that did not deserve a halter, or whose proper place was not behind a counter, in lieu of directing the resolves of a legislative assembly. Yet by these, and such as these, were the destinies of this great empire swayed for upwards of twenty years. Can we wonder at the frightful results of their empyrical statesmanship? Can we wonder that they bequeathed to their successors, convulsion, decay, and death, in every fibre of the kingdom? But incapable, vile, and unprincipled as these men were, ignorant and reckless, as experience has proved them to be, of the ultimate issues of their measures; still these scions of the Pitt school were too sagacious ever to think that retrenchment and rotten boroughs were compatible elements of the constitution. They knew better; they had been too long familiar with the secret pulses and springs of the state machinery to commit so egregious a mistake. Their dependence was on force and corruption; on the bayonets of the military, and the annual expenditure of eighty millions of money. These formed the right and left hands, the master principles of their policy. The support they could not bribe they sought to intimidate. Such was their black and iron system; it lasted their time, or the time of most of the pillaging and hypocritical crew; and for any thing beyond they did not care a rush!

Let us hope that we are on the eve of better times, that we shall not be deluded by temporary expedients and professions, put forth merely to gain time for plundering, nor quack remedies to be followed by mortal maladies; in short, let us hope the Whig ministry will proceed on scientific principles, and that we shall have a parliamentary reform first, and next such an effective retrenchment and disposition of public burthens as will afford real national relief.

“Corruption wins not more than honesty;” and the true end of government is not difficult to attain. It is simply to augment social happiness—affording equal security to the property and persons of every individual,—protecting the weak against the strong,—the poor against the rich; in short, by guarding against the extremes of indigence and crime, luxury and vice, and spreading an equilibrium of comfort and enjoyment through all ranks, by good laws, wisely conceived, promptly and impartially administered.

It is a cheap and admirable contrivance, when established on the rights, and supported by the confidence of the public. There is then no need of standing armies in time of peace. There is no need of expending sixteen millions a year in support of naval and military establishments. There is no need of a Sinking Fund as a resource for future war. Government is strong in the affections of the people. It is prepared for every exigence, and must always be invincible against domestic foes and foreign aggressors. But, if government has not this support; if it is looked upon only as an instrument of rapacity and extortion; if it is looked upon as a legalized system of pillage, fraud, and delusion; if it is looked upon only as an artful cabal of tyrants united for plunder and oppression; then must such a government, instead of being a cheap and simple institution, be a complex and expensive establishment—strong, not in the people, but in its means of corruption, delusion, and intimidation.

The English government had been long approximating to the latter predicament. It had ceased to possess the respect and confidence of the people, and governed by over-awing the weak, deluding the ignorant, and corrupting the baser part of the community. The latter—its power of corruption—its means of rewarding its adherents by the spoil of the people, is the great lever by which it has operated. This power, its connexion and influence, as exhibited in the church-establishment, the judicial administration, the public offices and departments, chartered monopolies, and corporate bodies, we have fully exposed; and it only now remains to record the names and emoluments of those who chiefly profit by its abuses and perversions.

ALPHABETIC LIST OF PLACES, PENSIONS, SINECURES, GRANTS, AND COMPENSATIONS.

EXPLANATIONS.

THE subjoined List has been principally prepared from the Parliamentary Papers Nos, 480, 479, 95, 273, 587, and 58, of the Sessions, 1830; from Nos. 23, 42, and 56 of Session, 1830-1; and from Nos. 345, 249, 167, 55, 108, and 337 of the Session of 1831. We have been also indebted to the Annual Finance Accounts, and to other official returns for pensions payable by the East-India Company, and out of the fee-funds of the public departments.

The same system of mystification and perplexity is observable in the payment of salaries and pensions as in other departments of the public accounts. The incomes of placemen, for example, arise partly from salaries paid by government and partly from fees paid by individuals. Pensions are paid out of at least half a score of different funds and by nearly as many different authorities. Some are parliamentary pensions charged on the revenue of taxes; others are court pensions, charged on the Civil List; others are ministerial pensions, charged on the 41/2 per Cent. Leeward Island Duties; and other pensions are granted under the authority of the 57 Geo. III. and 6 Geo. IV.; and then again an immense number of pensions have been granted under authority of 50 Geo. III. c. 117, which empowers the lords of the Treasury to award pensions payable out of the fees received in the public offices. These are exclusive of pensions payable by the East-India Company, and out of the colonial revenues of Ceylon, Mauritus, and other dependencies. Some individuals have been fortunate enough to obtain pensions on several funds; others again have had two or three or four pensions granted in succession, charged on the same fund. This complication of funds and payments has been the growth of centuries; it has been partially remedied during earl Grey’s ministry, but the disorder is of too long standing and too widely spread to admit of easy and effectual cure.

To the people the distinctions of the Civil List, Consolidated Fund, 41/2 per Cent. Fund, Fee Fund, Regium Donum, &c. are comparatively unimportant; it is sufficient for them to know that all salaries, pensions, fees, compensations, and allowances, by whomsoever granted, or out of whatever fund paid, ultimately proceed from the produce of industry, and that the misapplication of them for any other than effective public services, or for services that have been already sufficiently remunerated by patronage or emolument, is nothing better than peculation and robbery, whether committed by the king, his ministers, or the houses of parliament.

We thought at first of giving separate lists of the members of the Privy Council, the House of Peers, and the House of Commons, holding places, pensions, commissions, or emoluments, but on this plan the reader might have been often at a loss under what head to look for individuals; whereas, having adopted an alphabetic arrangement, every facility is afforded for direct reference to any name or title. All the sums put down, whether salaries, pensions, compensations, or other denomination, are annual payments, and with respect to salaries they are the amount agreeably to the scale of reduction of the present Ministers. Where a date is inserted, it refers to the year when the place was obtained or the pension first granted. From the salaries and pensions returned have been deducted all exchequer fees and duties, and they are the net amount actually received. It is unnecessary to observe that all the salaries are not exorbitant, nor all the pensions undeserved, but this is a point we leave to the reader’s discrimination.

The List is corrected to Feb. 1832 without the alteration of a single item in the official returns, further than by the omission of the shillings and pence, with which, though the honourable and right honourables have condescended to receive them, we did not think necessary to occupy our pages. In our illustrative notes of the pensioners we have been much aided by the searching expositions of Colonel Jones.

Recollections of the Reign of George III. p. 172.

Sup. to Ency. Britt. art. Fox, written by Mr. Allen.

Abbot, Thomas, clerk at nisi prius to the chief justice

£1000

Abbott, John, Henry, marshal and associate to the chief justice

2665

The last is the son of lord Tenterden, and the preceding a nephew. It is said the principal difficulty in the retirement of the chief justice of the king’s bench, is the condition his lordship insists upon, that the Hon. John Henry shall retain his offices, and affords another instance of the obstacles presented by exorbitant fees and emoluments to needful improvements. No new appointment ought to be made, nor the old one much longer continued without the abolition of the remanet fees. It is no fault of the suitor which makes his case a remanet, and the delay of his trial accumulates legal expenses enough upon him, without being heavily taxed every term by the marshal and associate for court fees.

Aberdeen, R. collector of customs, Bridge Town, Barbadoes

2000

Abergavenny, earl of, compensation for inspectorship of prosecutions in customs

1545

A sinecure abolished twenty years since, and surely the public has paid money enough for an office so long declared useless by statute. The earl has sixteen rectories and two vicarages in his gift; two sons and a nephew in the church.

Abercrombie, lord, hereditary pension by act of parliament

2000

Abercrombie, J. brother of the preceding; lord chief baron of the court of exchequer, Scotland

4000

Adair, Robert Sir, minister to Belgium

3600

Adair, Robert, Diana, and Elizabeth, pension Irish civil list

445

Adam, W. G. accomptant-general, court of chancery

3184

Adam, William, lord chief commissioner of jury court, Scotland

4000

Adam, major-gen. Sir F. col. 73d foot, unattached pay

434

Staff pay as lieut.-gen. in the Ionian Islands

1383

Pensions for wounds

300

Adams, W. D. commissioners of woods and forests

1200

Late comptroller of the lottery

375

Addington, Henry Unwin, minister at Madrid

3802

Aiton, W. T. director-general of his majesty’s gardens

1400

Alexander, sir W. late chief baron of the court of exchequer

3500

Albemarle, earl of, master of the horse

£3350

Can the magnitude of the civil list be matter of surprise when such enormous salaries as this are paid out of it? £1000 would be enough for any master of the horse. It might have been expected such a great county meeting patriot as my lord Albemarle and the father-in-law of the veteran Whig, Mr. Coke, would have made his first appearance in public in some other capacity than a court lord.

Alderson, sir E. H. puisne judge common pleas

5500

Alison, John, distributor of stamps for Dundee, Sept. 1828

445

Late stamp-master of linen, Scotland

151

Allen, Frances, viscountess, pension, civil list, July 1799

266

Additional, on civil list, Oct. 1800

88

Allen, viscount, pension on civil list, Sept. 1821

266

Could not this noble lord pay his subscriptions at White’s, Brookes’s, and Crockford’s—his journeys to and from Paris, and his cabriolet, without the paltry pension attached to his name?

Allen, L. B. one of the six clerks in chancery

1217

Althorp, lord, chancellor of the exchequer

5000

One cannot help agreeing in the high opinion commonly entertained of lord Althorp, but he has fallen in troublesome times, and got the most irksome post in the administration. The halcyon days for chancellors of the exchequer were during the sway of Pitt, Perceval, and Vansittart; those days of increasing establishments—granting pensions—multiplying boards and offices—and dispensing the other sweets of official life. It was then all plain sailing; the chief difficulty was to spend enough, not to raise the means—a sweeping loan of twenty or thirty millions, backed by a never-failing majority of three or four hundred members, covered every deficit. But these are times of pinching economy and abridgment, and all schemes of finance, except such as are comprised in the simple recipe of a reduction of expenditure, are repudiated. The truth is the Whigs have succeeded to a bankrupt concern, and when ministers announced in the Gazette in January that the expenditure exceeded the income, the docket was struck. We hope, however, when lord Althorp next gets hold of a good thing, he will neither be baffled out of it by jobbers in city articles, nor jobbers in ’Change-Alley. For our parts we could never see any valid objection to the proposed tax on the transfer of funded property in a country where the transfer of property of every other description, down to a trumpery receipt or promissory note, is subjected to duty. If by any contrivance mere stock-jobbing could be made a source of revenue, it would be an improvement in morals and police as well as finance. It is quite preposterous to be constantly taking out executions against the “hells” at the West End, or to legislate against thimble-ring and little-goes, while the giant Pandemonium adjoining the Auction Mart is tolerated in all its exuberance and ramifications of iniquity.

Alves, H. S. senior clerk, India board

900

Master of the mint, Scotland

390

Amedroz, K. F. clerk of first class, Admiralty, Jan. 1799

780

Translator of foreign papers, 1800

100

Amherst, earl, lord of the bedchamber

800

Hereditary pension, by act of parliament

3000

This is one of the most objectionable of the hereditary pensions. It was transmitted by the uncle of the peer, sir Jeffrey Amherst, a favourite of George III. and placed by him at the head of the army; when, as commander-in-chief, he introduced and protected such bare-faced jobbing and traffic in commissions as both disgraced and ruined our military power. The loyalty of that day was not to entertain even a suspicion of the misconduct of the individual who had the ear of royalty, however flagrant, and thus the court favourite died in the full enjoyment of the rewards of his baseness, and left the army of England to his successor as a body in name than in reality.

The services of lord Amherst in Canada were of no great importance, yet they were rewarded with the extravagant pension of £3000 a year—£1000 more than was ever voted by a squandering house of commons to the hereos of the peninsular war. The present Earl cannot object to have one-half, or at least one-third of his unearned hereditary allowance cut-off. It may be urged, indeed, that this pension was granted by act of parliament, and therefore irrevocable; but what more mutable and evanescent than acts of parliament? are they not constantly being repealed, altered, and amended? what progress could be made in the improvement of the judicial administration were not hundreds of unintelligible and inapplicable statutes abrogated. Grants and conveyances of property are constantly being set aside in courts of equity for want of a good title or adequate consideration; and why should the whole mass of pensions, allowances, and compensations be held more sacred? It is sheer nonsense to think about the existing generation and posterity being tied up for ever by the folly, ignorance, prodigality, and short-sightedness of their progenitors.

Amyot, T. registrar of colonial slaves

£800

Compensation for loss of office of registrar in Canada

400

Anglesey, marquis of, lord lieutenant of Ireland

20000

Colonel of the 7th dragoons

1800

The salary of the viceroy was reduced £7,000 in 1830; it still looks great, but according to the evidence of Mr. Stanley, the lord-lieutenant is constantly out of pocket by the appointment. The marquis is a brave and well-intentioned man, and we should be glad to hear he had got rid of the tic doloureux.

Angell, J. chief clerk, ordnance office

1162

Anson, sir George, M.P. for Lichfield; lieut.-gen. and col. of 4th dragoon guards

1500

His nephew, lord Lichfield, is master of the stag-hounds. Another nephew a lieutenant-colonel—and other relations in the army and church—one, a nephew, is prebendary of Southwell.

Anstruther, P. collector of revenue, Ceylon

1538

Antrobus, G. C. M.P. for Plympton; sec. of legation, Naples

1500

Arden, C. G. Perceval, lord, registrar of the court of Admiralty

38574

This sum was the gross amount of his lordship’s income during the war;—deductions were given in to the amount of £26,012, making his net income £12,562. In the late return of incomes exceeding £1000, the court of Admiralty was omitted, so we have no authentic means of estimating his lordship’s emoluments since the peace. His disinterested loyalty was marvellously exemplified in an animated speech he once made in the upper house, in defence of reversionary grants; asserting that an attempt to abolish them was an “indecent attack upon the king’slawfulprerogative.” His lordship has two sons in the church and another in the navy. Two nephews hold sinecures in the exchequer. Other relatives are in the army and colonies—one, R. Bourke, is governor of New South Wales.

Arthur, Colonel, lieutenant-governor, Van Dieman’s Land

£1500

Arnaud, E. collector of customs, Liverpool

2500

Arbuthnot, major-gen. sir T. staff, western district, Ireland

891

Unattached pay as major-general

310

Pension for a wound

300

Arbuthnot, Henry, commissioner of audit

1200

Arbuthnot, Catharine, pension on civil list, 1804

138

Arbuthnot, Harriet, pension on civil list, 1823

938

Wife of a veteran placeman, whose pension on the death of George IV. was the subject of amusing discussion and inquiry.

Archdall, Mervyn, M.P. for Fermanagh; a general and lieut-governor of the Isle of Wight

1397

Argyle, duke of, keeper of the great seal, Scotland

fees

A sinecure; the salary, which constituted nearly the whole emolument of this appointment, has been withdrawn by ministers.

Arnold, J. R. lieut.-col. royal engineers, 1814

330

Extra pay, commanding engineers, northern district

165

Allowance for a servant

27

Pension for wounds, 1816

300

Ashworth, Robert, pension on civil list, 1787

1072

Ashworth, Henrietta, pension on civil list

266

Ashworth, Frederick, pension on civil list

266

Ashworth, Charles, pension on civil list

177

Ashton, A. secretary and chargé d’affaires at Rio de Janeiro

1368

Athlone, earl of, hereditary pension, by act of parliament

2000

This family, the De Ginkells, came over with William III. in 1688, and was one of his instruments of oppression in Ireland. It was rewarded by a grant of 26,000 acres of land, the forfeited possessions of the earl of Limerick. This grant was reversed by parliament, and the family retired to Holland, whence they returned on the expulsion of the Stadtholder. The Earl took his seat in the Irish house of lords in 1795, and reclaimed his pension. In 1823 the ninth Earl of the name died, and he was succeeded in the title and pension by his son George, a child now in the eleventh year of his age.

Auckland, lord, master of the mint and pres. board of trade

2000

Pension on civil list, July 1814

300

Pension out of 41/2 per cent. fund, July 1820

400

Audley, lord, pension on civil list, 1821

462

Ross Donnelly, father-in-law of the pensioner, a vice-admiral.

Avonmore, viscount, late registrar, court of chancery, Ireland

4199

Aylmer, lieut.-gen. lord, colonel 56th foot, and governor of Canada

10,000

Pension on the civil list, Feb. 1783

356

By act of parliament, Ireland

553

Backhouse, John and J. Lewis, pensions out of 41/2 per cents.

500

Backhouse, John, under secretary of state

£500

Receiver-general of excise

1500

Badger, A. auditor for land revenue, Wales

750

Bagot, W. receiver of taxes for the Westminster district

1200

Bagot, sir C. ambassador to the Hague

4000

Brother of the bishop of Oxford and of lord Bagot, whose niece Emily is maid of honour to the Queen. Other Bagots are in the army, and the next, the fiscal, is a member of the family also. W. C. Bagot, receiver-general of taxes, about whose retention of office we are doubtful, after the abolition of these appointments in the country.

Bagot, G. second fiscal, Demerara

1228

Bankhead, Penelope Mary, pension on civil list, 1825

350

Widow of the physician of the late lord Castlereagh.

Barber, — chief registrar, bankrupt court (exclusive of fees)

800

Barnard, Edw. pension on civil list, 1823

500

Barraud, William, receiver of duties, customs

1160

Bathurst, earl, teller of his majesty’s exchequer

2700

Clerk of the crown in chancery

1105

Bathurst, Charlotte, pension on civil list, 1823

600

Pension on civil list, 1825

200

Pension on civil list, 1829

100

Bathurst, Mary, pension on civil list, 1826

250

Bathurst, hon. Charles, pension on civil list, 1826

350

Late commissioner of bankrupts

200

Receiver of duchy court of Lancaster

500

Bathurst, hon. W. deputy teller, exchequer

1000

Clerk in privy council office

2000

Bathurst, hon. S. treasurer to government, Malta

1560

Few persons have evinced a more exemplary appetite for the public money than lord Bathurst. His lordship’s family has mostly been in the receipt of £10,000 or £12,000 a year, from fees, pensions, and taxes. He still retains two valuable sinecures, his son William Lennox one, and an office nearly a sinecure, and his son Seymour Thomas another. On the eve of the breaking up of the Wellington ministry, his lordship made strenuous efforts to obtain firmer hold; first he tried to superannuate his second son, who had been a couple of years in the victualling office, as a retired commissioner; failing in that, he next, with the most indecent precipitancy and almost by absolute force, thrust him into the office of the late Mr. Buller, as clerk of the privy council. If one did not know that the assurance of men is mostly in the inverse proportion of their deserts they would be surprised at the pecuniary audacity of this nobleman. Lord Bathurst is notoriously a person with the least possible claims to public honour and emoluments: he is altogether without talent; a most feeble, awkward, and puzzled speaker; and in every sense of the word a most trifling personage.

Bannatyne, sir W. M‘Leod, late lord of session, Scotland

1500

Baring, F. M.P. for Portsmouth, nephew-in-law of earl Grey; lord of the treasury

1200

Bates, Edw. husband of the 41/2 per cent. duties, Jan. 1831

400

Secretary to the board of taxes, Feb. 1823

1500

Ballantyne, W. police justice, Thames-office

£800

Barrow, John, second secretary to the Admiralty

1500

Barlow, P. mathematical master, Woolwich-academy

380

Barton, J. deputy comptroller, mint office

600

Barnard, Edward, retired allowance as clerk, colonial office

200

Agent for New South Wales, Van Dieman’s Land

600

Barker, John, consul-general in Egypt

6151

Batley, W. collector of customs, Ipswich

350

Barnes, J. H. petition-clerk, customs

350

Barnard, major-gen. sir A. col. rifle brigade, 1st. batt.

1182

Equerry and clerk-marshal to the king

749

Baker, A. St. John, consul-general at Washington

1600

Baker, lady Elizabeth Mary, pension civil list, 1814

461

Sister to the duke of Leinster, and widow of an under secretary of state.

Baker, rear-adm. Tho. South America (part of the year)

1545

Baker, sir Robert, pension on civil list, 1822

500

Late Bow-street magistrate, dismissed and pensioned after queen Caroline’s funeral. If he neglected his duty, he ought not to have got a pension.

Bankes, G. M.P. Corfe Castle; cursitor baron, exchequer

455

Baillie, G. clerk in colonial secretary’s office

739

Agent for Sierra Leone and the royal African corps

639

Barnouin, J. H. chief clerk to clerk of ordnance

1062

Barry, colonel, secretary to government of Mauritius

3150

Barrington, hon. G. son-in-law of earl Grey, cursitor of county palatine of Durham, and captain in the navy; lord of the admiralty

1000

Bandinel, James, clerk in office of secretary for foreign affairs

1200

Bayley, sir John, one of the barons of the court of exchequer

5516

Bayley, sir D. consul-general at St. Petersburgh

1000

Bayly, lieut.-gen. H. col. 8th foot, pay and emoluments

1320

Pension for wounds

350

Beauclerk, John, late commissioner of bankrupts, 1797

200

Recorder of Northampton, 1828

750

Beaufort, capt. F. hydrographer to admiralty, May 1829

691

Bedingfield, John, pension on civil list, 1822

250

Bedwell, F. B. registrar in court of chancery

3877

Bell, lieut.-col. J. secretary to governor of Cape of Good Hope, Colonel of 27th foot, and governor of Tilbury Fort

2000

Bedford, G. C. clerk to auditor of exchequer

1200

Bernard, John F. clerk in the secretary’s office, customs

50

Clerk of the postage

500

Belfast, earl of, M.P. for Antrimshire; vice-chamberlain in the king’s household

600

Belhaven, lord, lord high commissioner of Scotland

2000

Belmore, earl of, governor of Jamaica

7000

Bentham, sir S. pension as late civil architect and surveyor

£1000

Pension for late employment in Russia, 1797

500

Beresford, William, groom of the privy chamber

no return.

Beresford, general, W. C. viscount, col. 16th foot, pay and emoluments

1182

Governor of Jersey

1100

Pension by act of parliament

2000

Beresford, H. B. compensation as late joint-storekeeper, customs

2157

Beresford, J. C. compensation as late joint-storekeeper, customs

2157

These offices, held by patent, are abolished—and what a compensation! it is a genuine Irish job, and worthy of the plundering family who participate in it. J. C. Beresford is the man of the riding-house flogging celebrity. Sir J. B. Beresford, brother of the viscount, is a vice-admiral, and major-general lord G. R. Beresford is colonel of 3d dragoons.

Bentinck, gen. lord W. governor-general of Bengal

25000

Clerk of the pipe in the exchequer, England

1131

Colonel of 11th hussars, pay and emoluments

2511

Look at this nobleman’s offices, emoluments, and localities, and then think of the incongruities tolerated under the system.

Bentinck, Jemina Helen, pension on civil list, Nov. 1809

300

Bessy, J. F. second under clerk, teller’s office

600

Bexley, lord, pension as late chancellor of the exchequer

3000

Here is a reward for the most consummate ignorance and laxity of principle. Lord Bexley left the Exchequer from sheer incapacity, and then skulked under the Canning ministry as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and after enriching himself in that sinecure, finally graduated on his pension under the profligate 57 Geo. III.

Bidwell, Thomas, clerk in office of secretary for foreign affairs

1250

Deputy clerk of the signet

95

Bidwell, John, clerk in the office of secretary for foreign affairs

1400

Binning, D. M. commissioner of customs

1400

Bipland, Thomas, collector of customs, Greenock

800

Birch, J. W. assistant reading clerk, house of lords

1200

Bird, C. clerk, receiver of duties and registrar, Berbice

1730

Bingley, Robert, king’s assay-master, mint-office

900

Birnie, sir. R. chief magistrate, Bow-street-office, salary and extra allowance for attendance at home-office

1200

Bicknell, H. E. clerk to registrar in chancery

1622

Bingham, C. col-royal artillery, and fire-master royal laboratory

731

Pension for wounds

300

Bingham, major-gen. sir G. R. staff, southern district, Ireland

891

Unattached pay as lieut.-colonel

310

Blake, A. R. chief remembrancer of the exchequer, Ireland

2817

Blackwood, vice-admiral sir H. commander-in-chief at the Nore

2555

Groom of the king’s bedchamber

400

Pension on civil list, 1809

300

Commanded a frigate at Trafalgar; but other captains in that action have neither obtained a place at court nor a pension.

Blackwood, lady Harriet, pension out of 41/2 per cent. fund

£206

Blakeney, major-gen. sir E. staff, south-western district, Ireland

691

Unattached pay as lieut.-colonel

310

Blackburn, F. attorney-general of Ireland

3000

Black, Jean and Mary, pension each, civil list Aug. 1823

50

Blair, Mrs. Isabella Cornelia, pension on civil list, Oct. 1811

276

Isabella and Cornelia, pension on civil list, 1810, each

138

William, pension on civil list, 1812

184

Blaquiere, John, lord de, pension on civil list, 1794

1107

Additional pension on civil list, 1802

830

Pension by act of parliament, Ireland

500

Well known in the Irish parliament, and who with a handsome person and good address succeeded well at the vice-regal court.

Blackwell, major-gen. governor of Tobago

3027

Bloomfield, lord, envoy and min. plenipo. in Sweden

4900

Colonel of artillery

1003

Blunt, Joseph, solicitor to the mint

800

Borough, sir R. during pleasure, pension on civil list, 1794

184

Booth, W. deputy commissary-general, half-pay

267

Clerk of the survey, ordnance-department

560

Bowen, Jas. late commissioner of navy

956

Boothby, sir W. receiver-general of customs

1500

Agent for New Brunswick

150

Paymaster of band of gentlemen pensioners

230

A relation by marriage of the “stern path of duty man.”

Bolton, lieut.-general sir R. col. 7th dragoon guards

1334

Equerry to the king

750

Bosanquet, sir J. B. a judge of the common pleas

5500

Bosanquet, G. secretary and chargé d’affaires at Madrid

2260

Bolland, sir W. one of the barons of the court of exchequer

5516

Bowles, William, comptroller of coast-guard, July 1822

1000

Captain in the navy, half-pay

228

Bowles, Charles and Elizabeth his wife, on Irish civil list, 1827

192

Mr. C. Bowles married the sister of Mrs. Goulburn, wife of the late chancellor of the exchequer; was afterwards dubbed private secretary to his brother-in-law; and on the unaccountable promotion of this last in England, finally settled for life on poor Ireland at the pittance mentioned.

Bowden, J. chief clerk to the receiver-general at post-office

600

Inspector of stamps for excise, Aug. 1826

150

Bouverie, major-gen. sir H. F. commanding northern district

874

Unattached pay as major in the coldstream guards

700

Bouverie, H. I. commissioner of customs

1400

Bouverie, hon. Arabella, pension on civil list, 1821

300

It is certainly not the politics of the present lord Radnor, which obtained for the Bouveries their civil and more numerous ecclesiastical appointments.

Boulton, K. J. attorney-general, Upper Canada

1534

Bousfield, deputy registrar, Bankrupt-court

600

Bourchier, Chas. assistant solicitor to the treasury

£1900

Bowden, J. W. commissioner of stamps

1012

Boyd, Chas, surveyor-general, customs

800

Boyd, hon. R. deputy inspector of hospitals and commissioner of revenue and commerce

3000

Boyle, David, lord justice clerk, Scotland

4000

Boyle, hon. C. commissioner of navy, 1823

1000

Bradshaw, J. H. clerk and registrar, post-office

625

Brande, W. T. superintendent of the irons, mint-office

700

Brandon, William, baron, pension on civil list, Nov. 1820

276

Briggs, J. T. deputy secretary to victualling-board

800

Brickdale, comptroller of customs, Bristol

666

Brisbane, lieut. gen. sir Tho. colonel 34th foot

1095

Brackenbury, J. M. consul at Cadiz

1216

Brent, T. secretary, board of green cloth

1185

Secretary to the lord steward

124

Groom and clerk of the robes

156

Bradford, lieut.-general sir T. col. 30th foot

1311

Pension for wounds

350

Brougham and Vaux, lord, lord high chancellor of England

14500

The sum we have put down is the average annual emoluments of the chancellor-ship during the three preceding years, and a Parliamentary Committee, of which Mr. Baring was chairman, has proposed to fix the future salary of the lord chancellor at £14,000 a-year, in lieu of all fees and perquisites. We have before expressed an opinion that this is too much. To be sure the Lord Chancellor is a sort of legal chattel moveable with the administration to which he is appendant, whereas the judges seated on the bench of common law have mostly a tenancy for life. But with the precedent of lord Lyndhurst there appears no absolute reason future exchancellors should, after the manner of the late lord Erskine, while away time in the gossip of coteries and drawing rooms. It is alleged the lord chancellor has an hereditary peerage to support, which he is compelled to accept, whether he will or not. To this we answer—grant peerages for life! How much better it would have been for the Giffords, Kenyons, Loughboroughs, Ellenboroughs, Thurlows, Fitzgibbons and Avonmores, had their dignities terminated with the individuals who acquired them: we should have heard less of poor peers, and of the necessity of hereditary pensions and hereditary sinecures to support them. Every new chancellor has an allowance for outfit to the amount of £2000, and the salary itself is only one of the advantages of the appointment: its great attractions consist in the official precedency it confers, and the vast extent of legal and ecclesiastical patronage it places at the disposal of the possessor. Lord Brougham will not be alone in his penury, if such be his lot; there are other law lords whose pecuniary acquisitions must be much less commensurate to the support of a coronet.

In England the public mind is so diseased by the pursuit of wealth, we are accustomed to hear so much of the necessity of great incomes to maintain the dignity of the Crown, the dignity of the Peerage, and the dignity of the Prelacy; we really seem to think—so much has the judgment been perverted by the worship of Mammon—that there is no honour, no dignity, no happiness, except in the grasping of large heaps of money. It is, however, not so—a man with £500 a-year—if he so will it—may just as well support his dignity as one with half a million. Our notions differ greatly from other ages and nations. The Roman worthies could retire to their farms without disparagement, after the exercise of sovereign power. How much our wealth-seeking aristocracy sinks in comparison with the American democracy—the glorious names of Jefferson, Adams, and Maddison, who needed neither hereditary honours nor pensions to dignify retirement, and transmit their fame to posterity. But we shall leave the subject: all we have said has no reference to the Lord Chancellor; no one can have read the testimony he gave before the Committee to which we have alluded, without being convinced that he has higher objects in view than pecuniary gain—that he is only actuated by a regard to what is suitable to the office, not to the individual who fills it.

Many persons were surprised that a person possessing such transcendent abilities and unwearied industry as lord Brougham should merge them in the stagnant pool of the house of peers. But ought not the harassing and stormy course of his lordship’s previous career to be borne in mind, and may he not, in his latter days, have chosen the woolsack from the same motives which prince Talleyrand chose a belle and bonhomie spouse,—namely, as convenient for repose? As cabinet minister, head of the law department, keeper of the king’s conscience, and what not, his lordship’s sphere and power of usefulness are vastly extended and augmented. All the manifold abuses, which he has so long forcibly and eloquently set forth in the administration of justice, in charitable foundations, in corporate and collegiate endowments, and in West Indian slavery, he may now hunt down with a power and means of accomplishment increased a hundred fold. To the pursuit of these objects lord Brougham is solemnly pledged; and we confess we have seen nothing in his lordship’s official career to lessen public confidence in the steadfastness of his engagements. The establishment of the Court of Bankruptcy was a vigorous and disinterested effort at judicial improvement. His lordship’s speech, however, on the first introduction of the Reform Bill, was, to say the least of it, a queer one; it had many readings, for which we could only account from some misgivings of the Speaker respecting the future. As to what his lordship has thrown out on the tenure of ecclesiastical property, we do not attach much importance to it: when the noble Baron alleged that the church was a sleeping partner with the state, we considered it a joke, intended for the blind side of the House. The spirit of the People is roused; events are crowding onward at a giant pace, which will practically determine the rights of the Clergy with much less preliminary discussion than has been consumed about the immunities of hares and partridges, the African slave-trade, and Catholic emancipation.

Brougham, W. brother of the preceding; a master in Chancery, circa

£4250

Brown, W. R. cocket-writer in the customs

1088

Brown, N. commissioner, victualling-office

800

Brown, Thomas, master-attendant, Woolwich

650

Brown, R. H. warden of Fleet Prison, see p. 486

2000

Browne, Charles, under-secretary, excise

800

Browne, P. secretary and charge d’affaires at Copenhagen

1151

Browne, R. solicitor to the stamp-board, Ireland

£2000

Browne, R. late teller of exchequer, Aug. 1824

400

Late commissioner of musters, 1798

151

Browne, sir H. pension on civil list, 1829

200

Brown, R. examiner of army accounts

1200

Half-pay as deputy-commissary general, 1807

273

Agent for paying retired or officiating chaplains

250

Allowance as private secretary to a secretary of war

150

Brooking, A. H. collector of customs, Newfoundland

1400

Brownrigg, gen. sir R. colonel 9th foot, pay and emoluments

1323

Governor of Landguard fort

339

Pension from Ceylon

1000

Brooksbank, Stamp, clerk in the treasury and auditor

1650

Brooksbank, T. C. chief clerk in treasury

1200

Agent and paymaster of Chelsea out-pensioners

750

Agent for the Bahamas

150

As late commissioner of lottery

150

Brooksbank, Ann, pension on civil list, 1783

155

Brooksbank, Elizabeth, Isabella, and Hermoine, civil list, 1827

300

Brooke, R. clerk in customs, Liverpool

500

Bromley, lady Louisa, (late Dawson,) pension out of 41/2 per cent. duties, Nov. 1820

250

Bruce, sir S. pension on civil list, 1817

177

Bryce, major-gen. sir A. colonel commandant royal engineers, and deputy inspector-general of fortifications

1875

Pension for good services

182

Brydges, sir John W. H. uncle-in-law of marquis of Waterford, and M.P. for Coleraine; a major in the army, capt. of Sandgate-castle, and colonel in the Portuguese service

no return.

The city of London has had a brush with the Beresfords, as well as Mr. O’Connell, and, last election, attempted to rescue from their monopolizing grasp the borough of Coleraine. The borough is indebted for its charter to the corporation of London; they are the proprietors of the soil, and endowed it with upwards of 400 acres of land, for the general benefit of the inhabitants. By some means the Beresfords have contrived to render the common council a select body, consisting of the members of their own family and dependents, through whose agency, for upwards of a century, they have returned the parliamentary representative. For the last fifteen years sir John Brydges has been their nominee; and, at the general election, the gallant knight, for the first time, went to pay his respects to his constituents, when, in answer to the inquiries of the townspeople, he told them “that, though he had never before been amongst them, and was an Englishman, he had an Irish heart.” Some of the inhabitants claimed the right to which they are entitled by the charter, to the exercise of the elective franchise, and objected to the Major being returned by about twenty non-resident burgesses. These claims and objections were over-ruled by the worshipful mayor; and, after the usual farce of a nomination by a clergyman, and a seconding by another corporate official, the captain of Sandgate-castle, and colonel in the service of Don Miguel, was declared duly elected to the imperial parliament. The corporation of London have protested against these proceedings of the Beresford puppets, and expressed their intention, by a deputation of their body, to re-establish, in a court of law, the general rights of the burgess agreeably to their charter. It is probable, however, their laudable endeavours will be rendered unnecessary by the general legislative measure, which will at once cut off such rotten concerns as Coleraine, Truro, Berealston, and scores more.

Buchanan, lady Janet, pension on civil list, Oct. 1827

£150

Buchanan, Susanna, pension on civil list, Nov. 1827

200

Burton, W. W. puisne-judge, Cape of Good Hope

1500

Bull, John, clerk of journals and papers, house of commons

1656

Buller, James, retired allowance as late commis. of customs

1100

This gentleman, we are told, a mild, amiable person, possessed the borough or boroughs of East and West Looe: therefore, disposing of his seats to the government, was made a commissioner of the customs; was unfortunately attacked with deafness; marries; is tired of London; retires to the country; makes room for some other protegé of government; and saddles the country with a pension of £1100.

Bulley, A. clerk of issues, auditor’s office, Oct. 1822

750

Receiver of pensions and officers’ duties

108

Allowance on moneys paid into the Exchequer

144

Burgh, Elizabeth, pension on civil list

276

Burgh, Catharine, pension on civil list

230

Burke, J. clerk of crown quit-rents, Dublin

461

Burke, executors of Mrs., pension on the 41/2 per cent. fund

2500

We have touched on this notorious abuse at p. 203, and shall here pass it over.

Bushe, C. K. chief justice of the king’s bench, Ireland

5076

Bursey, J. inspector in the audit-office

600

Burrows, Peter, commis. for relief of insolvent debtors, Ireland

2092

Burraud, Rev. G. compensation allowance for loss of the office of searcher in the customs

1100

Some boroughmongering job this, no doubt; otherwise, no clergyman could have held the office of searcher in the customs.

Burrard, Hannah, pension on civil list, 1815

400

Butler, G. chief clerk, ordnance department

900

Butcher, J. store-keeper in the ordnance, Dublin

750

Burghersh, major-gen. Lord, minister plenipo. at Florence

3900

His lordship was receiving a large salary as envoy at Florence, while spending the last winter in London, busily engaged in bringing out his new opera.

Burgoyne, J. lieut.-col. royal engineers, 1814

330

Extra pay, commanding royal engineers, Portsmouth

165

Allowance for servant

27

Pension for good services, 1817

182

Burnell, Dr. W. commissioner, victualling-office

1000

Burton, Charles, third justice of the king’s bench, Ireland

3692

Burton, T. allowance as late secretary to board of excise

1500

Burton, gen. N. C. col. 60th foot (1st batt.)

£1331

Butterwich, M. registrar of deeds, Yorkshire

650

Byham, R. secretary to the board of ordnance

1400

Byng, F. clerk in foreign secretary’s office

903

Byng, lieut.-gen. right hon. sir J. M.P. for Poole, col. 29th foot

793

Byng, hon. E. commissioner, colonial audit-office

1000

Byron, lord, captain, R.N.; lord of the bedchamber

500

Calvert, J. M.P. for Huntington; late sec. to the lord chamberlain

750

Camden, marquess, one of the four tellers of the exchequer

2700

The great sinecures being about to be attacked, in 1817, the marquis, who had held the tellership thirty-six years, and received, on account of it, probably upwards of a million of money, resigned the fees and emoluments of his office, amounting to £27,000, retaining only the regulated salary of £2500. Previously to this his lordship contributed sums to the public service. In 1819, the house of commons tendered a tardy vote of thanks for this munificent offering. An expectation was entertained, which is not yet realized, that the patriotic example would have been followed by the Grenvilles, the Ardens, the Bathursts, and other great sinecurists. Had the registrar of the admiralty court surrendered the emoluments of his office for the last half century, he would have done more, we imagine, to quench the fires in the country, of which he is lord-lieutenant, than by getting up magisterial resolutions to put down the incendiaries.

Cameron, lady, pension on civil list, Dec. 1819

500

Cameron, maj.-gen. sir J. commanding western district

691

Unattached pay as major

310

Lieutenant-governor of Plymouth

493

Pension for injuries received in the service

300

Cane, Richard, sub-agent, Ireland, for Chelsea hospital

1650

Agent to yeomanry corps, for Chelsea hospital

461

Capper, J. H. clerk for criminal business in the home depart.

670

Superintendent of convict establishment

400

Carter, M. consul at Coquimbo

1254

Cartwright, John, consul-general at Constantinople

1600

Carr, hon. Jane, (late Perceval) pension by act of parliament.

2000

Our readers may have read or heard of a mild, specious, cold-hearted, self-complacent minister—exactly of the Addington impress—named Spencer Perceval: this pension was granted to his widow, who, within the annum luctus, forgot her little lawyer, and married major Carr, of the guards. Some of the minister’s children have been well provided for in the public offices; and in political demeanour, present no contrast to their progenitor.

Carr, Morton, solicitor to excise, Scotland

1500

Campbell, major-gen. sir J. staff at Grenada, staff pay

828

Governor of Grenada, pay and emoluments

3775

Unattached pay as major-general

310

Campbell, lieut.-gen. sir H. commissioner of taxes

1000

Military pay in 1829

1294

Campbell, sir A. late lord of session, Scotland

£1950

Campbell, Patrick, sec. and chargé d’affaires in Colombia

3125

Campbell, D. retired allowance as registrar of forfeitures, Ireland

276

Campbell, D. retired allowance as commissioner of military accounts, Ireland

367

Pension on Irish civil list

266

Accountant to board of general officers

130

A servant of all work, this, at the Castle, and the work there has been mostly black-jobs.

Campbell, gen. A. col. 3d foot, pay and emoluments

1351

Campbell, D. inspecting commander of customs, Aberdeen

344

Captain in the navy

191

Campbell, major-gen. sir C. commanding south-west district

691

Unattached pay as major in the coldstream guards

500

Governor of Portsmouth

168

Campbell, John, comptroller of customs, Greenock

600

Campbell, gen. D. col. 91st foot, pay and emoluments

1241

Campbell, Alexander, commissioner of excise

1400

Campbell, Eliza, pension on civil list

389

Campbell, Mary, pension on civil list. Sept. 1810

200

Campbell, Mrs. A. pension out of 41/2 per cent. duities, 1820

219

Campbell, sir Ilay, late president court of session

3225

Campbell, Thomas, pension on Scotch civil list, Oct. 1806

184

Really the Campbells are a host! We find them in all offices and departments, and in all parts of the world. Those enumerated are only part of the clan. The last we always took to be the author of the celebrated Pleasures of Hope. Mr. Campbell’s pension, we believe, was given to him by his friends, the WHIGS, but we never could learn by what “high and efficient public services” he became entitled to it. If it were bestowed when Mr. C. was a poor, but elegant scholar, and man of genius, well and good; we do not grudge the boon, had it been five times the amount.

Canning, H. consul-general at Hamburgh

1836

Canning, sir Stratford, ambassador at Constantinople

4460

Canning, trustees for the family of the late Mr., pension, by act of parliament

3000

The life of the late Mr. Canning was undistinguished by public virtue, and at his death he merited no public reward. He was an open corruptionist and trimmer for place; his political principles were superficial and aristocratic; and by his abilities—specious sophistry, and tinsel eloquence—he kept up a party which inflicted on the country incalculable evils. The friends who deserted him knew him; they hated and feared him. If not too late, we would suggest that the monument in honour of this adventurer had better be erected somewhere else than Palace-yard; that is no place for George Canning, and the times are coming when it will certainly not be allowed to stand there.

Carter, Thomas, provost-marshal, Barbadoes

1500

Cathcart, earl of, late ambassador at Petersburgh

1784

Colonel of 2d life guards

1816

Vice-admiral of Scotland

1015

Governor of Hull

Camperdown, visc. hereditary pension for lord Duncan’s victory

£3000

Cathcart, Elizabeth, baroness, pension on civil list, 1798

389

Caithness, Jean, countess of, pension on civil list, 1800

200

Additional pension on civil list, July 1802

100

Additional pension on civil list, Sept. 1825

100

Cavan, gen. the earl of, col. 45th foot, pay

613

Governor of Calshot-castle

43

Pension on civil list, June 1796

260

Chapman, J. commissioner of audit

1200

Chapman, col. S. R. secretary and registrar, Gibraltar

1200

Chapman, J. allowance as late clerk in colonial-office

1100

Late clerk of council, Trinidad

1427

Chad, G. W. foreign minister in Prussia

5500

Charsley, W. assistant-clerk in tally-office

500

Compensation for loss of office in tally cutting

150

Junior clerk in tally-office

133

For labour in locking up the king’s treasure, 1826

40

Christie, col. sir Arch. unattached pay as colonel of 1st royal

501

Commandant of Chatham depot

726

Pension for wounds

600

Chamberlain, sir H. consul at Rio (to 5th June, 1830)

1041

Champagne, gen. Josiah, col. 17th foot

1315

Chambers, R. J. police justice, Union Hall

800

Late commissioner of bankrupts, 1803

200

Chambers, Geo. inspector and receiver of taxes, 1825

771

The number of inspectors of taxes for England and Wales is seventeen, and their salaries £400 each, exclusive of allowances for travelling and other expenses. By 1 and 2 William IV. c. 18, the receivers of taxes are abolished, with the exception of one for the London district, and their duties transferred to the inspectors, who receive an additional salary of £100, and a further allowance of £100 for a clerk. We have stated their salaries and emoluments from the Parliamentary Return (No. 167, Sess. 1831), including the additional remuneration for the receipt of the taxes.

Chatham, earl of, governor of Gibraltar

4000

Receives also military allowances, and is col. of 4th foot.

In trust for seven children of lady Lucy R. Taylor, out of 41/2 per cent. Leeward Island duties, for each

139

Chowne, lieut.-gen. C. colonel 76th foot

1321

Christian, J. assistant inspector-gen. of customs, Dublin

400

Commander in the navy

182

Church, John, late clerk in navy pay office, March 1822

292

Clerk in stationery-office, Jan. 1808

600

Christmas, C. G. deputy auditor for land revenue

2193

Clarendon, earl of, chief justice in Eyre, North of Trent

2250

Prothonotary county palatine of Durham

450

A nephew, G. W. F. Villiers, commissioner of customs; and a cousin, T. H. Villiers, secretary to the India Board.

Clare, dowager lady, and lady Fitzgibbon, pension on c. l. 1830

780

Mother and daughter; the former, widow of an Irish lord chancellor, who was long in office, realized money, purchased estates, and ought to have been in good circumstances. It was he who was said to have alarmed George III’s conscience as to the coronation oath; and, if so, was really the cause of retarding the Catholic claims thirty years, and for which we are now suffering. The present lord is governor of Bombay, with a salary of 15,000 a-year, and his brother, Fitzgibbon, is usher of the Court of Chancery, Ireland.

Clarke, J. inspector and receiver of taxes, 1805

£718

Clarke, gen. sir Alured, col. 7th foot, pay and emoluments

1153

Clarke, rev. Dr. receiver of clergy returns, 1804

500

Late auditor of the royal naval asylum

300

Clark, E. H. clerk of the warrants, customs

2682

Clerk, John, late lord of session, Scotland

1500

Clifden, viscount, clerk of the privy council, Ireland

1450

Clancarty, earl of, late ambassador to the Netherlands

2000

A brother, Poer Trench, archbishop of Tuam: another brother, Charles Trench, archdeacon of Ardagh; William Gregory, brother-in-law, late under secretary of Ireland, is a pensioner on the civil list.

Clanricarde, marquis, captain of yeomen of guard

1341

Clancey, James, taxing officer in common law business, Ireland

1107

Clarina, Penelope, baroness, pension on civil list, 1813

333

Clinton, lieut.-gen. sir W. H. col. 55th foot

1109

Clinton and Say, lord, col. and aid-de-camp to the king; lord of the bedchamber

500

C. R. Trefusis, a brother, commissioner in the excise; another brother capt. R. N.; E. Moore, a son-in-law, is in the church. Lady Clinton is lady of the bedchamber.

Clifton, M. W. secretary to the victualling-board

1000

Clogstone, S. M. collector of customs, Trinidad

1500

Cochrane, Maria, lady, pension on civil list, Oct. 1800

300

Cochrane, Sir T. James, governor of Newfoundland

3000

Cockburn, Henry, solicitor-general, Scotland

2000

Cockburn, A. late minister to Wurtemberg

1700

Cockburn, sir Geo. M.P. admiral and major-gen. of marines

1630

Cockburn, Fanny, Mary, and Harriet, civil list, 1791, each

100

Cockburn, Marianne, pension on civil list, 1800

115

Cockburn, Augusta Harriet, pension on civil list, 1827

200

Cockburn, dame Mary, pension on civil list, 1825

680

Cockburn, dame Augusta, pension on civil list

358

Of this singular cluster, probably dame Augusta is the mother of sir James, sir George, the dean of York, and the Columbian or Mexican ambassador. She was of a noble family, and fell in love with her husband, who was either a merchant, or held an office in the India-house. To reconcile her marriage with this person to her family he was made a baronet.

Cockane, Barbara, pension on civil list, June 1798

230

Codd, major-general superintendent, Honduras

1200

Coke, Elizabeth Ann, pension on civil list, 1818

100

This certainly cannot be the lady of the member for Norfolk, and lessee of Dungeness lighthouse!

Colchester, lord, capt. R. N. hereditary pension, by act of parl.

£3000

The father of this lord was speaker of the house of commons for many years with a sufficiently large salary, and held till death the valuable sinecure of keeper of the privy seal, Ireland. He was a shuffling, time-serving lawyer, and the vote of censure on his conduct, moved by lord W. Russell, stands recorded on the journals of the house. Were not such a person adequately rewarded in his lifetime, and ought the country to be burthened with a pension to his heir?

Coleridge, John Taylor, late commissioner of bankrupts

200

By the Bankruptcy Court Act the Lords of the Treasury are authorised to grant annuities for life, to the amount of £200, to the late commissioners of bankrupt, provided they hold no other public employment.

Colman, George, examiner of plays

400

Lieutenant of the yeomen of the guard

350

Besides the military duties of this court functionary, his business is to examine theatrical pieces before they are licensed for representation, by the Lord Chamberlain; and in the discharge of this office he has latterly acquired considerable notoriety, by his captious and puritanical expurgation of what he considered objectionable passages. The performance of The Bride of Ludgate, we are told in the Tatler, was delayed by the extraordinary official sensitiveness of Mr. Deputy Colman, who refused to license the piece until Charles the Second (one of the dramatis personæ), who was made by the author to disguise himself as a parson, should masquerade it under another less objectionable character! A king appearing as a priest seemed to the deputy as savouring of irreverence towards the cloth! The truth seems to be, that the merry Mr. Colman, of auld lang syne, has turned Methodist. It is time, however, the office was abolished; it is too much that talent and genius should be subject to the hypocondriacal whims of repentant prodigals.

Colborne, major-gen. sir J. lieut.-governor, Upper Canada

3000

Cowper, earl, hereditary pension out of excise revenue

1600

Here we have a most singular instance of the application of the revenue. The present noble lord holds it as an inheritance, acquired by the marriage of his grandfather with the heiress of the son of general Overkerken, created lord Grantham. This general was greatly distinguished in the wars of the duke of Marlborough; but whether the pension was granted by king William for the services of the father, or for a loan of money from the son, is not known, no document being extant to establish it; but this pension has been made part of the family settlements of the noble earl, who succeeded to it at his brother’s death, as he did to his estates: he may dispose of it at his pleasure. The present possessor, in his political life, has been distinguished by high liberalism, and the most perfect independence. Though frequently invited to Windsor, he was never influenced by it, or ever swerved from his public duty. In the examination of votes, his will be found to have been correctly given. As an inheritance, his lordship cannot be blamed for drawing this sum regularly from the public purse; but it becomes the duty of ministers to make arrangements with the noble earl for the extinction of this pension. He is entitled to some compensation; but yet his vested right in it is not such that he can look for so many years’ purchase as if it were a landed property. No improvement has been made—no outlay incurred; and what was apparently so lavishingly given, and has been so long enjoyed, may be resumed, with some regard to the present times and the general interests of the country.—Colonel Jones, Dec. 15, 1830.

Cowley, lord, brother of the duke of Wellington, late ambassador at Vienna

£2500

Cole, B. and W. Herbert Mullens, brokers, national debt office

750

Combermere, gen. viscount, colonel 1st life guards

1800

Governor of Sheerness

200

Pension, by act of parliament

2000

Congreve, dame Isabella, pension on civil list, 1829

311

Widow of the gentleman of share-notoriety, who was himself a pensioner, and at one time much about the person of George IV.

Conway, lord H. S. and lord R. S. Conway, late prothonotaries of the court of king’s bench, Ireland

7137

Conyngham, marquis, late lord steward of the household, and constable of Windsor castle; lieut.-gen. unattached

636

Conyngham, sir F. N. lieut.-governor of Lower Canada

3100

Conyngham, lord A. D. secretary of legation, Berlin

1050

Conyngham, G. Lennox, seventh senior clerk in foreign office

695

The Conynghams were in high favour at the court of George IV. Dr. Sumner, one of the “Lady’s Bishops,” was tutor in the Conyngham family, and flatterer of the late king, by whose special favour he was raised to the throne of Winchester.

Cooksey, J. H. inspector and receiver of taxes

814

Corbett, C. H. assistant secretary, excise

600

Cooper, George, assistant surveyor, customs

1093

Cooper, sir W. H. and sir F. G. auditor for land revenue in England, salary and emoluments, in year 1829

4071

This is a patent office, held for the lives and life of the survivor; the former is a clergyman, and sir F. G. Cooper was lately an officer in the guards.

Cooper, J. S. comptroller-general of stamps, Ireland

900

Cooke, lieut.-general sir G. col. 77th foot

1249

Pension for wounds

350

Cooke, Frances, pension on civil list, 1821

200

Cooke, Eliza, pension on civil list, 1793

135

The widow of the celebrated navigator of the name still survives, and probably receives this pension; if so, it is one of the few state annuities of which the public will not complain.

Cornwall, Jos. collector of excise, Edinburgh

600

Cornwall, J. warehouse-keeper, excise, Dublin

600

Cole, lieut.-gen. sir G. L. governor of Cape of Good Hope

7000

Cope, Walter, consul at Guayaquil

1033

Cotton, William, chief clerk in the treasury

1400

Colles, Joseph, clerk to registrar in chancery

1447

Collingwood, hon. S. pension on consolidated fund

500

Colville, E. D. registrar in chancery

2759

Colby, lieut.-col. F. lieut.-col. royal engineers

384

Extra pay for survey of Great Britain

495

Superintendent of the trigonometrical survey, Ireland

500

Conant, J. E. police justice, Great Marlborough-street

800

Corry, James, late sec. to linen board, Ireland

616

Late clerk of the journals, Irish house of lords

609

Colville, lieut.-gen. sir C. governor of Mauritius

£8000

Courtenay, William, patentee of subpœna office in chancery

no return

Clerk in parliament

4000

Courtenay, T. P. agent for Cape of Good Hope

600

Pension under 57 Geo. III. 1825

1000

A copious introduction to the Place and Pension List renders unnecessary many observations at the conclusion. We might have multiplied notes, but made a point of passing over the Grenvilles, Sidmouths, and other individuals already sufficiently known, whose merits have been canvassed and long since settled in public estimation. Many names illustrate themselves, others by juxta position; and really we cannot help thinking that our alphabetical arrangement has been the means of our performing a task very usual at certain seasons of the year—that of assembling families together—from the royal household, the colonies, courts of law, army, navy, and public offices, exhibiting them face to face, their incomes, emoluments, relationships, and prospects.

Our List has one striking advantage over every other previously given to the public. All the individuals enrolled upon it are living, or were living within a few months of the period of publication. From it the people will be able to learn who receive exorbitant emoluments, and the amount of them in every branch of the public service—civil, judicial, naval, and military. Since the last edition, issued within the preceding twelvemonths, many names have disappeared through death, some few have voluntarily resigned their annuities; those have of course been omitted, except in the latter case, two or three have been retained, purposely to remark on such a rare example of disinterestedness.

With respect to the pensions generally, though their claims appear at present recognized by the settlement of the Civil List, we apprehend they will ultimately have to undergo the ordeal of another examination. There are some deserving objects, but they are only a grain of sand on the sea-shore—the mass are too vile for description, and their plunderings must speedily have an end. We are told, indeed, “to pause before we plunge noble families into distress.” But if noble families can only maintain their nobility by living on the public, perish their nobility. Surely tithes and corn-laws are sufficient for the maintenance of the Order, or, if they be still indigent, let them appear in their proper character, and not assume to rank above other paupers. What claim have the Mulgraves, Manchesters, Mansfields, Arbuthnots, Grevilles, Courtenays, Crokers, Herries, and Bathursts; or the lady Anns, Emilys, Bettys, and Jennies, of any titled beggar, to the money wrung from the labours and necessities of the industrious and now deeply depressed people. If they think carriages and fine clothes, titles and fine houses, essential to their existence, let them pay for them out of their own purses; if they cannot pay for them, what right have they to them? or what right have they to make the people pay for them? The whole affair is a gross insult to common sense; and those silken creatures, and their dandy brothers, etherial and exquisite as they may be, must do like others, earn their bread by honest industry, or have no bread to eat. Noble families have long been under a delusion, and seem to think they have a hereditary right to be fed and clothed at the public expense, whatever be their improvidence, folly, or worthlessness; but they must be undeceived:—no more lordly plunderings by the sons and daughters of corruption; if they cannot support themselves by useful services, they must descend from their fictitious rank and learn the duties of their proper station in society. They will gain a great deal by the change, lose nothing in point of real dignity, or perhaps comfort; for there can be no dignity not founded in justice, nor comfort in enjoying the rewards which no desert has required.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME.

WE have reserved the subject of this chapter to the last, and have been much at a loss what title to give the observations we are about to submit. At this moment the Reform Bill, for the third time, is in its last stage in the House of Commons, and we are just on the eve, as we fervently trust, of the birth of a new constitution. Under such circumstances it would be mere folly to do, as we have often done before, drag our readers through the iniquities of the Borough System. That system is doomed, and we will not believe that any event can intervene to avert its fate. We will not believe there is any peer of parliament, however great his prepossessions against reform may be, however great his apprehensions of its ultimate issues; we will not believe there is any man who will not deem it a less evil to pass the Bill than risk the fearful consequences which would inevitably result from opposing the two constituted authorities of the state, supported by the almost unanimous power, wealth, and intelligence of the community. We will therefore consider the Reform Bill the law of the land, and will throw behind us, as a portion of past history, the abominations it entombs, like the prerogatives of the Tudors, the oppressions of Feudality, and the corruptions of Popery.

Having thus cleared our course of a loathsome nuisance, we will state the chief points to which we are desirous of calling attention. 1. In order to dispose of some popular errors, we will briefly indicate the progress of the constitution up to the era of the Reform Bill. 2. We will give an estimate of the adequacy of the Bill to the national wants, and advert to the principal objections urged against it by its two classes of antagonists—namely, those who think it concedes too much, and those who think it does not concede enough. 3. And last, we will endeavour to show the future improvements likely to be effected in the country by the practical operation of this great public measure. Our readers need not be alarmed from the general import of these propositions we are going to lead them into any dissertation; we shall despatch the whole in a very few pages, our aim being only to indicate a few leading problems,—a sort of landmarks, which, at the existing crisis, it may be useful to keep in mind. As we deem the battle won, and seek not victory, we shall submit our remarks in that spirit of truth, candour, and fairness, in which we doubt not they will be received.

I.—

PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION UP TO THE REFORM BILL.

We have long been of an opinion that the English constitution is the result of successive improvements advancing with the increasing intelligence of the people. It is a tree of slow but magnificent growth, in which decayed parts have at intervals appeared, and been partly abscinded, and new and more perfect branches engrafted. Those who entertain a different opinion, rely, we apprehend, either on descriptions purely imaginary, or refer to a period too remote for authentic intelligence. The surest test of the excellence of public institutions, and the extent of popular rights, is the administration of justice. The executive government may claim and exercise a transitory power, dependent on the character of the sovereign or his ministers, or imposed upon them by the emergencies of the moment; but the administration of justice is that permanent and wide-spread divisions of social machinery which touches all the members of society; and accordingly as their rights are respected or violated under it, we may infer the general existence or absence of civil liberty among the people.

Let us apply this test to the Saxon era. We are not accurately informed of the institutions existing at this remote period, but it is certain they were those of a nation little advanced from a state of barbarism. According to Mr. Turner, the laws ascribed to Alfred, and so highly extolled, comprised the decalogue and the principal provisions in Mosaic legislation contained in the three chapters following the decalogue. However applicable such a code may have been to the Jews and Judea, it could not have been well suited to a community placed under widely different circumstances. The existence of the were and the mund afford further testimony of the rude state of society among the Anglo-Saxons: the former was the legal value of a man’s life, which varied according to his rank; the latter was the security afforded to the safety of the house, and like the were varied with the rank of the party. If human life and property were thus made to vary in value, it is not surprising personal estimation varied in the same way: thus the oath of a twelve hynd man was equivalent to the oaths of six churls. With such uncouth and partial judicial notions, the condition of the great body of the people may be easily conceived. It was that of mere personal slavery. The labouring classes were considered the property of their masters, and at their absolute disposal as much as the cattle on their estates. They might put them in bonds, whip them, brand them, yoke them in teams like horses, or openly sell them in the market like any other commodity. This state of society continued till long after the Conquest. In the reign of Henry II. we read that the number of slaves exported to Ireland was so great that the market was absolutely over-stocked; and from William I. to that of John, scarcely a cottage in Scotland but what possessed an English slave,—the spoil of the border wars. It was only in the year 1102, it was declared in the great council of the nation, held at Westminster, unlawful for any man to sell slaves openly in the market, which before had been the common custom of the country.

The state of society described is obviously that existing at this day in the islands of Dominica and Jamaica, and the great mass of the people were no more in the enjoyment of civil rights than the Negroes of the West Indies. It must then be quite indefensible in any one to revert to the times of the Saxons, or to a period long subsequent, for models of constitutional liberty and government.

Let us advance to the era of Magna Charta. The concessions extorted by the barons at Runnymede were concessions extorted for themselves, not the people. But even this indicates a progression in society. Two orders at least in the state were recognized, namely, the king and nobility, and the idea of prescribing their respective immunities by a public law shows a growth of intelligence, and may be deemed, perhaps, the first visible germ of the Constitution.

From the reign of king John, to that of Charles I. the constitution underwent no decided improvement; the powers of the several parts of which it consisted were the subject of dispute, but were not fixed or materially altered by any public act. Great changes however had taken place among the people. Vassalage was entirely extirpated; commerce and manufactures had been introduced and flourished; comforts and luxuries unknown to preceding ages were placed within the reach of all ranks. But what most distinguished this interval was the growth of an entirely new order of vast power and influence who claimed for the first time a share in political government—namely, the MIDDLE CLASSES; consisting of the smaller freeholders and copyholders living in the county, and of merchants, manufacturers, and retailers resident in cities and towns. These, hitherto unknown as an independent cast, had gradually and almost imperceptibly become influential enough to contest the prerogatives of the monarch in the legislature—make war upon him—and, after beating him and his feudal chivalry in open battle, consolidate all authority in themselves. But their day had not yet come. They conquered, but knew not how to preserve their conquest. Political knowledge was not sufficiently diffused to enable them to frame and maintain a system of government, greatly superior to that which previously existed, and as a consequence, the power of the state fell back into the hands of its former possessors. The new influence, however, manifested in this great struggle was never lost; though the political power reverted to the King and Aristocracy, a vast influence was ever after exercised over public affairs by the middling classes; and we consider the Reform Bill of 1832 nothing more than an open and constitutional recognition of that authority in the body of the People, which, for the last century and a half, has never ceased to be indirectly, though often inefficiently, exercised over the national government.

In this sketch we have taken no notice of the rise of the HOUSE OF COMMONS. The fact is, we consider the House of Commons had hardly begun to exist for any useful purpose, till a short time anterior to the Civil Wars of the commonwealth. What was the constitution of this body previously? Why, it was an assemblage of persons, summoned or not, at the pleasure of the crown or of the sheriff, to raise a sum of money for the public treasury, by taxing themselves and constituents. It was not a legislative assembly, in any proper sense of the term, any more—perhaps not so much—than the Court of Star Chamber, or High Commission. It was a meeting of deputies to assess aids and scutages, not to make laws. That was a branch of the royal authority to be exercised by the summary process of edict and proclamation, not by mean burgesses, the delegates of mushroom towns, who it is true might have money to spare for princely extravagance—the produce of their industry—but whom it was assumed had not intellects sufficiently refined for the high task of legislation, though they might be great adepts in the mysteries of felt-hats, hose, and woollen cloths! So little did the M. P.s of those days value the representative function that they considered it a task imposed, not an honour conferred, and actually received wages for the discharge of so unpleasant a duty. All sorts of evasions were practised to avoid sending representatives to parliament; some boroughs pleaded poverty, others their insignificance, and the honourable members were almost constrained by force to appear at Westminster, Oxford, or other place of royal residence. The whole proceeding was analogous to what takes place in a city taken by storm. The victorious general calls together the principal inhabitants, not to make laws for the government of the town, but to determine how great a sum they can raise to save themselves from pillage. It was the same with the House of Commons, and so continued till the advent of Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Eliot, and other master minds, claimed for the third estate a nobler and more independent vocation.

Such, we apprehend, is an unvarnished representation of the constitutional importance of the House of Commons up to a comparatively recent period; and for its truth we have only to appeal to the recollections of those who have even cursorily studied the histories of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, and the notions of prerogative entertained by the princes of the Stuart race. The English government for a long period was a despotism, occasionally checked and controlled by the clergy and nobility; but though its arbitrary powers were often and bravely disputed, no permanent constitutional barrier was erected against them, till the next great era of our history, the Revolution of 1688.

The expulsion of the Stuarts was a great achievement in favour of constitutional government; but it left the industrious orders in their former state as to the exercise of political power. The limits of the royal prerogatives were defined, and the basis of public freedom declared by the Bill of Rights, but it failed to confer the great desideratum of the period—a system of representation commensurate with the augmented wealth and intelligence of the community. The classes who chiefly profited by the revolution were the Clergy and Aristocracy. The reformed church was in danger from the revival of popery; the aristocracy from both popery and prerogative: the two interests in jeopardy united for their common security and obtained it. From the despotism of the monarch the people fell under the despotism of an Oligarchy, divided into two factions—equally corrupt and inveterably hostile to each other. Though their professions were different, their practice was the same, and neither party, when circumstances gave them an ascendency, pursued measures for the general advantage. Abroad, the country was involved in unceasing, unnecessary, and expensive wars; while, at home, public happiness was a mere pretext, the emoluments of administration being the end of their policy. Government became a game, played at by the rival parties; the king being the occasional umpire, and the people the prize!

The chief reason which can be assigned, for the people remaining so long quiescent under such a defective national administration, has been the internal prosperity of the country, the result of their own unpatronized energies. During two centuries, the career of improvement has been steady and uniform; each reign closed with an augmentation of wealth and knowledge; but in this increase government had no share. It is hardly possible to fix on any period, under any minister, when the spirit of improvement was fostered by government, when men of genius were patronized, or when any anxiety was manifested to facilitate the operations of industry, by abstaining from burdening it with imposts. On the contrary, history exhibits only the virtues of the people struggling against the vices of power,—of liberty against oppression,—of industry against the rapacity of taxation,—of truth against established error. Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, the country continued to flourished; but its prosperity is not the creation of a day nor a century; it is not to be dated from the Revolution, nor the reign of George III. nor the Pitt system, nor any other system. No; it is to none of these causes: the great towns of Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, have not emerged into opulence and magnificence under the favouring auspices of any of these dynasties; their growth may be ascribed to the people themselves, who, while they had to surmount the disadvantages of their own condition, had to contend against the spirit of institutions hostile to improvement.

How little government, at any time, has been identified with public prosperity may be instanced in this. The worst period of our history may be reckoned from the restoration of Charles II. to the expulsion of James II.; it was a period remarkable for the profligacy of the Court, arbitrary principles, bigotry, and parliamentary corruption; yet Mr. Hume observes, that the commerce and riches of England never encreased so fast as during that time.

In the period which followed the Revolution, the policy of government was not more favourable to industry. It was a shameless picture of war and misrule; the King the slave of faction, the People of fiscal extortion, and the mere profession of patriotism rendered ridiculous by the profligacy of public men. Yet even this vile system did not repress the energies of the people; the country flourished, but it flourished not in consequence of the vices of administration, but in spite of them. There was nothing in it paradoxical, it demonstrated no natural connexion between bad government and national prosperity; it merely showed that the seeds of improvement may be so powerful, that they will triumph over the most defective institutions.

The causes of public prosperity during the reign of George III. are too obvious to be pointed out. On the accession of that prince, the country was in the full tide of wealth and glory, and his reign was a mere continuation of the impetus it had previously received. The general progress, no doubt, was greatly accelerated by the invention of machinery: the discoveries of Watt and Arkwright, doubling the productive power of industry, gave to our manufactures an unrivalled superiority, which, in their turn, laid the foundation of agricultural prosperity. In all this, however, government did not participate: indeed, the contrast between the struggling energies of industry and the vices of power was remarkable; while the people were acquiring within, their Rulers were wasting without. It was a singular contest: genius and industry ministering to the calls of folly and prodigality. The result is now before us; and, after all our inventions, toil, and enterprise, we find ourselves worse situated than a century ago. Instead of exhibiting an unexampled picture of real opulence, social enjoyment, and general comfort, we are a woeful spectacle of embarrassment and privation. The first was the portion provided by the Genius of the people, the last is the evil entailed by the Demon of faction and misrule.

Had government ever directed its attention to the intellectual or physical improvement of the people, how different would have been the result. Five things at least might have been expected from an enlightened administration:—First, a general system for the education of the people, founded, not on any system of religious exclusion or political injustice, but on social utility. Secondly, a provision for the clergy, independently of tithe, which is so oppressive on agriculture, and adapted only to a different state of society. Thirdly, a more simple and economical mode of taxation, embracing an abolition of such internal duties as, without adding proportionately to public revenue, interfere with the operations of commercial and manufacturing industry. Fourthly, a revision of the civil and criminal jurisprudence. Lastly, as a necessary preliminary to the rest, an extension of the basis of representation, so as to embrace the power, intellect, and property of the community.

These ameliorations might have been all quietly effected within the last century. Instead, however, of government being occupied on these truly national objects, it has been a mere arena for aristocratical contention, on which these pseudo-patriots—these “Great Men,” as they are sometimes called, the Godolphins, the Somers, the Harleys, the Bolingbrokes, the Chathams, Foxes, Burkes, and Pitts, have displayed their selfishness and ambition, their want of real patriotism, and enlarged views of public justice and happiness.

We have thus run through the historical part of our subject, and brought out those propositions which mark the progress of the Constitution at different epochs; it only remains to show their application to the great question of parliamentary reform in progress through the Legislature.

Our first inference is, that England never had a constitution in which equality of civil rights and equal protection to all interests were recognised; and that it is in vain to look for such a model of government in any anterior period of our history.

Secondly, we infer, that in England, as in most infant communities, political power was originally exercised by a single person, and that it was afterwards divided between the monarch and nobility.

Thirdly, that the power of the government continued to be exercised by the two estates, and almost to be unquestioned by any antagonist claim till the accession of the Stuarts, when the rise into importance of the Middle Classes called for a new partition of political authority; that these classes succeeded in wresting the government from the king and nobility, but failed to retain it, and that they also failed in securing a direct share in the government in the Revolution of 1688: but, though excluded on both these occasions, they have ever since the great struggle in the sixteenth century succeeded in exercising an indirect influence on national affairs by their numbers, wealth, and intelligence—aided by the Press, access to the debates of the Legislature, and a fragment of popular representation in the House of Commons.

Fourthly, we infer that the period has arrived when the productive classes can no longer be excluded from a direct share in the constitution; that the indirect influence they have hitherto exercised must be converted into an integral and operative part of government; and that this is really the object sought to be accomplished by the Reform Bill.

Fifthly, we infer that we have arrived at a crisis when this change is wholly irresistible:—1. Because the interests to be benefited and enfranchised by it so greatly preponderate over the minor interests by which it can be opposed. 2. Because the change is expedient as well as just; and this is shown by contrasting the past history of the people with the past history of the government: for while the latter presents a congerie of abuse, incongruities, and embarrassments, the results of the partial interests it has embodied; the former have been eminently successful in all their pursuits, and have only been retarded in their progress to social happiness by the folly and incapacity of their Rulers. The conclusion is manifest; the people ought to be admitted to a share of that political power for which experience has proved them qualified, and the Aristocracy deprived of the irresponsible authority, which they have perverted to their exclusive benefit, and the detriment of the nation.

II.

ADEQUACY OF THE REFORM BILL TO THE WANTS OF THE NATION.

Two considerations appear to have principally influenced Ministers in framing the Reform Bill; first, to introduce a measure commensurate with the wishes of sincere and rational reformers; and, secondly, to introduce a measure which should not involve greater changes in established institutions than were essential to the accomplishment of this end. Had they introduced a measure less extensive than it is, it would have been unsatisfactory—it would, certainly, have been no resting-place—and would have left the national grievance precisely in its original state. Had they introduced a measure more extensive, it would have had to encounter increased opposition, which opposition, though it could not possibly have averted an efficient parliamentary reform, might have caused its postponement, and, in the intervening struggle, involved us in those internal calamities which every well-wisher to his country is anxious to avoid.

With great ability Ministers have pursued a medium course; if there has been any leaning contrary to popular expectation we candidly confess it has been to the democratic rather than the aristocratic side, and for this bent the people will know how to be thankful. By the extinction of the nomination boroughs they have, with a bold and dexterous hand, cut out the cancer of the Constitution, and by enfranchising the great towns they have conceded that political controul to the people which every intelligent community ought to possess over the government under which they live, and on whose administration their happiness so greatly depends.

Judicious as we humbly conceive the Reform Bill to be, happily as it has steered through the middle passage, well-adapted as it is to the times—to the expectations it has to satisfy—the interests to reconcile—and the prejudices to conciliate; still it has failed to give universal satisfaction, and is opposed by two opposite and very different classes of antagonists—by one class who conceive the Bill concedes too much, and by another who conceive it does not concede enough. We shall submit a few observations to each of these denominations, not in the vain hope that we can add to their previous knowledge, but simply with the view of recalling to their recollection considerations which, in our opinion, will shew that the apprehensions of one party and the non-expectations of the other are alike unfounded, or greatly exaggerated.

We shall first address ourselves, as in courtesy bound to do, to my lords Harrowby, Wharncliffe, Wellington, Winchilsea, and those who constitute what may be termed the “Alarmists.” We may premise to these noble persons, in the first place, that if the Reform Bill be an evil, it is an evil wholly unavoidable; we have reached such a crisis in national affairs, that either the bill, or a measure equally effective with the bill, must necessarily be passed, and that, therefore, it behoves them to submit to it, as one of these dispensations of Providence to which we must be resigned, however painful to be borne. It is true they may flatter themselves a measure less perilous would have done; in this we can assure them they are mistaken; not an atom less than the bill gives would have satisfied us, neither would it have satisfied that numerous and influential class with which we conceive we hold community of interest and sentiment.

But the great spectre which haunts the imaginations of the Alarmists is that the Bill involves consequences of direful import, that it is only the first of a series of constitutional changes, which will follow in rapid succession, and ultimately sweep away the Order, the Throne, the Altar, and even property itself. These are dreadful apprehensions, but more worthy of the dowagers of Grosvenor-Square than of statesmen seated in the highest chamber of legislation. What the people of England require is not alteration in the frame of the constitution, nor in its constituent parts. All they require is to live under cheap and enlightened institutions—institutions which shall preserve them from unnecessary wars—institutions which shall not take more from the produce of industry, neither under the pretext of religion, nor of law, nor of civil government, than is necessary to the efficient administration of public affairs—institutions which shall purge off the foul opprobrium of men claiming honour and worship from their fellow citizens, though holding lucrative offices without employment, and pensions without desert—institutions which shall not be supported by the offerings of want, but the redundancies of the rich—institutions, in short, that shall assimilate with the altered mind and altered circumstances of the community. It is not the form of the government the people wish changed, but its better administration; and what is there in this, we ask, that any just or wise man need to dread or protest against?

The apprehension of indefinite change is unwarranted by all previous experience. The country has been constantly undergoing great changes without altering the status of the Aristocracy. The Reformation was a great change, but when made it stopt, and did not subvert the Peerage. The rise of the House of Commons was a great change; so were the abolition of feudal tenures in the reign of Charles the Second—the revolution of 1688—the Septennial Act—the Scotch and Irish unions—the publication of the debates—the Catholic relief act—the separation of the American colonies—the rise of the Bank of England and East-India Company: all these were great changes, but the Order buffetted through these storms, and not only outlived them, but, positively, attained a higher, more palmy, and enviable state of existence than before. The English government has been a perpetual menstruum of changes. The king, as we have seen in the last section, at first engrossed all political authority; he afterwards shared it with the clergy—next with the nobility—next with the House of Commons—next, indirectly, with the middle classes—and, ultimately, perhaps, he may share it with the labouring classes, when circumstances render them sufficiently independent and intelligent for the beneficial exercise of it; and this last we deem the utmost subdivision and diffusion of political power. In all this efflux there is nothing alarming; it has been the work of two thousand years, and is the natural progress of events which it is vain to try to stop. As classes rise in wealth and intelligence they must necessarily be incorporated in the government. There is no help for it; and it is just to be so. But because men seek what is just and useful, are we to infer they aim at something further? because they seek the abolition of an oppressive and impolitic impost, called tithe, is it to be inferred, as sir R. Peel most fatuously insinuated, they seek the abolition of rent? The boundary which mostly limits the demands of mankind is the just and expedient: beyond that, it is against the general feeling of human nature to trespass.

But it is alleged dangerous opinions are abroad—opinions menacing the security of property and all social institutions. There are the followers of Robert Owen, of Thomas Paine, of Joseph Spence, of Parson Irving, and the “Lady of the Rotunda.” This is all true, and “ ’tis a a pity ’tis true.” But when was it otherwise? Men’s minds have bubbles in them as “the earth and air have.” In the civil wars of the Commonwealth there were the Levellers and Republicans, there were Fifth Monarchy men and Millennium men, who thought the period had arrived when Jesus was to descend and reign a thousand years. The fact is, we are at the crisis of transition, we are about to undergo a great change; and such periods are now, and always have been, the very Carnival of conceits, theories, and fancies. But does any sane person believe that the vast rational mass of English society, set in its solid frame-work of a thousand years’ duration, can be endangered by such puny assailants? We shall not utter another word on the subject. Let us have the renovated constitution, based on the general interest, and all the system mongers, who with their new-born idea vainly think to subvert a social edifice which, with its habits and usages, is the result of ages of experience, will disappear with the excitement that gave them birth, and be no more heard of, except for fire-side laughter; certainly not to be mentioned in the street, much less alluded to in the legislature.

Having tried to allay the fears of the Alarmists, we shall next turn to the honest portion of the RADICALS, who fancy they will reap no benefit from the Reform Bill, by its not including Universal Suffrage, or a scheme of suffrage co-extensive with taxation, which last, we believe, is the opinion of the M.P. for Preston, and which in this land of imposts would give the franchise to every person who eats and drinks, whether male or female, child or adult.

Before alluding, however, to the Bill, let us advert to the general principles that ought to govern the elective qualification about which extremely vague notions are entertained. It is a question of time and place, and circumstance, not of theory. A right of suffrage adapted to France or the United States may be unsuited to England. In no country is the franchise exercised without some condition being annexed. In America the slave-population, which forms so large a portion of the inhabitants, is entirely excluded; and, if we recollect Mr. Cobbett rightly, in none of the States of the Union is the suffrage exercised unaccompanied with residence or other qualification in the elector. Were it otherwise, it would not be a conclusive argument for the adoption of a similar scheme of representation in the United Kingdom. In the cheap and universal circulation of newspapers—in the independent circumstances of the industrious—and in the absence of that mass of vagrancy, poverty, and destitution, which is found among ourselves, the Americans possess advantages for the exercise of political power which unhappily do not exist in England.

Take another illustration of the elective qualification, in which a higher standard of suffrage would be sufficiently protective of the people than would be adequate to the same purpose in England. In France, the number of electors amount to 250,000; but the electors who returned the Chamber of Deputies of 1830, which so nobly withstood the encroachments of the Bourbons, did not exceed 85,000. In England, the number of electors who actually voted in the general election of 1830, has been estimated at 87,000, which exceeds the number of electors in France under the old system: but mark the difference in the two systems of representation. What class, interest, or section of society do the English electors represent? None, not a single social element, either of numbers, intelligence, or property. Omitting county freeholders and metropolitan electors, THREE-FOURTHS of the remaining body of the electors of England are of the labouring classes in the lowest state of indigence, non-resident, and the hireling tools of the candidates. Contrast these with the conditions under which the French constituency exercise their suffrages. First, the ballot excludes corruption and intimidation; and every elector, according to his judgment, may be supposed to vote for the man best qualified to advance the general interests: he can have no other motive; his only grounds for preferring one person to another must be public, not personal to himself, like those of the English elector. Secondly, the French electors comprise nearly the entire proprietary and intelligence of the community; they consist of householders, retailers, shopkeepers, and of the classes more opulent than these: hence they embody, either directly, or through dependence on the working classes, the chief interests of the community. These are not the only points of contrast between the two countries: in France there is no richly endowed Church nor Aristocracy to make head against; there are no interests like the Bank, or the East-India company, or West-India planters, or brewers, or old chartered corporations to counterpoise. The constitution of society is essentially democratic; there is no monied aristocracy, nor landed interest: having no primogeniture or entail laws, property is more equally divided. Hence it is, that a much smaller body of electors in France would adequately represent and sustain the interests of the community, than would be adequate to similar purposes in England: for it must be borne in mind, that the excellence of any system of representation does not consist in the number of voters, but in the unbiassed and intelligent exercise of their suffrages, and in their being sufficiently numerous to touch on and constitute a fair and aliquot proportion of every social interest. After duly considering these points, the reader will not be at a loss to account for the different results presented in the history of the French chamber of deputies and the English house of commons, though both deriving their origin from an elective basis of similar extent, but differently constituted, differently exercised, and with widely different interests to contend against.

The examples we have mentioned of America and France must, we apprehend, demonstrate that the elective qualification cannot be determined by any general law, but must be governed by the circumstances of communities—the division of property—the diffusion of intelligence—and the independent condition of the people.

So far as abstract right is concerned, no good reason can be alleged why every one should not share in the making of laws to which he is amenable. The person is not less precious than property; and laws which affect the security of the former are certainly not less important to every individual than those which affect the security of the latter. It is not, therefore, residence, householdership, nor the payment of taxes, but legal responsibility which prescribes the strictly equitable limit to the right of suffrage.

But the admission of such a principle is clearly incompatible with any practicable form of government: it would entitle all, with scarcely any exception, to participate in legislation, it would embrace females as well as males; all minors would be included, of whatever age, provided they were judicially responsible: in short, none would be disqualified, except the insane and infants of so tender age, that they are unable to distinguish right from wrong. The introduction of such an unlimited scheme of suffrage, no one can seriously contemplate. Still, if we are asked, why we would adopt any other principle of exclusion; why disfranchise women in preference to men, or minors to majors; why we would allow a person to vote at the precise age of twenty-one, and not at twenty or eighteen; we confess, in answer to these inquiries, we can only give one reply, namely, that expediency, not strict justice, dictates their exclusion. Universal suffrage is as much governed by expediency as any other scheme; for in this plan some classes are excluded, so that the difference is in degree not in principle.

We are thus compelled to resort to the only principle by which political questions must be invariably decided. They must be determined, not on any abstract view of justice, but general advantage. It is not by reverting to rights, or, more correctly, powers appertaining to man in a natural state, that we can ascertain his civil immunities; we can only look to the general good; or, as Mr. BENTHAM significantly terms it, “the greatest happiness of the greatest number, for the longest period of time.”

Upon this principle we exclude minors from voting, because their interests may be presumed to be indentified with those of their parents; we exclude females from voting, because their interests are merged in those of their husbands, fathers, or brothers. How much farther the principle of exclusion should be carried, is a practical question only—one of utility, not theory. Whether the right of suffrage should be universal, or limited to householders, or to rent-payers of £10 or £20 a year, or to those assessed to the poor-rate, or direct taxes, is a consideration which must be decided by ascertaining which would be most conducive to public happiness. The end of just government is the equitable and adequate protection of all interests; and provided this is attained, the object for which the suffrage is exercised becomes amply secured. The task of legislation is a part of the labour of society; and it is only a clumsily contrived social machinery—approaching to the organization of the savage state—if it demand the participation and exertion of every individual.

This we think is sufficient to show that no condition of suffrage is of universal application, and adapted to all times and places. For further proof we may inquire what would be the tendency of a scheme of universal suffrage, aided by the ballot, in Spain and Portugal. It would, evidently, revive the inquisition; increase and perpetuate the domination of the priesthood; confirm the despotisms of Don Miguel and Don Ferdinand; and strengthen all interests opposed to liberal ideas, to the developement of internal resources, and the promotion of the prosperity of the Peninsula. Universal suffrage and the ballot would operate in a similar manner in Ireland. There the people are so lamentably ignorant as to be entirely at the mercy of a fanatical priesthood, who pillage them without mercy, under the pretext of saying masses for the repose of the dead! The condition of Ireland in the nineteenth century—to the eternal reproach of our Oligarchical government—is a living type of the state of England anterior to the Reformation. And what, we ask, would universal suffrage have done for us at that era? Would it have broken the power of the monks, or of the feudal barons? Certainly not; it would have perpetuated vassalage; and had such a regime continued, the body of the people would have been in no better condition at this day than that of the barbarians of Russia, who, like droves of cattle, have trodden under foot the liberties of the heroic Poles.

Having said thus much on the general tendency of Universal Suffrage, we may be permitted to say a few words on its practicability. In the existing state of opinion it would be wholly unattainable by peaceable means; nothing but absolute force, nothing short of a convulsive movement, subversive of every thing, would accomplish it; and then it would not subsist a twelvemonth without leading to Anarchy and Despotism. The middling classes, with hardly an exception, are indisposed to such a sweeping measure; but without the co-operation of the middling classes no political reform can be obtained. In France the encroachments of the Bourbons were resisted, and they were, finally, expelled from the soil they had polluted, by the co-operation of the industrious orders. It is only by a similar united effort that the Church and Aristocracy of this country can be successfully resisted. What was it that rendered the efforts of the Reformers abortive in 1817 and 1818? Upwards of a million and a half of petitioners prayed for parliamentary reform, yet this numerical array was powerless of effect, and disappeared like water on a sandy bed. The cause of this memorable failure may be readily found in the fact that the people were not seconded by any portion of the proprietary; the consequences of the revolutionary wars had not penetrated deep enough into the substance of society: the case is now altered, and it is because it is altered that the Boroughmongers are disposed to concession. But though the middling classes are as fully bent on parliamentary reform as any other section of society, it is such a reform as would restore, not destroy.

Before concluding, we would beg to inquire whether by universal suffrage it is meant the floating population of towns should be eligible to vote? Vagrants, Irish emigrants, and persons of that description, for instance. We apprehend the idea has not been sufficiently analyzed; if it had, we feel convinced a scheme so indefinite could have few advocates, except among such mock reformers as Harlequin Sheridan, who professed to be the advocate of universal suffrage, because he deemed it utterly unattainable, and an excellent device for creating divisions, by which every plan of public improvement might be ridiculed and frustrated. Our reasons for preferring a more limited scheme of suffrage are practical; they are that such limitation renders reform attainable, while a more indefinite scheme defeats it; and the fact of keeping house of a certain rental, though it confers no natural right, indicates a class of persons settled in life, of mature age and fixed abode, and that such qualification is adequate to the protection of all interests, conciliates the timid, and preserves the suffrage itself from degradation. Lastly, let it be borne in mind that persons are not excluded from the suffrage on the ground of right, on the pretext that they have no stake, no interest in the country; but simply because the exercise of it would be unprofitable to themselves and the community, and as useless as two persons holding a pen in place of one.

Leaving the subject of universal suffrage, let us come to the positive benefits likely to result to the people from the Reform Bill. It is unnecessary to premise we do not anticipate from it the extirpation of all social evils; it will not avert the calamities, unhappily so frequent—of commercial vicissitudes and unemployed industry and capital; these, and other difficulties in our internal state, the best of governments can only mitigate when aided by the co-operative intelligence of the community. But thought it will not bring down the golden age, it will accomplish the main object Reformers have been anxious to attain.

In the first place, by the extinction of the nomination boroughs, a mass of legislative power is at once transferred from the Aristocracy to the people. This is a positive gain, without any countervailing loss. Not a particle of democracy previously existing in the Constitution is extinguished by the Bill. As before observed, three-fourths of the voters under the old system (leaving out the Counties and Metropolis) were of the working classes; they will continue voters under the new, and less exposed to bribery and intimidation. Thus there is an addition without subtraction from popular power.

An entirely new influence will be thrown into parliament—an influence emanating from the people and identified with the people in interest, sentiment, and opinion. This influence will not be measured by the additional number of members returned for the metropolis and enfranchised towns, but by the masses of population they will represent and of which they will be the organs and representatives. The ten-pound qualification is not an uniform qualification; it is one thing in London and another in the country; but both in London and the country it includes the working classes, or those chiefly dependent on the working classes. On whom are the Middle Orders, the class of shopkeepers, the butchers, bakers, hatters, grocers, inn-keepers, and alehouse-keepers chiefly dependent? Why, on the working people, to be sure. Their profits accrue more from wages than rents or tithe, or any other source of income. Whatever tends to lessen wages will lessen their gains; whatever tends to impair the condition of the labourer and operative, will impair their own. They will, in consequence, exercise the elective franchise, under an influence favourable to the poor, not to the rich.

The ten-pound qualification has been adopted not as a test of property, but of fitness for the elective function. The object sought was not to create a class of voters representing the wealth of the community, but its virtues, intelligence, and public spirit. How was this to be done? It was impossible to do in this case as is done in schools and colleges—go through the country and submit every individual to personal examination. Some external sign—some general rule must be adopted; the ten-pound qualification is one; it is not the best perhaps; it is not infallible; it neither demonstrates invariably moral or intellectual fitness; but it shews, at least, the elector is not a minor, nor a beggar, nor a vagrant.

That it is not a property-qualification may be instanced in this. In England there are thousands of persons ineligible to the proposed franchise, though in possession of millions of income—incomes derived from the funds, from colonial property, from the copyrights of books, from government annuities, from professions, trades, and other sources; many of these are persons in opulent circumstances; they are a class of people whom it might have been thought the Government would have been desirous to attach to its interest by granting them the suffrage: yet a great portion of them, not being occupiers of houses, from dislike to the trouble of housekeeping or other motive, will be totally without political power in the State; they will have no share in making militia laws, nor laws of any other description, though bound to obey them; they will be as void of political rights as the man who has not a sixpence, nor a rag to cover him, nor a shed wherein to lay his head. If the new qualification be unjust, it is, at least, impartially so; it does not strike one class and leave another unscotched; it does not exclude all the poor, and incorporate all the rich: it embraces a part of every grade of society and omits a part; and in this, in our opinion, consists the great excellence of the scheme; for, by means thereof, not a single interest is left without legislative protection.

Very erroneous notions are abroad as to the greater popular power the people would derive from the adoption of the household or universal suffrage scheme in preference to the ten-pound qualification. Facts are stubborn things, and we shall avail ourselves of a few from the mass of returns to parliament, and of which a digest will be found at the end of this article.

Owing to the great wealth, intelligence, and population, concentrated in the metropolis, the character of the Reform Bill greatly depends on its application to this division of the kingdom. The capital comprises one-tenth of the population of England; it contains 116,279 qualifying tenements, while through the whole kingdom there are only 378,786. But as few houses in London are tenanted at a less rent than £10 a-year, the household plan may be considered in operation in this great influential district of the empire. In some towns, household suffrage and universal suffrage nearly coincide. Thus, in Bishop’s Castle there are of household votes 344, of universal suffrage votes 345. This is a small borough; but take some of the large ones, Southwark for instance, with a population of 77,799; here the household voters are 13,187, the universal suffrage voters 15,559. In Hull are 5,350 household, and 6,591 universal suffrage electors; in Ipswich the proportions are 3,412 to 4,090; King’s Lynn 2,323 to 2,674; Knaresborough 976 to 1,045; Lancaster 1,803 to 2,028; Leicester 6,627 to 8,102; Ludlow 1,006 to 1,050; Lichfield 1,151 to 1,126; Norwich 11,031 to 12,219. It is unnecessary to proceed; other and as striking examples of coincidence will be found on reference to our Tables. The conclusion to be drawn is important. Universal suffrage is not a bugbear to excite alarm; nor is it of such general concernment as to be worth contending for by the people.

We have been repeatedly told that the constituency to be created by the Bill is too limited—that it gives the suffrage to one man and leaves ten without it. Look to the Tables, and let facts speak. In Birmingham the proportion between the male adult population in possession of the franchise and those without it will be 1 to 3, in Greenwich 1 to 2, in Lambeth 1 to 11/2, and in Mary-le-bone 1 to 1. In no case, with one or two exceptions, does the proportion exceed 1 to 4.

On the whole, we conclude the £10 qualification is a happy medium. Had it been higher the elective basis would have been too narrow. As it is, it touches on the different schemes of suffrage which have been proposed: it embraces every class and excludes none. We should object to a plan of representation which embodied only one interest, whatever interest it might be; for instance, we should object to the constitution of a House of Commons which represented only the working classes or the middle classes, just as much as we object to the constitution of that which exists, because it represents only the interests of the Aristocracy.

III.—

PRACTICAL RESULTS OF A REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Constitutional changes, like the circulating medium, are valueless in themselves. They are not the good sought, but the instrument of its production. A reformed parliament is the machinery which is to extirpate the abuses of our institutions. When it has been obtained the discussion of forms of government, theories of civil rights, and plans of elective qualification will cease to be of interest; the people will naturally turn to subjects of more direct benefit—to the practical measures by which the condition of society can be improved. Let us, then, endeavour to ascertain the sort of materials which will be brought to the new legislative manufactory—the measures which will probably engage the attention of a reformed House of Commons. As this part of our task will be little more than a brief recapitulation of the preceding topics of our work, it will appropriately form the concluding section of our publication.

The first and most important result of the adoption of the Reform Bill will consist in the substitution for the government of an oligarchy with selfish and limited interests—a national government responsible to 500,000 electors, every one of whom has an interest in domestic peace, order, and prosperity.

For the interests of the few the Reform Bill would substitute the interests of the many; it would lay the axe to the root of all monopolies, and the community no longer be compelled to enrich the Bank Proprietary by exclusive privileges; nor profit the Shipping Interest by the consumption of the dear and inferior timber of Canada; nor the East-India Company, by paying double the price for tea the consumer pays on the Continent; nor would industry be impeded by corn laws which are only favourable to high rents—of no benefit to the farmer—and only tend to limit the exchange of our manufactures for the produce of America and continental Europe.

Reform would equalize taxation, and the redundant incomes of the great, not the wages and profits of the industrious, be made the chief fund of fiscal exaction.

It would remedy the glaring abuses of our judicial administration, and render justice prompt, protective, and attainable to every individual.

It would reduce the public expenditure to the lowest possible scale; abolish sinecures, unmerited pensions, and exorbitant salaries; cut off Colonies that are burdensome to the nation, and which, like useless Boards, Diplomatic Missions, and Consular Establishments, have been kept up solely to provide lucrative appointments for the Boroughmongers and their families.

It would destroy the oppressions of the tithe system, abolish the monstrous inequalities in ecclesiastical income, and improve the condition of the Working Clergy, who reside among their parishioners, and benefit them by their example and ministry.

It would reform the abuses of Corporate Bodies and render them, not only the faithful trustees of the poor, but the centres of local government, police, and judicial administration.

It would provide for the general education of the people—their profitable employment—and open new channels for redundant capital and industry.

It would put an end to the perjuries, drunkenness, riots, and immoralities of parliamentary elections.

It would be a guarantee against future liberticide wars; if wars were waged they would be the wars of the nation, not of an Oligarchy; they would be wars for, not against, the people.

Lastly, it would consolidate the empire, uniting in the bonds of equal rights and reciprocal advantages England, Ireland, and Scotland, and render them what, from superior wealth and intelligence, they ought to be, “the envy and admiration of the world!” England would recover her rank among nations, and be again the model of constitutional governments. Her government would be founded on Public Opinion, not on that sinister opinion fostered by a lavish expenditure of public money—by the abuse of collegiate and ecclesiastical endowments—by the restraint of discussion—but an opinion, the result of impartial investigation and expanded views of social happiness.

Such, we apprehend, are a few of the advantages that would result from the adoption of the Reform Bill, and which would form the subjects of deliberation of a reformed parliament, and which, in due course, it would endeavour to accomplish. That the people can be frustrated in the pursuit of so many national blessings, we cannot for a moment believe; we cannot believe that from supineness or want of union among themselves they will continue the serfs of the Boroughmongers, who, for their own emolument, have cherished every abuse in our institutions, and entailed on the country all its embarrassing calamities.

Our enemies are few in number, but mighty in influence. They are an united, active, and desperate band, exasperated almost to madness at being kept for the last fifteen months from their accustomed prey. If they succeed, they well know all the sacrifices they make will be amply repaid by the plunder of the people. But their rapacious hopes will be baffled. Corruption will never triumph over true patriotism—a mock representation over one that is real—private interests over the public weal—a mere faction over the king, his ministers, the public press, and the nation!

Cheap government—cheap bread—cheap justice—and industry unfettered and productive will reward our efforts in the triumph of the Reform Bill!

N.B. Whatever changes the Reform Bill may finally undergo in either House of Parliament, the subjoined “Statistical Tables” will be useful for reference; comprising as they do the elements of representation on any proposed plan, whether founded on population, on rental, the amount of taxation, or the household or universal suffrage scheme.

Totness, in No. IV., which formed one of the semi-disfranchised boroughs, has been removed in the committee of the Lower House; but as it originally stood in the Bill, it has been here retained.

STATISTICS OF REPRESENTATION.

No. I.

The Year of Election, and greatest Number of Freeholders who have exercised the right of voting in ENGLAND and WALES for County Members since 1811.

Counties.

Year of Election.

Freeholders on the Poll Books.

The number of freeholders in this county is estimated at 4000.—Parl. Pap. 149, Sess. 1831.

The election continued only six days, and supposed half the number of freeholders polled.

The election continued only one day. The number polled in 1790, when the election lasted two days, was 4849.

Bedford

1826

2546

Berks.

1812

1992

Bucks.

1831

2593

Cambridge

1830

3717

Chester.

No polling for last century in this county.

Cornwall

1831

2762

Cumberland

1811

1396

Derby.

No contest since 1811.

Devon

1818

7793

Dorset

1831

2961

Durham

1820

2712

Essex

1830

5317

Gloucester.

No contest since 1811.

Hereford

1818

3505

Hertford.

No contest since 1811.

Huntingdon

1826

1884

Lancaster.

No contest in the county since 1811.

Leicester

1830

5420

Lincoln

1818

5598

Monmouth.

No contest since 1811.

Norfolk

1817

7217

Northumberland

1826

2985

Nottingham.

No contest for a century past.

Oxford

1831

2934

Rutland.

No contest since 1811.

Salop

1831

2534

Somerset

1818

4644

Stafford

1831

12

Suffolk

1830

1691

Surrey

1826

3743

Sussex

1820

4440

Warwick

1820

3122

Westmoreland

1826

3455

Anglesey.

No contest since 1784.

Brecon

1818

1641

Cardigan.

No contest for a century.

Denbigh.

No poll-books filed.

Flint.

No contest.

Glamorganshire

1820

1598

Montgomery

1831

1005

Pembroke

1812

2723

Radnor.

No contest since 1811.

No. II.

The Number of Freeholders in the different Counties in IRELAND, Registered up to the 1st May, 1831; distinguishing the £50, £20, and £10 Freeholders.

Counties.

Number of £50.

Number of £20.

Number of £10.

Total Number.

Antrim

752

395

1296

2443

Armagh

295

231

1087

1613

Carlow

321

97

193

611

Cavan

462

344

781

1587

Clare

579

293

930

1802

Cork

2280

452

447

3179

Donegal

811

92

66

969

Down

887

338

1902

3127

Dublin

1223

496

109

1828

Fermanagh

273

251

920

1444

Galway

897

299

1812

3008

Kerry

632

355

178

1165

Kildare

682

122

190

994

Kilkenny

767

798

383

1948

King’s

788

202

318

1308

Leitrim

336

181

554

1071

Limerick

1418

1126

1369

3913

Londonderry

488

215

836

1539

Longford

204

85

463

752

Louth

295

113

380

788

Mayo

583

346

335

1264

Meath

784

160

302

1246

Monaghan

464

254

946

1664

Queen’s

941

183

303

1427

Roscommon

468

357

470

1295

Sligo

399

315

299

1013

Tipperary

2015

411

475

2901

Tyrone

265

316

701

1282

Waterford

458

476

488

1422

Westmeath

395

163

366

924

Wexford

661

328

697

1686

Wicklow

314

122

513

949

No. III.

Population, Electors, &c. of the FIFTY-SIX Boroughs totally disfranchised, forming Schedule A of the Reform Bill.

Boroughs.

Population, 1831.

Houses, 1821.

Resident Electors.

Houses over £10.

Houses, over £20.

Assessed Taxes, 1830.

Electors Uni. Suf.

Aldborough

2475

258

147

39

10

574

495

Aldeburgh

1538

268

57

31

7

297

307

Amersham

2816

494

79

126

7

880

563

Appleby

1359

145

——

65

6

487

271

Bedwin, Gt.

2191

125

120

2

—

627

438

Berealston

——

——

——

1

—

3

375

Bishop’s Cast

1729

344

183

83

4

311

315

Blechingley

1203

85

6

5

1

390

240

Boroughbridge

950

158

70

18

4

358

190

Bossiney

1006

52

15

1

——

46

201

Brackley

2107

354

33

25

1

302

421

Bramber

97

35

——

——

——

16

12

Callington

1388

232

153

32

——

221

277

Camelford

1359

110

26

14

1

127

271

Castle Rising

888

111

——

2

2

127

177

Corfe Castle

960

156

——

11

2

104

192

Downton

3961

582

86

94

——

361

792

Dunwich

232

38

25

2

1

75

46

Fowey

1767

310

275

46

5

273

353

Gatton

145

23

6

6

4

206

29

Grinstead, E.

3364

444

8

42

8

855

672

Haslemere

849

124

——

16

4

369

169

Hedon

1080

182

331

44

8

270

216

Heytesbury

1413

26

——

21

7

306

282

Higham Ferrars

965

154

——

6

——

168

123

Hindon

921

163

——

11

1

100

184

Ilchester

975

165

181

12

3

145

195

Looe, West

593

107

34

8

1

53

118

Looe, East

865

142

40

20

1

92

173

Lostwithiel

1074

206

23

37

15

344

214

Ludgershall

535

116

——

4

1

122

107

Milborne Port

2072

302

169

11

1

210

414

Minehead

1494

265

261

36

3

316

298

Newport, C.

1084

180

81

8

—

116

216

Newtown, I. W.

68

14

26

——

—

——

13

Newton, L.

2137

275

52

19

2

151

427

Okehampton

2055

313

93

42

7

383

411

Orford

1302

217

——

20

1

144

260

Plympton

804

128

24

39

12

314

160

Queenborough

786

175

300

11

6

82

157

Romney, New

378

165

16

24

1

352

75

St. Germains

2586

99

30

15

1

341

597

St. Mawes

459

101

——

9

—

31

91

St. Michael

97

24

——

1

—

34

19

Saltash

3092

234

——

134

2

126

618

Sarum, Old

12

2

——

7

2

12

2

Seaford

1098

217

124

36

5

315

219

Steyning

1436

127

——

18

5

369

287

Stockbridge

851

134

138

31

5

252

170

Tregony

1127

188

233

11

3

110

225

Wendover

2008

148

117

14

—

272

401

Weobly

819

118

——

5

1

231

163

Whitchurch

1673

268

——

21

2

343

334

Winchelsea

772

187

8

13

6

217

154

Wootton Bas

1896

379

300

36

5

321

379

Yarmouth, I.W.

586

97

9

14

4

172

177

No. IV.

Population, Electors, &c. of the THIRTY Boroughs of which the Representatives have been reduced to One, forming Schedule B of the Reform Bill.

Boroughs.

Population, 1831.

Houses, 1821.

Resident Electors.

Houses over £10.

Houses over £20.

Assessed Taxes, 1830.

Electors Uni. Suf.

Arundel

2803

472

463

200

33

877

560

Ashburton

4165

341

——

54

11

413

833

Calne

4795

461

18

208

45

1581

959

Christchurch

1599

936

20

300

18

557

319

Clitheroe

5213

550

7

60

19

406

1042

Dartmouth

4597

607

100

234

48

656

919

Droitwich

2487

474

4

69

19

519

497

Eye

2313

340

129

29

5

411

462

Grimsby

4225

734

394

94

3

461

845

Helston

3293

466

52

234

20

883

658

Horsham

5105

288

78

23

165

1209

1021

Hythe

2287

437

36

77

20

640

457

Launceston

2231

253

14

176

17

537

446

Liskeard

2853

414

24

235

16

542

570

Lyme Regis

2621

401

25

270

26

852

524

Malmesbury

2785

275

13

158

6

338

557

Midhurst

1478

234

20

65

23

802

295

Morpeth

5156

478

240

162

31

946

1031

Northalltn

5118

567

——

107

30

1128

1023

Petersfield

1423

262

56

54

12

513

284

Reigate

3397

217

8

78

11

662

679

Rye

3715

574

50

95

28

815

743

Shaftesbury

3061

546

359

158

7

528

612

St. Ives

4776

772

496

26

——

337

——

Thirsk

2835

591

6

110

15

606

567

Totness

3442

356

40

247

86

1088

688

Wareham

2325

417

20

53

6

560

465

Westbury

7324

——

——

318

——

995

1464

Wilton

1997

299

20

150

14

492

399

Woodstock

1320

258

145

90

23

487

264

No. V.

Boroughs not included either in Schedule A or B, and to continue to return two Members to Parliament.

Boroughs.

Population, 1831.

Houses, 1821.

Resident Electors.

Houses over £10.

Houses over £20.

Assessed Taxes, 1830.

Electors Uni. Suf.

Abingdon

5622

1114

253

148

39

1355

1124

Andover

4748

810

24

207

94

1704

949

Aylesbury

4450

886

1500

120

21

1220

890

Banbury

5906

701

16

169

62

1305

1181

Barnstaple

6840

805

731

344

88

1455

1368

Bath

38063

5494

29

1243

1062

15885

7812

Bedford

6959

1104

914

209

43

2047

1391

Berwick

8920

1061

527

415

185

2130

1784

Beverley

7432

1513

870

328

130

3000

1486

Bewdley

4003

918

24

121

22

925

800

Bodmin

3375

467

37

178

60

984

675

Boston

11240

2231

503

446

219

2953

2248

Bridgenorth

5298

1021

986

220

73

1363

1059

Bridgewater

7807

1110

460

452

216

2711

1561

Bridport

4242

604

260

338

343

762

848

Bristol

59034

8451

5188

5022

2719

33641

11806

Buckingham

3610

287

13

75

8

842

722

Bury St. Edm.

11436

1960

37

585

262

4994

2287

Cambridge

20917

2682

130

1106

514

7751

4183

Canterbury

12190

2621

1988

667

218

4585

2438

Carlisle

19069

1014

850

587

275

3798

3813

Chester

21331

4076

1504

1040

504

37732

4266

Chippingham

4333

541

126

180

52

1057

866

Chichester

8270

1328

828

456

194

3785

1654

Cirencester

4520

900

573

329

127

2731

904

Cockermouth

4536

766

——

101

11

609

907

Colchester

16167

2768

1406

612

285

5713

3233

Coventry

27298

4470

2763

953

241

6658

5459

Cricklade

11661

2266

1188

——

——

——

2332

Derby

23627

3516

700

801

336

5488

4725

Devizes

4562

488

40

336

99

1746

912

Dorchester

3033

405

210

333

112

2103

606

Dover

14381

2047

1866

273

43

3340

2872

Durham

9262

1175

987

448

155

3783

1852

Evesham

3976

746

155

178

78

1297

795

Exeter

28242

3432

1300

1856

886

22497

5648

Gloucester

11373

1794

1703

760

360

4765

2276

Grantham

7427

766

864

228

114

2196

1485

Guildford

3813

565

178

213

93

1630

762

Harwich

4297

699

20

170

28

906

859

Hastings

10097

1068

17

596

319

5144

2019

Hereford

10351

1929

884

617

248

4155

2070

Hertford

4028

656

659

273

132

2394

805

Honiton

3509

697

506

303

69

1125

701

Huntingdon

3267

538

78

200

77

1773

365

Hull

32958

5350

2299

2136

781

16182

6591

Ipswich

20454

3412

1003

592

180

5025

4090

King’s Lynn

13370

2323

284

334

71

2596

2674

Knaresboro

5226

976

28

203

56

1148

1045

Lancaster

10144

1803

2490

554

265

4100

2028

Leicester

40512

6627

4781

855

405

5278

8102

Leominster

4300

854

716

195

41

1051

8600

Lewes

6353

808

626

230

79

2475

1270

Lincoln

13102

2145

1233

434

230

3048

2620

Lichfield

6281

1151

763

321

149

2476

1256

Liverpool

165175

27792

4401

14127

5936

59086

33033

London

121344

17534

8639

13600

1888

198101

24268

Ludlow

5253

1006

16

292

116

1995

1050

Lymington

3361

417

20

295

66

1077

672

Maidstone

15387

2276

752

685

283

4784

3677

Maldon

3831

606

251

274

53

1114

766

Malton

4173

774

625

146

60

952

834

Marlborough

3426

488

10

227

37

1276

685

Marlow

2863

494

444

192

11

1741

572

Monmouth

13815

——

——

1279

535

7383

2763

Newark

9557

1691

1362

351

198

2856

1911

Nwcstl. UL

8192

1510

800

267

139

1764

1638

Nwcstl. UT

42760

4317

3000

2916

1223

14961

8552

Nwprt. I. W.

4398

731

22

270

118

1841

879

Nrthmpton.

15351

2086

2300

691

266

4127

3070

Norwich

61096

11031

4202

2316

810

15550

12219

Nottingham

50216

7676

4051

1436

523

9359

10043

Oxford

18460

2520

1779

1460

443

2735

3692

Penryn

4490

498

429

112

23

521

899

Peterboro’

6511

983

548

245

139

2379

1362

Plymouth

31080

2384

177

2059

651

8753

6216

Pontefract

9349

960

806

484

64

1811

1669

Poole

6459

1180

95

298

71

1702

1291

Portsmouth

50389

8506

59

——

——

——

10077

Preston

33112

4229

7122

976

510

7394

6622

Reading

15595

2585

1010

1050

657

8661

3119

Retford

——

6724

1283

152

31

924

——

Ripon

5080

178

——

195

70

3076

1016

Richmond

3900

748

41

175

77

1899

780

Rochester

9891

1646

841

400

608

2356

1978

St. Albans

4772

744

623

286

93

1964

954

Sandwich

3084

578

468

125

28

785

616

Salisbury

9338

1684

57

567

286

5365

1867

Scarborough

8752

1883

44

387

173

2503

1750

Shoreham

——

210

1041

26

5

196

——

Shrewsbury

16055

3155

974

989

471

8695

3211

Southamptn.

19324

2249

839

1284

656

11378

3861

Southwark

77799

13187

5000

4658

2629

26271

15559

Stafford

8956

1013

864

190

80

1331

1391

Stamford

5837

919

667

340

168

3224

1167

Sudbury

4677

843

730

108

21

1131

935

Tamworth

7118

747

470

137

44

914

1423

Tavistock

5602

560

27

269

72

1282

1120

Taunton

——

800

739

336

225

2699

——

Tewkesbury

5780

1132

318

262

108

1575

1156

Thetford

3462

602

23

77

21

887

692

Tiverton

9566

1357

25

213

86

1651

1913

Truro

8644

464

25

190

90

1278

1728

Wallingford

2545

386

286

218

43

1073

509

Warwick

9109

1590

186

354

152

3227

1821

Wells

4048

505

308

173

85

1355

809

Wenlock

17435

3667

485

36

6

2723

3487

Westminster

202050

19275

17000

17681

15163

303421

40410

Wymth & M.

7655

1213

745

490

300

3747

1531

Wigan

20774

3288

97

474

204

2686

4514

Winchester

5280

769

140

307

136

2805

1056

Windsor

8661

811

363

374

181

3538

1732

Worcester

18590

2926

2173

909

511

6900

3718

Wycombe

6299

519

124

446

46

1737

1219

Ymth. Nrflk.

22028

4403

929

420

129

3192

4405

York

26260

3326

3715

1589

807

11514

5254

WELSH BOROUGHS.

Boroughs.

Population, 1831.

Houses, 1821

Resident Electors.

Houses over 10l.

Houses over 20l.

Assessed Taxes, 1830.

Electors Uni. Suf.

Beaumaris

13697

462

——

152

43

1404

2739

Brecon

4139

977

——

186

75

1259

838

Caernarvon

18106

1148

——

434

72

2498

3621

Cardiff

32777

671

702

654

250

4053

6555

Cardigan

8120

448

1096

219

35

1478

1624

Carmarthen

15552

1128

633

372

74

2192

3110

Denbigh

11697

1400

546

442

121

2668

2339

Flint

28338

——

1217

236

30

1427

5667

Haverfordw.

10882

806

500

369

95

2703

2106

Montgomery

16283

227

85

322

15

2090

3256

Pembroke

10098

862

1401

229

91

2422

2041

Radnor

7245

422

922

81

——

830

1449

No. VI.

New Boroughs forming Schedule C, which are to return TWO MEMBERS.

Names.

Population, 1831.

Houses at 10l. and upwards.

Houses at 20l. and upwards.

Assessed Taxes, 1839.

Electors Uni. Suff.

Birmingham

142251

6532

1545

28350

28450

Blackburn

27091

1578

176

2325

5418

Bolton

41195

1712

322

4215

8239

Bradford

23233

1083

128

2444

4646

Brighton

40684

2673

2131

31800

8126

Devonport

44454

——

——

9678

8890

Finsbury

244077

23626

17448

206848

48815

Greenwich, &c.

62009

4177

1573

21341

12401

Halifax

15382

1044

183

3186

3076

Lambeth

203229

16872

9224

108814

40645

Leeds

123393

6683

1278

18800

24678

Macclesfield

23129

1206

140

2416

4625

Manchester

187022

12639

2126

40628

37404

Marylebone

240294

22637

19618

290376

48058

Oldham

50513

1128

138

2436

10102

Sheffield

90657

4573

473

12605

18131

Stockport

25469

854

187

2652

5093

Stoke-upon-Trent

52946

——

——

4950

10589

Stroud

13721

——

——

2274

2744

Sunderland

43078

2270

306

4682

8615

Tower Hamlets

359821

26297

13467

118546

71964

Wolverhampton

67514

2125

1451

6229

13502

No. VII.

New Boroughs forming Schedule D, which are to return ONE MEMBER.

Names.

Population, 1831.

Houses at 10l. and upwards.

Houses at 20l. and upwards.

Assessed Taxes, 1830.

Electors Uni. Suff.

Ashton-under-Line

33597

——

——

1434

6719

Bury

15086

639

128

2161

3017

Cheltenham

22942

1939

1225

21184

4588

Dudley

23043

595

131

2536

4608

Frome

12240

1354

91

1960

2448

Gateshead

15177

795

140

2036

3035

Huddersfield

31041

1709

248

3941

6208

Kendal

11265

——

——

3027

2253

Kidderminster

14981

473

117

1920

2998

Rochdale

35764

1044

N. D.

3143

7521

Salford

50810

1244

463

8970

10162

South Shields

18756

987

N. D.

1627

3751

Swansea

19093

739

303

3644

3818

Tynemouth

16926

974

N. D.

2467

3385

Walsall

15066

750

N. D.

1735

3013

Wakefield

12232

675

271

5530

2446

Warrington

16018

799

252

2914

3203

Whitby

10399

——

——

2035

2079

Whitehaven

17808

468

130

2842

3561

No. VIII.

A LIST of the PLACES contained in Schedule (C.) and (D.); 1. specifying the Parishes, Townships, or Hamlets, of which the whole or any part is recommended in the Reports of the Commissioners as the appropriate limits of each place contained in Schedules (C.) and (D.) 2. The Population, Number of Houses, Number of Qualifying Tenements, and Amount of Assessed Taxes, within such limits, or as nearly as can be ascertained.

SCHEDULE (C.)

Birmingham.—Parish of Birmingham, parish of Edgbaston, township of Bordesley, township of Deritend, township of Duddeston with Neachels:—containing town of Birmingham and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

142,000

Qualifying tenements

7,000

Houses

30,000

Assessed taxes

£28,000

Blackburn.—The township of Blackburn;—containing the town of Blackburn and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

27,000

Qualifying tenements

600

Houses

4,800

Assessed taxes

£2,300

Bolton.—The township of Great Bolton, the chapelry of Little Bolton, the township of Haulgh;—containing the town of Bolton.

Population

42,000

Qualifying tenements

1,600

Houses

7,600

Assessed taxes

£4,300

Bradford.—The township of Bradford, the township of Bowling, the township of Little Horton;—containing the township of Bradford and its neighbourhood.

Population

34,000

Qualifying tenements

1,100

Houses

4,100

Assessed taxes

£2,444

Brighton.—Parish of Brighton, parish of Hove;—containing the town of Brighton with its immediate neighbourhood, which includes the village of Hove.

Population

42,000

Qualifying tenements

3,000

Houses

9,000

Assessed taxes

£31,800

Devonport.—The parish of Stoke Damerill, the township of Stonehouse;—containing the town of Devonport, with its neighbourhood, which includes the suburbs of Stoke and Morrice town.

Population

44,000

Qualifying tenements

3,000

Houses

4,600

Assessed taxes

£9,700

Finsbury.—Part of the parish of St. Mary, Islington, part of parish St. Andrew, Holborn, part of the parish of St. James and St. John, Clerkenwell, part of the parish of St. Sepulchre, part of Furnival’s-inn, part of Staple’s-inn, Lincoln’s-inn, Gray’s-inn, the parish of St. Luke, the parish of St. George-the-Martyr, the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, the parish of St. George, Bloomsbury, the liberties of Saffron-hill, Hatton-garden, and Ely-rents, the liberty of Ely-place, the liberty of the Rolls, the liberty of Glasshouse-yard, the precinct called the Charter-house,—containing the northern portion of the metropolis.

Population

225,000

Qualifying tenements

23,600

Houses

30,000

Assessed taxes

£201,000

Greenwich.—The parish of St. Paul, Deptford, the parish of St. Nicholas, Deptford, part of the parish of Woolwich, part of the parish of Greenwich, part of the parish of Charlton, part of the parish of Plumstead;—containing the towns of Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford, and the intermediate space, including the village of Charlton.

Population

64,000

Qualifying tenements

6,000

Houses

12,000

Assessed taxes

£21,500

Halifax.—The township of Halifax, part of the township of South Ouram, part of the township of North Ouram;—containing the town of Halifax.

Population

31,000

Qualifying tenements

1,300

Houses

9,000

Assessed taxes

£3,200

Lambeth.—Part of the parish of Lambeth, part of the parish of St. Giles, Camberwell, the precinct of the Palace, the parish of St. Mary, Newington;—containing the southern portion of the metropolis.

Population

154,000

Qualifying tenements

16,400

Houses

29,000

Assessed taxes

£91,000

Leeds.—The borough of Leeds;—containing the town of Leeds, with its surrounding neighbourhood.

Population

123,000

Qualifying tenements

6,700

Houses

27,600

Assessed taxes

£18,800

Macclesfield.—The borough of Macclesfield, part of the township of Sutton, part of the township of Hurdsfield;—containing the town of Macclesfield and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

30,000

Qualifying tenements

1,100

Houses

6,000

Assessed taxes

£2,500

Manchester.—Township of Manchester, township of Chorlton-row, township of Ardwick, township of Beswick, township of Hulme, township of Cheetham, township of Bradford, township of Newton, township of Harpur Hey;—containing the town of Manchester and its immediate neighbourhood, with the exception of the town and township of Salford.

Population

187,000

Qualifying tenements

12,700

Houses

32,000

Assessed taxes

£40,600

Marylebone.—The parish of St. Marylebone, the parish of Paddington, part of the parish of St. Pancras;—containing the north-western portion of the metropolis.

Population

234,000

Qualifying tenements

21,600

Houses

28,000

Assessed taxes

£274,000

Oldham.—The township of Oldham;—containing the town of Oldham and its neighbourhood.

Population

32,000

Qualifying tenements

1,100

Houses

6,000

Assessed taxes

£2,000

Sheffield.—The township of Sheffield, the township of Attercliffe-cum-Darnell, the township of Brightside Bierlow, the township of Netherhallam, part of the township of Eccleshall Bierlow;—containing the town of Sheffield and its surrounding neighbourhood, which includes the village of Attercliffe.

Population

90,000

Qualifying tenements

4,300

Houses

20,000

Assessed taxes

£12,000

Stockport.—The borough of Stockport, part of the township of Heaton Norris, part of the township of Brinnington, the hamlet of Brinksway, the hamlet of Edgeley;—containing the town of Stockport.

Population

41,000

Qualifying tenements

1,500

Houses

7,600

Assessed taxes

£4,000

Stoke-upon-Trent.—The township of Tunstall, the township of Burslem, the vill of Rushton Grange, the hamlet of Sneyd, the township of Hanley, the township of Shelton, the township of Fenton Vivian, the township of Lane-end, part of the township of Penkhull, part of the township of Fenton Culvert, part of the township of Longton;—containing the district of the Potteries, including the towns of Lane-end, Stoke, Shelton, Hanley, Burslem, and Tunstall.

Population

53,000

Qualifying tenements

1,500

Houses

9,000

Assessed taxes

£4,900

Stroud.—Parish of Stroud, parish of Bisley, parish of Painswick, parish of Pitchcomb, parish of Randwick, parish of Stonehouse, parish of Eastington, parish of Leonard Stanley, with the exception of that part called Lorridge’s Farm, parish of King’s Stanley, parish of Rodborough, parish of Minchinhampton, parish of Woodchester, parish of Avening, parish of Horsley:—containing the Clothing District, situate on the Stroud Water, or River Frome, and its tributary streams.

Population

41,000

Qualifying tenements

1,600

Houses

9,300

Assessed taxes

£7,000

Sunderland.—The parish of Sunderland, the township of Bishop Wearmouth, the township of Bishop Wearmouth Panns, the township of Monkwearmouth, the township of Monkwearmouth Shore, the township of Southwick;—containing the town of Sunderland and its neighbourhood.

Population

43,000

Qualifying tenements

2,500

Houses

5,000

Assessed taxes

£4,500

Tower Hamlets.—Parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, parish of St. Matthew, Bethnal-green, parish of Christ Church, Spitalfields, parish of All Saints, Poplar and Blackwall, parish of St. Anne, Limehouse, parish of St. George-in-the-East, parish of St John, Wapping, parish of St. Mary, Whitechapel, the liberty of East Smithfield, the hamlet of Mile-end Old-town, the hamlet of Mile-end New-town, the hamlet of Ratcliff, the precinct of St. Catharine, the liberty of Nortonfalgate, the several divisions of the liberty of the Tower;—containing the north-eastern suburbs of the metropolis.

Population

293,000

Qualifying tenements

23,000

Houses

65,000

Assessed taxes

£93,000

Wolverhampton.—The township of Wolverhampton, the township of Bilston, the township of Wednesfield, the township of Willenhall, the parish of Sedgeley; containing the towns of Wolverhampton and Bilston, and their surrounding neighbourhood, including the villages of Sedgeley, Wednesfield, and Willenhall.

Population

67,000

Qualifying tenements

2,400

Houses

14,000

Assessed taxes

£6,200

SCHEDULE (D.)

Ashton-Under-Line.—Part of the parish of Ashton;—containing the town of Ashton-under-Line, as limited by its Police Act.

Population

15,000

Qualifying tenements

600

Houses

2,900

Assessed taxes

£1,400

Bury.—Township of Bury, part of the township of Elton;—containing the town of Bury and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

19,000

Qualifying tenements

750

Houses

3,500

Assessed taxes

£2,200

Chatham.—Part of the parish of Chatham, part of the parish of Gillingham;—containing the towns of Chatham and Brompton.

Population

19,000

Qualifying tenements

1,200

Houses

3,500

Assessed taxes

£3,500

Cheltenham.—The parish of Cheltenham; containing the town of Cheltenham and its neighbourhood.

Population

23,000

Qualifying tenements

2,100

Houses

4,350

Assessed taxes

£21,000

Dudley.—The parish of Dudley;—containing the towns of Dudley and its immediate neighbourhood, which includes the village of Netherton.

Population

23,000

Qualifying tenements

800

Houses

4,700

Assessed Taxes

£2,500

Frome.—Part of the parish of Frome;—containing the town of Frome.

Population

12,000

Qualifying tenements

400

Houses

—

Assessed taxes

£1,960

Gateshead.—The parish of Gateshead, part of the chapelry of Heworth;—containing the town of Gateshead and its neighbourhood south of the river Tyne.

Population

15,000

Qualifying tenements

750

Houses

4,000

Assessed taxes

£2,000

Huddersfield.—The township of Huddersfield;—containing the town of Huddersfield.

Population

19,000

Qualifying tenements

1,100

Houses

4,000

Assessed taxes

£3,900

Kidderminster.—The borough of Kidderminster, part of the foreign of Kidderminster;—containing the town of Kidderminster.

Population

16,000

Qualifying tenements

500

Houses

3,100

Assessed taxes

£1,000

Kendal.—The township of Kirby Kendal, the township of Kirkland, the township of Nethergraveship;—containing the town of Kendal and its neighbourhood.

Population

11,600

Qualifying tenements

680

Houses

2,200

Assessed taxes

£3,000

Rochdale.—Part of the township of Castleton, part of the township of Wandleworth, part of the township of Spotland, part of the township of Wuerdale with Wardle;—containing the town of Rochdale.

Population

20,000

Qualifying tenements

1,000

Houses

3,000

Assessed taxes

£3,100

Salford.—The township of Broughton, the township of Salford, the township of Pendleton, part of the township of Pendlebury;—containing the town of Salford and its neighbourhood north-west of the river Irwell.

Population

50,000

Qualifying tenements

1,300

Houses

9,500

Assessed taxes

£9,000

South Shields.—The township of South Shields, the township of Westoe;—containing the town of South Shields and its neighbourhood, which includes the village of Westoe.

Population

18,600

Qualifying tenements

1,150

Houses

2,200

Assessed taxes

£1,600

Tynemouth.—The township of North Shields, township of Chirton, township of Tynemouth, township of Preston, township of Cullercoats;—containing the towns of North Shields and Tynemouth, and their neighbourhood.

Population

25,000

Qualifying tenements

1,150

Houses

3,500

Assessed taxes

£2,800

Wakefield.—The township of Wakefield, part of the township of Alverthorpe, part of the township of Stanley;—containing the town of Wakefield, and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

12,500

Qualifying tenements

800

Houses

2,800

Assessed taxes

£1,730

Walsall.—The borough of Walsall;—containing the town of Walsall with its neighbourhood.

Population

15,000

Qualifying tenements

800

Houses

3,000

Assessed taxes

£1,730

Warrington.—Township of Warrington, township of Latchford, part of township of Thelwall;—containing the town of Warrington and its immediate neighbourhood.

Population

18,000

Qualifying tenements

1,000

Houses

3,400

Assessed taxes

£2,914

Whitehaven.—Township of Whitehaven, part of the township of Preston Quarter;—containing the township of Whitehaven.

Population

15,700

Qualifying tenements

900

Houses

3,000

Assessed taxes

£2,000

Whitby.—Township of Whitby, the township of Ruswarp, the township of Hawsker-cum-Stainsacre;—including the town of Whitby and its neighbourhood, which includes the villages of Hawsker, Ruswarp, and Stainsacre.

Population

10,300

Qualifying tenements

500

Houses

—

Assessed taxes

£2,000

No. IX.

Population, Electors, &c. of the Cities and Burghs of SCOTLAND.

City or Burgh.

Population.

Houses.

Number of Electors.

Houses rated at £10 and upwards.

The cities and burghs sharing together in the return of a member are placed between brackets. The number of persons in whom the elective franchise is vested is here stated.

{ Aberdeen

26484

2187

19

1166

{ Inverbervie

1092

217

15

7

{ Aberbrothock

5817

734

19

136

{ Montrose

10338

1150

19

239

{ Brechin

5906

858

13

64

{ Ayr

7455

962

17

297

{ Irvine

7007

1037

17

105

{ Rothsay

4107

503

17

124

{ Campbeltown

6445

413

16

65

{ Inverary

1137

103

16

27

{ Crail

1854

344

21

11

{ Kilrenny

1494

247

15

—

{ Anstruther, East

1090

191

19

13

{ Anstruther, West

429

65

15

3

{ Pittenweem

1200

219

24

8

{ Dumfries

11052

1436

25

417

{ Sanquhar

1357

268

17

32

{ Annan

4486

808

21

123

{ Lochmaben

2651

591

15

8

{ Kirkcudbright

2595

348

17

62

{ Dysart

6529

959

24

20

{ Kirkaldy

4452

451

28

167

{ Kinghorn

2443

365

21

11

{ Burntisland

2136

260

21

32

Edinburgh

138253

9925

33

9382

{ Elgin

5308

1122

16

127

{ Cullen

1452

341

19

13

{ Banff

3855

708

17

118

{ Inverary

735

164

9

17

{ Kintore

312

79

13

5

{ Forfar

5897

827

19

72

{ Perth

19068

5304

26

561

{ Dundee

30575

2773

21

910

{ Cupar

5892

897

26

131

{ St. Andrews

4899

828

29

160

{ Fortrose

not stated

not stated

15

14

{ Inverness

12264

2240

21

221

{ Nairn

3228

699

17

38

{ Forres

3540

775

17

72

{ Glasgow

147043

33805

32

6357

{ Renfrew

2646

366

19

8

{ Rutherglen

4091

549

18

49

{ Dumbarton

3481

365

15

77

{ Haddington

5255

834

25

71

{ Dunbar

5272

750

20

45

{ North Berwick

1694

237

12

8

{ Lauder

1845

359

17

9

{ Jedburgh

5251

826

25

76

{ Inverkeithing

2512

384

39

18

{ Dunfermline

13681

2106

22

147

{ Queensferry

690

80

21

21

{ Culross

1434

269

19

3

{ Stirling

7113

727

21

261

{ Kirkwall

2212

311

23

33

{ Wick

6713

1078

12

113

{ Dingall

2031

360

15

35

{ Dornoch

630

137

15

4

{ Tain

2861

583

15

27

{ Selkirk

2728

451

33

40

{ Peebles

2701

451

17

60

{ Linlithgow

4692

568

27

53

{ Lanark

7085

797

23

65

{ Wigton

2042

347

18

18

{ Stranrear

2463

417

18

28

{ New Galloway

not stated

not stated

18

2

{ Whithorn

2361

421

18

116

No. X.

Number of Parliaments held in each Reign, from 27th Edward I. A.D. 1299, to the End of the Reign of George IV.; also the respective length of each Reign.

No. of Parliaments.

Length of Reign.

Edward I. from 1299,

8

8 years.

Edward II.

15

20

Edward III.

37

50

Richard II.

26

22

Henry IV.

10

14

Henry V.

11

9

Henry VI.

22

39

Edward IV.

5

22

Richard III.

1

2

Henry VII.

8

24

Henry VIII.

3

38

Edward VI.

2

6

Mary

5

5

Elizabeth

10

45

James I.

4

22

Charles I.

4

24

Charles II.

8

36

James II.

3

4

William III.

6

13

Anne

6

12

George I.

2

13

George II.

6

33

George III.

11

59

George IV.

2

10

From this table it appears that in the 461 years preceding the reign of George III. there were 202 parliaments, whose average duration was 21/2 years; and that in 210 years preceding the reign of Henry VIII. there were 143 parliaments, averaging rather less than 11/2 year each. In the 69 years of the reigns of George III. and IV. there were only thirteen parliaments, averaging five years and one-third each. Hence we learn how greatly the duration of the same parliament has been extended in these latter days, resulting, no doubt, from the better understanding subsisting between the ministers of the Crown and the representatives of the people, which rendered frequent dissolutions unnecessary.

No. XI.

A List of those Places which formerly sent Members to Parliament and now do not.

Alresford.

Dunstable.

Kidderminster.

Pickering.

Aulton.

Dunster.

Kingston-on-Thames.

Raveners.

Axbridge.

Dudley.

Ross.

Bamborough.

Doncaster.

Ledford.

South-Molton.

Basingstoke.

Dedington.

Langport.

Sherborne.

Berkhampstead.

Egremont.

Lidbury.

Spalding.

Blandford.

Exmouth.

Leeds.

Stoke.

Bishops-Stortford.

Ely.

Mere.

Tickhill.

Bradnesham.

Fareham.

Montacute.

Tonbridge.

Bradford.

Farnham.

Manchester.

Teignmouth.

Bromyard.

Fremington.

Melton-Mowbray.

Torrington.

Burford.

Glastonbury.

Medbury.

Wainfleet.

Chelmsford.

Grampound.

Newbury.

Wisbeach.

Conebrig.

Greenwich.

Odyham.

Whitney.

Crediton.

Halifax.

Overton.

Whitby.

Chard.

Highworth.

Poligreen.

Ware.

Chipping-Norton.

Jarvell.

Pershore.

Watchet.

In all sixty-nine boroughs, which sent members to parliament in different reigns, and which are now deprived of that right. Besides these, Mr. Oldfield has given a list of ninety-seven other boroughs which have charters, and most probably sent members at some former period since the reign of Edward I. but which are now disfranchised. From the reign of Edward I. to that of Charles II. boroughs have been created and annihilated, at the caprice of each successive monarch. The following will show at one view, the gradual alterations in the representation of the people.

No. XII.

SHIRES AND UNIVERSITIES.

No. of Members.

Edward I.

and preceding monarchs, 37 counties

74

Henry VIII.

{ shires of Chester and Monmouth

4 }

16

{ 12 Welsh counties, 1 member each

12 }

James I.

the two universities

4

Charles II.

Durham county

5

Anne

30 Scotch counties, with one member each

30

George III.

Irish county members

64

Irish university

1

George IV.

Yorkshire county

2

193

CITIES AND BOROUGHS.

Edward I.

{ and preceding monarchs, created 78 boroughs, with 2 members each, and London with 4 }

160

Edward II.

created 6 boroughs, with 2 members each

12

Edward III.

{ created 9 boroughs, with 2 members each 18 }

22

{ restored 2 boroughs, with 2 members each 4 }

Henry VI.

{ created 5 boroughs, with 2 members each 10 }

14

{ restored 2 boroughs, with 2 members each 4 }

Edward IV.

{ created 3 boroughs, with 2 members each 6 }

8

{ restored 1 borough, with 2 members 2 }

Henry VIII.

{ created 4 boroughs, with 2 members each 8 }

21

{ created 12 Welsh boroughs 1 member each 12 }

{ created 1 borough, with 1 member 1 }

Edward VI.

{ created 14 boroughs, with 2 members each 28 }

48

{ restored 10 boroughs, with 2 members each 20 }

Mary

{ created 7 boroughs, with 2 members each 14 }

21

{ created 3 boroughs, with 1 member each 3 }

{ restored 2 boroughs, with 2 members each 4 }

Elizabeth

{ created 24 boroughs, with 2 members each 48 }

64

{ restored 8 boroughs, with 2 members each 16 }

James I.

{ created 3 boroughs, with 2 members each 6 }

23

{ created 1 borough, with 1 member each 1 }

{ restored 8 boroughs, with 2 members each 16 }

Charles I.

restored 9 boroughs, with 2 members each

18

Charles II.

created 2 boroughs, with 2 members each

4

Anne

added 15 Scots boroughs 1 member each

15

George III.

added 35 Irish cities and boroughs

35

465

RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT PAST HOUSES OF COMMONS.

- Hence chartered boroughs are such public plagues,

- And burghers, men immaculate perhaps

- In all their private functions, once combined,

- Become a loathsome body, only fit

- For dissolution, hurtful to the main.

- —Cowper.

IN the puerile debates on the East Retford bill, sir R. Peel took up a sophism dropped by the late Mr. Canning; namely, that however just and expedient a reform in the representation might be, still he should oppose it, since it would compromise the safety of the monarchy. What an argument to address to the United Kingdom! Is the safety of the Crown and the Aristocracy to be put in competition with the wishes and welfare of twenty-four millions of people; or, if we include the population of the colonies and dependencies of the empire, with one hundred and fifty millions? The kingly office is only a trust for the public benefit, and the Peerage is instituted for a similar purpose: and shall the prerogatives of these be made a pretext for withholding justice and happiness from such an assemblage of human beings? But we deny either the Crown or Peerage would be compromised by parliamentary reform, between which and a government of three orders we cannot discern an inherent incompatibility. Every community must have a head: we prefer a king to any other designation, and between the monarch and the commons an intermediate body may be interposed, without deranging the harmony of the system or erecting a barrier to popular rights. This intermediate body is the Peerage, or Aristocracy, and ought to be a real aristocracy, consisting of the élite of society, not deriving their functions from the accident of birth, but chosen, like the judges, for life. Such an innovation as this might compromise the corruptions of monarchy and aristocracy, they might involve a reduction in the civil list, and in the pensions and unearned salaries of the nobility; and it may be these Sir Robert contemplated; but the loss of them would not be greatly deplored by the people of England, so long as the substance of the regal office and the legitimate functions of an upper chamber were preserved inviolate. It would relieve them at least of the pain of beholding the descendants of statesmen, heroes, and lawyers, dependent on sources of income which true nobility ought to spurn. They inherit name, and fame, and rank, but no bread. A poor lord is a poor thing, and the natural prey of a corrupt or ambitious Minister. What will not a pauper peer, dependent on a paltry sinecure or pension, with a fashionable wife and a crowd of infant nobility about her—very hungry, and what is worse, very capricious and luxurious—do for quarter day?

It may be truly said England has yet to establish a constitution. France and America are the only countries which can answer the challenge—If you have a constitution produce it? An Englishman, if asked, where is the constitution of which you boast? must answer, it exists by a sort of inference from what a half hundred hirelings have written, and in which they all contradict each other, and are the whole of them contradicted by daily practice in every transaction of state. In every part the renovated French constitution, under king Philip, is an improvement on the principles of the English government. We shall select a few points of comparison.

The French charter is announced as the right of the people, not the grant of the Crown. It abolishes the censorship of the press. The dramatic censorship exists in England in great rigour, and the powers of the attorney-general are an indirect censorship—a suspended despotism—which, aided by the stamp-duties, and the law of securities, fetter the freedom of discussion. The sittings of the two chambers are declared public: the debates of our parliament are by law declared secret, and are published only by connivance at the illegality. The French deputies are elected only for five years, ours for seven. A confiscation of goods is abolished;—in England, children may be attainted in blood for the delinquencies of their parents, and punished by confiscation of their father’s property. Peers in France cannot vote till they are twenty-five years of age: in England they vote at twenty-one, and by proxy, without hearing the discussion. Half the members must be resident: in England, one-half the members have no knowledge of the boroughs they represent. The French government, without professing to be of any religion, grants not only equal toleration, but equal provision for the maintenance of every Christian sect: the English government adopts one creed, and subjects to neglect every other. In short, the French constitution is, in all respects, what the English pretends to be, except in the impossible theory of three equal and co-existing branches of the legislature. In France, the commons are triumphant, the peers subordinate, and the king only the premier, or first public minister: in England, a surreptitious branch of the constitution has been predominant—the boroughmongers.

To all complaints against our defective representation, Mr. Canning had but one reply—It works well. Any government is better than no government; and, consequently, they must all work well. It was time, however, for that great Pacific Ocean, the English public, to look about them, and see whether other governments did not work better. While John Bull has been dozing under the political drug, it works well, his more vigilant neighbours in France have laughed him to scorn, and bravely achieved a government that works better. Having compared the principles of the two governments, let us next compare, not theories, charters, and paper-constitutions, but simply the working well; acknowledging, however, imprimis, that in working a people, no government ever worked half so well as that of England.

Who does not remember the incessant goadings in the house of commons to acknowledge the free republics of South America, and the sophistry, concealments, and shuffling to put off the recognition? The French government, before it was a month old, declared its recognition.

We have been chuckling and rejoicing over Mr. Fox’s libel bill for the last forty years. The French have at once determined that all offences of the press shall be subject to the adjudication of a jury.

What nauseating debates have occurred session after session, to induce the government to rescue the black population of our Colonies from a brutal tyranny. The French have already given all the rights and privileges of citizenship to their negroes, and are adopting measures for the effective protection of the African race.

What eloquent and endless declamation there has been on the increasing influence of the Crown, from the increased expenditure, and the augmentation of the Peerage. Within a few days of its first sitting, the French Chamber struck off the roll ninety-three peers of the creation of Charles X. and last year made a bolder step by the abolition of the hereditary right of legislation.

Every session has produced its exposure of jobs, which generate like the polypus, and are quite as indestructible. The Dundas and Bathurst and the South-American missions were the jobs of the Tories, and the Plunket doings those of the Whigs. The French are subjecting their pension-list, their dead weight, and the ecclesiastical and civil salaries to rigid investigation and close curtailment.

Every session produced its scores of motions for economy, finance committees, judicial inquiries, and what not. They all ended in nothing but bills of charges for commissioners, secretaries, office-keepers, and so forth. The most ridiculous, and almost the last farce of the Tories, was the mock trial of the East Retford electors, and the passing laws to indemnify witnesses for their evidence in proof of corruption!

Lastly, observe what the French have done in regard to capital punishments. We have been nibbling for half a century at our savage treason laws: in the session of 1830 an abortive attempt was made to abolish capital punishment for forgery; the French have voted for the abolition of the punishment of death for all political offences.

Instead of a working government, the Borough System has been the laziest institution in the world for any purpose save evil doing—a mere congerie of formalities, parade, and ostentation. The Parliament, for a century, has been little better than a common debating club, where a mob of gentlemen met, during the winter season, to spend their evenings in cracking jokes and spouting nonsense. It has been mere play at shuttlecock between the rival disputants, who, in alternately changing from one side of the house to the other, have amused themselves in reciprocally throwing back their opponents’ arguments, phrases, and opinions: all the time the nation has been looking on the logomachy quite seriously, as if it were real business, instead of a sham fight—harmless pastime for those who had no better employment: but the game is up!

ANALYSIS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ELECTED IN 1830.

Relations of peers

256

Placemen and pensioners

217

Officers in the army

89

Officers in the navy

24

Lawyers

54

East India interests

62

West India interests

35

Bankers

33

Agricultural interests

356

Miscellaneous

51

Many of the members belonged to several classes or interests, and have been enumerated in each, which swells the nominal number of individuals. It is apparent that the vast majority were connected with the Peerage, the Army, Navy, Courts of Law, Public Offices, and Colonies; and, in lieu of representing the People, only represented those interests over which it is the constitutional object of a real House of Commons to exercise a watchful and efficient control.

APPENDIX.

INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY.

IN our chapter on Corporations we might have properly included a short notice of the present state of the Inns of Court. They form incorporated foundations, originally intended for the study of the law and advancement of legal science; and grew out of the violent contests between the clergy and laity respecting the introduction of the civil law into this country, the former being anxious to make it the law of the land, and the latter, with equal pertinacity, insisting on being governed by the municipal or common law. As the clergy had the control of the universities, the professors of the common law were excluded from them, and constrained to establish an university for themselves. This they did by purchasing, at various times, certain houses and lands between the city of Westminster, the place of holding the king’s courts, and the city of London, for advantage of ready access to the one, and plenty of provisions in the other.—Chit. Bl. C. 18. Here they naturally fell into collegiate order—exercises were performed, lectures read, and other immunities of the regular universities assumed. After being established some time, the crown took them under protection; and more effectually to encourage them, Henry III. issued an order, directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, prohibiting law to be taught any where else in the metropolis, except by these bodies. He also formed the members of each inn or lodging house into a corporation, and established rules for their regulation. The societies, feeling their importance, began to exercise the privilege of bestowing rank upon their students of a certain standing, and conferred the degrees of barrister and serjeant, corresponding to those of bachelor and doctor in the universities.

From Dugdale and Stow it appears James I. made a grant by letters patent of the premises of the middle and inner temple to the benchers of both societies, to have and to hold the same mansions, gardens, and appurtenances, &c. to themselves, their heirs and assigns for ever, for lodging, reception, and education of the professors and students of the laws of the realm, yielding and paying to the same king, &c. the sum of £10 a year for each of the temples. That a similar grant for the same purpose was made of Gray’s Inn, by Henry VIII. for a rent of £6 : 13 : 4; that the fee simple of Lincoln’s Inn was conveyed to the benchers of that society, for the same object, in the reign of Elizabeth; that the fee simple of Clements Inn and Lyons Inn is vested in the society of the Inner Temple; that of the New Inn, in the Society of the Middle Temple; that of Barnard’s Inn and Staple’s Inn, in the society of Gray’s Inn; that Thavie’s Inn and Furnival’s Inn belonged to the Society of Lincoln’s Inn. The latter was sold by that society a few years ago. Such is a brief outline of the origin and objects of the inns of court and of chancery. To enter more minutely into the history of these societies would be foreign to our purpose; our object in stating the foregoing facts is to shew that these institutions were founded for the purpose of promoting legal knowledge; that the different estates above enumerated were conferred on the societies for the advancement of that object; that the mode prescribed for carrying it into effect was by giving public instructions in the different inns, and that such instructions were actually given at the period when those estates were granted to the benchers. It is unnecessary to state that the benchers have ever since been in the reception of the profits of these estates, and that no legal instructions have for a long time been given in the inns of court, or any measures adopted to direct the application of those who may feel disposed to study. At the Inner Temple the exercises are compounded for by the payment of money. In the Middle Temple the form is observed, but with no real utility. These inns, with Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn, are the only societies the members whereof are called to the bar. Admission to the inns of chancery, which are Barnard’s Inn, Staple’s Inn, Furnival’s Inn, Lyon’s Inn, Thavies’ Inn, Clement’s Inn, Clifford’s Inn, and New Inn, would now be of no avail in obtaining a call to the bar.

Two reasons may be assigned for the decline of the inns of court as seminaries of legal instruction. First, the more eminent of the profession find it more advantageous to aspire to the receipt of the profitable fees in the courts of law, the possession of rich legal sinecures, and the higher offices of state, than to devote themselves to the teaching the principles of judicial knowledge. The second reason we consider to be that assigned by a writer in the Legal Examiner—namely, the irresponsible character of the benchers, who, not being accountable for the revenues at their disposal, feel no disposition to part with them, nor listen to improvements which might disturb the exercise of their authority. They also possess irresponsible power in conferring the degree of barrister, and may even refuse to admit any person a student in the inns of court, and cannot be compelled to assign reasons for such refusal (King’s Bench, M.T. 1825): thus possessing authority arbitrarily to exclude any individual from the most seductive department of the profession.

From the known character of many of the Benchers, it is a subject of surprise the defective administration of the inns of court has so long escaped notice; it can only have arisen from that esprit de corp which usually renders individuals averse from any proceeding which savours of a betrayal of their own cast; and, if they be of a reforming spirit, induces them to apply to objects foreign or extraneous to their fraternity. In the list of benchers of Lincoln’s Inn we find the distinguished name of Henry Brougham, synonymous with universal hostility to abuses. There is also sir Thomas Denman, the ex-officio prosecutor of malversation and violated trusts by incorporated bodies. There is also the celebrated Jeremy Bentham, who has devoted a long life to the task of legal improvement, not only in this but most other countries. Those eminent individuals, we doubt not, are wholly guiltless of participation in the mal-administration of their brethren; perhaps there are few subjects with which they are so little acquainted. The government of the inns of court, we suspect, like that of the city companies and most corporations, has fallen into the hands of a few intriguers, or of those who have no higher or more lucrative objects of ambition. But this is no justification of the specific abuses of the law establishments. The benchers are self-elected bodies, accountable to no superior, consisting of about one hundred and twenty individuals, in the receipt, it has been calculated, of £60,000 a year, granted to them in trust to promote legal knowledge, yet not one shilling of these revenues do they expend in forwarding that object. This is quite as bad as the Gresham lectures in the city; it is a state of things that ought not to pass uninvestigated: every student, we apprehend, who is entered of the inns of court, is a shareholder in the funds of the society to which he belongs, and may rightfully demand that they shall be administered in the advancement of these ends for which they were originally granted.

Some years ago sir James Scarlett had a project on foot for raising the scholastic and other qualifications of aspirants to the bar. Should this design still be entertained, an improvement in the institutions of the inns of court, and the administration of the revenues, might be rendered auxiliary to the proposed undertaking. If it be true, that out of one thousand and fifty-four barristers there are only twenty capable of filling the situation of puisne judge, it is high time some change was introduced, both for the advantage of the community and legal students. With such a limited number of individuals qualified for judicial appointments, the choice of Ministers is restricted, and the salaries of the judges maintained at a monopoly standard.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

THE revenues of “The College of the Holy and undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth, near Dublin” are kept so masonically secret, that, up to this hour, all is mystery without. Conjectures and statements have been, at different times, made by men supposed to be capable of judging, and who had graduated within the blessed precincts, but they are all vague and uncertain. A general opinion is, that the land revenues are about £60,000 a year, and that the profit on the board and lodging of the fellow commoners and pensioners, fees, fines, and other sources of income, pay so much of the expenses as to leave £30,000 or, as some think, £40,000 surplus. One account has been published, stating that it had in one county alone (Armagh) 60,000 acres, but that a good part was let so low as 6s. per acre. Those old leases are, however, occasionally dropping, and of course increasing the college revenue. It has also very good estates in Donegal and Kerry, estimated some fifteen or twenty years ago at upwards of £15,000 rent. Besides, it possesses many excellent Dublin holdings in ground rents and houses, that are all valuable. It was James I. who gave the Ulster estates, and also a pension of £358 : 15. In your list of composition tithes (page 148) Trin. Col. Dub. is sprinkled here and there, but that is nothing to the actual presentation which it holds as a matter of right, and dispenses at pleasure. A writer, evidently favourable to the college, says that it has nineteen benefices of from £500 to £1000 a year, and that their value is constantly increasing. That was thirty years ago—what must they be worth now?

There are seven senior and eighteen junior fellows. The latter, who are the teachers, have, it is said, £400 (some say £500) a year, with lodging and commons (board); but they make from £800 to £1000, and even above £1800 more by tuition; for all the students, whether intern or extern, must pay for that separately, and they can choose their own teacher, though great efforts were made to deprive them of that right. Some restrictions would, however, be judicious, as I shall hereafter shew. The charges for tuition will be noticed in another place.

The senior fellows have, it is said, £1000 (some say £1200) a year, a church living in some particular cases, and a lucrative post or two, as vice-provost; bursar, librarian, and catechist (here are three); senior proctor; senior dean and auditor, &c. &c.; though these were formerly distinct places. The junior fellows also hold places like the senior, though less valuable, as registrar, censor, junior dean, junior proctor, sub-librarian, professorships, assistant ditto, morning lecturers, preachers, &c. &c.

We now come to the door, for we can get no farther, of the grand arcanum. Those seven senior fellows with the provost form the actual government of the college, and it is believed that none else are let into the mysteries of revenue, and that until a junior gets to be a senior, which he one day devoutly expects, he is not entrusted with the grand secret, which has been kept with a fidelity almost unexampled. The question then is, what is done with the alleged surplus? Here we nonmasons are all left to guesses, and I can only tell you what people think. No one supposes that any of the junior fellows get much of it—indeed, the popular opinion is, they get none; because if they did they would not work so hard as they do at tuition. The common opinion is, that a good part is shared amongst the senior government; and surely, if this be false, it would be very easy for the college to disprove what brings it into, perhaps, unmerited disrepute. While the public are left to mere conjecture, they will inevitably believe in the worst reports.

Let it not be thought by Englishmen, that Trinity College, Dublin, is merely a local Irish subject, with which they have no concern. If “what every one says must be true,” it is the wealthiest university in the world, although it has scarcely 2000 students, while Oxford and Cambridge together have nearly 10,000, and it is the duty of English members to bring the subject under parliamentary investigation. Concealment in one great instance sanctions it in another, and it is this that leads to such abuses and misapplications of the public money. We know how the honest portion of the London press advocated secrecy in the Bank of England, when, a few years ago, a wish was expressed for a yearly exposé similar to the Bank of Paris. Old Trinity, like the church, always appears to be much hurt by the frequent guesses at her wealth; but, until we have an authentic statement, it is natural for the public to presume that its income is enormous, and that a vast portion of it is not applied as intended. Why not set all those conjectures, that it would call malicious, or ill founded—why not set them at rest for ever by a candid statement? The public have a right to such statement, for the college is endowed with the property of the nation, no matter by what name, royal grants or otherwise, it might have been given; and parliament has also lavished large sums in the buildings at different times. While authentic information is unattainable by the public, can they be blamed for believing in the worst reports? Can they be blamed for believing that there is something which will not bear the light? The college threatens actions—that is the way it answers charges. About four years ago the Freeman’s Journal ventured on some animadversions, but it was silenced by a threat of law proceedings. Now this never did any thing for a public establishment but to excite and confirm suspicion, hatred, and disgust, nor will it ever make people believe in the purity of the college. What though the directors are all in holy orders, they are but men, and therefore peccable. The charter of Charles I. granted in lieu of Elizabeth’s, requires that the bursar give in, on the 20th November in each year, an accurate account of all receipts and disbursements, and copy same into a book. Now that book is kept—else the charter is void. “Show, show, show” (Macbeth). That would be the proper way to answer alleged libels.

Old Trinity is, like the church, so very tenacious of change in technicals, that it is still “near” Dublin, though it has been above a century in it, and is now more in the centre of our city than Ludgate-hill is in London. This very absurdity would form cogent grounds for a new and improved charter for Trinity College in Dublin, there being now no such thing as Trinity College near Dublin. There is something more than humour in this remark, and I wish it to be taken very seriously.

Yet, still, like the church, Old Trinity permits changes beneficial to revenue. In 1793 Catholics were admitted as students in this orthodox establishment, which assuredly was a great innovation on its unsullied Protestant charter. No matter for that—it materially served the fiscal department, for the students, who had been fluctuating between 5 and 700, rose in a few years to 1000, and are now nearly 2000. But again—there were then fifteen junior fellows or teachers for 500, and now there are but three additional for three times the number. What prodigious spirit and liberality! Their labours are indeed so great, that even an archbishop of Dublin, in defending the University from the charge of “silent sister,” did not hesitate to declare them excessive. His grace clearly showed that they left the teachers no leisure for authorship, but it did not occur to him at the time, that he was making a heavy charge against the college itself, which the worthy prelate otherwise treats with all the tenderness due to a high-church-loving establishment. The charter sets no limit to the number of junior fellows, and Charles began with nine, “in the name of more,” when there were not, perhaps, 100 students.

The following are some extracts of yearly salaries and charges from the charter:—

Provost, £100; senior fellow, £9. 13. 4.; junior fellow, £3; catechist, £13. 6. 8.; sub-dean, £4; junior fellow, £2; lecturer, £4; bursar, £10; librarian, £3. With lodging and commons.

Scholars.—Natives, £3, not natives 10s. With lodging and commons.

The junior fellows or teachers not to charge more for tuition than £4 for a fellow commoner, £2 for a pensioner, and 20s. for a sizer.

College to be charged no more than 4s. 41/2d. a week for the commons of a fellow, and 1s. 91/2d. for a scholar. This was fixed by George II., who also raised the salary of the librarian to £60, to which office he attached great importance and responsibility; but he left all other salaries and charges as in the charter. No official mention of sub-librarian appears any where.

Having given these very necessary extracts, we must now speak particularly of scholars and sizers. Scholars are deserving students, not lower than junior sophister, who stand an examination in logic, and though the post cannot be held beyond the five years, and the advantages are very trifling, it is eagerly sought. What must we then think of Old Trinity’s liberality, when the number is still but 70, as fixed by Charles? Yes, this college, which has made such numerous bye-laws and changes for renewal and other purposes, here sticks religiously to the charter! Do we wish them to break it? No, but we wish no partial observances. Let it be either “the whole charter, and nothing but the charter,” or let the deviations be generally liberal. The provost and senior fellows know full well, that leave would be readily granted to increase the scholars, and why not here apply to government? But we have more to say about the scholars, and shall leave them for the present, in order to notice the sizers.

The free students or sizers were directed, by the statutes of Charles, to be used as servants, to wait at table, feed on the fragments, and do menial offices in the college. Of the baseness, the meanness, and the cruelty of this, we cannot form a just estimation without recollecting that they were Protestants—were they Papists, the thing might find a justification in the persecuting spirit of the times, but we have seen that none were admitted till 1793. Can we possibly imagine any mode of giving charity more revolting or detestable? Is it not something like inhumanly flinging our alms in the face of the humble mendicant? A show is made of fostering indigent talent, while it is wounded and repressed by the bitterest mortification that can be well conceived. This was Charles’s refined notion of rearing up spirited Protestants, who were afterwards to declaim against the slavish and degrading institutions of popery. Yet, on a vacancy occurring, it is common to have 150 candidates, who must already know more Greek and Latin than is necessary for a filius nobilis to obtain a degree at Oxford. The best answerer in a most severe examination is admitted; and he, though a mere boy, has often sufficient lore to qualify, as times go, for a classical professor. It is but justice, however, to say that, about the beginning of the present century, the college relaxed a great deal of its authorised severity towards those interesting objects, from whose ranks have sprung some of the finest geniuses that could adorn any country. Yet the number is still but thirty, as originally fixed by Charles! O the charter—how beautifully inviolable it appears in some cases! So, then, the scholars must never exceed seventy, nor the sizers thirty, no matter how the college revenues augment!

Come we now to some most important considerations. No one will maintain that the salaries of Charles, though doubtless liberal enough at the time, would answer for the present day. Accordingly, we find, on the authority of T. Swift, of whom we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, that thirty-seven years ago the provost had £3000, the bursar £2000, and the junior fellows £90. Look now to preceding page, and it will be seen that the first and last exhibit an increase of exactly thirty fold, and the bursar two hundred fold, over the charter salaries. And if it be true that the junior fellows have now £400, that is an increase of one hundred and thirty-three fold. Now, how were these augmentations made? Through bye-laws, no doubt; but why not keep cæteris paribus in view. Why keep the scholars to the now miserable allowances of Charles? Answer that. Tell us why, at only taking thirty fold as a standard, they are not allowed £90 a-year; for they are now, perhaps, all natives? Tell us whether 1s. 9d. a week is not still, in some cases, the calculation for their commons; and tell us, is there no more than 4s. 41/2d. for that of a fellow?

Look again to former page for tuition. The charge for a pensioner now is, entrance (of which there is no mention in the charter) £14 : 5 : 0, and £6 : 8 : 0 for first half year, and it goes on rising according to class. I have not ascertained, precisely, the charges for a fellow commoner, but I find that they are considerably higher. So much for the sacred charter and tuition. I do not know what is now allowed for the sizers, but, as there are not two a-piece for the teachers, it is of no consequence.

All the fellows, “big and little,” are, with the exception of three, obliged to be priested, in order to fill up the college benefices as they become vacant. We are now approaching some of the university mysteries. No institution has succeeded so well in getting favourable reports in books as this. Look into any of the most independent English works that mention Trinity College, Dublin, and you would suppose it faultless as any thing human could be expected; but the truth is, that they have all been deceived for want of authentic information. The only attempt worth notice, at a fearless exposé, of which I have heard, was by a gentleman named Theophilus Swift, in a pamphlet published 1794, which is now out of print and very scarce. He brings numerous grave charges against the entire college system, and particularly as regarding not only education, but competency for tuition. Those I shall pass, but he makes one accusation of great importance,—that mulcts and fines were vexatiously multiplied on the pupils, so as to amount to no less than £8000 a-year, “which was all swept into the fobs of the fellows.” For this, and, particularly observe, for this only, he was served with notice of an action for “libel.” Swift called for a fair account of receipts and disbursements, and this is the way that he is answered! He also states that a living worth £1000 a-year was refused by eight junior fellows, and was only accepted by the ninth in rotation, because he wished a quiet life. See what an answer this is to the authentic accounts we read, of a senior fellowship being worth “perhaps” £1000 a-year, and a junior “perhaps” £700 or £800 a-year, when £1000 was actually spurned at by a junior near forty years ago. To us, in Dublin, such accounts are quite mawkish—they appear, at best, like the miracle of the five loaves and fishes, when we see senior fellows keeping splendid town mansions, beautiful country seats, carriages, livery servants, and living altogether at a rate immeasurably above our notions of a thousand a-year. The fact is that we know nothing of fellowship incomes, for the whole machinery is managed with admirable dexterity. Thus the present (now the late) provost, Kyle, has accepted the bishopric of Cork, estimated at £6000 a-year, and, of course, that would seem to say that the provostship was not worth so much. We have seen what Swift says of the salary, and there is, besides, a princely mansion, with all the other nameless &c.’s, and the place is at this day so valuable, that some carry their estimates as high as £8,000 or £10,000 a-year. Why, then, accept one of only a-third the amount? In explaining this, it is necessary to observe that the patronage of the Cork see is said to be worth from £10,000 to £30,000 a-year,—no contemptible source for a family provision; but suppose it had no patronage, the new bishop does not calculate on remaining there always. There is, you know, such a thing as translation—you, Mr. Editor, as a learned man, understand that. So, if a senior fellow is vacated to accept a living of £1000 a-year, it is no proof that his fellowship was not worth above treble. But these apparent phenomena help to silence the vulgar inquirer, who understandeth not translation, collation, or the beauties of Christian-like expectancy.

We can now plainly see that Trinity College, Dublin, is, in essence and substance, a church establishment, and some light on its political character may be interesting. The suppression of the celebrated Historical Society, that produced so many great men, is well known, and I shall only observe that, about sixteen or eighteen years ago, Locke on Government was expelled to make room for Butler’s Analogy of revealed Religion. You know the two works, Mr. Editor, and you can judge of the spirit that actuates the only university in a country with eight millions of inhabitants.

No Catholic can remain in college after he have finished his course, as he cannot be a scholar, nor be admitted to a higher degree than Bachelor of Arts.

None but the provost, fellows, and scholars, have a vote for the parliamentary representative.

From all these considerations, the following are among some improvements that naturally suggest themselves:—

1. That the real yearly revenue of the college, in lands and otherwise, and from fines, entrance, or other fees, board and lodging of fellow commoners and pensioners, tuitions, &c. and the total expenditure, say for ten years last past, be published. This is necessary, to inspire confidence and respect; for no one can conceive why there should be any secrecy in the pecuniary concerns of a NATIONAL establishment, assuredly for the advancement of learning.

2. That, if any surplus appear over and above a reasonable fund for contingencies of building or repairing, it should, in the first instance, be applied to giving the scholars the increased allowances to which they are as fairly entitled as the provost and fellows.

3. That, after adjusting the rights of the scholars, any further surplus should be applied to extending the sizers to one hundred—a number which would still be by no means proportioned to other augmentations. The scholars, too, should be increased, but not until after the sizers were one hundred. And a charge, now exacted from the sizers for lodging, not mentioned in the charter, should be abolished.

4. That the number of junior fellows should be regulated by that of the students, which would be very easy; for if they decreased, a vacant junior fellowship need not be filled up. None of them to have less than a certain number of pupils, say fifty, and while that remained uncompleted, no new student should be allowed to choose his teacher. Such a regulation would be found most equitable and serviceable.

5. That the junior, or, at least, the senior sophisters have the right of voting for a parliamentary representative for the college.

6. That Catholics should be eligible to scholarships. For fellowships, the church being the fountain of college promotion, I do not think they could or would expect a participation, as the constitution of the establishment should be entirely changed to allow their admission: but to scholarships there cannot be any reasonable objection.

I now tell the college that petulant or dogmatical contradictions, or actions at law, will avail nothing, while the whole revenue and disbursement are unknown to the public. A new charter and statutes for Trinity College IN Dublin, should certainly be recommended to parliament. We shall, no doubt, hear a great deal of fudge about the sacredness of charters, but that is mere fustian, with the precedent of Charles before us, who did nothing less than abrogate the original of Elizabeth—with the example of George II., who altered as much as he thought proper of Charles’s; and, finally, with the admission of Catholics by the act of an Irish parliament, and which was rather aided than opposed by the college, as could be easily demonstrated. An improved charter would ultimately serve the college itself, by making it a popular and respected establishment, instead of being, as it now is, an object of suspicion, monopoly, and unfavourable report, and one of which the public are ready to believe the very worst rumours.

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION.

RETURN of the population, according to the census of 1821 and 1831, of all towns or cities in England, exceeding a population of ten thousand, to which it is not intended by the Reform Bill to give representatives.

City or Town.

Population in 1821.

Population in 1831.

LANCASHIRE:

Toxteth Park

12,829

24,067

Spotland

13,453

15,325

MIDDLESEX:

Chelsea

26,860

32,371

Kensington

14,428

20,902

STAFFORDSHIRE:

Kingswinford

11,022

15,156

Tipton

11,546

14,951

YORKSHIRE:

Saddleworth

13,902

15,986

An Account of the Amount actually Expended under each Head of Service in the years 1829 and 1830, and an Estimate for the Year 1831.

Heads of Service.

The Amount Actually expended in

The Estimated Expenditure in the Year 1831.

Savings on Grants as stated in the Finance Accounts for the Years ended Jan. 5, 1829 and 1831. pages 162 and 154. as granted, and parts of the Ways and Means for 1829 and 1831.

The probable Amount of Grants Unexpended on the 5th Jan. 1832.

Total Amount which might have been Expended in 1829, 1830, & 1831.

1829

1830

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

For Army

7,709,372

6

9

6,991,163

7

41/4

7,404,416

0

0

126,475

5

01/2

1,745,087

0

13/4

23,979,513

19

31/2

For Navy

5,902,339

1

10

5,399,605

17

5

5,675,787

0

0

1,619,622

18

5

18,407,354

17

4

For Ordnance

1,569,150

0

0

1,613,908

0

0

1,362,444

0

0

640,817

0

0

5,186,319

0

0

For Miscellaneous

2,410,105

7

1

1,891,608

13

4 }

2,307,316

0

0

97,014

9

2 }

1,589,526

3

71/2 }

8,455,986

17

21/2

For Services formerly paid out of the Civil List

160,415

3

113/4 }

For Interest on Exchequer Bills }

720,873

0

2

29,126

19

10 }

2,142,252

5

10

17,590,968

15

6

16,687,574

2

3

16,652,963

0

0

For Interest on Exchequer Bills not voted }

600,000

0

0

792,252

5

10

Services not voted

75,555

5

3

58,500

0

0

131,055

6

3

18,458,774

6

7

16,746,074

2

3

17,252,963

0

0

223,489

14

21/2

5,624,180

1

101/4

58,305,481

4

103/4

SUMS EXPENDED UNDER THE HEAD OF CIVIL CONTINGENCIES IN 1831.

The amount expended for furniture, ironmongery, &c. for Whitehall Chapel, apartments of the officers of the guards, and for the Tower, in the three quarters ended June 30, 1831

£336

The amount expended for robes, collars, badges, &c. for knights of the several orders, in the same period

2578

The amount expended for repairing the King’s crown, maces, badge, &c., gold and silver sticks, officers attending proclamation of His Majesty’s accession, in the same period

511

The amount expended for plate supplied to Lord Melbourne, upon his appointment as secretary of state, in the quarter ended 30th June 1831

488

The commission for inquiring into the state of His Majesty’s settlements, the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon and Mauritius

14830

The commission for inquiring into fees in the courts of justice; on account of remuneration and expenses

3662

The commission for inquiring into the law of real property; on account of expenses

1044

The commission for inquiring into the practice, &c. of the ecclesiastical courts

1639

The commission for carrying into effect the convention signed at London on the 29th September 1827, between His Majesty and the United States of America, stipulating the reference to the arbitration of a friendly sovereign, of the disputed points of boundary under the 5th article of the Treaty of Ghent

3000

The commission for carrying into effect certain stipulations relative to the demarcation of the boundaries of the new state of Greece, agreed upon between the plenipotentiaries of the allied powers, parties to the treaty signed at London on the 6th July 1827

962

The amount paid on account of R. Lander’s late expedition of discovery of Africa

853

The amount paid for relief of certain distressed Spanish subjects residing in this country, wholly without the means of subsistence, who had been employed with the British army, or under British authorities in Spain, or who had otherwise rendered service to our military operations in that country

12420

Expense of creating Admiral sir James Saumarez a baron of the United Kingdom, in reward for public services

556

T. Wyon, esq. chief engraver of His Majesty’s Mint, for engraving great and other seals for the courts of Exchequer, &c., and for silver medals for native chiefs on the River Gambia

1428

The amount issued to C. Babbage, to enable him to proceed in constructing a machine for the calculation of various tables

£2000

The amount issued to defray the expenses incurred in publishing the natural history of the late expedition to Behring’s Straits

236

The amount issued to J. Richards, for salary to himself and clerk, and for travelling and other contingent expenses of his mission of survey in North America

1600

The amount issued to pay the fees on the nomination of certain officers to be Honorary Knights Commanders and Companions of the Order of the Bath

210

The amount issued to pay the fees on the installation of his serene Highness Augustus William Maximilian Frederick Lewis, reigning Duke of Brunswick, Knight Companion of the most noble Order of the Garter

439

The amount issued to pay the fees on the nomination of Count Munster, to be a Knight Grand Cross of the most honourable Order of the Bath

330

The amount issued to pay the fees on the nomination of Count Munster, for the maintenance and care of two incurable lunatics, for three years to 5th April 1831

300

The amount issued to pay the fees on the nomination of Count Munster, in removing the records belonging to the court of common pleas, from Westminster Hall to the Old Mews, Charing-cross

849

The amount issued to the minister and churchwarden of St. James’s, in the island of Nevis, towards erection of a church there

500

The amount issued to Dr. J. Bowring, in reimbursement of the expenses incurred by him and in remuneration for his services in reporting upon the public accounts of France

908

The amount issued to T. Telford, to defray expenses already incurred in his survey for supplying the metropolis with pure water, and to enable him to proceed with the same

1000

The amount issued to defray the expenses incurred on account of, and for services connected with the Cholera Morbus

1934

The amount issued to defray the expenses incurred in England and Scotland, in procuring information relative to the boundaries of different cities and boroughs

6623

The amount issued to T. Marshall, to enable him to complete a series of statistical tables of the resources of the British empire

500

The amount issued to pay rewards offered by His Majesty’s proclamation of the 23d November 1830, for the discovery, &c. of the offenders in the districts at that time in a disturbed state, and to discharge expenses connected therewith

32000

His excellency the Marquess of Anglesey, the usual equipage money allowed the lord lieutenant on his arrival in Ireland

2769

Right honourable lord Plunket, lord chancellor of Ireland, the like on his appointment

923

N. B. We have only extracted a few of the items; the total expenditure under the head of civil contingences in 1831, was £174,657.

An Account of the Sum paid in 1829, for Half Pay and Retired Superannuated Allowances; distinguishing the amount under separate Heads and Departments.

ARMY.

Army pay of general officers

140,362

12

6

Retired full pay, half pay, and military allowances

866,431

12

7

Militia adjutants and serjeant majors

11,202

17

6

Local militia adjutants

17,205

14

0

Out-pensioners of Chelsea and Kilmainham hospitals

1,328,797

7

1

In-pensioners of Chelsea and Kilmainham hospitals

40,215

0

9

Widows’ pensions

151,226

5

9

Compassionate list

37,592

5

0

Royal bounties

34,561

0

9

Pensions for wounds

119,167

17

7

Foreign half-pay

79,067

13

8

Foreign pensions, including allowances to widows and children of deceased foreign officers

18,712

10

0

Superannuation allowances

48,462

19

0

Commissariat

46,545

5

9

Royal military asylum

345

13

9

2,939,896

15

8

NAVY.

HALF-PAY:

To flag-officers, captains, commanders, lieutenants, pursers, masters, and surgeons

824,504

6

4

To royal marine officers

51,113

2

10

SUPERANNUATIONS, PENSIONS, AND ALLOWANCES:

To officers, &c. in the military line of service

127,174

16

5

To commissioners, secretaries, clerks, &c. formerly employed in the civil departments of the navy

130,518

7

11

Victualling department

33,331

12

6

Bounty to chaplains

1,372

10

0

Allowances to widows and orphans on the compassionate list

12,808

0

0

Widows’ charity

148,327

0

0

Greenwich hospital, out-pensioners

250,000

0

0

1,579,149

16

0

ORDNANCE.

MILITARY:

Superannuated and half-pay officers

£55,118

0

0

Retired as general officers

13,039

0

0

Allowances for good services

5,099

0

0

Pensions in remuneration for inventions and improvements in artillery service

1,200

0

0

Superannuated and disabled men

189,004

0

0

Pensions to wounded officers

7,393

0

0

Pensions to widows and children

22,910

0

0

Retired officers of the late Irish artillery and engineers, and pensions to widows

8,590

0

0

CIVIL:

Superannuated and half-pay to civil officers, artificers, and labourers; retired pay and pensions to civil officers, in consequence of reduction and ill-health

36,838

0

0

Pensions to widows

4,666

0

0

Superannuated and half-pay to Irish civil officers and artificers and labourers; and pensions to widows

4,429

0

0

Barrack department

17,340

0

0

365,626

0

0

4,884,672

11

8

To which add the Civil Departments of the government, including pensions, superannuations, and allowances in the treasury, tax-office, customs, excise, stamps, police, &c.

478,967

16

3

Grand Total, military, naval, and civil

£5,367,640

7

11

DEAD WEIGHT.

Year 1822

£5,289,087

19

10

—— 1823

5,311,248

2

4

—— 1824

5,317,445

3

7

—— 1825

5,302,499

18

0

—— 1826

5,376,674

2

1

—— 1827

5,455,990

19

4

—— 1828

5,362,670

16

1

DIVIDENDS PAYABLE ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.

An Account of the Total Number of Persons to whom a Half-Year’s Dividend on Three per Cent. Consols became due on 5th January last; specifying the Number respectively of those whose Dividend for the Half-Year did not exceed £5, £10, £50, £100, £200, £300, £500, £1000, £2000, and the Number of those whose Dividend exceeded £2000;—a like Account of Dividends on Three per Cent. Reduced, payable on 10th October last;—a like Account of the Dividends on Three and a Half per Cents, payable on 10th October last;—a like Account of Dividends on Four per Cents, payable on 10th October last;—a like Account of the Dividends on Long Annuities, payable on 10th October last;—a like Account of the Dividends on New Four per Cents, payable on 5th January last;—and, a like Account of the Dividends on Three per Cent. Annuities, Anno 1726, payable on 5th January last.—Vide page 361.

Not exceeding £5.

Not exceeding £10.

Not exceeding £50.

Not exceeding £100.

Not exceeding £200.

Not exceeding £300.

Not exceeding £500.

Not exceeding £1,000.

Not exceeding £2,000.

Exceeding £2000.

TOTAL.

£3 per cent. Consolidated

26,596

12,779

30,651

9,326

6,163

2,192

1,421

820

239

82

90,269

£3 per cent. Reduced

10,078

4,653

11,460

3,491

2,110

775

455

222

85

32

33,361

£3. 10 per cent. Reduced

6,933

4,381

10,365

2,978

1,613

428

291

124

39

15

27,167

£3. 10 per cent. 1818

222

186

489

192

155

53

40

32

7

7

1,383

£4 per cent. Annuities, 1826

1,269

735

1,486

430

266

80

71

29

8

5

4,379

Long Annuities

9,077

4,008

9,210

1,985

1,017

339

209

95

20

2

25,962

New £4 per cent. Annuities

29,307

15,403

33,451

7,874

3,857

1,037

589

233

52

18

91,821

£3 per cent. Annuities, 1726

127

82

195

40

28

8

1

Nil.

Nil.

Nil.

481

Totals

83,609

42,227

97,307

26,316

15,209

4,912

3,077

1,555

450

161

274,823

Bank of England, 15th Feb. 1830.

WILLIAM SMEE, Deputy Accountant.

COLONIAL STATISTICS.

RETURN from each COLONY or FOREIGN POSSESSION of the BRITISH CROWN; stating the Number of the POPULATION, distinguishing White from Coloured, and Free from Slaves; also, the Value of EXPORTS and IMPORTS into each of those Colonies, for each of the past Three Years.

N.B.—Those with a * affixed have a Legislative Assembly; those without are governed by the Orders of the King in Council.

COLONIES.

POPULATION 1829, OR LATEST CENSUS.

Trade with Great Britain.

Imports into the United Kingdom. Official Value.

Exports from the United Kingdom, Official Value.

Number and Tonnage of Vessels to and from the United Kingdom and the Colonies.

Inwards.

Outwards.

NORTH AMERICA.

Total.

Ships

Tons.

Ships

Tons.

*Lower Canada

423,630

}

569,451

1,117,421

778

227,909

760

221,694

*Upper Canada

188,558

}

*New Brunswick

72,932

213,842

274,922

562

155,249

460

133,469

*Nova Scotia }

142,548

}

61,701

297,966

121

30,146

126

31,738

*Cape Breton }

}

Prince Edward’s Island

23,473

}

Newfoundland

60,088

243,628

373,817

148

17,820

306

31,246

911,229

Totals

911,229

1,088,622

2,064,126

1,609

431,124

1,652

418,147

WEST INDIES.

Whites.

Free Coloured.

Slaves.

*Antigua

1,980

3,895

29,839

35,714

285,500

146,657

46

9,781

43

9,367

*Barbadoes

14,959

5,146

81,902

102,007

489,214

369,828

65

17,190

82

20,887

*Dominica

840

3,606

15,392

19,838

141,911

27,478

12

3,011

12

2,921

*Grenada

801

3,786

24,145

28,732

359,813

93,015

41

12,349

37

11,031

*Jamaica

No census taken.

322,421

322,421

3,741,179

2,761,483

286

85,710

276

82,558

*Monserrat

330

814

6,262

7,406

40,958

8,302

5

1,253

4

944

*Nevis

700

2,000

9,259

11,959

78,278

25,223

8

1,892

8

1,996

*St. Kitts

1,612

3,000

19,310

23,922

192,280

97,234

24

6,224

26

6,804

St. Lucia

972

3,718

13,661

18,351

157,533

51,505

22

5,290

19

4,209

*St. Vincent

1,301

2,824

23,589

27,714

414,548

99,891

53

14,379

42

12,084

*Tobago

322

1,164

12,556

14,042

158,385

51,368

26

6,594

29

6,913

*Tortola

477

1,296

5,399

7,172

33,243

5,666

5

1,317

3

606

*Anguilla

365

327

2,388

3,080

Trinidad

4,201

15,956

24,006

44,163

694,001

361,077

94

22,224

82

20,474

*Bahamas

4,240

2,991

9,268

16,499

17,915

51,524

7

1,360

7

1,338

*Bermudas

3,905

738

4,608

9,251

4,901

24,817

3

620

9

2,256

Demerara & Essequibo

3,006

6,360

69,467

78,833

1,762,409

502,236

190

55,250

183

53,687

Berbice

552

1,151

21,319

23,022

325,051

51,587

29

7,710

23

6,070

Honduras

250

2,266

2,127

4,643

190,795

792,278

42

11,184

33

8,847

Totals

798,769

9,087,914

5,521,169

958

263,338

918

252,992

Gibraltar

17,024

nil.

nil.

17,024

34,535

1,117,615

16

1,795

93

10,426

Malta }

104,489 }

119,969

20,784

505,359

11

2,034

46

7,906

Gozo }

15,480 }

Cape of Good Hope

55,675

37,852

35,509

129,036

238,133

383,427

36

8,069

35

7,705

Sierra Leone and

87

15,123

15,210 }

258,570

511,779

103

27,912

116

31,909

Gambia

24

2,192

2,216 }

Ceylon

6,414

906,389

20,464

933,267

202,668

46,496

4

1,309

9

3,048

Mauritius

8,844

15,851

76,774

101,469

451,998

280,530

41

12,824

27

6,391

New South Wales

20,930

15,668

36,598

92,528

250,620 }

30

8,970

81

28,719

Van Dieman’s Land

9,421 {

Aborigines not ascertained

} Convicts.

17,905

33,191

58,913 }

} 8,484

} Convicts.

Swan River

850

850

37,210 }

General Totals

2,229,725

829,665

3,083,542

11,508,943

10,777,244

2,808

757,375

2,977

767,243

White and Free.

Slaves, exclusive of Convicts.

Total Population.

Imports.

Exports.

Ships

Tons.

Ships

Tons.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

“There must be a period and an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere? For where is Bohun? Where’s Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet?”

—Speech of Lord Chief Justice Crewe, 1662.

WE have taken some pains to view the House of Lords under its various aspects. It presents itself in the way of the Nation’s wish; and it is natural that the Nation should seek to understand the character of the obstacle which impedes its progress. We have looked into the history of the Peerage, and what is the result? Who are they that, generally speaking, have been made peers—and why? Is a peerage the reward of virtue, of talent, of disinterestedness, of grand patriotic efforts, of a long course of noble doings? No one who has looked with any care to the family annals of the British peers will venture to say that, even in the selection of a virtuous man for a peer, his virtue has been the cause of his ennoblement; or if a man of talent, that he has been chosen because his talent has been patriotically directed. No—the peerage has been one of the means employed for several ages to carry on the great JOB of government. If a patriot was troublesome, he was bought off by a peerage; if a powerful individual was importunate, he was quieted by a peerage; if votes were in demand, the possessor or manager was paid by a peerage; if a minister’s place was desired, he vacated it for a peerage. The lawyer, who proved the ablest instrument of government, was rewarded by a peerage. In short, the honour of the peerage has mostly been the Treasury of Corruption.

If the House of Lords, by the natural progression of things, is hastening to an euthanasia because of its want of correspondence and sympathy with public opinion, what is so well calculated to postpone that inevitable hour, as the adoption of that for the want of which they must wither and decay? A large and copious addition of popular peers would revivify the antique and mouldering mass, and cause it to rise up with much of the ardour and beauty of a veritable rejuvenescence. Unless this plan be acceded to, the days of the peerage, as at present constituted, are numbered; and yet it is against this very measure that the greatest number of prejudices are arrayed.

The peers are jealous of NEW MEN. What are they themselves? Take even the oldest of them, they are but of a few centuries; and the majority are the merest novi homines—mushrooms, whom a shower of wealth, or an accidental fall of borough rottenness, has caused to spring from the earth within the last few years. The peerage of England is the most modern in Europe: it is a contemptible upstart, compared with that either of Germany or of France. Where are the true ancestors of Englishmen, the men of Saxon blood? where even the descendants of the butchers and bakers that came over with the Norman Conqueror? Not all the lies of all the heralds can give us a creation six hundred years old; and such as go even two hundred years back are very thinly scattered indeed. Some of the most ancient blood of England is represented by men of private station, or by baronets, whose ancestors did not happen to receive the king’s summons to parliament in former reigns, and whose descendants, if they were to receive it now, would carry into the House of Peers all that depends “upon Norman blood, or whatever else it is they are so proud of.” But the day is gone past when a legislator is to be chosen on such grounds.

It would be a curious phenomenon, if the obstacle which the peers have thrown in the way of the people’s measure, should lead to an immediate change in their own body. It was a reform in the Commons that was demanded; we may come to see that a virtual reform in the House of Lords is a necessary preliminary. The House of Commons has confessed its corruption: are the Lords immaculate? They debate as if their House stood upon the foundations of the earth, and as if angels guarded its keystone. It would seem they deemed it the very sun of our political constellation: they are mistaken—it is but a lamp, and may want trimming—may be worn out, and renewed—may have grown useless, and be removed: a more cynical illustrator of its nature might even term it a will-o’-the-wisp, which, when the bog of corruption in the other House comes to be dried up by Reform, may die out of itself.

What then are our conclusions? They are these—

I. The history of the origin and progress of the House of Peers indicates that it was calculated for another order of things; and that it is only by its having been used as an instrument in the hands of ministers and their masters, that it has been made tolerable, under the increased wealth and intelligence of the people.

II. The House of Peers has maintained its existence by usurping an influence over the representation of the people, which it has turned to its sole advantage.

III. The history of the peerage is a series of JOBS. It is a coinage; and represents place, pension, commission, civil employment, government contract—in one word, public money. The actual peerage is chiefly an efflorescence of taxation.

IV. Whenever the minister has wanted votes, he has created peers; whenever he has wished to get quit of votes, he has created peers. A peerage is the grave of the patriot—the throne of the placeman.

V. The antiquity of the families of the existing peerage is a farce; the Herald’s College and the Alienation Office are the managers of this noble melodrama. When a line becomes extinct, by some trick of marriage, or by some interpretation of a patent, a trap-door is struck, and out comes a representative of the Mortimers or the Mowbrays. To such an extent is this carried, that the same family name is changed almost every other year in the peerage; and some peers do not know their own name. For instance, lord Oriel wished to vote against the Reform Bill; his real name is Foster—he signed his proxy Ferrard, he ought to have written something else. The proxy was useless—there was one vote less against the people.

VI. The most numerous and the most active of the existing peers are the creations of the long reign of George the Third: they may be considered as a body of unconscious conspirators, bound together by the minister, for the secret purpose of swelling the national debt. With the exception of the military and naval chiefs, they are titled contractors for a loan, who have received their per centage in peerage.

VII. When the personal characteristics of the descendants of this motley society of born legislators are looked to—this assemblage of “accidents of an accident,”—we are not led to believe that station and fortune have redeemed them from the stain of their original creation, but that, on the contrary, it would be difficult to select from any class the same number of men less competent to create laws or propagate legislation.

If there be any truth in these conclusions—and we have come to them not by rhetoric, but rather by arithmetic—can any thing be more absurd, more drivelling, than the affected hesitation which has been shown in creating at once a due number of King and People’s Peers,—a class which, when the object of their ennoblement is considered, and the character of the parties who instal them in their elevated niche, may be assuredly maintained as the most honourable and distinguished division of the House to which they will belong? We have proved, in every possible way, that the peers as a body may derive honour from such a creation, but can lose none. Is not all the world convinced, that this is a course which may save the House, not only from contempt, but destruction; and that though the people may by it gain the immediate passing of “the Bill,” the Lords will gain much more—they will snatch their political existence out of the flames of discord and civil war.—Abridged from the Spectator newspaper.

BOROUGH LORDS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVES.

- Should there be found in some not distant year—

- [Oh, how I wish to be noPROPHEThere!]

- Amongst our British Lords should there be found

- Some great in pow’r, in principles unsound,

- Who look on Freedom with an evil eye,

- In whom the springs of loyalty are dry,

- Who wish to soar on wild Ambition’s wings,

- Who hate the Commons, and who love not Kings—

- Who would divide the people and the Throne,

- To set up separate interests their own;—

- Should there be found such men in after-times,

- May HEAVEN, in mercy to our grievous crimes,

- Allot some milder vengeance,—nor to them,

- And to their rage this wretched land condemn.

- —CHURCHILL.

The Names printed with R, were in favour of the Bill in 1831; those with A. against it.

Names of Patrons.

Places.

Members returned.

Anglesey Marquis, R.

Milborne Port

Mr. S. G. Byng

Aylesbury, Marquis, A.

Marlborough

Mr. W. J. Bankes

Aylesbury, Marquis, A.

Marlborough

Mr. T. Estcourt

Great Bedwin

Mr. J. J. Buxton

Sir J. Nichol

Bath, Marquis, A.

Weobley

Lord E. Thynne

Lord H. Thynne

Bandon, Earl

Bandonbridge

Lord Bernard

Bathurst, Lord, A.

Cirencester

Lord Apsley

Beaufort, D. A.

Monmouth

Marquis of Worcester

Bedford, D. R.

Tavistock

Mr. J. Hawkins

Lord J. Russell

Balcarras, E. A.

Wigan

——

Mr. J. H. Kearsley

Beverley, E. A.

Beeralston

Mr. D. Lyon

Lord Lovaine

Bristol, M. A.

Bury St. Edmund’s

Earl Jermyn

Brownlow, E. A.

Clitheroe

Hon. P. F. Cust

Buckingham, D. A.

Buckingham

Sir T. Freemantle

Sir G. Nugent

St. Mawe’s

Sir E. Sugden

Mr. G. W. Pigott

Winchester

Mr. J. B. East

Bute, M. A.

Cardiff

Lord J. Stuart

Caledon, L.

Old Sarum

Mr. J. Alexander

Mr. J. D. Alexander

Calthorpe, L. A.

Bramber

Mr. W. S. Dugdale

Hindon

Mr. J. Weyland

Carrington, L. A.

Wendover

Mr. S. Smith

Mr. A. Smith

Carlisle, E. R.

Morpeth

Hon. W. Howard

Castlemaine, L.

Athlone

Mr. H. Handcock

Charleville, E. A.

Carlow

Lord Tullamore

Cholmondeley, M. A.

Castle Rising

Lord Cholmondeley

Clarendon, L. R.

Wootton Basset

Lord Mahon

Cleveland, M. R.

Camelford

Mr. M. Milbank

Mr. S. Cradock

Ilchester

Dr. Lushington

Hon. E. Petre

Winchilsea

——

Mr. J. Williams

Clifford, L. de, R.

Kinsale

Captain J. Russell

Clinton, L. R.

Ashburton

——

Delewarr, E. A.

East Grinstead

Mr. F. R. West

Viscount Holmesdale

Devonshire, D. R.

Derby

Mr. W. Cavendish

Dungarvon

Hon. George Lamb

Knaresborough

Lord Waterpark

Sir J. Mackintosh

Youghall

Hon. G. Ponsonby

Donegal, M. R.

Belfast

Sir A. Chichester

Downshire, M. R.

Carrickfergus

Lord G. A. Hill

Dundas, L. R.

Richmond

Mr. I. C. Dundas

Sir R. L. Dundas

Edgecumbe, E. Mt. A.

Plympton

Sir C. Domville

Lostwithiel

Mr. E. Cust

Lord Valletort

Egremont, E.

New Shoreham

Sir C. Burrell

Ely, M. A.

Wexford

——

Enniskillen, L. A.

Enniskillen

Hon. A. H. Cole

Exeter, M. A.

Stamford

Lord T. Cecil

——

Falmouth, E. A.

Truro

Lord Encombe

Mr. N. W. Peach

St. Michaels

Hon. L. Keynon

Hon. W. Best

Fitzwilliam, E. R.

Malton

Mr. H. J. Ponsonby

Mr. H. G. Knight

Peterborough

Mr. Fazakerley

Sir R. Heron

Higham Ferrars

Viscount Howick

Foley, Lord, R.

Droitwich

Mr. J. H. Foley

Sir T. Winnington

Forester, Lord, A.

Wenlock

Mr. G. Forester

Mr. P. B. Thomson

Grafton, D. R.

Bury St. Edmunds

C. A. Fitzroy

Thetford

Lord J. Fitzroy

Grantley, Lord, A.

Guildford

Mr. C. F. Norton

Guilford, E. A.

Banbury

——

Hardwicke, E. A.

Reigate

Captain J. Yorke

Harewood, E. A.

Northallerton

Hon. H. Lascelles

Sir J. Beresford

Harrowby, E. A.

Tiverton

Mr. S. Perceval

Mr. G. D. Ryder

Hertford, Marquis, A.

Bodmin

Mr. H. B. Seymour

Lisburne

Mr. Henry Meynell

Orford

Mr. T. H. Kilderbee

Sir H. F. Cooke

Aldeburgh

Mr. J. W. Croker

Marquis of Duoro

Heytesbury, L.

Heytesbury

Mr. E. H. A’Court

Sir G. Staunton

Howe, E. A.

Clitheroe

Hon. R. Curzon

Huntingfield, L.

Dunwich

E. of Brecknock

Kilmorey, E.

Newry

Hon. J. H. Knox

Lansdowne, M. R.

Calne

Colonel Fox

Mr. T. B. Macauley

Leeds, D. A.

Helstone

Lord J. Townshend

Mr. S. L. Fox

Lichfield, E.

Lichfield

Sir G. Anson

Lonsdale, E. A.

Haslemere

Sir J. Beckett

Mr. W. Holmes

Cockermouth

Sir J. Scarlett

Col. Lowther

Carlisle

——

Appleby

Viscount Maitland

Manvers, E. R.

Bassetlaw

Lord Newark

Marlborough, D. A.

Woodstock

Lord Stormont

Lord S. C. Churchill

Middleton, L.

Newark

——

Monson, L. A.

Gatton

Hon. J. Ashley

Viscount Pollington

Mulgrave, E. R.

Scarborough

Hon. E. Phipps

Newcastle, D. A.

Aldborough

Mr. J. F. C. Clinton

Mr. M. T. Sadler

Boroughbridge

Sir C. Wetherell

Mr. M. Attwood

Newcastle, D. A.

Bassetlaw

——

Newark

——

Norfolk, D. R.

New Shoreham

Mr. H. Howard

Steyning

Mr. G. R. Phillips

Mr. E. Blount

Horsham

Earl of Surrey

Mr. N. W. Colborne

Northumberland, D. A.

Launceston

Mr. J. Brogden

Sir J. Malcolm

Newport, Corn.

——

Sir H. Hardinge

Orford, Lord, A.

King’s Lynn

——

Pembroke, E.

Wilton

Mr. J. Dawkins

Mr. J. Penruddock

Primate of Ireland, A.

Armagh

——

Portarlington, E.

Portarlington

Sir W. Rae

Portland, D. R.

King’s Lynn

Lord G. Bentinck

Powis, E. A.

Bishop’s Castle

Mr. E. Rogers

Mr. J. Knight

Ludlow

Viscount Clive

Hon. R. H. Clive

Montgomery

Mr. H. Clive

Radnor, E. R.

Downton

Mr. J. Brougham

Mr. T. Creevey

Salisbury

Hon. D. Bouverie

Ranfurley, E. R.

Dungannon

Hon. T. Knox

Richmond, D. A.

Chichester

Lord A. Lennox

Roden, Lord, A.

Dundalk

Hon. J. H. Cradock

Rutland, D. A.

Bramber

Mr. J. Irving

Cambridge

Marquis of Graham

Col. F. W. Trench

Salisbury, M. A.

Hertford

——

Sandwich, E.

Huntingdon

Col. J. Peel

Mr. F. Pollock

Seaford, L. R.

Seaford

——

Shaftesbury, E. A.

Dorchester

Lord Ashley

Sidney, V. A.

Whitchurch

Hon. H. Townshend

Somers, E.

Reigate

Capt. J. Yorke

St. Germains, E. A.

Liskeard

Sir H. Pringle

Lord Eliott

St. Germain’s

Mr. C. Ross

Mr. W. M. Praed

Thanet, E. R.

Appleby

Mr. H. Tufton

Verulam, E. A.

St. Alban’s

——

Warwick, E. A.

Warwick

——

Waterford, M.

Berwick

Captain Beresford

Westminster, M. R.

Chester

General R. Grosvenor

Shaftesbury

Mr. L. Maberly

Mr. E. Penrhyn

Hindon

Mr. J. Weyland

Stockbridge

Mr. W. S. Stanley

Mr. G. Wilbraham

Westmoreland, E. A.

Lyme Regis

Mr. H. S. Fane

Mr. J. T. Fane

Wharncliffe, L. A.

Bossiney

Hon. J. S. Wortley

Yarborough, L. R.

Newtown

Mr. C. A. W. Pelham

CHURCH PATRONAGE OF THE NOBILITY,

Exhibiting the Number of Rectories and Vicarages in the gift of each, with the Valuation annexed of all Livings not exceeding £150 per annum as returned to Parliament in 1818.

EXPLANATIONS.

The following Table of the Ecclesiastical Patronage of the Nobility is abstracted from the Patroni Ecclesiarum, published in 1831. k.b. is the value of the living in the King’s Book, taken in the reign of Henry VIII. and of which an account will be found at pp. 43 and 131. p.r. is the real value of livings not exceeding £150 as presented to parliament: for a return has been made of the present value of poor livings but none of the rich ones; r. rectory, v. vicarage, c. chapelry, p.c. perpetual curacy, d. donative; w. signifies the living is held cum or with another.

AMOUNT of Highway Rates, Church Rates, Poor Relief, County Charges, Constables Charges, Militia, Litigation, and all other incidental local charges, for the Year 1827, in each County in England and Wales; also the annual value of Real Property Assessed in 1815 to the Property Tax and the Population according to the last census.

ABERGAVENNY, Earl of

Byrling

Kent

v.

KB

6

9

4

Bryngwm w }

Mnm.

r.

PR

150

0

0

Clytha c }

KB

5

0

6

Goytrey

—

r.

PR

150

0

0

Llanfihangellsternllewryne }

—

r.

—

150

0

0

Llanfoist

—

r.

KB

7

4

4

Llangattock

—

r.

—

11

7

3

Llanhilleth

—

r.

PR

50

0

0

Llanvapley

—

r.

KB

10

15

2

Llanvetherine

—

r.

—

14

17

8

Llanwenarth w. Aberystwith c }

—

r.

—

26

6

6

Brunstead

Norf.

r.

—

6

5

7

Holveston w. Burgh Apton }

—

r.

—

13

6

8

Sutton St. Mich

—

r.

—

6

16

8

Otley

Suffolk

r.

—

16

6

5

Chiltington, West

Sussex

r.

—

12

16

10

Easthothley

—

r.

—

7

6

3

Rotherfield

—

r.

—

27

12

6

Inkberrow

Worc.

v.

—

16

2

1

ABINGDON, Earl of

Cumnor

Berks.

v.

PR

120

0

0

So. Hinksey w. Wootten c. }

—

p.c.

—

70

0

0

Wightham

—

r.

KB

7

5

2

Bothenhampton

Dorset.

p.c.

PR

45

0

0

Aldbury

Oxon.

r.

KB

9

2

8

Weston on the Green }

—

v.

PR

125

0

0

ABOYNE, Earl of

Chesterton

Hunts

r.

—

17

3

4

Haddon }

—

r.

—

11

5

0

w. Holme c. }

Orton Longville w. }

Hants

r.

—

20

13

4

Botolph Br. }

Ranton

Staff.

pc.

PR

84

0

0

AILESBURY, Marquess of

Maulden

Beds

r.

KB

15

9

7

Bedwin, Great

Wilts.

v.

PR

146

0

0

——— Little

—

v.

KB

9

6

8

Collingb. Ducis

—

r.

—

16

6

8

Easton

—

p.c.

—

not in char.

East Witton

Yksh.

v.

PR

111

0

0

Wath

—

r.

KB

17

17

1

West Tanfield

—

r.

—

13

0

5

Marlbro’ Gram. Sch. Wilts.

Mastership.

ALBEMARLE, Earl of

Southwd. Hayling w. N. Hayling c }

Hants.

v.

KB

8

10

0

Quiddenham }

Norf.

r.

—

{ 8

4

6

w. Snetterton }

{ 12

17

1

Shottishm All Sts.

—

v.

—

6

18

4

———St. Mary

—

v.

—

6

0

0

Thetford, St Mary

—

p.c.

PR

70

0

0

———St. Cuthbert w Trinity }

—

p.c.

—

86

0

0

———St. Peter w St Nicholas }

—

r.

—

50

0

0

Winfarthing

—

r.

KB

2

0

0

AMHERST, Countess

Middleton on Leven }

Yksh.

p.c.

—

43

13

6

East Rownton

—

p.c.

—

37

7

6

ARDEN, Lord

Calverton

Bucks.

r.

—

26

2

11

———, and others

Whittington

Salop.

r.

—

25

4

2

ARRAN, Earl and Countess of

Springfield }

Essex

r.

KB

11

6

8

Bosville }

——— Richards

—

r.

—

11

4

10

ARUNDEL, Lord

Anstey

Wilts.

p.c.

—

not in char.

ASHBROOK, Lord Viscount

Aberyskin

Brecon.

r.

PR

135

0

0

Croughton

Npn.

r.

KB

15

3

6

ASHBURNHAM, Earl of

Clapham

Beds.

v.

PR

140

0

0

Llanelliew

Brecon.

r.

KB

4

6

3

Llanfilo w. }

—

r.

—

8

2

1

Llandefailog }

Tref y Graig }

Llansaintfread

—

r.

—

6

4

7

Pemprey with Llandyrw }

Carm.

v.

PR

88

0

0

Llansillo

Heref.

p.c.

—

79

6

6

Barking with Darmsden c. }

Suff.

r.

KB

27

10

7

Badley, alt

—

p.c.

PR

40

0

0

Combes, alt

—

r.

KB

25

17

8

Catsfield

Sussex.

r.

—

7

9

4

Dallington

—

v.

—

8

0

0

Ninfield

—

v.

—

8

0

0

AYLESFORD, Earl of

Ditton

Kent.

r.

—

11

15

0

Ashby, Great

Leic.

v.

PR

92

0

0

Saxleby

—

r.

KB

9

0

0

Bedworth

Warw.

r.

—

10

3

11

Bickenhill

—

v.

PR

54

1

0

Meriden

—

v.

KB

5

10

0

Packington, Gt.

—

v.

PR

71

8

8

———, Lit.

—

r.

KB

3

0

0

BAGOT, Lord, & others

Great Linford

Bucks.

r.

KB

20

2

2

BARNARD, Lord Viscount, &c.

St. Martin

Corn.

r.

—

36

2

3

Portlemouth

Devon.

r.

—

29

18

4

BATH, Marquess of

Buckland

Glouc.

r.

KB

29

6

8

Harley w. }

Salop.

r.

—

5

12

1

Kenley c. }

PR

33

0

0

Bachwell

Somer.

r.

KB

11

16

3

Bathwick }

—

r.

—

11

10

0

———v. w. }

Woolley c. }

Frome

—

v.

—

22

0

0

——, ew. Ch. in the Woodlands }

—

p.c.

—

not in char.

Street }

—

r.

—

24

12

3

w. Walton c. }

Corsley

Wilts.

r.

—

11

0

10

Fifield Bavant

—

r.

PR

150

0

0

Imber

—

d.

—

58

14

9

Kingston Deverell

—

r.

KB

19

15

0

Langbridge }

Wilts.

v.

KB

12

0

0

Deverell w. Monkton }

Deverell c. }

BATHURST, Earl

Saperton

Glouc.

r.

—

17

0

0

Potterspury

Npn.

v.

PR

80

0

0

BEAUFORT, Duke of

Crickhowell sin.

Breck.

r.

—

5

9

9

Cwmdñ sin.

—

r.

—

19

15

2

—— w. }

—

v.

—

14

13

1

Llantony c. }

Flint.

Llanbedr

Breck.

r.

—

16

17

6

Llangattock w. Llanelly c. & Llangennith }

—

r.

—

31

13

9

Llanfihangel }

—

r.

—

19

15

2

Cwmdu }

Lllangynedr

—

r.

—

13

14

7

Patricio

—

p.c.

—

not in char.

Badminton, Gt. }

Glouc.

v.

—

5

5

7

——— Little c. }

Frampt. Cottrell

—

r.

—

11

16

0

Oldbury on the Hill w. Dilmarton }

—

r.

—

16

0

0

8

0

0

Stoke Gifford

—

v.

PR

40

0

0

Tormerton w. Acton Turville c. & W. Littleton c. }

—

r.

KB

33

13

4

Woolaston w. Alvington c. & Lancante c. }

—

r.

—

33

11

5

Chapel Hill

Monm.

p.c.

PR

47

0

0

Llanishen

—

p.c.

—

56

0

0

Llansoy

—

r.

—

109

15

5

Magor with }

—

v.

—

45

0

0

Rudwich p.c. }

Monks Wood

—

p.c.

—

60

0

0

Monmouth w. }

—

v.

—

145

9

0

St. Thomas }

Newchurch J. C.

—

p.c.

—

40

0

0

Ragland with Llandenny }

Monm.

v.

PR

125

8

7

St. Arvans

—

p.c.

—

65

0

0

St. Kinemarks

—

p.c.

—

not in char.

Mitchell Troy w. Cumcarvon c. }

—

r.

KB

12

8

1

Trelleck Grange

—

p.c.

PR

32

0

0

Gwernesney

Mont.

r.

KB

2

18

6

Sopworth

Wilts.

r.

—

8

10

5

BEDFORD, Duke of

Apsley Guise

Beds.

r.

KB

15

16

10

Eaton Socon

—

v.

—

20

13

9

Flitwick

—

v.

—

7

17

0

Goldington

—

v.

PR

140

0

0

Houghton Regis

—

v.

KB

11

3

4

Ravensden

—

v.

PR

120

0

0

Steppingley

—

r.

KB

6

16

3

Stevington

—

v.

PR

111

18

0

Wilden

—

r.

KB

18

7

1

Willington

—

v.

—

7

17

0

Woburn

—

p.c.

—

not in char.

Cheney Eastmanstead }

Bucks.

r.

—

12

16

0

Chesham

—

v.

—

13

1

5

——— Boys

—

p.c.

—

5

6

8

Thorney

Camb.

r.

—

not in char.

Awliscombe

Devon.

v.

—

12

10

10

Brent Tor

—

p.c.

PR

14

19

10

Denbury

—

r.

KB

12

7

6

Milton Abbot

Devon.

v.

KB

19

13

6

North Petherwin

—

v.

PR

124

0

0

Tavistock

—

v.

—

111

0

0

Whimple

—

r.

KB

30

0

0

Swyre

Dorset.

r.

PR

80

0

0

Stibbington

Hunts.

r.

KB

7

13

6

Westminster, St. Paul, Covent Garden }

Midd.

r.

—

not in char.

Thornhaugh w. Wansford c. }

Npn.

r.

—

17

1

3

Streatham

Surry.

r.

—

18

13

9

BERKELEY, Earl of

Berkeley

Glouc.

v.

—

32

15

7

Cranford

Midd.

r.

—

16

0

0

West Thorney

Suss.

r.

—

10

8

4

BERWICK, Lord

Thornton Mayow

Chesh.

r.

—

24

7

8

Berrington w. Little Ness }

Salop.

p.c.

PR

70

0

0

Shrewsbury St. Giles & Holy Cross }

—

v.

KB

8

0

0

Sutton St. John

—

r.

—

3

0

0

Shenstone

Staff.

v.

—

6

5

8

Fornham St. Gen. w. Risby }

Suff.

r.

PR

94

4

11

BOLINGBROKE, Lord Viscount

Manston

Dorset.

r.

KB

12

5

0

BOLTON, Lord

Chickerell

Dorset.

r.

—

18

16

0

Frome Vauchurch with Batcombe }

—

r.

—

9

9

9

Hooke

—

r.

PR

80

15

0

Herryard

Hants.

v.

—

105

7

0

Kingsclere w. Itchinswell c. & Sidmont c. }

—

v.

KB

17

19

7

Winslade

—

r.

PR

97

0

0

Wensley with Bolton and Radmire p.c. }

Yksh.

r.

—

149

9

9

West Witton

Yksh.

p.c.

—

75

0

0

BOSTON, Lord

Llanddona

Angl.

p.c.

PR

74

10

0

Llanidan with Llanddaniel c. Llanfair y. Cwmmwd c. and Llanedwan c. }

—

v.

KB

10

0

0

Penrhos-lligwy

—

p.c.

PR

48

0

0

Hedsor, alt.

Bucks.

r.

—

59

8

5

Dolwyddelan

Carn.

p.c.

—

48

0

0

Whiston with Deynton c. }

Npn.

r.

KB

14

11

0

BRADFORD, Earl of

Hughley

Salop.

r.

PR

145

0

0

Knockin

—

r.

—

130

0

0

Walsall

Staff.

v.

KB

10

19

7

Weston under Lizard }

—

r.

—

6

7

8

Wigan

Lanc.

r.

—

80

13

4

Teddington

Midd.

d.

—

not in char.

Castle Bromwich, in Aston Birming Parish }

Warw.

p.c.

—

———

Clifton on Dunsmore w. Brownsover c. }

—

v.

PR

113

0

0

BRAYBROOK, Lord

Arborfield

Berks

r.

KB

7

19

10

Wargrave

—

v.

—

13

13

6

Saffron Walden

Essex

v.

—

33

6

8

Shadingfield

Suff.

r.

—

12

0

0

BRIDGEWATER, Countess of

Tottenhoe

Beds.

v.

PR

98

0

0

Cheddington

Bucks.

r.

KB

15

9

7

Edlesboro’

—

r.

—

13

17

0

Ivinghoe

—

v.

PR

70

0

0

Nettleden

—

p.c.

—

30

0

0

Pightlesthorne

—

p.c.

KB

20

0

0

Wingrave

—

v.

—

9

9

7

Aldbury

Herts.

r.

—

20

8

6

Little Gaddesden

—

r.

—

11

12

8

Ellesmere w. Cockshut and Dudlaston p.c. }

Salop.

v.

—

17

18

1

PR

90

0

0

Middle

—

r.

KB

12

7

3

Tilstock

—

p.c.

PR

110

0

0

Whitchurch w. Marbury, c. }

—

r.

KB

44

11

8

Settington

Yksh.

r.

—

42

12

6

Dunnington

—

r.

—

19

0

0

BRIDPORT, Lord

Cricket, St. Thomas }

Som.

r.

PR

145

0

0

BRISTOL, Marquess of

Chesterford, Gt.

Essex.

v.

—

10

0

0

——— Little

—

r.

—

11

0

0

Wendon, Great. —— Little v. }

—

r.

PR

75

0

0

Asgarby with Kirby Laythorpe }

Linc.

r.

KB

16

6

10

Metheringham

—

v.

PR

120

0

0

Normanton

—

r.

—

100

0

0

Quarrington

—

r.

KB

7

2

3

Sleaford, New

—

v.

PR

130

0

0

———, Old, sin.

—

v.

KB

4

10

0

Bredfield, St. George, w. Rushbrook }

Suffolk

r.

—

11

17

3

8

1

5

Bromeswell

—

r.

—

4

15

7

Chedburg w. Ickworth }

—

r.

—

11

14

2

Horningsheath

—

r.

—

10

17

8

Playford

—

p.c.

PR

36

0

0

Rushmere

—

v.

—

80

0

0

Shotley

—

r.

KB

20

0

0

Sproughton

—

r.

—

20

18

9

Tuddenham

—

r.

—

10

17

6

Anwick, alt. w. Brauncewell r. and Dunsby r. }

Linc.

v.

—

15

2

11

BROWNLOW, Earl

Cockayne-hatley

Beds.

r.

—

8

0

0

Belton

Linc.

r.

PR

150

0

0

Carlton Scropp

—

r.

KB

13

1

5

Faldingworth

—

r.

—

15

8

1

Hereby

—

r.

—

6

4

7

Hough on the Hill

—

v.

PR

83

4

8

Raisin Tupholm

—

v.

—

108

0

0

Saltfleetby, East

—

r.

KB

7

0

1

Snelland

—

r.

PR

145

12

9

Little Billing

Npn.

r.

KB

10

2

11

Overston

—

r.

—

12

16

3

Sywell

—

r.

—

11

1

5

Marnham

Notts.

v.

—

8

19

2

Horndon, E. alt.

Essex.

r.

—

10

0

0

Warley, Little, alt. }

—

r.

—

11

3

9

BUCCLEUGH, Duke of

Beaulieu

Hants.

d.

PR

61

0

0

St. Andrew, Holb.

Midd.

r.

KB

18

0

0

St. George }

—

r.

—

not in char.

Queen’s Sq. }

St. Matthew & St. Peter Cheap. alt. Friday St. }

—

r.

PR

250

0

0

Barton Seagrave.

Npn.

r.

KB

10

17

1

Broughton

—

r.

—

21

9

7

Geddington w. Newton d. }

—

v.

PR

140

0

6

Little Oakley

—

r.

—

108

0

0

Scaldwell

—

r.

KB

14

0

10

Warkton

—

r.

—

18

16

3

Weekly

—

v.

PR

135

0

0

BUCKINGHAM, Duke of

Foscot

Bucks.

r.

KB

9

9

4

Stowe

—

v.

PR

91

18

0

Water Stratford

—

r.

KB

7

0

5

Wootton Underwood }

—

p.c.

PR

82

0

0

Gosfield

Essex

v.

KB

8

0

0

Bighton

Hants.

r.

—

19

8

1

East Wellow

—

v.

—

5

0

0

Finmere

Oxon.

r.

PR

126

6

6

Compton Mart. w. Nempnet c. }

Som.

r.

KB

10

6

3

Doddington

—

r.

PR

122

0

0

Keynsham

—

v.

KB

11

19

7

Saltford

—

r.

—

10

5

0

Burton Dasset

Warw.

r.

—

14

0

0

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, Earl of

Great Hampden with Great Kimb. v. }

Bucks.

r.

KB

9

9

7

6

10

5

Werrington

Corn.

d.

—

not in char.

Welborne

Linc.

r.

—

11

12

9

BUTE, Marquess of

Luton

Beds

v.

KB

35

12

1

Kelligaer with Birthdir c. }

Glam.

r.

—

20

7

11

Llandough w. Leckwith & Cogan c. }

—

r.

—

8

8

4

Llanmaes

r.

—

10

2

3

Merthyr Tydvil

—

r.

—

20

5

7

Neath with Llantwit c. & Resolven c. }

—

r.

—

16

2

3

13

0

0

Roath

—

v.

—

7

0

0

Llanbaddock

Mnm.

p.c.

PR

52

15

0

Wroxton }

Oxon

v.

—

50

0

0

w. Balscot c. }

CADOGAN, Earl of

Santon Downh

Suff.

p.c.

KB

not in char.

Chelsea

Midd.

r.

—

13

6

8

CALTHORPE, Lord

Elvetham

Hants.

r.

KB

9

0

0

Acle

Norf.

r.

—

20

0

0

Ampton

Suff.

r.

PR

121

12

6

Blakeney w. Cockthorper Glandford c. and Little Langham v. }

Norf.

r.

KB

35

0

0

Pakenham

Suff.

v.

—

10

8

9

Edgbaston

War.

p.c.

PR

110

13

0

CAMDEN, Marquess

Llanspydded w. Pennybont c. }

Brecon

v.

PR

80

0

0

Merthyr Cynog

—

v.

—

32

0

0

CARDIGAN, Earl of

Cranoe

Leic.

r.

—

143

0

0

Glooston

—

r.

—

102

14

0

Stanton Wyvel

—

r.

KB

9

18

11

Corby

Npn.

r.

—

13

16

3

Dean

—

r.

—

24

3

6

East Ardsley

Yksh.

p.c.

—

27

0

0

West Ardsley

—

p.c.

—

31

5

0

Sheckling w. Burstwick. c. }

—

v.

—

7

0

0

Sproatley

—

r.

—

7

0

10

Batley, alt

—

v.

PR

150

0

0

CARLISLE, Earl of

Denton

Cumb.

p.c.

—

68

0

0

Lanercost w. }

—

p.c.

—

156

0

0

Farlam }

Stapleton

—

r.

—

88

10

0

Morpeth w. }

North.

r.

KB

32

16

8

Ulgham c. }

Hovingham

Yksh.

p.c.

PR

57

0

0

Slingsby

—

r.

KB

12

1

10

Brampton

Cumb.

v.

—

8

0

0

CARNARVON, Earl of

Burghclere w. Newtown c. }

Hants.

r.

—

30

0

0

Highclere

—

r.

—

7

13

9

Brushford

Som.

r.

—

15

1

5

Seagry

Wilts

v.

PR

120

0

0

CARRINGTON, Lord

Bledlow

Bucks.

v.

KB

16

9

7

Humberston

Linc.

v.

PR

72

0

0

CARTERET, Lord

Bedford, St. Paul

Beds.

v.

—

10

0

0

Willhampstead

—

v.

—

9

9

7

Kilkhampton

Corn.

r.

—

26

13

11

Brown Candover w. Woodmancote c. }

Hants.

r.

—

23

4

2

CAVENDISH, Lord G. A. H.

Broughton Field

Lanc.

p.c.

PC

90

0

0

Cartmell with Cartmell Fell }

—

p.c.

—

134

16

9

Flockborough

—

p.c.

—

93

4

0

Lindale

—

p.c.

—

111

0

0

Staveling

—

p.c.

—

90

0

0

Jevington

Suss.

r.

KB

20

0

0

Rye

—

v.

—

42

13

4

Uddimore

—

v.

PR

35

0

0

Westham

—

v.

KB

21

10

10

Wilmington

—

v.

PR

96

0

0

Hawnby

Yksh.

r.

—

147

0

0

Hilton

—

p.c.

—

47

0

0

CAWDOR, Earl

Llandeveyson

Carm.

p.c.

PR

52

0

0

Llanfihangel Kilvargen }

—

r.

—

55

0

0

Ystradffyn

—

p.c.

—

46

16

4

Botheston

Pemb.

r.

—

140

0

0

Loweston

—

r.

—

106

0

0

Penboyr with Ydrindod c. }

—

r.

KB

9

9

4

Stackpool Basher }

—

r.

—

11

6

8

—— Elidu, sin.

—

r.

—

15

12

11

———

—

v.

PR

90

0

0

St. Petrock

—

r.

—

146

0

0

Wiston

—

p.c.

—

130

0

0

CHANCELLOR, Lord

Six PREBBNDAL STALLS in Bristol Cathedral

Five PREBBNDAL STALLS in Gloucester Cathedral

Five PREBBNDAL STALLS in Norwich Cathedral

Five PREBBNDAL STALLS in Rochester Cathedral

RECTORIES 428, VICARAGES 357

CHANDOS, Marquess of

Bristol, St. Mary Magdalen }

Som.

r.

PR

110

0

0

CHATHAM, Earl of

Curry Rival

Som.

v.

—

13

16

4

CHESTERFIELD, Earl of

Aston Abbots

—

v.

—

150

0

0

Grove

—

r.

—

40

12

3

Ilmer

—

v.

—

97

0

0

Wing

—

v.

KB

18

16

3

Cubley with Marston Montgom. c. }

Derb.

r.

—

13

16

3

Horsley

—

v.

PR

94

0

0

Somershall

—

r.

KB

4

18

10

Bingham

Notts.

r.

—

44

7

11

Burton Joyce w. Bulcote c. }

—

v.

PR

121

0

0

Gedling

—

r.

KB

21

2

0

Shelford

—

p.c.

PR

40

0

0

CHICHESTER, Earl of

Falmer w. }

Suss.

v.

—

6

10

10

Stanmer r. }

PR

130

0

0

Hastings, St. Maryin Castle }

—

p.c.

KB

not in char.

Hellingley

—

v.

—

6

16

8

Laughton

—

v.

—

9

11

3

CHOLMONDELEY, Marquess

Barrow

Chesh.

r.

KB

19

6

5

Houghton in the Hole }

Norf.

v.

PR

52

0

0

Gt. Massingham

—

r.

KB

33

6

8

Stalham

—

v.

—

5

0

0

Syderstrand

—

r.

PR

133

12

4

CLARENDON, Earl of

Wootton Bassett

Wilts.

v.

—

12

0

0

Llanganna, alt.

Glam.

r.

PR

150

0

0

CLEVELAND, Marquess of

Tregony

Corn.

v.

—

10

4

2

Darlington

Durh.

p.c.

PR

133

3

10

Staindrop with Cockfield r. }

—

p.c.

—

98

0

0

KB

9

18

0

Brigstock with Stannyon }

Npn.

v.

—

11

17

3

Botterell Aston w. Bold p. c. }

Salop.

r.

—

7

1

0

Billingsley

—

r.

PR

129

0

4

Eaton Constanti.

Salop.

c.

KB

not in char.

Hope Bagot

—

r.

PR

100

0

0

Wem with Edstaston c. and Newtown p.c. }

—

r.

KB

26

4

4

PR

54

0

0

Wroxeter with Eyton on Severn c. }

—

v.

KB

11

8

0

Wrington with Burrington c. }

Som.

r.

—

39

9

4

3

7

11

Donnington Gram.

Sch.

Salop.

Mastership

CLIFFORD, LORD

Wappenbury

Warw.

v.

PR

70

4

0

Westan u. Wetherley }

—

v.

—

70

0

0

CLINTON, Lord

Huish

Devon.

r.

—

150

0

0

West Putford

—

r.

KB

9

11

0

Southill

Corn.

r.

—

38

0

0

Callington

—

c.

—

not in char.

Merton

Devon.

r.

—

20

15

7

St. Petrock Stowe

—

r.

—

17

0

2

COMBERMERE, Viscount

Burledam

Chesh.

p.c.

PR

100

0

0

COURTENAY, Viscount, Trustees of

Honiton

Devon.

r.

—

40

4

2

Milton Damerel with Cookbury c. }

—

r.

—

26

13

6

Moreton Hampstead

—

r.

—

49

19

7

Woolboro’ with Newton Abbot c. }

—

d.

—

not in char.

COVENTRY, Earl of

Oxenton

Glouc.

p.c.

PR

80

0

0

Woolston

—

r.

KB

13

6

0

Edgeware

Midd.

d.

—

not in char.

Croome D’ Abitot with Pirton }

Worc.

r.

—

15

3

0

Grafton Flyford

Worc.

r.

KB

20

0

10

Powick

—

v.

—

10

2

7

Severnstoke

—

r.

—

21

17

4

Wolvey, alt.

Warw.

v.

PR

144

0

0

CRAVEN, Earl

Enborne

Berks.

r.

KB

10

0

0

Hampstead Marshall }

—

r.

—

12

14

4

Elkstone

Glouc.

r.

—

12

9

2

Yelvertoft

Npn.

r.

—

25

0

10

West Felton

Salop.

r.

—

20

12

6

Onibury

—

r.

—

8

17

8

Staunton Lacy

—

v.

—

16

0

0

Wistantow

—

r.

—

18

0

0

Binley

Warw.

p.c.

PR

53

0

0

Rugby

—

r.

KB

17

19

2

Wykin

—

p.c.

PR

96

0

0

Allington

Wilts.

r.

KB

14

13

4

Burnsall, 1st portion with Rilstone c. }

Yksh.

r.

PR

63

0

0

CREWE, Lord, Trustees of

Barthomley

Chesh.

r.

—

25

7

1

Nantwich

—

r.

PR

100

0

0

Warmingham

—

r.

KB

12

4

7

Bamborough with Lucker }

North.

p.c.

PR

165

18

0

Blanchland

—

p.c.

—

115

0

0

Great Madely

Staff.

v.

PR

94

0

0

DACRE, Lord

Carlton with }

Camb.

r.

KB

9

0

0

Willingham c. }

Kimpton

Herts.

v.

—

12

0

0

Royston

—

v.

PR

117

1

4

DARNLEY, Earl of

Cobham

Kent.

v.

PR

65

0

0

Sandgate, in Folkstone parish }

—

c.

KB

not in char.

DARTMOUTH, Earl of

Olney

Bucks.

v.

PR

100

0

0

Lewisham

Kent.

v.

KB

23

19

2

Westbromwich

Staff.

p.c.

PR

20

0

0

———

—

c.

KB

not in char.

DE Dunstanville, Lord

Camborne

Corn.

r.

—

39

16

10

St. Illogan

—

r.

—

22

7

6

Redruth

—

r.

—

20

0

0

St. Eweny

—

r.

—

20

0

0

West Buckland

Devon.

r.

—

13

3

4

DEERBURST, Lord and Lady

Hatfield with St. Laur. c. }

Yksh.

p.c.

PR

80

4

3

KB

42

14

0

DE Grey, Countess

Blunham

Beds.

r.

—

46

2

11

Clophill

—

r.

—

12

0

0

Harrold

—

v.

PR

144

8

0

Pulloxhill

—

v.

—

113

7

0

Colchester, St. Michael Myland }

Essex.

r.

KB

7

10

0

Great Horkesley

—

r.

—

15

0

0

Fordham

Essex.

r.

KB

14

4

2

Aston Flamville

Leic.

r.

PR

124

1

4

Leir

—

r.

KB

9

14

9

DELAMERE, Lord

Whitegate

Chesh

v.

PR

90

0

0

DE La Warre, Earl

Ashurst

Kent.

r.

KB

5

4

7

East Grinstead

Suss.

v.

—

20

0

0

DE La Warre, Earl, &c.

Stratford on Avon

Warw.

v.

—

20

0

0

DEBRY, Earl of

Chester, Trinity

Chest.

r.

KB

8

15

5

Forrest

—

p.c.

PR

60

0

0

Bury

Lanc.

r.

KB

29

11

5

Huyton

—

v.

PR

70

0

0

Ormskirk

—

v.

KB

10

0

0

Winwick

—

r.

—

102

9

9

Badsworth

Yksh.

r.

—

32

5

10

DE Tabley, Lord

Knutsford

Chesh.

v.

KB

26

16

2

Peover Nether

—

p.c.

PR

146

2

0

Witton

—

p.c.

—

85

0

0

DE Vesci, Viscount, &c.

Silchester

Hants.

r.

—

9

6

0

DEVONSHIRF, Duke of

Ault

Derby.

v.

—

6

0

0

Bealey

—

p.c.

—

10

18

0

Blackwell

—

v.

PR

40

0

0

Bradborne with Ballidon p.c. and Brassington p.c. }

—

v.

—

160

0

0

Buxton

—

p.c.

—

54

0

0

Doveridge

—

v.

—

12

2

1

Edensover

—

v.

PR

40

0

0

Eyam

—

r.

KB

13

15

5

Hartington w. Earlsterndale c. }

—

v.

PR

151

11

7

Hathersage w. Middleton Stoney p. c. & Peake Forest p. c. }

—

v.

—

123

0

0

Heath

—

v.

—

132

0

0

Upper Langwith

—

r.

—

134

18

0

Marston on Dove

—

v.

KB

7

15

2

Pentridge

—

v.

PR

80

0

0

Scarcliffe

—

v.

—

32

11

0

Staveley

—

r.

KB

12

7

6

South Wingfield

—

v.

—

6

13

4

Youlgreave

—

v.

PR

103

0

0

Sawtry, All Sts.

Hunts.

r.

KB

8

15

7

Brindle

Lanc.

r.

—

12

8

4

Barrowby

Linc.

r.

—

31

1

5

Arnold

Notts.

v.

—

7

17

8

Beeston, St. John

—

v.

—

4

15

0

Clareborough

Notts.

v.

—

9

15

4

Year ending 25th March, 1827.

Highway Rates.

Church Rates.

Expended in Relief of the Poor, County Rate, &c.

Total Expenditure.

Annual Value of Real Property, April 1815.

Population, 1831.

£

£

£

£

£

Bedford

8,045

6,826

91,359

106,230

343,682

95,383

Berks

11,979

7,015

114,970

133,964

652,082

145,289

Bucks

15,207

7,118

152,515

174,840

644,129

146,529

Cambridge

16,511

5,698

104,863

127,072

655,220

143,955

Chester

26,449

9,135

147,124

182,708

1,083,083

334,410

Cornwall

24,086

8,072

115,453

147,611

916,060

302,440

Cumberland

13,734

3,758

58,785

76,277

705,445

169,681

Derby

16,049

8,793

99,518

124,360

887,659

237,170

Devon

39,588

19,567

244,887

304,042

1,897,515

494,168

Dorset

10,767

6,913

94,923

112,603

698,395

159,252

Durham

17,363

9,518

94,181

121,062

791,359

253,827

Essex

29,444

19,808

306,794

356,046

1,556,836

317,233

Gloucester

31,755

11,560

200,596

243,911

1,463,259

386,904

Hereford

13,367

5,999

69,443

88,799

604,614

110,976

Hertford

14,034

9,305

108,054

131,393

571,107

143,341

Huntingdon

5,335

2,387

48,276

55,998

320,187

53,149

Kent

46,693

32,715

392,253

471,661

1,644,179

479,155

Lancaster

96,615

27,111

539,388

663,114

3,087,774

1,336,854

Leicester

24,315

8,775

138,904

171,994

902,217

197,003

Lincoln

76,731

18,186

214,368

309,285

2,061,830

317,244

Middlesex

34,246

94,359

711,874

840,479

5,595,536

1,358,541

Monmouth

6,766

4,387

31,851

43,004

295,097

98,130

Norfolk

25,240

14,236

344,950

384,426

1,540,952

390,054

Northampton

21,441

8,577

167,352

197,370

942,161

179,276

Northumberland

16,067

5,337

79,117

100,521

1,240,594

222,912

Nottingham

27,703

6,208

99,685

133,596

737,229

225,320

Oxford

12,984

5,829

135,886

154,699

713,147

151,726

Rutland

4,128

947

13,873

18,948

133,487

19,385

Salop

17,032

9,865

96,461

123,358

1,037,988

222,503

Somerset

34,680

18,314

186,809

239,803

1,900,651

403,908

Southampton

16,096

10,077

210,526

236,699

1,130,951

314,313

Stafford

19,108

13,542

158,808

191,458

1,150,284

410,485

Suffolk

24,849

13,557

252,283

290,689

1,127,404

296,304

Surrey

34,086

36,597

291,830

356,513

1,579,172

486,326

Sussex

27,087

9,442

273,664

310,193

915,384

272,328

Warwick

20,003

11,198

178,425

209,626

1,236,726

336,988

Westmorland

3,099

1,158

31,514

35,771

298,198

55,041

Wilts

21,231

8,851

190,043

220,125

1,155,458

239,181

Worcester

17,506

10,030

92,078

120,244

799,605

211,356

York, E. R.

24,503

8,227

119,911

152,641

1,190,325

168,646

—— N. R.

26,564

6,320

96,730

129,614

1,145,252

226,235

—— W. R.

102,776

21,632

388,730

513,138

2,392,405

976,415

Wales

46,550

23,417

313,771

383,783

2,153,801

805,236

TOTAL of England and Wales

1,121,834

564,388

7,803,465

9,489,687

51,898,423

13,894,574

RETURN of Lay and Clerical Magistrates in each County in England and Wales who have qualified, appointed by the Lord Chancellor.

Names of the Counties.

Names of the present Lord Lieutenants.

Number.

Clergy

Lay.

Total.

Bedford

Lord Grantham

19

27

46

Berks

Earl of Abingdon

28

95

123

Bucks

Duke of Buckingham

54

90

144

Cambridge

Earl of Hardwicke

23

28

51

Chester

Earl of Stamford

16

58

74

Cornwall

Earl of Mount Edgecumbe

36

54

90

Cumberland

Earl of Lonsdale

15

39

54

Derby

Duke of Devonshire

79

79

Devon

Earl of Fortescue

42

144

186

Dorset

Earl Digby

25

43

68

Durham

Marquis of Cleveland

23

59

82

Essex

Viscount Maynard

51

119

170

Gloucester

Duke of Beaufort, K.G.

49

127

176

Hants

Duke of Wellington

19

131

150

Hereford

Earl Somers

58

97

155

Hertford

Earl of Verulam

44

102

146

Huntingdon

Duke of Manchester

7

18

25

Kent

Marquis Camden, K.G.

2

145

147

Lancaster

Earl of Derby

24

151

175

Leicester

Duke of Rutland

17

27

44

Lincoln

Earl Brownlow

52

59

111

Middlesex

Duke of Portland

16

153

169

Monmouth

Duke of Beaufort

13

44

57

Norfolk

Hon. John Wodehouse

78

119

197

Northampton

Earl of Westmoreland

35

49

84

Northumberland

Duke of Northumberland

6

40

46

Nottingham

Duke of Newcastle

10

44

54

Oxford

Earl of Macclesfield

18

53

71

Rutland

Marquis of Exeter

3

6

9

Salop

Earl of Powis

38

106

144

Somerset

Marquis of Bath

53

97

150

Stafford

Earl Talbot

16

70

86

Suffolk

Duke of Grafton

58

98

156

Surrey

Lord Arden

39

215

254

Sussex

Earl of Egremont

189

189

Warwick

Earl of Warwick

24

42

66

Westmoreland

Earl of Lonsdale

15

18

30

Wilts

Marquis of Lansdowne

18

71

89

Worcester

Earl of Coventry

44

92

136

York—East, West, & North Ridings

Earl Carlisle, Earl Harewood, and Duke of Leeds }

103

311

414

Anglesea

Marquis of Anglesea

7

14

21

Brecon

Duke of Beaufort

24

37

61

Cardigan

W. E. Powell, Esq

11

53

64

Carmarthen

Lord Dynevor

9

75

84

Carnarvon

Lord Willoughby de Eresby

14

17

31

Denbigh

Sir W. W. Wynn, Bart

24

41

65

Flint

Earl Grosvenor

15

26

41

Glamorgan

Marquis of Bute

18

36

54

Merioneth

Sir W. W. Wynn, Bart

9

14

23

Montgomery

Lord Clive

13

31

44

Pembroke

Sir John Owen, Bart

10

35

45

Radnor

Lord Rodney

4

29

33

Total

1324

4017

5371

COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS.

“Out of evil sometimes comes good, but do not evil that good may come.”—

FIELDING’S PROVERBS.

WHILE a malignant distemper is either actually amongst us or impending, it seems a suitable moment for referring to a subject directly bearing on the general health of the community. Except in periodical calls for rates the public know and hear little of the Commissioners of Sewers. They are, however, a branch of the ancient institutions of the country, and the people have a right to be informed of the derivation of their powers, their duties, and the abuses in their administration.

From the lectures of Challis at Gray’s Inn, in 1662, public sewers appear to have been first vested in commissioners in the reign of Henry III.; and after several acts to extend their powers, became consolidated in the 23d of Henry VIII. c. 25; when authority was granted to certain individuals, in various districts of the kingdom, to construct sewers for drainage, and levy rates for the purpose. The authority of the Commissioners is almost absolute, and still continues with little abridgement. They can summon, examine, and even imprison; and it is even doubtful whether the superior courts of law can interfere. As regards the qualifications and appointment of the Commissioners, the statute of Henry VIII. directs that substantial persons, having a freehold qualification of £20 per annum, shall be nominated by the lord Chancellor, lord Treasurer, and two chief justices, for “making and repairing ditches, banks, gutters, gates, sewers, calcies, bridges, streams, trenches, mill-ponds, and locks.” Each commission is to continue ten years; and six are to form a quorum. Commissioners acting without being duly qualified, to forfeit £40 each sitting; they may proceed either by inquisition or survey; each commissioner to be allowed 40s. a day while engaged in the duty of the commission, and the rates to be assessed in proportion to land, rents, profits, and fisheries.

Besides this and other general acts, local acts have been obtained by several commissions, the provisions of which extend only to the particular jurisdiction for which they have been passed. In the district of the metropolis, north of the Thames, are four principal commissions. Monthly committees, clerks of the works, surveyors, inspectors, messengers, &c. are attached to each commission. Every one who receives a benefit or avoids a damage is liable to be assessed to the sewers’ rate. The average expenditure under the Westminster commission is £24,000 per annum; the Holborn and Finsbury, £10,000; the Tower Hamlets, under £2,000; the city of London, £8,000: making a yearly expenditure of £44,000 for the maintenance of the sewers of one district of the kingdom.

Having shortly noticed the origin and powers of Commissions of Sewers, we shall instance their defective administration. We shall call attention to the state of that portion of the environs of this great metropolis on the south side of the river. It may be thought by some, perhaps, so obscure and remote a corner of the realm is totally unworthy of legislative notice, but it ought to be borne in mind that it is the principal seat of productive industry in the capital, and that it comprises a dense population of half a million of persons, every one of whom is equally entitled with other of his majesty’s lieges to the enjoyment of health and the blessings of life. If the inhabitants of this portion of the suburbs be peculiarly subject to the cholera or other malignant disease, it cannot be matter of astonishment. They are compelled to drink the most deleterious beverage, and the sewers, ditches, and channels for carrying off the foul and redundant water are in a state of disgraceful neglect. In all that thickly-peopled area, of at least sixteen square miles, embracing the entire parishes of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Horseley Down, Walworth, Newington-Butts, and a considerable portion of Lambeth, extending from Deptford and the Kent Road to the New Camberwell Road, and the roads in the vicinity of the Surrey Zoological Gardens, the channels and ditches for carrying off the water remain in their natural state, overflowing with filth and impurity. If, for want of descent, it might not be easy to drain them, they might at least be widened, cleansed, and covered over. If, by economy in the expenditure of the existing assessment, it could not be made adequate to the undertaking, at such a moment of apprehension of infectious disease, and for such a salutary end, the inhabitants would hardly complain of an additional rate for the purpose; in fact they would save it in the reduction of poor-rate, caused by the employment created for men who now burden the parish for want of work. As it is, the nuisance of which we complain is personally dangerous to the passenger, offensive to the eye, and most injurious to the constitution.

It is gratifying to think the Surrey parishes are about obtaining representatives in parliament, were it only for the sake of local improvements. At first we thought of calling the attention of Mr. Warburton to the power and duties of commissioners of sewers, but this gentleman has his hands full with the Anatomy Bill, and moreover is in some measure a particeps criminis, having been recently presented for a nuisance on his own lands, by the Surrey grand jury. However, we trust some honourable Member will take up the subject. A parliamentary committee sat on the state of the public sewers in 1823, but it had an indifferent chairman in the late Mr. Peter Moore—made no report, and nothing came of its inquiries.

PROGRESS OF POPULATION.

1801.

Increase per cent.

1811.

Increase per cent.

1821.

Increase per cent.

1831.

England

8,331,434

14⅔

9,551,888

177/3

11,261,437

16

13,089,338

Wales

541,546

13

611,788

17

717,438

12

805,236

Scotland

1,599,068

14

1,805,688

16

2,093,456

13

2,365,807

Army, Navy, &c.

470,598

—

640,500

—

319,300

—

277,017

10,942,646

151/4

12,609,864

14

14,391,631

15

16,537,398

The increase in population has been rapid and nearly at an uniform rate per cent. for the last thirty years, notwithstanding the increase or diminution of the Army, Navy, &c. The population of Ireland amounted in 1831 to 7,734,365, making the aggregate population of the three kingdoms 24,271,763. With such an augmented number of people, cribbed in by corn laws, anti-emigration prejudices, and monopolies, can it be matter of surprise that capital is redundant—bread dear and labour cheap? Is it possible, while society is progressively increasing in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, public institutions can be stationary? Is it possible that an Aristocracy, daily becoming more disproportionate in every element of power to the mass of the community, can maintain a monopoly of political authority? Either they must speedily repair the few decayed pillars by which the State is supported within, or be crushed from the superincumbent pressure without!

POSTSCRIPT.

Two or three changes, occasioned by deaths and removals, have occurred while the work has been printing, but they are of too great publicity to need particularizing. We may also remark that the observations at pages 376 and 502 were printed prior to the publication of the Navy Estimates. The energy with which sir J. Graham has proceeded to new-model the department over which he presides will leave, we apprehend, little to desire in that branch of the public service.

After the explanations of the Duke of Wellington (House of Lords, March 16th) we suppose we must acquit his Grace of the design imputed to him, p. 584, and conclude that he had no intention of joining the continental despots in a crusade against the liberties of France and Belgium.—May not this be an afterthought of the ex-Premier, like his famous explanation on the subject of Parliamentary Reform?

Page 498, line 14, for custos read custodes; page 592, line 15, for divisions read division; page 597, line 27, for sixteenth read seventeenth century.

In the printed Reform Bill, as amended in committee by the House of Commons, Wallingford forms one of the semi-disfranchised boroughs, and ought to have been inserted in No. IV. instead of No. V. of our Tables, page 614.

In No. VII. page 615, Chatham should be inserted and Swansea omitted.

On bringing up the Report, Merthyr Tydvil was included in the number of enfranchised boroughs.

THE END.

MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT, FENCHURCH-STREET.

WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE CABINET LAWYER.

REPORTS ON PUBLIC CHARITIES.

In 8vo. Boards, price 12s. Vol. I. of an

ACCOUNT OF PUBLIC CHARITIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES;

Comprising the Charities of Seventeen of the chartered Companies of London, and of the principal Cities and Towns; including Bristol, Bath, Scarborough, Tadcaster, York, Manchester, Preston, Lancaster, Blackburn, Oldham, Leeds, Ripon, Knaresborough, Beverley, Selby, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Northampton, Gloucester, Stratford, Lichfield, Bedford, Croydon, St. Bees, Yeovil, &c.; digested from the Reports of the Commissioners on Charitable Foundations. With Notes and Comments, by the Editor of The Cabinet Lawyer.

“This work is unquestionably of great importance; and we can, with great confidence, recommend it to our readers. The notes and comments, by the Editor, are elucidatory and satisfactory; and he has executed his difficult task with much tact and ability.”

—The Star, March 5, 1827.

“The compiler has added some very curious and pertinent notes.”

—Times, December 29, 1826.

“We consider the ‘Public Charities’ as a work of great national importance.”

—British Traveller, April 4, 1827.

“Although we have more than once recommended this useful, clever work, and several journals have echoed our sentiments, we still esteem it beyond the praise it has elicited.”

—The Literary Chronicle, June 9.

A TREATISE ON THE POLICE AND CRIMES OF THE METROPOLIS;

Especially Juvenile Delinquency, Female Prostitution, Mendicity, Gaming, Forgery, Street-robberies, Burglary, and House-breaking, Receiver of Stolen Goods, Counterfeiting the Coin, Exumation, Cheating and Swindling, Adulterations of Food, &c.

Also an account of the Courts of Justice and Prisons of London; and an Inquiry into the Causes of the Increase of Crime; the Tendency of the Debtor Laws; and into the Present State of the Licensed Victuallers’ Trade: with Suggestions for the Improvement of the Protective Institutions of the Metropolis, and the Prevention of Offences.

“We recommend it as a book of great intelligence and merit.”

—Literary Gazette, July 18th, 1829.

“This work is compiled with great care, and all who feel interested in such subjects will find it a compendium of the principal facts useful to be known.”

—New Monthly Magazine, June 1st, 1829.

TORY MISRULE. “The People would be quiet if let alone, and if not there is a way to make them. There shall be no Reform so long as I hold a station in the Government. ”. Duke of Wellington, Nov. 2 1830.

APPENDIX

TO THE

BLACK BOOK:

AN EXPOSITION OF THE

PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

OF THE

REFORM MINISTRY AND PARLIAMENT:

THE CHURCH AND THE DISSENTERS;

CATASTROPHE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS;

AND

PROSPECTS OF TORY MISRULE:

WITH TABLES OF ECCLESIASTICAL AND ELECTION STATISTICS, AND CORRECTIONS OF FORMER EDITIONS OF THE BLACK BOOK.

“His Grace is favourable to Reform—he must be favourable to Reform;—‘There stands his Grace between two bank directors!’ ”—“Not content with promises for the future, which I think you will find vain and unsubstantial, they refer to their past acts as proofs of their attachment to Reform; yet I think I shall demonstrate to you that they were only proofs of their inability to resist Reform.”

—Lord John Russell’s Speech, Totness, Dec. 2, 1834.

BY THE ORIGINAL EDITOR.

SIXTH EDITION,

WITH

THE ‘CRISIS’ AND A CHARACTERISTIC LIST OF THE

ANTI-REFORM GOVERNMENT.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.

MDCCCXXXV.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY W. MARCHANT, INGRAM-COURT, FENCHURCH-STREET.

THE ‘CRISIS.’

SINCE the publication of the first edition of the APPENDIX the Tory Ministry has been completed, and a list, with their characteristic additions, is placed at the end of the Addenda.

Failing to draw in the Stanley party, sir Robert Peel has madly thrown away the scabbard and identified his government with the RODENS and KNATCHBULLS—the Orangemen of Ireland, and the high churchmen of England. Acts, not evasive addresses, proclaim the policy of the new Administration; but happily the means are at hand to crush in embryo the Hydra visitation.

Electors have only to ask themselves,—For what was the late Ministry abruptly dismissed? For what is parliament prematurely dissolved? Is a Peel Cabinet, or a Peel House of Commons, likely to be more reforming than either? Is experience no longer to be our guide, but professions, rather than deeds performed and principles avowed, to be taken in earnest of the future conduct of statesmen? In so plain a matter there can be no mistake. Our course, in the approaching struggle, is as open as the heavens that cover us, and Reformers cannot possibly misunderstand each other or be misled by the common enemy they have to combat.

The base delusion sought to be practised by a perfidious branch of the Press has been repudiated with scorn by the Minister it was meant to serve. ‘Measures not men!’ croaked the wily Deceivers. But what said sir Robert Peel at the Mansion-house? Hear him!—

“I do not agree with the views of some persons, who are disposed to overlook the men who constitute a Government, and regard merely the measures they propose. I do not believe that any Government can be stable or permanent which does not possess public confidence. I do not believe that a cold approbation of measures, after previous scrutiny, will avail for the support of a Government, without reference to the heads which conceived and the hands which are to execute those measures.”

—December 23, 1834.

Upright man, but mistaken and incapable Premier, we accept the test with thankfulness. But by what strange perversion of moral reasoning it has been sought to destroy the sole foundation of human judgment and confidence! In all the affairs of life to what do we trust their successful issue but to the ‘heads’ and ‘hands’ that conceive and direct them, and which past experience has accredited?

Upon this principle, Electors, the KING seeks your opinion of his new servants. Let him have it with firmness and alacrity. There is now an end of mystification; the instruments of his will are before you; save one, they are to a man the opponents of the Reform Bill—the Ministry of the SIX ACTS—the Spy System—Tithe Massacres—Religious Intolerance, and European despotism. For the love of our species avert this threatened plague of nations! At your bidding the spectre of Misrule will disappear. Sir Robert is carried along by a torrent he cannot control, and will gladly withdraw from his irksome position when commanded by the voice of his countrymen. Let it be loudly and intelligibly expressed. By your moderation, discernment, and promptitude, place on record one more proud testimony to the excellence of representative institutions.

Select carefully the organs of your sentiments. Let eternal hostility to Tory domination be the first sine qua non of your suffrages. To carry out the principles of the Reform Acts, so as to purify, not to destroy, our institutions, another. These are cardinal points, and embrace in their full development Church Reform, Corporation Reform, Law Reform, Equality of Civil Immunities among all classes of religionists; with the remaining et ceteras that constitute the roll of national grievances.

The agitation of constitutional novelties we deprecate. There will be time enough for that hereafter, if need be. At the existing crisis it would create divisions, by which the concentrated force necessary to destroy the mischief hatched by Bishops and Courtiers would be weakened. Pledges, however, ought to be demanded to the extent we have indicated. All untried men ought to be pledged, and all tried men, if still suspected; but surely it cannot be necessary to pledge those who have been tried and approved. Pledges are to guarantee the future; but what better guarantee can we have than past and accepted services?

With these intimations, which some perhaps may deem obtrusive, we commit our countrymen to the strife. That each and all will do their duty, regardless of intimidation, corruption, and base Journalism, we fear not; and long before the vernal equinox, the black cloud which has gathered over the freedom and happiness of Britain be dissipated!

January 1, 1835.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE design of this APPENDIX is to supply omissions, and to correct and complete up to the present period the mass of information contained in former editions of The Black Book, especially the last edition, published in 1832.

The preliminary chapters were written prior to the change of administration, and comprise an exposition of the principles and practices of the Reform Ministry and Parliament up to the period of the former’s dissolution. They also embrace a brief elucidation of the important interests at issue between agriculture and commerce—the Church and the Dissenters—the rich and the poor—our fiscal administration—and other great questions which are long likely to engage public and parliamentary attention. The remaining chapters relate to the recent change of ministers and its probable consequences, and the purport of which is sufficiently indicated by their titles. In the ADDENDA is a collection of statistical information, explanatory of subjects of previous discussion, the existing state of the representation, and the character and composition of the Reform Parliament. Much of this detail is of permanent interest, and will also be found valuable for reference in the event of a general election.

The British constitution is in a dilemma, and in the chapter on the ‘Catastrophe of the House of Lords,’ we have taken the ‘bull by the horns,’ by shewing where the chief difficulty lies and the mode of extrication. Changes of ministers are only convulsive efforts to avoid an inevitable conclusion. Our discussion may be thought premature; but surely two years are long enough for carrying on a national deception which every one sees through, though its open avowal is by some deemed inexpedient. What the nomination boroughs were, the PEERAGE is—the national grievance—and until it be redressed—until the second estate of the realm be brought to harmonize with the Reform Parliament, we shall continue to vibrate on the agitating eve of a collision, the issues of which no man can gather up. It is not an unforeseen difficulty, it was foretold by Canning, Peel, and even Wellington, if not in words in idea, that the reform of the Lords would be an unavoidable consequence of the reform of the Commons.

Respecting the question which now fixes public attention, namely, the conflicting claims of the ‘Ins’ and the ‘Outs’, there seems little difficulty. The point at issue is simply this—Shall the people repose confidence in those who adopt reform from principle, or in those who repudiate it on principle. In private life the election would be promptly made. When men walk into danger with their eyes open—when they sin against knowledge—it is justly deemed a sign of weak or deranged intellect. He is a foolish shepherd who places over his flock a dog accustomed to bite sheep; nor less would be the fatuity of the people, if they trusted those who have always made them their prey, not watched over their welfare. Professions of reform will always be abundant. Who so base indeed as to profess otherwise? But the kind of reform makes all the difference. What a Radical deems reform, a Conservative deems destructive. It is not phrases but acts we want. To learn the future we must look to the past. What the Tories have been, we have still too many painful remembrances—an imperishable DEBT, and a ‘dead weight,’ which alone, since the peace, has swallowed upwards of one hundred millions of the fruits of industry. Can this be forgotten by the toiling hives of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Scotland? The Whigs are not without reproach; they have been timid in concession, but they have been great benefactors. In truth, when they gave us the Reform Bill, they gave us all, or nearly so, the rest being only a question of time in taking possession; the title-deeds and the power were put into our hands, and perhaps we have been too generous in consulting the convenience of the outgoing tenants!

For our parts we are always for choosing the least evil and the greatest good. On this principle we prefer a Whig to a Tory, and a Radical to either; but in our anxiety to serve a relative rather than a neighbour, we will not play the game of the common enemy of both.

Never since political strife began was there so outrageous an attempt as that which is now being made, on the credulity of the English nation. Those who have always been the foes of civil liberty, those who considered reform as synonymous with ‘revolution,’—who even thought the disfranchisement of East Redford a dangerous innovation on the constitution—are now put forward as the people’s best friends, as the fittest instruments to select to work out the consequences of the Reform Act which they reviled, opposed to the utmost, and dreaded as the harbinger of that retributive justice their misdeeds had so long provoked. The juggling of St. John Long, of Mahomet, or any other successful practiser on popular folly, was nothing to this, and we shall be curious to see how far it will succeed in a community heretofore distinguished by good sense and discrimination. To the dialectics of the shallow sophistry which it is sought to cram down by mere force of daily and impudent iteration, no answer is requisite, for its dupes and its authors must be alike contemptible.

We are obviously in a ‘crisis,’ though it may be denied by those who are unable or unwilling to comprehend the social elements in conflict. It is a crisis, too, into which the country has been deliberately, if not wantonly, precipitated. It is now established on unquestionable authority that no divisions existed in the late Cabinet likely to terminate in its dissolution. Lord John Russell, in his speech at Totness (Dec. 2nd), says pointedly, that ‘at no time was there the prospect of more UNANIMITY than when the Cabinet was dissolved.’ Ministers were occupied in preparing plans of reform for the next session of parliament when they were abruptly dismissed, and he must be blind indeed who does not see the cause and the object when he sees the men by whom they have been supplanted. But Englishmen are great on great occasions, and they will not fail in the present emergency. Their old enemy is once more in the field; all the unclean things are collecting together to make a stand for the remnant of Corruption—for a rich sinecure Church, and the close Corporations that have so long rioted in the abuse of the trust property of the poor. It will be the Battle of the Bishops, for it is at their instigation, aided by the corporators, that the new war has commenced between the government and the people of England.

It is an event for which we were certainly unprepared. We had consigned the Tory plunderers to the ‘tomb of the Capulets,’ as will be seen from the first page of our publication; having lost ‘the mind and motive’ force of the country, having exhausted all their arts of imposture, we never thought they would have the effrontery to re-appear in a public capacity. But their reign will be short; if not quietly disposed of by our parliamentary representatives, they will be crushed by the uprising of national execration at a general election. Meanwhile it will be interesting to observe their movements. They have already tried to pass themselves off as REFORMERS, but that is too clumsy a cheat to be long persisted in, and, thanks to the Reform Acts, there is no chance for gagging Bills, Habeas Corpus Suspension Acts, nor Seditious Meeting Bills:—therefore our opinion is that they will be driven to their old tricks, to try to alarm the proprietary of the kingdom, or to divert attention by a war about Belgium or Turkey, under pretext of maintaining national honour and preponderancy;—they will say nothing about the poor curates of England, nor the wretched peasantry of Ireland; their fears—pious and loyal souls!—will be all for the ‘interests of religion,’ the safety of the Monarchy, and the three estates; meaning thereby, as every one knows, tithes, pensions, cathedral sinecures, charity plunder, and a renewed lease of misrule!

These are certainly stale devices of the Pitt and Castlereagh system. Still, when one recollects the remark of Mr. Hume on the repeated success of similar arts of deception in all ages, and when, too, one sees that feats of ring-dropping, little-go, and other contrivances of fraud, continue daily to be played off with advantage in the metropolis, we cannot be sure that even Peel and his mountebank colleagues may not, for a time at least, meet with a certain degree of encouragement.

But that they will ultimately be driven from the stage there can be no doubt. Reformers are not so infatuated as to let their petty differences give a triumph to their common foe, and thereby lose the grand prize for which they have so long struggled—cheap—alike protective—and responsible government. If they cannot, at the ensuing election, secure the services of the best Reformer they will take the next best;—at all events they will unite and close their ranks against the entrance of the wily, hated, and well-known Tory.

December 15th, 1834.

APPENDIX TO THE Black Book.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.

THE Tories, or, according to their new designation, the conservators of abuses, have become, like the Jacobites, little more than an historical name. The mind and motive force of the country have left them, and it is impossible they can again exercise political power. If they are wise, they will seek obscurity rather than keep alive the remembrance of their misdeeds. They cannot complain that their reign was short, nor dissolution premature. They lived the full natural term of authority, that is, they survived till they fairly sank under the re-active energies of the corruptions they had patronized, and by which their sway had been perpetuated.

If we revert to the state of public institutions, it is manifest they could not have been longer carried on without the corrective of new principles. The seeds of decay had extended to the secondary as well as primary departments of administration. Abuses were not more rife in the church, public offices, and pension list, than in the courts of law and great corporations of the kingdom. Under a pertinacious system of non-inquiry and non-reform the gangrene had spread through the entire body politic. What is more, the Tories had lost their moral influence. A pretended respect for antiquity, a dread of innovation, and other plausibilities under which they had carried on their plunderings, failed to delude the community; it was found that the superstition of toryism, like other superstitions, was bottomed on mere selfishness and spoliation.

The Whigs succeeded under circumstances well calculated to inspire hope and confidence in the nation. First, they had been reared in the salutary school of adversity; with claims to power equal to their opponents, they had been long excluded from the sweets of enjoyment. Of course they entered office with a tempered and even humiliated spirit, and with no little ostentation of devotion to the popular will.

Secondly, they were bound by previous pledges; during a long course of opposition they had placed on record sentiments which they could not belie without the forfeiture of all claim to principle and character.

But the third and best guarantee of their conduct was in the state of the public mind. The people had been awakened to the defects of their institutions; they were unanimous and energetic in the determination that no pretext, no factious illusion, should avert their efficient reformation. While this spirit lasted, the Whigs could not swerve from the path of patriotism without endangering their official existence; and it was only as popular excitement subsided that their own zeal in well-doing abated. That such a change has come over them we will show by their acts; but before we do this, we shall advert to some leading measures as illustrative of the principles of whig government.

We pass over such acts as had no characteristic feature about them, and the course of which would have been similar whether directed by a whig or tory administration. Such were the renewal of the charters of the Bank of England and East India Company. The only thing we shall remark, on the agreements concluded with these great public bodies, is that ministers made an improvident bargain for the public; that they conceded advantages to these corporations, (especially to the Bank in the legal tender clause,) for which they ought to have obtained a higher price. That this was the case is proved by the rise in the price of the stocks of the two companies immediately after the arrangements had been completed. As respects the Bank, too, the opportunity ought not to have been lost of placing the whole trade of banking on a better foundation—of securing a currency of unchangeable value—and obtaining for the public not only the profit, but the security of a national circulation, issued under the authority and guarantee of the state.

The settlement of the West-India question is another great measure of the whig ministers. We pass over the ludicrous part of this business—namely, ministers first proposing to grant a loan of fifteen millions to the planters, and then suddenly transmuting the loan into a gift of twenty millions; let us attend to the principle of this transaction.

Had the planters a fair claim to compensation for the emancipation of their slaves? We say decidedly no. The ground on which the claim has been most plausibly defended is the fact that a vast property in slaves had grown up, if not under the sanction, at least under the connivance of acts of parliament, and that, as this property was about to be destroyed by another act of parliament, the owners of slaves had a just claim to compensation against the legislature, though none against the slaves themselves.

Our first reply to this is, that though acts of parliament had been passed to regulate the slave-trade, none had been passed recognizing a right of property in human beings. Quite the reverse; since it is a well-known maxim of the English law, that the moment a slave touches the British soil he is free, our laws repudiating the idea of a property in the person of an individual. Even a negro enlisting in the British army thereby becomes free by statute, (10 Geo. IV. c. 6, s. 37), as a native of England. Against the colonial legislatures the planters may have had a valid claim to compensation; they may have admitted a property in slaves, but the statute and common law of England are exempt from the opprobrium.

If government was right in its treatment of the planters, it has been unjust towards other classes. We will cite two cases in illustration. Under the authority of the law the great brewers acquired a valuable property in public-houses; by an act of parliament opening the beer-trade the property was destroyed or depreciated, and no compensation was granted for the injury sustained. Prohibiting the beer-houses to retail beer to be consumed on the premises will inflict great injury on their proprietors. Yet, though these houses were opened under the express guarantee of an act of parliament, and the property therein may be greatly impaired by another act of parliament, no compensation will be given to the owners for the loss they have suffered.

The property in newspapers has become a great property; it has been created under, and its value may depend on the continuance of the existing stamp laws. It is impossible to foresee what might be the effect of the repeal of the stamp duties, but whatever this effect may be, however greatly newspaper property may be depreciated thereby, we will venture to say the owners would neither ask nor obtain indemnification.

Why ought such different measures of justice to be dealt to the different classes of the community? We can only ascribe it to the aristocracy still predominant in the government. Members of the House of Commons, members of the Cabinet, were interested in the slave question; they were owners of slaves, and so their losses must be compensated! It was not, therefore, for the maintenance of a principle, nor to do an act of impartial justice, but for the maintenance of a caste, that a permanent encumbrance has been entailed on the country of upwards of £600,000 a year,—a sum equal to the taxes on knowledge, and one-tenth of all the money levied for the relief of the poor of England.

The same selfish policy, the same devotion to aristocratic interests, maintains the discriminating duties between East and West India produce, by which the people of England have been taxed four millions annually for the benefit of the trans-Atlantic planters.

An injustice or abuse ought to be abated without compensation. It is contrary to law, as well as reason, that a man should profit by his own wrong-doing. But the Whigs have been constantly doing violence to this principle; they have not sought to reform, but to buy up the fee-simple of abuses at their full value. They have sought to change, not lighten the burden. An overgrown salary has been commuted into a superannuation, and a sinecure into a pension. The maxim acted upon is, that whoever has once had the fingering of the public money shall for ever after be maintained out of the public purse. It is the principle of the poor-laws; let a man obtain a settlement, and he thenceforward claims support from the parish, and let a placeman once get into a government office, and he immediately and for ever sets up the pauper’s claim of being fed and clothed at the charge of the community. Some pensions have been granted on the most objectionable practice of the poor-law administration—namely, the allowance system. We have before us a parliamentary return of persons who receive compensation allowances for the loss of their offices until otherwise provided for; that is, while out of work they shall receive something less than full wages. According to this rule we are now maintaining a mass of tory ex-placemen. Mr. Goulburn receives £2000 a year; Mr. Croker, £1500; Mr. Planta, £1000; Mr. Courtenay, £1000; with many others. The condition on which all these pensions are received is that when they hold offices—that is, get into full employment—their pauper allowances shall cease. But why did not the Poor Law Bill abolish state allowances as well as parish allowances to the able-bodied but unemployed poor. Is it not as reasonable that John Wilson Croker and William Goulburn should have made provision for the vicissitudes of life out of their earnings as Jem Styles and Matthew Dawson?

In their Judicial Reforms the Whigs have gone on the tory maxim, that the holders of sinecures in the courts of law shall receive full pecuniary compensation. But we must protest against its justice; we can never admit of ‘vested rights’ in public abuses; we can never admit that the holders of life or reversionary interests in abuses in church or state are entitled to their full yearly value like the holders of a copyhold or freehold estate. But this favoured class seem even exempt from the changes in the value of property to which other classes are liable. Sinecures, whether lay or spiritual, are no longer sacred in public estimation—they are depreciated in value—they are, in fact, exposed to entire confiscation by the progress of opinion; yet they still continue to be bought up by government at their full nominal worth, in lieu of being extinguished by a compromise or dividend. In this way the great legal sinecures held by lord Ellenborough, the duke of Grafton, and others, ought to be got rid of. But the late reforms in the Court of Chancery have established a mischievous precedent. The monstrous sinecures of £11,000 a year, held by the rev. Thomas Thurlow, were purchased by an equivalent life-annuity payable out of bankrupt estates. The purse-bearer to the lord chancellor, and other officers in the court, were compensated in a similar manner. Lord Brougham received, as an equivalent for the loss of a portion of his sinecure patronage, an addition of one-fourth part to his retiring pension, making it £5000, in lieu of £4000, the highest sum paid to his predecessors.

Lord Brougham is a bitter enemy to the Poor Laws, as encouraging idleness and improvidence; but why does he countenance the application of principles to himself which he reprobates when applied to the less instructed portion of society? What is his pension but a compulsory rate levied on the community as a provision for old age, a large family, or scarcity of employment? These are, in truth, the very pretexts on which it has been justified. By a loss of patronage it is assumed his lordship has not the same means of providing for his children, and his pension is deemed a provision to fall back on in old age or when unemployed. But surely this “great Westmoreland pauper” might provide for the casualties of life out of his enormous income as well as the poor man out of his wretched pittance. As to absolute want of employment there does not appear much to apprehend, as lord Lyndhurst has overcome that difficulty by descending to a chief-justiceship after being chancellor; or why not even descend to practise again at the bar, after the example of chief-justice Pemberton. At all events there seems little need of a pension: the practice of granting pensions to ex-chancellors is one of the excrescences of the “Pitt and plunder” system, and ought to have disappeared with the first session of the Reformed Parliament.

By-the-by we might as well remark here on the enormous salary awarded to the lord chancellor by his whig friends, and which his lordship, up to this time, has condescended to receive. We do this without any personal ill-will, for we will readily admit no one deserves to be better paid than lord Brougham. But we look to principle and former professions. On examination before a parliamentary committee lord Brougham remarked on the almost impossibility that some of the tory ministers should not have been favourable to the continuance of the late war, seeing it added so enormously to their official gains. Lord Eldon was cited as an instance. Upon an average of three years during the war his lordship’s net income was £19,233, and in one year, 1811, it was £22,737. (Parliamentary Paper, No. 322, session 1831.) Lord Stowell lost £8000 a year by the cessation of hostilities as judge of the admiralty court. Even the king lost by the peace, as he had no longer the plunder of the droits of the crown and admiralty to supply his extravagance. It is inconceivable men would act so detestable a part with their eyes open, as to continue the miseries of war for mere official spoil; yet as lord Brougham most justly observed, “human frailty operates so, that without stating to ourselves the points we are erring upon, our interests work upon us unknown to ourselves.”

Now is lord Brougham more favourably circumstanced than his predecessor? Is he not surrounded by the same interest-begotten motives of action? By the establishment of the Bankruptcy Court his duties are considerably less than former chancellors; yet, allowing for the change in the value of money, his emoluments are greater than the average emoluments of lord Eldon during the war, and he has a retiring pension equal to the salary of the president of the United States of America. It is hardly possible, therefore, that he can see great defects in a system by which he so greatly profits, or be zealous in the reform of abuses. Hence his procrastinated, illusive, and abortive legal reforms. During the four years of his chancellorship not more has been effected than would have been effected under a tory or any other administration. The defects in our judicial system, and the chaos of absurdities in the statute and common law of the realm, continue unredressed. Even the Court of Chancery is still pre-eminent for delay, cost, and circuity. And why not disintegrate the mass of incompatible duties in his lordship’s own office, by separating judicial from political functions, and removing the opprobrious farce of appealing from lord Brougham on the bench to lord Brougham on the woolsack? A love of patronage, of power, and emolument, are the lurking motives.

In their Ecclesiastial Reforms the Whigs have been singularly unsuccessful, and the second session of the reformed parliament has terminated without any substantial improvement being effected either in the Irish or English branch of the United Church. It would occupy too much space to exhibit at length the abortions in principle and detail that have been propounded, still it is essential to give the reader an outline of what has been proposed, as illustrative of the views of ministers on church reform and indicative of future proceedings.

The Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 37.) for regulating the temporalities of the Irish Church was the chief measure of the first session. By it the number of bishops is reduced from twenty-two to twelve, by the union of sees as the present incumbents die off. After the death of the present incumbents also, the enormous revenues of some of the sees are to be reduced; that of Armagh from its present amount of £14,500 to £10,000; that of Derry from £12,000 to £6,000; and all the other sees which may be worth more than £4000 to that sum. The exaction of vestry cess is abolished. So is also that of first fruits, in the stead of which there is to be imposed upon all livings above the actual yearly value of £300 an annual tax, varying in its rate according to the value of the living. Lastly, the leases of bishops’ lands are to be converted into perpetuities, by which it is supposed a sum of £1,200,000 (it was originally calculated at three times that amount) will be realized. The fund arising from these prospective reductions and savings—for mind, it is all in future—is to be vested in commissioners, consisting of six prelates of the Irish Church and the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and under their direction it is to be applied to the augmentation of small benefices, the building of churches and glebe houses, the meeting of the expenses hitherto defrayed out of the vestry cess, and other purely ecclesiastical objects. The fund so created it is calculated will ultimately yield a revenue of £155,000 a year.

Upon this first measure of reform two observations may be made. 1. It effected (with the exception of the see of Derry) no immediate reduction in the enormous revenues of the Irish clergy. 2. With the exception of the vestry cess, amounting to about £35,000 a year, not a single farthing is saved to the community; an enormous sinecure church establishment is still left to levy the same amount of revenue from the industry and property of Ireland. So far, then, as the people are concerned, the reform is totally valueless; it saves nothing for the poor, for education, nor for local improvements.

In lieu of a measure of this sort a very different proceeding was demanded. A crisis had happened in the affairs of Ireland; by what may be termed the natural course of events, the clergy had lost their tithes, and the church, instituted for the benefit of the people, had become alien and useless to them. Here, then, was an opportunity for getting rid of the entire grievance. Abolish the Irish Church as a national establishment; share among the clergy the remnant of property which events had left to them; let them have life stipends out of the produce of the bishops’ and other church lands. In lieu of tithe let a land-tax be levied for the maintenance of the destitute, for education, and for the extinction of those territorial rights which are the great obstacle to the reclamation of the bogs and wastes of Ireland.

By such a plan of reform the ecclesiastical establishment, which has been the principal source of impoverishment and civil strife, might have been made the great instrument for improving and tranquillizing the country.

Two other acts were passed relative to the Irish Church; one for effecting a compulsory composition for tithes payable by the landlord, and the other empowering government to make advances to the amount of one million to such of the clergy as had not been able to recover the tithes due to them, to be repaid by five annual instalments. The landlords are now the parties from whom the repayment of these instalments may be demanded, who have of course their remedy against occupiers of the soil. It is not improbable the money advanced to the Irish clergy will never be repaid except out of the pockets of the people of Great Britain. But we must leave this to come to the schemes introduced last session for the extinction of tithe.

First it was resolved, before any final arrangement took place, the law itself should be restored, and the right of the clergy vindicated by enforcing the payment of tithe. In the execution of this preliminary essay, that noted person the Right Hon. E. G. Stanley most signally failed. After bringing into play all the resources of his vast genius—after employing horse, foot, and artillery, to collect the pigs, poultry, cattle, and chattels of the peasantry, the most energetic of secretaries could only raise £12,000, and this after an expenditure of £60,000. Failing in this project, the next position assumed was that whatever might be the fate of tithes, the landlords had no right to a farthing of them. This was lord Althorp’s own explicit, firm, and decided declaration. Mr. Littleton followed with his celebrated resolution of the 20th of February, for the conversion of tithe into a land-tax, payable to the crown and redeemable by the landlords, the produce of such redemption to be invested in land for the benefit of the clergy.

To this proposition the objections were weighty and manifold. First, the policy of tying up in mortmain a mass of real property in the hands of the church or government, was not sanctioned by the experience of history. Secondly, the making the clergy stipendiaries of the state would not tend to elevate their office in public estimation, and gave a sanction to some of the popular notions respecting them. Lastly, it was not likely many of the Irish landlords would have money to spare to redeem their tithes, poor as they were known to be, and burdened as their estates mostly are with mortgages and settlements.

To surmount these difficulties the Great Agitator came forth, July 30th, with his famous proposition for at once giving a bonus of 40 per cent. to the landlords on condition that they would, in place of their tenantry, charge themselves with the payment of the remaining 60 per cent. of tithe. The plan was that the clergy should abate 221/2 per cent. of their full due,—namely, 21/2 per cent. for the expenses of collection, and 20 per cent for better security. Every incumbent therefore would receive 771. 10s. certain in lieu of £100 nominal income. Of this 771. 10s. the sum of £60 would be paid by the landlord, and the remainder, 171. 10s., be charged on the consolidated fund, that is, on general revenue of the empire. Ultimately, indeed, it was held forth that the difference of £17 was to be paid out of what is called the Perpetuity Fund, that is, the fund already alluded to, arising from the sale of bishops’ leases in perpetuity; but as this fund is not likely to be realized during the present generation, it may be concluded that the tax-ridden people of England and Scotland would be saddled with the payment of nearly one-fifth of the tithes of the Irish clergy!

The plan we have last indicated is that which passed the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords as too unfavourable to the Church; but a plan more favourable to the Church and less favourable to the people is not, in our opinion, likely to be again submitted for their acceptance.

That it was favourable to the clergy may be easily illustrated. By the defection or hostility of the people tithe had become extinct as a property, as much so as if it had been swallowed up by the sea or an earthquake. Under such circumstances were not 771/2 per cent. a most bountiful equivalent? In our opinion it was too much. Few persons would give £77 for £100 tithe even in England, to be saddled with its insecurities and the expenses of collection. Many landlords would gladly accept £77 certain, indisputable, and in perpetuity, in place of a nominal £100 of their rents. Whether the Irish clergy were entitled to anything may be doubted. They had lost their property by the course of events, and how many other persons have lost their incomes by the vicissitudes of the times without receiving compensation? To wit, those who have been ruined or injured by tamperings with the currency, the Bank Restriction Act, and the reduction of the Five and Four per Cents. Stock of the National Debt. Government showed no sympathy for the sufferers in these instances, though it was, in fact, the author of their misfortunes. We repeat, then, that the tender to the Irish clergy was most liberal—more liberal, we are sure, than will ever be again offered.

Let us next advert to this plan of ecclesiastical reform as it would have affected the community. It is of importance to examine it with attention, as it may be made the foundation of ulterior projects for the extinction of tithe in England.

Two-fifths of the tithes were to be at once swamped in a bonus to the landlords. This was the most indefensible part of the scheme. If there were any point on which all men were agreed, it was on the fact that, come what might, no portion of the tithe ought to devolve to the owners of the soil. This was the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s own explicit and apparently unchangeable declaration. Next to the clergy no class was so deeply interested in the settlement of the tithe question as the landlords. It gave value, peace, and security to their possessions. In lieu of a bribe they ought to have made a sacrifice. But the source whence the bribe was to be taken outrages belief. It was not to be taken from the vast possessions of the Irish Church, but to be charged on the general revenue of the empire. Of the £40 out of every £100 to be given to the landlords, nearly one half was in great part to come out of the pockets of the dissenters of England and presbyterians of Scotland. Here was ecclesiastical regeneration with a vengeance! In lieu of the reform of the rich sinecure church of Ireland opening new sources of public revenue, it would have entailed additional burdens on the community. The question of the secular appropriation of the surplus wealth of the church was perverted into a question for appropriating more money for its maintenance—and of which a whig aristocracy, who had with alacrity adopted this new scheme of public spoliation, and who are among the principal landowners of Ireland—and the rest of an absent proprietary, who had been the chief causes of the miseries of the country—were to have the sole benefit and advantage!

One of the most objectionable measures of last session—Poor Law Bill excepted—is the Civil Offices Pension Act. This act is founded on an act passed during the odious administration of lord Castlereagh. In 1817 the call for retrenchment was loud and unceasing, and in order to silence the popular cry a committee of the House of Commons recommended that certain of the most obnoxious sinecures should be abolished. But as this took away a portion of the corrupt matter at the disposal of the minister, it was proposed that the crown should be empowered to grant certain equivalent pensions to its adherents in lieu of the abolished sinecures. Accordingly the 57 Geo. III. c. 67, provided that all the chief and subaltern officers of government, from the first lord of the treasury down to the clerk of the ordnance and first and second secretaries of the Admiralty should be entitled to retiring pensions, varying from £3000 to £1000 per annum.

This, it must be confessed, was an odd mode of economical reform. The sinecures were abuses, and ought to have been swept away without placing another equivalent abuse at the disposal of the crown. The principle assumed was that sinecures were the property of our hereditary legislators and their dependents, and as this property was taken from them they had a right to be provided for in some other way; that either as sinecurists or pensioners they were entitled to a perpetual maintenance from the public!

Upon this bill of 1817—so base in its origin and so indefensible in principle—the Whig act of the present session for granting pensions to themselves is founded. The Act 4 and 5 Will. IV. c. 24 provides that the first lord of the treasury, the secretaries of state, the chancellor of the exchequer, first lord of the admiralty, president of the India board, and president of the board of trade, may each claim £2000 a year pension after two years’ service at one or different times; that the chief secretary of Ireland and secretary at war may claim £1400 a year after five years’ service, and that joint secretaries of the treasury, vice-president of board of trade, under secretaries of state, first and second secretary of the admiralty, and secretaries of India board, may each claim pensions from £1200 to £1000 for terms of service, varying from five to ten years.

Neither the public press nor the radical members of the House of Commons appear to have taken notice of this extraordinary measure of a reform ministry. We shall, however, offer a few observations, first on the extravagance of this provision, and, secondly, on the principle of placing such a power of rewarding the high and efficient officers of government in the hands of the crown.

According to the act, the first lord of the treasury, after two years’ service, may claim a pension of £2000 for life, and the president of the board of trade a like sum after the same term of service. Supposing now these officers forty years of age, and that they retire from office after two or three years and live to the age of eighty they will receive, exclusive of interest, £80,000 of the public money, or £40,000 for each year of actual labour. A pretty reward this to lord Melbourne or Mr. Poulett Thomson for submitting for a couple of years to the drudgery of public life, exclusive of their official salaries and patronage while in office, and which we should have thought ample remuneration.

But why should the power of rewarding public services be vested in the crown, and not in the House of Commons? It is plain enough that it is only the favourites of the court or of the ministers that will receive pensions under this act. No servant of the people, however necessitous, will ever be benefited by it—only the parasites of power. It is in fact bribes for servility, so much additional influence to the crown, and a further provision for titled pauperism. Lord Brougham, however, concurred in the measure as well as the duke of Wellington, and the chief objection to it entertained by earl Grey was, that “it did not sufficiently enable the crown to reward public functionaries.”

There is another observation connected with this extraordinary provision of the Whigs,—namely, that it holds out a temptation to ministers to desert their employment without reasonable and adequate occasion. We do not mean to insinuate that the chance of £2000 a year for doing nothing was the cause of the retirement of lord Grey, Mr. Stanley, and sir James Graham; we do not mean to say that they acted from the same unworthy motives that lord Brougham says the paupers do—that they prefer one-half or one-third wages in idleness rather than whole wages and industry; still, as the same learned personage remarked, selfish motives do exert such an unerring influence over human conduct, unknown even to the parties themselves, that it is impossible to say to what extent they may have influenced the individuals mentioned. It cannot be denied that during last session ministers were always ready to withdraw from office; indeed, having made such a comfortable provision for themselves, and having placed in lucrative appointments their relatives and dependents, they had scarcely any motive longer to undergo the toils and anxieties of official life. They had, as the late premier recommended the bishops to do, put their ‘houses in order,’ and were prepared for the worst. The threat of retirement was really the talisman by which they governed the country. If the independent portion of the House of Commons was likely to prove refractory, a ministerial ‘strike’ was held in terrorem, which instantly procured implicit obedience.

Now to those honourable Members who really consider the services of lord Althorp and colleagues essential to the government of this great empire—a necessity we confess we do not ourselves perceive—we would vouchsafe a word of advice. Why do they not take away from ministers all temptation to retirement?—why do they not obtain the repeal of an act which holds out a direct inducement to withdraw from office, and apply to them the same principle they are seeking to apply to the poor, that those who do not work neither shall they eat—at the public expense!

As our purpose is not to present a detailed history of the Whig Ministry merely to illustrate principles, we shall only indicate minor delinquencies. Of this sort was the grant of a pension of £2000 a year to Mr. Abercromby. The appointment of this gentleman to a Scotch sinecure judgeship of the Court of Exchequer, just on the eve of its abolition, was itself a mere job; and then on the reduction of the court to settle the honourable member on the country for life was an indefensible mode of providing for a friend totally unworthy of a reform government. Of the same character, or worse, was the creation of a new office for Mr. Macaulay—his father and other relatives having before been provided for—with a salary of £10,000 a year, and an ample retiring pension after four or five years service, as a means of paying him for half a dozen clever speeches, reviews, and party pamphlets. Not less objectionable was the appointment of sir John Byng to the governorship of Londonderry—a sinecure of £1200 a year. The Russo-Dutch loan and the guarantee given to Otho, king of Greece, were measures of questionable policy, by which a serious burden and responsibility have been imposed on the country. Then, one cannot forget their defence of naval and military sinecures—their opposition to a revision of the pension list—to the abolition of flogging in the army—to naval impressment—to the repeal of the septennial act—the stamp duties on newspapers—and the introduction of the ballot.

The measures on which the Whigs may justly pride themselves are their Reform Bill, their economical reductions in the public expenditure, their improvement of the constitution of the Scotch Burghs, and their foreign policy. They have also instituted many salutary inquiries into the civil and judicial administration of the country. But their foreign policy, next to the reform bill, is their proudest boast. They have not only preserved peace—so essential to the thorough reform of our institutions and the progress of constitutional liberty abroad—but they have severed the country from its tory connexions with the continental despotisms, and united her destinies to the free governments of France and the Peninsula. The union of the naval power of Britain with the military power of France is the guarantee of peace, or, if war should come, of victory against Tyrants!

CHAPTER II.

THE PLOUGH AND THE LOOM.

THERE is obviously a strong disposition in ministers and the reformed parliament to show special favour to agriculture. On the opening of the late session his Majesty is made to lament “the continuance of distress amongst the proprietors and occupiers of land.” All the more important measures subsequently introduced, as the repeal of taxes on husbandry and the reform of the tithe and poor laws, appear to have been deemed chiefly valuable as modes of rural relief. Now an important question offers,—is there any thing in the present state of agriculture, or its relative importance as a branch of national industry, that fairly gives precedency to the Plough over the Loom? or is the preference merely a feudal prejudice, or selfish desire on the part of the territorial classes to forward those pursuits in which they are most deeply interested?

As to the existence of agricultural distress, that is a condition inseparable from the cultivation of the soil. But that there is general and unusual distress among the farming classes, we deny, and for proof refer to the evidence (not Sir James Graham’s Report) given before the Agricultural Committee of last year. Relative distress will always subsist in agriculture. Farming is and always must be a poor trade. The inducements to invest capital in land are such, that the profits of farming must always be depressed below the profits of commerce and manufactures. This is not the only cause of depression. In England, where two-thirds of the land occupied are held by tenants-at-will, if a farmer’s profits increase, his rent will be proportionately increased. So that, pressed on one side by the greater competition of capital in his employment, and on the other by the increasing exactions of his landlord, it is obvious that he can never enjoy, for a lengthened period, an exuberant state of prosperity.

From this dilemma no protection can save him. Were the price of corn, by restrictions on importation, artificially forced up to 120s. a quarter, his condition would not be permanently bettered. There would still be agricultural distress for him. The exorbitant price of corn would force inferior land into cultivation, the produce of which, owing to the greater outlay in its cultivation, would barely remunerate the grower; so that the occupier would be still only able to obtain a bare subsistence; and as to those occupying the richer soils, they would be reduced to their wonted level by the increase of rents.

The partial distress of landlords, though it originates in different causes, seems as inevitable as that of their tenants. In Poland, in Russia, in Spain, and in every European community, the landed interest is in a state of pecuniary embarrassment. Every where estates are encumbered by debts, mortgages, and settlements. This, however, is not because their revenues are small, but because they are enormous. It is men of moderate, not of large incomes, that live within them. The former are compelled to practice economy, to look after their affairs, and live according to rule; the latter are exempt from these precautions. George IV. had a million a-year and was constantly in debt, and many of the great landholders, from similar improvident courses, are involved in a like predicament.

It follows that the mere existence of poverty among the proprietors and occupiers of land is no proof of the existence of general agricultural distress entitled to legislative relief. The landed interest has always been the favoured interest in this country; it has been favoured by the progress of commercial and manufacturing industry, and it has been favoured by a most partial allocation of public burdens, and the general course of legislation. After shortly elucidating these circumstances in the progress of agriculture, we will proceed to show that, from changes in society, the time has passed when the landed interest ought to be considered the primary interest of the community.

Notwithstanding the complaints of the decay of agriculture, of farmers living on their capital, and of whole parishes being abandoned from the pressure of poor-rates, there can be little doubt that agriculture has been constantly extending. How otherwise can we account for the comparatively low prices of produce? Population has been steadily increasing, and unless the increase of food had kept pace with the increase of consumers, prices must have been enhanced by competition. It may be alleged that prices have been kept down by importation from abroad, but this is refuted by facts. In the last two years the foreign wheat and flour entered for home consumption have been very inconsiderable. The quantity of foreign wheat and flour kept for consumption in Britain, in the ten years ending in 1820, amounted to 5,206,321 quarters; and in the ten years ending in 1830, it amounted to 5,349,927 quarters. No great difference. Yet in the interval from 1820 to 1831, population had increased two millions. Now whence has the food been obtained for this vast addition to the number of consumers? Certainly not from Ireland. The imports from Ireland during the last ten years do not exceed on the average 350,000 quarters a-year. But an increase of two millions of consumers requires an increase of at least two millions of quarters of wheat for their sustenance, and that the supply has been obtained is evident from the fact of the steadiness of prices. It may be concluded, therefore, that as this supply has neither been obtained from Ireland nor abroad, it has been obtained from the increasing produce of our own soil.

General facts of this nature entirely negative the idea of the decline of agriculture. They are much more satisfactory than the testimony of individuals; since the last, when honestly given, can only be founded on a limited observance and their own peculiar circumstances. Even witnesses examined by the Agricultural Committee of last year testified to the thriving state of husbandry. In Norfolk, Mr. Wright, an extensive land-agent, bore testimony to the progressive improvement in farming; and in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk the land is as well cultivated as ever, (p. 96.) In Cornwall, Mr. Coode stated that agriculture had improved. In Lancashire, Mr. Reed said (p. 179) the quantity of arable land had increased within the last seven years. Other witnesses testified to the same effect.

No doubt the profits of farming have fallen since the war, but the depression extends to every other department of industry. Taken as a body, in no other country do the agricultural classes enjoy such pre-eminent advantages. Their estates have been fertilized by the wealth flowing from the successful pursuit of commerce and manufactures. They have better turnpike-roads to roll their carriages on, and canals to transport their produce, than can be found any where else. By the help of unrivalled mechanical inventions, they are enabled to buy their wearing apparel, their woollens, linens, silks, and calicoes, cheaper than in any other country. The possession of vast colonies brings within their reach all the choicest luxuries of the earth. Through these and other advantages the English aristocracy has become the richest and most favourably circumstanced in the world. It is remarked of lord Clive, (Universal Magazine, July, 1760,) who had killed himself, that he had £70,000 a-year, and was the richest subject of the king. Many individuals at present have four or five times that income. Foreigners view with astonishment the splendid seats of the nobility, their gorgeous and crowded assemblies, their massive sideboards of plate, splendid equipages, and other indications of territorial opulence!

Mere wealth, however, constitutes only a tithe of the social and political advantages enjoyed by the landed interest. 1. A landed qualification is the basis of eligibility to most civil and legislative functions. Without a qualification in land, no person is eligible to be a member of parliament, a sheriff, a justice of peace for the county, or a commissioner of land and assessed taxes. 2. By the law of entail, their property is protected from the just demands of creditors, when that of persons engaged in trade would be liable. 3. Their possessions are exempt from the legacy and auction duties. 4. A mass of sinecures in church and state are kept up solely for their profit and emolument. 5. In the levy of the assessed taxes and the imposition of turnpike-tolls, special favour is shown to all interests connected with agriculture. Lastly, it is now admitted by sir R. Peel and sir James Graham, that the cornlaws, which levy a tax of twenty or thirty millions on the people, are kept up solely for the preservation of the landed aristocracy as essential parts of the community.

The only drawbacks of the landed interest are tithes, poor-rates, and county-rates. The unfairness of representing these as peculiar burdens on land has been so often exposed, that it appears superfluous to advert to them. For a landowner to complain of tithes, it has been justly observed he might as well complain that his neighbour’s field is not his own, or that he is lord of only 900 in lieu of 1000 acres. For 1000 years at least the tithe-owner has been co-proprietor of the soil, and subject to his claim the landlord has succeeded to his possessions. The lien of the poor is hardly less inalienable; they have always been a charge upon the land, and justly so in return for their services. Then, again, as to the county-rates, the burden properly falls on the landowners, as it is chiefly for their convenience and security that the highways, prisons, and bridges are kept in repair.

Leaving these matters, let us come to the allocation of public burdens. The progress of taxation is a most instructive lesson in the science of government; it shows how a class, enjoying a monopoly of political power, will pervert that power to its own selfish purposes, and to the neglect or depression of all the non-represented interests of the community.

The land-tax is a practical illustration of this truth. This impost has been stationary for a hundred and forty years, notwithstanding the vast increase in the value of landed property. Of forty-nine millions raised by taxes in the thirteen years of the reign of William III. the land-tax furnished £19,174,000. The landowners of that day, therefore bore two-fifths of the whole public revenue, and paid a direct tax to government, which was nominally one-fifth, and might be in reality one-sixth of their entire income.

As the old valuation and rate of assessment of 1692 have been continued to the present, the produce of the land-tax at this day, including the value of what has been redeemed, is the same as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, namely, two millions a-year. But two millions at the former period was about one-fifth of the land-rents, whereas it is now only one-fifteenth. It then formed nearly one-half the public revenue; it now constitutes about the twenty-fifth part. Here, then, is a striking instance of the dexterity with which the landowners have evaded their fair proportion of taxation, and this without being subjected to any countervailing burdens; for it must be borne in mind that when contributing one-fourth of their incomes to the state, they were subject then as now to the additional assessment of tithes, poor-rates, and county-rates.

Let us now advert for a moment to the continental landowner. More the subject is investigated, and more enviable and favoured will appear the position of the British agriculturist; less ground there will appear for perpetuating the injustice of corn-laws, and seeking relief from existing burdens.

In France, the fonciere, or land-tax, produces about one-fourth part of the entire revenue of the country. The landowners of Austria are supposed to pay at least one-fourth, probably one-third of the entire mass of national taxation. From the statements of Mr. Jacob, it appears that in Hanover, Mecklenberg, Holstein, and Sleswick, the land-tax on the owner’s net profits varies from 20 to 25 per cent. including, however, tithes and school and poor rates, which are generally trifling in amount. In Prussia, the king’s tax on rent is 25 per cent.

It thus appears that in the most improved and civilized countries of the continent, about one-fourth of the whole public revenue is derived from a direct tax on land, while in Britain the land-tax supplies only one twenty-fifth part of the revenue. The landowners of the continent pay about one-fourth of their incomes to government, those of Britain about one fifteenth part.

It is worthy of remark, too, that while the land-tax in this country has been stationary since the reign of William III. it has been in a state of progressive increase on the continent, the cadastres, or valuations, being raised or altered, from time to time, or superseded by new ones.

Having adverted to the privileges, exemptions, and special favour extended to agriculture, let us next inquire whether there is any ground for this preference, either in the superior numbers, industrial character, fiscal contributions, or intelligence and moral power of the agricultural classes: in a word, let us ascertain whether agriculture is, as heretofore considered, the primary, or only the secondary interest of the empire. A solution of these questions will determine the soundness of the policy, which has long been predominant in the legislature, of rendering the interests of the town subservient to the country population.

First as to numbers. In England, the proportion of the population employed in agriculture is smaller, perhaps, than in any other European community. In Italy, the proportion of agriculturists to non-agriculturists is as 100 to 31; in France, as 100 to 50; in England, rather more than as 27 to 100. It is a remarkable fact, that the proportion of persons employed in agriculture during the last thirty years has been gradually decreasing, while the proportion employed in trades has been increasing. A similar change in the industrial character of society is observable in Scotland and Wales, as will appear from the following statement of Mr. Rickman, inserted in the Appendix to the Report of the Agricultural Committee.

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT of the NUMBER and OCCUPATION of FAMILIES in England, Wales, and Scotland, in the Years 1811, 1821, and 1831; also the Proportions expressed in Centesimal Parts.

——

In each Year.

Total Families.

Employed in Agriculture.

Employed in Trade, Manufacture, &c.

All other Families.

EXPRESSED IN CENTESIMAL PARTS.

Year.

Total.

Agriculture.

Trade, &c.

Others.

ENGLAND

{ 1811

2,012,391

697,353

923,588

391,450

1811

100

34·7

45·9

19·4

{ 1821

2,346,717

773,732

1,118,295

454,690

1821

100

33·0

47·6

19·2

{ 1831

2,745,336

761,348

1,182,912

801,076

1831

100

27·7

43·1

19·4

WALES

{ 1811

129,756

72,846

36,044

20,866

1811

100

56·2

27·7

16·1

{ 1821

146,706

74,225

41,680

30,801

1821

100

50·6

28·5

20·9

{ 1831

166,538

73,195

44,702

48,641

1831

100

43·9

26·9

29·2

SCOTLAND

{ 1811

402,068

125,799

169,417

106,852

1811

100

31·3

42·1

26·6

{ 1821

447,960

130,699

190,264

126,297

1821

100

29·2

42·5

28·3

{ 1831

502,301

126,591

207,259

168,451

1831

100

25·2

41·3

33·5

Mr. Marshall, in his Statistics of the British Empire, has classed the counties of England into the agricultural, manufacturing, and metropolitan, and given the following table of the increase per cent. in the population of each.

VIII.—INCREASE PER CENT. OF POPULATION.

ENGLAND.

1801 to 1811.

1811 to 1821.

1821 to 1831.

1700 to 1831.

Agricultural counties

91/2

151/4

10⅔

84

Manufacturing counties

181/4

201/4

221/4

295

Metropolitan counties

161/4

181/8

151/4

147

Total

{ England

14⅜

17⅞

16

154

{ Wales

13

171/4

12

117

{ Scotland

13

15

13

87

GREAT BRITAIN

141/8

171/2

151/2

144

From this and the preceding table, we derive two important facts:—First, that the number of persons employed in trade and manufactures far exceeds the number employed in agriculture, and, secondly, that the disproportion is rapidly augmenting. From 1700 to 1831, the population of the agricultural counties increased only 84 per cent., while the population of the manufacturing counties increased 295 per cent. Or, if we limit attention to the more authentic censuses taken from 1801 to 1831, it is obvious how rapidly manufacturing has been gaining on agricultural industry at each decennary enumeration.

So far then as numerical superiority is involved, the loom may claim decided precedency over the plough. This determines the most important consideration, for it is obviously men and not things that ought mainly to decide the course of legislation. But we shall find that trades and manufactures have another point of superiority, namely, in their power to augment the wealth of the community.

There are no authentic data for determining the relative proportion in which the different branches of industry add to the national income. Mr. Colquhoun, with his usual hardihood, has attempted to solve this question. He has given an estimate of the wealth annually realised in Great Britain and Ireland; we give his statement more as a curiosity and the conjectures of a shrewd calculator, than any thing else.

Estimate of the Property annually created in Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1812.

£

Agriculture in all its branches (including pasture)

217,000,000

Mines and minerals, including coals

9,000,000

Manufactures in every branch

114,000,000

Inland trade

31,500,000

Foreign commerce and shipping

46,000,000

Coasting trade

2,000,000

Fisheries

2,000,000

Chartered and private banks

3,500,000

Foreign income remitted

5,000,000

£430,000,000

This estimate is chiefly valuable, as shewing the relative productive power of the several branches of national industry in the opinion of an ingenious writer; it is not applicable to existing circumstances, being prepared when the country was involved in war and paper-money, and when agriculture was of far greater relative importance than at present. We have no data for correcting the estimate up to the present. But the superior productive power of manufactures over agriculture may be readily inferred from the obvious facts of the greater number of persons employed therein, and the higher wages and profits realised. These are infallible criteria for determining the amount of wealth annually created in the two branches of national industry. Agriculture barely provides the community with its coarser food; all our luxuries, clothing, domestic conveniences, tools and machinery, shipping, navigation, and vast exports and imports are the results of commerce and manufactures. They have been the source even of agricultural wealth, as well as provided the means for internal improvements and a vast government expenditure.

The third point of superiority we claim for manufacturing industry is, that it contributes in a greater proportion to the public revenue of the country; agriculture not only contributes less to the mass of taxes in proportion to the smaller number of persons connected therewith, but absolutely less as will appear from a representation which appeared in the Times newspaper, April 2, 1834.

Our population in round numbers is 24,300,000, of which one-third or 8,100,000 is engaged in agriculture, and the remaining two-thirds, or 16,200,000, are engaged in other pursuits.

By the English scheme of taxation, the government taxes are for the most part common, and apply uniformly, and are paid by all classes of the community.

These taxes may be ranged under the following heads:—

1.

The customs and excise, the gross produce of which, for the year ending 5th January, 1833, was

£36,411,482

2.

The stamp duties, the gross produce of which, for the same period, was

7,119,892

3.

The assessed taxes, the gross produce of which, for the same period, was

5,333,686

4.

The Post-office, the gross produce of which, for the same period, was

2,175,291

£51,040,351

And the agriculturists being one-third of the population, the proportion of this sum of £51,040,351, which they ought to pay according to their numbers, is £17,013,450: and now let us see what these men actually do pay, and then:—

1.

It is quite sure that of exciseable commodities, and those paying the customs’ duties, there is a much greater proportionate consumption in town than in the country; and therefore if the consumption of these commodities by the agriculturists is put down at three-tenths instead of one-third, this will be doing them more than justice, and three-tenths of £36,411,482 is

£10,923,444

2.

Of the stamp duties at least four-fifths are paid by the inhabitants of towns, and one-fifth only by the agriculturists, and one-fifth of £7,119,892 is

1,423,978

3.

Of the assessed taxes four-fifths are paid by the inhabitants of towns, and one-fifth only by the agriculturists, and one-fifth of £5,333,686, is

1,066,736

4.

Of the Post-office revenue 11-12ths are derived from the inhabitants of towns, and 1-12th only from the agriculturists, and 1-12th of £2,175,291, is

181,274

13,595,432

Proportionate contribution, as before stated

17,013,450

Difference

3,418,018

So that the agriculturists not only contribute in a small degree to the general revenue, but less by £3,418,018 than they ought to contribute in proportion to their numbers. Yet mirabile dictu! these men are considered the mainstay of the country, and the class for whose interests, in the opinions of a majority of a reformed Parliament, the interests of all other classes should be sacrificed.

Let us advert to the fourth and last consideration—the superior intelligence and moral power of the trading and manufacturing population.

The entire mind and soul no less than the industrial activity and physical power of the community are concentrated in the metropolis and great towns of the kingdom. It is here where institutions of science, of education, and benevolence are founded and maintained. It was here even where civil liberty had its origin, was first claimed and conquered for the entire nation. Among the scattered population of the country, there is as little intelligence as combination for accomplishing objects of general utility. There is hardly any thing like personal independence—from the land-owners down to the farmer and mere labourer, it is a gradation of comparative slavery without the freedom either of thought or action which animates the manufacturer and operative. Hence it is that all great political movements, all great social ameliorations have had their origin and achievement in towns, not in the rural districts. It is commerce and manufactures, not agriculture that have impelled nations onward in the career of improvement. They have been the foundation of the freedom, glory, and magnificence of all great communities, of Tyre, Carthage, and Palmyra, no less than of Venice, Genoa, and the Netherlands. Wherever we find agriculture the sole or predominant industry of a state, there we may be well assured the people are poor and abject in spirit—poor in all the comforts and luxuries of living—women socially and physically degraded—and the whole frame of society debased by tyranny and superstition. Before our eyes, it is so even now in Italy, Spain, Poland, and Hungary. Without Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, France would have had no revolution,—she would have still groaned under the double yoke of regal and ecclesiastical bondage. Without London, Birmingham, and Manchester, England would neither have had religious freedom nor parliamentary reform, but would have still been in the trammels of a plundering oligarchy and intolerant church.

Pursuing the contrast in its moral and municipal bearings, we are led to similar conclusions. The most degraded part of the population are the cultivators of the soil. Among them it is we find the cases of improvidence, vice, and illegitimate births most numerous. It is not in Leeds, Liverpool, or Manchester, but in the domain of the squire and parson that have been found the worst examples of parochial misgovernment.

But enough: with such facts, moral, statistical, and historical, does it not appear like national infatuation to tolerate the ostentatious imbecillities propounded by sir James Graham and sir R. Peel of the superior importance of agriculture, and that the landed aristocracy is the most essential interest of the community, in whose favour not only the great principle of commercial freedom should be violated, but every man, woman, and child in the country barefacedly and openly robbed!

CHAPTER III.

THE CHURCH AND DISSENTERS.

I.—

UTILITY OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH.

ACTIONS which refer only to individuals, not to society, are usually considered without the pale of public legislation. The minor transactions of individuals in trade, in the management of their families, and in mutual intercourse, are not within the animadversion of the law. Religion seems still less within the scope of civil government than morals. It has reference solely to the individual—to a future state, and the relations that subsist between man and his Maker. It has little or no reference to his duties as a citizen, nor has it any reference to the fundamental purposes for which government itself was principally established—namely, the security of persons, property, and public institutions.

Notwithstanding these obvious truths it has been affirmed that it is the duty of the state to tender religious instruction to all its subjects. Upon what foundation this obligation rests has not been stated. Prima facie it seems as little the duty of the state to tender religion to the people as to tender medicine, or a trade or occupation by which they may obtain a livelihood.

It is a sound principle that a government should never interfere to do for the people what the people will voluntarily do as well for themselves. Before, therefore, a church establishment supported by public endowments can be deemed defensible, it must be shewn that a benefit is conferred on society that could not otherwise be obtained. Before any portion of the public resources can be fairly appropriated to the support of any order, it must be shewn that the people derive a benefit from that order which otherwise they would not receive.

Now this ground for the maintenance of the ecclesiastical establishment of the country seems to be entirely cut away by the example of the Dissenters. The established priesthood confers no exclusive benefit on the people. Under the auspices of a voluntary ministry religion has thriven more than under the auspices of a stipendiary one. Nonconformists may claim precedency of the church in the support of institutions for education, of works of charity and benevolence; they may boast of their private and civic virtues, of their habits of order, peaceful industry, and devotion to the liberties of the country. On these points the church can claim no superiority, nor hardly equality. Does it not then follow that its compulsory maintenance is an unjustifiable waste of the resources of the community, and its connexion with the state as a great public institution, an evil, not a benefit?

But a waste of the public revenue is not the only objection. All orders and all establishments that are not positively beneficial are positively mischievous. First, because they are a cost to the peeple; secondly, because they monopolize advantages at the expense of the rest of society; thirdly, because they are an obstacle to social improvement. Wherever there is a body of men enjoying exclusive profit or privilege there must be an impediment to the onward march of society—an aversion to change, and this from the very obvious motive, that, possessing above their share of social benefits, they are conscious they may lose but cannot gain by innovation. It is thus that the church and aristocracy have been mostly in the ranks of anti-reformers, and, like islands in a stream, opposed to the general current. They felt that any new disposition of social power and influence, whether educational, political, or ecclesiastical might lessen, but could not aggrandize them.

Applying these principles to the established church of this country, we find, first, it confers no exclusive benefit on the people which they would not otherwise obtain; and, secondly, that it is a positive evil by operating to the social disfranchisement of a large portion of the community. Upon the great and influential body of Dissenters its exclusive privileges inflict many and grievous injuries. Their case may be briefly stated.

1. They are excluded from the parochial registry, unless they conform to the baptismal rites of the church.

2. They cannot marry without conforming to the church ceremonial, to which they object as “superstitious and indelicate.”

3. They cannot bury their dead in the parish churchyard, except according to the rites of the church.

4. They are excluded from the national universities; from Oxford entirely, and to Cambridge they are only admitted for instruction, but not allowed to graduate without subscription to the church articles.

5. By the 10 Geo. IV. c. 7, s. 25, if they hold any judicial, civil, or corporate office, they are not allowed to attend in their official costume, or with the insignia of office, except at a church or chapel of the establishment.

These are all practical grievances, arising out of the monopoly of office and function vested in the church ministry; they are absolute persecutions for conscience sake,—penalties inflicted for nonconformity. The two remaining grievences are of a different character.

6. They are compelled to contribute towards the maintenance of a church from which they have withdrawn, and from which they derive no benefit.

7. Their religion is stigmatized and degraded by the state preferring another denomination of religionists, first, by the grant of endowments; second, by the grant of the exclusive privileges of registration, baptism, burial, and marriage; and third, by giving the church exclusively a political representation in the legislature.

The church is national, the universities are national, yet from the benefits of both the nation is excluded. If the Dissenters formed an insignificant fraction of the community, their complaints might be disregarded, their hardships might be considered an evil inseparable from the social state, which renders it impossible that every man’s natural rights and inclinations can be respected; but when it is considered that they form a majority of the community, that they are in fact the community itself (for a majority is the community), for whose benefit all laws and all establishments ought to be framed and maintained, the case is marvellously altered; and the injustice of their position is further heightened when it is considered that there is nothing in the dogmas of their worship, in the source from whence it is derived, nor in its influence on their characters as citizens, to place them one iota on a lower level than churchmen.

For the abatement of this great social wrong there is only one remedy, and the longer it is delayed the more disadvantageously it must be applied. The remedy to which we allude is the state ceasing to patronise any sect of religionists, any more than any sect of philosophers. Let no man in purse, person, reputation, or civil privilege, suffer on account of his spiritual faith; it is, as before remarked, a matter solely personal to the individual, and of which government ought to be less cognizant than even of moral conduct.

For the adoption of this change in social polity the reasons are many and convincing. First, the separation of church and state is a catastrophe wholly unavoidable; the churchman can never compete with the dissenter; loaded with sinecure wealth, like the soldier in battle loaded with spoil, he must ultimately yield the field to his more ardent and enterprising opponent.

Secondly, it must strike all men, that an expensive church establishment is wholly unnecessary in a country where experience demonstrates that the religious instruction of the people will be amply provided for without a compulsory provision for the purpose. It is indeed alleged that in the remote districts of the kingdom religious teachers would not be found without the aid of parish endowments; but this seems sufficiently answered by the fact of the ample provision made, on “the voluntary principle,” for the religious instruction of the scattered population of Wales, and in the distant settlements of North America.

Thirdly, the patronage by the state of the episcopalian form of worship is a real obstacle to the peaceful and effective government of the country. No plan of popular education, of municipal institutions, nor of civil registration, can be well introduced and established until all classes of religionists are placed on the same level as to office, favour, and immunity.

Lastly, this concession is demanded from government by the rapidly increasing numbers and wealth of the dissenters. Upon these points we shall not enlarge, as we purpose hereafter to insert some illustrative statements.

II.—

MEASURES FOR THE RELIEF OF DISSENTERS.

THE measures introduced by ministers for the relief of dissenters were characterised by illusiveness and inefficiency. First came the Marriage Bill. Here the grievance consisted in compelling the dissenter to be married according to the forms and by a minister of the church of England. It was proposed to allow the dissenter to be married according to his own fashion, but the bans were to continue to be published in the parish church. Why such bit by bit relief? Were the Ministers reluctant to take too large a slice from the surplice fees? The dissenter wished to be relieved from the necessity of coming in contact at all with the established priesthood in the celebration of what he considers a mere civil ceremony; and why could not an indulgence be extended to the whole body of dissenters which has long been enjoyed, without bad consequence, by the Quakers and Jews?

But if the object was to amend the marriage laws, why not do it on a general and comprehensive principle? They are a disgrace to the jurisprudence of a civilized people. To prevent clandestine marriages the consent of parents and a certain term of residence are required, bans are to be published or a license obtained; but all these safeguards may be evaded by stepping over the border into Scotland. Then why not have removed the anomalies in the law of divorce, and rendered valid marriages celebrated by the Roman catholic clergy. The last are a fruitful source of immorality and often of suffering: the vast body of Irish in England prefer being married by their own priests; such marriages are all invalid, the children born of them are bastards, and the mother is not unfrequently left destitute with a family, not having any marital claim on the father for their maintenance.

In their Marriage Bill the Whigs acted on their accustomed maxim of doing the least possible—introducing a measure not the best in kind but smallest in quantity.

The Church Rates’ Bill was a gross attempt at delusion. It was framed on the principles then predominant in the cabinet—namely, not to diminish in the slightest degree the possessions of the Church. About £250,000 a year, it was calculated, formed the dissenters’ share of the church rates; this was to be charged on the land-tax—that is, on the general revenue of the country. That is, the hand was to be taken out of one pocket to be thrust into the other: what had been a voluntary payment, assessed by the parishioners themselves, was to be converted into a compulsory tax, levied by the state on both Dissenters and Churchmen. How ingenious! but the people only laughed; so no more was heard of the Church Rate Bill.

It is not easy to conceive what practical advantages Dissenters can derive from admission into the Universities on the principles proposed by the bill of last session. They can hardly like their children to be taught any more than married by the established clergy. Besides, the government of the colleges and the fellowships, tutorships, and professorships, will be possessed exclusively by members of the Church of England. The course of instruction, too, being in great part religious, must be repugnant to dissenting tenets. This is decidedly the case at Oxford, where at one of the colleges one-third of the time of the students is occupied in religious studies. From Mr. Maberly’s pamphlet it appears that at the college to which he belonged the students are occupied in reading the gospels in Greek, afterwards Paley’s Evidences of Christianity, and the last year of their course is devoted to the study of the thirty-nine articles. Can a dissenter join in these exercises, or if he cannot how is his time to be occupied? It is clear, admission will be to him a profitless boon; the only advantages it offers are that it will qualify him to be a fellow of the college of physicians, and shorten by two years the term of attendance at the inns of court of students educating for the bar: but these can only be facilities to a few of the great body of dissenters desirous of an university education. As to the attainment of academical degrees, even if admission is allowed, that seems chimerical in the existing spirit and constitution of the universities. A dissenter is more hated and despised at college than an infidel. He may deserve degrees, but will they be conferred by the governing authorities? It will be at the universities as it is in the courts of law—where many are called to the bar, but few chosen.

The entire constitution of the Universities is vicious. They are national foundations, and were originally intended for national purposes, but have become wholly unsuited to the times. Two-thirds of the colleges of Oxford were founded in catholic times, when men believed in purgatory, transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and the efficacy of masses in procuring the repose of the dead. At the Reformation, and subsequently, their constitution was altered under the mere authority of royal letters and proclamations, and the same power which assimilated their discipline to the reformed religion may be again exercised to assimilate it to the altered circumstances of society. The educational wants of the age are science and philosophy, but the instruction of the universities is scholastic and theological. It is the learning of the fourteenth rather than of the nineteenth century. Divinity formerly constituted almost the only knowledge as the sole study of all classes; the Bible in an unknown tongue was a sealed volume to the laity, and required the interpretation of priests and professors. But this is all changed. The scriptures are opened to all, and every one assumes an equal right to interpret their contents. Does not this shew the necessity of altering the constitution of the universities? Education at these national establishments ought to be secular, not ecclesiastical. Divided as the community is into sects, whoever seeks to establish tests seeks to privilege one by the proscription and plunder of another. It is an attempt to establish a mental monopoly more detestable in principle than monopoly in commerce. To abate such grievances is only following up the spirit which repealed the test and corporation acts, and relieved the catholics. Till then toleration will be incomplete; there will still be pains and penalties for conscience sake. But that the good cause will triumph we have no doubt, in spite of the imbecile conceits of Sir Robert Peel, Goulburn, Inglis, and other remnants of the pig-tail school.

Throwing open the Universities forms only a part of the advantages to which Dissenters ought to aspire. The colleges of Eton and Winchester are public foundations, intended for the advancement of learning. With ample revenues, they are entirely in the hands of the established clergy, and replete with abuses. The education given there is a farrago of obsolete learning and metrical trifling—and the discipline is detestable; it is that of the quarter-deck or cockpit, in which boys are brought up to be alternately slaves and tyrants. In the great schools and charitable foundations of the metropolis and neighbourhood, in the Charter House, Christ’s Hospital, St. Paul’s, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, and the Gresham Lectures, the clergy have a monopoly of their revenues, as wardens, provosts, high masters, senior masters, ushers, lecturers, and assistants. Why, too, should the masterships of grammar-schools, throughout the kingdom, be limited to graduates of the universities? They have degenerated into sinecures, seldom having more than two or three foundation scholars; and the buildings piously intended by their founders for the gratuitous accommodation of poor children, have been perverted into boarding and pay-schools for the emolument of their clerical masters, usually the parasites or relatives of some rotten corporation, who assume to be trustees of the foundation.

One of the benefits we anticipate from the agitation of the Dissenters is the opening and entire reform of the much-abused and long-neglected schools and charitable foundations of the kingdom. But to obtain this or any other practical advantage, they must urge their claims with zeal and perseverance. They must agitate openly and boldly; it is only by organizing a strong pressure from without that any thing will be carried: in the opinion of those from whom relief is sought, they are not, as matter of right, entitled to any concession; therefore no concession will be made except on compulsion. We would strongly advise the Dissenters to abandon their present stealthy mode of proceeding; they really seem ashamed to put forward their grievances with effect, lest they should be accused of political agitation, or of allying themselves with political agitators. False delicacy like this is unworthy of so just and honest a cause. They should connect themselves with all who have any thing to ask from the common enemy, regardless of misconstruction. Above all they should refrain from seeking private interviews with ministers; they will obtain only courtesies: nor should they listen to those who advise them not to embarrass government, but wait and see what will be done for them. This soft and illusive course has been tried, and what was the result? What did they gain by their twenty-three interviews with the members of government?—the Church Rate Bill and the Marriage Bill!

Agitate—agitate boldly; let their grievances, numbers, wealth, and social importance be unceasingly brought before the public, and we will answer for the result.

Having said much on the Universities, we shall conclude the chapter with shortly noticing a few of the incongruities in the discipline and constitution of these foundations.

Dissenters, as such, are not admitted either at Oxford or Cambridge, but at Cambridge they may pass through their studies, though not allowed to graduate: thus they may qualify for degress, but are interdicted their attainment. At Oxford they are entirely excluded, subscription to the thirty-nine articles being requisite on entrance. At Trinity College, Dublin, catholics are admitted and allowed to graduate; yet this is a strictly protestant university, intended to promote the protestant religion, and founded by almost our first protestant sovereign, Queen Elizabeth.

England has been more slow than most continental nations in establishing entire religious freedom; that is, the abolition of all tests as a qualification for civil rights, whether political or educational. In the German universities there are no religious tests; nor even in the pope’s university at Bologna. In England they are comparatively of recent introduction, and rest on no great authority; for it is under no higher sanction than a royal letter of James I., dated 1613, that the universities assume the power to refuse degrees without subscription. Prior to that time all the honours of the universities were attainable, except in theology, without any subscription whatever.

In the reform of the universities the spirit that prevails there ought to be totally disregarded. During the last session they had the monstrous injustice to petition Parliament not only against the admission of dissenters to degrees, but against the grant of authority to any other university to confer degrees on dissenters. This was assuredly the climax of clerical monopoly and intolerance.

But why should the Dissenters stop at mere academic distinctions, and not seek to participate in the government and emoluments of these great public establishments. The college endowments are a part of the national domains, intended by their founders to be appropriated to national education. They were not intended for the benefit of a sect or party, but for the community. A collation of the practices of the universities, with their ancient charters and statutes, would show such deviations as would fairly warrant the confiscation of their revenues. To break in on such nurseries of abuse, and adjust them to the wants of society, would be an act of justice, not spoliation. The endowments of some of the colleges were meant solely for the poor. Thus the statutes of King’s College, Cambridge, declare that it is for the benefit of “the poor and indigent”—pauperes et indigentes; whereas it is only the wealthy scholars of the abused foundation of Eton that enjoy its advantages.

But enough: university reform ought to have been included in the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. It is indeed contended by some that as the universities are lay corporations, the dissenters are eligible to all their advantages under the authority of that statute.

III.—

TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.

THE power of truth has been singularly evinced in the progress of opinion on the tenure of ecclesiastical property. The first position taken up in favour of the Church was that the clergy hold their possessions by the same inviolate right that an individual holds his estate. This assumption was speedily disproved. It was negatived by the practice of all the continental states and of our own country at the Reformation; it was negatived by the palpable fact that the clergy have only a life interest in their benefices, over which they could not, neither by will, sale, nor other species of alienation, exercise any of those powers ordinarily annexed to the idea of property; and, lastly, it was negatived by the recorded proceedings of the British parliament itself, which had repeatedly interfered with the property of the church by passing acts regulating the sale, exchange, and mortgage of parsonage houses and glebe lands, and acts actually making a new appropriation of the incomes of incumbents for the benefit of curates: all which would have been indefensible had the clergy held their revenues under the same immutable conditions that individuals hold their incomes; or had they been considered other than stipendiaries of the state, with whose office and emoluments, like those of the army, navy, or civil servants of the crown, the legislature had always a right to deal according to the exigences of the public service.

The second position taken up was that though the estates of the church might not be held in absolute property like those of individuals, yet there was no example of the property of the church being alienated for other than ecclesiastical purposes.

Here again it might have been sufficient to refer to the precedent of the Protestant Reformation, in which the examples were numerous of the possessions of spiritual persons alienated to laymen, or appropriated to the endowment of educational foundations. But this might be objected to as a period when right was compelled to succumb to mere arbitrary violence. Then reference was made to more recent and orderly periods, to the reigns of William III. and the Georges. Here were found examples of acts of parliament, by which masses of property were severed from the church, and appropriated to objects of an entirely secular character.

In 1797, when the cathedral of Lichfield was about being repaired, an act of parliament was obtained to defray the expense by sequestrating the revenues of two vacant prebends. Applying a portion of the clerical income to the maintenance of the fabric of the church was clearly giving it a new direction, as distinct as if applied to the maintenance of the poor. But more recently an act was obtained to appropriate part of the revenues of the see of Durham to the founding of a college for education. In both these instances it may indeed be urged that the purpose was in some degree ecclesiastical. Well, then, here is another example in which church property was severed merely for a commercial purpose. In the reign of William III. the legislature was desirous of encouraging the growth of hemp, when an act passed declaring that, in lieu of a tenth of the produce, no parson, vicar, or impropriator should be entitled to more than 5s. for every acre of hemp and flax grown in England. This act is made perpetual by 1 Geo. I. st. 2, c. 26, s. 2, and upon which it may be observed that if parliament could legally exempt hemp from tithe, why not corn, or grass, or hops? If it could make a new appropriation of a portion of the church estates for an object of secular and national advantage, why not the whole? This clearly establishes under the precedent of an act of parliament itself the legislative right to appropriate to other than ecclesiastical purposes the estates of the church.

The interested misrepresentations of the clergy have caused a great deal of misapprehension of the true nature of tithe property. It is something or nothing, as the cultivator pleases. It may not only be legally and conscientiously diminished, but annihilated; it is not then even a right, for no right can be taken away. If I do not grow corn where is the tithe? If I do grow it, but do not sever it, but let it rot on the ground, the tithe-owner has no redress; in short, it is an uncertain interest that depends on the will of the landlord.

It is a monstrous error to consider tithe as a tenth part of the produce of the earth. Dr. Burn says (3 Ecclesiastical Law, 377) that “tithes of common right are only to be paid for such things as do yield a yearly increase by the act of God.”—“I conceive,” continues the same great authority, “the act of God to mean the natural and spontaneous produce of the earth, and not the act of man, arising from artificial cultivation.”

Now there is no such thing in nature as corn, any more than there is a ship or a cotton mill; it is a creation of human industry; it does not grow as other vegetables, by the power of God, but like the tulip (which Paley says we should never have had without the gardener), hyacinth, the ranunculus, and many others; it is no where to be found only in a state of artificial culture; it is therefore the product of man, and no more the act of God than a watch or a mill; though God gave the materials, as he gave the sun and air, it is the labour of man that has given the value.

The time was when a corn-mill was considered a predial tithe, and paid the tenth dish of the corn ground, but by the case of Newls and Chamberlain, and afterwards by the case of Carlton and Brightwell, without any legislative act the tithe of a mill was changed from a predial tithe, where no expenses of working the mill were allowed, but full tithe paid to a personal tithe where all expenses of such working were allowed: which reduced the tithe of a corn-mill to a tithe of the profit. Why did the House of Lords make this distinction? Obviously because the working of a mill is the effect of personal labour. Is no then the working of a farm equally an effect of personal labour and extensive outlay: and why, if both be the result of labour, should not both be subject to deduction for expenses?

It follows that, strictly, tithe is only a tenth of the produce after deducting the profit of capital and wages; it is what the landowners of Devon and Kent contend, a tenth of the rent or net profit of land: a distinction of great importance, and which we trust our readers will bear in remembrance on the approaching valuation and settlement of the claims of the Church.

CHAPTER IV.

WORKING OF THE EXCISE LAWS.

IT can hardly be denied that during the last one hundred and forty years by far the largest portion of the active talent and intelligence of the government has been directed, not to objects of national improvement, but to picking the pockets of the people, to the watching with the vigilance of a Turkish pacha their growing riches, and then carrying off with remorseless gripe the fruits of their toil and skill, to be wasted in exhausting wars, regal pomp, and aristocratic profusion. The genius of the people has been commercial; the policy of their rulers anti-commercial. Trades’ unions have been obnoxious to the charge of interfering with the freedom of industry; but the annoyances from this source are insignificant when contrasted with the vexatious impediments resulting from the unceasing inquisitions of our fiscal administration.

For proof of this we shall only refer to one department, that of the EXCISE;—a term giving rise to similar imaginings of judicial tyranny as the Court of Star Chamber or Holy Inquisition, and which is no less repugnant to sound principles of finance than of commercial legislation. The laws therein are for the most part unintelligible, and subjecting the individuals obnoxious to them to harassing domiciliary visits and spiteful persecutions. They are also mischievous by interfering with the conduct of business, and thereby imposing restraint on skill, enterprise, and improvement. As a tax the excise is generally unequal, being levied on commodities used by the bulk of the people, but on which the rich spend little or nothing. To get rid of it altogether is perhaps neither possible nor desirable, but we shall select a few examples to illustrate the working of the system, in which improvement would not be difficult, and which would involve no great sacrifice of revenue,—certainly not more than has been squandered in indemnifying the West Indian planters, and clearing out judicial nuisances in the courts of law.

1.PAPER.—The duty on paper varies from 50 to 150 per cent. on the different kinds of paper. Except the very coarsest wrapping paper all paper is subject to a first-class duty; and even wrapping paper, to be charged at the lowest rate, must be manufactured wholly of tarred ropes, a regulation which causes the refuse of the finer paper to be wasted. The duty is a tax on science, on the diffusion of education and useful information. But the tax forms a small part of the expense to which the public is put in order to repay the manufacturer for the trouble and annoyance to which he is subject in carrying on his business. There are sixteen acts of parliament regulating his trade, commencing with the 10 Ann, c. 19, and ending with 6 Geo. IV. c. 111. By one of these he is required to take out a license, and to enter his presses and engines, vats and chests, at the Excise Office. He must only carry on his business in certain places, and a maker of paper must not be a maker of pasteboard. He must letter each room of his manufactory; he must fold his paper in quires, reams, and bundles, and tie it up in a form prescribed by statute: he must give twenty-four or forty-eight hours’ notice of weighing, and after weighing paper must not be removed in less than twenty-four hours. Errors in weighing to the extent of five per cent. subject paper to forfeiture. The penalties vary from £20 to £500. An excise label must be pasted on each ream or parcel; and if the maker do not account for every label received he is liable to a penalty of £200 for each. A master will sometimes send for 500 labels at once to the excise, and should any person get into the mill and steal or destroy them the penalties would amount of £100,000.

2.GLASS.—The direct duty on glass varies from £100 to £200 per cent. Little more than half the gross duty levied is brought into the exchequer; the remained being either returned or lost in the collection. On flint glass the officers may charge the duty either at 3d. per pound in the pot or 6d. out. It is thought more advantageous to the revenue to exact the duty in the pot; and the tax is by this means virtually raised to 7d., whilst the manufacturer who makes the fine glass from the middle, and the coarser from the bottom and top, is compelled, whether he requires it or not, to manufacture the whole from having paid the duty, whereas he would often remelt the coarser parts.

This is only one vexation of the manufacturer. The laws regulating his trade are scattered through twenty-nine acts of parliament. He must take out an annual license, and enter at the excise all his workshops, furnaces, pots, pot chambers, annealing arches, &c. He must provide locks, fastenings, trays, windlasses, scales, and weights, as approved by the officer, and keep them in repair. Before filling any pot he must give twelve hours’ notice, with an account of the weight of the materials and species of glass intended to be made. Officers may enter at any hour, guage, mark, and number the pots: counterfeiting or altering marks penalty £500. Officer may forbid fires to be stirred, or smoke raised, lest he be annoyed in the discharge of his duty, on pain of £100. Refusing to assist officer, penalty £100. Removing flint-glass before weighing, or any way attempting to evade the duty, subjects to a penalty of £500. The structure of the annealing arches, the number of entrances, and the different processes and stages of manufacture are all prescribed under heavy penalties. Exclusive of forfeitures there are fifty-eight penalties, amounting in the aggregate to £9740. So tied down and watched, the manufacturer neither attempts improvement nor experiment in his business.

3.SOAP.—The manufacture of soap is peculiarly a chemical process, but notwithstanding the discoveries in chemical science, there has been no improvement in the making of soap during the present century. The number and complexity of the excise regulations render deviations from the established routine almost impossible. There are twenty-nine acts of parlinment regulating the manufacture, beginning with 10 Ann, c. 19, and ending with 3 Will. IV. c. 16.

A soap-maker must occupy a tenement assessed to the parish rates. If he alter any boiling-house, warehouse, room, or other place, or use any copper, vat, or other vessel, without giving notice, he is liable to penalty. All materials and utensils for soap-making found in an unentered place become forfeited. He must provide covers, locks, fastenings, and keys, as approved by the excise, and opening any copper, furnace, or ash-hole door, without twelve hours’ notice, or if in the country twenty-four hours’, subjects to penalty. Officers may break up the ground, or remove any wall or partition to search for a private pipe. If any hole be found for privately conveying away soap the fine is £500. Notices must be given of cleaning and beginning to work; failing to begin at the time mentioned notices must be renewed. The form of soap-frames, the depth of soap therein, and the time to elapse before it is divided into cakes or bars, are all minutely prescribed by statute. Hard soap must be sold in bars or cakes, or ball soap, and the scraps and parings, immediately after it is divided, must be put into the boiler in presence of an officer on pain of £100. Removing soap without notice is finable; or, if the quantity exceed twenty-eight pounds, without inscribing the word “soap” in letters two inches long on the package, and three inches long on the carriage. Dealers are liable to sundry penalties, and any person, not being an entered soap-maker, having barilla, kelp, or other materials in possession, they may be seized.

4.MALT.—The act by which the forty statutes regulating the malt-trade were consolidated imposed no fewer than one hundred and six penalties, amounting altogether to £13,500. The number and complexity of these provisions were such that neither excisemen nor maltsters could proceed in their business till they had been explained and amended by orders issued from the Treasury. By a subsequent act some of the penalties are repealed, leaving however the manufacture of malt sufficiently restricted by precautions as to the structure of cisterns and couch-frames, notice of wetting—keeping of grain in steep—the number of floors, &c.

An officer may enter a maltster’s premises at any hour, by night or day. If officer suspect corn to have been condensed in the couch or cistern, by treading or otherwise, he may have it turned out; if, on laying the corn level again in the cistern or couch, an increase to a certain amount is found, the maltster is subject to a penalty of £100. A like penalty is imposed on the maltster if he refuse to assist the officer in making the trial of his own honesty!

5.BRITISH SPIRITS.—The importance of these to the revenue afforda at least some extenuation of the severity of the excise-regulations. But really the act on the distilleries seems the acme of fiscal refinement and policy. It has one hundred and fifty-three sections; the number of penalties inflicted is eighty-nine, varying in amount from £100 to £500. It is quite impossible to give even an outline of this masterpiece of excise genius, and we must refer to The Book of Penalties for particulars.

In extenuation of the number and severity of the excise-laws it is urged that they are not strictly enforced: like capital punishments, they are only held up in terrorem. But this is an aggravation of their iniquity. Laws to be enforced or not at the pleasure of individuals, are equivalent to no laws at all—it is living under a mere despotism. Whether or not the excise penalties are inflicted depends on the whim, temper, or spite of the revenue officers, or perhaps an unfriendly neighbour. They are snares and scorpions to an honest man, whilst rogues escape them by cunning and bribery.

For examples of the oppressive and arbitrary administration of the Excise Laws, see the cases collected under that head in the last edition of The Black Book, page 321.

CHAPTER V.

POOR LAWS’ AMENDMENT ACT.

THE Poor Law Commissioners have not treated the public fairly in their Reports. They have given a partial, and, in many instances, an exaggerated representation of the working of the poor laws; they have pointed out their evils, but not described their countervailing advantages. Instead of mainly confining their exposition to a few agricultural parishes, which have been in the hands of the parsons and squirearchy, why did they not advert to the state of the poor in the great towns of the kingdom, in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, &c. where they would have found fine examples of administering the national charity with economy and intelligence, realizing all the benefits that the admirers of a compulsory assessment for the relief of indigence could desire?

Secondly, why did not they advert to the decline of pauperism during the ten years from 1820 (the period of improvement under Sturges Bourne’s Acts) to 1830? It is a fact that, during the period mentioned, the poor-rates have not increased in so fast a ratio as the population; that there has been a relative decline of pauperism; and in the period prior to 1820, the increase was occasioned, in a much greater degree, by the increase of law charges than an additional expenditure on the poor. In some of the principal parishes there have been great and successful efforts made to effect a diminution in the poor expenditure; it has been so in the principal parishes of the metropolis, and at Leeds, Liverpool, and other places.

Thirdly, why did not the Commissioners bring down the history of the poor and the poor laws to the present time, instead of stopping at the reign of Elizabeth? Had they done so, they would have found that all their more important suggestions have been already tried; that the project for incorporating parishes has been tried; that for refusing relief to able-bodied poor, except in a workhouse; and for attaching wages for advances previously made to paupers out of the rates. Mention may be found of all these plans, and their failure or abandonment, in Eden’s History of the Poor and Wade’s History of the Middle and Working Classes. But a notice of them might have weakened their case, and lessened the confidence of the public in any schemes founded upon them.

In the reports of the Commissioners there is a singular want of comprehensiveness of view—a disregard of general principles—and an absence of correct information on the character and condition of the labouring classes. Their plans of amendment are founded chiefly on experiments made in the parishes of Southwell, Cookham, Bingham, and Swallowfield.

These are their pattern parishes, according to which all other parishes ought to conform in their parochial administration. But with what propriety can these places be adduced as examples for the entire kingdom? Their population is diminutive; they are entirely agricultural; and have been in the hands of zealous individuals, who by great personal sacrifices, and enforcing a strict system of parochial relief, succeeded in lessening the amount of pauperism, most probably at the expense of the adjoining districts. But are such insulated and peculiar examples sufficient to warrant the extension of similar principles of management to the entire country? Certainly not. With as much reason Mr. Owen might seek to establish his co-operative parallelograms throughout England, from the success of his individual experiment at New Lanark. Of the disregard of general principles by the Commissioners, and of their reckless determination to make out a case, the pattern parishes afford an illustration. The system pursued in these parishes was that of non-relief, except in the workhouse. The effect of this no doubt was, in part, as intended to be, to compel the able bodied to accept work on any terms, and in any sort of employment, rather than forego personal freedom in a poor-house. But strange to say, this forced increase of competition for work had, according to the Commissioners’ representations, the effect of raising its price! An effect so paradoxical, so contrary to the best established principles of economical science, evinces a zeal in behalf of the anti-pauper system, that reminds us of those nostrums of sovereign efficacy which cure the most opposite disorders.

It seems not less contrary to general principles to anticipate, for a lengthened period, a reduction of parish expenditure by the operation of the Poor Law Act. The poor-laws are administered by the rate-payers, who are locally and personally acquainted with the state of their parishes, and directly interested in checking abuses and a lavish expenditure. Will the Central Board sitting in London, or the Assistant Commissioners, in their occasional visitations, act under greater motives to to economy, or bring greater local and practical information to their task; and if they do not, what benefits are we to anticipate from their parochial superintendence? It strikes us that, after a time, (for we will give credit for demonstrations of zeal at the beginning,) the superintendence exercised by them over paupers will be like that exercised by the lord chancellor, in right of his office, over public charities, or of the bishops over some of our collegiate foundations; it will exist in name, but have no practical or executive efficiency.

Both the Commissioners and the late Ministers committed a great mistake in confounding the present state of society with the age of Queen Elizabeth. Lord Althorp, during the debates in the House of Commons, repeatedly declared that the main object of the Poor-Law Bill was to bring back the administration of the poor laws to the legitimate purposes of their first institution. Now the two great objects embraced by the 43d of Elizabeth are to relieve the impotent, and to set to work the able-bodied. The act of Elizabeth was chiefly an act for the enforcement of industry, intended to meet the mass of vagrancy that grew out of the abolition of the religious houses, and the transition from slave to free labour. But mark the difference of the two periods. Such a monstrous anomaly as an able-bodied man willing to labour, but unable to get employment, was unknown in the time of lord Burleigh; the great difficulty then was to overcome the propensity to idleness and vagabondage, not to find remunerative labour. At present the case is reversed; there is no lack of industry in the country, but of profitable employment. Yet the framers of the Poor Act have overlooked this fundamental distinction. They have prescribed a remedy more applicable to the age of Elizabeth than of William the Fourth. They seem to think that the main source of pauperism now as then is IDLENESS, and as a corrective of this, have propounded their grand panacea for subjecting all the able-bodied poor to the ordeal of a workhouse.

Here we think they have committed a grievous error. There is, we apprehend, a permanent redundancy of labour; there are more people than can be employed on the terms they have been accustomed to be employed, and to compel them, by any legislative machinery, to be employed on lower terms, we hold to be highly impolitic—impolitic as not tending to the improvement, but the moral and physical degradation of the community.

That there is a redundancy of labour, the low wages which have been long paid in some of the agricultural parishes are conclusive proof. For this evil the workhouse project is no remedy. It opens no new source of employment, it only provides a sort of Bridewell punishment for an offence which is not the predominant vice of the age.

We have not yet brought before the reader our main objection to this new-fangled scheme. A great deal has been urged on the irresponsible powers vested in the Central Board. We should care little for this if we thought they would be exercised for a salutary purpose. Irresponsible power is not so dangerous in subordinate bodies as in the state. In the former, if it becomes an oppressive nuisance it may be promptly abated; in the latter it may rise above control.

What we most strongly object to the Poor Law project is its tendency to deteriorate, not to better the condition of the people. If such be its real tendency—and that it is such, we will by and by show—then we say that no benefit which can possibly arise from it would compensate for the social injury it will inflict. No economic savings in poor rates would be an equivalent for a permanent deterioration in the diet, clothing, and lodging of the mass of the community. Pauperism is a great evil, but there may be greater. The general insecurity of property and persons would be greater. A pauper is a bad member of society, but a beggar, a thief, an assassin, or incendiary is worse. By rigid persecution we may get rid of pauperism, but by converting pauperism into mendicity, or criminality, or into Irish or Russian helotism, we effect a social change certainly, but no improvement in the condition of society.

That some or all the evils to which we allude may result from a rigid enforcement of the New Act, we will speedily demonstrate.

The leading principle upon which it is founded is that the condition of no pauper shall be as eligible as that of the independent labourer; and for carrying out this principle, it is proposed relief shall only be given in a workhouse. Such a plan every body knows to be impracticable, and that to erect and maintain workhouses for all the paupers in the kingdom would, in lieu of diminishing, quadruple the poor assessment. We have heard, indeed, some of the strenuous advocates of the measure slily insinuate that it is really not intended to make any great addition to the number of workhouses, but to introduce such discipline there, to render them places of so much discomfort that the poor shall be deterred from seeking parish aid at all. This is the real secret we believe, but let us see the influence the working of such a system will have on the future state of the labouring population.

The state of the pauper it is assumed shall be inferior to that of the free labourer, however bad that may be. If the wages of the independent labourer are so low that he is compelled to live on potatoes and salt fish, to clothe himself in the coarsest garments, to sleep on straw, to live in a cabin, and labour sixteen hours a day—bad as all this may be, something worse shall be provided—‘a lower deep’ still awaits the unfortunate wretch who is compelled to resort to the parish for assistance. Although he may be already as poor in comfort and as degraded in condition as the Russian serf or the Irish cotter, a still worse fate awaits him in a workhouse. Now, we crave attention to the effects of this system on the price of labour and the condition of the labouring classes. Rather than accept relief in a workhouse on such onerous conditions—what will not the working man do?—he will submit to work for any wages, however small the pittance, to feed on any garbage, to live in any hovel; in a word, to be screwed down to a level with the most miserable peasantry in Europe. And is this a consummation to be wished? Is this an enlightened mode of raising the character of the people and improving the condition of society? The greatest calamity that can befal the working people is the submitting to an inferior standard of living. This is the opinion of every writer of authority. From the writings of Ricardo, Malthus, Macculloch, Torrens, and lord Brougham himself, we might quote passages without number to show the hopeless degradation of a people who once submit to a low standard of diet, clothing, and lodging. Physical discomfort precludes all hope and desire of personal independence, moral and intellectual improvement. Yet this is the vital principle of the Poor Law project—it is its sole talisman of reform—a lower scale of relief for the pauper as a preliminary to a lower scale of living for the independent labourer; it is, in short, a screw for lowering wages and abridging the comforts of the poor.

The discipline of the workhouse is to be such as to be held in terrorem of all paupers. Applications for relief are to be discouraged by hard labour, coarse fare, degrading attire, and other contrivances of pain and ignominy. Pauperism for the first time is to be made a crime; it is to be a crime in any man to be in want and unemployed; and the workhouse is to be converted into a house of correction for his reception—with this difference—that in the former he will have to work harder and fare worse; so that in future it will be the interest of every man to be a criminal rather than a pauper—to steal rather than resort to the parish for assistance. What enlightened principles of legislation to confound misfortune with delinquency; what benevolent projects of the Whigs for bettering the state of society! How consistent, too, is their philanthropy, for while they are mitigating the punishments for housebreaking and forgery, they are devising new punishments for that which never since the world began was deemed an offence at all, but an object of commiseration!

The pretexts on which the workhouse ordeal is introduced, are to get rid of the abuses of the allowance system and the impositions of the able-bodied poor. That evils have arisen from both sources is indisputable. They afford strong reason for improving the administration of the poor laws, but none for acting unjustly. If parishes have been imposed upon, apply a test, establish a tribunal for separating the pauper from necessity from the worthless vagabond, but do not confound the innocent with the guilty by subjecting both to indiscriminate punishment.

Looking at the workhouse scheme in another point of view, it appears only an adoption of the plan of the Dutch pauper colonies. The object of these is to find work and economically maintain the indigent. This has been objected to by Dr. Chalmers and others as having no tendency to eradicate the seeds of pauperism, only permanently to create a new and degraded caste in society. Such is precisely the tendency of workhouses; it shuts out a section of society from community of right and feeling with their fellow-men; it permanently degrades them without either instructing them or warning others to avoid a similar fate.

Such, then, is our chief objection to the Poor Law Act,—if vigorously carried through in the spirit in which it has been framed, it will operate as a powerful engine of social degradation. It will effect no reform in the habits, character, or condition of the poor, but will merely compel them to accept lower wages and accommodate themselves to a lower standard of living. If such be really the result—if it will really tend to the moral and physical degradation of the people—no accompanying advantages can countervail its evil tendency, and the Whigs have inflicted a greater national calamity by its introduction than can be counterbalanced by all the public improvements they have effected.

We see little to object to in the establishment of a Central Board of Commissioners acting on sound views; the magnitude of our pauper administration requires the superintendence of an exclusive tribunal, whose functions shall be to suggest improvements and enforce uniformity of practice: but we object to the principles on which they propose to proceed. They seem to have mistaken the disease and the tendency of their own remedies. Of the rashness of their conclusions, the suggestions adopted for the reform of the BASTARDY LAWS are a pertinent example. A few instances had occurred of lewd women having more bastards than one, for which they received the parish allowance; hence it was concluded a general trade was carried on in bastardy, and, as a preventive, the burden of maintaining an illegitimate child has been thrown entirely on the mother. The ordinary parish allowance for a bastard in the metropolis is eighteen-pence weekly; it is not more—most likely less—in the country;—can any one suppose such a pittance holds out a bounty to incontinence? But see how many principles have been outraged by the new law! First, it violates one of the most general maxims of jurisprudence, namely, that which imposes on both parents, equally, the obligation to maintain their offspring whether legitimate or not. Secondly, it violates natural justice; for, if incontinence be an offence at all, it is equally so in both parties, and equally ought the punishment to be apportioned. Lastly, it is monstrous and inhuman to throw the entire burden on the weaker, and, in our opinion, more venial transgressor.

Notwithstanding these obvious objections to this strange innovation on pre-established principles and feelings, it is urged that the alteration is expedient, that it will work well in practice. We deny it. It will impose no additional restraint on females, while it will give greater license to the low and profligate of our own sex, who may now spawn away with impunity at the parish expense. That it will not impose further restraint on women, one observation will suffice. If the destitution and pains of child-birth, coupled with the shame of public exposure—the dread of which, in the present state of moral feeling, often leads to frightful crimes—fail to curb female indiscretion—how can it be supposed that superadding thereto the mere pecuniary penalty of the maintenance of the child can have any such tendency? It is a poor, hasty, and impotent piece of legislation, bottomed on gross ignorance of society and human nature; and the worst of it is, that its evil consequences may eat long and far into the core of domestic life before they become manifest to the public eye.

The alterations in the SETTLEMENT LAWS are good as far as they go, but why such piece-meal legislation? Were the Whigs afraid to take too large a slice from the fat emoluments of lawyers? Litigation arising out of settlement claims has been the fruitful source of parish expense, and it is to this and similar defects in the Poor-Laws themselves rather than the increase of pauperism that the oppression of poor-rates may be traced. Residence seems the only fair ground of eligibility to parish relief. The law about removals and the distinctions kept up about each parish keeping only its own poor are absolutely ridiculous when applied to a community living under the same institutions and government.

By the new act the Whigs have dealt a harsh measure to the poor, and stripped them of their most valued rights. First, in case of want, they have lost their old and undeniable claim to parish aid. They have no general right of appeal from an unjust or hardhearted overseer to the magistrate; nor can the magistrate order relief except in special and extreme cases.

Secondly, by the introduction of a plurality of votes—by giving votes both to owners and occupiers—and by allowing the former to vote by proxy, it is sought to vest the management of the poor and the administration of the poor-laws in a rich and absentee proprietary.

It has always been represented as a pre-eminent advantage of the poor-laws that they created community of interest between the several classes of society—that neither prosperity nor adversity could visit one without effecting a corresponding influence on the other—and that the rich were identified with the poor themselves in every circumstance influencing their condition. Such ties will be weakened, if not dissolved, by the operation of the poor-act;—first, by the interference of non-resident landlords and their agents in parish affairs; and, secondly, by the interference of the Poor-Law Commissioners, who, partly assuming the powers, will also assume the responsibilities formerly borne by the middle ranks, and who will thereby feel relieved from that concern hitherto felt in the welfare of their poorer neighbours.

But this may turn out an exaggerated apprehension. Our own opinion is that the Commissioners’ operations will be chiefly limited to the rural districts. Indeed, the entire scheme may be chiefly intended as another mode of affording relief to the agricultural interest at the general expense of the community. Under the auspices of the squires, the farmers, and parsons, flagrant abuses had crept into the administration of the poor-laws, and the plan may be to supply their remissness and incapacity by the establishment of a corps of commissioners, secretaries, messengers, and so forth, payable out of the general revenue of the empire!

But we must hasten to conclude. Both in the general Report of the Commissioners and in the act of parliament founded upon it, grievous errors have been committed. In neither is there much benevolence or science; nor do they evince an intimate acquaintance with the history or causes of pauperism, nor a practical knowledge of the habits and state of the people. In the chief remedies suggested, we recognize only a revival of an old system—a new attempt to apply the barbarous machinery of despotism;—do not seek to instruct, reform, and make the poor wise to their true interests,—that is too troublesome a task; adopt the olden process—punish! punish!—punish!—degrade, torture, and incarcerate, and if they do not submit quietly, at least they will assume some other shape than the detested one of a burden on their richer neighbours. For one vicious system another vicious system is substituted; it is not a social reform, but a transmutation of social evil!

But though the main provisions of the Poor-Law Act are bad—for we concede there are good points in it—our comfort is that it is only a sort of paper constitution, and, like other paper constitutions, its practical working will be controlled by the action of public opinion. Fortunately there exists in this country a standard of humanity and love of justice—more omnipotent than the boasted laws—that will not long suffer any wrong without a remedy. For this guarantee of the rights of all we are not indebted to a sinecure Church, nor a “bread-tax fed” Aristocracy; but to an ever-watchful Press. Further we have a guarantee against extensive mischief in the intelligence of the Commissioners themselves. It is obvious they cannot act without the concurrence of the rate-payers by whom the funds raised for the poor are paid and disbursed. Any thing like a general collision with popular feeling would at once terminate their official career. For their own sakes therefore they will proceed cautiously. They will promulgate their “rules, orders, and regulations;”—if opposed, impracticable, or mischievous, they will cease to meddle, their duties will become nominal, and chiefly exist, like those of the mob of commissioners appointed by the Whig ministry, in the receipt of their salaries.

So that after all there is “balm in Gilead!” The ominous thunder cloud may pass over without consuming, or even seriously scotching the pauper world: but no thanks to the framers of this savage and aristocratic law.

LORD BROUGHAM’S SPEECH ON THE POOR LAWS.

We felt curious to see the speech of the ex-Chancellor on this subject. We had read many long speeches of his lordship, but they mostly comprised only a grouping, or detail of facts, or vehement tirades directed against passing measures or party opponents. But the poor laws formed a great moral and economical question; they called for an exposition of principles, and the application of these principles to the existing habits and institutions of society: they were a test for a philosophical and practical statesman. But we fail to recognize a union of these endowments in the exhibition of lord Brougham, and we feel assured that if he has nothing better to bequeath to posterity, as the product of his matured years, than his rambling oration on the 21st of July, it will not rank him in the first order of intellects.

Although lord Brougham is a legislator and has been a judge, he still remains the veriest advocate. His speech on the poor laws might have very well been sketched by any clever attorney, and stuffed into his briefbag to be delivered to “My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury!” It is a one-sided view—a forced effort to establish a case in the worst fashion of the bar by the most culpable suppressions of truth and gross exaggerations of fact. We say nothing of the morality of this way of doing the thing; but we hold that it is not strictly just to calumniate even paupers, nor is it consonant with strict veracity of mind to raise fears in the minds of any body of men about the security of their estates when the speaker knows in his heart there is not the smallest ground for any such apprehension.

Whatever the ex-Chancellor may think, he is only imperfectly acquainted with the history and object of the poor laws. He has got that glancing view on this subject, as on many others, which tends to mislead rather than safely guide the understanding. He professes, indeed, to be a political economist, and so do we, and we feel as much contempt as he can for the efforts made to depreciate a science so intimately connected with social happiness. But the economical dogmas of his lordship are those that were fashionable some twenty or thirty years ago, and which other persons, with more leisure perhaps for investigation, have found reason to correct or abandon.

The leading position of lord Brougham is this:—If you raise a poor-rate or any other fund for the relief of indigence, the support of the unemployed, or the mitigation of any other human calamity; such fund will be sure to be abused, or it will be inadequate to its purpose, or tend to multiply the evils it was meant to alleviate.

Now these contingencies may happen, but the fault is not in the creation of the fund itself, but its maladministration. It may be just as politic in society to make a public provision for evils inseparable from it, as it is virtuous in individuals to make a provision for the incidents of life. And this brings us to the gist of the poor laws.

There is a mass of destitution in the country; it may arise from fluctuations in employment—changes of the seasons, or, if you will, from the improvident and ill-educated habits of the people. Now, we ask, how can this calamity be best met? Mind, we do not ask how it can be best met under any future or Utopian state of social life, when all men are to be prudent and well-instructed; but how it can be best met under the existing circumstances of society? You may leave the destitute to be relieved by the voluntary benevolence of individuals; or you may leave them to what may be termed their natural resources; that is to starve, beg, or steal.

All these are a choice of evils. To die of hunger is what few men would quietly submit to; a general practice of begging or stealing renders the whole community insecure and uncomfortable, and for the charitable to be constantly putting their hands into their pocket, while their more close-fisted neighbours refuse to contribute is far from agreeable. In lieu of such alternatives, is it not more fair and equitable to raise a general fund from each according to his ability, and let it be disbursed by the contributors to the needy in sums proportioned to their wants and character? This is our poor-law system, and for its beneficial influence on the national character, we challenge comparison with any country where no such system exists.

Lord Brougham comprehends in the poor laws nothing beyond an institution of mistaken benevolence, fostering vice and improvidence. Here he betrays that half-knowledge to which we have alluded. They were not instituted for the destitute merely, but for the peace and security of the community, and well did they answer their purpose, for they were the first commencement of social order in the Elizabethan age! They are not maintained as an institution of charity only, but of POLICE, to shield society from the evils of mendicity and lawless depredation.

He would make a public provision for accidents, as lunacy or a fever, but not for old age, which comes on gradually and may be foreseen and provided against. Ah, my lord, it is a futile distinction! Who shall say what are the accidents of life? A reckless improvident mind is often as much an accident as a broken leg, and which no example, no previous education could have averted or cured. The only difference is, that one is a physical, the other a mental misfortune.

In one sense society has little interest in the origin of destitution, its chief concern is in averting its perilous consequences. If a man be destitute, no matter how his destitution originated, whether from chance or his own default, he will not starve. If the public has not made a provision for him, he will speedily devise a provision for himself. This is a law of nature which no social law can supersede. But we say it is better society should make a provision for absolute want of all kinds, than that the peace and security of the whole community should be endangered; for if society did not do it openly and directly, it would, in such extreme cases, by the necessities of the sufferers themselves, be compelled to do it indirectly. Which course is most economical, and most consonant to the interests of a rich and civilized community appears plain enough to our apprehension.

But we must conclude these hasty observations, without we fear fully putting our readers in possession of our views of the Poor Laws. Lord Brougham complains that they have (addressing his brother peers,) “reduced YOUR PEASANTRY (this atrocious insolence of phrase, though indulged in, has been omitted in the printed speech) to a state of abasement I am ashamed to think of.” Now, my good lord, by whom and in whose hands have “YOUR PEASANTRY” been abased? It is quite a non sequitur to say the poor laws did it. These laws have been in force in towns as well as in the country, and no such lamentable effects have ensued. In Liverpool, Leeds, and Birmingham, they know little of workhouse wages; and in Sheffield, according to the testimony of our brave poet Elliott, they still retain their “bit of beef, their pint of ale, and well-paid Saturday.” Who then has robbed the poor rustic of these just rewards of industry? Is it not, rather than the poor laws, your “bread-tax eating lords” and your tithe-fed pluralists, combined with the ignorance of a university educated, or noneducated gentry?

P.S. The inactivity of the Poor Law Commissioners confirms what we have previously advanced of the impracticable nature of the Poor Law Act. During the three months of their administration they have done nothing, save appoint eight assistant commissioners, and promulgate three circulars, the last two of which have been issued to explain the meaning of the first, and all three are simply meant to inform the overseers that they must go on as before! In the circular dated Nov. 8th, the overseers are informed that the Poor Law Act was passed “not for the purpose of abolishing the necessary relief to the indigent, but for preventing various illegal and injurious practices which had by degrees grown up in the administration of such relief.” This had become necessary, in consequence of the eagerness with which overseers, in various parts of the kingdom, had availed themselves of the New Act as a pretext for refusing relief to the poor. It shows that the right of appeal to magistrates from the ignorant and often inhuman adjudications of parish officers ought not to have been hastily abolished. It shows too that the existing system did not need tightening in the way of pinching the poor; the present instruments of poor-law administration being mostly prompt enough in that direction.

CHAPTER VI.

CATASTROPHE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

IT is not the dilatory illusiveness of a Whig, nor the direct hostility of a Tory administration, with which the people have principally to combat; their great foe is in the HOUSE OF LORDS, and until that foe be subdued—until the constitution of the second estate of the realm be so far modified as to be brought into harmony with the Reform Parliament—it is plain the government of this country cannot go on. There is a conflict of antagonist forces in the state; in the Lords there is a spirit and power of anti-reform that baffles and defeats the reform spirit of the Commons. The experiment has been tried; all the salutary measures of last session—the Jewish Disabilities Bill—the University Admission Bill—the Warwick Bill—the Prevention of Bribery Bill—and the Coroners’ Court Bill, were either so mutilated as to be made totally inefficient or entirely frustrated by the Lords. It was only in measures which had the semblance of abridging popular liberty and comforts—the Poor Law Bill and the Sale of Beer Bill, for instance—that the Upper concurred with the Lower House.

The question then is, shall this state of things continue—shall all the benefits anticipated from reform in the representation be defeated? In our opinion the constitution is still unsettled—we are still in the course of revolution. It is quite an historical blunder to suppose that the government of this country ever consisted of three branches, possessing equal and co-ordinate powers. Such a form of rule, when conflicting interests intervene, is and ever must be a chimera as fabulous as the phœnix. In England, one estate of the realm has always possessed predominant authority, to which the others have been subservient. Until the Orange revolution of 1688, the crown was paramount; thenceforward the aristocracy, and the great object of the Reform Bill was to abase their power. But see the issue; they have indeed been driven from the lower house, but have entrenched themselves on an adjoining eminence, where they are as omnipotent for mischief as ever. Thus the friends of reform—those who battled so long and stoutly for the amendment of parliamentary representation—have only achieved an absurdity—they have covered themselves with ridicule!

But is their error irretrievable? By the altered constitution of the house of commons the people have obtained an engine of vast power, when backed by the public voice, and shall not this engine be brought to bear on their old enemy in his altered position? What are the Lords that the nation should be mindful of them? They consist, for the most part, of hereditary imbeciles, steeped in the prejudices of birth, education, rank, and association. If we look into their history, as the Spectator has suggested, what is the result? Who are they that have generally been made peers—and why? Is a peerage the reward of virtue, of talent, of patriotism, of a long course of noble doings? Can any one say that, even in the selection of a virtuous man for a peer, his virtue has been the cause of his ennoblement; or, if a man of talent, that he has been chosen because his talent has been patriotically directed? No; the actual peerage is chiefly the result of TORY misrule—‘an efflorescence of war and taxation.’ It has been one of the means by which the great JOB of government has been carried on. If a patriot was troublesome, he was bought off by a peerage; if a powerful individual was importunate, he was quieted by a peerage; if votes were in demand, the possessor or manager was paid by a peerage; if a minister’s place was desired, he vacated it for a peerage. The lawyer, who proved the ablest tool of power, was rewarded by a peerage. Next to the public exchequer, the peerage has mostly been the treasury of Corruption.

The peers represent only THEMSELVES, not any great element of the social state; neither its property, intelligence, nor population. Even in personal income they are insignificant, not possessing above three or four millions of territorial revenue, which is not one-hundredth part of the national income, and this diminutive share of the general wealth is every year growing less in proportion to the increasing wealth of the other classes of society: for, be it remembered, that the income of the peerage, being derived principally from the soil, is comparatively limited in amount, and unlike the income derived from trade and manufactures, which, by skill and industry, admits of almost indefinite augmentation. Shall then a caste like this—stunted in its physical as well as moral developments—mostly ignoble in origin—belonging to nothing nor nobody—poor in purse as in intelligence—be allowed to be an obstacle to a nation’s progress—be suffered to delay, fritter down, or stifle every project of national amendment? The question admits of only one reply—the grievance must be abated:—it is monstrous that an irresponsible conclave, thrown up by chance, unconnected with and not deriving its powers from the great interests of the empire, should be able to thwart the people’s representatives, who really embody, are amenable for, and, of course, without let or hindrance, ought to direct the weal of the state. Unless reform has given this supremacy and directive power to the house of commons, it is an entire failure. We are still in the grasp of the Boroughmongers, as much so as when they filled the lower house with their nominees. In lieu of the substance we have embraced a shadow. The end sought was the triumph of the democratic branch of the constitution—the placing the commons on the pedestal of power heretofore occupied by the Lords, and making the third estate, that had been subservient, paramount to the two other estates of the realm, which, in future, were to be tolerated, as we conceive, rather in deference to old habits and prejudices, as ‘monarchical forms surrounding republican institutions,’ than as integral branches of authority, having a veto on the national will expressed through its constitutional organs.

To this state, both in name and reality, the government must be brought, otherwise it will not work. There was manifestly a hitch in affairs under the Melbourne ministry. The last session terminated abruptly with the question, arising out of Irish tithes, ripe for decision, namely, whether lords or commons should be the ascendant? This point must be decided before we can permanently hope for a liberal administration. If the Conservatives, of which there appear strong indications, prefer a fair stand-up fight, be it so. We will again back the ROUNDHEADS against the CAVALIERS, commanded even by the hero of the Malpurba (see The Black Book, last edition, p. 405.) We have no fear of the issue—the organized masses of this vast metropolis and great towns of the kingdom would soon dispose of a scattered military, (many of whom, smarting under their own wrongs, sympathise with the popular cause,) aided, though they might be, by a stupid yeomanry, the raff of the club-houses, the Horse-guards, and universities. Victory would not long be in suspense, and after victory there is spoil—there would be confiscation and forfeiture—the pensioners and dead-weight people would disappear in the turmoil—and in the escheated domains of a defeated Oligarchy, it is possible resources might be found for compromising those monstrous incumbrances which now weigh heavily on the springs of national industry!

Whether, however, the nation’s difficulties be surmounted by a moral or physical struggle—the former is our prayer—it behoves the people in the existing crisis to be awake. Above all it is important they should look forward to the coming session. The last year of the Whig administration has been ‘mere fooling.’ They fairly succumbed to in lieu of facing the enemy. Their measures were framed, not in accordance with the wishes of the people, nor of their representatives, nor even according to their own estimate of the public wants, but absolutely according to what they thought might be agreeable to the interests and prejudices of the House of Lords. They even went lower than this in their prostration to the Tories and bench of bishops. They not only kept back all measures that were unlikely to pass the straight gate of the upper house, but actually did their utmost to take upon themselves and shield from their opponents the unpopularity of their rejection!

With a Ministry that obviously quailed before the public foe the people could feel little sympathy. The men they sought, and which the times required, were such as would be totally regardless of the upper house—who would consider it non-existent—and pursue a policy, not in accordance with the views of a few prejudiced nobles and ecclesiastics, but of the commons of England. This alone would have been the consummation of parliamentary reform: without it we have only the theory, not the practice, of good government—we are still writhing in the fetters of Gatton and Old Sarum.

The test, then, of a Reform Ministry really in keeping with a reform parliament, is short and simple—it is its determination to frame its measures in accordance with the lower not the upper chamber. If such measures are pertinaciously rejected by the upper house, this shows that the several parts of the government are incompatible with each other—that the branch which represents the property, intelligence, and population of the empire is thwarted in its course by that which represents none of these social elements. Hence the issue would be forced onward—the obstacle to the common weal removed—and the question so often asked—What must be done with the lords?—be at once solved!

As we have not yet answered this question, we might as well do it in this place. Its solution is unavoidable, and will be hastened rather than retarded by the startling re-apparition of the Tory plunderers. Only one leg of the constitutional tripod has undergone a curative process, and at least one more remains to be subjected to medical treatment. Let us see how this may be best accomplished.

It seldom happens that constitutional changes can be effected by constitutional means. As the object sought is a new disposition of political power, a little violence and departure from ordinary forms are usually essential to its achievement. The Reform Bill itself was not carried without coercion. An intimation, not to say a menace, was conveyed from a high quarter that constrained the refractory peers to withdraw their opposition. But a threat arbitrarily to increase the peerage is just as strong a measure, and as wide a departure from the constitutional objects for which the power to create peers is vested in the crown—as a threat arbitrarily to diminish their number. As, however, a sudden augmentation of the number of the lords is a change not at all to be desired, let us see whether the other alternative—a reduction—may not be adopted.

About the utility of ejecting the thirty bishops from the Lords no doubt is entertained by any sane and disinterested observer. They have long disgraced themselves and the church by their presence. Besides, it would only be an act of justice to the great body of Dissenters, who are not represented in either branch of the legislature.

But supposing the bishops got rid of, there would still be too much Toryism in the upper house for the wholesome and practical working of the government. Lord Grey reckoned up a majority of eighty tory peers always lying in ambush ready to crush him and his measures; it was this, more than divisions in the cabinet, which gave such a feeble and wavering character to the noble lord’s administration. Let us then see how this phalanx of evil can be further and least offensively reduced. Our purpose is to avert civil strife by a timely restoration of the balance of the constitution, which has been disturbed by the extinction of the nomination boroughs—by the abstraction of an aristocratic mass from one end of the beam without a corresponding diminution of weight at the other.

Next to the episcopal bench the chief strength of the Tories lies among the representative peers of Ireland and Scotland. It was the bishops and the Irish and Scotch peers, who had obtained their promotions or been elected under Tory influence, that defeated the Reform Bill on its first introduction into the House of Lords. Of twenty-three bishops who voted, twenty-one were against and two for the bill; of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland twelve were against and four for the bill; of twenty-three Irish peers nineteen voted against and four for the bill: thus, of fifty-four votes against the Reform Bill forty-three were the votes of bishops and Irish and Scotch peers; the proportion of Scotch peers being as three to one, of the Irish nearly five to one. So palpable an anti-reform spirit shows the utility of excluding from the lords the representative peers, along with their right reverend brethren.

For this mode of reduction two substantial reasons may be given.

First, a representative peerage is an anomaly in the constitution of recent introduction. Constitutionally, a peer is supposed to sit in his own right, by descent or creation, and to represent only himself, not others. Upon this principle he exercises the right of voting by proxy, which is a privilege denied to the members of the House of Commons, as inconsistent with their representative functions. To exclude the Irish and Scotch representative peers would therefore be a renovation of the constitution of the House of Lords, by bringing it back to that state of consistency and integrity in which it subsisted prior to the innovations introduced at the unions with Scotland and Ireland.

Secondly, the exclusion of the Scotch and Irish peers would be an improvement scarcely attended with personal sacrifice. The Irish peers sit only for life; the Scotch are chosen only for one parliament; so that the interests of both are terminable, unlike the legislative functions held by the hereditary peerage.

Against this proceeding it may be urged that the nobility of Scotland and Ireland would be unrepresented in the legislature. No such thing. If not sufficiently represented in the upper house, they have recently gained an indirect representation in the lower, by that clause of the Reform Act which gives the elective franchise to their dependents as leaseholders and tenants-at-will.

By the exclusion of thirty spiritual peers, and the forty-four temporal peers of Ireland and Scotland, a reduction would be effected to the amount of seventy-four members. If this should not be enough to bring the Lords into due keeping with the Commons, we would next suggest that all PAUPER PEERS be excluded from the upper house. There is an instance, mentioned in The Cabinet Lawyer, in the reign of Edward IV. of the degradation of George Nevile, duke of Bedford, on account of his poverty, which rendered him unable to support his dignity. Acting on this precedent, aided by the pension list, names might easily be selected, the exclusion of which from parliament would tend materially to elevate its character as well as harmonize the two branches of the legislature.

But if all these reductions should not suffice, we must resort to the peers created during the ministry of Mr. Pitt. In the two last reigns, there was a clear addition of two hundred and twenty-five members to the House of Lords. Toryism being the ascendant school of politics, the character of the peers created was, of course, determined by that of the minister from whom the honours were obtained. The effect of this was evinced on the introduction of the Reform Bill in 1831. Of the old peers of the United Kingdom, there was a majority of two for the second reading of the bill. Of the new peers of the United Kingdom created subsequent to 1792, the majority was against the second reading of the bill, and their number was only balanced by the creations under the Whig ministry. The entire subject will be made manifest from the following statement, copied from a tract ‘On the Adjustment of the Peerage.’

Voted against the Bill.

Voted for the Bill.

Peers of the United Kingdom, created previously to the end of 1792

79

81

Peers of the United Kingdom, created subsequently to 1792, (including the creations during the administration of Earl Grey)

66

66

Archbishops and Bishops

21

2

Representative Peers for Scotland

12

4

Representative Peers for Ireland

19

4

Royal Dukes

2

1

199

158

How to make a selection from the Pitt peers we are unable to suggest, unless they be at once black-balled by name, by a vote of the House of Commons, and declared ineligible to sit in parliament. It may be urged there is no precedent for this. But, in great emergencies, every age creates its own precedents. There was no precedent for the reduction of the French Chamber of Peers on the accession of Louis Philippe. There was no precedent for declaring the throne vacant when James II. was alive and well, and had only stepped over into Ireland: but it was done by the Whig revolutionists of 1688. A legislature which has disfranchised the rotten boroughs may, without greater violence, disfranchise their proprietors, who are alike unsuited to the times and an obstacle to the common weal.

The constitution is manifestly in a dilemma, and neither his “Highness” of Waterloo, sir R. Peel, nor any body else, can rescue it, except by the adoption of expedients analagous to those we have indicated, No Tory ministry can go on with the present House of Commons; nor can any liberal ministry go on with the present House of Lords. What, then, is to be done? Must the nation or a junta give way? Must the Reform Act be repealed, and Gatton and Sarum be re-established in their ancient glory, or must the House of Lords be adjusted? The last appears the most rational alternative. The peerage must be brought into that position of subserviency to the other branches of the legislature which the commons, previously to the Reform Bill, occupied. It would still have full power to discuss and debate public measures, but no power vexatiously to oppose the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament. As a liberal ministry would always have the means for preserving the liberal character once given to the Lords, there would be no danger of deterioration, or necessity for a second application of the first remedy.

Such appears the most natural solution of existing difficulties, and the final issue of the much-talked-of “COLLISION.” It is the catastrophe of the House of Lords,—the hand-writing on the wall,—the fulfilment of which neither Whig nor Tory ministry can avert. From the passing of the Reform Act, the aristocracy lost their supremacy; the deed was then executed, though possession not fully given, by which political power was transferred to the great and increasing MIDDLE RANKS of England. The people only now claim THAT for which they virtually stipulated, and which if timely conceded, the Lords may subsist a century longer, though not as hereditary legislators. As the yearly convocation of the Clergy subsists as a type of bygone ecclesiastical domination, so may the Peerage, as a type of lost feudal sovereignty.

CHAPTER VII.

CHARACTER AND COMPOSITION OF THE FIRST REFORM PARLIAMENT.

THE House of Commons, backed by the people, is the medium through which we look forward for the ultimate attainment of good government; but whether its composition is such—so independent of aristocratic influence and prejudice—as to be prepared to adopt the remedial suggestions of the last chapter, is a point we are unable to determine. We do not yet despair of the reformed representation. Although the ballot, triennial parliaments, and alterations in the elective suffrage are points which ought not to be delayed, practical ameliorations claim the first consideration. Both the people and their representatives have still much to learn. That there is a large body of independent men in the House we infer from two facts; first, that in spite of the contrary disposition of government, a majority of the members were determined to support Mr. Ward’s motion (May 27th) for the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property; and secondly, they were determined to throw out the more objectionable clauses of the Irish Coercion Bill: in the one we had evidence of a sound and firm judgment in regard to a great economical question; in the other of a constitutional jealousy, which would not, without imperative necessity, submit to abridge the civil liberties of the people. That they were not disposed to support other popular measures may be ascribed to an impression that they were premature, or were unseasonably introduced, or had a tendency to embarrass—perhaps to cause a change of ministers!

The last is a consideration, we confess, that always puzzled us amazingly; it does, indeed, appear an astounding fact that a majority of the honourable members should have laboured under the strange delusion that no ‘great men’ could be found capable of governing this vast empire save Thomas Spring Rice and my lords Lansdowne, Auckland, and Melbourne. The thought never seems to have occurred that great occasions always produce their great men to direct them. So far from sharing in this infatuation, our opinion is that if the whole of the late cabinet,—or, indeed, the three estates of the realm, as Guy Fawkes intended,—had disappeared in the recent combustion of the parliamentary walls, the entire community would have gone on much in the same way as if no such catastrophe had happened. We are quite sure the ‘Collective Wisdom’ (we cannot forget old names) will look back to this part of their conduct with the same ludicrous feelings that they look back to the phantasmagoria of the nightmare, occasioned by swallowing too much of Bellamy’s old port and rump-steaks.

A second hallucination under which the Reformed Parliament laboured, and which gave a wrong direction to their legislation, was mistaken notions of the importance of the agricultural interest. Hence their negative vote on the corn-laws and their dealings with fiscal burdens. In our chapter on the ‘Plough and the Loom’ we have tried to place this question in its true light. The middle classes, as well as their representatives, share in the misapprehension of the national importance of rural industry, and it is a fact which may partly account for the proceedings of the House of Commons in this respect, that nothing like an energetic and consentaneous expression of public opinion on the injustice and impolicy of the bread-tax could be elicited.

There is another subject on which we think the people are quite as much at fault as their representatives,—namely, the projected dealings with church property. The idea of giving upwards of one-third part of the tithes to the landlords instead of applying as much of the redundant revenues of the clergy to some purpose of public utility, surpasses our comprehension. Yet this intended spoliation, of what we consider the national resources, did not call forth any loud expression of disapprobation. The truth is, the people did not generally comprehend it; many of them, we verily believe, conceived it to be a generous act of the landlords to undertake to pay, in lieu of their tenants, three-fifths of the tithes on consideration that the remaining two-fifths should be abated; not reflecting or not knowing that the whole tithe is a rent-charge on the land belonging to the public, and which the public has as much right to exact to the full amount from the owners of the soil as a mortgagee has to exact the amount of his mortgage.

Much of the other business which has been before parliament has been of the same character as the commutation of tithes. Referring to property rather than personal rights, it has not excited a high degree of popular interest. If a pension is lavished on the cast-off mistress of a minister, attention is excited to the profligacy of the transaction from the Land’s End to John-o’-Groat’s; but legal reform, the slave-question, and the renewal of the charters of the Bank and East India Company have been more interesting to lawyers and political economists than the mass of the people. Hence the House of Commons has been left, as we may say, to itself, and its members have been influenced neither by the watchfulness nor excitement of their constituents.

Another circumstance tended to give flatness and inefficiency to the proceedings of the Reform Parliament. There is nothing like a regular opposition in the House of Commons. The Tories never reckon to exert themselves unless they are amply paid for it, and having no expectation of the recent turn-up in their favour, they were mostly content during the late sessions lo look on and laugh while the Whigs tried to wriggle out of the difficulties created by their long course of misgovernment. Exclusive of Tories there is a somewhat numerous corps of RADICALS—one hundred and twenty at the least—a number far exceeding that of the old opposition, which under Charles James Fox struggled against the war faction, and the profligate administrations of Liverpool and Castlereagh. With discipline and the support of the towns the Radicals in the house might make the English aristocracy quail for their corn-laws, church abuses, and hereditary privileges, but they are a body without a soul; having no leader in whose superior character and ability they can acquiesce, they are a disorganized mass, many of whom had no higher object of ambition than the dinners of lord Althorp!

While we are on the popular party, we might as well drop an observation on the conduct of some of its chief members. Mr. HUME appears to have been amalgamated, in part at least, with the late ministers, and his economical vocation became so diminutive, that at the end of the session he had only to complain of the wastefulness of using gilt instead of plain edged paper. The conduct of the member for Middlesex on agricultural questions has puzzled us exceedingly. His motion for a fixed duty on corn at the high rate fixed by him was more favourable to the landlords than the existing graduated scale. If such were the intention of the honourable member, we cannot reconcile it with our notion of a popular representative, and that it was so may be inferred from Mr. Hume’s subsequent vote in favour of the marquis of Chandos’s motion, that ‘agriculture be specially considered in any reduction of taxation.’ Mr. Buckingham too, (proh pudor!)—the representative of the operatives and tradespeople of Sheffield—voted (disinterestedly we suspect) with the ‘lords of the soil’!

Knowing Mr. Hume’s sentiments on the slave question, we were not surprised to find him among the foremost supporters of the Poor Law bill—a measure which certainly required the stomach of a Scotchman to swallow whole and undivided. It may be inferred from this that he is a disciple of that school which has long been labouring to substitute a heartless selfishness for the more generous impulses of our nature. We have before adverted to the tendency of this mis-named philosophy, and which in substance amounts to this:—that the miseries of life result from the absence of individual prudence, and that this prudence will be best taught by abandoning the destitute to the consequences of their vices or misfortunes; thereby extinguishing all the charities which hitherto it has been the business of science and religion to inculcate, and bringing society into that primæval state in which the predominant rule is—Take care of yourself without regard to any body else! A man who thinks that social existence can be bettered by the dissemination of such a doctrine must have a very peculiar organization himself, and have had a very limited and peculiar observance of human nature.

Mr. O’CONNELL is usually enrolled in the popular file, but with little pretension to popular principles. His idea of church reform is limited to the transfer of tithe to the landlords; he is opposed to poor laws and to popular education, which last he identifies with the spread of DEISM; thus covertly insinuating that Christianity is incompatible with the diffusion of general intelligence. His quarrel with government is a personal quarrel merely; it is a dispute about the disposal of the ‘loaves and fishes,’ not about popular rights and benefits. Ireland is the patrimony of O’Connell and his heirs, and the away of the ‘Saxon’ is in the way of his ambition.

Two truths are satisfactorily illustrated in the career of this redoubtable agitator,—first the power of a clever man to mislead a community; secondly, the deplorable ignorance of the Irish, who can be duped by so palpable an adventurer, who fights not for them but himself only.

It is one of the imputed weaknesses of the late administration that it sought to open a negotiation with O’Connell; or, as we understood it, to buy him over. But how was this possible? Like the Times newspaper, O’Connell may boast of being placed by circumstances in such a position that he is above the price of any ministry. What pension or place could they give him which would be an equivalent for the ‘rint’ and professional gains? There is only one—the kingly office—and that is not yet vacant.

The position of sir FRANCIS BURDETT in the reform calendar cannot be overlooked. For some reason—we know no good one—the Baronet has fallen to leeward. This may be the mere caprice of popular favour, which posterity will correct. We shall, however, stick to first impressions; we shall not transfer our allegiance from those who cherished reform in its weakness and nonage to those who have only adopted it in its triumph and maturity. It is often painful to observe how the ‘honours are divided.’ The Whigs claim all the laud of reform, but what did they do for the cause during the thirty years’ public life of sir Francis Burdett save treat its advocates with sneers, revilings, and contumelious silence? Not many years since there appeared in the organ of the party, the Edinburgh Review, an article recommending to the people to withdraw from the pursuit of parliamentary reform as a primary object, and concentrate attention on retrenchment in the public expenditure. Even so late as 1830 (Nov. 2d) earl Grey declared in the House of Lords that he was ‘unprepared with any plan of reform,’ and perhaps would have long continued unprepared had he not had at his elbow lord Durham, lord John Russell, and one or two more who loved the cause more with the heartiness of a first love than the ex-Premier.

We have no taste for minute retrospections into public conduct, for we have an aversion to try men either by words or deeds, having their own by-gone circumstances to justify them. We will never deny—it cannot be denied—that the Whigs at length, as soon perhaps as they had the power—gave the people a measure of reform ample beyond their expectation. For this they owe them forgiveness and perhaps gratitude. But if it comes to the apportionment of individual merit, we say that of living men—we pass over the early martyrs, Wyvil, Sharpe, Jebb, Wakefield, Cartwright, and Walter Fawkes—we repeat, of living men there is none to whom the cause is so much indebted as to sir Francis Burdett, and next to him a few honest and indefatigable men of Westminster. Among the upper ranks sir Francis long fought the good fight single-handed, and for the achievement of what he conceived the birthright of Englishmen he sacrificed that which is most painful to bear—the friendship and association of his equals. For a long time the Baronet was sent to Coventry by Whigs and Tories, and when he walked into the House of Commons not a member would speak to him. He had committed high treason against the usurping few by identifying himself with the rights and interests of the oppressed many:—

- From kings and nobles will I seek no more

- Aid, friendship, nor alliance. With the POOR

- I make my treaty, and the heart of man

- Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there,

- And ratifies the compact.

- —Philip von Artevelde.

The present inertia of sir Francis may be easily explained. His task is done. He never sought more than the constitutional immunities of his countrymen. Fiscal, commercial, and economical questions, which now form the chief topics of parliamentary discussion are not in his department; but if he takes no further share in public affairs, he has well earned a life interest in the representation of Westminster and the gratitude of his country after.

It is not our purpose to go through the entire roll of ‘good men and true’ in the House of Commons. They are a formidable body, and will, no doubt, be ultimately omnipotent there, but they cannot accomplish national objects unless they have the zealous support of the people. If we look to the composition of the lower house, we shall find that what may be termed aristocratic interests have still a numerical preponderance. On the first meeting of the reformed parliament, the sons and heirs presumptive of peers returned amounted to seventy-three; of other relatives of peers there were seventy-eight, making one hundred and fifty-one members united by consanguineous ties with the House of Lords. Besides the direct influence of the aristocracy, there is the influence of the crown. From the returns of 1833, (Parl. Pap. No. 671,) it appears there are sixty members holding offices and receiving emoluments from civil appointments, pensions, and sinecures to the amount of £86,291 (exclusive of eighty-three members holding naval and military commissions.) There are four members holding offices at the pleasure of public officers, the emoluments of which are £7,500; ten members holding offices or pensions for life under the crown, £1,311; four members hold offices under the chief justice or other public officers, of which the emoluments are £9,233; four members with pensions, or sinecures, or offices executed by deputy, the annual emoluments of which are £5,764. One member (the speaker!) has the reversion of an office after one or more lives, the annual value of which is £4,000. Sixty-four members hold commissions in the army, and nineteen in the navy. In the militia and yeomanry there are forty-five members who receive pay and emolument when their corps are on service. Seventy-five members have church patronage.

It is worthy to be remarked that in the house there are only forty-nine merchants, manufacturers, and traders, while there are seventy-one LAWYERS. The Whig administration was the harvest of gentlemen of the long robe, and this was the spring of a good deal of the scribbling and talking support it received. Of four hundred and twenty-four new offices created by the late ministers, one hundred and five were given to barristers. When one million had been voted by parliament to assist the Irish clergy, no fewer than seventy-two barristers, at five guineas per diem, aided by seventy clerks, were immediately put into active service to distribute the loan. The lavishness of this creation was the more palpable, as only sixty persons had been appointed to distribute the twenty millions among the slave-holders in the West-India colonies. But patronage at home is more valuable than patronage abroad, and the advantages derived from confining it to legalists are obvious enough. Lawyers usually move in the better circles; they are educated men—have the power of explaining and diffusing their opinions—and they are accustomed to advocate causes of all descriptions. Set them to make a report on any public subject—give them, for example, a brief to fill up against the Poor and the Poor-Laws, and they will do it to their employer’s satisfaction: it is their vocation faithfully to serve those by whom they are paid, or hope to be paid, and little of conscientious responsibility to truth or justice is felt in the execution of the appointed task.

But the elective bodies of the kingdom must see what injury they are doing the public cause by returning so many hungry Swiss to parliament. Lawyers are eaten up by mutual rivalry and ambition; it is a profession into which no one enters without views of aggrandizement; if by any contrivance or clap-traps the representative function be obtained, it is mostly used only as a stepping-stone to wider practice at the bar or to government employment. As legislators they seek only to serve themselves, not their constituents, and their course is rarely marked by patriotic independence. If their connexions lie among the opposition, it is mere factious hostility to government; if among ministers, it is either silent acquiescence or clamorous advocacy of all their measures, according to the bribes of office received or expected. But the mischief they openly do by impeding or misdirecting public affairs is only a part of the evil. It is among the vulgar errors of common life to consider barristers more competent and better informed than other men; in grammar and elocution, and in Coke and Littleton no doubt they are, but not in the mass of questions which ought to occupy parliamentary attention,—connected with trade, manufactures, commerce, currency, and the condition of the several classes of the population. Yet owing to this false estimate of legislative fitness, they are at all times looked up to as guides and finger-posts; by their speeches in the house, and their promptings and whisperings out of it, on the back benches, and in the lobby, smoking-room and supper-rooms, members of plain minds and honest purposes are overlaid and misled by them.

It is to this preponderance of legal influence we ascribe much that has been wrong or inefficient in the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament. But this is another evil in addition to those already suggested, which may be traced to the conduct of the people themselves. Why have the manufacturing towns and some of the more populous boroughs returned lawyers to parliament? What have they got by it? Have they got vigilant attention to the conduct of ministers, or zealous watchfulness over their local interests or the more general interests of the community? To these inquiries we fear the answer, in most cases, must be a very simple figure of arithmetic. Some of the popular law representatives have not even vouchsafed a speech in return for the favour of their constituents; others have deserted their trust for valuable appointments in the colonies; others are fructifying at home on commissionerships or Treasury practice; others again have been reposing on the file of king’s counsel, waiting in silence a joyful resurrection as solicitor or attorney general, master of the rolls, vice-chancellor, or judge of the superior courts: but few or none have laboriously served the people.

But the error of misplaced confidence may be corrected. As a general election seems inevitable, if the projected formation of a Tory ministry is persisted in, the electors will soon have an opportunity of getting rid of faithless and negligent servants, and of not again accepting their services unless it be under such guarantees of devotion to the public, and not their own gains, as even lawyers cannot evade.

CHAPTER VIII.

DISSOLUTION AND CHARACTER OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.

THE abrupt dismissal of the Reform Ministry had more resemblance to the capricious movements which happen within the courtly atmosphere of despotism than of a constitutional monarchy. So far as has yet transpired, the blow was unexpected, and at least undeserved, from the quarter it came. Like Cardinal Wolsey, the errors of the Whigs consisted rather in excess of devotion to the service of their ‘royal master’ than of their country. Whatever may have been the cause of their downfall, the change in the king’s councils augurs no good to the people. If the design were to form a more popular administration, the court would not have resorted to the chancellor of Oxford, but to Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Mr. Hume, or some other of the more thorough-going reformers. As the SOLDIER has been called in, it is plain a retrograde movement is intended—the repeal of the Reform-Act, or some other desperate effort of expiring conservatism. It is a mad resolve, as events will prove; but before endeavouring to ‘trammel up its issue,’ let us advert to the position and character of the displaced ministry. As they have been suddenly dismissed, they may be suddenly recalled; in the latter case it is important to ascertain their claims to the confidence of the nation.

It must be conceded that the difficulties which beset the late go-government were of no ordinary character. If the measures they brought forward had any thing of a radical hue about them, they were immediately at issue with the House of Lords; and if they were not of a popular character, they were at issue with the people: so that between both their situations were both precarious and uncomfortable.

It may be urged that they might easily have escaped the dilemma by allying themselves heart and soul with the popular cause and boldly leading on the battle against the Peerage. So they might. This is what they ought to have done, and what must be done, as we have shown in the chapter on the House of Lords, before the constitution can be brought into equilibrium. But, to say nothing of the obstacles which might have been opposed in a higher quarter, there are two reasons why the late government was not so patriotically devoted. First, it was much too aristocratic in its composition; many of the ministers were peers themselves, and to have joined in an attack like that to which we have alluded, they, doubtless, considered would be to attack themselves, and terminate in the extinction or humiliation of their own order. Besides motives of self-preservation there were others. In the opinion of some of them, no doubt, they had already gone as near the quick as they safely could without coming into the jaws of democracy; they thought, therefore, it was time to make a stand,—at least they were not disposed individually to share the responsibility of any farther advance into radicalism.

Besides these, which may be considered the external difficulties of ministers, there were others of an internal character, originating among themselves. Upon the great questions impending relative to church, corporation, and law reform, it would perhaps be impossible to find in the united kingdom twelve persons exactly agreed in opinion; we do not mean as to the necessity of reform at all, but as to the degree, kind, and extent. For shades of difference, therefore, excuses may be found; but there were important differences in the Cabinet, especially as regards the Church; and this was a constant source of weakness and disunion. In fact the original Whig ministry had been constantly sloughing away ever since its formation.

The first cast-off was earl DURHAM, whose general inability to agree with his colleagues called into play a portion of Whig wit, and he was designated the ‘dissenting minister.’ His retirement was ascribed, in the newspapers, to indisposition. Indisposition no doubt—indisposition to co-operate with wavering apostacy! The plain and straightforward mind of his lordship could not comprehend the policy of neglecting the tried friends of the people to keep up a sort of bribery and coquetry with their old and irreclaimable foes. Neither could the noble lord understand the sophistries by which it was sought to substitute illusive procrastination for the prompt and substantial removal of ‘recognised abuses.’

The next swarming away from the ministerial hive consisted of the Stanleyites. By the secession of Mr. Stanley, the earl of Ripon, the duke of Richmond, and sir James Graham, a positive improvement was effected in the sentiment if not in the speaking organs of the administration. These gentlemen were infected with a semi-conservatism that much impeded the full development of the reform principle. Besides entertaining very exalted notions of the social importance of the landed interest, they were opposed to the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property, and maintained, as part of their creed, the very fantastical conceit that the revenues of the church ought not to be graduated to the number of its members but of its ministers—the clergy themselves, forsooth! Dogmas like these are irreconcileable with reason; and the ministry must have felt greatly relieved by the withdrawal of the political mystics who held them. An opportunity was thus afforded of infusing more common sense and robustness into the ministry, but it was thrown away; instead of recalling lord Durham, and strengthening themselves in public confidence by bringing forward Mr. Hume and sir H. Parnell, they filled up the vacuum with such unmeaning and unknown things as lord Auckland, and the marquis of Conyngham, and thus put together ‘the lath-and-plaster’ administration.

After this what could be expected? Next and closely after followed the Littleton mess, and embroilment with Mr. O’Connell, which terminated first in the resignation of lord Althorp, and then of the premier himself. The retirement of the last has been ascribed to an intrigue. We believe, however, there is no ground for this imputation. According to the statement of the Chancellor (House of Lords, July 29th) earl Grey had six times during the preceding twelve months expressed a wish to resign, and it was only by the earnest entreaty of his colleagues that he had been prevailed upon to remain in office. The testimony, too, of lord Lansdowne on the same occasion is decisive of the charge of ‘treachery.’ There is no need, indeed, of resorting to the mysteries of a conspiracy, to account for the resignation of the premier. The noble lord’s case was palpable enough. He shrunk from carrying out the principle of the Reform Acts; he must have felt that he could not successfully carry through the practical ameliorations the country expected from him without a ‘COLLISION’ with the House of Lords, and this was an alternative he seems to have declined either from the morgue aristocratique, or unwillingness to falsify his previous pledge to ‘stick by his order.’ To escape from so equivocal a position and secure his own retreat, he availed himself of the hasty retirement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The difficulties which beset the ministry of lord Grey descended to his successor. In the approaching session of parliament only two courses were open to the Melbourne ministry—either they must face the peers or the people. Upon these alternatives, differences of opinion may have subsisted; one part of the cabinet may have inclined this, and the other that way, and there may have been a third portion that inclined to neither, but preferred leaving the task to the DUKE: and hence may have originated the break-up of the administration; or it may have originated solely in royal caprice, or in the desire to get rid of one unruly member, and which could only be effected by an internal effort, like that with which the lobster is said to cast off its shell.

Leaving these surmises to be confirmed or not by subsequent disclosures, we shall here observe that the Melbourne ministry was perhaps as good as any of its predecessors under the Reform Act. There was a great deal of rubbish in it certainly, but there were also good materials. There was merit even in its errors. Although the Poor Law Act and the Irish Tithe Bill were both, as we have shewn, highly objectionable in principle and detail, yet they were bold measures, and the way they were adjusted and forced through parliament evinced an energy—a determination to go on, without which it is impossible the difficulties of the country can be surmounted. As a Tory government would be a complete upsetting of all that has been done during the last four years, we consider its permanent existence an utter impossibility; it is likely, therefore, that the whole, or a portion of the late ministry will be recalled: let us ascertain then by personal analysis the good and evil in its composition, so that the people may be apprised of what they ought to wish for and what they ought to reject in its possible reconstruction.

We shall begin with the noble ex-Premier, about whom the public knows little, and whom we had always considered rather in the light of an epicurean aristocrat than a man of business. He certainly left a favourable impression of talent as Home Secretary, having evinced good sense and firmness in the little he had to do during his fair-weather administration of that mostly irksome department. But his lordship is an ‘old stager’ in public life, and he has not, to our knowledge, placed on record either word or deed calculated to inspire very exalted hopes of future development as an enlightened and very superior statesman. Some years since we remember sir F. Burdett took him to task for an attempt to apply the arbitrary principles he had deduced from a recent study of Roman history to the government of this country. Our impression is that he has more of the inertness of conservatism in him than his predecessor. He obviously views with no favourable eye the admission of Dissenters into the Universities; and if his recent declarations in respect of the church may be trusted, great things need not be expected in that direction.

On the 9th of August lord Melbourne said, ‘He reverenced and loved the mild and tolerant spirit of the church:’—of course he did; all lords love the church because it is a church for lords, not for the people. On the same occasion he said, ‘If he were to speak his own individual opinion, he would say that he for one was not dissatisfied with the church as it stood at present.’—No, my lord, not dissatisfied with the legislation of the bishops, nor with the dignitaries, pluralists, and non-residents! This is disheartening enough in all conscience; the only three great reforms remaining are ecclesiastical, municipal, and legal, and if the Whigs do not intend to come up to the mark on the first and most important, we shall say, in the language of Portia, they are ‘no men for us,’ nor we believe the country.

Some allowance may be made for the atmosphere in which the preceding morceaux were delivered. The ex-premier, as well as his colleagues, was often compelled to throw a kind of verbal dust into the eyes of his opponents, in order, if possible, to steal a march upon them. We have heard that lord Melbourne is more a man of expediency than inflexible principle. It may savour perhaps of laxity to observe that, in the existing crisis, we do not like him the worse for it. Our opinion is that no set of men can cut through present difficulties unless they will adapt the means to the end. Tithes, and other great and complicated questions, can never be settled on principles of strict equity, no more then a man can walk the crowded pathways of the metropolis in a direct line. If ministers cannot go straight, they must go awry;—at all events they must do the thing and get on!

As to the poor ex-Chancellor, he is politically dead, and we shall allow him the privilege of dead men, by speaking of him tenderly. He has sinned against all the proprieties; as minister, legislator, judge, and ci-devant reformer. His ‘lark’ in the North cleared up whatever mystery attached to his character, and his name is no longer a ‘tower of strength.’ He is obviously a man of the most pitiable foibles, a lover of vulgar notorieties of all sorts, and which wise men mostly despise. That he has done much for liberal government—has exposed and helped to amend many devouring public abuses—and possesses great industry and cleverness are undoubted facts; but he grievously lacks the discretion, steadiness, and comprehension which constitute a safe and leading mind. If a vague desire of the premiership ever flitted across his ambitious thoughts, he may erase it from remembrance, for we verily believe not one person—save one—in the united kingdom would countenance his pretensions.

Lord Brougham, like Napoleon, sinned against the ‘spirit of the age’ and has fallen. In his latter days he affected conservative principles—lauded the duke of Wellington, and prostrated himself before sir Edward Sugden, both of whom he had reviled. At one place in Scotland he told his hearers that he was no radical, (he had been though, as well as an admirer of Mr. Pitt and many other things,) and that he could hold no disputation with persons who denied the utility of a House of Lords. How could he? he ought to have been sworn on a voire dire first; of course the parvenu and vain Henry Brougham considered himself, as well as Brougham Hall, pieces of the ‘order,’ without which this great empire could not hold together.

The fatal delusion of this unhappy man appears to have been, that he alone was the ATLAS to support the tottering throne and peerage of England; that he could say to the march of reform, as Canute said to the waves,—‘so far shalt thou go and no further.’ Hence, like another Peter the Hermit, he went to and fro in the country declaiming against republicans and rash innovations. But what an ungrateful return for his conservative labours—for all his fulsome eulogies of prince and peers to receive only a most ungracious kick-out!

In one respect we rejoice at the unceremonious turn out of the Whigs; it has given that proud aristocracy a taste of the sweets of monarchy, as well as the people who pay half a million a year for it, and three or four times as much more for its trappings. The fall of their chief has had one bad consequence, it has thrown discredit on science by showing how much learning may subsist—though the remark is trite—with little sense. We had always our misgivings of lord Brougham; a certain etourderie of organization conjoined with mental impetuosity, precluded all nice discrimination of both men and things. On his first assumption of the great seal we said of him (Black Book, edit. 1831, p. 426.) that,—“It is the JUDGMENT more than anything else we distrust in the noble and learned lord, and if he does not bring his resolves to wait on a more patient discretion, it is probable his chancellorship will be signalised by some very unusual eccentricities.” All we apprehended has come to pass; but we trust the noble lord’s pension will be saved. The Tories may not think him a fit person to be keeper of the king’s conscience, for, in truth, he needs a keeper himself; but why not put him into the Exchequer agreeably to his own desire, in room of Lyndhurst, who received the appointment from the Whigs, in part at least from the economical consideration of saying his retiring allowance?

Lord Brougham has been so fully dissected by the public press, that it is needless to enlarge further in his illustration. His lordship said, “the school-master is abroad,” and he did something to set him forth, therefore he cannot complain that he has had a wipe of his birch. Among his evil and faulty deeds we shall not forget all his good ones, for we are not of that class who are constantly seeking out bad motives for virtuous actions.—Let us proceed to the next.

We heard so little of the noble ex-President of the council during the reform ministries, that he reminded us of the lady Egeria, who was better known as an oracle of wisdom in private than a speaker in public. Lord Lansdowne always recommended himself to us by his junction with GEORGE CANNING; for though the last was a trickster, the union with him was a fortunate jostling or breaking up of the relations of the two great factions, and the first shove to perdition the hulk of Toryism received. Earl Grey was well nigh making a shipwreck of his reputation by some unseasonable, not to say envious speeches directed against the coalition ministry, and which, as a step towards a more enlightened administration and consistently with his own principles, he ought to have steadily supported. In some sort the marquis appears to have an orbit of his own, and though as liberal perhaps as a lord may be, he has not always mixed himself up with the party combinations of the Whigs. He is reputed to be the foster-father of the first brood of Edinburgh Reviewers, who during the last four years have virtually grasped the government of the country. A dubiousness about consequences, which results from viewing questions too abstractedly and on all sides, will prevent him, we apprehend, as well as lord Holland, from going very far or fast in the way of effective reformation.

Of lord Duncannon we know little, and of lord Auckland nothing at all, nor have we ever met any body that did. The last, we had concluded, was dead and the title extinct, till we met the names of his sisters and himself on the Court Pension List as a pauper peer. He seems to have been thrust into the ‘arm-chair’ of the Admiralty as a short and easy way (two years’ sitting only) of acquiring for life the £2000 retiring pension, under the infamous Civil Offices Pension Act.

The late Chancellor of the Exchequer had long subsisted rather on an indulgent system of public credit, than any thing great or brilliant actually performed by him. The dogged manner he stood to the worst parts of that curious ‘boon (query bone?) to the female population’ as he called the Poor Law Bill, was more like the bite of a mastiff than any thing else. Still we cannot help thinking well of a man so highly esteemed by all who intimately know him. If there is really any thing good in him, and we are inclined to think there is, we trust in the new sphere into which his lordship is removed it will be produced, and in such a way that the reporters may be able to transmit it to the public. The little that has been usually given of earl Spencer’s speeches is mostly distinguished by brevity and good sense, and in honesty of purpose he is unsuspected.

Little need be said of the right hon. THOMAS SPRING RICE. Every body knows that the ex-secretary of the Colonies is a keen landlord and a first-rate artist in politics. He disposed satisfactorily of Mr. O’Connell on the ‘repale’ question, but was not so successful in his encounter with the honourable M. P. for Oldham on the stamp duties.

The motion of lord JOHN RUSSELL at the end of the session for postponing the issue of the writ for the corrupt borough of Warwick, and his prompt abandonment of the Bribery Bill after its maltreatment by the Lords, show that he is not disposed to acquiesce in all the freaks of hereditary wisdom. The name of Russell is a guarantee of attachment to constitutional rights, but has his lordship truly interpreted the change effected by the Reform Acts? It is no longer king, lords, and commons, but in the inverse order—commons, lords, and king!

The hearty and straightforward speech of sir JOHN HOBHOUSE at the Edinburgh festival ought to be accepted as a peace-offering for prior transgressions. Bating a little petulance, the Baronet possesses sterling qualities, and we are glad to see him again in parliament, though the absence of his opponent, Mr. Eagle, is a real loss to the country; inasmuch as his learning, acuteness, and popular principles would have been of essential use in the approaching discussion of ecclesiastical matters. We cannot, however, forget old services; the rejection of sir John by the electors of Westminster always appeared to us a harsh and hasty measure of justice. What claims his opponent had to supersede him we could never discover. Colonel Evans seems to us a revival of that famous knight-errant sir Robert Wilson,—one very fond of leaving his name at the palace, and of asking questions about our ‘foreign relations!’ Now we have a great contempt for M.P.’s whose diffusive patriotism is such that it extends to Turkey, Russia, or Mehemet Ali, rather than to Lancashire, Yorkshire, or the southern counties. If the Westminster people will have a colonel, why not take colonel Jones,—a man who has really done the cause some service, and against whom, in our opinion, there prevails a very undeserved prejudice?

Notwithstanding the startling advent of the Duke and his myrmidons, we are progressing in good government. Democracy is the advancing flood which must ultimately level all monopolies. The times have marvellously changed! Lord Brougham, after his rejection by the universal-suffrage men of Westminster, always affected a great distaste for men of low politics, and we remember, during a pending election for that city, he thought there was little to choose between Hobhouse and the devil—and said as much. Yet the would-be premier has lived to sit in the same cabinet with the despised radical!

We pass over that ‘pure old Whig,’ lord PALMERSTON. If the noble lord, by any sort of jockeyship, can manage to keep the saddle under the contemplated ducal ministry, he may be considered a second Talleyrand, destined to survive all vicissitudes of rule. Under the ex-secretary the foreign policy of the Whigs has been the best part of their administration, as their Irish has been the worst. What weakness to send a doting voluptuary to preside over a country that has never yet known the blessings of civil government—that is a complete scene of want, violence, and rapine—a moral and physical chaos which nothing less than the genius of a Peter the Great or some such master-mind could rescue from its complicated maladies! It was this, and the pensioning, salarying, place-finding, and church-jobbing for sycophants, dependents, and undeserving relatives, that abated public zeal in favour of the fallen ministry.

We come to the lower and best stratum, consisting of Messrs. Abercrombie, Ellice, and Poulett Thomson, all of whom are plain men of honest purposes, and we wish the defunct government by incorporating lord Durham, sir H. Parnell, and some others, had consisted more of the same description. They are not shining characters, but they are free from the aristocratic prestige and historical associations which were the chief source of bewilderment of the higher section of the cabinet on the great questions of church and state reform. They are men of the age we live in; whereas the others belong to the by-gone times of Bubb Doddington, Rockingham, Shelburne, Pitt, Fox, and other magnates of the Georgian period. Poulett Thomson’s dividing with Mr. Hume on the corn laws shows that he is not only a person of sound and consistent principles, but of independence, and his rated scale of tea duties deserves public support.

Sir JOHN CAMPBELL was a great promiser of legal reforms, but except laying the first stone and giving a name, he perfected nothing. There were one or two more, which we forget, on the Whig roll, but as late events have rendered the whole, in lieu of a living calendar, a mere bill of mortality, it is not a matter of consequence.

Having thus gone through the ex-Ministry rather in the line manner than with fulness of detail, the important inquiry is—What prospect did it hold out of good government? Our opinion, as before hinted, is, that it was too aristocratic, that it did not sufficiently represent the Commons of England. It consisted of respectable functionaries—liberal in the abstract—intelligent, and within a certain pale, of good intentions—but not intently bent on great practical ameliorations. Unless acted upon by a strong pressure from without, they would have stood still; if they had moved, it would only have been when every excuse for delay had been exhausted, and then with the least possible momentum against abuses. Their prevailing disposition was not to change—for they had no interest in change—but to maintain, with a few unimportant amendments, things as they are—a church with a gorgeous hierarchy—a privileged peerage with an extortionate rental and irresponsible power—and a House of Commons with freedom of debate, but no efficient power of action. What good there was in them had been nearly extracted, and for the future, we believe, they had determined (as lord Brougham prematurely, and to the great mortification of his colleagues, divulged) to incline to a conservative rather than a more radical course. But as all men of ‘woman born’ are the creatures of circumstances, it is impossible to predicate the precise track they would have taken; it would have depended on the spirit of the community—on the relative force of the two great conflicting parties between which they stood—and to the most potent of which they would doubtless have felt the necessity as well as policy of yielding.

We may further observe that the preceding remarks apply in their full extent only to the upper, and not to that lower and better section of the ministry to which allusion has been made, and which, besides the names already mentioned, included those of sir John Hobhouse, earl Spencer and lord John Russell, and perhaps of lords Duncannon and Mulgrave. From these there was ground to hope for substantial reform, and had it not been for the intervention of the DUKE it is possible they might have succeeded, backed by a Reform Parliament, in ejecting their timid and more fastidious colleagues, and then formed a really popular administration.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE TORIES.

THE irruption of the Duke and his pandours, like the invasion of the French people by the duke of Brunswick, has united all classes of reformers. Differences of opinion may have subsisted among us, but there can be none as to the claims of a reforming and totally unreforming ministry. The Whigs may have been slow and niggardly in their concessions; but they were pledged to do something, and would have done something; whereas the Duke comes before us in no ‘questionable shape,’ but as an open, avowed, an out-and-out champion of abuse—an incarnation of the principle of evil—a foe to the freedom of his own and every European community.

Insidious attempts have been made to bring in the Duke, like sir George Murray and the Lord Mayor, under false pledges and representations. So silly a device scarcely merits notice. Reynard is Reynard still though he put on a surplice. But his Highness himself is not a man to counterfeit any more than change sentiments; nor is any man who has attained the age of the Duke prone to alter his political creed, especially from a love of despotism to liberty.

But supposing such a miracle, as a conversion from Toryism to liberality, then why bring him forward at all? It cannot be imagined that the Duke or sir R. Peel is prepared to go farther in reform even than Spring Rice, or lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, and if not, why turn them out—why agitate the whole country for a change without an amendment? Never since Britain became an isle was it in a more hopeful state, so well-disposed to wait for salutary but efficient ameliorations, and so little in need of a coercive government. A spirit of watchfulness is abroad, but there is no political excitement, no plots nor revolutionary designs. Intelligence and moderation are spreading, and all the great branches of industry are rapidly extending Why then should the cheering prospect be blighted—be broken in upon for the mere purpose of an experiment, to try whether an old soldier has repented him of his errors?

But it is no experiment—nobody thinks it is—every one knows that the Duke is and ever must be hostile to popular reforms. For this he is brought forward—the Tories have resolved to make a stand, and the old battering ram is again brought forth in defence of the church and corporations. It is a hopeless struggle. The Whigs were doing their best for the Tories, and much better than they will be able to do for themselves, and their true policy was to remain quiet. We thought the hated faction had been disposed of now and for ever, but as it is has once more taken the field, we trust the next onset will be final—that its discomfiture and overthrow will be such that it will never again venture to show itself in hostile array. There can be no doubt of the result. Scotland will rise almost to a man. That country, by the amendment of her representation, her burghs and police institutions, has been almost created under the Reform Acts, and she will never see the benefits she has derived endangered by Tory misrule. The vast mass of English Dissenters is with us, and in Ireland there are seven millions.

Were not great national reforms in jeopardy, the Duke is not qualified for the civil government of the country in ordinary times. He is great in war, but mediocre in peace. He is shrewd certainly, and a selfish man, but his endowments are not various. In tact and judgment, as a minister, he has often shewn himself as defective as the late chancellor. With the mind and great social interests of the empire he is not conversant. We could cite examples of want of information of which a Lancashire weaver would be ashamed. It is not long since (April 20th) he classed ‘ATHEISTS’ in the number of English Dissenters. In political economy he is barely so far learnt as to see the superiority of machinery to manual labour. Notwithstanding the schooling he received from Mr. Huskisson, he does not fully appreciate the policy of free trade, and is disposed to increase the duty on foreign silks, to give, as he says, a ‘change to the home market.’ His external policy is notorious; it is that of Don Miguel, of Nicholas, and Metternich. The old pragmatical Dutch king is the duke’s beau ideal of a monarch. But it is unnecessary to proceed—the reader will find in the ADDENDA extracts from the speeches of his highness, illustrative of his sentiments on nearly all public questions.

It is said that the influence of the Duke with his party is such that he will be able to carry measures that nobody else could, that the peers will follow him when they would not follow earl Grey or lord Melbourne. The hereditaries are a queer set certainly, and it is impossible to say who they will follow. Gibbon relates that the Crusaders had the emblem of a goose at their head, and they always followed that in full confidence of victory. We do not mean that his highness is a goose, or any thing like it; he is something very different. But we know that the liberal and enlightened portion of the British community will not follow him, nor will that portion which is the reverse of liberal and enlightened—for it is notorious that there is a section of the Tories for whom even the duke is too expansive in his views, and there is another section who think him a very good Ajax, but no Nestor, in politics:—so that between them his party is far from multitudinous. There is one faithful band we dare say will follow him to the world’s end, provided he has any thing to give them;—we mean that corps of attaches, male and female, whom his highness, to save his own pocket, threw on the pension list at the close of his last administration. The Grevilles and William Holmes will come forth again no doubt, as well as John Wilson Croker, Peregrine Courtenay, Joseph Planta, and other survivors of that plundering phalanx who abetted Castlereagh and Sidmouth in all their atrocities. Besides these, the duke will have other adjuncts even after death—namely, the glories of the MALPURBA, and of the death of the brave marshal Ney!

As the Duke’s chance of success has become dubious, a new candidate has been started in the person of sir Robert Peel, and posterity will scarcely believe that the government of this vast empire has been suspended—laid on the shelf we may say—to wait the return of this great personage from a tour of pleasure in Italy.

Sir Robert is a respectable man—he is a scholar and a gentleman, and that is saying much for any one in private life, but they are not the qualities to constitute a great public character. He is a good debater—the best, perhaps, in the House, save Stanley; and though inferior to Stanley in energy, he is superior to him in the arrangement of his matter, and a discreet and balanced mind. But after all he is only a second or third-rate statesman, well enough in ordinary times, but not fit for the existing crisis, and in a country that contains as many sects, parties, and divisions, as the Roman empire contained tribes and nations. A long speech on an important subject will mostly set forth the grasp of a person’s mind, and if any one wishes to appreciate sir Robert’s, let them read his oration of December 20th, 1830:—it comprises what may be termed his general views at that critical period; but a more brainless exhibition of common-place, conceit, Joseph Surface candour, and dowager politics we never before witnessed. Sir Robert is a timid and accomplished man, and would grace a peerage much better than the premiership. Moreover, he is—saving a slight and recent amendment—a regular university Tory, therefore quite out of season; and, besides, has always been a slow learner: he only discovered the policy of Catholic emancipation when too late—when the concession could only be made without grace, and was received as no favour. Of the two we prefer the bold, blunt, blundering, Duke; but our fervent prayer is for neither, and this we are confident is the prayer of the united British people.

From some cause the country has been convulsed by anticipation, and most unexpectedly; for it is plain even the Tories did not anticipate the sudden turn in their favour, otherwise they would not have been to collect from all parts of the continent. In the course of the ensuing session, a change of ministry or rather of ministers may have become necessary, but it was yet premature. The people might have their misgivings about a portion of the cabinet; indications may have got abroad of the secession of a squad of alarmists like that of the Portland clan in 1793; but as a body the Melbourne ministry was untried, and the people were not so unreasonable as to wish its dismissal before being subjected to that ordeal. That it possessed energy we have shown, and that the larger part of it was of a sterling kind, we have the cheering testimony of its opponents. According to the Quarterly Review,—“There were two parties in the cabinet: one—the MAJORITY, we fear—thought that they could not meet Parliament without announcing some strong measures of what they called church reform, or to speak more truly and plainly church spoliation; the other (to which lord Melbourne himself is said to have inclined) were reluctant to pledge themselves to this extent, and declared that they must resign if such measures were proposed.”—Postcript, Nov. 19, 1834. Very well, they could have resigned; if they were so very opinionated that they could not agree with a majority of their colleagues, supported by a Reform Parliament, their best course was to take up their bag and walk, as the Stanleyites had done before them. Perhaps their places might have been supplied when the time came without a break-up of the ministry, and why not wait and see? Our opinion of the intelligence of the Lansdowne party and its notions of civil government is such, that if it found the mind and strength of the community, expressed through constitutional organs, were really bent on searching ecclesiastical reforms, it would have succumbed and not withdrawn. But if it had, successors might have been found, and then we should have had a ministry in harmony with the Reform Parliament, and together, backed by the people, they would have been in a state to speak to their high mightinesses of the upper chamber.

This in truth is the real dilemma of the British constitution. A liberal or illiberal ministry is only prefatory matter. Take which you will, there is a ‘lion in the way.’ With a reforming ministry the question is—What shall be done with theLORDS? With an unreforming one—What shall be done with theCOMMONS? But is it possible—can it be believed that this great empire, more lofty than ever in its elevation, and looking forward to a still better futurity—bursting with energy at every pore—and enlightened by the immortal Black Book on the causes of past misrule and present difficulties;—can it be believed, we repeat, that this empire will go backwards? Never! Up, then, Britons! one victory more and you have done. You fight not for Whigs nor for Tories, but for yourselves. The hated faction which has again reared its head, and which for a century plundered, duped, and misled you, will be for ever exterminated. By your noble efforts in 1831 you reformed the lower house, and by another such struggle—if the Duke vouchsafe the opportunity—you will reform the upper—and then rest in peace!

A portion of the public press has adopted a very silly, not to say insidious course. The Times and Morning Herald never made a weaker point than to attempt to write up the Duke—to induce the people quietly to let his Highness get into the saddle to see how he would go; just as if he had not been there before.

- “Pray, Mr. Speaker, shall we let him in,

- To—try if we can turn him out again?”

It is easier to keep the devil out than to turn him out,—so the people thought, and with their characteristic good sense, they were not to be misled even by the ‘leading journal’—the changeling Times, which, not long since, was called ‘Brougham’s Gazette,’ then the anti-Brougham, and now it is the Duke’s or Peel’s Gazette as it may best turn up!

ADDENDA.

I.—

REVENUES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUE INQUIRY.

To theKING’s Most Excellent Majesty.

YOUR Majesty having been pleased to issue a Commission under the Great Seal, dated the twenty-third day of June, in the second year of your Majesty’s reign, authorizing and directing the Commissioners therein-named to make a full and correct Inquiry respecting the Revenues and Patronage belonging to the several Archiepiscopal and Episcopal Sees in England and Wales to all Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, and to all Ecclesiastical Benefices, (including Donatives, Perpetual Curacies and Chapelries,) with or without Cure of Souls, and the Names of the several Patrons thereof, and other circumstances therewith connected; and your Majesty having been further pleased, on the expiration of the said Commission, to issue a second Commission, extending the period within which the Commissioners were required to make their final Report, and authorizing them to extend their Inquiries to the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man:—

We, your Majesty’s Commissioners, whose hands and seals are hereunto set, humbly report to your Majesty, that in obedience to your Majesty’s commands, we have proceeded to execute the duties committed to us.

In prosecuting our inquiries, we have, from the extent and complexity of the various matters to be investigated, encountered many difficulties, which, though not unexpected, necessarily required a considerable length of time to surmount.

We believe that we are now in possession of materials sufficient to enable us to make a full report to your Majesty on all the topics within the range of our Commission; but to arrange and digest into a tabular form so large a mass of returns, comprising so many different heads of information, and thus to present a distinct view of the whole revenues of the Church and their distribution, has been a work of no ordinary labour, which, though nearly completed, must still occupy some further time.

It would have been more satisfactory to us to have awaited the period when we could have completed our task by a final report; but we are impressed with a conviction that it is expedient to lay before your Majesty, without delay, a statement of the total income of the Church, and of the manner in which it is divided between the archbishops, bishops, corporations aggregate and sole, and the incumbents and curates of benefices.

The total amount of the gross annual revenues of the several archiepiscopal and episcopal sees in England and Wales is £180,462, affording an average of £6,683; and the total amount of the net annual revenues of the same is £160,114, affording an average of £5,930.

The total amount of the gross annual revenues of the several cathedral and collegiate churches in England and Wales, together with the separate gross annual revenues of the several dignitaries and other spiritual persons, members of cathedrals or collegiate churches, is £350,861, and the total amount of the net annual revenues of the same is £272,828.

The total number of benefices with and without cure of souls, the incumbents whereof have made returns to our inquiries, omitting those which are permanently or accustomably annexed to superior preferments, and which are included in the statements respecting those preferments, is 10,498; the total amount of the gross annual revenues of which benefices is £3,191,950, affording an average of £304; and the total amount of the net annual revenues of the same is £3,000,393, affording an average of £285.

The total number of benefices with and without cure of souls in England and Wales, including those not returned to us, is 10,701; the total gross income of which, calculated from the average of those returned will be £3,253,662, and the total net income thereof will be £3,058,248.

The total number of curates employed both by resident and non-resident incumbents returned to us is 5,282, whose annual stipends in the aggregate amount to £424,796, affording an average annual stipend of EIGHTY POUNDS; and the total amount of the stipends of curates, if one hundred and two be assumed as the proportionate number on the benefices not returned, and the same be calculated on the average of those returned to us, will be £432,956.

From a scale which we have prepared of the benefices with cure of souls returned to us, it appears that there are 294, the incomes of which are respectively under £50; 1621 of £50, and under £100; 1591 of £100, and under £150; 1355 of £150, and under £200; 1964 of £200, and under £300; 1317 of £300, and under £400; 830 of £400, and under £500; 504 of £500, and under £600; 337 of £600, and under £700; 217 of £700, and under £800; 129 of £800, and under £900; 91 of £900, and under £1000; 137 of £1000, and under £1500; 31 of £1500, and under £2000; and 18 of £2000, and upwards.

The number of sinecure rectories returned to us, and which sinecure rectories are included in the number of benefices above stated, is sixty-two; the aggregate gross annual revenues of which amount to eighteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two pounds, affording an average of three hundred pounds, and the aggregate net annual revenues of the same amount to seventeen thousand and ninety-five pounds, affording an average of two hundred and seventy-five pounds.

We regret that it is not at present practicable to offer a full explanation of the various items which compose the difference between the gross and net amounts; but, to prevent misapprehension, we think it advisable to observe, that no deduction is made from income on account of payments to curates, nor for the reparations of episcopal residences, or of glebe houses and offices, nor on account of payments of rates and taxes for the same, nor has any deduction been made on account of arrears due at the time of making the returns, or of any payments not being of a compulsory nature.

The returns of income have been generally made upon an average of three years, ending December the thirty-first, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one.

Received this NA day of June, 1834.

W. CANTUAR.

(L. S.)

C. W. W. WYNN.

(L. S.)

E. EBOR.

(L. S.)

J. NICHOLL.

(L. S.)

LANSDOWNE.

(L. S.)

N. C. TINDAL.

(L. S.)

HARROWBY.

(L. S.)

E. J. LITTLETON.

(L. S.)

C. J. LONDON.

(L. S.)

S. LUSHINGTON.

(L. S.)

J. LINCOLN.

(L. S.)

G. CHANDLER.

(L. S.)

C. BANGOR.

(L. S.)

CHR. WORDSWORTH.

(L. S.)

WYNFORD.

(L. S.)

JOSEPH ALLEN.

(L. S.)

W. S. BOURNE.

(L. S.)

CHAS. THORP.

(L. S.)

H. GOULBURN.

(L. S.)

HUGH C. JONES.

(L. S.)

Dated this 16th day of June, 1834.

Remarks on the Ecclesiastical Report.

THE preceding outline is the only result, known to the public, of the two years’ labours of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and, meagre as it is, was only conceded after urgent inquiries in parliament by Messrs. Hume and Baines. Between the industry of the Church Commissioners and Poor-Law Commissioners the contrast is as striking as the objects of their respective investigations. But the delay in making a full report by the former is the more extraordinary as the returns from the clergy appear to have been received so early as April 17th, 1833; lord ALTHORP on that day having prefaced his motion for a commutation of tithes in England by a general statement of the revenues of the church, as now given to the public. Surely in the long interval that had elapsed between the date of the report and of his lordship’s speech there was sufficient time to ‘digest and arrange the materials,’ without keeping them back until the untoward advent of the DUKE, who may deem it unnecessary to have any further report at all on the Church.

Leaving these mysteries to be solved by the commissioners, we shall submit a few brief remarks on the matter of the Report such as it is. We have no enmity to the church, only we desire all the good that can be obtained from it at a less cost to the public.

ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS.—The net average income of these is £5,930. But the Primate of all England has an income of £32,000, according to the statement of Dr. Lushington, and the right reverend bishop of London an income of £15,000, according to his own admission. Such incomes are exorbitant, and quite out of keeping with the incomes of other public servants; as of military and naval officers; or of the first lord of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer. In France an archbishop has only £1041, and a bishop £625 a year. A cardinal at Rome, next in dignity to the pope, has between £400 and £500 per annum. These latter sums are enough for Christian pastors. The English bishops have not, we suspect, included in their returns of revenue the annual value of their parks, and ‘palaces,’ and their ‘thrones!’

DEANS AND CHAPTERS.—The gross revenue of these is £350,861. They were deemed a ‘superfluous condition,’ even in popish times, by archbishop Cranmer; and, in a letter to Henry VIII. he says, a prebendary is neither a ‘learner nor a teacher, but a good viander who wastes his substance in superfluous BELLY CHEER.’ By a reform of the cathedral and collegiate churches a saving of a quarter of a million might at once be effected.

RECTORIES AND VICARAGES.—The net average income of these is £285. If there were as many incumbents as benefices, and each received only this very moderate stipend, there would be no complaint that the clergy are overpaid. But the waste and injustice consist in the disproportion between the number of livings and the number of individuals among whom they are shared. From authentic returns it appears that the number of incumbents in England and Wales, among whom the 10,498 benefices are divided, is under 7,000; so that some fortunate persons, with good connexions, have two, three, or four livings, or more, besides dignities in cathedrals, preacherships, chaplainships, and other tit-bits of preferment too numerous to mention, but which together swell the incomes of favoured individuals to an enormous amount. It is not only the aggregate revenues of the church, but their unequal and partial distribution which excites public indignation. In this consists its chief iniquity; but, for a complete elucidation of the subjects of PATRONAGE, SINECURISM, and PLURALISM, we must refer to The Black Book itself, especially the edition of 1832, pages 29, 31, and 56.

CURATES.—From the incomes of these we may form an estimate of the expense really necessary to the maintenance of an efficient church establishment. It is notorious that the curates and poor clergy who are unable to bear the charge of curates, form nearly the only labouring bees, and that it is by them that the chief business of preaching, burying, baptizing, and marrying is performed. The 5,282 curates, it seems, have an average salary of £80, amounting for the whole to £424,796; so that, for about double that sum an efficient clergy might be maintained, adequate to the discharge of all the practical offices of the national worship.

POOR CLERGY.—It seems there are 4,506 benefices with cure of souls, having incomes under £150. The worst of the poor livings is, that they are mostly held single, while the ‘fat ones’ are held double, treble, or quadruple, and often with a stall or some other good thing appended. But there is no help for this class of incumbents any more than for the curates, until they obtain a radical ecclesiastical reform. All we can do for them is to recommend their case to the merciful consideration of the bishop of London, who, now that he has got through his poor-law duties, and perhaps, too, his jobbing and exchanging of church preferment with a brother prelate—of which such curious examples were recently given in the Morning Chronicle—may have leisure to attend to their situation.

We shall not enter into the subject of the total revenues of the established clergy, having already done that in another place; but shall only remark, that the exclusion from the returns of the income derived from college and school foundations, and from lectureships, chaplainships, and other sources, renders the estimate of the commissioners far from satisfactory. Why, too, ought not church rates to be included in ecclesiastical revenue, and which, according to the last return, amounted to £554,295? Are surplice-fees, mortuaries, Easterdues, &c. included in the returns of the clergy?

If the Clergy, from sinister motives, have understated their real incomes, we trust they will hereafter be bound by their own returns, should the Legislature determine on a plan of composition for the church revenues.

II.—

THE CHURCH AND THE DISSENTERS.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND DISSENTING PLACES OF WORSHIP.

(From the Black Book, edit. 1832, p. 25.)

COUNTIES.

Roman Catholics.

Presbyterians.

Independents.

Particular Baptists.

General Baptists.

Quakers.

Wesleyan Methodists.

Calvinistic Methodists.

Other Methodists.

Missionary Stations.

Total Dissenting Congregations.

Church Livings.

Bedfordshire

1

—

8

21

—

4

35

—

1

1

71

115

Berkshire

6

1

14

11

1

6

34

7

—

1

81

150

Buckinghamshire

1

—

21

28

—

8

25

1

—

37

121

190

Cambridgeshire

1

1

23

19

6

3

29

1

1

1

85

162

Cheshire

7

12

27

5

9

6

48

8

30

1

153

145

Cornwall

2

—

31

12

—

10

219

3

39

4

320

187

Cumberland

4

10

16

8

—

22

32

—

11

2

105

139

Derbyshire

8

7

36

5

11

5

84

3

22

1

182

161

Devonshire

9

15

65

31

—

6

93

—

18

10

247

442

Dorsetshire

7

3

22

5

—

5

21

—

22

3

88

248

Durham

14

7

13

8

—

7

72

—

28

28

177

91

Essex

7

2

64

24

—

20

36

1

—

21

175

413

Gloucestershire

5

4

38

27

—

13

53

11

7

19

177

290

Hampshire

11

4

49

22

1

5

27

6

—

3

128

258

Herefordshire

4

—

11

9

—

4

16

1

—

4

49

201

Hertfordshire

1

1

28

13

1

12

2

4

—

—

62

129

Huntingdonshire

—

1

9

12

1

3

9

1

—

—

36

74

Kent

8

4

44

30

4

9

90

15

—

6

210

395

Lancashire

81

36

88

29

5

25

156

9

75

—

504

287

Leicestershire

7

3

17

13

17

4

68

—

13

2

144

208

Lincolnshire

12

2

18

14

11

9

211

2

24

1

304

598

London and }

21

15

91

55

2

12

59

22

7

5

289

233

Middlesex }

Monmouthshire

4

—

24

28

—

3

10

—

—

3

72

118

Norfolk

8

1

21

32

2

13

74

1

24

5

181

683

Northamptonshire

3

1

35

40

4

7

61

—

—

2

153

303

Northumberland

19

50

8

3

1

4

29

—

22

—

136

97

Nottinghamshire

3

3

12

7

6

3

77

—

41

—

152

178

Oxfordshire

8

3

14

12

—

10

44

—

2

6

99

203

Rutland

—

—

3

1

1

1

7

—

—

—

13

40

Shropshire

7

2

25

15

—

3

32

—

18

—

102

209

Somersetshire

8

7

47

37

—

17

94

3

20

21

254

456

Staffordshire

21

5

32

16

3

6

82

—

41

7

213

178

Suffolk

4

2

33

35

2

10

40

1

—

5

132

486

Surrey

4

1

27

21

—

10

—

11

—

27

101

142

Sussex

6

4

31

13

—

5

20

6

—

2

87

300

Warwickshire

11

5

30

16

7

12

18

2

2

5

108

209

Westmoreland

2

1

12

—

—

11

13

—

1

1

41

68

Wiltshire

3

1

38

31

3

3

37

1

8

4

129

274

Worcestershire

8

8

10

22

—

7

24

3

21

1

104

175

Yorkshire

46

13

154

51

9

64

532

1

147

2

1019

809

North Wales }

6

23

{ 172

52

—

3 }

214

330

{ 6

0 }

1100

299 }

South Wales }

{ 202

107

—

5 }

{ 9

0 }

526 }

See further on the proportion of Dissenters and Churchmen, page 122.

III.—

PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.

1.

ALTERATIONS IN PUBLIC OFFICES.

(From the Companion to the Newspaper.)

An account of the increase and diminution in the year 1833 in the number of persons employed, and in the salaries, emoluments, and allowances in the public offices. In the Admiralty there has been an increase of 4 persons; in the Navy and Victualling-yards at home, 51; in the Excise, 33; in the Post Office, 33; and in the Board of Education, 7.—Total, 128. In the Colonial Department there has been a diminution of 2; in the War Office, 4; in the Army Medical Board, 6; in the Paymaster-General’s Office, 4; in the Commissariat (Ireland), 1; in the Ordnance, 37; Chelsea Hospital, 4; Royal Military College, 1; Royal Military Asylum, 16; Navy Pay Office, 1; Navy and Victualling-yards abroad, 5; Customs (United Kingdom,) 113; Stamps and Taxes, 10; Audit Office in Ireland, 15; Tellers of the Exchequer, 1; Barons of Exchequer (Scotland), 1.—Total, 221. The total amount of the increase of salaries in the various departments, £5,650 : 16 : 7; Emoluments, £405 : 2 : 9; Retired Allowances, £16,662 : 17 : 9; Expenses, £2,980 : 11 : 4.—Grand total of increase, £25,699 : 8 : 5. The total amount of the diminution of the salaries in the various departments is £44,806 : 19 : 91/4; Emoluments, £2,136 : 3 : 101/4; Retired Allowances, £7,736 : 0 : 7; Expenses, £55,927 : 14 : 11/2.—Grand total of diminution, £110,606 : 17 : 4.

2.

COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY.

Abstract of a Return of the number and description of the existing Commissions of Inquiry, showing the total cost of each commission, from its appointment to the 29th of April, 1834.

Date of Commission.

Total cost from commencement.

That is, from the re-appointment of the commission in 1831, not from the commencement of the charity inquiry in 1818, which must have cost nearly a million, though with few practical benefits to the country.

Commissioners of Charities

1831

£26,637

Commissioners of Royal Burghs, and other Burghs in Scotland

1833

1,653

Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Revenues, England and Wales

1832

2,192

Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Revenues, Ireland

1833

710

Commissioners of Excise

1833

2,150

Commissioners of the Courts of Law, Scotland

1833

1,606

Commissioners of the Poor, Ireland

1833

935

Commissioners of Poor Laws

1832

6,408

Commissioners of Municipal Corporations, England

1833

6,665

Commissioners of Municipal Corporations, Ireland

1833

4,046

3.

PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS TO IRELAND FROM THE UNION TO JANUARY 1, 1833.

For Charitable and Literary Institutions

£4,225,750

For the encouragement of Agriculture and Manufactures

1,340,421

For public works and Employment of the Poor

3,072,160

Total

£8,638,331

4.

INCOME OF CHARITY PROPERTY.

A Return made by the Secretary to the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities in England and Wales, of the Amount of the Income of Charity Estates, and Property of all Kinds, and distinguishing those for Education, in the several Counties under-mentioned.

Annual Income of all Charities.

Portion of the whole Income applied for Education in established Schools.

Portion of the whole Income applied for or appropriated to Education, otherwise than in established Schools.

Total applied for Education.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

£

s.

d.

Bedford

13,579

16

8

1,608

11

10

214

3

6

1,822

15

4

Cumberland

3,279

1

10

1,802

18

7

85

14

3

1,888

12

10

Derby

12,515

14

11

3,547

19

4

127

1

6

3,675

0

10

Devon

28,438

3

7

5,755

14

2

785

5

1

6,540

19

3

Durham

17,124

16

4

1,783

3

6

80

4

6

1,863

8

0

Gloucester

19,435

14

11

4,510

16

10

691

13

9

5,202

10

7

Huntingdon

3,733

7

6

854

4

10

172

0

0

1,026

4

10

Lancaster

35,734

11

10

18,455

12

5

259

10

3

18,715

2

8

Northampton

17,823

6

6

3,088

13

0

687

6

5

3,775

19

5

Northumberland

5,648

6

2

2,478

14

5

40

4

6

2,518

18

11

Nottingham

13,477

2

11

2,103

4

6

224

16

1

2,328

0

7

Oxford

13,112

4

1

1,621

16

11

118

7

4

1,740

4

3

Rutland

4,783

6

4

1,290

0

0

197

8

0

1,487

8

0

Salop

20,030

0

0

6,231

4

11

197

10

7

6,428

15

6

Somerset

34,925

0

11

7,581

16

5

574

9

5

8,156

5

10

Southampton

10,589

4

3

2,730

17

4

623

0

2

3,353

13

6

Stafford

19,171

15

6

6,693

7

4

440

4

5

7,133

11

9

Suffolk

26,364

13

4

2,938

15

9

1,018

5

1

3,957

0

10

Surrey

26,729

8

7

5,547

19

2

1,049

15

11

6,597

15

1

Westmoreland

5,145

13

11

1,952

8

5

220

3

4

2,172

11

9

York

81,399

18

5

18,621

15

11

2,453

5

1

21,075

1

0

413,041

8

6

101,199

15

7

10,260

9

2

111,460

4

9

IV.—

REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

1.—

COUNTIES AND DIVISIONS.

Counties.

Population.

Population exclusive of the population of unrepresented towns.

Registered last general election.

Polled last general election.

By registered electors, both in this and the next table, is meant electors eligible to vote, and who, having fulfilled the conditions of the Reform Acts as to occupancy and the payment of rates and taxes, their claims were admitted by the Revising Barristers. The discrepancy between the number of £10 houses and the £10 houses registered and qualifying to vote is striking, especially in the metropolitan boroughs of Lambeth, Marylebone, &c. By registered freemen, in the second table, is meant those who vote in virtue of the elective franchise subsisting in cities and boroughs prior to the passing of the Reform Acts.

Lindsey.

Kesteven and Holland.

Second election.

Bedford

95,383

88,424

3,966

3,484

Berks

145,289

112,854

5,582

4,863

Bucks

146,529

121,730

5,306

4,189

Cambridge

143,955

123,038

5,923

Chester, N. }

334,410

{ 118,420

5,103

Chester, S. }

{ 120,990

5,130

Cornwall, E. }

302,440

{ 114,919

4,462

Cornwall, W. }

{ 147,255

3,353

Cumberland, W. }

169,681

{ 70,337

3,848

3,266

Cumberland, E. }

{ 55,535

4,035

Derby, S. }

237,170

{ 115,743

5,541

4,789

Derby, N. }

{ 103,804

4,370

3,677

Devon, S. }

494,168

{ 187,205

7,453

6,660

Devon, N. }

{ 157,901

5,368

Dorset

159,252

118,856

5,632

Durham, N. }

253,827

{ 77,114

4,267

3,841

Durham, S. }

{ 78,506

4,336

3,994

Essex, N. }

317,233

{ 146,747

5,163

4,513

Essex, S. }

{ 145,131

4,488

3,592

Gloucestershire, E. }

386,904

{ 86,164

6,437

5,752

Gloucestershire, W. }

{ 152,822

6,521

5,940

Hants, N. }

314,313

{ 96,623

2,424

1,810

Hants, S. }

{ 82,462

3,143

2,746

Hereford

110,976

95,447

Hertford

143,341

133,322

4,245

3,845

Huntingdon

53,149

47,736

Kent, W. }

479,155

313,631

{ 6,678

5,562

Kent, E. }

{ 7,026

6,144

Lancaster, N. }

1,336,854

624,465

{ 6,593

Lancaster, S. }

{ 10,039

8,453

Leicester, N. }

197,003

157,570

{ 3,658

3,063

Leicester, S. }

{ 4,125

Lincoln

317,244

270,446

{ 9,134

8,338

{ 7,956

Middlesex

1,358,541

188,603

6,939

5,132

Monmouth

98,130

93,214

3,738

Norfolk, E. }

390,054

290,997

{ 7,041

6,229

Norfolk, W. }

{ 4,396

Northampton, N. }

179,276

158,372

{ 3,363

3,063

Northampton, S. }

{ 4,425

Northumberland, N. }

222,912

130,317

{ 2,322

Northumberland, S. }

{ 5,192

4,606

Nottingham, N. }

225,320

162,592

{ 2,889

2,548

Nottingham, S. }

{ 3,170

Oxford

151,726

118,360

4,721

Rutland

19,385

19,385

1,296

Salop, N. }

222,503

186,258

{ 4,682

4,297

Salop, S. }

{ 2,791

661

Somerset, E. }

403,908

315,271

{ 8,996

7,694

Somerset, W. }

{ 7,884

5,812

Stafford, N. }

410,485

{ 118,931

8,756

7,886

Stafford, S. }

{ 129,745

3,107

Suffolk, E. }

296,304

{ 138,637

4,265

3,326

Suffolk, W. }

{ 112,211

3,326

2,920

Surrey, E. }

486,326

{ 107,472

3,150

2,211

Surrey, W. }

{ 81,229

2,912

2,527

Sussex, E. }

272,328

{ 107,703

3,437

2,757

Sussex, W. }

{ 51,454

2,365

Warwick, N. }

336,988

{ 83,194

3,740

Warwick, S. }

{ 71,994

2,550

Westmorland

55,041

43,464

4,392

3,584

Wight, Isle of

1,167

824

Wilts, N. }

239,181

185,551

{ 3,614

Wilts, S. }

{ 2,540

Worcester, W. }

211,356

134,222

{ 8,122

2,647

Worcester, E. }

{ 5,161

4,349

York, N. Riding

226,235

160,796

9,539

8,487

York, E. Riding

168,646

106,234

5,559

York, W. Riding

976,415

607,048

18,056

WALES.

Anglesey

48,325

45,379

1,187

Brecon

48,325

43,299

1,168

Cardigan

64,780

61,985

1,184

Carmarthen

100,655

90,660

3,887

3,503

Carnarvon

65,753

58,111

1,688

Denbigh

83,167

79,381

3,401

3,050

Flint

60,012

57,796

1,271

Glamorgan

126,612

85,086

3,680

Merioneth

35,609

35,609

580

Montgomery

66,485

65,297

2,523

Pembroke

81,424

70,998

3,700

Radnor

24,651

24,179

1,046

2.—

CITIES, BOROUGHS, AND TOWNS.

Population.

£10 Houses.

Registered £10 Houses.

Registered Freemen.

Polled last general election.

Expenses of the Returning Officer.

Towns only.

Scot and Lot.

Including freeholders.

Towns only.

Including Scot and Lot voters.

Freemen not distinguished.

Scot and lot, 31; potwallopers, 480.

Old scot and lot voters.

Including freemen.

Scot and lot; of these, 113 only were householders.

Including freemen.

Scot and lot voters.

Scot and lot voters.

The town clerk demands as his fee £150.

Inhabitant voters.

Scot and lot voters.

Including freeholders and scot and lot voters.

£10 householders not distinguished.

Township of Stockport only.

Potwallopers.

Scot and lot voters.

Scot and lot voters included.

Freeholders.

Abingdon

5,259

451

300

201

no charges

Andover

4,966

322

229

17

no contest

Arundel

2,805

254

351

£10

Ashburton

4,165

342

146

52

5

Ashton-under-Lyne

33,597

610

433

383

72

Aylesbury

4,907

314

1,654

1,269

143

Banbury

5,906

365

329

109

Barnstaple

6,840

607

459

261

684

100

Bath

50,802

7,314

2,853

2,329

248

Beaumaris, &c.

2,946

329

Bedford

6,959

493

975

597

961

249

Berwick

8,920

582

269

436

653

172

Beverley

8,302

507

146

865

972

50

Bewdley

4,132

484

312

25

Birmingham

146,986

6,532

4,309

46

Blackburn

27,091

623

626

607

127

Bodmin

5,228

311

222

30

222

10

Bolton-le-Moors

43,396

1,612

1,040

210

Boston

12,818

1,000

885

372

788

103

Bradford

43,537

1,083

1,139

967

65

Brecon

5,026

350

242

224

116

Bridgnorth

6,284

339

746

11

Bridgewater

7,087

611

484

no charges

Bridport

4,242

342

111

322

400

43

Brighton

41,994

2,763

1,649

1,434

426

Bristol

103,886

9,785

5,000

5,309

6,333

£874

Buckingham

7,418

367

300

270

30

Bury

19,140

765

535

459

126

Bury St. Edmunds

11,436

719

550

30

521

8

Calne

4,876

519

176

15

Cambridge

20,917

1,160

1,420

79

1,247

134

Canterbury

15,314

667

302

1,209

82

Cardiff, &c.

6,187

827

687

533

104

Cardigan, &c.

2,795

672

466

564

none

none

Carlisle

20,006

893

571

406

649

41

Carmarthen, &c.

9,995

936

404

280

597

78

Carnarvon, &c.

7,642

774

544

311

773

Chatham

24,670

1,174

677

572

76

Cheltenham

22,942

2,100

919

27

Chester

21,363

1,800

649

1,379

1,574

87

Chichester

8,270

680

503

349

771

32

Chippenham

5,270

312

112

96

183

34

Christchurch

6,077

363

206

23

Cirencester

5,420

329

604

64

Clithero

8,915

359

288

18

281

28

Cockermouth

6,022

356

305

255

30

Colchester

16,167

500

623

476

991

77

Coventry

27,070

1,500

529

2,756

1,989

189

Cricklade

1,642

1,534

51

Dartmouth

4,597

422

221

22

none

Denbigh, &c.

3,786

743

350

781

none

Derby

23,607

1,684

1,012

372

1,136

66

Devizes

4,562

409

292

23

276

116

Devonport

44,454

2,500

1,777

1,477

344

Dorchester

3,033

333

322

no contest

Dover

11,924

1,743

367

1,284

1,396

156

Droitwich

6,493

311

236

7

none

Dudley

23,043

800

670

540

61

Durham

10,125

448

314

492

768

70

Evesham

3,991

330

195

164

332

67

Exeter

28,201

3,016

2,336

586

2,092

232

Eye

7,015

330

200

53

37

Finsbury

244,077

23,266

10,309

7,344

463

Flint, &c.

2,216

709

303

976

7

Frome

12,240

450

322

263

64

Gateshead

20,601

750

454

12

Gloucester

11,933

760

802

725

1,197

48

Grantham

7,448

475

202

496

650

24

Greenwich

64,336

6,142

2,714

2,391

215

Great Grimsby

6,836

338

303

353

455

4

Guildford

3,813

431

269

73

303

25

Halifax

34,437

1,300

531

492

105

Harwich

4,297

202

188

16

186

41

Hastings

10,097

1,125

554

20

473

93

Haverfordwest, &c.

3,915

584

539

184

none

Helston

10,845

225

281

60

none

Hereford

10,280

617

459

461

126

Hertford

5,247

273

700

671

140

Honiton

3,509

318

511

503

£47

Horsham

5,105

365

257

188

26

Huddersfield

19,035

140

608

415

39

Hull

54,110

3,133

2,350

1,513

3,305

327

Huntingdon

5,413

200

384

287

30

Hythe

8,919

537

481

51

424

37

Ipswich

20,454

1,800

875

344

953

78

Kendal

11,577

682

327

none

Kidderminster

20,865

500

390

332

39

Knaresborough

6,894

369

278

260

50

Lambeth

160,613

16,405

4,768

3,220

227

Lancaster

12,613

658

261

848

none

Launceston

5,414

327

243

223

Leeds

123,393

6,683abve

4000

161

Leicester

39,433

1,900

1,200

1,569

2,795

147

Leominster

5,249

195

756

23

no contest

14

Lewes

8,592

832

188

690

65

Lichfield

6,499

420

563

298

563

136

Lincoln

12,634

652

461

582

878

64

Liskeard

4,042

315

211

7

no contest

13

Liverpool

165,175

17,427

7,655

3,628

8,551

358

London (City)

132,803

14,568

9,057

9,527

11,500

522

Ludlow

5,253

514

300

59

339

none

Lyme Regis

3,345

300

212

183

20

Lymington

5,472

249

219

112

Lynn Regis

13,370

660

583

253

no contest

none

Macclesfield

23,129

1,000

718

588

53

Maidstone

15,387

1,417

652

456

873

29

Maldon

4,895

716

671

75

Malmesbury

6,136

351

278

13

no contest

20

Malton

6,802

397

375

292

no contest

none

Manchester

187,002

12,723

6,726

729

Marlborough

4,186

299

no return

Marlow

6,175

349

95

362

39

Marylebone

240,294

21,630

8,901

6,076

338

Merthyr Tidvil

22,088

830

502

no contest

Midhurst

3,819

339

252

no contest

none

Monmouth, &c.

4,916

1,140

102

Montgomery, &c.

740

657

66

656

216

Morpeth

6,856

446

190

131

no contest

Newark

9,557

510

1,575

1,518

95

Newcastle-under-Lyne

8,192

360

973

941

84

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

53,613

2,916

2,286

1,619

2,850

422

Newport

3,385

445

405

15

365

75

Northallerton

4,839

294

232

209

29

Northampton

15,351

1,087

2,497

2,406

325

Norwich

61,110

2,316

1,043

3,195

3,817

794

Nottingham

50,680

2,950

2,187

3,033

3,322

152

Oldham

50,513

1,128

1,131

848

165

Oxford

20,434

2,389

904

1,408

2,139

not settled

Pembroke, &c.

6,511

682

341

967

no contest

none

Penryn and Falmouth

3,521

796

875

717

72

Peterborough

5,553

396

285

488

no contest

none

Petersfield

5,892

305

234

205

£7

Plymouth

31,080

2,271

1,376

115

no contest

none

Pontefract

9,305

519

418

538

no contest

41

Poole

8,216

298

301

111

360

75

Portsmouth

50,389

463

1,280

15

983

88

Preston

33,871

1,277

826

5,526

5,538

444

Radnor, &c.

455

253

276

no contest

Reading

15,595

1,050

1,001

Reigate

3,397

276

152

101

8

Retford

2,491

2,174

138

1,980

150

Richmond

7,243

301

273

no contest

none

Ripon

5,735

403

299

42

330

145

Rochdale

41,308

1,014

687

632

72

Rochester

12,791

1,124

550

423

650

100

Rye and Winchelsea

8,538

328

382

40

290

38

Salford

50,810

1,244

1,497

1,220

158

Salisbury

9,876

627

539

37

531

133

Sandwich

12,183

796

487

429

847

54

Scarborough

8,760

508

429

3

385

65

Shaftesbury

8,698

145

296

338

328

62

Sheffield

91,692

4,383

3,508

3,056

273

Shoreham

1,503

1,925

1,154

173

Shrewsbury

21,227

1,651

823

891

1,314

37

Southampton

19,324

1,284

1,403

1,046

83

South Shields

18,756

1,400

475

419

55

Southwark

134,117

9,923

4,775

2,810

441

Stafford

6,998

468

193

983

1,049

9

St. Albans

4,772

286

264

{ 118

637

109

{ 275

St. Ives

7,115

302

130

454

509

16

Stamford

7,062

460

851

766

206

Stockport

29,456

842

1,012

955

229

Stoke-upon-Trent

52,090

1,450

1,349

1,245

160

Stroud

41,719

1,600

1,247

1,156

148

Sudbury

4,677

301

59

450

474

52

Sunderland

40,735

2,500

1,378

1,132

248

Swansea, &c.

13,256

1,200

826

481

no contest

Tamworth

3,917

528

162

424

no contest

Tavistock

5,602

380

247

193

31

Taunton

11,139

848

588

361

no contest

31

Tewksbury

5,780

262

295

91

364

51

Thetford

3,462

203

124

22

no contest

none

Thirsk

4,558

315

254

no contest

11

Tiverton

9,766

643

443

19

58

Totness

3,442

316

175

42

179

11

Tower Hamlets

367,854

23,187

9,906

7,320

617

Truro

11,417

237

388

17

386

209

Tynemouth & N. Shields

23,206

1,150

760

590

170

Wakefield

24,538

1,001

722

no contest

15

Wallingford

5,931

278

287

166

367

43

Walsall

15,066

300

597

535

£75

Wareham

5,207

218

{ 152 }

315

39

{ 7 }

Warrington

18,184

973

456

379

39

Warwick

9,109

500

1,340

1,248

106

Wells

6,649

383

193

163

318

10

Wenlock

3,481

450

489

202

635

54

Westbury

7,324

318

185

no contest

none

Westminster

202,891

17,681

11,576

362

Weymouth

7,655

490

368

{ 20 }

34

{ 43 }

Whitby

10,399

443

422

356

107

Whitehaven

15,716

863

458

384

31

Wigan

20,774

900

423

60

341

25

Wilton

9,758

299

197

17

no contest

41

Winchester

9,212

807

465

66

36

Windsor

5,650

778

507

461

4

Wolverhampton

67,514

2,405

1,700

1,463

155

Woodstock

7,026

373

241

76

no contest

none

Worcester

18,610

2,000

854

1,512

42

Wycombe, Chipping

6,299

446

270

28

264

164

Yarmouth

21,115

1,113

643

1,040

1,555

198

York

25,359

2,141

531

2,342

2,655

555

In England 40 counties return 144 members, and previous to the election of 1832 had 344,564 registered electors. The cities and boroughs are 185; they return 327 members, and their registered electors up to the same date were 274,649. The total for England was thus 619,213 electors, and 471 representatives of counties and boroughs.

In Wales, 12 counties return 15 members, and their registered electors in 1832 were 25,815. The 14 districts of boroughs return 14 members, and their registered electors were 11,309.

In Scotland, 30 counties have 30 members, and their registered electors in 1832 were 33,114. Seventy-six cities and boroughs return 30 members, and their registered electors of the above date were 31,332. Total for Scotland, 53 representatives, and 64,447 electors.

In Ireland 32 counties have 64 members, and their registered electors in 1832 were 60,607. The cities and boroughs are 34; they return 41 members, and their registered electors are 31,545. Total for Ireland 105 members, and 92,152 electors, according to the registration of 1832.

The first remark that occurs is upon the proportion of the town to the county suffrage. In round numbers, the gross population of cities and boroughs of England and Scotland is half the population of counties; and the representation of cities and boroughs is about double the representation of counties. Wales gives an advantage to the counties; and the returns for Great Britain stand thus:—County population 10,446,241; Borough population 5,816,060. Members for counties, 189; members for boroughs, 364. So that the county population is two to one against the town, and the town representation two to one against the county.

In Ireland the case is different. The county representation exceeds the borough representation, but the county population is rated at 7,000,000, and the borough at little more than 700,000. In Ireland the registered electors for counties in 1832 about doubled those for towns.

Taking Great Britain and Ireland together, the population of cities and boroughs is about one-third of the population of counties; the electors for counties are to the electors of towns about as four is to three—the numbers of the first being 403,494, of the latter 317,290; the number of members for counties is 253, the number of members for boroughs 405. According to the registration of 1832 the electors for the towns and counties of Great Britain and Ireland were altogether 812,936.

In the election of 1832, of the 114 counties and divisions of the United Kingdom, 60 were contested, and in 54 no contest. Of the 254 cities, boroughs, and towns, 190 were contested, and in 64 no contest.

At the general election in 1832, the poll was over in many of the boroughs on the first day; and it appears probable that by the erection of a few more booths, and the appointment of additional polling places, the whole number of electors in the cities and boroughs might have been easily polled in one day.

In ten of the counties of England and Wales, which were contested at the same general election, 37,075 voters out of 44,551, or five-sixths of the whole number who voted, presented themselves for the purpose on the first day; and there can be no doubt that if an opportunity had not been given for choosing between one of two days, a very large proportion of those who presented themselves on the second would have done so on the first day of the election. It is certainly possible that some electors might be unavoidably prevented from attending if the election were to be begun and concluded on the same day; but as is remarked in the Report on Election Expenses, “some inconvenience will be found from every course that can be adopted, and the question is to be decided on the balance of advantage to the public by the limitation proposed, it being expected that voters will generally accommodate their time to comply with the law.”

One part of the Reform Act which has occasioned great vexation and disappointment, is the demand which it sanctions of one shilling from each county elector at the time of claiming to register his right, and from each borough elector at the time of registration, and on every year thereafter. These payments were required in order to defray the expense of making out lists or registers of electors which expense must otherwise have fallen upon the parish rates. It was thought to be just that those who enjoy the franchise should pay the expense of the registration. Upon this point it is observed in the Report, that “the suffrage is for the benefit of the whole community, and that it is desirable to have as large a number of electors as possible enrolled, whence it becomes a fit question for consideration, whether, if the payment of the shilling operates against registration, and at the same time creates discontent, it ought not to be discontinued.” Upon a review of all the circumstances, the committee have recommended that these shilling payments shall cease to be demanded.

The sums paid to the revising barristers employed under the provisions of the Reform Act at the registrations of 1832 and 1833, and which were defrayed by the Treasury, amounted to £83,364.

The amount of the returning officers charges for 81 counties and divisions of counties in England and Wales, paid by candidates, was

£23,289

Additional charges

3,707

£26,996

Being, on the average, £333 for each election.

The amount of returning officers’ charges against the candidates for 185 borough elections in England and Wales, was

£21,539

Additional charges

3,273

£24,812

Being, on the average, £134 for each place.

Total for England and Wales

£51,808

In Ireland, the amount of the returning officers’ charges for the 32 county elections, was

£7,148

For the 34 boroughs

3,983

Total for Ireland, with the exception of Dublin University

£11,131

It is not pretended that the foregoing statement affords a correct view of the expenses incurred by candidates in England, many of whom undertook personally, or through their committees, to defray various additional, and not strictly legal charges, of which the committee could not obtain any account.

We believe it is not generally known, that, with reference to elections for members of parliament in Scotland, whether for cities or burghs, no qualification whatever of property is required on the part of the candidate; upon which fact the Committee already referred to has remarked, that “as no practical inconvenience appears to have arisen therefrom, they submit to the House whether the existing laws respecting qualifications of candidates in England and Ireland should not be reconsidered.” We should cordially join in a recommendation for doing away with the qualification altogether; not because we would throw open the doors of parliament to needy adventures, for, practically, the existing system is not found to place any obstacles in the way of such characters when they can prevail upon electors to return them as members. Every question of this kind may safely be left to the discretion of the electors, who should not be restrained from selecting a man in whose ability and integrity they can confide, because his estate is not of sufficient magnitude; and, on the other hand, it appears to be demanded for the sake of the respectability of the House of Commons itself, that all necessity should be removed for having recourse to a subterfuge, which, in other cases, might lay the parties open to the imputation of fraud.

V.—

LISTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES.

DURING THE SESSION OF 1833.

1.

THE BALLOT.

On the 25th of April, Mr. Grote moved “That all elections of members to serve in Parliament should in future be by ballot.”

For the motion

108 }

tellers included.

Against it

211 }

Total in the House

319

MINORITY.

England.

Blandford, marq. of

Ewart, W.

Hardy, J.

Adams, E. H.

Brotherton, J.

Faithful, G.

Hawkins, J. H.

Aglionby, H. A.

Buckingham, J. S.

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Hill, M. D.

Astley, sir J.

Buller, C.

Fellowes, N.

Hodges, T. L.

Attwood, T.

Bulwer, E. L.

Fenton, J.

Hornby, E. G.

Barnett, C. J.

Chichester, J. P. B.

Ferguson, sir R.

Hume, J.

Bayntun, capt. S. A.

Clay, W.

Fielden, J.

Humphery, J.

Beauclerk, major

Cobbett, W.

Fitzroy, lord J.

Hutt, W.

Berkeley, G. C. F.

Divett, E.

Fryer, R.

Ingilby, sir W. A.

Berkeley, C.

Dundas, J. C.

Gaskell, D.

Kemp, T. R.

Barnard, E.

Dykes, F. L.

Guest, J. J.

Key, sir J.

Biddulph, R.

Ellis, W.

Gully, J.

King, E. B.

Bish, T.

Evans, W.

Hall, B.

Lambton, H.

Lamont, capt. N.

Romilly, J.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Fitzsimon, N.

Lister, C.

Romilly, E.

Thompson, ald. W.

Grattan, H.

Lloyd, J. H.

Scholefield, J.

Wigney, I. N.

Lalor, P.

Lushington, Dr. S.

Simeon, sir R. G.

Wood, ald. M.

Maclachlan, L.

Molesworth, sir W.

Stanley, H. T.

Walker, R.

O’Connell, D.

Marshall, J.

Staveley, J. K.

Scotland.

O’Connell, C.

Moreton, H. G.

Strickland, G.

Gillon, W. D.

O’Connell, M.

Palmer, general

Strutt, E.

Maxwell, sir J.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Parrott, J.

Tancred, H. W.

Parnell, sir H.

Roche, W.

Pease, J.

Tayleur, W.

Ireland.

Roe, J.

Philips, M.

Tennyson, C.

Bellew, R. M.

Ruthven, E. S.

Potter, R.

Thicknesse, R.

Chapman, M. L.

Ruthven, E.

Penleaze, J. S.

Tooke, W.

Evans, G.

Vigors, N. A.

Ricardo, D.

Torrens, col. R.

Finn, W. F.

Tellers.

Rider, T.

Trelawney, W. L.

Fitzgerald, T.

Grote, G.

Rippon, C.

Turner, W.

Fitzsimon, C.

Warburton, H.

MAJORITY.

England.

Dick, Q.

Hope, H. F.

Patten, J. W.

Althorp, lord

Dillwyn, L. W.

Hyett, W. H.

Peel, sir R.

Apsley, lord

Dugdale, W. S.

Ingham, R.

Pelham, C. A. G.

Ashley, lord

Dundas, sir R.

Jermyn, earl

Pendarves, E. W.

Astley, sir J.

Ebrington, viscount

Jervis, J.

Peter, W.

Bankes, W. J.

Egerton, W. T.

Johnstone, sir J. V.

Phillips, sir R.

Baring, F. T.

Fancourt, major

Johnstone, sir F. G.

Phillips, sir G.

Baring, F.

Fenton, capt. L.

Jolliffe, col. H.

Pigot, R.

Baring, H. B.

Folkes, sir W.

Kerrison, sir E.

Pinney, W.

Bell, M.

Fordwich, viscount

Kerry, earl of

Plumptre, J. W.

Benett, J.

Forester, G. C.

Labouchere, H.

Ponsonby, W. F. S.

Bentinck, lord G.

Forster, C. S.

Langston, J. H.

Price, R.

Bethell, R.

Fox, S. L.

Lee, J. L. H.

Pryme, G.

Bewes, T.

Gaskell, J. M.

Lemon, sir C.

Ramsbottom, J.

Blackstone, W. S.

Gladstone, W. E.

Lennard, T. B.

Rickford, W.

Blake, sir F.

Gordon, R.

Lennard, sir T. B.

Ridley, sir M. W.

Briggs, R.

Gore, M.

Lennox, lord W.

Ramsden, J. C.

Brocklehurst, J.

Goring, H. D.

Lennox, lord G.

Rolfe, R. M.

Brodie, W. B.

Graham, sir J. R.

Lennox, lord A.

Ross, C.

Bruce, lord E.

Grant, R.

Lincoln, earl of

Rotch, B.

Bulkeley, sir R. W.

Greville, sir C.

Lopes, sir R.

Rumbold, C. E.

Buller, J. W.

Grey, col.

Lumley, viscount

Russell, lord J.

Bulteel, J. C.

Grimston, viscount

Lygon, col. H. B.

Russell, C.

Burdett, sir F.

Grosvenor, lord R.

Lyall, G.

Sandon, viscount

Burrell, sir C.

Guise, sir B. W.

Maberley, col.

Sanford, E. A.

Byng, G.

Hughes, H.

Madocks, J.

Sebright, sir J.

Calvert, N.

Halford, H.

Mangles, J.

Shawe, R. N.

Carter, J. B.

Handley, H.

Martin, J.

Shaw, sir F.

Cavendish, lord

Harcourt, G. V.

Mildmay, P. St. J.

Skipwith, sir G.

Cavendish, col.

Harland, W. C.

Miller, W. H.

Slaney, R. A.

Cayley, sir G.

Hawes, B.

Milton, lord

Smith, J. A.

Cayley, E. S.

Heathcote, J. J.

Molyneux, lord

Smith, R. V.

Chaplin, col. T.

Heathcote, G. J.

Moreton, A. H.

Somerset, lord G.

Chaytor, sir W.

Henniker, lord

Morpeth, viscount

Spankie, serjeant

Clive, E. B.

Herbert, S.

Nicholl, J.

Stanley, E.

Clive, R. H.

Hobhouse, sir J. C.

Norreys, lord

Stanley, E. J.

Collier, J.

Hodgson, J.

North, F.

Staunton, sir G. T.

Crawley, S.

Horne, sir W.

Paget, F.

Stewart, J.

Curteis, capt. E. B.

Howard, P. H.

Palmer, C. F.

Stewart, P. M.

Dare, R. W. H.

Howick, viscount

Parker, J.

Talbot, C. R. M.

Darlington, earl of

Halcomb, J.

Parker, sir H.

Talbot, W. H. F.

Throckmorton, R.G.

Williams, T. P.

Ewing, J.

Ireland.

Todd, R.

Williams, R.

Ferguson, R.

Acheson, viscount

Tower, C. T.

Willoughby, sir H.

Hay, col. A. L.

Christmas, J. N.

Townshend, lord C.

Wood, C.

Jeffrey, F.

Cole, lord

Trevor, H.

Wrottesley, sir J.

Johnston, A.

Cole, A.

Verney, sir H.

Wynn, C. W.

Loch, J.

Conolly, col. E. M.

Vernon, G. J.

Yorke, capt. C. P.

Mackenzie, J. A. S.

Hayes, sir. E.

Vyvyan, sir R.

Young, G. F.

Macleod, R.

Jones, capt. T.

Walsh, sir J. B.

Scotland.

Murray, J. A.

Lamb, G.

Walter, J.

Agnew, sir A.

Ormelie, earl of

Macnamara, maj. W.

Waterpark, lord

Bannerman, A.

Oswald, J.

Macnamara, F.

Welby, G. E.

Dalmeny, lord

Ross, H.

Martin, J.

Whitmore, W. W.

Dalrymple, sir J. H.

Traill, G.

Martin, J.

Wilbraham, G.

Dunlop, capt. J.

Wemyss, capt. J.

Stawell, colonel

Williams, W. A.

Elliott, capt. G.

Young, J.

ABSENT.

England.

Davenport, J.

Inglis, sir R. H.

Robinson, G. R.

Andover, lord

Denison, J. E.

James, W.

Rooper, J. B.

Anson, sir G.

Donkin, sir R. S.

Jerningham, H.V.S.

Russell, lord

Anson, G.

Duffield, T.

Keppel, major G.

Russell, lord C.J.F.

Atherley, A.

Duncannon, visc.

Leech, J.

Russell, W. C.

Attwood, M.

Duncombe, W.

Lefevre, C. S.

Ryle, J.

Baillie, J. E.

Eastnor, viscount

Lester, B. L.

Sanderson, R.

Baring, A.

Ellice, E. R.

Lewis, T. F.

Scarlett, sir J.

Beaumont, T. W.

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Littleton, E. J.

Scott, J. W.

Bernal, R.

Etwall, R.

Locke, W.

Scott, sir E. D.

Biddulph, R. M.

Fazakerley, J. N.

Lowther, viscount

Sheppard, T.

Blake, sir F.

Feilden, W.

Lowther, col. H.

Smith, J.

Blamire, W.

Finch, G.

Macaulay, T. B.

Smith, R. S.

Blunt, sir C. R.

Fitzroy, lord C.

Manners, lord R.

Smith, T. A.

Bolling, W.

Fleetwood, P. H.

Marryat, J.

Spencer, capt. F.

Boss, J. G.

Foley, J. H.

Marsland, T.

Spry, S. T.

Bowes, J.

Foley, E. T.

Maxfield, capt.

Stanley, E. G. S.

Brodie, W. B.

Fort, J.

Mills, J.

Stormont, viscount

Brougham, J.

Frankland, sir R.

Mosley, sir O.

Stuart, lord D.

Brudenell, lord

Fremantle, sir T.

Mostyn, E. M. L.

Stuart, W.

Burton, H.

Gisborne, T.

Nanney, major

Surrey, earl of

Buxton, T. F.

Glynne, sir S. R.

Neale, sir H. B.

Talmash, A. G.

Calcraft, J.

Greene, T.

Neeld, J.

Tapps, G. W.

Calley, T.

Godson, R.

Newark, viscount

Taylor, M. A.

Campbell, sir J.

Goulburn, H.

Noel, sir G.

Thompson, P. B.

Cartwright, W. R.

Gronow, capt. R. H.

Owen, H. O.

Thomson, C. P.

Chapman, A.

Grosvenor, earl

Owen, sir J.

Townley, R. G.

Chaytor, W. R. C.

Halse, J.

Palmerston, visc.

Tracy, C. H.

Chetwynd, capt W F

Handley, W. F.

Pechell, sir S. J. B.

Troubridge, sir E.T.

Childers, J. W.

Hanmer, col. H.

Peel, col. J.

Tullamore, lord

Clayton, col. W.

Harvey, D. W.

Penruddocke, J. H.

Tyrell, sir J. T.

Clive, viscount

Heathcote, sir G.

Pepys, C.

Tyrell, C.

Cockerell, sir C.

Heron, sir R.

Petre, E.

Vaughan, sir R.

Codrington, sir E.

Herries, J. C.

Phillips, C. M.

Vernon, G. H.

Cookes, T. H.

Hill, sir R.

Pollock, F.

Villiers, viscount

Cooper, A. H.

Hoskins, K.

Poulter, J.

Vivian, sir H.

Cornish, J.

Hotham, lord

Powell, col. W. E.

Vivian, J. H.

Cootes, J.

Howard, F. G.

Poyntz, W. S.

Wilks, J.

Cripps, J.

Hudson, T.

Pryse, P.

Williams, col. G.

Crompton, J.

Hurst, R. H.

Reid, sir J. R.

Williamson, sir H.

Curteis, H. B.

Irton, J.

Richards, J.

Wilmot, sir J. E.

Dashwood, G. H.

Ingestrie, viscount

Robarts, A. W.

Winnington, sir T.

Wood, G. W.

Grant, col. F. W.

Browne, D.

Lefroy, Dr. T.

Wood, col. T.

Hallyburton, D. G.

Butler, P.

Lefroy, A.

Wall, C. B.

Hay, sir J.

Callaghan, D.

Maxwell, J.

Ward, H. G.

Hope, sir A.

Carew, R. S.

Meynell, capt. H.

Watkins, J. L.

Kennedy, T. F.

Castlereagh, lord

Mullins, F. W.

Wason, R.

Marjoribanks, C.

Chichester, lord A.

Nagle, sir R.

Watson, R.

Maxwell, J.

Clements, viscount

O’Brien, C.

Wedgwood, J.

Oliphant, L.

Cooper, E. J.

O’Callaghan, C.

Whitbread, W. H.

Oswald, R. A.

Coote, sir C. H.

O’Connor, F.

Whitmore, T. C.

Pringle, R.

Corry, H. L.

O’Ferrall, R. M.

Wyndham, W.

Steuart, R.

Daly, J.

O’Grady, col. S.

Wynn, sir W. W.

Stewart, E.

Dobbin, L.

O’Neill, general J.

Whalley, sir S. B.

Stewart, sir M. S.

Don, O’Conor

O’Reilly, W.

Yelverton, W. H.

Stuart, capt. C.

Ferguson, sir R. A.

Oxmantown, lord

Scotland.

Wallace, R.

Fitzgibbon, R.

Perceval, col.

Abercromby, J.

Ireland.

French, F.

Perrin, L.

Adam, admiral C.

Archdall, general M.

Forbes, viscount

Roche, D.

Balfour, J.

Baldwin, Dr. H.

Galwey, J. M.

Ronayne, D.

Callender, J. H.

Barry, G. S.

Gladstone, T.

Shaw, F.

Colquhoun, J. C.

Bateson, sir R.

Crattan, J.

Sheil, E. L.

Fergusson, R. C.

Belfast, earl of

Hill, lord A.

Stewart, sir H.

Fleming, admiral C.

Bernard, W. S.

Howard, R. A.

Sullivan, R.

Gordon, capt. W.

Blaney, capt. C.

Keane, sir R.

Talbot, J.

Grant, C.

Browne, J. D.

Knox, col. J. J.

White, S.

PAIRED OFF.

FOR.

AGAINST.

Dawson, E.

Seale, col.

Grey, sir G.

Heneage, G. F.

Phillpotts, J.

Langton, col. G.

Hill, lord M.

Weyland, major

Talbot, J. H.

Methuen, P.

Tynte, C.

Palmer, R.

Walker, C.

Ord, W.

Hanmer, sir J.

Ossulston, lord

Lambert, H.

Handley, B.

Ferguson, G.

Knatchbull, sir E.

Langdale, C.

Roebuck, J. A.

Arbuthnot, general

Rice, T. S.

Sharpe, general

O’Connell, Maurice

Johnstone, J. J. H.

Dundas, capt.

Lynch, A. H.

Barron, W.

Warre, J. A.

Hardinge, sir H.

O’Connell, J.

Brigstock, W. P.

Byng, sir J.

Verner, col.

Bainbridge, E. T.

Bulwer, H. L.

Houldsworth, T.

Fox, col.

Jephson, C. D. O.

Davies, col.

Brougham, W.

Windham, W. H.

Sinclair, G.

Morrison, J.

Mandeville, visc.

Marjoribanks, S.

Vincent, sir F.

Tennant, J. E.

Price, sir R.

2.—

MILITARY AND NAVAL SINECURES.

Minority, Feb. 14, on Mr. Hume’s Motion respecting the Abolition of Military and Naval Sinecures.

England.

Hodges, T. L.

Ricardo, D.

Beauclerk, major

Tooke, W.

Lester, B. L.

Ingilby, sir W.

Wood, alderman

Hawes, B.

Berkeley, hon. G.

Tancred, H. W.

Wilks, J.

Phillpotts, J.

Fancourt, major

Godson, R.

Strutt, E.

Vincent, sir F.

Evans, W.

Guest, J. J.

Romilly, W.

Key, sir J.

Gaskell, D.

Bulwer, E. L.

Roebuck, J. A.

Fryer, R.

Tennyson, rt. hon.

Bulwer, H. L.

Humphery, J.

Gisborne, T.

Hall, B.

Cobbett, W.

Hill, M. D.

Thicknesse, R.

Goring, C. D.

Grote, G.

Hutt, W.

Palmer, gen.

Plumptree, J. P.

Warburton, H.

Molesworth, sir W.

Pryme, G.

Dawson, E.

Davies, colonel

Lennox, lord W.

Clay, W.

Phillips, C. M.

Buller, C.

Attwood, T.

Martin, J.

King, E. B.

Harvey, D. W.

Marsland, T.

Bowes, J.

Romilly, E.

Herries, J. C.

Roche, W.

Potter, R.

Evans, W.

Scotland.

Finn, W. F.

Philips, M.

Ewart, W.

Dalmeny, lord

Butler, colonel

Brotherton, W. J.

Ord, W. H.

Gillon, W. D.

Sullivan, R.

Bolling, W.

Hawkins, K. H.

Kinloch, G.

Sheil, R. L.

Astley, Sir J.

Trelawney, W. L. S.

Oswald, J.

O’Connor, F.

Simeon, sir R.

Spry, S. T.

Oswald, R.

Barry, G. S.

Buckingham, J. S.

Hodgson, J.

Pringle, R.

Dant, J. O’Neale

Briggs, R.

Fellowes, N.

Wallace, R.

Nagle, Sir R.

Bayntun, S. A.

Fielden, J.

Wemyss, J.

O’Brien, C.

Parrot, J.

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Ireland.

Baldwin, Dr.

Aglionby, H. A.

Vernon, G. H.

O’Connell, D.

M‘Lachlan, L.

Wigney, I. N.

Walker, R.

O’Connell, C.

Lynch, A. H.

Curteis, H. B.

Etwall, R.

O’Connell, J.

Roe, J.

Turner, W.

Cayley, E.

O’Connell, M.

French, F.

Fielden, W.

Langdale, C.

O’Connell, M.

Lalor, R.

Gully, J.

Brodie, W. B.

Ruthven, E. S.

Rorke, J. H.

Townley, R. G.

Buller, E.

Ruthven, E.

Bellew, R. M.

Dykes, F. L. B.

Mosley, sir O.

Fitzsimon, C.

Fitzgeral, T.

Shawe, R. N.

Fenton, J.

Fitzsimon, N.

O’Ferrall, R. M.

Jarvis, J.

Harland, W. C.

Grattan, J.

Vigors, N.

Divett, E.

Williams, colonel

Grattan, H.

Wallace, T.

Willoughby, sir H.

Ellis, W.

Roche, D.

3.—

BISHOPS IN THE EAST INDIES.

Majority of 86 (Tellers included) who, on the 19th of July, in the Committee on the East India Bill, voted for two additional Bishops for India.

England.

Grosvenor, lord R.

Phillpotts, J.

Scotland.

Adams, E. H.

Hughes, H.

Plumptre, J. P.

Bruce, C. L.

Althorp, lord

Howard, hon. F. G.

Pryme, G.

Bannerman, A.

Baring, F.

Halcomb, J.

Ridley, sir M. W.

Dalmeny, lord

Barnard, E. G.

Ingham, R.

Rooper, J. B.

Ewing, J.

Buxton, T. F.

Inglis, sir R.

Russell, lord J.

Ferguson, captain

Bouverie, capt.

Jermyn, earl

Scrope, P.

Fergusson, R. C.

Cavendish, lord

Kerry, earl of

Scott, sir E. D.

Grant, right hon. C.

Collier, J.

Lamont, captain

Shepherd, T.

Johnston, A.

Crawley, S.

Leech, J.

Stanley, E.

Mackenzie, J. A.

Divett, E.

Lefevre, C. S.

Strickland, G.

Macleod, R.

Ebrington, visc.

Lyall, G.

Tancred, H.

Maxwell, sir J.

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Macaulay, T. B.

Todd, R.

Maxwell, J.

Fancourt, major

Morpeth, viscount

Tracy, C. H.

Sharpe, general

Feilden, W.

Mosley, sir O.

Troubridge, sir E.

Finch, G.

Mostyn, hon. E. M. L.

Wilbraham, G.

Ireland.

Forster, C. S.

Palmer, R.

Williamson, sir H.

Coote, sir C.

Goring, H. D.

Parker, J.

Winnington, sir T.

Hill, lord M.

Graham, sir J.

Parker, sir H.

Wood, C.

Jephson, C. D. O.

Grant, right hon. R.

Pendarves, E. W.

Ward, H. G.

Lefroy, Dr.

Grey, colonel

Peter, W.

Wynn, right hon. C.

Macnamara, —

Grey, sir G.

Petre, Hon. E.

4.—

WEST INDIA SLAVE QUESTION.

Minority of 94 (tellers included) who on the 31st of July voted for Mr. Buxton’s motion, “That one-half of the £20,000,000 should be reserved till the apprenticeship shall have expired.”

For the motion

94 }

In the house.

Against it

149 }

239.

Majority against it

51

England.

Fenton, J.

Palmer, R.

Wilks, J.

Aglionby, H. A.

Forrester, G. C. W.

Pease, J.

Williams, colonel

Attwood, T.

Gaskell, D.

Penleaze, T. F.

Winnington, sir T.

Bewes, T.

Grote, G.

Philips, M.

Winnington, capt.

Berkeley, hon. C. F.

Handley, major

Petre, hon. E.

Scotland.

Bish, T.

Handley, H.

Potter, R.

Agnew, sir A.

Blake, sir F.

Handley, W. F.

Poulter, J.

Johnston, A.

Bouverie, captain

Harland, W. C.

Pryse, P.

Ireland.

Briggs, R.

Hawkins, J. H.

Romilly, J.

Blake, M.

Briscoe, J. I.

Howard, hn. G. F.

Romilly, E.

Evans, G.

Brocklehurst, J.

Howick, lord

Sanford, E. L.

Finn, W. F.

Brotherton, J.

Hudson, T.

Scrope, P.

Mullins, F. W.

Brougham, J.

Hutt, W.

Strutt, E.

O’Connell, D.

Bulwer, E. L.

Ingilby, sir W.

Tayleur, W.

O’Connell, M.

Cayley, sir G.

Jerningham, H. V. S.

Thicknesse, R.

O’Connell, J.

Cayley, E. S.

Lambton, H.

Tooke, W.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Chandos, marq. of

Lamont, captain

Torrens, colonel

O’Reilly, W.

Clay, W.

Langdale, hon. C.

Trelawny, W.

Ruthven, E. S.

Curteis, H. B.

Lushington, Dr.

Turner, W.

Ruthven, E.

Curties, captain

Marjoribanks, S.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Sullivan, R.

Dashwood, G. H.

Marsland, T.

Vernon, G. J.

Vigors, N. A.

Dykes, F. L. B.

Martin, J.

Wason, R.

Grattan, J.

Evans, W.

Methuen, P.

Whalley, sir S.

Teller.

Ewart, W.

Morrison, J.

Wigney, J. N.

Buxton, T. F.

Faithfull, G.

Ord, W. H.

PAIRED OFF.

FOR.

AGAINST.

Parrott, J.

Russell, lord J.

Seale, W.

Codrington, sir E.

Minority of 52 (teller included) who voted against filling up the blank in the 25th clause with the sum of £20,000,000.

Against

52 }

In the house

For

133 }

185.

Majority

81

England.

Ewart, W.

Hutt, W.

Philips, M.

Aglionby, H. A.

Faithfull, G.

Ingilby, sir W.

Potter, R.

Bish, T.

Fenton, J.

Knatchbull, E.

Roebuck, A.

Blamire, W.

Gaskell, J.

Langton, G.

Romilly, J.

Bruce, lord E.

Handley, major

Marshall, J.

Stewart, -

Briggs, M.

Handley H.

Marsland, T.

Strutt, E.

Chandos, lord

Hall, B.

Methuen, P.

Thicknesse, R.

Cobbett, W.

Harland, W. C.

Norris, lord

Todd, J. R.

Cornish, J.

Hawkins, J. H.

Parrott, J.

Torrens, colonel

Dillwyn, L. W.

Hudson, T.

Pease, J.

Turner, W.

Trelawny, W. L. S.

Wilmot, sir E.

O’Connell, M.

Sullivan, R. Teller.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Wigney, J. N.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Teller.

Wason, R.

Ireland.

Ruthven, E. S.

Briscoe, J. I.

Whalley, sir S.

O’Connell, D.

Ruthven, E.

PAIRED OFF.

AGAINST.

FOR.

Walker, R.

Whitbread, W. H.

O’Connell, J,

Watson, hon R.

Mills, J.

Villiers, lord

Evans, colonel

Howard, H. P.

Seale, colonel

Codrington, sir E.

5.—

AGRICULTURE.

Minority of 90 who voted, April 26th, in favour of lord Chandos’s resolution, “That in any reduction of taxation which may be considered expedient, it is necessary that the interests of the agricultural portion of the community should be duly considered.”

Aglionby, H. A.

Fancourt, major

Lygon, hon. col.

Smith, T. A.

Arbuthnot, hon. H.

Ferguson, capt. G.

Manners, lord R.

Somerset, lord G.

Attwood, M.

Ferguson, A. C.

Martin, T. B.

Stanley, E.

Balfour, J.

Fielden, J.

Maxwell, sir J.

Stuart, captain

Baring, A.

Finn, W. F.

Maxwell, T. W.

Tennyson, C.

Barnard, E. G.

Fitzsimon, C.

Nicholl, J.

Trelawney, W. L. S.

Bethell, R.

Folkes, sir W. M.

O’Connell, D.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Bell, M.

Fox, S. L.

O’Connell, M.

Tyrell, sir J. T.

Blackstone, W. S.

French, F.

Ossulston, lord

Verner, W.

Blamire, W.

Gordon, capt. W.

Oswald, R. A.

Vincent, sir F.

Bruce, lord E.

Greville, sir J.

Palmer, R.

Walsh, sir J. B.

Burrell, sir C.

Handley, H.

Parker, sir H.

Ward, H. G.

Chaplin, T.

Hanmer, sir J.

Parker, T.

Wason, R.

Cline, hon. R.

Heathcote, G. I.

Patten, W.

Wemyss, captain J.

Cobbett, W.

Herbert, hon. S.

Pease, J.

Williams, W. A.

Crawley, S.

Hodges, T. L.

Perceval, colonel

Windham, W. H.

Curties, H. B.

Ingilby, sir W. A.

Plumptre, J. P.

Yorke, capt. C. P. Tellers.

Curties, capt. E. B.

Inglis, sir R.

Rickford, W.

Denison, J. E.

Kerrison, sir E.

Ruthven, E. S.

Chandos, marq. of

Dilwyn, L. W.

King, E. B.

Ruthven, E.

Fremantle, sir T.

Dugdale, W. S.

Knatchbull, sir E.

Sanderson, R.

——

Duncombe, W.

Leech, J.

Sheppard, T.

Hall, B.

Egerton, T.

Lennard, T. B.

Simeon, sir R.

Bankes, W.

Estcourt, T. B.

Lincoln, earl of

Sinclair, G.

LISTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES, (Session 1834.)

1.—

CORN LAWS.

Division of the 7th and 8th of March, on Mr. Hume’s motion, “That this House do resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, to consider the Corn Laws, (9 Geo. IV. c. 60,) and substituting, instead of the present graduated Scale of Duties, a fixed and moderate Duty on the Import at all times of Foreign Corn into the United Kingdom, and for granting a fixed and equivalent Bounty on the Export of Corn from the United Kingdom.”

For the motion

157

Against it

314

Majority against the Motion

——

157

Total in the House

471

Absent, Paired, &c.

186

Speaker

1

Total

——

658

MAJORITY.

England.

Curteis, H. B.

Hill, sir R.

Palmer, R.

Althorp, lord

Curteis, captain

Hodges, T.

Palmerston, visct.

Anson, hon. G.

Dare, R. W. H.

Hornby, E. G.

Parker, sir H.

Astley, sir J. D.

Denison, W. J.

Hoskins, K.

Pease, J.

Astley, sir J.

Denison, J. E.

Hotham, lord

Pechell, sir S. J. B.

Atherley, A.

Dillwyn, L. W.

Houldsworth, T.

Peel, rt hon. sir R.

Attwood, M.

Donkin, sir R. S.

Howard, P. H.

Peel, colonel J.

Bankes, W. J.

Duncombe, hon. W.

Hope, H. T.

Pelham, C. A. G.

Baring, A.

Dundas, captain

Hudson, T.

Pendarves, E. W.

Baring, H. B.

Dundas, sir R. L.

Hurst, R. T.

Penruddocke, J. H.

Bell, M.

Eastnor, viscount

Irton, S.

Pepys, C.

Benett, J.

Egerton, W. T.

Ingilby, sir W. A.

Philips, sir G.

Bentinck, lord G. F.

Edwards, J.

Inglis, sir R.

Pinney, W.

Berkeley, hon. C. F.

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Jephson, J. F.

Pigot, R.

Barnard, E. G.

Fancourt, major

Jermyn, earl

Ponsonby, hon. W.

Bethell, E. R.

Finch, G.

Jerningham, H. V.

Price, sir R.

Bewes, T.

Fitzgibbon, R.

Johnstone, sir J. V.

Pryme, G.

Biddulph, R.

Fitzroy, lord C.

Jolliffe, H.

Pryse, P.

Biddulph, R. M.

Fitzroy, lord J.

Keppel, major

Ramsden, J. C.

Blackstone, W. S.

Foley, E. T.

Kerrison, sir E.

Reid, sir J. R.

Blake, sir F.

Foley, J. N.

Kerry, earl of

Richards, J.

Blandford, marquis

Folkes, sir W.

Knatchbull, sir E.

Rickford, W.

Boss, J. G.

Forester, G. C. W.

Lambton, hon. E.

Rider, T.

Bowes, J.

Fox, S. L.

Langdale, hon. C.

Ridley, sir M. W.

Brocklehurst, J.

Frankland, sir B.

Leech, J.

Robarts, A. W.

Brodie, B.

Fremantle, sir T.

Lefevre, C. S.

Rooper, J. B.

Bruce, lord E.

Gaskell, J.

Lemon, sir C.

Ross, C.

Brudenell, lord

Gladstone, W.

Lennard, T. B.

Rotch, B.

Bulteel, J. C.

Glynne, sir S.

Lennard, sir T. B.

Rumbold, C. E.

Burrell, sir C.

Gordon, R.

Lennox, lord W.

Russell, Lord J.

Burton, H.

Goring, H. D.

Lennox, lord G.

Russell, C.

Byng, G.

Goulburn, rt hon. H.

Lennox, lord A.

Russell, W. C.

Byng, sir J.

Graham, sir J. R. G.

Lewis, hon. T. F.

Sanderson, R.

Calcraft, J.

Grant, right hon. R.

Lincoln, earl of

Sandon, viscount

Calvert, N.

Greene, T. G.

Locke, W.

Sanford, E. A.

Carter, J. B.

Grey, hon. colonel

Lumley, viscount

Scarlett, sir J.

Cartwright, W. R.

Grimston, viscount

Lygon, hon. colonel

Scott, sir E. D.

Cavendish, hon. C.

Gronow. capt, R. H.

Lyall, G.

Scott, J. W.

Cavendish, lord

Grosvenor, lord R.

Madocks, J.

Sebright, sir J.

Cavendish, Col.

Guise, sir B. W.

Mangles, J.

Shawe, R. N.

Cayley, sir G.

Halcomb, J.

Marjoribanks, S.

Simeon, sir R. G.

Cayley, E. S.

Halford, H.

Marryat, J.

Skipwith, sir G.

Chandos, marquis

Halse, J.

Maxfield, captain

Smith, J. A.

Chaplin, colonel T.

Handley, W. F.

Miles, W.

Smith, J.

Chapman, A.

Handley, B.

Mildmay, P.

Smith, hon. S.

Chetwynd, capt. W. F.

Handley, H.

Mills, J.

Somerfet, lord G.

Childers, J. W.

Hanmer, sir J.

Moreton, hon. A. H.

Spry, S. T.

Clayton, col. W. R.

Hanmer, colonel H.

Moreton, hon. H. G.

Stanley, rt hon. E.

Clive, E. B.

Harcourt, G.

Mostyn, hon. E. M.

Staunton. sir G. T.

Clive, hon. R. H.

Hardinge, sir H.

Neale, admiral

Staveley, J. K.

Cockerell, sir C.

Harland, W.

Neeld, J.

Stewart, J.

Collier, J.

Heathcoat, J. J.

Newark. viscount

Stormont, viscount

Cookes, T. H.

Heathcote, G. J.

Nicholl, J.

Stuart, lord Dudley

Cooper, hon. A. H. A.

Heneage, G. F.

North, F.

Steuart, W.

Cotes, J.

Henniker, lord

Norreys, lord

Surrey, earl of

Crawley, S.

Herbert, hon. S.

Ossulston, lord

Talbot, C.

Cripps, J.

Heron, sir R.

Paget, F.

Talmash, A. G.

Crompton, J.

Herries, rt hon. J.

Palmer, C. F.

Tayleur, W.

Thomson, P. B.

Winnington, H. J.

Hay, colonel A. L.

Gladstone, T.

Throckmorton, R. G.

Wood, colonel T.

Jeffrey, rt hon. F.

Hayes, sir E.

Tower, C. T.

Wall, C.

Johnstone, J. J. H.

Howard, R.

Townshend, lord C.

Ward, H.

Macleod, R.

Jones, capt. T.

Townley, R. G.

Warre, J,

Rae, sir W.

Knox, hon. col. J. J.

Tracy, C. H.

Watkins, L.

Ross, H.

Lambert, H.

Trelawney, W.

Watson, hon. R.

Stewart, sir M. S.

Meynell, capt. H.

Trevor, hon. R.

Weyland, major R.

Traill, G.

O’Callaghan, hn. C.

Troubridge, sir E. T.

Whitbread, W.

Wemyss, captain J.

O’Connor, F.

Tullamore, lord

Wrottesley, sir J.

Ireland.

O’Ferrall, R. M.

Tynte, C.

Wynn, right hon. C.

Barry, G. S.

Roche, W.

Tyrell, sir J.

Yorke, captain C.

Belfast, earl of

Roe, J.

Tyrell, C.

Scotland.

Blaney, hon. capt.

Shaw, F.

Verney, sir H.

Adam, admiral

Bobbin, L.

Sheil, E. L.

Vernon, G.

Agnew, sir A.

Browne, D.

Stewart, sir H.

Villiers, viscount

Arbuthnot, hon. H.

Blake, M. J.

Sullivan, R.

Vivian, J.

Bruce, C.

Castlereagh, visct.

Talbot, J.

Vyvyan, sir R.

Callender, J. H.

Christmas, J. N.

Tennent, J. E.

Wilbraham, G.

Elliot, hon. capt. G.

Conolly, col. E. M.

Walker, C. A.

Williams, W.

Ferguson, capt. G.

Coote, sir C. H.

Wallace, T.

Williams, R.

Fergusson, R. C.

Corry, hon. H. L.

Tellers.

Williams, T.

Gordon, hon. capt.

Copeland, W. C.

Darlington, Earl of

Willoughby, sir H.

Grant, right hon. C.

Daly, J.

Rice, hon. T. S.

Windham, W.

Hallyburton, hon. D.

Fitzgerald, T.

MINORITY.

England.

Evans, W.

Kennedy, J.

Sheppard, T.

Aglionby, H. A.

Evans, Colonel

Lambton, H.

Smith, V.

Attwood, T.

Ewart, W.

Langton, colonel G.

Stanley, H. T.

Baillie, J. E.

Faithfull, G.

Langston, J. H.

Stanley, E. J.

Baines, E.

Fenton, J.

Labouchere, J. C.

Scrope, P.

Barnett, C. J.

Fielding, J.

Lester, B. L.

Seymour, lord

Bernal, R.

Fielden, W.

Lister, E. C.

Stewart, P. M.

Bish, T.

Fleetwood, H.

Littleton, rt. hon. E.

Strickland, sir G.

Blunt, sir C. R.

Fort, J.

Loyd, J. H.

Strutt, E.

Bolling, W.

Fox, Colonel

Lushington, Dr.

Tancred, H. W.

Briggs, R.

Fryer, R.

Marshall, J.

Tennyson, C.

Brotherton, J.

Gaskell, D.

Marsland, T.

Thicknesse, R.

Brougham, W.

Gisborne, T.

Martin, J.

Thompson, Alderman

Buckingham, J. S.

Grey, sir G.

Molyneux, lord

Thomson, P.

Buller, E.

Grote, G.

Molesworth, sir W.

Todd, R.

Buller, J. W.

Guest, J. J.

Morpeth, viscount

Tooke, W.

Bulwer, H. L.

Gully, J.

Morrison, J.

Turner, W.

Bouverie, D. P.

Hall, B.

Ord, W. H.

Vernon, G. J.

Buxton, T. F.

Hardy, J.

Palmer, general

Walker, R.

Chichester, J. B.

Harvey, D. W.

Parker, J.

Walter, J.

Clay, W.

Hawes, B.

Parrott, J.

Warburton, H.

Crawford, W.

Hawkins, J. H.

Philips, M.

Waterpark, lord

Dashwood, G. H.

Hodgson, J.

Phillpotts, J.

Whalley, sir S.

Davenport, J.

Howard, captain

Penleaze, J. S.

Wedgwood, J.

Davies, Colonel

Howick, lord

Rippon, C.

Whitmore, W. W.

Dawson, E.

Hughes, H.

Robinson, G. R.

Wigney, L. N.

Divett, E.

Humphery, J.

Roebuck, J. A.

Wilks, J.

Dundas, J. C.

Hutt, W.

Rolfe, R. M.

Williams, colonel

Dundas, T.

Hyett, W. H.

Romilly, J.

Wood, C.

Dykes, F. L. B.

Ingham, R.

Romilly, E.

Wood, alderman

Ellice, Rt. Hon. E.

James, W.

Ryle, J.

Wood, G. W.

Ellis, W.

Jervis, J.

Russell, lord

Young, G. T.

Etwall, R.

Kemp, T. R.

Scholefield, J.

Scotland.

Murray, J. A.

Ireland.

O’Reilly, W.

Abercromby, J.

Ormelie, lord

Evans, G.

Ruthven, E. S.

Bannerman, A.

Oswald, R. A.

Lalor, P.

Ruthven, E.

Dalmeny, lord

Oswald, J.

O’Connell, D.

Vigors, N.

Dunlop, captain

Parnell, sir H.

O’Connell, M.

Tellers.

Ewing, J.

Sharpe, general

O’Connell, M.

Hume, J.

Gillon, W. D.

Stuart, R.

O’Connell, J.

Torrens, colonel

Loch, J.

Wallace, R.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

ABSENT.

Adams, E. H.

Johnstone, Sir F.

Vincent, sir F.

Cole, A.

Andover, viscount

King, E.

Vivian, sir H.

Cooper, E.

Anson, sir G.

Lamont, captain

Winnington, H. J.

Chichester, lord A.

Apsley, lord

Lee, J,

Williamson, sir H.

Don, O’Conor

Ashley, lord

Lopes, sir R.

Wilmot, sir J. E.

Ferguson, sir R. A.

Bainbridge, E. T.

Lowther, viscount

Winnington, sir T.

Finn, W.

Baring, F. T.

Lowther, colonel

Walsh, sir J. B.

Fitzsimon, C.

Baring, F.

Maberly, colonel

Welby, G. E.

Fitzsimon, N.

Baring, W. B.

Mandeville, viscount

Whitmore, T. C.

French, F.

Beaumont, T. W.

Manners, lord R.

Wynn, sir W. W.

Forbes, lord viscount

Berkeley, G. C. F.

Methuen, P.

Yelverton, W. H.

Galway, J. M.

Blackburne, J.

Miller, W. H.

Scotland.

Grattan, J.

Blamire, W.

Milton, viscount

Balfour, J.

Gratian, H.

Briscoe, J. I.

Mosley, sir O.

Campbell, sir H.

Hill, lord A.

Bulkeley, sir R.

Noel, sir G.

Dalrymple, sir J. H.

Hill, lord M.

Buller, C.

Owen, H. O.

Ferguson, H.

Jacob, E.

Bulwer, E. L.

Owen, Sir J.

Fleming, C.

Jephson, C. D. O.

Burdett, sir F.

Paget, sir C.

Grant, col. F. W.

Keane, sir R.

Calley, T.

Patten, J. W.

Hay, sir J.

Lefroy, Dr. T.

Chaytor, W. R. C.

Peter, W.

Hope, sir A.

Lefroy, A.

Chaytor, sir W.

Petre, E.

Johnston, A.

Lynch, H.

Clive, viscount

Phillips, sir R.

Mackenzie, J. A. S.

Macnamara, major

Cobbett, W.

Phillipps, C. M.

Maxwell, J.

Macnamara, F.

Codrington, E.

Plumptre, J. P.

Oliphant, L.

Martin, J.

Dick, Q.

Pollock, F.

Pringle, R.

Martin, J.

Duffield, T.

Poulter, J.

Sinclair, E.

Maxwell, H.

Dugdale, W. S.

Powell, col. W. E.

Stewart, G.

Maxwell J.

Duncannon, viscount

Poyntz, W. S.

Ireland.

Mullins, F. W.

Durham, sir P. C.

Price, R.

Acheson, viscount

Nagle, sir R.

Ebrington, visc.

Ramsbottom, J.

Archdall, gen. M.

O’Brien, C.

Fazakerley, J. N.

Russell, lord C. J. F.

Baldwin, Dr. H.

O’Connell, C.

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Seale, colonel

Barron, W.

O’Grady, col. S.

Fellowes, N.

Slaney, R. A.

Bateson, sir R.

O’Neill, hon. gen.

Ferguson, general

Smith, T. A.

Bellew, R. M.

Oxmantown, lord

Forster, C. S.

Spankie, Mr. serjeant

Bernard, W. S.

Perceval, colonel

Fordwich, viscount

Spencer, hon. capt. F.

Blackney, W.

Perin, L.

Glynne, sir S. R.

Stanley, E.

Butler, P.

Roche, D.

Godson, R.

Stonor, T.

Browne, J. D.

Ronayne, D.

Heathcote, sir G.

Talbot, W. H. F.

Callaghan, D.

Stawell, colonel

Hill, M. D.

Tapps, G. W.

Carew, R. S.

Talbot, J. H.

Horne, sir W.

Taylor, M. A.

Chapman, M. L.

Verner, colonel

Hawkes, T.

Tynte, C. K. K.

Clements, viscount

White, S.

Jervis, J.

Vaughan, sir R.

Cole, lord

Young, J.

PAIRED OFF.

FOR.

AGAINST.

Duncannon, lord

Beaumont, M.

Ebrington, visc.

Wason, R.

Potter

Maxwell, J.

Poulter

Grant

Burdett, sir F.

Oliphant

Vincent, F.

Bulwer, E. L.

Buller, C.

Johnston

Macnamara Horne, sir W.

Sinclair

2.—

PENSION LIST.

Minority of 184 (tellers included), who voted for Mr. D. W. Harvey’s motion, that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the consideration of each grant in the Pension List, and report the same to the house. Feb. 18.

England.

Grote, G.

Richards, J.

Scotland.

Aglionby, H. A.

Guest, J.

Rickford, W.

Dunlop, captain

Attwood, T.

Gully, J.

Rider, T.

Ewing, J.

Baillie, J.

Hall, B.

Rippon, C.

Gillon, W. D.

Bainbridge, E. T.

Handley, B.

Robinson, G. R.

Johnston, A.

Barnard, E. G.

Handley, H.

Roebuck, J. A.

Oliphant, L.

Beauclerk, major

Hardy, J.

Romilly, E.

Ormelie, earl

Benett, J.

Hawes, B.

Sanford, E.

Oswald, J.

Bewes, T.

Heathcoat, J.

Scholefield, J.

Pringle, R.

Bish, T.

Hill, M. D.

Scott, J.

Sharpe, general

Blackburne, J.

Hodges, T. L.

Scrope, C.

Sinclair, G.

Blake, sir F.

Hughes, H.

Seale, colonel

Wallace, R.

Blunt, sir C.

Hudson, T.

Shawe, R. N.

Ireland.

Boss, J.

Humphery, J.

Sheppard, T.

Barron, W.

Bowes, J.

Hurst, R. H.

Simeon, sir R. G.

Bellew, R.

Briggs, R.

Hutt, W.

Spry, S. T.

Blake, M.

Briscoe, J. I.

Ingham, R.

Stanley, E. J.

Butler, hon. colonel

Brocklehurst, J.

Jervis, J.

Staveley, J. K.

Chapman, M. L.

Brotherton, J.

Kemp, T.

Strickland, G.

Evans, G.

Buckingham, J. S.

Kennedy, J.

Strutt, E.

Finn, W. F.

Buller, C.

King, E.

Talmash, A. G.

Fitzgerald, T.

Cayley, E. S.

Langdale, hon. C.

Tancred, H. W.

Fitzsimon, C.

Chaytor, sir W.

Langton, colonel

Thicknesse, R.

Grattan, H.

Chichester, J. P. B.

Leech, J.

Tennyson, rt. hon. C.

Lambert, H.

Clay, W.

Lefevre, C. S.

Todd, R.

Lynch, A. H.

Codrington, sir E.

Lennox, lord W.

Tooke, W.

Macnamara, F.

Collier, J.

Lennox, lord G.

Torrens, colonel

O’Connell, D.

Cromptom, J. S.

Lennox, lord A.

Townshend, lord C. J.

O’Connell, M.

Curteis, H. B.

Lester, B. L.

Trelawney, W. L. S.

O’Connell, J.

Curteis, captain

Lister, E.

Turner, W.

O’Conor Don

Davies, colonel

Lloyd, J.

Vincent, sir V.

O’Connor, F.

Dawson, E.

Locke, W.

Walter, J.

O’Dwyer, A, C.

Dillwyn, L.

Marshall, J.

Warburton, H.

Roche, D.

Divett, E.

Martin, J.

Wason, M.

Roe, J.

Dykes, F. L. B.

Methuen, P.

Watkins, L.

Ruthven, E. J.

Evans, colonel

Molesworth, sir W.

Watson, hon. R.

Ruthven, E.

Ewart, W.

Moreton, hon. H. G.

Whalley, sir S.

Sheil, R. L.

Faithfull, G.

Palmer, general

Whitmore, W. W.

Sullivan, R.

Fancourt, major

Palmer, C. F.

Wigney, J. R.

Talbot, J. H.

Fenton, J.

Parker, J.

Wilbraham, G.

Vigors, N. A.

Feilden, W.

Parrott, J.

Wilks, J.

Walker, C. A.

Fielden, J.

Pease, J.

Williams, W.

Tellers.

Fleetwood, P.

Petre, hon. E.

Williams, colonel

Harvey, D. W.

Fort, J.

Philips, M.

Windham, W.

Hume, J.

Fryer, R.

Plumptre, J. P.

Winnington, H.

Paired off in favour.

Gaskell, D.

Potter, R.

Wood, alderman

Tynte, C.

Godson, R.

Ramsbottom, J.

Young, G. F.

Romilly, J.

Goring, H.

MAJORITY (190).

England.

Attwood, M.

Barnett, C. J.

Bernal, R.

Althorp, viscount

Baring, F.

Bell, M.

Blackstone, W. S.

Anson, hon. G.

Baring, H.

Bentinck, lord G.

Bolling, W.

Bouverie, hon. D. P.

Hanmer, sir J.

Pendarves, E. W.

Wood, G.

Brougham, W.

Harcourt, G.

Peter, W.

Walker, R.

Bruce, lord E.

Hardinge, sir H.

Phillpotts, J.

Ward, H.

Buller, J. W.

Harland, W. C.

Pigot, R.

Warre, J.

Buller, E.

Herbert, hon. S.

Pinney, W.

Waterpark, lord

Bulteel, J.

Heron, sir R.

Ponsonby, hon. W.

Wedgwood, J.

Burdett, sir F.

Herries, right hon. J.

Pryme, G.

Weyland, major R.

Buxton, T. F.

Hodgson, J.

Reid, sir J.

Whitbread, W.

Byng, G.

Howick, lord

Rice, hon. T. S.

Wrottesley, sir J.

Byng, sir J.

Hope, H.

Ridley, sir M.

Scotland.

Carter, J. B.

Inglis, sir R.

Robarts, A. W.

Adam, admiral

Cartwright, W.

Irton, S.

Rolfe, R.

Agnew, sir A.

Cavendish, hon. C.

Johnstone, sir J.

Rooper, J. B.

Arbuthnot, general

Cavendish, lord

Keppel, major G.

Ross, C.

Bruce, C.

Cavendish, hon. H. F.

Kerrison, sir E.

Russell, rt. hon. lord J.

Dalmeny, lord

Childers, J. W.

Knatchbull, sir E.

Russell, lord C.

Elliott, hon. captain

Clive, E. B.

Labouchere, H.

Russell, W.

Ferguson, captain

Clive, hon. R. H.

Lambton, H.

Russell, C.

Fleming, admiral

Crawley, S.

Lemon, sir C.

Ryle, J.

Grant, right hon. C.

Cripps, J.

Lincoln, earl of

Sanderson, R.

Halliburton, D. G.

Darlington, earl of

Littleton, E.

Sandon, lord

Hay, colonel

Davenport, J.

Lumley, viscount

Scarlett, sir J.

Jeffrey, right hon. F.

Denison, J. E.

Lushington, doctor

Scott, sir E.

Johnstone, J.

Donkin, sir R.

Lygon, colonel

Smith, J.

Loch, J.

Duffield, T.

Mangles, J.

Smith, R.

M‘Kenzie, J. A. S.

Dundas, hon. sir R.

Marjoribanks, S.

Somerset, lord G.

M‘Leod, R.

Ebrington, lord

Marsland, T.

Spankie, serjeant

Murray, J. A.

Egerton, W.

Maxfield, captain

Stanley, right hon. E.

Ireland.

Ellice, E.

Mildmay, P. St. J.

Stanley, hon. T.

Browne, J. D.

Evans, W.

Milton, viscount

Staunton, sir G. H.

Browne, D.

Finch, G.

Molyneux, lord

Stewart, P.

Castlereagh, viscount

Fitzroy, lord C.

Morpeth, lord

Stuart, lord D.

Christmas, J.

Foley, J. H. H.

Mostyn, hon. E. M. L.

Tayleur, W.

Corry, hon. H.

Forester, hon. G. C. W.

Nicholl, J.

Thompson, P. B.

Fitzgibbon, hon. R.

Forster, C.

Norreys, lord

Thomson, rt. hon. C. P.

Gladstone, T.

Fox, colonel

North, F.

Throckmorton, R. G.

Hayes, sir E.

Gisborne, T.

Ord, W. H.

Tower, C. T.

Hill, lord M.

Gladstone, W. E.

Ossulston, lord

Townley, R. G.

Jones, captain

Gordon, R.

Penleaze, J.

Tracy, C. H.

Knox, hon. colonel J.

Graham, sir J.

Paget, F.

Trevor, hon. G. R.

Shaw, F.

Grant, right hon. R.

Palmer, R.

Verney, sir H.

Talbot, J.

Grey, colonel

Palmerston, lord

Vernon, hon. G. S.

Verner, colonel

Grey, sir G.

Pechell, sir S.

Vyvyan, sir R.

Wallace, T.

Gronow, captain

Peel, right hon. sir R.

Willoughby, sir H.

Young, J.

Halford, H.

Peel, colonel

Winnington, sir T.

ABSENT.

England.

Beaumont, T. W.

Bulwer, H. L.

Chetwynd, capt. W. F.

Adams, E. H.

Berkeley, G. C. F.

Burrell, sir C.

Clayton, col. W. R.

Andover, viscount

Berkeley, C. F.

Burton, H.

Clive, viscount

Anson, sir G.

Bethell, E.

Calcraft, J.

Cobbett, W.

Apsley, lord

Biddulph, R.

Calley, T.

Cockerell, sir C.

Ashley, lord

Biddulph, R. M.

Calvert, N.

Cookes, T. H.

Astley, sir J. D.

Blamire, W.

Campbell, sir J.

Cooper, A. H. A.

Astley, sir J.

Blandford, marquis

Cayley, sir G.

Cotes, J.

Atherley, A.

Brodie, B.

Chandos, marquis

Dare, R. W. H.

Bankes, W. J.

Brudenell, lord

Chaplin, col. T.

Dashwood, G. H.

Baring, A.

Bulkeley, sir R. W.

Chapman, A.

Denison, W. J.

Baring, W. B.

Bulwer, E. L.

Chaytor, W. R. C.

Dick, Q.

Dugdale, W. S.

Lennard, T. B.

Tapps, G. W.

Bateson, sir R.

Duncombe, W.

Lennard, sir T.

Taylor, M. A.

Belfast, earl of

Dundas, J. W.

Lewis, T. F.

Troubridge, sir E. T.

Bernard, W. S.

Dundas, J. C.

Lopes, sir R.

Tullamore, lord

Blackney, W.

Eastnor, viscount

Lowther, viscount

Tynte, C. K. K.

Blaney, capt. C.

Edwards, J.

Lowther, col. H.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Callaghan, D.

Ellis, W.

Lyall, G.

Tyrell, sir J. T.

Carew, R. S.

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Maberley, col.

Tyrell, C.

Chichester, lord A.

Etwall, R.

Madocks, J.

Vaughan, sir R.

Clements, viscount

Fazakerley, I. N.

Mandeville, viscount

Vernon, G. H.

Cole, lord

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Manners, lord R.

Villiers, viscount

Cole, A.

Fellowes, N.

Marryat, J.

Vivian, sir H.

Conolly, col. E. M.

Ferguson, gen. sir R.

Miller, W. H.

Vivian, J. H.

Cooper, E. J.

Fitzroy, lord J.

Mills, J.

Wall, C. B.

Coote, sir C. H.

Foley, E. T.

Moreton, H.

Walsh, sir J. B.

Copeland, W. C.

Folkes, sir W.

Neale, adm. sir H. B.

Welby, G. E.

Daly, J.

Fordwich, viscount

Neeld, J.

Whitmore, T. C.

Dobbin, L.

Fox, S. L.

Newark, viscount

Williams, R.

Ferguson, sir R. A.

Frankland, sir R.

Noel, sir G.

Williams, T. P.

Fitzsimon, N.

Fremantle, sir T.

Owen, H. O.

Williamson, sir H.

French, F.

Gaskell, J. M.

Owen, sir J.

Wilmot, sir J. E.

Forbes, viscount

Glynne, sir S. R.

Paget, sir C.

Wood, col. T.

Galwey, J. M.

Goulburn, H.

Parker, sir H.

Wyndham, W.

Grattan, J. A.

Greene, T. G.

Patten, J. W.

Wynn, sir W. W.

Hill, lord A.

Grimston, viscount

Pelham, C. A. G.

Wynn, C. W.

Howard, R.

Grosvenor, lord R.

Penruddocke, J. H.

Yelverton, W. H.

Jephson, C. D.

Grosvenor, earl of

Pepys, C.

Yorke, capt. C. P.

Keane, sir R.

Guise, sir B. W.

Phillips, sir R.

Scotland.

Lalor, P.

Halse, J.

Philips, sir G.

Abercromby, J.

Lefroy, Dr. T.

Handley, B.

Phillipps, C. M.

Balfour, J.

Lefroy, A.

Hanmer, col. H.

Pollock, F.

Bannerman, A.

Macnamara, major W.

Hawkins, J. H.

Poulter, J.

Callender, J. H.

Martin, J.

Heathcote, sir G.

Powell, col. W. E.

Colquhoun, J. C.

Martin, J.

Heathcote, G. J.

Poyntz, W. S.

Dalrymple, sir J. H.

Maxwell, J.

Heneage, G. F.

Price, R.

Ferguson, R.

Meynell, capt. H.

Heniker, lord E.

Price, sir R.

Fergusson, R. C.

Mullins, F. W.

Hill, sir R.

Pryse, P.

Gordon, capt. W.

Nagle, sir R.

Hornby, E. G.

Ramsden, J. C.

Grant, col. F. W.

O’Brien, C.

Horne, sir W.

Rotch, B.

Hay, sir J.

O’Callaghan, C.

Hoskin, K.

Rumbold, C. E.

Hope, sir A.

O’Connell, M.

Hotham, lord

Russell, lord

Maxwell, sir J.

O’Connell, C.

Houldsworth, T.

Sebright, sir J.

Maxwell, J.

O’Ferrall, R.

Howard, P. H.

Slaney, R. A.

Parnell, sir H.

O’Grady, col. S.

Howard, E. G.

Smith, J. A.

Rae, sir W.

O’Neill, gen. J.

Hyett, W. H.

Smith, R. S.

Ross, H.

O’Reilly, W.

Ingilby, sir W. A.

Smith, T.

Stewart, E.

Oxmantown, lord

James, W.

Spencer, capt. F.

Stewart, sir M. S.

Perceval, col.

Jermyn, earl

Stanley, E.

Truill, G.

Perrin, L.

Jerningham, H.

Stewart, J.

Wemyss, capt. J.

Roche, W.

Johnstone, sir G. F.

Stonor, T.

Ireland.

Ronayne, D.

Jolliffe, H.

Stormont, viscount

Acheson, viscount

Stawell, col.

Lamont, capt. N.

Surrey, earl of

Archdall, general

Stewart, sir H.

Langston, J. H.

Talbot, C. R. M.

Baldwin, Dr. H.

Tennent, J. E.

Lee, J. L. H.

Talbot, W. H. F.

Barry, G. S.

White, S.

In the minority in favour of Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey’s motion respecting the pension list, Mr. Morrison (Ipswich) paired off for the motion with Mr. Maxwell. The mover and seconder of the address, therefore, both voted against ministers on this occasion.

3.—

REPEAL OF SEPTENNIAL ACT.

MINORITY

Of 187 (tellers included) who voted for Mr. Tennyson’s motion for leave to bring in a Bill to shorten the Duration of Parliaments.

Ayes

185

Noes

235

Majority

——

50

Abercromby, J.

Ewing, J.

Marjoribanks, S.

Sanford, F. A.

Adams, E. H.

Faithfull, G.

Marshall, J.

Sandford, sir D. K.

Adam, admiral

Fielden, J.

Marsland, T.

Simeon, sir R.

Aglionby, H. A.

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Maxwell, J.

Sinclair, G.

Attwood, T.

Fenton, J.

Methuen, P.

Sheil, R. L.

Baillie, J. E.

Fergusson, R. C.

Molesworth, sir W.

Seale, colonel

Baldwin, Dr.

Ferguson, sir R.

Morrison, J.

Scrope, P.

Baines, E.

Finn, W. F.

Mullins, F. W.

Shawe, R. N.

Barnett, C. J.

Fitzsimon, N.

Nagle, sir R.

Sharpe, general

Barron, H.

Fleetwood, H.

O’Brien, C.

Scholefield, J.

Barron, G.

Fryer, R.

O’Connell, D.

Staunton, sir G.

Barry, G.

Gillon, W. D.

O’Connell, C.

Staveley, T. K.

Barnard, E. G.

Gaskell, D.

O’Connell, M.

Stewart, sir M.

Bannerman, A.

Grote, G.

O’Connell, M.

Stewart, lord J.

Beauclerk, major

Guest, J. J.

O’Conor, Don

Stanley, H. T.

Bellew, R. M.

Gully, J.

Oliphant, L.

Stanley, E. J.

Bewes, T.

Hall, B.

Oswald, R. A.

Strickland, sir G.

Bish, T.

Hay, colonel, L.

Oswald, J.

Strutt, E.

Blackburne, J.

Hill, M. D.

Palmer, C. F.

Sullivan, R.

Blake, T.

Handley, B.

Palmer, general

Tancred, H. W.

Blunt, sir C.

Handley, H.

Parker, J.

Talbot, J. H.

Briscoe, J. I.

Hawes, B.

Parker, sir H.

Thicknesse, R.

Briggs, R.

Hawkins, J. H.

Parnell, sir H.

Todd, R.

Bowes, J.

Harvey, D. W.

Parrott, J.

Tooke, W.

Brocklehurst, J.

Hodgson, J.

Pendarves, E. W.

Torrens, colonel

Bouverie, D.

Hodges, T. L.

Penleaze, J. S.

Trelawney, sir W.

Browne, D.

Hornby, E. G.

Philips, M.

Turner, W.

Brotherton, J.

Hughes, H.

Plumptre, J. P.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Butler, colonel

Hurst, R. H.

Potter, R.

Vernon, G.

Bulwer, E. L.

Humphery, J.

Pryme, George

Vigors, N. A.

Buckingham, J. S.

Hutt, W.

Pryse, Pryse

Vincent, sir F.

Cayley, sir G.

Ingham, R.

Richards, J.

Walker, C. A.

Chaytor, sir W.

Ingilby, sir W.

Rider, T.

Wallace, R.

Clay, W.

James, W.

Rippon, C.

Walter, J.

Collier, C.

Jervis, J.

Robinson, G. R.

Ward, H. G.

Dashwood, G. M.

Kennedy, J.

Roche, D.

Warburton, H.

Denison, W. J.

King, E. B.

Roche, W.

Wason, R.

Divett, E.

Lalor, P.

Roebuck, J. A.

Whalley, sir S.

Dobbin, L.

Lambert, H.

Romilly, E.

Wigney, J. N.

Dundas, captain

Lambton, H.

Romilly, J.

Wilks, J.

Dunlop, captain

Leech, J.

Ross, H.

Wilbraham, G.

Dykes, F. L. B.

Lefevre, S.

Rotch, B.

Wood, alderman

Ellis, W.

Lister, E. C.

Russell, lord

Etwall, R.

Locke, W.

Russell, lord C.

Tellers.

Evans, colonel

Lloyd, J. H.

Ruthven, E.

Codrington, sir E.

Evans, George

Lushington, Dr.

Ruthven, E. S.

Tennyson, C.

Ewart, W.

Madocks, J.

PAIRED OFF.

FOR.

AGAINST.

Bainbridge, E. T.

O’Ferrall, M.

Feilden, W.

Rice, T. S.

Beaumont, T. W.

Poulter, J.

North, F.

Shaw, F.

Chapman, M.

Williams, colonel

Pease, J.

Sanderson, R.

Dawson, E.

Walker, R.

Fort, J.

SHUT OUT.

Callaghan, D.

Sandon, lord

4.—

DISSENTERS’ ADMISSION INTO THE UNIVERSITIES.

Majority on the Bill “to remove certain disabilities which prevent some classes of His Majesty’s subjects from resorting to the universities of England and proceeding to degrees therein.”—July 29.

Adam, admiral

Dundas, J. W.

Lushington, Dr.

Ruthven, E.

Aglionby, H. A.

Ebrington, lord

Lynch, A.

Scholefield, J.

Althorp, lord

Elliot, capt.

Macleod, R.

Scrope, P.

Attwood, T.

Etwall, R.

Macnamara, major

Seale, col.

Bainbridge, E.

Evans, G.

Mackenzie, J. A. S.

Shawe, R. N.

Baines, E.

Ewart, W.

Maitland, T.

Stanley, H. T.

Baring, F. T.

Ewing, J.

Marjoribanks, S.

Stanley, E. J.

Barnett, C. J.

Fenton, J.

Methuen, P.

Stawell, col.

Barron, W.

Ferguson, sir R.

Morpeth, lord

Stewart, P.

Beauclerk, major

Feilden, W.

Moreton, A.

Steuart, R.

Berkeley, C.

Fellowes, W.

Mostyn, E. L.

Sullivan, R.

Bernal, R.

Fleming, admiral

Mullins, R.

Talbot, J.

Bewes, J.

Fox, lieut. col.

Murray, J. A.

Tancred, H. W.

Biddulph, R.

French, F.

O’Connell, D.

Tennyson, C.

Blamire, W.

Gaskell, D.

O’Connell, M.

Thicknesse, R.

Blake, M. J.

Gillon, W. D.

O’Connell, J.

Thomson, C. P.

Briggs, R.

Grey, col.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Troubridge, sir E.

Brocklehurst, J.

Grey, sir G.

Oliphant, L.

Torrens, col.

Brotherton, J.

Gordon, R.

O’Reilly, W.

Tooke, W.

Brougham, W.

Gronow, R. H.

Oswald, J.

Todd, R.

Buckingham, J. S.

Hall, B.

Palmerston, lord

Tower, C.

Bulteel, J. C.

Handley, B.

Pease, J.

Turner, W.

Burton, H.

Harland, W. C.

Pelham, C. A.

Waddy, C.

Byng, G.

Hawes, B.

Pepys, C. C.

Walker, C. S.

Calvert, N.

Hay, L.

Peter, W.

Wallace, R.

Campbell, sir J.

Hawkins, J.

Philips, M.

Warburton, H.

Carter, J. B.

Hill, lord M.

Phillipps, C. M.

Wason, R.

Chapman, M. L.

Howard, R.

Pinney, W.

Waterpark, lord

Chichester, J. P. B.

Howard, P.

Potter, R.

Wedgwood, J.

Childers, J. W.

Hudson, T.

Poulter, J.

Whalley, sir S.

Clay, W.

Hurst, R. H.

Price, sir R.

Wigney, J. N.

Clements, lord

Hutt, W.

Pringle, R.

Wilks, J.

Clive, E. B.

Kennedy, J.

Pryme, G.

Williams, W. A.

Codrington, sir E.

Labouchere, H.

Pryse, P.

Williams, G.

Cookes, T. H.

Lambton, H.

Rice, T. S.

Winnington, H.

Crompton, S.

Langdale, C.

Richards, J.

Wood, C.

Dalmeny, lord

Langston, J. H.

Rider, T.

Yelverton, W.

Davies, col. C.

Lennard, sir T. B.

Rolfe, R. M.

Young, G. F.

Denison, W.

Lennard, T. B.

Rooper, J. B.

Tellers.

Dillwyn, L.

Littleton, E. J.

Russell, lord J.

Wood, G. W.

Divett, E.

Lumley, lord

Ruthven, E. S.

Smith, R. V.

Duncombe, T.

Minority of 77 (tellers included) who voted against the third reading of the Universities’ Bill, Monday, July 28.

Archdall, M.

Dugdale, W. S.

Irton, S.

Norreys, lord

Arbuthnot, H.

Duncombe, W.

Jones, capt.

Peel, sir R.

Attwood, M.

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Jermyn, earl

Penruddocke, J. H.

Bankes, W. J.

Finch, G.

Kerrison, sir E.

Perceval, colonel

Baring, A.

Gladstone, T.

Knatchbull, sir E.

Phillipps, C. M.

Baring, H. B.

Gladstone, W. E.

Langston, J. H.

Reid, sir J. R.

Blackstone, W. S.

Gordon, capt.

Lefroy, T.

Ross, C.

Bolling, W.

Goulburn, H.

Lefroy, A.

Sandon, lord

Bruce, lord E.

Greene, T.

Lemon, sir C.

Sanderson, R.

Brudenell, lord

Grimston, lord

Lincoln, earl of

Scarlett, sir J.

Buller, J. W.

Harcourt, G. V.

Lowther, lord

Shaw, F.

Campbell, sir H. H.

Hanmer, col.

Lowther, col.

Sheppard, T.

Chandos, marquis

Hayes, sir E.

Lyall, G.

Sinclair, G.

Colborne, N. W. R.

Henniker, lord

Manners, lord R.

Somerset, lord G.

Cole, A. H.

Herbert, S.

Marryat, J.

Stormont, lord

Corry, H. T. L.

Herries, J. C.

Maitland, T.

Trevor, R.

Daly, J.

Hotham, lord

Meynell, capt.

Villiers, lord

Dare, R. W. H.

Hughes, W. H.

Neale, sir H.

Wall, C. B.

Darlington, earl of

Inglis, sir R.

Nicholl, J.

Young, J.

5.—

MALT DUTY.

Minority of 172 (tellers included), who voted in favour of Sir W. Ingilby’s motion for a Committee to inquire what reduction could be effected in the Malt-Tax.

England.

Crawley, S.

Gully, J.

Parker, sir H.

Adams, E. H.

Curteis, H. B.

Halcomb, J.

Parrott, J.

Aglionby, H. A.

Dare, R. H.

Halford, H.

Pigot, R.

Arbuthnot, hon. A.

Darlington, earl of

Hall, B.

Pelham, hon. C.

Attwood, M.

Dashwood, G.

Handley, H.

Poulter, J.

Attwood, T.

Davies, colonel

Hanmer, sir J.

Richards, J.

Baillie, J.

Dillwyn, L.

Hanmer, colonel H.

Rippon, C.

Bainbridge, E.

Duffield, T.

Harvey, D. W.

Robinson, G. R.

Bankes, W. J.

Dugdale, D. S.

Hardy, J.

Rooper, J. B.

Baring, A.

Dundas, captain

Herbert, hon. S.

Russell, W.

Baring, H.

Dawson, E.

Hope, H. T.

Seale, colonel

Barnard, E. G.

Duncombe, hon. H.

Henniker, lord

Simeon, sir R.

Beauclerk, major

Durham, sir P.

Irton, S.

Spry, S.

Bell, M.

Egerton, W.

Jervis, J.

Stanley, E.

Benett, J.

Etwall, R.

Jolliffe, H.

Stewart, J.

Blackstone, W.

Faithfull, G,

Kennedy, J.

Sandford, E.

Briggs, R.

Fancourt, major

Keppel, hon. G.

Sanderson, R.

Bruce, lord E.

Fellowes, hon. N.

Kerrison, sir E.

Shawe, R.

Brudenell, lord

Fellowes, H. A. W.

Leech, J.

Tancred, H. W.

Buckingham, J. S.

Fielden, J.

Lennox, lord W.

Townshend, lord C.

Burrell, sir C.

Finch, G.

Lincoln, earl of

Taylor, M. A.

Burton, H.

Foley, hon. E.

Lister, E.

Tennyson, rt. hon. C.

Buxton, T. F.

Folkes, sir W.

Lowther, hon. H. C.

Tower, J.

Berkeley, Hon. G.

Forester, hon. C. W.

Lygon, hon. H.

Trevor, hon. G. R.

Cartwright, W.

Fremantle, sir T.

Martin, J.

Trelawney, W. L. S.

Cayley, E. S.

Fryer, R.

Meynell, captain

Tyrell, Sir J.

Chandos, marquis

Gaskell, J. M.

Miles, W.

Tyrell, C.

Chaplin, colonel

Gaskell, D.

Milton, lord

Tynte, C. J. K.

Clive, hon. R.

Grimston, viscount

Norreys, lord

Tollemache, A. G.

Clayton, sir W.

Goring, H.

Palmer, R.

Vernon, G.

Cotes, J.

Guise, sir W.

Palmer, general

Walter, J.

Weyland, major

Cole, viscount

O’Connor, F.

Gordon, hon. W.

Williams, colonel

Conolly, colonel

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Grant, hon. colonel

Williams, R.

Daly, J.

Roe, J.

Maxwell, J.

Wilmot, sir E.

Finn, W. F.

Roche, D.

Sinclair, G.

Wood, colonel

Fitzsimon, C.

Roche, W.

Windham, W. H.

Fitzgerald, T.

Ruthven, E. S.

Paired off.

Welby, G.

Hayes, sir E.

Ruthven, E.

Bowes, J.

Watkins, J.

Jacob, E.

Sheil, R. L.

Denison, W. J.

Wilks, J.

Lalor, P.

Sullivan, R.

Fleetwood, captain

Ireland.

Maxwell, J.

Vigors, N. A.

Ossulston, lord

Blaney, hon. C.

O’Connell, D.

Wallace, T.

Tynte, C.

Barry, G. S.

O’Connell, M.

Scotland.

Tellers.

Butler, hon. colonel

O’Connell, J.

Bruce, C.

Hume, J.

Blake, M.

O’Connell, M.

Gillon, W.

Ingilby, sir W.

Minority of 61 (tellers included), who voted in favour of Mr. Cobbett’s motion, “That it is expedient that from and after the 5th of October next, all duties on Malt shall cease and determine.”

Against the motion

142

For the motion

59

Majority

83

201 in the house.

England.

Foley, E.

Trelawney, W. L. S.

Ireland.

Adams, E. H.

Folkes, sir W.

Trevor, hon. R.

Jacob, E.

Aglionby, H. A.

Gaskell, D.

Tyrell, sir J.

O’Connell, M.

Astley, sir J.

Hume, J.

Tyrell, C.

O’Connell, M. J.

Attwood, T.

Ingilby, sir W.

Vincent, sir F.

O’Connell, J.

Barnard, J. G.

James, W.

Walter, J.

Ruthven, E. S.

Bell, M.

Keppel. major

Wason, R.

Ruthven, E.

Bowes, J.

Leech, J.

Watkins, L.

Sheil, R. L.

Buckingham, J. S.

Lennard, sir T.

Wigney, I. N.

Tellers.

Burton, H.

Lister, E. C.

Wilks, J.

Cobbett, W.

Chandos, marquis of

Mills, W.

Winnington, H.

Curteis, H. B.

Chaplin, colonel

Parrott, J.

Clayton, col. W. R.

Pigot, N.

Scotland.

Paired for the motion.

Crawley, S.

Plumptre, J. N.

Ferguson, captain

Curteis, captain

Rickford, W.

Maxwell, sir J.

Goring, H. D.

Faithful, G.

Robinson, G. R.

Oswald, R. A.

Tynte, C. J. K.

Fancourt, major

Shawe, R. N.

Sinclair, G.

Shut out.

Fielden, J.

Simeon, sir R.

Wallace, R.

Kennedy, J.

6.—

BISHOPS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Minority of 60 (tellers included) who voted in favour of Mr. Rippon’s motion for “Relieving the Archbishops and Bishops of the Established Church from their legislative and judicial duties in the House of Lords:”—

Against the motion

127

For the motion

60

Majority against

67

187 in the House.

England.

Baines, E.

Buller, C.

Faithful, G.

Adams, E. H.

Bewes, T.

Chaytor, sir W.

Ferguson, sir R.

Aglionby, H. A.

Blake, sir F.

Codrington, sir E.

Fielden, J.

Attwood, T.

Buckingham, J. S.

Ewart, W.

Grote, G.

Guest, J. J.

Richards, J.

Hay, colonel L.

O’Connell, M.

Harland, C. H.

Rider, T.

Oliphant, L.

O’Dwyer, A. C.

Harvey, D. W.

Roebuck, J. A.

Oswald, R. A.

Ruthven, E. S.

Humphery, J.

Romilly, J.

Oswald, J.

Ruthven, E.

Ingilby, sir W.

Russell, lord

Pringle, R.

Sheil, R. L.

James, W.

Sebright, sir J.

Stewart, R.

Vigors, N. A.

Kennedy, J.

Staveley, J. K.

Wallace, R.

Walker, C. A.

Leech, J.

Warburton, H.

Wemyss, captain

Tellers.

Lister, E. C.

Whalley, sir S.

Ireland.

Hume, J.

Parrott, J.

Wilks, J.

Blake, M. S.

Rippon, C.

Pease, J.

Wood, alderman

Evans, G.

Shut out.

Philips, M.

Scotland.

Jacob, E.

Molesworth, sir W.

Potter, R.

Gillon, W. D.

O’Connell, D.

PAIRED OFF FOR THE MOTION.

Bainbridge, E. T.

Hall, B.

Lynch, A. H.

O’Connell, M.

Bowes, J.

Fleming, Admiral

Marjoribanks, S.

Palmer, general

7.—

POOR LAWS.

Minority of 52 (tellers included) who voted against the third reading of the Poor Laws’ Amendment Bill.

Attwood, M.

Fielden, J.

Lowther, colonel

Stanley, E.

Attwood, T.

Fitzsimon, C.

O’Connell, D.

Thicknesse, R.

Bainbridge, E.

Fryer, R.

O’Connell, M.

Tower, C.

Baines, E.

Guise, sir W.

O’Connell, M.

Vigors, N. A.

Baring, H.

Gully, J.

O’Connell, J.

Vyvyan, sir R.

Blackstone, W.

Halcomb, J.

Parker, sir H.

Walter, J.

Brotherton, J.

Halse, J.

Potter, R.

Williams, colonel

Burrell, sir C.

Hardy, J.

Rider, T.

Willoughby, sir H.

Cobbett, W.

Hughes, W. H.

Robinson, G. R.

Wilks, J.

Duffield, T.

Humphrey, J.

Ruthven, E.

Young, G. F.

Duncombe, W.

Kennedy, J.

Scholefield, J.

Tellers.

Egerton, W. T.

Leech, J.

Somerset, lord G.

Benett, J.

Faithful, G.

Lister, E. C.

Spry, S. T.

Hodges, T. L.

PAIRED OFF.

Tennyson, right honourable C.

VII.—

PLACEMEN AND PENSIONERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

RETURN of Members holding Offices, or having Pensions, Grants, or Emoluments in the first Session of the Reformed Parliament.—Parl. Paper, No. 671, Sess. 1833.

1.—

Thirty-six Members holding Offices under the Crown at the pleasure of the Crown, or otherwise.

Althorp, viscount, Northampton, county, chancellor of the exchequer

£5000

Baring, Francis, Portsmouth, commissioner of treasury

1200

Belfast, earl of, Antrim, county, vice-chamberlain, 1830

924

Carew, R. S. Wexford, county, lord lieutenant.

Clive, viscount, Ludlow, lord lieutenant.

Campbell, sir John, Dudley, solicitor-general

No salary: fees uncertain

Duncannon, viscount, Nottingham, city, first commissioner of woods and forests, 1831

£2000

Ebrington, viscount, Devonshire, North, vice-lieutenant for Dover, 1830

nil.

Colonel East Devon militia.

nil.

Elliot, captain hon. George, Roxburghshire, naval aid-de-camp to the king

182

Secretary to the Admiralty

2000

Governor of mint in Scotland

300

Captain, navy, half-pay, not received during the secretaryship to the Admiralty.

Fox, Charles Richard, Tavistock, surveyor-general to ordnance, 1832

1200

Captain, guards, 1829

450 to 470

Graham, sir J. R. G. Cumberland, East, first lord of admiralty, 1830

4500

Grant, Charles, Inverness, county, president board of control

3500

Grant, Robert, Finsbury, judge advocate-general and commissioner India board, 1830

2000

Gordon, Robert, Cricklade, commissioner India board, 1832

1200

Grosvenor, lord Robert, Chester, comptroller of the household, 1830

904

Hobhouse, sir John Cam, Westminster, secretary-at-war

2480

Horne, sir William, Mary-le-bone, attorney-general

no return

Jeffery, Francis, Edinburgh, lord advocate of Scotland, 1830

2500

Kennedy, Thomas F. Ayr, &c. commissioner of treasury, 1832

1200

Lamb, George, Dungarvon, under secretary home department

1502

Labouchere, Henry, Taunton, lord of admiralty, 1832

1000

Maberley, William Leader, Chatham, clerk of ordnance, 1832

1200

Lieut.-colonel, half-pay; not received during appointment.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Leeds, secretary to India board

1500

Mackenzie, James A. Stewart, Ross and Cromarty, commissioner India board

1200

Oxmantown, lord, King’s County, lord lieutenant.

Paget, sir Charles, Carnarvon, groom of bedchamber

500

Rear admiral

456

Palmerston, viscount, Hampshire, South, secretary foreign affairs, 1830

5000

Lieut.-colonel Hants militia, 1809; no pay during office.

Peel, sir Robert, Tamworth, privy councellor.

Pechell, sir Samuel J. Windsor, lord of admiralty

1000

Captain R. N. half-pay

228 : 2 : 6

Phillips, sir Richard, Haverfordwest, lord lieutenant.

Russell, lord John, Devonshire, South, paymaster of forces, 1830

2000

Stanley, Edward G. S. Lancashire, North, chief secretary of Ireland, 1830

5500

Keeper of the privy seal, 1830

nil.

Smith, R. Vernon, Northampton, commissioner of treasury

1200

Thomson, Charles Poulett, Manchester, vice president of board of trade

2000

Treasurer of the navy, 1830

nil.

Tennyson, Charles, Lambeth, privy councellor, 1832.

O’Neil, John B. R. Antrim, county, constable of Dublin Castle

439

Major-general in the army

419

2.—

Four Members holding Offices in the appointment of Public Offices, &c.

Wood, Charles, Halifax, joint secretary to the treasury, 1832

2500

Rice, Thomas S. Cambridge, joint secretary to the treasury, 1830

2500

Hill, Matthew D. Hull, law courts commissioner

£1000

Howick, viscount, Northumberland, North, under-secretary to the colonies

1500

3.—

Ten Members holding Offices or Pensions for life, under grants from the Crown.

The patent contains a grant of the ancient salary, the gross amount of which is £40 a-year; the net amount £28. This was regularly paid till the year 1830 inclusive, since which the treasury have refused to comply with His Majesty’s grant.

There was also an allowance of stationery and four bags annually, which was compounded for £10, the payment of which has also been refused.

The king’s counsel cannot undertake the defence of any person accused and prosecuted criminally in the name of the king, without his majesty’s licence, under his sign manual, for which a fee is paid to the crown of £10. The number of these licences since the time of my appointment in 1816 has been 167, amounting to £1670, which the crown has received, or to an average of £98: 10 per annum.

Hardy, John, Bradford, chief steward of the honor of Pomfret

19

Gross fees of stewardship, £978; net fees, £707: the difference paid to deputy.

Pepys, Charles C. Malton, king’s counsel

nil.

Pollock, Frederick, Huntingdon, king’s counsel, 1830

nil.

Perrin, Louis, Monaghan, county, king’s serjeant

nil.

Rolfe, Robert Monsey, Penryn, &c. king’s counsel, 1832

nil.

Spankie, Robert, Finsbury, king’s serjeant, 1832

nil.

Scarlett, sir James, Norwich, king’s counsel, 1816

nil.

Wallace, Thomas, Carlow, county, king’s serjeant

nil.

Wynn, sir W. W. Denbigh, county, steward of Broomfield and Gale; by patent

20

Colonel of Denbighshire militia, 1814, 15s. per day.

Wynn, Charles W. W. Montgomery, county, steward of Denbigh, by patent, 1796

30

4.—

One Member holding Offices under grants from the Crown or other public officers.

The member is dead, and the offices expired Aug. 20, 1833.

Brougham, James, Kendal, registrar of affidavits, 1832

1700

Clerk of letters patent, 1832

750

5.—

Four Members holding Offices for life, under appointments from the chiefs in the Courts of Justice.

Brougham, William, Southwark, master in chancery, 1831

4186

Spry, Samuel Thomas, Bodmin, secretary to board of gentlemen pensioners, by purchase of the patent

365

Stuart, William, Bedford, county, registrar (by deputy) of the prerogative court in Ireland, 1832

1500

Captain Bedfordshire militia.

Fitzgibbon, hon. Rich. Limerick, usher and registrar (by deputy) of affidavits in the court of chancery, Ireland, 1797

3245

6.—

Four Members holding Pensions or Sinecures, or Offices chiefly executed by deputy under grants from the Crown by act of parliament.

Abercromby, James, Edinburgh, lord chief baron, 1832

2000

Goulburn, Henry, Cambridge university, pension for life under act 57 Geo. III. c. 65

2000

Herries, John Charles, Harwich, retired allowance as commissary in chief

1350

Murray, John Arch. Leith, recorder of the great roll, or clerk of the pipe in the exchequer court, Scotland, 1795

£414

7.—

One Member holding the Reversion of Offices under the Crown after one or more lives, stating the office, and net proceeds at present of such office.

Sutton, Charles Manners, Cambridge university.

Contingent pension under 2 and 3 Will. IV. cap. 109, “An annuity of £4000 a-year to be paid to the right hon. Charles Manners Sutton during his life; after his decease £3000 to his heir male.”

Sect. 7. “One-half of the annuity to be suspended during any period in which the right hon. Charles Manners Sutton may hereafter hold any place under his majesty, of equal or greater profit than the annuity.”

Sec. 8. Proviso, “In case the heir male shall succeed to the registrar of the prerogative court of the archbishop of Canterbury, then the annuity of £3000 to cease; but if the profits of the office shall not produce the annual sum of £3000, then there shall be paid such a sum annually as will make up a clear annual income of £3000.”

8.—

Sixty-four Officers on the Full and Half pay of the Army.

Archdall, Mervyn, Fermanagh, general, lieut.-general not having a regiment

no return

Lieutenant-governor, Isle of Wight

no return

Pension for the loss of right arm on service

£400

Ferguson, sir Ronald C. Nottingham, general, 1790, about

600

And from £400 to £500 emoluments as colonel of the 79th highlanders

450

Hope, sir Alexander, Linlithgowshire, general, 1786, pay as colonel and non-effective allowance

613

Saving on clothing uncertain, in the year 1832 it was

475

Pension for wounds

400

Lieut.-governor Chelsea Hospital, full pay

390

The lieut.-governor furnishes his apartments, and receives an allowance on that account

50

He receives a diet account of 3s. for such days as he is present in the hospital

uncertain

Byng, sir John, Poole, lieut.-general, 1793, colonel of the 29th regiment

613

Emoluments from clothing

uncertain

Appointed governor of Londonderry and Culmore in July 1832; no pay attached, having been discontinued since my appointment.

An income about £300 from the lands of Culmore, granted by charter, and about £170 British, paid by the Irish society, by same charter is attached to this government, but I have not yet received any part of it.

300

170

Dalrymple, sir John H. Edinburghshire, lieut.-general, 1821

614

Donkin, sir Rufane S. Berwick, lieut.-general, pay as colonel

593

Non-effective allowance

20

Colonel of the 80th regiment

599

Lygon, Henry B. Worcestershire, lieut.-general, 1802, full pay £1 : 9 per diem.

Sharpe, Mathew, Dumfries, &c. lieut.-general, 1791, £1:5s. per diem

Vivian, sir Richard Hussey, bart., Truro, lieut.-general, 1793, pay as colonel 12th royal lancers

893

As lieut.-general in Ireland

1,388

Profits from clothing of regiment

206

As master of the royal hospital held with the command in Ireland

356

Table allowance

£1,476

Allowance for forage 1832

183

Pension for wound

350

Salary as one of his Majesty’s grooms of the bedchamber

356

Arbuthnot, hon. Hugh, Kincardineshire, major-general, 1796, 17s. per diem.

Dundas, hon. Robert L., Richmond, major-general, 1830, full pay 16s. per diem.

Greville, sir Charles J., Warwick, major-general, 1796, pay and allowance as colonel of the 98th regiment

613

Hardinge, sir H., Launceston, major-general, 1801, 17s. per diem. Pension for loss of limb

300

Kerrison, sir Edward, bart., Eye, major-general, 1796, as colonel 19th light dragoons

891

Non-effective allowance

20

Emoluments from clothing

uncertain

Manners, lord Robert, Liecestershire, major-general, £1 : 3 per diem.

Anson, hon. George, Yarmouth, lieut.-colonel

no return

Anson, sir George, Litchfield, lieut.-colonel, 1814, half pay

200

Brudenell, lord, Northamptonshire, lieut.-colonel

no return

Cavendish, hon. Henry F. C., Derby, equerry extraordinary to his Majesty, 1831

nil

Chaplin, Thomas, Stamford, lieut.-colonel, 1811, full pay, about

400

Pension for wounds

50

Clayton, William Robert, Marlow, lieut.-colonel, 1804, half pay

209

Darlington, earl of, Shropshire, lieut.-colonel, 1824, half pay

200

Davies, Thomas Henry, Worcester, lieut.-colonel, 1815, half pay

200

Fitzroy, lord Charles, Bury St. Edmunds, lieut.-colouel, 1807, half pay

200

Grey, hon. Charles, Wycombe, lieut.-colonel, 1820, half pay

200

Hay, Andrew Leith, Elgin, &c. lieut.-colonel, half pay

200

Hill, lord Arthur, Down County, lieut.-colonel, 1833, full pay

400

Hotham, lord, Leominster, lieut.-colonel, 1825, half pay

200

Peel, Jonathan, Huntingdon, lieut.-colonel, 1815, half pay

200

O’Grady, Standish, Limerick, County, lieut.-colonel, 1811, half pay

200

Stawell, Sampson, Kinsale, lieut.-colonel, 1801

419

Torrens, Robert, Bolton, lieut.-colonel, 1796, Royal Marines, 16s. per diem.

Baring, Henry Bingham, Marlborough, major

no return

Beauclerk, Aubrey William, Surrey, major, 1818, half pay

155

Bentinck, lord George, King’s Lynn, major, 1818, half pay

200

Keppel, hon. George, Norfolk, major, 1815, half pay

173

Berkeley, hon. Craven F. Cheltenham, captain, 1823

315

Bernard, W. Smyth, Bandonbridge, captain, half pay

127

Chichester, lord Arthuir Belfast, captain, 1827, half pay

209

Chetwynd, William, F. Stafford, captain, 1826, half pay

215

Conolly, Edward M., Donegal, captain artillery, full pay

200

Cooper, hon. Anthony Henry Ashley, Dorchester, captain, 1825, full pay

200

Curteis, Edward Barrett, Rye, captain, 1822, full pay

200

Fenton, Lewis, Huddersfield, captain, 1804, half pay

127

Fitzroy, lord James, Thetford, captain, 1822, half pay

136

Forester, hon. G. Cecil W., Wenlock, captain, full pay

349

Lennox, lord Arthur, Chichester, captain, 1823, half pay

127

Paget, Frederick, Beaumaris, captain, 1829, full pay

200

Pringle, Robert, Selkirkshire, captain, 1819, half pay

127

Russell, lord Charles J. F., Bedfordshire, captain, 1823

200

Stuart, Charles, Bute, captain, 1832, full pay

127

Watson, hon. Richard, Canterbury, captain, 1817, half pay

£136

Berkeley, hon. G. C. G. F., Gloucestershire, lieutenant, 1816, half pay

54

Fordwich, lord, Canterbury, lieutenant, 1827, half pay, about

42

Halford, Henry, Leicestershire, lieutenant, 1818

73

Maclachlan, Lachlan, Galway, lieutenant, 1796, half pay

42

M‘Namara, Francis, Ennis, lieutenant, full pay

118

O’Callaghan, hon. Cornelius, Tipperary, lieutenant, 1826, full pay

164

Ross, Horatio, Inverbervie, &c. lieutenant, half pay

54

Stanley, hon. Henry T., Preston, lieutenant, 1830, full pay

118

Brigstock, William P., Somersetshire, cornet, 1816, half pay

60

Powell, W. Edward, Cardiganshire, cornet

33

Rider, Thomas, Kent, cornet, 1816, half pay

64

Grattan, James, Wicklow, lieutenant, half pay

42

9.—

Nineteen members on the Full and Half pay of the Navy.

- Neale, sir H. B. bart., Lymington, admiral, 1832, half pay, £2. 2s. per diem.

- Codrington, sir Edward, Devonport, vice-admiral, 1794, half pay, £1. 12s. 6d. per diem.

- Fleming, hon. C. E., Stirlingshire, vice-admiral, 1821, half pay, £1. 12s. 6d. per diem.

- Adam, Charles, Clackmannan, rear-admiral, 1825, half pay, £1. 5s. per diem.

- Dundas, James W. D., Greenwich, post-captain, 1807, half pay, 12s. 6d. per diem.

- Ingestre, viscount, Hertford, post-captain, 1827, half pay, £228. 2s. 6d.

- Lieut.-colonel Staffordshire militia.

- Troubridge, sir E. T., bart., Sandwich, naval aid-de-camp to the king, 1831, nil.

- Captain, 1807, half pay, 12s. 6d. per diem.

- Berkeley, Maurice F. F., Gloucester, captain, 1814, half pay, £191. 12s. 6d.

- Ferguson, George, Banffshire, captain, 1805, half pay, £192 per annum.

- Gordon, hon. William, Aberdeenshire, captain, 1797, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem.

- Jones, Theobald, Londonderry county, captain, 1828, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem

- Meynell, Henry, Lisburn, captain, 1809, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem.

- Spencer, hon. Frederick, Midhurst, captain, 1822, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem.

- Wemyss, James, Fife, captain, 1814, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem.

- Yorke, Charles P., Cambridgeshire, captain, half pay, 10s. 6d. per diem.

- Boss, John G. Northallerton, commander, 1811, half pay, £184 per annum.

- Mandeville, viscount, Huntingdonshire, commander, 1822, half pay, £184 per annum.

- Chichester, John P. B., Barnstaple, lieutenant, 1816, half pay, £95 per annum.

- Dobbs, Conway Richard, Carrickfergus, lieutenant, 1821, half pay, £95 per annum.

10.—

Forty-five members in the Militia and Yeomanry.

- Coote, sir Charles H., bart., Queen’s County, colonel, Queen’s County

- Grant, hon. Francis William, Elginshire, colonel, Inverness-shire.

- Lord lieutenant of Inverness-shire.

- Langton, William Gore, Somersetshire, colonel, Oxford.

- Lowther, hon. Henry Cecil, Westmorland, colonel, Cumberland.

- Waterpark, lord, Derbyshire, colonel, Derby.

- Lieut.-colonel, Staffordshire.

- Wood, Thomas, Breconshire, colonel, East Middlesex.

- Aid-de-camp to the king.

- Brodie, William B., Salisbury, lieut.-colonel, corps of volunteer yeomanry.

- Chaytor, sir William R. C., bart., Sunderland, lieut.-colonel commandant, North Riding, Yorkshire.

- Eastnor, viscount, Reigate, lieut.-colonel, Herefordshire.

- Lowther, lord, Westmorland, lieut.-colonel, Westmorland.

- Owen, Hugh Owen, Pembroke, lieut.-colonel, Royal Pembrokeshire.

- Penruddocke, John H., Wilton, lieut.-colonel commandant, Wiltshire.

- Price, Richard, New Radnor, lieut.-colonel commandant, Radnorshire.

- Seale, John Henry, Dartmouth, lieut.-colonel, South Devon.

- Stormont, viscount, Norwich, lieut.-colonel, Stirlingshire.

- Trevor, hon. George Rice, Carmarthenshire, lieut.-colonel commandant, royal Carmarthen fusileers.

- Wrottesley, sir John, bart., Staffordshire, lieut.-colonel commandant, West Staffordshire.

- Callander, James H., Argyleshire, major, Stirlingshire.

- Duncombe, hon. William, Yorkshire, major, Third West York.

- Hodges, Thomas Law, Kent, major, Kent.

- Moreton, hon. Henry F. G., Gloucestershire, major, North Gloucestershire.

- Tullamore, lord, Penryn, major, King’s County.

- Tynte, Charles Kemeys, Bridgewater, major, West Somerset yeomanry cavalry.

- Maxwell, Henry, Cavan, captain commandant, Fortland yeomanry corps.

- Acheson, viscount, Armagh County, captain, Armagh.

- Biddulph, Robert, Hereford, captain, Denbighshire.

- Cole, hon. Arthur Henry, Enniskillen, captain, Fermanagh.

- Cole, viscount, Fermanagh, captain, Glenorth.

- Clements, viscount, Leitrim County, captain, Prince of Wales, Donegal.

- Cooper, Edward Joshua, Sligo County, captain, Sligo.

- Crompton, Joshua Samuel, Ripon, captain, Second West Yorkshire.

- Fellowes, hon. Newton, Devonshire, captain, East Devon.

- Gore, Montague, Devizes, captain, Wilts.

- Grosvenor, earl, Cheshire, captain, Royal Flintshire.

- Hurst, Robert H., Horsham, captain.

- Lennox, lord William Pitt, King’s Lynn, captain, Royal Sussex.

- Roe, James, Cashel, captain, Tipperary.

- Stewart, Edward, Wigton, &c. captain, Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire.

- Stanley, Edward John, Cheshire, captain, Cheshire.

- Welby, Glynne Earle, Grantham, captain, Royal South Lincoln.

- Williams, Thomas Peers, Marlow, captain, Royal Anglesea infantry.

- Verner, William, Armagh, captain, Ardnes corps of infantry.

- Bruce, lord Ernest, Marlborough, cornet, Royal Wiltshire yeomanry.

- Bulkeley, sir R. B. W., bart., Anglesea, lieutenant, Royal Anglesea.

- Hornby, Edward George, Warrington, Second Royal Lancashire.

IX.—

FUTURE POLICY OF THE TORIES.

THE following extracts from the speeches of the principal Tories, delivered during the two last sessions of parliament, will serve to illustrate their foreign and domestic policy—its agreement with the policy of the late Ministers, and the measures supported by the Reform Parliament. We shall begin with extracts from the speeches of the

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

Independence of Belgium.—“As to the negociations, he had no difficulty in saying that, from the moment the present government took charge of them, they might be said to have abandoned the cause of the King of the Netherlands: and that was an act peculiarly reprehensible in a British minister at any time, and especially in times like the present; but it was the business of a British minister to pay every attentive care to the interests of the Dutch nation. In the progress of negociations like those, IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE A GREATER BLUNDER THAN THE RECOGNITION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF BELGIUM. As soon as the case of Holland was abandoned by the British ministers, the British ministers were abandoned by three other powers; and in proof of it he might mention, that the plenipotentiaries of the three other powers were not authorized to give their approbation to the treaty of January, 1832. He would confirm that statement by what passed at the time of the ratification; for he had in his pocket a memorandum upon the subject, which would clearly prove that England and France were the powers which pushed the measure forward, while Russia, Prussia, and Austria, did not join in the attempt.”—Feb. 5, 1833.

Toleration of Missionaries.—“With respect to the resolutions which related to the moral improvement of the negro, he had an amendment to propose—namely, to omit the words “A liberal and comprehensive system of education.” No man could be more desirous than he was, that when the negro became free he should receive every moral improvement which could be communicated to him; but those who were aware that the words in question were introduced into the resolutions on the proposition of an honourable member of the other House, were aware that they pointed to the toleration and encouragement of missionaries; and there could be no doubt, if they were adopted, society in the West Indies would continue to be, as it had been, greatly disturbed.”—June 25, 1833.

East India Company’s Trade.—“From what he had then, and from what he had since seen, he must say that he thought the government of the East India Company was the best and most purely administered that he had ever witnessed. It was not now a question whether a chartered government was the best for carrying on the double operations of trade and government, or for carrying on only one of these things. He had seen the company in the days of their glory, and when it was at the head of a population of one hundred millions; and notwithstanding it had been engaged almost continually in wars, its debt was only forty millions sterling. It was, therefore, untrue to tell the people of this country that such a government was unfit for the purposes of government and trade, when hitherto it had united both.”—July 5, 1833.

Reform Bill.—“I should wish to ask the noble lord (Earl Grey) how any ministry will hereafter be able to conduct the king’s government with a parliament such as will be returned by this Bill?”

Irish Church Temporalities’ Bill.—“The great object on all these occasions was to support the Protestant religion in Ireland. Now, if the present measure were passed, they would be contented to pass from that principle entirely. How was it consistent for Parliament with the Act of Union, which declared the two churches to be united, fresh in remembrance—to pass such a measure as this? Besides, his majesty positively swore to support the Church of England in all its rights, privileges, and immunities. He did not quote the precise words, but the meaning of the oath evidently was that his majesty was thereby bound to maintain the Protestant Church in its full powers.”—July 11, 1833.

Debate on the Address.—“He had opposed the measure regarding the West India colonies from the commencement, for he thought he foresaw great injury from it to the interests of the country, and he should be happy to find he had been misinformed and deceived on this subject.” * * “A change takes place in the government of Spain, in consequence of the will of the late king; till then the undisputed successor, Don Carlos, retires into Portugal, and thus the war is encouraged and kept up. This state of things would not continue if we were on terms of amity with Don Miguel.” * * “A measure was brought forward last session—the municipal commission; he was bound to say that it was well worthy of their lordships’ consideration, to pause and reflect ere they proceeded upon reports (i. e. those of the commissioners), when strong doubts were entertained of the legality of the commission under whose authority they were formed. But setting this consideration aside, he would make one observation which he was desirous emphatically to utter. He doubted, much doubted, whether it would be expedient to establish a new municipal constitution on the ten pound franchise. He considered such to be impracticable: and he even thought that ministers themselves could not have that confidence in the ten pound householders as to delegate to them so great and so important a trust.”—Feb. 4, 1834.

Cambridge Petition.—“Who and what were the Dissenters? Many of them differed but little except in one or two points of doctrine from the established church; others of them did not agree with the church of England in any one point; others denied the Trinity; and others wereATHEISTS: and would it, he asked, be desirable to place such persons in a situation to inflict injury upon the established church? * * He could not consider it to be the business of either house of parliament to interfere with the rules and regulations of other bodies, and those such corporate bodies as our universities.”—March 21, 1834.

Admission of Dissenters into the Universities.—“When Dissenters would have gotten degrees they would in time become governors; they would hold the education of the people in their hands, and would instantly supersede the constitution which at present governed the universities. He would not then enter into the consequences which would inevitably result if such a measure were adopted, which God forbid. The consequences would be most disastrous. The connexion between church and state would be destroyed—the religion of the country would be menaced, nay, THE VERY EXISTENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ITSELF.”—April 20, 1834.

The Irish Church Commission.—“Was the Church Temporalities Bill, he asked, intended to be a final one? EVERY THING WAS DONE by that measure which could possibly be effective to reduce the property of the church to the very lowest rate.”—June 6, 1834.

Principle of Free Trade.—“They had heard a great deal of free trade in other countries, but in his opinion there was no such thing as a free trade at all. He therefore would be favourable to such an increase of duty on foreign silks as to give a change to the home market.”—June 17, 1834.

The Irish Coercion Bill.—“It had been stated as a reason for abandoning the former bill, that though it might pass that house it would not pass in another place. In this opinion he could not agree, as he was satisfied that no government possessed the confidence of that other house in a greater degree than did the late administration (that of Early Grey), and he was equally satisfied that notwithstanding the late resignations, the present government (that of Lord Melbourne), possessed at this moment the same confidence there as when it was assisted by the talents and character of the noble earl on the opposite side.”—July 29, 1834.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

Reform Bill.—“Time and good patience may reconcile me to physical pain or moral danger, but to this measure I never can become reconciled. The more I consider it, the more I am satisfied of its dangerous and mischievous character.”—April, 1832.

Malt Tax.—“With respect to the total repeal of the Malt Tax, he still adhered to the opinion he had stated in the last session—the House could not consent to such an excessive reduction of taxation, as would be implied in the repeal of the Malt Tax.”—Feb. 27, 1834.

Pension List.—“You are now going to dry up the sources of that power of bestowing rewards for service, which was once considered essential to the well-being of the state. I challenge you to produce the instances in which there has been a corrupt appropriation of the pension fund. I admit that pensions have been granted as acts of royal favour, without reference to public service.”—May 5, 1834.

LORD ABERDEEN.

Legitimacy.—“Nine-tenths of the people of Portugal were favourable to Don Mignel.”

Belgian Revolution.—“The king (the Dutch king) has conducted himself above all praise, and if it please, I trust his merits will meet with due success. In truth, the cause of Holland is so just a cause, so good a cause, that it must prosper; and when I say the cause of Holland, I entreat your lordships to believe that I mean the cause of England also, for I consider them inseparable and identical.”

X.—

WHIG CLAIMS TO NATIONAL CONFIDENCE.

As we do not reckon to be bound to ‘men or measures,’ but try to find out and hold fast by that which is good in either, we give insertion without hesitation to the following. It is a summary of the real or supposed benefits conferred by the Reform Ministry and Reform Parliament. It is what Mrs. Austin would call a ‘one-sided statement;’ but as the Whigs are in trouble, and likely soon to be put on trial before the whole country, it would be unjust to suppress any evidence that could be adduced in their favour. Among their good deeds are reckoned these:—

Taken off taxes to the annual amount

£5,235,000

Lessened the annual expenses of the government

3,471,000

Lessened the number of official persons, 1858—salaries thereby saved

259,230

Abolished upwards of 2000 places—salaries saved

362,250

Reduced the salaries of the ministers, chief-justices, attorney, and solicitors general, and all salaries above £1000 per annum

199,429

Reduced salaries and allowances of ambassadors, consuls, &c.

50,525

Reduced the expenditure of the navy

1,220,000

Two boards of stamps and taxes thrown into one, with various other economical regulations.

House-tax

repealed.

Duty on printed cottons

repealed.

Duty on candles

repealed.

Duty on starch, stone-bottles, and sweets

repealed.

Duty on soap

reduced one-half.

Duty on slates and coal

repealed.

Duty on tiles

repealed.

Duty on hemp

reduced.

Duty on drugs

reduced.

Duty on apples, currants, and fruit

reduced.

Duty on cotton wool

reduced.

Duty on oil

reduced.

Duty on books

reduced.

Stamps on marine insurance

reduced.

Stamps on fire assurance—farming stock

repealed.

Duty on advertisements

reduced.

Stamps on small receipts

repealed.

Land tax on personal estates

repealed.

Duty on pamphlets and almanacks

repealed.

Duty on commercial travellers

repealed.

Duty on clerks and book-keepers

repealed.

Bachelors’ tax on Catholic clergymen

repealed.

Duty on horses of clergymen and dissenting ministers—if salary under £120

repealed.

Duty on tax carts

repealed.

Duty on overseers, warehousemen, and shopmen

reduced.

The Irish church placed on a more satisfactory footing by the abolition of several useless bishopricks, and adding to the salaries of the inferior clergy.

Irish church-cess abolished.

Bill for the abolition of Irish tithe carried through the Commons but rejected by the Lords.

The Bank charter renewed on a more liberal system, a monthly report of its accounts to be made public; and to pay £120,000 a-year to the public for its privileges. Also quarterly returns from private bankers of their notes in circulation required.

The East India monopoly destroyed; all India and China thrown open to British enterprise and employment of British capital. The charter granted designated by Mr. O’Connell, ‘the great charter’ of the Indian people.

Negro slavery abolished.

Great and salutary changes effected in the law, particularly in the Court of Chancery, in which alone the public will save £96,000 per annum.

Established the Court of Bankruptcy, by which a vast saving of time and expense has been effected to creditors.

Established the Central Criminal Court, the jurisdiction of which extends over a population of 1,700,000, and which by monthly sessions affords facilities for the speedy trial of offenders.

Established a ‘Judicial Committee’ of the Privy Council for the prompt decision of appeals and admiralty causes.

Abolished the punishment of death for housebreaking, forgery, and returning from transportation.

Almost gave political existence to Scotland by new representative, corporate, and police institutions.

Laid the foundation of a new and, it is hoped, an amended system of Poor Laws, and appointed a commission of inquiry into the practicability of introducing Poor Laws into Ireland.

Commissions of inquiry appointed to inquire into the state of corporations in England and Ireland, and into the state of the churches of the two kingdoms preparatory to effective reforms.

Preserved the peace of Europe without compromising the honour or interests of the empire, and by the Quadruple Treaty of alliance guaranteed the maintenance of the free governments of Spain and Portugal.

Lastly, commerce and manufactures were never more flourishing than under the late Ministry, and by negociations with France and other means attempts were being made still further to extend them.

XI.—

MILITIA, YEOMANRY AND VOLUNTEERS.

Abstract of Accounts of the sums actually expended in each year, for the Militia and for the Yeomanry and Volunteer Corps of the United Kingdom, from the 1st January, 1816, to 1st January, 1834.

Militia.

Yeomanry.

1816

£306,306

£112,598

1817

381,668

138,813

1818

365,510

118,736

1819

375,545

123,729

1820

418,537

185,479

1821

420,377

207,568

1822

340,617

184,317

1823

332,093

142,944

1824

326,901

144,514

1825

418,194

129,281

1826

359,613

162,480

1827

333,127

151,027

1828

335,516

58,715

1829

308,421

63,027

1830

243,629

70,345

1831

372,331

184,883

1832

226,840

96,482

1833

222,173

92,406

Totals

£6,084,406

£2,367,348

XII.—

PROPORTION OF CHURCHMEN AND DISSENTERS.

(From the Congregational Magazine, Dec. 1, 1834.)

A comparative view of the Hearers, Communicants, and Scholars, belonging to Churchmen, Dissenters, and Wesleyan Methodists, in 203 towns and villages of England; compiled from local returns transmitted to the Congregational Union.

Places of Worship.

Hearers.

Communicants.

Scholars.

Dissenters

634

231701

47276

75767

Methodists

214

74897

22377

38706

Total Nonconformists

848

306598

69653

114473

Episcopalians

330

166099

9625

47247

Excess of Nonconformists

518

140499

60028

67226

XIII.—

OBITUARY AND CORRECTIONS.

Since the publication of the last edition of The Black Book in 1832, the following deaths have occurred in the List of Placemen, Pensioners, and Sinecurists.

Arbuthnot, Harriet, pension on civil list

£938

Bathurst, earl, teller of the exchequer

2700

Birnie, sir R., chief magistrate, Bow-street

1200

Bingham, major gen. sir G. R. commander, Ireland

1210

Blackwood, vice-admiral sir G. R, commander of the Nore, &c.

3255

Brent, T. secretary to board of green cloth, &c.

1466

Clinton and Say, lord, lord of the bedchamber

500

Conygham, marquis, steward of the household

636

Donoughmore, gen., earl of; as colonel, searcher, pensioner, &c.

5044

Fitzgerald, lord, late minister at Lisbon

1700

Fitzgerald, lord Robert, pension on civil list

800

Gloucester, duke of, parliamentary allowance out of the consolidated fund, exclusive of his military appointments and the allowance of the duchess

14000

Grant, sir Wm., late master of the rolls

3750

Grenville, lord, auditor of the exchequer

4000

Greville, Charles, comptroller in excise, &c.

1522

Leach, sir John, master of the rolls

7000

Leake, R. M., master of the report-office in Chancery, (office abolished)

4589

Macdonald, sir James, commissioner of India board, &c.

1200

Mackintosh, sir James, commissioner of India board, and pensioner of the East India Company

2400

Macleod, lieut. gen. sir John, colonel, commandant, horse-artillery and master-gunner, St. James’-park

2782

Manchester, duchess dowager of, as late collector of customs

2928

Mornington, countess of, mother of the duke of Wellington, and pensioner

600

Mulgrave, countess of, pensioner on civil list

800

Mulgrave, lord, general, col. of 31st foot, gov. of Scarborough, &c.

made no return.

Newcastle, Ann, duchess dowager of; resigned her pension of £800 a year on the civil list before her death

Pell, sir A., puisne-judge, Bankruptcy Court

£2000

Penn, John, hereditary pension on consolidated fund

3000

Portmore, earl of, pensioner on the Scotch and English civil lists

509

Seymour, captain sir M., naval commissioner, Portsmouth

1100

Scott, W. H. I., son of lord Eldon; sinecures, offices, and reversion

14789

Spottiswoode, G. king’s printer

made no return.

Tarleton, gen. sir B., as colonel, governor, and pensioner

2190

Taunton, sir W. C., puisne-judge, court of king’s bench

5500

Tenterden, lord, chief justice of the king’s bench

10000

Villiers, G. W. F., commissioner of customs

1200

Wyndham, hon. P. C., West India offices and sinecures

5526

Yorke, C. P., teller of the exchequer

2700

N.B.—The hon. Charles Bathurst and James Moore, Esq., have resigned their pensions on the civil list.

Church of Ireland.—The reforms introduced and projected in the Irish church since the publication of the last edition of the Black Book, have been noticed at page 6 of this Appendix.

Court of Chancery.—By 2 and 3 Will. IV., c. 3, the offices of clerk or keeper of the hanaper, the patentee of the subpœna office, the registrar of affidavits, the clerk of the crown in chancery, the clerk of the patents, the clerk of the custodies of lunatics and idiots, the prothonotary of the court of chancery, the chaff wax, the sealer, the clerk of the presentations, the clerk of inrollments in bankruptcy, (subsequently reappointed,) the clerk of dispensations and faculties, and the patentee for the execution of the laws and statutes concerning bankruptcy were to cease and determine from August 20th, 1833.

By the same Act, and in lieu of the loss of patronage thereby occasioned, the retiring pension of the Lord Chancellor is augmented to £5000 per annum. For other reforms in the offices of the Court of Chancery, see 3 and 4 Will. IV. cap. 84 and cap. 94.

House of Commons.—By 4 and 5 Will. IV. cap. 70, the salary of the present speaker is continued at £6000, but on the appointment of a new speaker, salary reduced to £5000. Future secretary of the speaker to receive £500. Clerk of the House of Commons to receive £2000; clerk assistant £1500; second clerk assistant £1000; sergeant-at-arms £1500; deputy sergeant-at-arms £800. The sinecure offices of committee clerk and engrossing clerk are abolished.

The Navy.—Total number of Officers in the Navy January 1, 1834, distinguishing those employed afloat:—

No. of each rank.

Employed afloat.

Admirals

44

2

Vice-admirals

51

4

Rear-admirals

64

5

Retired rear-admirals

34

0

Retired captains

9

0

Captains

783

53

Commanders

867

59

Retired commanders

100

0

Lieutenants with the rank of retired commander

176

0

Lieutenants

3,160

372

Dead Weight.—The total amount of Reduced Allowances for 1833 for the Army, Navy, Ordnance, and Civil Departments, is £5,194,576 : 17 : 10.—Parl. Pap. No. 563, Sess. 1834.

LIST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE ANTI-REFORM GOVERNMENT; WITH THEIR CHARACTERISTIC ADDITIONS.

I.—

NEW CABINET MINISTERS.

PEEL, sir Robert, first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer.

The premier’s claims to public confidence may be decided by two points of his Tamworth address. He could not pledge himself to corporation reform, but he would give to the ‘suggestions’ of the Commissioners ‘a full and unprejudiced consideration.’ So sir Robert has yet to learn that the corporations of England and Ireland need reformation! Secondly, ‘I cannot give my consent to the alienation of church property in any part of the United Kingdom from strictly ecclesiastical purposes.’ This means that for the maintenance of the Irish sinecure church he will perpetuate the military executions of Rathcormack, and yield no substantial relief to the grievances of the Dissenters. From such a dreadful Reformer as sir Robert, heaven preserve us!

LYNDHURST, lord, lord high chancellor of England.

An accomplished judge but no law reformer, as his first chancellorship proved, and in favour of hanging for forgery. A second Shaftesbury in politics, with a private trait or two of the late Sheridan, and reputed patron of Mr. Barnes, the supervisor of the ‘leading journal of Europe.’ Upon the Reform Bill, April 2, 1832, lord Lyndhurst said,—‘Let me conjure you, then, by voting against the second reading of this Bill, to avoid those calamities which menace the Constitution.’

ROSLYN, earl of, lord president of the council.

Commonly called ‘rat Roslyn,’ but not, as reported, without ‘a tail.’ since, beside his lord presidentship, he is general in the army, colonel of 9th lancers, and director of chancery, Scotland.

WHARNCLIFFE, baron, lord privy seal.

We suspect this honest but prejudiced old Tory has had more to do with late changes than the world is aware of. If we are not misinformed the ‘odd trick’ of a great personage, in suddenly dismissing his ministers, was mainly brought about by the ‘Dragon of Wantley’ and earl Munster, the last of whom the Whigs did not think quite worthy of the governor-generalship of India. The privy seal gentleman, it will be recollected, was at the head of the ‘Waverers’ in the House of Lords, and had the audacity to move for the absolute rejection of the Reform Bill. The baron is bold, and oftener than once has distinguished himself in Yorkshire in the van of his yeomanry cavalry.

WELLINGTON, duke of, secretary for the foreign department.

About ‘his Highness’ there can be no mistake. But really his modesty in yielding the premiership to sir Robert is a new trait of character we were unapprised of. His grace may have other virtues that blush unseen, beside even his love of the Turk and Don Carlos.

GOULBURN, right hon. H. secretary for the home department.

Pensioner of £2000 a-year as late Irish secretary. From his famous speech on the civil list in 1830 he seems to differ with the late Charles James Fox, and to doubt, with Machiavel, whether in matters of government, ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ His bungling oration on the last mentioned occasion was in great part the unintentional cause of the upsetting of the Wellington ministry, and was a fine attempt at the ‘humbug,’ as his doings in respect of French claims and the sugar duties were of the ‘hotch-potch.’ Notwithstanding, he will make an excellent home secretary on the Sidmouth model, and we dare say will have no objection to revive, if needful, a little of the Oliver and Castles system. After his speeches on the Universities Bill he must be as great a consolation to the Dissenters of England as sir H. Hardinge is to the Catholics of Ireland. Upon the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, last year, Feb. 12, Mr. Goulburn said, ‘Of this he was convinced, that the church must be ultimately one of the best means of the salvation of the country.’ We wish it may prove true, and if rightly interpreted we are not sure it may not so turn out.

ABERDEEN, earl of, secretary for the colonial department.

Formerly secretary for foreign affairs, and as profoundly versed in the conceits of diplomacy (mind this is no joke) as in matters of antiquarian research. The noble lord is altogether an antique, and one is at a loss to discover his fitness for grappling with the modern difficulties likely to arise in the West India colonies. But this is the Duke’s, or rather, and by courtesy, we should say his man Robert’s affair and not ours.

DE GREY, earl, first lord of the admiralty.

Alias Robinson, alias Thomas Philip Weddell, alias lord Grantham, alias the custos rot. of Bedfordshire, alias the eldest brother of the earl of Ripon. The various designations this nobleman has thought fit to assume renders his personal identification difficult, but he is best known, we believe, by his second title of lord Grantham, and used to be more distinguished by his large whiskers than any thing else. He is colonel of the York hussar yeomanry cavalry, and no doubt the blue Peters of the royal fleet, as well as the masters attendant and so forth of the dock-yards, will be greatly edified by having their stores and rigging overhauled by one so admirably fit for the office as the new first lord of the admiralty.

MURRAY, sir George, master-general of the ordnance.

Has valuable military appointments as colonel and governor, and his wife, who is a daughter of the old lord Uxbridge, and first married an Erskine, is a pensioner. Sir George, who is an able quarter-master-general, may have satisfied himself (for we are partial judges in our own cause) but has satisfied nobody else about his tergiversations with the Dissenters, and his rejection by the electors of Perthshire is one of the most pleasing results of the general election.

BARING, right hon. Alex. president of the board of trade and master of the mint.

A very puzzling personage this, who bears true allegiance to nought save his long purse. In 1824 Mr. Baring headed the merchants of London in petitioning for free trade. He has since become a restrictionist in commercial matters, and will perhaps go along with the Duke in carrying us back to the dark ages of monopoly. But, as before hinted, he is an undefinable being. Even in the House of Commons he generally speaks one way (oftener two or three) and votes another, and we verily believe if he were not compelled by the rules of the house to give plumpers he would split his vote into fractional parts. Marquis Chandos could not go into the ministry because he differed with sir Robert Peel on the malt duty, but ‘Jock o’ the Mint, (an apt office truly for a loan-monger and millionaire,) though of the same opinion as the marquis according to the latest return (Feb. 27, 1834,) yet, being of a more multiform character, was able, we suppose, on condition of plural offices to compromise with the premier.

ELLENBOROUGH, lord, president of the board of control.

Receives about £9000 a-year from sinecure appointments derived from his father, the hurly burly chief justice, who, according to the writers in the Law Magazine, was partial to red herrings; as much so seemingly as judge Jefferies to home-brewed, with which, in a cellar in Wapping, he was caught tippling after perpetrating his cruelties in the west of England. In the good old times of Toryism, when offices in the superior courts formed regular articles of traffic, two of the most lucrative in the King’s Bench, and in the gift of the then chief justice Ellenborough, became vacant. For one of them, the chief clerkship, his lordship was offered £80,000, but he preferred keeping it in his own hands until his son was of age, and to whom he gave the appointment, receiving during his minority the emoluments, which swelled his official income to £16,000 a-year, and enabled him after death to bequeath £320,000 personal property. It is surprising that a system which afforded such delicious pickings should be looked back upon with fond recollections, and even now be tenaciously clung to? We wonder whether the priggish President on his re-appointment to the India Board will revive his famous receipt for the management of the India judges by placing the wild ones between two ‘tame elephants.’ An imputation of an ‘itchy palm’ has been broached against the noble lord, but as it hangs on a slender thread we scorn to notice the accusation.

KNATCHBULL, sir Edward, paymaster of the forces.

An obtuse and inveterate Tory from his father. At a Church-and-King dinner, Dec. 20, 1834, sir Edward said,—‘It was his fixed determination to continue to pursue the path which had met their approbation;’ in the same breath expressing the certainty that ‘they would consult the best interests of the country by keeping the Church and State JUSTas delivered to them by their ancestors.’ Within a month after he receives an important appointment in the government, is made a cabinet minister and privy counsellor; which, we should think, puts an end to the farce of sir Robert’s being a reforming administration.

HERRIES, right hon. J. C. secretary-at-war.

Pensioner of £1400 a-year, and man of detail, who has graduated through the offices of chief commissary, auditor of the civil list, and chancellor of the exchequer. Character, in this instance, cannot be requisite.

HARDINGE, sir H. chief secretary for Ireland.

This is the unkindest cut of all, and sir Henry is a cutting man, who rather unnecessarily, we think, sought some time ago to signalise his courage on a very amiable nobleman. But what a mind and temper to select to still the boiling cauldron of Ireland and disintegrate her social chaos! It cannot be sir Robert Peel’s appointment; it must be the Duke’s, who has been desirous of raising, like himself, one of his military bravos to civil distinction.

II.—

NOT OF THE NEW CABINET.

So distinguished, we suppose, as men who are to act and not to think like their superiors, the Cabinet Ministers. We shall dispatch them with very brief notices.

HADDINGTON, earl of, lord lieutenant of Ireland.

Like the office of executioner, the viceroyship does not appear to have been much sought after or coveted. Rumour first gave it to the duke of Buccleuch, a young Scotch nobleman, with twenty-four titles, and an income of £220,000 per annum, but minus all besides, and in the opinion of the Duke not even qualified for a deputy-kingship. Next it was laid at the door of the valiant DE GREY; and is finally vested in the present possessor, who formerly was a follower of George Canning, and is best known as lord Binning. And—

- “What is lord Binning made of?

- Pinch of snuff,

- Second-hand stuff,

- Such is lord Binning made of, made of.”

- New Tory Guide.

Poor Ireland, how sadly her maladies are misunderstood, and how deplorable her situation, when doctors Hardinge and Haddington, aided by sir E. Sugden as chief apothecary, are sent to ‘kill or cure!’

LOWTHER, viscount, treasurer of the navy and vice-president of the board of trade.

Not amiss as a surveyor of the roads, but we never heard of his acquaintanceship with trade.

WYNNE, C. W. W. chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.

Gave up a place in the Whig government from repugnance to the Reform Bill. His sinecure of £4000 a-year, seems a bonus for the Grenvillites. The family history would fill a volume, and we cannot enter into it.

MARYBOROUGH, lord, postmaster-general.

Brother of the duke of Wellington; formerly chief secretary of Ireland, and afterwards master of the king’s dogs, or something of that kind.

SOMERSET, Granville, lord, chief commissioner of woods and forests.

Relative, we suspect, as well as (post) the surveyor of the ordnance, of the duke of Beaufort, the head of an old ultra-Tory family, whose ramifications in Church and State under the Liverpool-Castlereagh domination were almost innumerable.

PEEL, right hon. W. Yates, lord of the treasury.

Brother of the premier, first lord of the treasury.

LINCOLN, earl of, lord of the treasury.

Son of the duke of Newcastle, who claims ‘the right to do what he will with his own.’

STORMONT, viscount, lord of the treasury.

Son of the earl of Mansfield, the enemy of all reform, who inherits a freehold patrimony of £20,000 a-year, and whose mother has a pension of £1000 a-year out of the 41/2 per cent. West India duty, and who is also mother of general George Murray and of Fulke Greville, and mother-in-law of the hon. Finch Hatton, brother of lord Winchelsea. The viscount was M.P. for Norwich, and at the late election dinner there said he always felt a ‘violent dislike to reform.’ He is a noted prig, and on the occasion last-mentioned had the impertinence to hold up lord Durham as ‘the vendor of nostrums.’

ROSS, Charles, lord of the treasury.

M.P. for Northampton, son-in-law of the marquis Cornwallis, and West India proprietor. Meant, it is said, to be ministerial whipper-in, though he lacks the good temper of his predecessor Mr. W. Holmes, who, pending the distribution of the loaves and fishes, was locked up with the gout at Berlin.

GLADSTONE, W. E. lord of the treasury.

Son of the East India and West India Liverpool merchant, who was a great idolater of Mr. Canning, and managed his election interests. The junior treasury lord is reputed to have been clever at Eton, and owes his seat for Newark to his patron, the anti-Catholic, anti-reforming duke of Newcastle.

Such are the five chosen colleagues of sir Robert Peel at the Treasury board. They are the pink of Toryism, and give an anti-reform hue to his ministry which no addresses nor candid explanations can efface. The treasury secretaries, sir G. Clerk and sir T. Fremantle, are of the same dye.

DAWSON, G. R. secretary to the admiralty.

Vice John Wilson Croker, whose name we miss in our List, and for whose absence we cannot account, unless he is a disappointed man in not having obtained the first lordship of the admiralty. The junior lords of the navy board are sir George Cockburn, sir John Poer Beresford, sir Charles Rowley, lord Ashley, and Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald. ‘Peel, Dawson, and Co.’ used to be a regular joke with the abandoned cast-off Old Times newspaper.

PRAED, W. M. secretary to the board of control.

This honourable gentleman would needs feel embarrassed if some of his present associates were to read to him the lampoons he directed against them seven years ago. The commissioners of the India board, of which Mr. Praed is secretary, are sir A. C. Grant, right hon. John Sullivan, and Joseph Planta, esq. and pensioner of £1500 per annum.

SOMERSET, lord Edward, surveyor-general of the ordnance.

OWEN, sir Edward, clerk of the ordnance.

BONHAM, F. R. storekeeper of the ordnance.

PERCEVAL, colonel Alexander, treasurer of the ordnance.

The last, bad as it is, is not out of keeping with the new government, which is a gathering of the extremes of Toryism. The gallant colonel is the “fidus Achates” of the low Orangemen of Ireland; a person of the strongest prejudices, the weakest head, and of the smallest influence of any colonel either of militia or marines in Christendom.

BECKETT, sir John, judge-advocate-general.

Brother-in-law of viscount Lowther, and a native of Leeds. Professionally a lawyer, but long an industrious official of punctual habits and moderate abilities. The resignation of Mr. Marshall, and the neck-and-neck run sir John had with Mr. Baines for the representation makes it barely possible he might succeed at a second venture. This, however, would be no proof of the predominance of Toryism in Leeds; it would only prove the influence of the vicar, of a self-elected corporation, and of an old banking family which for two generations has borne itself respectably. Of the whole body of electors in the United Kingdom how few are political characters, and of those who are, how few are at liberty to vote according to their political predilections! For the Leeds Radicals we have much respect, and if they will excuse the liberty, we will vouchsafe a word of advice, roughly given but honestly intended, and which is that they will not play the fool in the event of a contest, but if by union they can keep out the judge-advocate, do so, and thereby, in the existing crisis, render their country a service.

ELIOT, lord, under-secretary, home department.

MAHON, viscount, under secretary, foreign department.

Son of earl Stanhope, and Chairman of the West Kent conservative meeting. The bribery used at a former election for Hertford caused his lordship to be ousted from his seat, and the issue of a new writ was suspended several months.

WORTLEY, hon. J. Stuart, under secretary, colonial department.

Son of lord Wharncliffe, and held some office, we believe, under the late Ministry. Rejected candidate for Forfarshire.

III.—

LAW APPOINTMENTS.

SCARLETT, sir James, lord chief baron of the Exchequer.

The new Lord Abinger seems likely to terminate his career much in the same way as if he had stuck to his old friends, and die at last a peer and pensioner. In spite of his rubicund equanimity, sir James must have experienced considerable political chagrin, and the last, we “guess,” has been the pleasantest Christmas of some years. The learned chief baron recollects, no doubt, the year when the late chancellor, then the Queen’s attorney-general, almost killed himself by over-exertion to outshine him on the Northern circuit.

SUGDEN, sir Edward, lord chancellor of Ireland.

Said to have given up a practice of £20,000 a year, which is a great sacrifice for a pension, and most likely short-lived legal distinction. Except as a lawyer, sir Edward is a Lilliputian of the narrowest dimension. He has, however, the credit of being the first Tory convert, or ‘conformer,’ having two months since, at Merchant Tailors’ Hall, expressed himself favourable to the removal of ‘proved abuses,’ so far and so forth as is compatible with the maintenance of existing institutions, &c.

POLLOCK, sir Frederick, King’s attorney-general.

Son of the late King’s saddler, at Charing-cross, and opposed to the admission of Dissenters into the Universities.

FOLLETT, sir William, solicitor-general.

Has made a flourishing speech at Exeter for the ‘good old cause’ of Church and King.

RAE, sir William, lord advocate of Scotland.

The lady of sir William has a large pension on the civil list, granted under the Wellington administration as a compensation to the lord advocate for loss of emolument as sheriff depute.

PENNEFATHER, sergeant, attorney-general for Ireland.

JACKSON, Devonsher, solicitor-general for Ireland.

Some of the writers of the public press, from whom more discrimination might have been expected, have vouchsafed their approbation of the legal appointments of the new Ministers. The infamy of lawyers seldom appears until they accept government employment. That the new functionaries are respectable and of ability are unavoidable conditions of their offices; for at this day no other could be selected, or at least would be tolerated, either for judges or King’s attorney-general. But as to their political tendencies, they are as bad as possible; for they are renegados or high prerogative men of strong prejudices, and what worse could we have for the present times?

IV.—

ROYAL HOUSEHOLD APPOINTMENTS.

JERSEY, earl of, lord chamberlain; son-in-law of lord Westmoreland.

DORSET, duke of, master of the horse; a bachelor.

FORESTER, lord, or lord Chesterfield, master of the buck-hounds.

Offered to, but refused by the former, and accepted by the latter, who had no objection to £3000 a-year.

RODEN, earl of, lord steward.

Connected with a bishop of infamous memory. This, however, is nothing, since we are not responsible for relatives; the valid objection to placing lord Roden near the royal person is that he is an Orangemen as mad as colonels Conolly and Perceval. At a great protestant meeting held in Dublin, Aug. 14, 1834, speaking of the commissioners appointed to investigate the abuses of the Irish church, lord Roden said, ‘That in numbering the heads of the protestants of Ireland, they were at the same time numbering their lives!’

*∗* Since the publication of a former edition of the APPENDIX this appointment has been abandoned.

CASTLEREAGH, viscount, vice-chamberlain; son of the marquis of Londonderry.

The last is the newly-appointed ambassador to St. Petersburgh; and to whom Mr. Liddell, the son of lord Ravensworth, is secretary.

CORRY, hon. Henry, comptroller of the household.

HOWE, earl, lord-chamberlain to the Queen.

DENBIGH, earl of, master of the horse to the Queen.

After going through the above List, our indignation is renewed at the attempt made to palm it upon the country as a Reforming Ministry. It is, as before remarked, a complete revival of the No Popery—Six Acts—Corruption-worshipping faction. Shades of difference in political sentiment there are none worth remarking. They are all Tories, all anti-reformers, all men, save perhaps only lord Denbigh, who zealously opposed the Reform Acts; and this is the great distinction between them and their predecessors, who laboured for and accomplished the destruction of the rotten borough system.

The Address purporting to be from the ‘Merchants, Bankers, Shipowners, Traders, and others connected with the city of London,’ expresses attachment to our ‘mixed constitution of king, lords, and commons;’ and who assails them,—who wishes to re-model the form of government? The only destructives—the only assailants of public institutions—are the men who are covertly seeking to destroy the salutary amendments of the last four years. We are surprised at such weak subterfuges of the enemy.

What is the array of 5000 or 6000 signatures in the Address worth as an exponent of the political sentiments of this vast metropolis, collected, as they are, from a circuit as wide as the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court? Within much narrower local limits, taking only the two cities of London and Westminster and the suburban boroughs of Marylebone, Lambeth, Finsbury, Greenwich, and the Tower Hamlets, there are 122,879 £10 householders, which is twenty-four times the number of the Addressers. In the London Directory there are 80,000 names of merchants, bankers, shipowners, and others, of which, it seems, the city Tories have only been able to obtain 5000, leaving an overwhelming majority of 75,000 persons of another way of thinking. The Address and its ostentatious list of signatures establish incontestably the weakness of the conservative cause, and its publication can only be serviceable to the proprietors of the Times, who, by their own acknowledgment, pocketed 240 guineas for its insertion in a supplemental sheet of their journal.

It is not the only ray of light which will be elicited by the general election. The return for the metropolitan district, embracing a concentrated population of nearly two millions, of reform members, affords an indication of the state of public opinion that neither sir R. Peel nor the duke of Wellington can misunderstand, and by which, we doubt not, they will be admonished, unless they be as far gone in delirium as their Orange and high-church colleagues.

PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES.

IN reply to inquiries connected with a General Election, the Author of the BLACK BOOK begs publicly to announce that he is ready to offer himself (free of expense) a Candidate for the representation of any City or Borough in Parliament, in opposition to a Tory or Conservative Whig; but he will not, when union is so essential, divide the reform interest,—that is, he will not weaken the popular cause by being brought forward as a third man, in any case, where it may endanger the return of a brother Radical, or even a Liberal Reformer. By a Liberal Reformer is meant a Reformer who has generally supported the late Ministers, and who is in favour of the Ballot, Short Parliaments, Household Suffrage, and a thorough reform of the Church and Corporations.

CHEAP WEEKLY POLITICAL PUBLICATION.

On Saturday, in the first Week of the meeting of Parliament, No. 1. of a Weekly Review and Register of Politics, Literature, and Statistics,

ENTITLED

THE GOOD SENSE.

By the Author of “The Black Book,” “The History of the Middle and Working Classes,” &c.

THE design of this new periodical work is not only to furnish a cheap weekly Review and Register of Politics, Literature, and Statistical Information, but to establish those principles of political and social amelioration which the Editor has inculcated in his former publications.

MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT, FENCHURCH-STREET.

Table of Contents

Cover

Liberty Fund

Online Library of Liberty

Copyright

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NEW EDITION.

ADDRESS TO THE NEW EDITION.

DEDICATION TO THE PEOPLE.

ADDENDUM.

MINISTERIAL PLANS ON TITHES.

The Black Book: An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State, Courts of Law, Municipal Corporations, and Public Companies

CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

I.: ORIGIN AND TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.

II.: PATRONAGE OF THE CHURCH.

III.: SINECURISM—NON-RESIDENCE—PLURALITIES—CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

IV.: REVENUES OE THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY.

V.: RAPACITY OF THE CLERGY EXEMPLIFIED.

VI.: ORIGIN AND DEFECTS OF THE CHURCH LITURGY.

VII.: NUMBER, WEALTH, MORAL AND EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS.

VIII.: WHO WOULD BE BENEFITED BY A REFORM OF THE CHURCH?

LIST OF BISHOPS, DIGNITARIES, AND PLURALISTS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

EXPLANATIONS.

VALUATION OF SEES AND DIGNITIES IN THE KING'S BOOK.

CHURCH OF IRELAND.

Non-residence of the Irish Clergy.

Oppressiveness of the Tithe System.

Proportion of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.

Management of the First Fruits Fund.

Promotions in the Irish Church.

Intolerance towards Dissenters and Roman Catholics.

Crisis of the Irish Church at the close of 1831.

Conclusion.

REVENUES OF THE CROWN.

CROWN LANDS.

DROITS OF THE CROWN AND ADMIRALTY.

FOUR-AND-A-HALF PER CENT. DUTIES.

SCOTCH CIVIL LIST—GIBRALTAR DUTIES—ESCHEATS—DUCHIES OF CORNWALL AND LANCASTER—FINES AND PENALTIES.

THE CIVIL LIST.

CIVIL LIST OF WILLIAM IV.

ROYAL DEBTS AND EXPENDITURE DURING THE LATE REIGNS.

POLICY AND CHARACTER OF THE TWO LATE REIGNS.

CIVIL LIST ACCOUNTS.

IRISH CIVIL LIST.

SCOTCH CIVIL LIST.

PRIVY COUNCIL, DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS, AND CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS.

AMBASSADORS AND DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS.

CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS.

THE ARISTOCRACY.

I.: RIGHT OF PRIMOGENITURE AND ENTAILS.

II.: PRIVILEGES OF PEERS.

III.: INJUSTICE OF ARISTOCRATIC TAXATION.

IV.: ARISTOCRATIC GAME-LAWS.

V.: INCOMES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.

VI.: INCREASE OF THE PEERAGE.

VII.: SOURCES OF ARISTOCRATIC MONOPOLY.

LAW AND COURTS OF LAW.

SUMMARY OF LEGAL ABUSES AND DEFECTS.

ABSURDITIES AND DELAYS IN ADMINISTRATIVE JUSTICE.

OPPRESSIONS UNDER THE EXCISE-LAWS.

PROSPECTS OF LEGAL REFORM.

JUDGES' SALARIES.

COURT OF CHANCERY.

MASTERS IN CHANCERY.

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

PROGRESS OF THE PUBLIC DEBT AND TAXES.

William the Third's Reign, from 1688 to 1702. *

Queen Anne's Reign, from 1701 to 1714.

George the First's Reign, from 1714 to 1727.

George the Second's Reign, from 1727 to 1760.

George the Third's Reign, from 1760 to 1820.

American War.

EXPOSITION OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

PLANS FOR THE REDEMPTION OF THE DEBT.

DEAD-WEIGHT ANNUITY PROJECT.

NEW SUGGESTIONS FOR LIQUIDATING THE DEBT.

CATASTROPHE OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION AND FINANCE.

ABUSES IN THE EXPENDITURE OF GOVERNMENT.

WORKINGS OF TAXATION.

EAST-INDIA COMPANY.

INDIAN WARS AND TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS.

GOVERNMENT AND PATRONAGE OF INDIA.

TERRITORIAL REVENUES OF INDIA.

COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH THE CHINESE.

COMMERCIAL PROFITS OF THE COMPANY.

RENEWAL OF THE CHARTER OF THE EAST-INDIA COMPANY.

TERRITORIAL DEBT OF INDIA.

BANK OF ENGLAND.

THOUGHTS ON A NEW BANK OF ENGLAND.

POSTSCRIPT.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS, COMPANIES, GUILDS, AND FRATERNITIES.

ORIGIN OF CORPORATIONS, GUILDS, AND FRATERNITIES.

MANAGEMENT AND REVENUES OF THE CITY COMPANIES.

CORPORATIONS OF CITIES AND TOWNS.

ABSTRACT OF THE RECEIPTS.

ABSTRACT OF THE PAYMENTS.

DR. BRADY'S INTERPRETATION OF COMMUNITATIS.

PLACES, PENSIONS, SINECURES, COMPENSATIONS, REVERSIONS, HALF-PAY, AND SUPERANNUATIONS.

MILITARY AND NAVAL HALF-PAY AND CIVIL SUPERANNUATIONS.

SINECURES, REVERSIONS, AND PENSIONS.

COMPENSATIONS AND RETIRED ALLOWANCES.

SALARIES AND PENSIONS EXCEEDING ONE THOUSAND POUNDS.

REDUCTIONS OF THE WHIG MINISTRY.

ALPHABETIC LIST OF PLACES, PENSIONS, SINECURES, GRANTS, AND COMPENSATIONS.

EXPLANATIONS.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME.

I.—: PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION UP TO THE REFORM BILL.

II.: ADEQUACY OF THE REFORM BILL TO THE WANTS OF THE NATION.

III.—: PRACTICAL RESULTS OF A REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS.

APPENDIX.

INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. *

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION.

SUMS EXPENDED UNDER THE HEAD OF CIVIL CONTINGENCIES IN 1831.

ARMY.

NAVY.

ORDNANCE.

DEAD WEIGHT.

DIVIDENDS PAYABLE ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.

COLONIAL STATISTICS.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

BOROUGH LORDS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVES.

CHURCH PATRONAGE OF THE NOBILITY,

EXPLANATIONS.

COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS.

PROGRESS OF POPULATION.

THE 'CRISIS.'

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

APPENDIX TO THE Black Book.

CHAPTER I.: GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.

CHAPTER II.: THE PLOUGH AND THE LOOM.

CHAPTER III.: THE CHURCH AND DISSENTERS.

CHAPTER IV.: WORKING OF THE EXCISE LAWS.

CHAPTER V.: POOR LAWS' AMENDMENT ACT.

CHAPTER VI.: CATASTROPHE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

CHAPTER VII.: CHARACTER AND COMPOSITION OF THE FIRST REFORM PARLIAMENT.

CHAPTER VIII.: DISSOLUTION AND CHARACTER OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.

CHAPTER IX.: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE TORIES.

ADDENDA.

I.—: REVENUES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

II.—: THE CHURCH AND THE DISSENTERS.

III.—: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.

IV.—: REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

V.—: LISTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES.

VII.—: PLACEMEN AND PENSIONERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

IX.—: FUTURE POLICY OF THE TORIES.

X.—: WHIG CLAIMS TO NATIONAL CONFIDENCE.

XI.—: MILITIA, YEOMANRY AND VOLUNTEERS.

XII.—: PROPORTION OF CHURCHMEN AND DISSENTERS.

XIII.—: OBITUARY AND CORRECTIONS.

LIST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE ANTI-REFORM GOVERNMENT; WITH THEIR CHARACTERISTIC ADDITIONS.

I.—: NEW CABINET MINISTERS.

II.—: NOT OF THE NEW CABINET.

III.—: LAW APPOINTMENTS.

IV.—: ROYAL HOUSEHOLD APPOINTMENTS.