Civil List Expenditure during the Regency. Having mentioned the hereditary revenues of the crown in Scotland, we shall insert a statement of their amount and application in 1816. The sums from this source alone ought to maintain the whole of the royal family; but it will be seen that they are wasted on persons and objects almost entirely unknown to the public. HEREDITARY REVENUES OF THE CROWN IN SCOTLAND. New subsidy of customs... Fines and forfeitures of customs Hereditary revenue of excise, including fines and forfeitures Interest received from Bank for money deposited PENSIONS.. Professor of botany and expense of botanic garden Solicitor of tithes..... Ditto, extra allowance.... ...... King's plate, to be shot for by Royal Company of Archers, two payments Sheriff of Forfarshire, for preserving from decay the Abbey Annual allowance for trouble in comparing charters Robert Mitford, Esq. in aid of his Majesty's Civil List in England, March 21st £ s. d. 49,061 6 8 104 15 9 37 4 2 9 11 0 Crown agent for defraying expense of criminal prosecutions 4,000 0 0 For repairing church of Linlithgow Professor of botany, May 3d...... Chamberlain of Ettrick forest, salary to Whitsunday 1815 420 0 0 104 15 9 250 O 0 2,098-10 0 2,085 10 0 Civil List Expenditure during the Regency. Annual allowance for coach-house and stables to the barons of the Exchequer.... .... For making up new cess books for shire of Edinburgh ance Professor of natural history and expenses of Edinburgh Museum 99 16 0 Alexander Mundell, for preparing public bills relative to Scotland 409 6 0 104 15 9 .... 105 0 0 Professor of botany, 5th July.. 'King's plate to Caledonian hunt...... Expense of building a bridge over the river Don, Aber Agents before the Court of Session, for matters relative to Teinds .. Purchase of lease of lands for new botanic garden Towards completing a transaction for removing site of bota nic garden Sundries.. 85. 6 0 Robbery of Charitable Foundations. ROBBERY OF CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONS. WHEN the reformers reflect how many interests are identified with the present system, they can feel no surprise at the difficulties they encounter. There is not a village in England, however small, where corruption has not extended her influence and her agents, whose emoluments depend on the present Representation. Tithes, partial taxation, the cost and intricacy of legal proceedings, chartered communities, and the abuse of charities, all rest upon this foundation. Connected with these, individuals are found in every part of the kingdom, betwixt whom and the government there is a very obvious dependence, Abuse must always depend upon abuse for support. A government founded on the usurpation of the rights, and maintained by the sacrifice of the interests of the people, cannot look to the people for support; neither can abuse founded on similar injustice. Their dependence is not upon the people, but upon each other.. Abuse supports government, in order to be protected; government protects abuse, in order to be supported. Thus is the connivance at fraud necessary to government for the maintenance of its power; and prostitution to government necessary to abuse, for the enjoyment of its plunder. A diabolical compact, founded on the same principle which sometimes unites the outcasts of society; a general consciousness of guilt; but also a consciousness of the necessity of union for their common safety. Looking at the subject in this point of view, and knowing the ramifications of abuse through all parts of the empire, we`feel no surprise at the formidable array against the people. We are not surprised at the alarmı which pervades the clergy, the bar, and the aristocracy. We feel no surprise when we read the charges of Justice Bailey and Sir William Garrow, to the grand juries of York and Surrey, nor the charge of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the clergy. The alarm of these classes is natural; their present emoluments and future prospects depend on abuses which it is the object of Reformers to eradicate. The Clergy feel apprehensive Robbery of Charitable Foundations. for their tithes; the aristocracy for their rents and rotten boroughs; and the bar for the fat emoluments of litigation. But why should the panic of these men, originating in the most obvious causes, spread among the middling classes? What interest in common have the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing classes with the privileged orders that they should be the dupes of their selfish fears and misrepresentations? How could their interests be endangered?-nay, would they not be infinitely bettered by a RADICAL REFORM? How could the farming classes suffer by the abolition of tithes, and the ministers of religion being dependent on the voluntary contributions of their followers? How could the mercantile classes' suffer by the abolition of the assessed taxes, the stamp duties, and other imposts, which impede, fetter, and impoverish all their operations? How could any of the productive classes suffer by a general reduction in their burdens, and their transfer to the shoulders of the borough-mongers, whose infatuated measures have rendered them necessary? How could they suffer by the abolition of a standing army and the substitution of a national militia, the cheap, natural, and constitutional defence of both the country and government? Lastly, how could they suffer from the saving of five millions a year in the management of the revenue; the abolition of 100,000 tax-gatherers; the expenditure reduced to one-sixth of its present amount; agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing industry relieved of their most oppressive burdens; thereby employment created for all classes, and the entire annihilation of the degrading and burdensome system of poor laws and poor rates?. These are the ultimate objects contemplated by the Reformers. They seek neither massacre, pillage, nor revolution. Their object is not the destruction of every thing, but the preservation of every thing. They seek not to viclate property, but to preserve it from violation. They seek to lessen the cost of government,- -a more equitable distribution of the national burdens, the security of every class against partial oppression; and the mitigation of the sufferings of millions of their countrymen, struggling with unmerited and unparalleled privations. Whence, then, again we ask, these absurd fears of the middling classes? Why are they afraid? They are not the objects of attack. They need not tremble from conscious guilt, from "crimes unwhipt of justice." They have not been wallowing in the plunder of the people; nor have they usurped the rights of their fellow-citizens. There is no intention to diminish, but rather to add to their possessions. Why then should they keep aloof from the meetings of the Reformers? Either the people are right, or they are wrong. Robbery of Charitable Foundations. If they are right, they are clearly entitled to their support; if they are wrong, why not exert their talents and influence to convince them of their error. In either case, their present conduct is culpable in the highest degree. They behold their sufferings and privations. They see the unexam-pled patience with which they are endured, when goaded to violence by every artifice their black-hearted oppressors can suggest. Seeing and knowing these things, how can they reconcile to their consciences, that criminal neutrality, which neither supports any measures to alleviate the sufferings, nor to guard them against the diabolical machinations of their enemies. Nay, the con. duct of some is still more deplorably wicked and fatuous. They have taken arms to defend a plundering Oligarchy, and, with tiger ferocity, lent their aid to stifle the complaints of misery and famine, by the sabre, the bayonet, an‹ the dungeon! It is not, however, to the humanity of these classes we appeal at the present crisis; we appeal to motives much more influential-we appeal to their interests-which we are persuaded are identified with the cause of Radical Reform. Under the present system, property cannot endure nor industry thrive: remorseless taxation, overwhelming poor-rates, the consequence of that taxation, must ultimately devour the one, and paralyse the other. For the security of property, then, and the revival of industry, this great evil of TAXATION must be reduced; and this again, we say, and we could adduce a thousand arguments to prove it, will never be done without a RADICAL REFORM in the Representation. How utterly hopeless the reform of any abuse is under the present system, we shall fully demonstrate in the exposition we are going to give of the robbery of Charitable Foundations. A more flagrant, more widely diffused, and more unprincipled abuse, was never brought to light. On the full exposure of this impious robbery, a government with the least sense of shame or justice, if it had not brought the illustrious, the sanctified, and the magisterial robbers to punishment, for the violating of their trust, would at least have compelled the restitution of their plunder. Instead, however, of either punishment or restitution, every artifice was resorted to shield the memorable fraud from investigation. A commission was appointed, composed of men who from prejudice, family connexion, and education, were more likely to screen than bring to light the abuses they were appointed to examine. Their powers were limited; the most aggravated cases of abuse THEY were wholly restrained from investigating; and they were so ingeniously subdivided into boards, that they might examine the fewest number of cases in the longest time! |