chase were £10,000. The receipt from pews was only £800, and the rector was paid £2000 a year. But an important object was gained by this contract. Ministers secured the ecclesiastical patronage of one of the largest and richest parishes in the metropolis. Having given specific examples of the management of crown property, and the purposes to which it has been applied, we shall next advert to the general income and expenditure arising from this source. The property in Ireland has scarcely yet been noticed. It is of the same description as that in England, consisting of estates, compositionrents, quit-rents, and rents of plus acres. The gross proceeds from these sources, in 1796, were £61,340. Since then part has been sold, leaving the Irish rental in 1829, £56,354. The average receipts from the crown lands in both kingdoms, from 1793 to 1829, has been £560,000 per annum. Of this income a very small portion indeed has been available to the public service. In the last three years £1,500,000 was received, and not a single farthing was paid into the Exchequer. During the whole term of twenty-six years only £234,000 has reached the Treasury, the remaining balance of upwards of fourteen millions having been expended in the notable bargains of the commissioners already mentioned, in metropolitan improvements, on the royal parks and palaces, in pensions and compensations, and in the salaries of officers and charges of manage ment. The average expenditure in the three years 1827, 1828, 1829, in the collection of rents, law expenses, and other charges, was £169,020, being, within a trifle, 20 per cent. on the entire produce of the crown lands. The office of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, &c. costs upwards of £18,000; in addition to which £6000 and more is annually paid for law charges, and to auditors and assistants. But the greatest and most objectionable objects of disbursement have been the parks and palaces. The total of the ordinary expenditure on St. James's and Hyde Parks, Richmond, Hampton-court, Bushy, Greenwich, and Windsor Parks, was, in 1826, £48,810. In 1827, the expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, amounted to £92,200. In 1828 it was £116,143. The sums lavished on the palaces have been really prodigious. For the repairs and alterations of Windsor Castle £771,000 has been granted, and still unfinished. £270,670 has been expended in furniture for the castle, and £10,000 more is required. Of the sum expended £1768 was for kitchen furniture. The total expenditure on the castle in furniture and building is estimated to amount to £1,084,170.* The estimated expense of repairing and improving that ill-situated pile, Buckingham-Palace, was £432,926; but this did not include the expense of the SCULPTURE of a marble archway, alone, to cost £35,000, and the commission of architects and clerks, amounting to £63,243 more. Lord Duncannon, this session, * Parliamentary paper, 271, Sess. 1831. required £78,750 additional, to complete this monstrous undertaking, which does not include the charge for furnishing the palace.* The formation of Regent-street was estimated to cost £368,000. From first to last it has cost £1,833,000. The rents of the houses do not exceed £36,000, being under 2 per cent. per annum on the outlay. Had not this undertaking been left to the management of Mr. Nash, it might, by this time, have produced three or four times the present rental. The Charing-cross improvements were estimated to cost £850,000, they have already cost £1,147,000. The Strand improvements are estimated to cost £748,000, but Mr. Arbuthnot now admits there will be an exceeding on this estimate of £95,000. With the purpose of the street-improvements no fault can be justly found. Some of them already are, and others no doubt will be, both useful and ornamental to the Metropolis; and if the land-revenue had not be drawn upon, recourse must have been had to the consolidated fund. The chief objections that can be urged against them are the disproportion between the original estimate and the expenditure; the questionable taste displayed in some of the plans, and to the individuals employed to superintend their execution. For example, Mr. Nash, according to the report of a parliamentary committee, "became a lessee of the Crown while acting as its agent and surveyor, and in his capacity of the crown-surveyor actually reported on the buildings erected by himself, upon the ground of which he was the lessee." Other and more serious charges have been alleged against this gentleman, but as they have not been so clearly established we pass them over. Throughout we have used the term crown lands; they are in fact not the lands of the Crown, but of the public. Ever since the reign of Queen Anne a life-annuity has been granted to the sovereign in lieu of the produce of the hereditary revenues. Hence results the mal-appropriation in lavishing these funds in aid of the royal expenditure. Surely the civil list of the late King was ample enough, not only to defray his personal outgoings, but to maintain his own establishments. The The palace jobs have yielded splendid pickings to the upholsterers. Messrs. Morel and Seddon's estimates for furnishing Windsor Castle amounted to £143,000, which were paid to them; but the bills they delivered were for £203,963, leaving a balance of £60,963. A parliamentary committee demurred to the payment of so large a balance over the estimates. Certain persons, deemed competent judges, were appointed to examine the charges for selected articles of furniture which the committee thought would be a criterion whereby to judge whether the general charges of the bills were extravagant. But the gentlemen nominated by the Treasury to appraise, after a preliminary inspection, declined the task, the furniture being of that peculiar sort, they were incapable of forming an estimate of its value. Messrs. Morel and Seddon next delivered a statement of the sums actually expended by them in materials, labour, and trade charges, and the profit accruing, which statement was verified by an inspection of their books by Mr. Abbott, an accountant. Witnesses were then examined as to the FAIR PROFIT which ought to be charged by upholsterers, and the result was the bill of Morel and Seddon, originally £203,963: 6:5, was reduced to £179,300 13: 9. + Parl. Paper, No. 343, vol. iii. Session 1829. acts of parliament, establishing the administration of the Woods and Forests, require that the revenues arising therefrom shall be expended in objects of public utility. Was the purchase of Claremont, as a residence for Prince Coburg, or the giving of a slice off Hyde-park to the Duke of Wellington, to round the area of Apsley-house, objects of this nature? Or can the parks and palaces be considered such? These last are often very haughtily and insultingly described as solely for the use, recreation, and enjoyment of the King. Let the King then defray, we say, the expense of them. During the late extravagant reign the people were very contemptuously treated as regards these matters. They were often capriciously excluded from the parks; prohibited from being seen in certain walks-restricted from entering here or walking there- and all these fantastic regulations to interdict the enjoyment of their own property, and the expense of maintaining which was defrayed out of their own pockets. Waterloo-place, Regent's Park, and Windsor-park, afford examples of royal or official whims which will be easily recollected. Under William IV. there appears a disposition to conciliate popular feeling, but the treatment of the public by his predecessor was intolerable. We shall now lay before the reader a return of the present income and expenditure on account of the crown lands. It is for the year ending 5th January, 1829, and it is abstracted from the last triennial Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. After that we shall subjoin an estimate of the present value of the crown estates, submitted, by Mr. Harvey, to the House of Commons, March 30th, 1830. Total income for the year ending January 5, 1829.... £525,750 0 3 ORDINARY EXPENDITURE. Ancient stipends, including payments to schools, chapels, churches, &c ... .... .... Collection of rents, including allowances to receivers tenants Expenses of the establishment of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, surveyors, officers, &c...... Salaries to auditors and assistants.......... Law-charges ...... ................. ........ Payments to architects, surveyors, &c. expenses of jour- Fees on acts of parliament, enroiling of leases, &c. Total ordinary expenditure. St. James's, Greenwich, Hyde, Windsor, and other royal parks.... In purchase of estates and payments to Board of Works for ESTIMATE of the Value of the Crown Lands, independently of the Woods and Forests, and of that Portion which may be considered to belong exclusively to the Royal Person. ...... £130,000 15,000,000 One hundred and thirty manors and royalties, at £1000 360,000 Carried forward......£17,490.000 Mr. Harvey committed an oversight in estimating the Middlesex groundrents at £50,000 per annum. Last year they produced £105,000, and when the leases fall in will be worth, according to the estimate of Mr. Huskisson, £500,000. Instead of two, their present worth is, at least, four millions. Brought forward....£17,490,000 Waste lands in forests not fit for oak timber, 86,000 acres, at £5 per acre.... 430,000 Church livings 100,000 Fee-farm-rents, and other unimproveable payments, in England 150,000 242,500 2,000,000 Total......£20,412,500 N. B. The above estimate is exclusive of mines of coal, tin, and copper, and also of the Duchy of Lancaster, £30,000. Davenant, in his Treatise on the Lands of England, estimates the common rights of the Crown at 300,000 acres. The estimate of the value of the land-revenues does not include the royal forests. In some of these are intermingling rights, and the Crown has no property in the soil. Such are New Forest and the forests of Epping, Sherwood, and Dean Forest; all the rights possessed by the Crown consist of the right of herbage for the deer, although in the great forest of Sherwood, comprising a sheet of land of 95,000 acres, not a single deer is kept. In the New Forest, out of 90,000 acres, the Crown has the right to enclose periodically 6,000 acres, which may be dissevered from the pasturage for the growth of timber. The most valuable property undoubtedly consists of the estates and leaseholds alone worth upwards of twenty millions sterling. These might be sold without encroaching on any possession in the least conducive to the dignity and enjoyment of the sovereign. What dignity, indeed, can there be in the king or his servants being jobbers in land, or hucksters in the sale of houses, leases, and ground-rents? It is not, however, the dignity nor the comfort of the king, but the patronage of his ministers, that is at stake. The preceding narrative has shown what an endless source of jobbing the crown-lands have been for centuries; of jobbing the most foul, rapacious, and iniquitous. Not only have the commons, but the distinguished names of the peerage— the great historical cognomens-been implicated in these peculating transactions. This description is not limited to the times of the Edwards and Henries, when there was no law to contravene the sovereign's pleasure, or the sordid practices of his servants, but applies to the period subsequent to the Revolution, when the constitution is supposed to have been purified and perfected. Acts of parliament, indeed, were passed prescribing the minimum of rent (relatively to the full value) at which the crown-farms should be let,-namely one-third before the reign of George III. and one-eighth after the accession of the said king, stating, too, that, under the former regulation, two-thirds of the valued rack-rent, and, under the latter, seven-eighths should be paid in the shape of fine. But what of these statutory restraints? They were all set at nought; the "creatures were at their dirty work" again; and, in most cases, the rents reserved and the fines exacted were merely nominal. May it not be said, after this, that ministerial responsibility is a farce, and that it is sheer fatuity to expect justice will be enforced |