The tithes only would yield £300 a-year for EACH PROTESTANT FAMILY, supposing land worth only twelve shillings per English acre. Notwithstanding this COSTLY management, it appears that, from 1776 to 1792, the Catholics increased from 6 to 1 to 60 to 1—that is in a tenfold proportion!

Killaloe. By the Return, 28 benefices in this diocese yield 674,008 acres, averaging 24,071 acres to each benefice. The average rent, by Wakefield, is 33s. per acre. Taking the tithe at one-fourth the rent, these benefices would be worth £9,929 a-year each. Eight sinecurists hold THIRTY-Two parishes without even the cure of one soul.

Kilmore contains 30 benefices, the GLEBES alone of which amount to 11,026 acres, averaging 367 acres of freehold each, probably worth £450 a-year. Surely these freeholds are quite ample, without any tithe whatever, for reading the church service to A FIFTH of the population; but if, in addition to the £450 a-year, freehold, besides houses, demesnes, &c., each possess (like the pluralist Wynne) 30,000 acres of tithe-what a picture!

Waterford contains 18 resident, 32 absent clergymen. The tithes of this diocese are very valuable, and are appropriated to administer religious rites to 1,375 persons out of 108,625. The number of Catholics in 1792 were 108,625; Protestants 1,375. In 1776 the Catholic families were 76,519; Protestants 2,879. The Catholics, during that interval, therefore, increased from 6 to 1 to 80 to 1. So much for the efficacy of tithes in supporting the reformed religion.

For a List of Irish Pluralists, see APPENDIX.

OF THE

REVENUES OF THE CROWN.

ROYALTY, after all, is an expensive government! What is a king without an aristocracy and a priesthood? and what are any of these, unless supported in splendour and magnificence? It is a system in which men are sought to be governed by the senses rather than the understanding, and is more adapted to a barbarous than civilized state. Pageantry and ceremony, the parade of crowns and coronets, of gold keys, sticks, white wands, and black rods; of ermine and lawn, and maces and wigs;-these are the chief attributes of monarchy. They are more appropriate to the state of the king of the BIRMANS or of the ASHANTEES than the sovereign of an European community. They cease to inspire respect when men become enlightened, when they have learnt that the real object of government is to confer the greatest happiness on the people at the least expense: but it is a beggarly greatness, an absurd system, that would perpetuate these fooleries amidst an impoverished population,-amidst debts, and taxes, and pauperism.

In treating of the revenues of the crown it will be important to observe the distinction between the ancient patrimony of the sovereign, denominated the hereditary revenues, and the modern parliamentary grant, substituted in lieu of them, called the Civil List. Of the nature of the latter-the various charges upon it in the maintenance of the king's household and other disbursements-of its extravagant amount during the profligate reign of George IV. and of the total burthen entailed by the royal expenditure on the people, we shall treat in the next chapter. In the present we shall confine ourselves to an exposition of the amount, the application, and management of the hereditary revenues; consisting of the landed possessions of the Crown, of Admiralty droits, Gibraltar duties, Leeward-Island duties, the property of persons dying intestate without heirs, forfeiture in courts of justice, the incomes of bishoprics during vacancies, surplus of the Scotch civil list, profit on waifs, shipwrecks, treasure-trove, and other minor sources. Parliament having granted a specific annuity, out of the taxes, for the support

of the dignity of the Crown, the public has been constantly made to believe that the produce of the hereditary revenues has been appropriated to the wants of the state. This, it will be shown in the sequel, has been a complete and egregious delusion. It will be seen that the ancient revenues of the Crown have been left at the uncontrolled disposal of ministers. That they have been chiefly expended in objects personal to themselves, the king, or royal family; in pensions and grants to their parliamentary supporters, their relatives, and adherents; in the purchase of tithes and church-patronage; in occasional charitable donations, ostentatiously granted, under pretext of mitigating the sufferings of distressed artizans and manufacturers; in payments into the privy purse, for the more lavish support of court prodigality; in the building and pulling down of palaces; in payments for defraying the expense of the royal household, and other outgoings, which ought to have been defrayed out of the civil list: in short, it will be seen that, for the last seventy years, the public has not only been burthened with an enormous provision for a civil list, but, by an extraordinary kind of ministerial management, has failed to derive any advantage from those funds, in lieu of which a civil list was specially granted.

For obvious reasons, the leading men in the House of Commons have always manifested great reluctance to touch on these subjects. Although it is well known the income of the late king exceeded that of his predecessor by more than HALF A MILLION, not one of our advocates-not even our more ostentatious patriots--Brougham, Hume, Russell, or Graham-ever brought the shameless extravagance fairly before the country. It is possible, as we have hinted, there may have existed reasons for this complacence towards royal profusion. In spite of the encroachments of the Oligarchy, a king of England possesses great power, and has abundant means of rewarding expectants and supporters: he is not only the fountain of honour, but enjoys, nearly, all patronage in church and state; and the more virtuous aspirants in public life may have felt reluctant to shipwreck all hope of once basking in the sunshine of the court. However, we entertain no delicacy nor reserve on this score; we neither enjoy, nor is it probable we shall, any of the fat emoluments of office. Moreover we consider the sovereign, like other state functionaries, only the servant of the public: and the public sustaining a great burthen on his account, under the pretext that the duties of his office are essential to the welfare of the people, they have clearly a right to be informed of the amount and mode of his outgoings. In what follows it will be seen what a lavish expenditure has been tolerated during a period when successive ministers have been loud and vehement in professing a desire to reduce every establishment to the lowest possible scale, and when it has been often openly and boastingly alleged that economy and retrenchment had been carried to the utmost limit compatible with the national service. Our exposition will also throw light on the workings of the borough-government in its highest departments, and uncover many streamlets of corruption which meander through the upper stratum of our boasted Constitution.

We shall take the several branches of the hereditary revenues in order, beginning with the

CROWN LANDS.

These constitute the remains of the ancient patrimony of the Crown, originally intended to maintain the dignity, and defray the expense of the executive government. Formerly, the kings of England, as of other European states, were supported from the soil, and not by the system of revenue which has been organized in later times. Manufactures and commerce were then almost unknown; of money there was very little, and scarcely any imposts. Gradually kings found out the means of supplying their wants by loading their subjects with taxes, which rendered the revenue derived from their private domains of less importance; and hence, contemporaneously with the progress of fiscal oppression, we may date the neglect and alienation of the hereditary revenues. The chief remains of these possessions are the crown lands, consisting of parks, forests, chases, manors, fisheries, and royalties; extensive estates, numerous church livings, fee-farm-rents, light-house dues, mines of coal, tin, and copper. The property is situate in almost every part of the kingdom, but principally in the metropolis and vicinity; much of it is in Wales; and there are extensive estates in Ireland. The history and management of these royal endowments, their subserviency to political purposes, and their present state and value, we shall shortly describe. It is a subject of much novelty, and one with which even public men have not taken great pains to be informed. Our information is mainly derived from the Reports of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, from a publication entitled, "Observations on the landed Revenue of the Crown," written by a nephew of the celebrated Viscount Bolingbroke, and from the able speech, last session, of Mr. D. W. Harvey, the member for Colchester.

William, of Normandy, possessed a landed revenue of £400,000 a year. From that period the territorial income of the sovereign declined, till the reign of Henry VIII., when, by the sequestration of the wealth of the religious houses, it was again augmented. The public revenue of Queen Elizabeth amounted only to £500,000, of which £132,000 was the produce of the crown estates. During the Commonwealth a commission was appointed by Cromwell to ascertain the extent of the crown lands throughout the kingdom; and, though the disturbed state of the country, and the jealousy with which the new government was regarded, did not afford him an opportunity of making that property produce as much as it would have done in more tranquil times, yet he disposed of crown property to the amount of two millions sterling. In Cornwall there were 52 honours, manors, and estates belonging to the Crown, of which Cromwell disposed of five or six; but only three or four of the whole number are now remaining in the hands of government. These alienations by the Protector were, after the restoration, made sub

servient to a system of royal favour and proscription. Those who were artful enough to seize the proper moment for apostatizing from republicanism to royalty were never disturbed in their purchases; while others, who were either too tenacious of their principles, or had committed themselves too deeply by the part they took in the civil war, were compelled to surrender the crown property. Neither Charles II. nor James II. could resist the solicitations of rapacious courtiers, and the hereditary estates were leased, for long terms, to the great families, at almost nominal rents.

But the greatest inroads on the crown estates were committed about the era of the Revolution of 1688. Such was the rapacity of the patriots of those days, and their ingenuity in devising new taxes to defray the royal expenditure, that William III. was induced to grant nearly the whole of the crown estates to his supporters in parliament. One family, that of Portland, obtained a grant of five-sixths of the whole county of Denbigh. In the next reign a compact was, for the first time, entered into between the sovereign and the people, by which a civil list amounting to nearly £700,000 was given to Queen Ann, as a commutation for the land and other revenues enjoyed by her predecessors; and the preamble of the Act is worthy of notice, for its object was stated to be "to defray part of the expense of government, and lessen the burthens on the subject by means of the preservation and improvement of the crown lands." How public burthens have been lessened by this and subsequent engagements with the sovereign for a civil list will be strikingly illustrated in the sequel. For the present let us continue our narrativo.

In the agreement with Queen Ann, it was settled that no crown estate should be leased at a rent less than one-third of its clear annual value; the remaining two-thirds being left to the disposal of ministers, who thereby were enabled to benefit their friends. Indeed, they often neglected the injunction of the statute, by granting long leases at a rent of a mark, 6s. 8d., 13s. 4d. or other nominal consideration. These abuses afforded a pretext to Shippen, Lockhart, and other members, disappointed in not being permitted a share in the spoil, for introducing a bill, the object of which was the resumption of the crown property obtained by the heroes of the Revolution. The bill passed the Commons, but found its grave among the delinquents it was meant to reach, and where many similar acts of utility have been entombed.

From this period nothing more was heard of the crown lands till the accession of George III.: when it was settled that no lease of them should be granted for less than one-eighth of their annual value; the other seven-eighths to be taken in fines. Such, however, was the profligacy of ministers, that they first let the land almost for nothing, and, after taking an estimate of it at that rate, sold it for nothing. Thus an estate that was worth £5,000, was leased at a rent of £10, and afterwards sold for £200. An estate, comprising the whole of Piccadilly from Park-lane to Swallow-street, together with all the back lanes, was absolutely sold to the Pulteney family, six years after a lease had been