"That no person who has an office or place of profit under the King, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a Member of the House of Commons."-Act of Settlement, 12 and 13 William III.

"It should always be remembered, that every eighteen pounds a year, paid to any Placeman or Pensioner, withdraws from the public the means of giving active employment to one individual, as the head of a family, thus depriving five persons of sustenance from the fruits of honest industry and active labour, and rendering them paupers." Richard Preston, Esq. M.P. and a supporter of the Pitt-System.

Look at the motto! Look at the motto! It is no matter that the clause in the Act which placed the present family on the throne is repealed, the invaluable, constitutional, and fundamental principle still remains. In framing that enactment our forefathers wisely foresaw that no man could serve two masters; that a servant of the

On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions.

crown could not at the same time be a faithful servant of the people and that a Member of Parliament ought not to be allowed to spend the money which he is expressly deputed to save. It belongs to a subsequent part of this work to treat of the salaries and pensions of Members of the present Parliament; but there is a fact connected with this subject, for which the public is indebted to a motion of the gallant Cochrane, to which we cannot forbear adverting, and which will show the extent of the violation of the principle on which we are commenting. The fact to which we allude is in the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Expenditure, in May, 1809, where it is shown that seventy-six Members of the then Parliament, received in salaries and pensions, free from all deduction, £164,003.

Having adverted to this great constitutional principle, we shall now, conformably to our plan, give an introductory essay on Places and Pensions.

From changes in the mode of managing the revenue, and in the administration of justice, and partly from the union of the three kingdoms, there is a considerable number of offices to which no duties whatever are attached, and of which the holders, without either employment or responsibility, have only to receive the salaries and emoluments. Of this description is the Chief-Justiceship in Eyre, north of Trent, held by Mr. Villiers, with a salary of £2250; the Keeper of the Signet in Ireland, held by Lord Colchester, with a salary of £1500; the office of Lord Justice-General in Scotland, held for many years by persons not brought up even to the profession of law.

Next to offices of this cast, are those of which the salaries are vastly disproportioned to the employment, and of which the duties are discharged wholly by deputy. This forms a very numerous class. As specimens of Sinecures of this character we may mention the Auditorship of the Exchequer, held by Lord Grenville, with a salary of £4000; the Registrarship of the Admiralty, held by Lord Arden, with a salary of £10,000; the Clerkship of the Pells, held by a son of Lord Sidmouth, with a salary of £3000; and the Tellerships of the Exchequer. Many offices in the Courts of Justice belong to this head, and we may also add a host of Commissioners for the collection

On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions.

of the Revenue, the Receivers of Taxes, and Distributers of Stamps. But the chief nidus is in the colonies. The duties of nearly all offices in the West Indies are discharged by deputy, while the principal resides in England. They form an immense branch of patronage to the crown. It is impossible to estimate correctly their total value, the incomes being paid in fees, received by the deputy, who stipulates to pay a fixed annual sum to the principal. The total value of colonial sinecures, exclusive of those at the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, and Malta, has been estimated at £76,546. The following Statement, taken from the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Public Expenditure in 1809, shows the net value of the principal sinecures in the gift of the Crown; and otherwise:

In the English Law Courts, not generally in the gift of the Crown, £ 62,462
Sinecures in England, not in Law Courts...

Ditto in Scotland

Ditto in Ireland

To which add Colonial Sinecures

115,589

25,523

76,435

76,546

£356,555

Having spoken of Sinecures, we come next to their natural offspring-Reversions. It was very natural, that the holders of situations, to which large emoluments and no duties were attached, should not only wish to preserve them during their lives, but also, if possible, transmit them to their relatives and friends after their death: hence originated grants in reversion. Another reason, however, may be assigned.-Ministers not having situations in sufficient abundance to satisfy all their adherents, endeavoured to satisfy them. by anticipation. Those for whom they could not immediately provide, they satisfied by obtaining grants from the king, making them the heirs of places at the death of the present possessors. Sometimes these reversions were granted to two or three persons at once; first to one, and if he or she should die, to another; and if he or she should die, to another: in this way have been granted most of the places on the Irish establishment for sixty or seventy years to

come.

The absurdity of this practice is sufficiently obvious. Nothing

On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions.

could be more ridiculous than to appoint persons to offices who were, perhaps, yet in the nursery, and of whose future capabilities it was impossible to have any knowledge. To be sure, many of these reversionary situations had no duties attached to them, and, of course, it could not be of much importance by whom they were discharged.

1

From the large emoluments of Sinecures, and the granting them in reversion, have originated many ludicrous incongruities. "Many Noble Lords and their sons, Rt. Hon. and Hon. Gentlemen, fill the offices of Clerks, Tide-Waiters, Harbour-Masters, Searchers, Guagers, Packers, Craners, Wharfingers, Prothonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these officers are filled by women-by fine ladies too; some by children, but then these children are of high blood, and, of course, they have extraordinary faculties. There is one fine lady, a Baroness, who is Sweeper of the Mall in the Park, for £340 a year; Lady Arabella Heneage is Chief Usher in the Court of Exchequer; and the Honourable Louisa Browning and Lady B. Martyn are Custos Brevium in the Court of Common Pleas. Then, again, of Noble Lords, the Duke of Grafton is Sealer in the King's Bench, at £2886 a year; Lord Walsingham is in the petty office of Comptroller of First-fruits in the Court of Exchequer; and Lord W. Bentinck is Clerk of the Pipe, part of whose office it is to attend the man who holds up the Lord Chancellor's robe.

!

We could enumerate a great many more, but they will be noticed in our List; we shall now pass on to Pensions.

Of Pensions and Grants there are, in the official accounts, eleven hundred and nine names, receiving in the whole £642,621 a year. No inconsiderable part of this sum has been granted to "late Foreign Ministers;" men who have been sent abroad two or three years, and then return home and receive a swinging pension for life. Forty-seven of these persons receive £51,589 a year out of the

* Since these accounts were published, there has been a very considerable addition to the Pension-List. In the Ordnance department alone we have already noticed an addition of more than £6000 per annum.

On Places, Sinecures, Pensions, and Reversions.

earnings, of the people, who are in the deepest misery for food and clothing. This, however, is not the most objectionable class; the wives of such men as Mr. Huskisson and Lord Grenville are to receive enormous pensions at their death, while they are already saddled on the public for prodigious sums. Then there are swarms of misses, of mistresses, and of honourable ladies;-of the Herries, the Pagets, the Selwyns, the Piersons, the Napiers, and scores more, of whom we know nothing, and of whom the public know nothing, except their pensions. Foreigners too,-aye, foreigners are on the Pension-List; men have been brought from all parts of the earth, from America, from Germany, from France, and myriads from Scotland, to eat our bread, and devour the wages of labour and the profits of trade.

The salaries of public servants ought to be their only remuneration, and the granting of Pensions is altogether unjustifiable, unless for casualties in the service of the country; but, when they are squandered on persons of whom the public know nothing, nor for what, they are an intolerable grievance. At the close of the American war, when the country was very much straightened, an Act was passed to restrain the lavish expenditure of the public money in this department. This Act ordains "That no pension, exceeding the sum of £300 a year, should be granted for the use of any person, and that the whole of the pensions granted in any one year should not exceed £600, a list of which, together with the names of the persons to whom they were granted, should be laid before Parliament within twenty days after the beginning of each session, until the whole Pension-List should be reduced to £90,000, which sum it should not be lawful to exceed by more than £5000 in the whole of all the grants." How rigorously this enactment has been observed, will be seen from the following pages:-like every other fundamental law made for the protection of the persons or property of the people, it has either been evaded or abrogated.

It only now remains to give an estimate of the whole of the public money wasted on the subjects we have been describing. We shall digest our statement from the parliamentary papers to which we have