Pensions to ditto..

52,700 0 0

56,056 0 0 360,924 0 0

..........

Salaries in the Lord Chamberlain's department and
Office of Works

6,682 0 0

3,960 0 0

140,700 0 0

Having fully placed before the reader the ordinary charges on the civil list, we shall next show the sums granted by parliament or otherwise obtained to meet these various disbursements. The importance of the preceding documents, especially the last, will be seen shortly; the estimate of the future expenditure of the civil list, on the 3d of May, 1816, formed the basis of the extravagant grant in 1820, and continued till the death of George IV. The shameless profusion in the civil-list-department during the Regency and the last reign we shall speedily illustrate. 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 were £35,000, payable to the junior branches of the royal family, and which were to be paid out of the consolidated fund; and 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 past, 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 last settlement of the civil list 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-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.

We have dwelt particularly on the increase in the late king's income, because it is probable that, on the assembling of the new parliament, an attempt will be made to administer a sort of national composing draught, under the semblance of a considerable reduction in the civillist-expenditure. The sacrifice of a quarter of a million, however, will not be enough; the civil list, in 1804, was relieved of public charges to the amount of £82,000, and, in 1816, to the amount of £255,768, and it will not be sufficient to reduce the royal income only to the amount of these sums; but a reduction ought to be made in

consequence of the altered value of money, and the altered circumstances of the country, which has rendered a system of economy to an unprecedented extent indispensable; and to which all the productive classes of the empire has long since been compelled to submit. The civil list was the proper place at which retrenchment ought to have commenced in the last reign; and, by the abolition of the pension list, and a reduction of salaries and outgoings in the household, and other economical arrangements, a saving of half a million might have been effected without a diminution of the dignity of the Crown below the standard of the latest period of the government of George III. The futility and injustice of nibbling at a few clerks and the subalterns of administration, while the great Leviathan of expense remained uncurtailed, was evident to every intelligent person. But the fact is, neither ministers nor their regular opponents had ever a sincere wish to retrench on a grand scale. For obvious reasons, the two aristocratical factions were loth to bring the real state of the civil list before the country; since it was by indulging the lavish expenditure of George IV. "the powers that be," and the powers that wished to be, sought to be gratified.

These are not ordinary times, and ordinary measures will not be adequate to meet them. It is the ardent wish of William IV. we believe, to meet the wishes of the people; and there is little doubt the king will readily assent to any diminution his ministers may propose in his own income. But this is not all: we have not heard, since the commencement of the new reign, there has been any reduction in the royal establishments. The same number of sumptuous tables are spread every day at Windsor-castle; the same number of costly attendants, equipages, and palaces are kept up; the household, and all its expensive outgoings and innumerable retainers, are still undiminished: the only reduction we have heard of is in the stud of the late king; and, doubtless, there will be a saving in the articles of tailors' bills, perfumery, or molu, satin ottomans, fishing tackle, &c.: and it is said the housemaids, in future, are not officially to wear silk gowns, which will certainly enable them to submit to an abatement in wages. But all these items will contribute little to the main purpose; and the king, by accepting a diminished income, will only deceive himself, and delude the country: in short, he will be involved in debts, which, like those of his predecessors, will have to be discharged by additional parliamentary grants,-so that the public will not be ultimately saved a penny.

In order to make the future civil list commensurate with the expenditure, it is indispensable the royal outgoings and establishments should be entirely remodelled. In the first place, the court pension list should be abolished, and all future grants from mere personal favour or service be paid out of the privy purse. Next, some of the palaces should be shut up, or let, with their appendant domains, to the grandees of the aristocracy; some of whom, by means of an infamous Corn Law, having rentals quite adequate to support them. Of what use, for example, to the king are the palaces of Kew or Hampton-court, unless as retreats for practices to which it is not

necessary more particularly to describe. In the third place, the outgoings and establishments of the lord steward, the lord chamberlain, the master of the horse, and the master of the robes ought to be unsparingly cut down, and the salaries, especially of those functionaries, reduced. By some such reforms as these, William IV. would be enabled to make a reduced allowance square with his income, but not otherwise. The king has not, like his father, a large family to maintain at least, a family entitled to regal state; and, in some respects, he is better off than a bachelor, since he has got, according to every body's report, an amiable and frugal queen, and, consequently, is not subject to those extortions to which single men, in the various avocations of life, are unavoidably exposed. Altogether, then, we hope that his Majesty will be both able and willing to discharge the duties of his high office cheaper than any member of his august family; though we do not flatter ourselves he can go through his functions on any thing like the terms proposed by some Scotchman, who has offered to discharge all the duties of the monarch for £300 a-year, and find good security for the performance!

When the civil list is under discussion, it is usual to observe statements in the treasury papers, shewing how small a proportion of the sum granted under this head is expended in the maintenance of the king and his household. These ductile scribes never inform their readers that the principal extraneous branches of expenditure were transferred to the consolidated fund in 1804 and 1816, and the amount subsequently granted is appropriated almost exclusively to the support of the royal person and dignity. The sums specially applied to these purposes may be classed under the following heads. First, his Majesty's privy purse. The sum set apart for this purpose, under Geo. III., was £60,000; his successor (there being no prince of Wales) received in addition the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, amounting to £25,000 a year; besides £6,000, and often more, out of the hereditary revenues; in all, for the privy purse, or pocket-money, £91,000. To the king's privy purse may be added, the bills of his Majesty's tradesmen, the disbursements in the departments of the lord chamberlain, lord steward, master of the horse, and master of the robes, and the court pension list; making together the total personal charge of a king of England, on the scale of the last reign, as follows: Privy purse

..... ...

Tradesmen's bills

Salaries, &c. in the lord steward's department.、.
Ditto in the lord chamberlain's .....

Department of the master of the horse

Department of the master of the robes

Surveyor-general of works.....

Court pensions, limited by 22 Geo. III. c. 82

£91,000 0 0 209,000 0 0 41,866 10 59,062 0

27,743 0 1,080 0 0 10,946 6

95,000 0

£535,697 16 11

M