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red, that the droits of admiralty, as well as all the other prerogatives of the crown, are granted for the attainment of certain specific purposes, and that the specific purpose in this case, is the guarding and maintaining the rights and privileges of the sea. Lord Coke thinks that tonnage and poundage were granted to the crown for safeguard of the seas, and that it tains to the lord high admiral to see these droits administered; he qualifies this opinion, however, by stating, that the guard of the sea belongs not to the high admiral alone, but to private adventurers also, who fit out vessels for that purpose. But opinions of a date so ancient cannot be implicitly relied on with reference to the circumstances of the present times. In judging of the question, whether the droits of admiralty belong to the crown as matter of right, or are subjected to the controul of parliament, it is safer to look to more modern authorities. When the civil list was originally established in the reign of William and Mary, various rights and prerogatives of the crown were formally surrender. ed; and in all the acts re-establishing the civil list at the beginning of succeeding reigns, several branches of revenue, the exclusive property of the sovereign, have been collected into one aggregate fund, and named specifically as the surrender which the crown agreed to make in consideration of the civil-list granted by parliament. The principle of this arrangement is obvious; nothing was surrendered by the crown but what was specifically mentioned; and, as the droits of admiralty were not included in this specification, they were left of course with the crown on the same footing on which they had been formerly claimed. This principle has been recognised and acted upon at the commencement of each reign, from the Revolution downwards;

and, in particular, by the act passed in the first year of the present king's reign, which settled 800,0001. on his majesty for life, several branches of revenue were collected into one aggregate fund, in which, however, the droits of admiralty were not included. The right of the crown, therefore, to this fund, seems unquestionable; and when we reflect, that, so lately as the commencement of the present reign, when the various funds out of which the royal expences were to be supplied had been carefully examined by parliament, the droits of admiralty were left with the sovereign in addition to the ordinary revenue of the civil-list, the fair presumption seems to be, that unless gross abuse can be made out in the application, the legislature has no right to interfere.

Mr Brougham, however, was either unacquainted with these facts, or chose to disregard them. He accordingly brought forward a motion, by which he tried to establish, first of all, that the crown has no right to the fund in dispute; and, in the second place, that even supposing the right to be proved, it is proper that it should be abolished by parliament. He considered the subject to be of the gravest importance, as it involved the consideration of the best privileges of the House of Commons; of that privilege, the power of granting or refusing the supplies, which is the great and only seCurity that the people have in their representatives, against the influence and encroachments of the crown. He gave an exaggerated account of the value of these droits of admiralty, which he stated in round numbers to amount to no less than eight millions sterling, and enlarged upon the absurdity of allowing funds to such an enormous amount to remain at the disposal of the crown, without any act of parliament to controul the application. He

referred to the famous case of ship-money, which was argued in the reign of Charles I. and in which it was held, by the most eminent judges of that day, that all the natural profits arising from captures at sea, as well as the profits of lettres of marque, ought to be applied to the guarding and protecting of the national interests at sea, and could not, upon any principle, be considered as constituting a right by prerogative. He maintained, that even in the worst of times, not only parliamentary grants, but royal prerogatives, were considered as destined to the service of the country; and he quoted a dictum, which had been repeated by Sir William Scott in the court of admiralty, capta bello cedunt reipublicæ, and from this he inferred, that prizes must belong to the state, and not to the crown. That before the Revolution the expences of war were not regularly supplied by parliament, but generally by the crown from those very funds which were now described as the private property of the king; that parliament has often interfered with the prerogative of the crown, when that prerogative was turned into abuse, that upon this principle the temporalities of bishoprics had been taken from the crown, when a shameful and lavish use had been made of them: That the principle of parliamentary interference with the royal prerogative, was recognized in the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne; and even in the present reign, an act had been passed which directed the commissioners of Dutch prizes to pay the prize droits into the bank of England, and not to the receiver-general of droits. That the mode of receiving and issuing the various sums which compose the fund in dispute, is quite unconstitutional; that the droits of admiralty are received by the registrar of the high court of admiralty, and

remain in the hands of the receiver-general of droits, commissioners of prizes, and the bank of England, but never find their way into the exchequer ; that the money is taken out of the bank of England in a manner which infers no responsibility-not only under the authority of the privy seal, but of a warrant under the sign manual only; that the fund under consideration is, perhaps more than any other, liable to abuse, and might be turned to purposes most detrimental to the real interests of the crown and of the country; that it gives the crown an interest in commencing hostilities in a way the least honourable to the nation, and the least consistent with that good faith, candour, and magnanimity, which form such proud features in the character of the English people, and that the fund in question is that from which the most worthless minions of faction will, in all probability, be remunerated; men, whom even the minister would not dare to place openly on the pension list with such names as those of Nelson, St Vincent, and Wellington. That having thus urged his objections to the principles upon which this fund was left with the crown, he was not called upon to specify abuses which had actually occurred; but, at the same time, he could not help alluding to the great surplus of expenditure on the civil list, to the provisions out of the droits of admiralty which had been made to the princes, and to the large allowance granted to Sir Home Popham, all of which at least rendered the administration of this immense fund extremely suspicious. He concluded, by moving, that the possession by the crown of funds raised otherwise than by the grant of parliament, is contrary to the principles of the constitution; that it is the peculiar duty of the House of Commons to enquire into the nature of all such

therefore, this motion could not be supported; the right to the droits of admiralty has been vested in the crown for upwards of a century; and whatever may have been the opinions entertained at an early period, the various civil-list acts which have been passed since the Revolution, unquestionably continue this fund with the crown as a branch of the prerogative. Whether it be expedient that this prerogative shall still remain untouched, and that the droits of admiralty shall continue at the disposal of the crown, subject however to the controul of parliament, when a proper case for interference is made out, is a different although not a more doubtful question. The histoгу of parliamentary interferences with the royal prerogative, shews that it has not been usual, and is not of course constitutional, wantonly to trench upon any prerogative, until a case of abuse shall be clearly established; and, as it was not seriously pretended, in the present instance, that abuses existed, there could be no reason for ac ceding to the motion. These arguments had their proper weight with the house, and the resolutions of Mr Brougham were accordingly negatived. He afterwards made an attempt to get a committee appointed to enquire into the alleged abuses of this fund; but the house negatived his motion.

of

Another subject connected with the arrangements of the household and of the civil list was brought forward by Mr Creevey. About the beginning of the reign of Charles I. a grant of the whole island of Barbadoes, then very small value, was made to the Earl of Carlisle. During the troubles of the civil war and protectorate, however, many persons went over as settlers, and Barbadoes soon became a prosperous colony. The Earl of Carlisle died very much in debt, and his son transferred the grant of the is

land of Barbadoes to the Earl of Kinnoul. After the Restoration, however, the creditors of the Earl of Carlisle having made some claim on the island, which threatened to disturb the right of the settlers, a deputation of the latter came to England, and made a tender to the crown of certain rights and duties, on condition of their being secured in the possession of their property. The patent in favour of the Earl of Carlisle was accordingly surrendered; an annuity of 10001. was settled on Lord Kinnoul; the property of the planters was secured against all challenge, and the right of the crown to the duties was established.. It had been agreed, that these duties should be collected in the shape of an impost on the dead commodities of the island, at the rate of 4 in specie for every five score; and the duties have since got the name of the 4 per cent. Leeward Island duties. Part of this revenue was to be applied to local purposes in the island of Barbadoes, but the remainder was reserved to the king. In the reign of William III. this fund was recognised by two acts of parliament as part of the hereditary revenue of the crown; and although it was agreed, in the reign of Queen Anne, in consequence of an application from the colony, to apply this revenue to repair the fortifications of Barbadoes, no surrender of the fund, on the part of the crown, has ever been made, nor has parliament attempted to interfere with its application. At the beginning of the present reign, this fund, like the droits of admiralty, was reserved to the crown, and of course the prerogative. right cannot well be questioned. Mr Creevey, however, was of opinion, that these duties were the property of the inhabitants of Barbadoes, and ought to be applied to colonial pur poses: an opinion in which no one

concurred with him. He thought, at all events, that the house should resolve that these duties ought to find their way into the exchequer-that they ought to be applied in aid of the public expenditure, and not reserved as a part of the prerogative of the crown; but as this proposition implied an unnecessary and unjustifiable encroachment on the prerogative, he was not supported in his attempt to disturb it. He finally maintained, that the abuses in the application of this revenue called for parliamentary interference; but as he was unable to specify any such abuse, his motion for a committee was negatived.

The questions connected with the civil list naturally excited very great interest; and it is not wonderful that every effort was made to ascertain the nature and amount of the expenditure. A motion was accordingly made by Mr Eden for a select committee, to enquire into the charges on the civil list; and as ministers had nothing to conceal, they readily agreed to the proposal. Á circumstance deserving of notice occurred in the course of the discussion. The charge on account of foreign embassies constitutes a very considerable branch of the aggregate charge upon the civil-list revenue; and in the accounts presented to the house, in consequence of the motion, large sums were stated for the mission of Mr Arbuthnot to the Porte, and of the Marquis Wellesley to Spain. It was strongly insinuated that many errors had crept into these accounts; but a short explanation was found sufScient to remove every suspicion. Mr Arbuthnot was present in his place as a member of the house to answer for himself; and Mr Richard Wellesley was prepared to explain every thing on the part of his brother. So minute and satisfactory were the explanations given by these gentlemen; so clear of

all suspicion did the accounts of the embassies appear on the closest scrutiny; nay, so deeply was the public indebted, in a pecuniary point of view, to those who had served it with zeal and ability, that men of all parties assented to the justice of the charge made upon the civil list on account of these distinguished persons.

A message from the Prince Regent was sent down to the House of Commons, recommending that a suitable provision should be made for the princesses. By acts passed in the 18th and 39th of his present majesty's reign, the king was empowered to make a grant (contingently in the event of his majesty's demise.) of 30,000l. as an annuity to the four princesses who were in life when the acts were passed. If the number of the annuitants should be reduced to three, each of them was to have 10,000l. a-year; if to two, 20,0001. a-year was to be divided between them; and if to one, the survivor was to have 12,000l. a year. Such was the provision which parliament had enabled the king to make for the princesses in the event of his majesty's demise; but the melancholy circumstances which had recently occurred seemed to place their royal highnesses in the same condition as if the demise of the crown had actually taken place. The princesses had hitherto lived in family with their royal parents; but as they might now desire a change in this respect, and might even prefer to live separately from each other, it became necessary to make suitable provisions for them. It was proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that to each of the four princesses the sum of 90001. per annum should be granted, exclusively of the grant of 40001. from the civil list, a sum which, as it was payable during pleasure, could not with certainty be relied upon. He proposed