ROYALTY, after all, is an expensive government! What is a king without an aristrocacy 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 a civilized state. Pageantry and show, 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 ridiculous 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, a barbarous system, which would maintain these fooleries amidst a famishing population,-amidst debts, and taxes, and pauperism. In treating the subject of this article we shall distribute it under three heads. First, we shall give some account of the history and amount of the Civil List. Secondly, the chief objects to which it is applied. And, thirdly, we shall subjoin, from official documents, a statement of the amount of the different sums under the various heads of expenditure. The revenue of the crown was formerly derived from various sources: as forfeitures in courts of justice, the post duty, the duty on wine licences, the income from the crown lands, a profit on waifs and shipwrecks, the incomes of bishoprics during a vacancy, treasure trove, wild fowl, and various other items. These formed the hereditary revenue of the crown; in lieu of which, the king, at the commencement of the present reign, accepted £800,000 per annum from Parliament, for the maintenance of the Civil List. This sum being found insufficient, in 1777, was increased to £900,000, to which, by the 44 Geo. III. an additional sum of £60,000 'was added. Expenditure of the Civil List. This forms the regular parliamentary provision, but is far from including the whole of the sums absorbed by the Crown. The debts of the King, as well as the Regent, have been frequently paid by the people. The Crown, in 1810, had received of Admiralty droits £7,344,000, and of the 4 per cent. Leeward Island duties, so far back as 1812, £1,600,000. The revenues from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are very considerable. The king's hereditary revenues in Scotland, in 1816, amounted to £105,373 : 4:2. From the statement of Mr. Hume too, in the last Session, it appears, that duties have been levied on various articles at Gibraltar, without consent of parliament, from which the crown derived a yearly income of £18,000. These, however, are all insufficient to meet the immense expenditure in this department. Every year enormous sums are voted to make up deficiencies, and to defray expenses not in the ordinary charges of the civil list. In 1817, the sum voted for this purpose was £500,000; this year the sum voted was £700,000.* * As a specimen of the objects to which the grant of £500,000, in 1817, and the grant of £700,000 in the present year, have been applied, we have selected the following items: Robert Quarme, esq. to make the emoluments of his office £. s. d. £2000 per annum 1433 1 Charles Manners Sutton, for his equipage as speaker of the 1000 O in lieu of plate, usually allowed to the speaker on his nomination in lieu of stationary. 1637 7 8 of exchequer, and diet Arabella Walker Heneage, for necessaries supplied to the court Expenses for works and repairs of public buildings Expenses for repairs of the royal sovereign yacht Matthew Martin, esq. for continuing his inquiry into the state of mendicity in the metropolis. Thomas Wyon, esq for engraving seals W. Horne, for obtaining returns of the insane persons in For illuminations at Madrid on the marriage of "Ferdinand the beloved" For SNUFF BOXES, as presents to foreign ministers and imperial coachmen 945 0 0 41,195 4 10 1267 10 11 755 12 316 15 0 636 18 9 84 3 9 261 1 9 . 22,510 15 1 Expenditure of the Civil List: Having given some idea of the money which flows into this immense gulf, our next object will be to show the various purposes for which it is drawn out again. And, first, we will speak of the king's privy purse money. Before the present reign, 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 the king; 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, its origin is coeval with the king's reign. When the sum of £800,000 was first set apart for the civil list 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. At this sum it has remained ever since, and forms the privy purse. No part of this fund is applied to defray the expense of the royal house hold, nor of any other function of his office; it is limited entirely to his 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. It is from the savings from this source, and his income of £10,000 a year from the duchy of Lancaster, that the king's private property in the funds, and other securities, has accumulated. Even since his majesty's indisposition, both these sums have been accumulating in the hands of the keepers appointed in the act of the 51st. At the debate on the Windsor establishment, it was proposed to pay the memorable grant of £10,000 to the duke of York from these funds; but it was opposed by lord Castlereagh, as an infamous violation of the king's private property. The whole of these savings will most probably fall to the different members of the royal family at the king's decease. Next to the privy purse are various annuities to the royal family, payable out of the civil list. The income of the princes and princesses, are, For the expenses of duke Nicholas, while on a visit to John Lord Castlereagh and duke of Wellington, for expenses while at Aix-la-Chapelle Royal George yacht, for the furniture of one room £. s. d. .13,000 0 8432 0 Expenditure of the Civil List. aowever, principally charged upon the consolidated fund. The following is a statement of the sums payable out of the civil list. Prince of Wales Duke of York.. Duke of Clarence 4,000 The great head of charge on the civil list is the king's household. This forms a most ponderous establishment; and affords ample scope for retrenchment under a government really wishful to economise. It is the great nursery of indolence, parasites, and courtiers. It is formed upon manners and customs that have long since expired,-upon old feudal principles. It not only retains traces of its Gothic origin, but it is formed also on the principles of a body corporate; and has its own law-courts, magistrates, and bye laws. In ancient times these establishments were supported on a principle 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 "rabble of places," which, though profitable to the holders, 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 are gone, it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burden 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 - Expenditure of the Civil List. 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."—His Works, v. iii. pp. 277-8. Speech on Economical Reform. The great branches of the household are under the direction of the ford chamberlain, (marquis of Hertford ;) the lord steward, (marquis Cholmondeley ;) and the master of the horse, (duke of Montrose.) 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 into 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 household, clerks of green cloth, &c. are under his controul. The master of the horse has the charge and government of all the king's stables and horses. He also the power over equerries, pages, footmen, |