Keeper of Records, Birmingham Tower Keeper of State Papers Constable of the Castle of Dublin, including Lodgings Constable of the Castle of Limerick.. Constable of the Castle of Castlemain... Chairman of Committees, late House of Lords. 3 Messengers, late House of Lords, at £65: 4: 8 each 3 Doorkeepers.. Housemaid. ..ditto... 65: 13 each 361 7 0 Customer of Drogheda, Dundalk, and Carlingford Searcher of Dundalk and Carlingford. Searcher of Carrickfergus Searcher of Strangford and Donaghadee. Commissioner of the Board of Works One other..... One other. ...... ....ditto SCOTCH CIVIL LIST. Hereditary Keeper of the Palace of Holyrood House Under Keeper of ditto.... The Porter of the said Palace Under Falconer..... First Physician Second Physician. Apothecary.. Clock-maker Master of the Wardrobe. First Underkeeper of ditto. 92 6 4 12 376 4 12 6 0323 6 4 4 4 1,950 0 0 100 18 0 276 10 0 Usher to the Order of the Thistle. The Principal Masters and Professors of the University of St. The Principal and Professors of the Marischall College in The University of Glasgow, for their Professors ... The Procurator for the Church, for defraying the charges of Church ...... 276 10 0 50 0 0 6000 For the Clerks of the Auditor, until the office shall be regulated on the cessation of the existing interest Whitehall, Treasury Chambers, 30th March, 1831. PRIVY COUNCIL, DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS, AND CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS. A BRIEF notice of these subjects will appropriately follow our preceding exposition of the hereditary revenues and civil-list. The number of members of the Privy Council is indefinite, and at the pleasure of the king; the privy counsellors of William IV. amount to 192, comprising the royal dukes, the archbishops, the ministers, the chief officers in the royal household, the heads of the law-courts, and all the principal nobles and commoners who hold, or have held, the more important situations in the civil, military, and diplomatic service of the government. They sit during life, or the life of the king who nominates them, subject to removal at his majesty's discretion. They are bound by oath to advise the king, without partiality, affection, and dread; to keep his council secret, to avoid corruption, and to assist in the execution of what is there resolved. To assault, wound, or attempt to kill a privy counsellor, in the execution of his office, is felony. Although the ostensible duties of the council are, to advise the king in affairs of state, yet this duty is seldom discharged; and a privy counsellor, as such, is as little the adviser of the sovereign as a peer of the realm, who is denominated the hereditary adviser of the Crown. The really efficient and responsible advisers of the king are the ministers, especially that portion of them constituting the cabinet. No privy counsellor attends in council, unless expressly summoned for the occasion; and summonses are never sent except to those counsellors who, as members of the administration, are in the immediate confidence of his majesty. The privy council, then, is an institution of state, without salaries and without duties; and, as such, would require no notice in this publication. Authors who amuse themselves and their readers in describing that " shadow of a shade," the English constitution, make a great parade of the grave functions and high privileges of "his majesty's most honourable privy council;" but practice is as widely dif ferent from theory, in respect of this, as in respect of the representative branch of the government. Although the privy council ex officio is little more than a nonentity, yet, from extrinsic circumstances, it is a body of great interest, and some account of it is strictly relevant to our purpose. Nearly the whole of the privy counsellors do now, or have held important offices in the state; and, in consequence of these offices, have contrived to concentrate, in their own persons, a miscellany of pensions, salaries, sinecures, and grants, which is almost incredible. The mass of taxes consumed by George III. and IV. having been set forth, we may, as an appropriate sequel, set forth the mass of taxes annually consumed by those grave and reverend seignors," who were fortunate enough to enjoy the greatest share of the favour and confidence of those monarchs. 66 Our task will be much abbreviated by the exposition, in the session of 1830, of the present first lord of the admiralty. In a committee of supply on the 14th of May, SIR JAMES GRAHAM moved "for a return of all salaries, profits, pay, fees, and emoluments, whether civil or military, from the 5th of January, 1829, to the 5th of January, 1830, held and enjoyed by each of his Majesty's most honourable Privy Council, specifying, with each name, the total amount received by each individual, and distinguishing the various sources from which the same is derived." After urging a variety of cogent arguments in support of the propriety and utility of his motion, Sir James made the following extraordinary statement, founded on documents in his possession, and which statement was not contradicted. "He had divided the Privy Counsellors into classes, excepting from each the Royal Family, because they, having a certain income under the assignment of Acts of Parliament, there was nothing mysterious about them; and, in many cases, these assignments had been made under the sanction of bills, which had themselves undergone discussion in the House. He, therefore, excluded them altogether from his calculations upon this occasion. The total number of Privy Counsellors was 169, of whom 113 received public money. The whole sum distributed annually amongst these 113 was £650,164, and the average proportion of that sum paid to each yearly was £5,753. Of this total of £650,164, £86,103 were for sinecures, £442,411 for active services, and £121,650 for pensions, making together the total which he had stated. Of the 113 Privy Counsellors who were thus receivers of the public money, thirty were pluralists, or persons holding more offices than one, whether as sinecurists or civil and military officers. The amount received by the pluralists was £221,133 annually amongst them all, or £7,331, upon an average, to each annually. The number of Privy Counsellors who enjoyed full or half-pay, or were pensioned as diplomatists, was twenty-nine, and the gross amount of their income from the public purse was £126,175, or, upon an average, a yearly income to each individual of £4,347 a year. The whole number of Privy Counsellors who were members of both Houses of Parliament was sixty-nine, and of those forty-seven were PEERS, whose gross income from the public purse was £378,846, or, upon an average to each, £8,060 a year. The remaining twenty-two were of the House of Com. mons, and the gross amount of their receipts was £90,849, or, upon an average to each individual, £4,128 a year. It appeared then that there were 113 Privy Counsellors receiving the public money, of whom sixty-nine were members of either house of Parliament. He had already stated that sixty-nine were in the receipt of public money by way of salary; the total number of Privy Counsellors in the House of Commons was thirty-one, and of these twenty-two were charged upon the public purse. In this analysis there might be some inaccuracy; but if its accuracy were denied, his answer, short and conclusive, was-grant this motion, and prove the error to the public satisfaction." The motion was not granted; in lieu of it the then chancellor of the Exchequer substituted and carried a motion, of his own, for a return of salaries and emoluments above £250, held by all persons in the civil departments of the United Kingdom. The honourable member had moved for the return of the public emoluments of 169 individuals, and Mr. Goulburn overwhelmed him with a return of 2000. It was serving him, as Sir James remarked, when he called for a glass of wine, with a glass of wine diluted with a bottle of water. In fact, it was a complete avoidance of the object sought by the member for Cumberland. Mr. Goulburn said it would be invidious to produce a return of the emoluments of the Privy Council alone. What! more invidious than to move for and obtain, as was the case in 1806, of a return of the pensions and emoluments of the royal Dukes! Or more invidious than to seek and obtain, as was the case in 1822, a return of the pensions and emoluments of the honourable members themselves! George IV. had often submitted to such invidious proceedings-his income and expenditure too-the amount of his tailors' bills-his upholstery bills-the outgoings in his household-even down to the consumption of pickles and potatoes -- had all been sifted and overhauled, oftener than once, and no one thought it invidious. Receiving annually a great mass of public money, which imposed a heavy burthen on the people, they had a right to look into his majesty's affairs, just in the same way as they had a right to look into the affairs of these privy counsellors. But the chancellor of the Exchequer wished to screen the most honourables, by mixing them up with the clerks, and tidewaiters, and other subalterns, who serve not so much for present pay, as the hope of obtaining higher and more lucrative appointments. It was a dextrous diversion of the enemy's attack, worthy of the sublime genius who framed the Irish Tithe Composition Act. Precisely the same manœuvre is resorted to by the apologists of the ecclesiastical establishment to conceal the enormous revenues of the clergy. They have a great repugnance to giving separate statements of the incomes of the bishops, the dignitaries, and aristocratic pluralists; they like to see them all lumped together, those with high connexion and influence, and those with none,--and then, after exaggerating their numbers two-fold, they call upon you to look and sympathize at the miserable pittance allotted to the sons of Mother Church! But this will not do. It is not the average but the disproportion that shocks public feeling. A friendless incumbent or poor clerk cannot make his miserable stipend go a jot farther in the purchase of the necessaries of life, because there is some court bishop or court judge with ten or twenty |