The Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 15

Then, again, the civil list, which had been raised to within a little of a million a-year, was loaded with all sorts of extravagant charges. There appeared little control exercised in purchasing the necessary articles for the royal household, or in checking the sums charged for them. The royal menage was notoriously at once mean and monstrously expensive. Well might Pepys, in his time, exclaim, "I see it is impossible for the king to have things done as cheap as other men!" But, had he lived now, his astonishment would have been far greater. Besides this, there were innumerable pensions granted on the most ludicrous pleas to the connections of the ministers and their friends, and equally amazing catalogues of sinecure posts, with heavy sums attached to them. The whole of the royal government establishments were overrun by these flagrant corruptions. The governmental life was like that ancient image of the goddess Rhea, with her whole body covered with bosoms, at which the multitudinous broods might hang and suck. The sinecures were become of the most barefaced character in both court and office, in courts of judicature, and wherever they could be affixed.

What these impositions on a suffering people really amounted to was not destined to be known then, nor for a long time after, but we may now form some idea of them from the inquiries, and experiences, and loppings that have been made in our time. The royal household was one scene of useless offices and extravagances, which so completely drained the royal substance that the king's and queen's own mode of living was remarked on as mean and parsimonious. So devouring was this state of things in that great nursery of indolence, favourites, and courtier leeches, that the civil list of George III. was repeatedly increased during his reign, till it averaged upwards of one million annually, and at length, in 1816, amounted to one million four hundred and eighty thousand pounds. The debts of this same pattern king, moreover, during his reign, discharged by parliament, amounted to three million one hundred and thirteen thousand and sixty-one pounds!

The royal household is founded on manners and habits which have long been obsolete - upon old baronial customs and arrangements. There is the lord chamberlain, lord steward, groom of the stole, master of the horse, &c., each, in Ms department, covering an expenditure royal of itself. The lord chamberlain has oversight of all officers and servants of the royal chambers, except those of the royal bedchamber, which are under the groom of the stole. He is master of the officers of the wardrobe, of tents, revels, music, comedians, handicrafts, and artisans; though a layman, he has the oversight of all the royal chaplains, heralds, physicians, and apothecaries; and examines - or should examine - all charges of coronations, marriages, public entries, cavalcades, and funerals, and of all furniture in the parliament house, and the rooms of address to the sovereign. The lord steward has the like control of the servants of the household, clerks of the green cloth, &c. The master of the horse, of the royal stables and horses, and all the necessary, or unnecessary, equerries, pages, footmen, grooms, farriers, smiths, saddlers, &c. &c. The master of the hawks has, it is to be presumed, the care of the hawks that once were; yet this officer has a salary of one thousand three hundred and seventy-two pounds a-year; and the master of the dogs two thousand pounds a-year. The money expended by the lord chamberlain in George III.'s reign often amounted to one hundred and ten thousand pounds a-year; by the, lord steward, from eighty thousand to one hundred thousand pounds; by the master of the horse, from thirty thousand to fifty thousand pounds. No wonder that he was poor. How unnecessary was this cumbrous establishment was, in after years, - strikingly shown,' when the prince regent discharged all the duties of royalty on Iiis establishment as prince of Wales.

But, besides the immediate household, every government establishment was surcharged with sinecures, and offices all but sinecures, such as the chief-justiceships in Eyre, with salaries amounting to four thousand five hundred and sixty- six pounds; the vice-admiralty of Scotland, the privy seal of Scotland, offices of keeper of the signet and register of sasines, chancellor, justice-general, &c. of Scotland; all of which ought to have been abolished at the union, but which are kept up as sops for aristocratic families. The auditorship of the exchequer, the registrarship of the admiralty, were immensely overpaid for the amount of duty, the latter office amounting eventually to sixteen thousand pounds a-year. Then there were the four tellerships of the exchequer, the four clerkships of the Pells, clerks of the Hanaper, both here, in Scotland, and in Ireland, the custos brevium in the court of king's bench, the six clerks in chancery, &c., all notorious jobs, and, where there were any duties capable of being discharged, these were done by persons at very light salaries. But many of these things were become hereditary, and highborn ladies were even invested with collectorships of the customs; one was sweeper of the mall; another chief usher of the court of exchequer; a third custos brevium. Noble lords were wine-tasters, storekeepers, craners and packers to the court in Ireland. There were hereditary tide-waiters, clerks, harbour-masters, searchers, gaugers, wharfingers, prothonotaries, nay, royal and vice-royal ratcatchers, honourable and right honourable gentlemen, ladies, and even children; and finally, many of these hereditary offices, when at a later day the besom of reform came amongst them, had to be purchased off by large compensation sums. The sinecures towards the end of this reign amounted to three hundred and fifty six thousand five hundred and fifty-five pounds a-year; the pension list had grown, before it received a searching revision, to eight hundred and five thousand and twenty-two pounds per annum, loaded with almost every imaginable hanger-on of the aristocracy, men - numbers of whom more richly deserved a halter - and women and children whom the country at large had never heard of. The exceptions for real merit were few and far between, and very slightly benefited the possessors of it.

It was into this condition of the Augean stable of corruption and national robbery that the duke of Richmond and lord Shelburne in the lords, and Edmund Burke in the commons, now instituted an inquiry. It was not likely that so widely- spread and deeply-rooted a disorder, which involved the interests of so many powerful families, would be at once remedied; we have seen that, after eighty years of perpetual pressure on this subject, we are yet far from the bottom of this Sorbonian bog of governmental abuse, but these statesmen had the honour of being the first to put in their draining spades.

The duke of Richmond introduced the subject into the upper house by moving, on the 7th of December, that an address be conveyed to his majesty representing the distress of the country, the heavy demands upon it for the complicated war, and recommending a reduction of all useless expenses; that profusion, so far from being strength, was weakness; that it behoved all classes of officials to consent to a curtailment of the lavish salaries in existence; and that it would be a noble and effective example in the crown to take the lead, and could not fail of enhancing the love of his people, and diffusing an excellent influence throughout every department of the state. His grace represented that the present vast military establishment by sea and land could not include less than three hundred thousand men; that, since the commencement of the American war, as we have already stated, the expenditure had added sixty-three millions of pounds to the debt, and its interest, eight millions, to our annual payments. The interest of the debt had, in fact, now become of itself equal to the whole of our expenditure in years of peace before. This gave a fearful idea of the wastefulness and worse than wastefulness of our system, considering how little of effective service we had derived from this enormous outlay. He laid much stress on the belief that the example of the king would induce all orders of men to make equal sacrifices to the needs of their country. But no such desire animated the bosom of George III., who continued through the whole of his reign, at least during the period in which he retained his sanity, to suffer his expenditure to exceed his magnificent income. Richmond declared that he had no wish to curtail the pensions of those who had wasted their fortunes in the service of their country, as the Pelhams, for the duke of Newcastle was said to have sunk five hundred thousand pounds during the years that he so fondly adhered to office. The Pelhams, the Walpoles, and the Pitts, he deemed well entitled to what the country had conferred on them. Horace Walpole, the son of the minister, was now and had been long enjoying six thousand pounds a-year. The duke of Richmond gave the ministers and the aristocracy credit for a disinterestedness which they did not possess. They admitted the vastness of the expenditure, and that there was wastefulness, and that they were desirous of economy; but they could not believe that any reduction of the civil list would be sensibly felt, whilst it would reflect dishonour on the country, as if it were incapable of maintaining the crown in due credit. Lord chancellor Thurlow affected not to believe in the distress, or that any case of public extravagance had been made out. The duke of Richmond's motion was negatived by seventy-seven votes against thirty-six.

But on the 15th of December, only eight days later, lord Shelburne followed up the question with moving that the alarming additions annually made to the debt, under the name of extraordinaries incurred in different services, demanded an immediate check; that the distresses of landed and mercantile interests made the strictest economy requisite, and that the expenditure of such large sums without grants from parliament was an alarming violation of the constitution. He showed that these expenses bore no proportion to those of any former wars as to the services performed for them, and stated plainly that the cause was notorious - that the greater part of the money went into the pockets for the ministers' contracting friends. The ministerial party endeavoured to answer these too-well pointed charges by lauding the integrity and disinterestedness of lord North, as though such disinterestedness would have been any excuse for mismanagement; but the truth was, and it was no secret, that lord North, though not avaricious himself, was much too freehanded in gratifying the cupidity of others at the expense of the country; and, indeed, it is impossible to see how a minister of such ordinary powers and narrow views could have secured so long a tenure of office under such a career of disgrace and disaster, except by the indulgence of a boundless corruption to sustain his majority. Lord Shelburne's motion was also rejected. He then gave notice for a further motion of a like nature on the 8th of February.

The matter was not to be lightly or easily dismissed. On the very same day that lord Shelburne made his motion in the lords, Edmund Burke gave notice of a series of resolutions which he should introduce after the Christmas recess. He stated the outline of his intended measures for economical reform. Whilst he was delivering a very fine speech on this occasion, Fox came in from the house of lords, where he had been listening to the debate on lord Shelburne's motion, and warmly supported him, lamenting that there was not virtue enough in the house to carry through so necessary - so patriotic a measure. " I am just come," he said, " from another place where the first men in this kingdom - the first in abilities, the first in estimation - are now libelling this house." The announcement excited, as Fox intended, much surprise, and he continued - " Yes, I repeat it. Every instance they give - and they give many and strong instances - of uncorrected abuses, with regard to the public money, is a libel on this house. Everything they state on the growth of corrupt influence - and it never was half so flourishing - is a libel on this house."

The corruptionists in parliament were deaf to eloquence or remonstrance; the base contractors sitting there, and the other base engrossers of the money voted by the country for the most sacred purposes, for the preservation of the integrity and very status of the empire, sate still in impudent hardihood; but the sound of these stirring words were already out of doors. The public started at the note of reform, and at the prospect of the exposure of its bloodsuckers. The city of London voted thanks to the duke of Richmond and the earl of Shelburne for their motions, and for their promised resumption of the subject on the 8th of February. A great meeting was called at York to induce that county to prepare a petition for reform in parliament. Many efforts were made by persuasion and by menace to prevent these freeholders meeting. The marquis of Carmarthen, who, for his concurrence in the object of the meeting, was dismissed from the lord - lieutenancy of the county, described the means used to prevent the meeting as " mean, shabby, pitiful, and unwarrantable." But the marquis of Rockingham and Sir George Saville stood boldly forward, attended the meeting, and encouraged the freeholders. The meeting was held on the 30th of December, and, besides these distinguished men, was attended by noblemen, gentlemen clergymen - the richest and noblest in the county. A petition was adopted to the house of commons in the strongest terms. After enumerating the great facts of the revolt of the colonies, the aid given them by France and Spain, and the consequent war with those two countries, and all its train of expenditure, debt, and distress, it proceeded thus: - " Alarmed at the diminished resources and growing burthens of this country, and convinced that rigid frugality is indispensable to every department of the state, your petitioners observe with grief that, notwithstanding the calamitous and impoverished condition of the country, much public money hath been improvidently squandered; and that many individuals enjoy sinecure places, efficient places with exorbitant emoluments, and pensions unmerited by public services, to a large and still increasing amount; whence the crown has acquired a great and unconstitutional influence, which, if not checked, may soon prove fatal to the liberties of the country. Your petitioners, conceiving that the true end of every legitimate government is not the emolument of any individuals, but the welfare of the community, and considering that, by the constitution of this realm, the national purse is intrusted in a peculiar manner to the custody of this honourable house, beg leave further to represent that, until effectual measures be taken to redress the oppressive grievances herein stated, the grant of any additional sum of public money, beyond the produce of the present taxes, will be injurious to the rights and property of the people and derogatory from the honour and dignity of parliament." It then called upon the house, before laying any fresh burthen on the country, effectually to inquire into and "to correct the gross abuses in the expenditure of public money; to reduce all exorbitant emoluments; to rescind and abolish all sinecure places and unmerited pensions, and to appropriate the produce to the necessities of the state."