process, in any way, will be entangled and difficult; and it will be infinitely slow: there is a danger that if we turn our line of march, now directed towards the grand object, into this more laborious than useful detail of operations, we shall never arrive at our end.

The king, sir, has been, by the constitution, appointed sole judge of the merit for which a pension is to be given, We have a right, undoubtedly, to canvass this, as we have to canvass every act of government, But there is a material difference between an office to be reformed, and a pension taken away for demerit, In the former case, no charge is implied against the holder; in the latter, his character is slurred, as well as his lawful emolument affected, The former process is against the thing; the second against the person. The pensioner certainly, if he pleases, has a right to stand on his own defence; to plead his possession; and to bottom his title in the competency of the crown to give him what he holds, Possessed, and on the defensive as he is, he will not be obliged to prove his special merit, in order to justify the act of legal discretion, now turned into his property, according to his tenure. The very act, he will contend, is a legal presumption, and an implication of his merit. If this be so (from the natural force of all legal presumption) he would put us to the difficult proof, that he has no merit at all. But other questions would arise in the course of such an inquiry that is, questions of the merit when weighed against the proportion of the reward; then the difficulty will be much greater.

The difficulty will not, sir, I am afraid, be much less, if we pass to the person really guilty, in the question of an unmerited pension; the minister himself. I admit, that when called to account for the execution of a trust, he might fairly be obliged to prove the affirmative, and to state the merit for which the pension is given; though on the pensioner himself, such a process would be hard. If in this examination we proceed methodically, and so as to avoid all suspicion of partiality and prejudice, we must take

the pensions in order of time, or merely alphabetically. The very first pension to which we come, in either of these ways, may appear the most grossly unmerited of any. But the minister may very possi bly show, that he knows nothing of the putting on this pension that it was prior in time to his administration; that the minister who laid it on is dead; and then we are thrown back upon the pensioner himself, and plunged into all our former difficulties. Abuses, and gross ones, I doubt not, would appear; and to the correction of which I would readily give my hand; but when I consider that pensions have not generally been affected by the revolutions of ministry; as I know not where such inquiries would stop; and as an absence of merit is a negative and loose thing, one might be led to derange the order of families, founded on the probable continuance of their kind of income. I might hurt children; I might injure creditors. I really think it the more prudent course, not to follow the letter of the petitions. If we fix this mode of inquiry as a basis, we shall, I fear, end, as parliament has often ended under similar circumstances. There will be great delay; much confusion; much inequality in our proceedings. But what presses me most of all is this; that though we should strike off all the unmerited pensions, while the power of the crown remains unlimited, the very same undeserving persons might afterwards return to the very same list; or if they did not, other persons, meriting as little as they do, might be put upon it to an undefinable This I think is the pinch of the grievance.

amount.

For these reasons, sir, I am obliged to wave this mode of proceeding as any part of my plan. In a plan of reformation, it would be one of my maxims, that when I know of an establishment which may be subservient to useful purposes, and which at the same time, from its discretionary nature, is liable to a very great perversion from those purposes, I would limit the quantity of the power that might be so abused. For I am sure that in all such cases, the rewards of merit will have very narrow bounds; and that partial or

corrupt favour will be infinite. This principle is not arbitrary; but the limitation of the specifick quantity must be so in some measure. I therefore state 60,000l. leaving it open to the house to enlarge or contract the sum as they shall see, on examination, that the discretion I use is scanty or liberal. The whole amount of the pensions of all denominations, which have been laid before us, amount, for a period of seven years, to considerably more than 100,0001. To what the other lists amount, I know not. That will be seen hereafter. But from those that do appear, a saving will accrue to the publick, at one time or other, of 40,000l. a year, and we had better, in my opinion, let it fall in naturally, than to tear it crude and unripe from the stalk.

There is a great deal of uneasiness among the people, upon an article which I must class under the head of pensions. I mean the great patent offices in the Exchequer. They are in reality and substance no other than pensions, and in no other light shall I consider them. They are sinecures. They are always executed by deputy. The duty of the principal is as nothing. They differ, however, from the pensions on the list, in some particulars. They are held for life. I think with the publick, that the profits of those places are grown enormous; the magnitude of those profits, and the nature of them, both call for reformation. The nature of their profits, which grow out of the publick distress, is itself invidious and grievous. But I fear that reform cannot be immediI find myself under a restriction. These places, and others of the same kind, which are held for life, have been considered as property. They have been given as a provision for children; they have been the subject of family settlements; they have been the security of creditors. What the law respects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of law should be broken down, upon ideas of convenience, even of publick convenience, we shall have no longer any thing certain among us. If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to

ate.

determine whose power, and what discretion it is that will prevail at last. It would be wise to attend upon the order of things; and not to attempt to outrun the slow, but smooth and even course of nature. There are occasions, I admit, of publick necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that they supercede all laws. Law being only made for the benefit of the community, cannot in any one of its parts, resist a demand which may comprehend the total of the publick interest. To be sure, no law can set itself up against the cause and reason of all law. But such a case very rarely happens; and this most certainly is not such a The mere time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice of a principle of law. Individuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The difference therefore of to day and to morrow, which to private people is immense, to the state is nothing. At any rate it is better, if possible, to reconcile our economy with our laws, than to set them at variance-a quarrel, which in the end must be destructive to both.

case.

My idea, therefore, is to reduce those offices to fixed salaries, as the present lives and reversions shall successively fall. I mean, that the office of the great auditor (the auditor of the receipt) shall be reduced to 3,000l. a year; and the auditors of the imprest and the rest of the principal officers, to fixed appointments of 1,500l. a year each. It will not be difficult to calculate the value of this fall of lives to the publick, when we shall have obtained a just account of the present income of those places; and we shall obtain that account with great facility, if the present possessors are not alarmed with any apprehension of danger to their freehold office.

I know too, that it will be demanded of me, how it comes, that since I admit these offices to be no better than pensions, I chose, after the principle of law had been satisfied, to retain them at all? To this, sir, I answer, that conceiving it to be a fundamental part of the constitution of this country, and of the reason

of state in every country, that there must be means of rewarding publick service, those means will be incomplete, and, indeed, wholly insufficient for that purpose, if there should be no further reward for that service, than the daily wages it receives during the pleasure of the crown.

Whoever seriously considers the excellent argument of lord Somers, in the banker's case, will see he bottoms himself upon the very same maxim which I do; and one of his principal grounds of doctrine for the alienability of the domain in England* contrary to the maxim of the law in France, he lays in the constitu. tional policy, of furnishing a permanent reward to pub. lick service; of making that reward the origin of families; and the foundation of wealth as well as of honours. It is, indeed, the only genuine unadulterated origin of nobility. It is a great principle in government; a principle at the very foundation of the whole structure. The other judges who held the same doctrine, went beyond lord Somers with regard to the remedy, which they thought was given by law against the crown, upon the grant of pensions. Indeed no man knows, when he cuts off the incitements to a virtuous ambition, and the just rewards of publick service, what infinite mischief he may do his country, through all generations. Such saving to the publick may prove the worst mode of robbing it. The crown, which has in its hands the trust of the daily pay for national service, ought to have in its hands also the means for the repose of publick labour, and the fixed settlement of acknowledged merit. There is a time, when the weather beaten vessels of the state ought to come into harbour. They must at length have a re treat from the malice of rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and the inconstancy of the people. Many of the persons, who in all times have filled the great offices of state, have been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any fortune. These

* Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of land.