a pension roll, in times like these, to the amount of £777,556, 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 Selwyns, the Piersons, the Napiers, and scores more, who are living on the earnings of the industrious. Foreigners, too, are on the Pension 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 pre

tensions.

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 thenceforth 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?

The

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? 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 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 is 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 deputyranger, 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, the 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 Mr. 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 widow's 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, no 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 among 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 our muster-roll! 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, if not speedily repealed by the Whig ministry, we shall say they are no true men."

There is another description of pensioners whom we must shortly touch-the noble and learned lords on the woolsacks:-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 Lyndhurst, too, is now fastened on us for £4000 for a pretty long term, according to external appearances; and, in a few month, we may expect he will be followed by Lord Brougham. Are these things never to have an end? At this rate the whole Bar may file through the chancellorship, 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 poorlaws; 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 us such dreadful 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 last session, 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 article. 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.

It was by a liberal grant of pensions and compensations to the members of the Irish parliament, that Mr. Pitt, through the agency of lord Castlereagh and marquis Cornwallis, was enabled to accomplish the Union. From page 408, it appears, that more than £80,000 is annually paid to persons for the loss of office, in consequence of that great legislative movement. Sir Jonah Barrington relates that, "Among other curious claims for Union compensation, 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 superadded 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

Historic Memoirs of Ireland, and Secret Anecdotes of the National Convention, the Rebellion, and the Union.