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vernment has been loud and unceasing in professions of economy, of a desire to reduce every possible charge, to make every possible saving; yet, in face of all this, one great and most objectionable branch of expense, under circumstances most favourable for reduction, has been actually suffered to increase!

What faith can the nation repose in the declarations of any ministers? They can only be meant to deceive—to prolong time-to lull a suffering people into a fatal security. All the extravagance of which we complain has resulted from a negligent-not to say deliberate-and indefensible system of profusion. We do not complain of the expense of maintaining those who are actually worn-out or disabled in the public service, no more than we complain of supporting, by a poor-rate, the aged and infirm in civil life; but we may justly complain of supporting those who are in health and strength,-who never served their country, and have no claim on its gratitude. The half-pay of the Army and Navy, on the present plan, is decidedly objectionable. It is not a remuneration for past service; since every holder of a commission, though he has held it only for a day or an hour, is as much entitled to claim half-pay, when not actually employed, as another who has served for twenty years. Such being the rule of the service, ought not government to have adopted every precaution against the multiplication of claimants; ought it not have guarded against new admissions into the naval and military departments, while there remained officers in abundance on half-pay able to fill up every vacancy? Their conduct has

been the reverse of so obvious a principle. Thousands of new commissions have been given away in the Army and Navy, while, at the same time, we had upwards of 16,000 officers in both branches of service totally unemployed. Hence the perpetuity of the Dead Weight." The Aristocracy look upon the Army, the Navy, the Church, and Public Offices, as so many branches of their patrimony, and that a reduction in them would lessen the amount of patronage, diminish the funds for the maintenance of younger children, illegitimate offspring, collateral relatives, favourites, and dependents.

Besides the granting of first commissions, other causes have operated to keep up the amount of the Dead Weight. Previous to the year 1820, no half-pay was payable to officers holding any other office, civil or military, under the crown; but this regulation did not extend to officers on full-pay, the receipt of which was compatible with the holding of civil employment. Another regulation, previous to 1818, was that widows should not be allowed pensions, unless their husbands had been on full pay; and all widows having pensions ceased to receive them if they married. Further, in the Navy, a widow lost her pension if her income from any other source equalled twice its amount. All these regulations have been abrogated;* and the consequence has been an annual increase of charge to the amount of £147,624; and a loss to the public from 1818 of upwards of £1,300,000.

Third Report of the Committee on Public Income and Expenditure, Parliamentary Papers, vol. v. Session 1828.

What we have said will, we apprehend, be sufficient to enable our readers to comprehend the nature of the Dead Weight, and the causes of its longevity. We shall proceed with other subjects, first referring to the Appendix for a more detailed statement of the Half-Pay and Superannuation Expenditure.

SINECURES, REVERSIONS, AND PENSIONS.

Sinecures are offices without employment! The bare description is sufficient to decide the fate of appointments like these; but how infatuated the government must be, which obstinately retains them amidst a discontented and famishing population. Let us shortly inquire into the origin and present state of these corruptions.

Sinecures have mostly originated from changes in the usages of society, from alterations in the management of the revenue, the administration of justice, and partly from the union of the three kingdoms. They ought all to have ceased with the duties attached to them; but have been kept up for sake of patronage. Of the first description of sinecures, the office of master of the hawks, in the royal household, held, with a salary of £1,392, by the Duke of St. Albans, is an example. The chief-justices in Eyre, with salaries amounting to £4,566, have been kept up for centuries, after such a mode of administering the laws had terminated. In Scotland and Ireland is a host of offices of which the holders, without employment or responsibility, have only to receive their salaries and emoluments. Of this class are the offices of Vice-admiral of Scotland, held by general Lord Cathcart; the Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, held by the late first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville; the office of Chancellor of Scotland, held by lieutenant-general the Earl of Rosslyn; the office of Justice-general of Scotland, held by the late Master of the Horse, the Duke of Montrose; and the office of Keeper of the Signet in Ireland, held by Lord Colchester. All these are absolute sinecures, with salaries varying from £1500 to £5000 per annum. The offices of Chief Justices-in-Eyre, now held by Lord Clarendon and the Right Honourable T. Grenville, are to cease with existing interests; but when that will be no one can tell, since many of these lucrative appointments have been made hereditary in particular families, or patent offices granted for a long term of years.

Next to absolute sinecures are offices 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 may be mentioned, the Auditorship of the Exchequer, held by Lord Grenville, with a salary of £4000; the Registrarship of the Admiralty, held by Lord Arden, with an income of £10,500; the four Tellerships of the Exchequer, each with salaries of £2700; and the four Clerkships of the Pells, with salaries of £1500, held by the Bathursts, Dundasses, and Percivals. In the departments of the Army, the Navy, and Revenue, are numerous sinecures, which ought to have been long since extinguished. Such are the Paymaster of the Forces, £2000;

the Treasurership of the Navy, £3000; the Vice-Treasurership for Ireland, £2000; the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, £2000; and the Master-General of the Ordnance, £3175; the duties of which last office, if any, might be discharged by the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance.

Many offices in courts of justice fall under this head. Only think of Earl Bathurst being a clerk in Chancery, with a salary of £1108, and of such a pompous man as Lord Ellenborough, being Clerk of the Court of King's Bench, with a salary of £9625, and one of the custodes brevium of the same court. The Honourable Thomas Kenyon, a brother of Lord Kenyon, is filazer, clerk of outlawries and custos, with emoluments amounting to £7,000 or £8,000 a year. The emoluments of Mr. Thomas Thurlow, the patentee for the execution of the bankrupt laws, amounted, in the year ending January 1830, to £8,502; and the emoluments of the Rev. Thomas Thurlow, (another relative of the Chancellor of that name,) as clerk of the hanaper, averaged betwixt £2,000 and 3,000 per annum. The Scotts, the Surtees, the Abbotts, the Murrays, and other well-known names, hold valuable appointments in courts of law; but we cannot stop to particularise them, and must refer to the List of Places. In the counties palatine and duchy courts of Lancaster, Durham, Chester, and Cornwall, are innumerable sinecures in the nominal capacities of chancellors, registrars, receivers, attorneys and solicitors general, auditors, King's counsel, ushers, and other mimicry of the regal and imperial government.

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Again, what a host of sinecures, under the titles of governors, lieutenant-governors, town-adjutants, town-majors, constables, gunners, wardens, lord-wardens, and God knows what beside, of the cities, towns, forts, castles, garrisons, &c. of Great Britain and Ireland. Berwick-onTweed, Chester, Hull, Blackness-Castle, Dover-Castle, EdinburghCastle, Walmer-Castle, and Tilbury-Fort, are examples of these appointments, and which cost the country upwards of £35,000 per annum.+ Numerous commissioners of revenue, comptrollers, receivers of taxes, and distributors of stamps, are little more than sinecurists, the duties, where any exist, being discharged by deputies. But the chief nidus of sinecures 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 subjoined statement, taken from the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Public Expenditure in 1809, shews the net value of the principal sinecures in the gift of the Crown, and otherwise. It is now twenty-one years since this report was made; and, during

* Parliamentary Paper, ordered to be printed Nov. 12, 1830.

+ Parliamentary Paper, No. 426, Session 1826.

that long interval, we doubt whether the profits of a single sinecure have been saved to the public; some which we have noticed are to cease on the termination of existing interests. In Scotland, last Session, the office of justice-general, and one or two more, were abolished; but then the holders are to have compensations; so that, we repeat, we doubt whether, by the extinction of sinecures the community has been saved a farthing; and this monstrous abuse is just as flagrant as ever, to the everlasting reproach of the members of both houses of Parliament, who have not raised their voice, not only once but many times, against the further toleration of this shameless robbery, under any shape or pretext. Here is the return to which we have referred :

Sinecures in the English Law Courts, mostly in the gift of the
Judges.

Sinecures in England, not in Law Courts.

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£

62,462

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 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 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.

From the large emoluments of Sinecures, and the granting them in reversion, have originated some ludicrous incongruities. Many noble lords and their sons, right honourable and honourable gentlemen, fill the offices of clerks, tide-waiters, harbour-masters, searchers, gaugers, packers, craners, wharfingers, prothonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these offices are filled by women and some by children. Not long since a right honourable lady, a Baroness, was sweeper of the Mall in the Park; another lady was chief usher in the Court of Exchequer; and the Honourable Louisa Browning and Lady B.

Martyn, were custos brevium: some of these offices, we see, from the Law List, have been recently merged in and executed by the husbands and children of these high-born dames. Then of noble Lords; the Beresfords hold the appropriate offices of wine-tasters, storekeepers, packers, and craners, in Ireland; the Duke of Grafton, with a deputy to help, is sealer in the Common Pleas in England, at £3888 a year; Lord Walsingham is in the petty office of comptroller of first-fruits in the Court of Exchequer; and Lord Wm. Bentinck, now located in India as governor-general of Bengal, is clerk of the pipe, part of whose office it is to attend or assist the man who holds up Lord Chancellor Brougham's train.

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

As nearly as can be collected from the various official returns submitted to Parliament, it would appear there are upwards of fifteen hundred pensioners, who receive about £777,556 per annum. This is exclusive of colonial pensions, and of all grants, allowances, half-pay, and superannuations for civil, military, and naval services. We subjoin a statement of the objects and sources from which this vast sum is paid.

Pensions payable out of the consolidated fund of England and £
Ireland.....

Pensions to St. Domingo sufferers and Dutch naval officers.....
Pensions to ambassadors and other foreign ministers charged on

.....

455,444

Pensions payable out of the hereditary revenues of the Post Office

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1,820

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18,040 +

Court pensions limited, by 22d Geo. III. c. 82, to..

Pensions on the Irish civil list, about

Ditto on the Scotch civil list..

Ditto to Spanish refugees, who had co-operated with the British armies in the Peninsula war

Total of Pensions...... £777,556

The funds, out of which pensions are paid, are so numerous that we are not sure, though we have all the official returns about us, some of them have not escaped our researches. However, we had rather be under the mark than be accused of exaggeration. Exclusive of sinecures, and the millions expended on objects nearly as unjustifiable,

This and the preceding items are taken from the Fourth Report of Sir H. Parnell's Finance Committee, page 67, Session 1828.

+ Parliamentary Paper, No. 127, Session 1830. This item, perhaps, ought to be omitted, being only, we presume, a temporary allowance to individuals, many of whom had just claims on the hospitality of the country.

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