Civil List Expenditure during the Regency.

form, to defray expenses for which they had already provided. In 1815, £50,000 was expended on additional buildings at Brighton, and £20,000 for furniture. Both these sums were paid out of the public purse, although the pavilion is considered the private property of the Prince. The cost of the Windsor establishment was not less unjustifiable. While the Regent was lavishing the public money-on tailors, jewellers, glass and china manufacturers, upholsterers, builders, perfumers, embroiderers, &c. the old King was kept bolstered up in the most ridiculous state imaginable. He had four lords of the bed-chamber, a groom of the stole, and a great number of other' officers, of whose services, and even existence, he was quite unconscious. The cost of his establishment was £100,000 a year; besides which, his faithful commons allowed him £60,000 for pocket money, and the Queen had 10,000 a year for superintendence.

Another great cause of the augmented charge on the Civil List was the increased expense of the foreign ministers, which, during the period we are speaking of, had increased £150,000 a year. The expense of lord Castlereagh's missions to Paris and Vienna in 1815 and 1816, amounted to £43,096, which, with his official salary of £12,000, formed an expenditure for two years of £55,809. His brother, lord Stewart, was also out on a special mission, and his expense amounted to £24,000; besides which, he received £2000 from his commission as general on the staff. The expense of lord Cathcart, who, as well as lord Stewart, was considered merely an understrapper to the noble lord, was still greater. This nobleman, on going out on his embassy to Petersburgh, instead of the usual compliment of a service of plate, was pleased to accept a present of £4,400.

From these, and some other causes, the arrears on the Civil List, in 1816, had accumulated to an enormous amount. The average excess of the expenditure above the receipt during the four years was £258,000, or about onefourth of the total expense for the seven preceding years, making a deficiency of more than one million. What was to be done? Prudent men, when their expenditure exceeds their income, endeavour to make them meet by a reduction of the former: but economy has long been a stranger to the English government; and ministers are as jealous of abridgment in the expenditure, as any arbitrary prince could possibly be of his prerogative. Instead, therefore, of steps being taken to curtail this waste of the public money, a bill was introduced by lord Castlereagh to transfer certain chargés on the Civil List to the Consolidated Fund, or provide for them by new grants from parliament. It is conformable to this bill, that the Civil List

Civil List Expenditure during the Regency.

expenditure is now regulated; and to make the reader fully acquainted with the present state of this important subject, it will be necessary to give some account of its principle and provisions.

The principle of the bill was to prevent future excess in the Civil List expenditure, by relieving it of certain charges of expensive and uncertain amount. The first charge we shall notice of this nature is trademen's bills. The total amount of these bills in future was estimated at £234,000. Of this sum, it was proposed to defray by grants from parliament all charges for furniture and other articles heretofore provided by the lord chamberlain for certain public offices; also the expense of plate to foreign ministers; collars, badges, and mantles, of the several orders of the Garter, Bath, and Thistle; and also all expense for the repair of public offices and buildings at the Tower, Whitehall, Westminster, and for works in St. James's Park, and of private roads, which had formerly been defrayed out of the Civil List. The annual amount of these charges to be provided by parliament was estimated at £25,000.

The next charge to be provided for by new grants was under the head of Occasional Payments, amounting to £222,000. Of this sum parliament was to provide £197,000, including all charges for outfit to ministers to foreign courts, and for their extraordinary disbursements; also for presents to foreign ministers, incidental expenses of the treasury, deficiency of fees to the secretaries of state, and in the home department. Besides these, salaries to certain officers and persons, amounting to £3268, were to be provided for; and the whole of the sums payable out of the Civil List to the junior branches of the royal family, amounting to £30,500, were to be transferred to the consolidated fund.* The total amount of the different charges, of which it was proposed to relieve the Civil List, were estimated by lord Castlereagh at £255,768. Events have proved that this estimate was greatly below the mark, and that it amounted to little more than one-third of the actual charge to the public. In 1817, parliament granted £500,000 for "Civil Contingencies," the name under which supplies for the Civil List are voted; and for similar charges in 1818, parliament have granted this year £700,000. We have already shown at page 111-12, some of the

* For an account of these sums, see page 113. The whole is now payable out of the consolidated fund, as well as the £2500 to the duke of Clarence, mentioned page 118.

Civil List Expenditure during the Regency.

objects to which these enormous sums had been applied, therefore it is unnecessary to repeat them.

But the most remarkable feature in the Civil List Bill was the appointment of an entire new office, under the name of Auditor of the Civil List, with a salary of £1500 a year. This is exactly the way in all attempts at reform and regulation; whenever any expense is curtailed, or useless office abolished, ministers are sure to keep up the same amount of patronage by some new creations. We had an instance of this in the consolidation of the revenue of England and Ireland; when a vicetreasurer and his deputy were appointed with a salary of £3000 a year, merely to keep up the quantum of ministerial influence and corruption. The duties of the new officer on the Civil List are to audit the accounts of the lord chamberlain, lord steward, and the master of the horse; but certainly these were the duties which ought to be performed by the heads of these departments. For what do they receive their enormous salaries? Would the public be more secure against profusion in the household when confided to the watchful viligance of a commoner, than when confided to the wisdom and integrity of three peers of the realm? The thing was ridiculous; but it answered the desired purpose of a pretence for dipping into the pockets of the people. Mr. Herries is now auditor of the Civil List. He was appointed on the abolition of the office of commissary in chief.

Deducting the various sums yearly to be provided for by parliament, and the pensions and annuities transferred to the consolidated fund, the annual charge on the Civil List, according to the new regulation, was estimated at £1,083,727; at which sum it now remains. An estimate, which we will insert, was laid before parliament in 1816, of the objects to which this sum was to be applied.

An ESTIMATE of the Annual Charge on the CIVIL LIST, after deducting the sums payable under the head of Civil Contingencies, amounting this year to £700,000; and also the income of the ROYAL FAMILY, payable out of the consolidated fund:

Pensions and allowances to the royal family.....
Allowances to the lord chancellor, judges, &c.

£298,000

32,950

Civil List Expenditure during the Regency.

Salaries to the different departments of the household,

including compensations and allowances payable

within these departments

Pensions limited by act 22 Geo. III.

140,700

95,000

Salaries and allowances to certain officers and pensions.. 41,300
Salaries to the commissioners of the treasury and chan-

cellor of the exchequer Occasional payments

Remarks-From the first of these sums must be deducted the £68,000 granted to the late queen; but of this sum little has been saved to the public; nearly the whole having been granted in pensions to her servants, and in the infamous grant of £10,000 to the duke of York.

In judging of the incomes of the royal family and the expenditure of the Civil List, the reader is liable to error from the various heads under which they are distributed. For a summary statement of the incomes of the royal family from different sources, he must turn to page 118. From what has been said, it is evident, that the annual expenditure of the Civil List, including sums payable out of the consolidated fund, the annual grants, for civil contingencies, and the permanent charge of £1,083,727, cannot be less than Two MILLIONS A YEAR.

Kings, it is said, are the fathers of their people; but England exhibits the barbarous spectacle of its sovereign wasting the substance of his famishing children, in luxury and ostentation. A republican would contend that the whole of the two millions expended on the civil list might be spared to the community, because it does not serve any important object for which governments are instituted. But even an admirer of monarchy, after perusing the details we have exhibited of the profusion in the royal household, especially in the department of the Lord Chamberlain; and after remembering that the duties of the executive were, at one period, discharged by the Regent without any part of this establishment; he must allow, that, at least, one great branch of expense, amounting to £400,000 annually, might be saved to the country without the smallest diminution of the necessary splendour to the sovereign power. Instead of such useless parade and profusion increasing the dignity and respect of the first magistrate, they degrade him in the eyes of the people, and render him an object of contempt and abhorrence. Men feel neither respect nor admiration for an ostentation by which they are deprived of the means of subsistence; and the barbarous idolatry which could worship the idle pageantry of cocked hats, wigs, gowns, and robes of gold, has long since disappeared.

Civil List Expenditure during the Regency.

Among the Americans, a country where the enemies of the people loathe, above all others, to look for examples of economy and wisdom, things are ordered differently. Their king only costs them about five thousand instead of one hundred and twenty thousand a year, and their vice king only one thousand, instead of five hundred thousand a year. Their other officers are equally cheap and reasonable. As for lords of the bed-chamber, grooms of the stole, master of the horse, master of the hawks, and many other masters and lords; they have none of these things. And where is the misfortune? The government appears neither deficient in dignity nor in efficiency, neither at home nor abroad; and as to the duties of their executive, they are discharged quite as well-aye, and infinitely better than

our own.

There is one practice relative to public offices in the United States, which, if adopted in this country, would be productive of many advantages. According to a resolution in Congress, April, 1816, the secretary of state is required to compile and print once in every two years, a register of all officers and agents, civil, military, and naval, in the service of the Union; exhibiting the amount of compensation, pay, and emolument allowed to each officer, the state or country where he was born, and the place of employment. Five hundred copies of this work, which forms the Red or The Black Book of America, are distributed to the members of Congress. The salaries of officers exhibit a singular contrast to the sums paid in this country. We have selected from the third volume of Warden's Travels in the United States, the pay of different officers in the civil department, and compared them with similar situations in our own country; and they exhibit a most singular contrast. We will lay the result before the reader. We have taken the dollar at one fifth the pound sterling, which is rather less than the real value, to avoid shillings and pence.