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Robbery of Charitable Foundations.

much rubbish, tending to hide that which is already sufficiently obscured from public view.

To us it appears, that a plan much more simple, efficacious, and which would cost nothing at all, might be adopted for rooting out this grievous, shameless, and wide-spread, abuse. In our humble opinion, the whole might be done in one year, and without any jobbing whatever. We should propose, that a local tribunal should be established in every parish, composed of the resident parishioners, who should be empowered to examine every charitable institution in their respective jurisdiction, and to make such regulations relative to education, and application of the funds, as would be most conducive to the interest of those for whose benefit they were originally bequeathed. This would be at once prompt, general, and efficacious; and there would be no occasion for Reports, proceedings in Chancery, and £18,000 a year expended in salaries and expenses; all would be speedy, summary, and economical. Surely a sufficient number of disinterested individuals might be found among the magistracy, the established and dissenting clergy, to undertake the office gratuitously; but, if that were impossible, the tribunal might be composed of Radical Reformers, who are to be found in every place, and who would not require a greater reward for their labour than the pleasure of bringing to justice the base spoilers of the poor,

Droits of Admiralty.

DROITS OF ADMIRALTY,

AND

DROITS OF THE CROWN.

NOTWITHSTANDING the efforts of political writers to expose the abuses of the borough system, an immense number still remain, of which the public have no knowledge, and of which they have scarcely any means of ob taining information. Where, for instance, till the commencement of our publi cation, could accurate and complete information be obtained relative to the Expenditure of the Civil List, the cost of the Police Department, or on the subject of which we are going to treat, the Droits of Admiralty? Information on these important subjects could only be obtained from the parliamentary debates, parliamentary reports and papers, to which few persons have access, and still fewer leisure to peruse these voluminous and ponderous details, This was certainly a desideratum in the political knowledge of the people, which we have attempted to supply; and we may truly say, from the immense circulation of our publication, that the knowledge which heretofore had been confined to some few thousands, will hereafter be familiar to millions among all classes of the community.

crown.

Of the different subjects connected with government, there is none of so much importance, and, we may say, so little known, as the revenue of the The immense sums swallowed in this royal sinecure almost exceed belief. At the commencement of the present reign, the Civil List establishment was fixed at £800,000 a year. By papers laid before the House of Commons, it appears, that this sum was first raised £100,000; at a sub- . sequent period, £60,000 was added; then again, by the abstraction of certain charges, to which it was before subject, it was virtually raised £135,000 more; lastly, in 1816, it was again relieved of charges to the amount of £195,000: thus making a real annual increase to the original £800,000, of the sum of £500,000. At one period, a sum of £100,000 was voted to the

Droits of Admiralty.

king, to defray the expenses of new palaces and buildings. Parliament have several times paid the arrears of the Civil List debt; and, in the year 1802, voted the enormous sum of £900,000, for that purpose. The whole of the sums voted at different periods to pay the debts of His Majesty, is between four and five millions.

Tremendous as this statement may appear, there are various other sums appertaining to royalty, of which the public have scarcely ever heard, and over which even parliament have no controul. The reader has seen what became of poor Troutback's money. This was considered a droit of the crown, and of which it was from mere accident parliament obtained any knowledge. There are several other droits of a similar description, of which it will be proper to say a word or two, before we come to the greatest of all droits, those of Admiralty.

During the minority of the Prince of Wales, when there is no Duke of Cornwall of a proper age to receive the revenues, amounting to £13,000 a year, they are claimed by the crown. Besides this annual sum, the fines, during the infancy of the Regent, were estimated at £130,000; so that the King, from the duchy of Cornwall alone, must have received nearly half a million of money during the minority of the Prince. He has also received very considerable sums from the duchy of Lancaster, and the Scotch Civil List. But the most important fund of the crown, independent of Parliament, is the 4 duties raised in Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands. These duties are levied upon the dead commodities of the island, and form a most intolerable grievance to the inhabitants. They were originally granted to defray the charges of maintaining the King's authority, but have been subsequently applied to very different purposes, and formed the most famous jobbing fund of the crown. From a statement of Mr. Creevy, it appears, that from the accession of the king, to the year 1812, these duties had produced £1,600,000.—The following statement of the expenditure of this enormous sum, by the same gentleman, is also curious:

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Droits of Admiralty.

We shall now speak of the Droits of Admiralty, the most important fund attached to the King, and which form the subject of this article. The term droits comes from the French, and signifies right. The right, however, of the crown to this fund, or to any of its hereditary revenues, after the acceptance of a fixed sum in lieu of all former grants, may be fairly questioned: but this is a point we shall leave to be discussed by Mr. Brougham and Sir James Mackintosh. The king receives the droits of Admiralty as Lord High Admiral of England; the duties of which office are discharged by seven lords commissioners. The principal sources whence the droits are derived, are the following: all sums arising from wreck and goods of pirates; all ships detained previously to a declaration of war; all coming into port from ignorance of hostilities; all taken before the issuing of proclamation; and those taken by non-commissioned captors, are sold, and the proceeds form droits of Admiralty. The total sum received as droits of the Crown and of Admiralty, from the 1st of February, 1793, to the 29th of May, 1818, was £8,494,719:12:7. We shall insert a statement of the general heads of this enormous sum, taken from a parliamentary paper, ordered to be printed on the 1st of June, 1818.

A SUMMARY ACCOUNT of all Monies received as DROITS OF THE CROWN AND OF THE ADMIRALTY; specifying the NATIONS from which they have arisen, from the 1st of February, 1793, to the 29th of May, 1818.

Registrar of the High Court of Admiralty

Receiver General of Droits

Commissioners for the care of Dutch Droits*

Commissioners for the care of Spanish Droits

Commissioners for the care of Danish and other Droits

.£5,077,216 9 Ò

489,885 10 9 1,286,042 6 10

1,293,313 19 7

348,261 6 5

£8,494,719 12 7

The purposes to which this immense sum has been applied, forms the next subject for inquiry. The first payment out of this fund that struck us as particularly curious, were two sums to Dr. STODDART, alias SLOP;

* This and the following sums in the hands of commissioners, are the sums which had not been paid over to the Registrar of the High Court of Admiralty.

Droits of Admiralty.

one of £457: 4:6, and another of £1500. Another payment, equally singular, was the sum of £5077, to the Reverend W. B. Daniels, the author of a work on Field Sports, which lately we saw advertised, not for the first time, in the Doctor's paper. The way in which the Reverend Mr. Daniels became entitled to £5077 from government, it may be worth while to state a little more in detail.

› A Mr. Jacob, the owner of the privateer Daphne, captured, in 1799 or 1800, the French vessel Circe, worth £30,000, which was condemned as lawful prize, and all claim to the contrary disregarded. The year and day for appeal having transpired, the condemnation became final, and £15,000 was shared among the captors. Ten thousand pounds more lay ready to be distributed. At this point of time, information was laid against Mr. Jacob, for having disregarded the 33d of the King, by which the muster of the crew of a privateer before sailing is enacted. On the letter of this law they were convicted; the £10,000 stopped; and the £15,000 recovered; all of which became Droits of Admiralty. The mere ignorance of the law was admitted as no excuse for Mr. Jacob, and the result to him was, besides the loss of his prize, costs to the amount of £1700, and utter ruin. From having been in a respectable trade, he was thrown into gaol, and reduced to beggary. But on whose authority does the reader imagine Mr. Jacob and his family were, reduced to beggary? Here it will be necessary to introduce the Rev. Mr. Daniels. This gentleman, after publishing his work on Field Sports, had been confined for debt, and reduced, as Mr. Brougham says, to the rank of a primitive Christian. After all other attempts to patch up his broken fortune had failed, he, at last, turned a broker in evidence, and procured two men, of the names of Thatcher and Guzman, one of whom had been convicted of perjury, and the other had been flogged at the cart's tail, to swear as much as was neces sary to convict Mr. Jacob. For this signal service, the worthy and Reverend Mr. Daniels received £5077 out of the Admiralty Droits, and the first of his witnesses £87: 13: 7, as a gratuity for evidence given.*

Besides the payments to Messrs. Stoddart and Daniels, there are others quite as extraordinary and unaccountable. There is a sum of £2250 granted to Sir George Young, on the 20th of September, 1803, being one

*We should not be at all surprised, if the Reverend Mr. Daniels, besides his famous work on " Field Sports," is not the writer of some of those neat tracts advertised in the New Times, and intended for the instruction of the poor, intituled, “ Reasons for Contentment," " Church and King, or Old Chimes better than New Changes," "Touch no State Matters," and many others, all tending to promote the glory of God and the happiness of the people, no doubt.

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