On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions. of the Revenue, the Receivers of Taxes, and Distributers of Stamps. But the chief nidus is in the colonies. The duties of nearly all offices in the West Indies 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 following Statement, taken from the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Public Expenditure in 1809, shows the net value of the principal sinecures in the gift of the Crown, and otherwise : In the English Law Courts, not generally in the gift of the Crown, £ 62,462 Ditto in Scotland Ditto in Ireland To which add Colonial Sinecures 115,589 25,523 76,435 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 their 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. The absurdity of this practice is sufficiently obvious. Nothing On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions. 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 many ludicrous incongruities. Many Noble Lords and their sons, Rt. Hon. and Hon. Gentlemen, fill the offices of Clerks, Tide-Waiters, Harbour-Masters, Searchers, Guagers, Packers, Craners, Wharfingers, Prothonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these officers are filled by women-by fine ladies too; some by children, but then these children are of high blood, and, of course, they have extraordinary faculties. There is one fine lady, a Baroness, who is Sweeper of the Mall in the Park, for £340 a year; Lady Arabella Heneage is Chief Usher in the Court of Exchequer; and the Honourable Louisa Browning and Lady B. Martyn are Custos Brevium in the Court of Common Pleas. Then, again, of Noble Lords, the Duke of Grafton is Sealer in the King's Bench, at £2886 a year; Lord Walsingham is in the petty office of Comptroller of First-fruits in the Court of Exchequer ; and Lord W. Bentinck is Clerk of the Pipe, part of whose office it is to attend the man who holds up the Lord Chancellor's robe. We could enumerate a great many more, but they will be noticed in our List; we shall now pass on to Pensions. Of Pensions and Grants there are, in the official accounts, eleven hundred and nine names, receiving in the whole £642,621 a year.* No inconsiderable part of this sum has been granted to "late Foreign Ministers ;" men who have been sent abroad two or three years, and then return home and receive a swinging pension for life. Forty-seven of these persons receive £51,589 a year out of the * Since these accounts were published, there has been a very considerable addition to the Pension-List. In the Ordnance department alone we have already noticed an addition of more than £6000 per annum. On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions. earnings of the people, who are in the deepest misery for food and clothing. This, however, is not the most objectionable class; the wives of such men as Mr. Huskisson and Lord Grenville are to receive enormous pensions at their death, while they are already saddled on the public for prodigious sums. Then there are swarms of misses, of mistresses, and of honourable ladies;-of the Herries, the Pagets, the Selwyns, the Piersons, the Napiers, and scores more, of whom we know nothing, and of whom the public know nothing, except their pensions. Foreigners too,-aye, foreigners 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. The salaries of public servants ought to be their only remuneration, 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 know nothing, nor for what, they are an intolerable grievance. At the close of the American war, when the country was very much straightened, an Act was passed to restrain the lavish expenditure of the public money in this department. This Act ordains "That no pension, exceeding the sum of £300 a year, should be granted for the use of any person, and that the whole of the pensions granted in any one year should not exceed £600, a list of which, together with the names of the persons to whom they were granted, should be laid before Parliament within twenty days after the beginning of each session, until the whole Pension-List should be reduced to £90,000, which sum it should not be lawful to exceed by more than £5000 in the whole of all the grants." How rigorously this enactment has been observed, will be seen from the following pages:-like every other fundamental law made for the protection of the persons or property of the people, it has either been evaded or abrogated. It only now remains to give an estimate of the whole of the public money wasted on the subjects we have been describing. We shall digest our statement from the parliamentary papers to which we have On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions. already referred. The sums we have put down are the net amount, the gross sums would be nearly one-fourth more. A Summary Statement of Sinecure Offices, Pensions, and Reversions, exclusive of Allowances to Naval and Military Officers and their Relatives, on account of Naval or Military Service: When the reader has reflected on this enormous sum, which excludes all salaries, properly so called, and allowances for naval and military services, let him turn to the extract from Mr. Preston, where it is asserted, that every eighteen pounds abstracted in this manner from the people, deprives 5 persons of sustenance; whence it follows, that 381,525 persons are deprived of sustenance by Pensioners and Sinecurists alone!!! Since concluding the above article, we have seen a paper by Mr. Knight, intituled, “ An Analysis of the Red Book," from which we are tempted to make a curious extract. * See page 7. |