Star. — London, England, 1817-05-06 00:00:00

I , 10.:p•+111. CP TIIK CMIAIITTEF. OF FINANCg. and General THolorrow, the further consideration of Ale Report of the Committee on the Saving Bank's was put off to next Wednesday. Lord BINNING moved the second reading of the Scotch Madhouse Bill, and stated, that in consequence of several communications wh'ch lie had received, he should tr:t press the Bill through all its stages during the present tiessinn of Parliament. The Bill w•.as then read a second time, and orlysed to be printed. Mr. PEEL g.ave notice that he should s';ortly move for kive to hring in a Bill for the recovery of fortrAori s r.n Irc n;zances in Itel od. The C:miniirce on the Tithe. Leasing Bill was p soponed n ix Tl.urgday. Mr. 1) GI 1.3::i(1' moved t! at the !loose resolve itself into a Comavttee of tb, whole House, to consi der the fiat ; - I:tt of tile Cemmittee of Finance. Oa the Tteitioti 'fiat the SPEAK 1::t leave the Chair, Mr—BROUGHAM expressed his tite, that al thol,lll the lions.. sheltie! tes , lve ihell into a Com /vim e, it wool.] net be prevented from entering into the merits nf ti , e whole riues:ion. Mr. 1) GILIIERT a;;reed with the Honourable and Leal eel (i;ontlarnan. Toe 11 ,, use having 'hen resolved itself into a C unmittee, Mr. 1). GILBERT rese, to c ull the attention of the Conirwitt e to the first Finance Report, and to a k leave to brine, in Bills to carry its recomtnenda ti ins int., eff .ct. The llon"titable Gentleman said, tut he had al , e:4ys considered Sinecure Places as 1 , 1 is and hlen.iNh s in the Cnesitiiitom of the Coun try. He had air to. nay suitinoted the measures pro po ted for their aboli sou by au Hen. Friend of his ( Mr. li4nkes). lit. pm °oddity thsapproved of • ffices exe c .te'd by deptitirs,anti of giving sinecure offices, carry ing a semblance°, duty. He also th , ,,lght Eh+ grant ing of Others in Reversion was an abase which tend .ed to increase the burdens no the punlic. It such places were not given as a matter nt tavour, yet an wehensiim Went abroad, chit City were, and a bigwig lean% was excited in the pablic opinion Pgain,t them. On those grounds I.e had always re clmniroded their abolition, even %hen the House was much divided upon the subject. It would pro bably be t bjected to the present measure, that it weeld not produce any ;peat saving. That, at first, would certainly be the case. And the reason of it was the necessity of keeping goad faith with those who had vested rights in their situations, and he was sore that but few would not concur in saying that such right should be religiously maintained. borne time hence, however, the saving would become more cousiderable. The abolition of Sinecures would ten d:r it necessary to point out' some other mode of re. waroing meritorious services. Hence the system of granting Pen:lions was recommended to the conside- Tatou of the Committee, those Pensions to be pro portioned to the nature of the services performed.— He had hoped that there would have been scarcely any difference of opinion with tegard to the motion which it was his intention to propose. He had since I been .given to undetstand, that he should not be sup. ported so unanimously as he had expected. He la mented it. He should have to move for leave to bring in, not one Bill only, but a number of Bills, as the different nature of the offices to be abolished or regulated reluired separate enactments. Thui, the Chief Justices in Eyie, were entirely Sinecures; but the Warden of the Cinque Ports and the Sover nor of the Isle of Wight had important duties to perform, which must continue to be executed by per.; sons with reduced emoluments derived front other sources than the Civit,List, or the Consolidated Fund. He conceived that the measure to be adopted in con- sentience of the recommendation of the Committee would give general citisfaction. The public were aware that no great saving could at once be eff:cted i that particular branch, and would take what was done as an earnest of since'e intentions and future economies. 'lie then moved that the Chairman be directed to move for leave to being in a Bill to abolish the o&es of Warden and Chief Justices in Lyre, North and South of Trent. Mr. BOSWELL rose, he said, reluctantly, to offer himsell to the attention of the House upon this important occasion. The measures proposed by the Hon. Gentleman, could, in his conception, rest only upon one of two grounds, either that . the influence u . l the Crown had increased and ought to be reduced. or that the finances.of the country were inadequate to bear the butdens arising out of the appointmetits un der consideration. As to the first point, he was ready 'openly to avow his opinion, that the influence of the Crown in Parliament had never been less than of late jars especially, in consequence of the operation of the measures adopted in 1792 (alluding to Mr. Biirke's Bill). It was notorious that the country never had a better House of Comments than the re gent. (A laugh, sad Hear, hear, hear.) He meant what was called a more unmanageable House..L ( Reserved largbta, awl hear, hear.) He supposed, when site Committee proposed to substitute pensions as a reward for service, they thoright they were sugges ting something much better thin office; bathe would v.:inure to assert, these was something in the nature of a pension by no means so agreeable to the feelings as an •ottice which had been hallowed by long cus tom. So far from being a saving, also, be was cer. tarn it would create a great increase of expense. He must own he never t spected that a Committee, com posed of such individuals as sat upon the one whose Report was then before them, would have recommen ded that public setv.ces should be rewarded open a calculatr n of time. The consequence was, that the moat brilliant services which a man might perform to his country, would go untequittd, unless he could plead a service of hve years. Were there no other individuals worthy of reward than thy eleven pointed out in the Repent of the Committee He would swpose the case of Hon. Gentlemen on the other' s-ae of the House, some of whom might be considered, as ren dering most efficient services to their country by resisting measures, in their opinion, injurious.— 'rhe eyes of the Sovereign might at last be opened to their merits—(a loud largo from the oppoutioa Barbee), but be could fun reward them until they had gone ihrougli their tire years probation. The principle of tie measure, therefore, only tended to encourage a pl •ce-iteeping disposition, to induce men to cling to odice. As to the economy of it, he could not say much in Its savoor. At the end of five years the pen somt might amount to £27,000, and at the end of 90 years to ail6U,Utid. With tepid to the pieces pro posed for abolition, he thought they should he touched with great caution. The Warden of the Cinque Ports .wad one of that description. But there was All another office, respecting which he was entitled to feel, and he should be wanting as a Scptsman if he dd not. At this period there were tillers retained ie Scotland, and those few were struck %t by the present Report. He spoke of them as the monuments of homer ill ; dependence, and as soothing to the pride 'of the in- I habitants of that country. The Repent, howevt r. had touched on , ! with which it was not in the power of Par liament to isitertere. By the 19th ar tide of the it was provided that the office of Lord Justice Gene ral should be maintained as by law established. He was aware the Committee did not propose to abolish it, but to make the 'head of the criminal court walk into the civil one, which was the same As it the Lord Chief Justice of the .Court of King's Bench were, male the bead of the Court of Common Pleas. The general principle of the Report he considered as dan gerous to the Constitution, and he should 'give his humble opposition to it in every stage. Lord CASTLE It RAG II was not one of those who, distingeishing the patronage of the Crown in 1792 Iron ttizt which had grown with the war and ought certainly to he reduced at pt-ice, were prepar ed to admis that that patronage had become excessive in tte present day. It was his conviction, on the contrary, that the current of years had imposed many restraints on that patronage. He, therefore, had thought that no case had been made when an Ho limitable Friend of his (Mr. Bankes) had introduced a motion for its reduction some Sessiocs ago. He had consequently voted against that motion. As to the Honourable Member who had spoken last, and had stated, that by the adoption of the present mea sure the country might be burthened in five years with pensions to the amount of £27,000, and in SO years to that of reltio,ooo, lie must not have read the Report of the Committee attentively. For by no possibility, according to the Bill proposed, could pensions ex at at once to .1 greater emotion than £42,900, or rather 5e39.000, as the other 43000 formed an exception, and A . p.irticiair instance. The presumption esen was, that it would never rise above £so,oous It was not before the end of twelve years , that .pensiens to that full amount could be in exist ence. He therefore conceived that the Honourable' Gentleman bad not attacked the Report fairly. His , Honourable Friend (Mr. lilacs) had never repre sented the Abolition of Sinecures as a toeasuie of economy likely to yield the great relief to the country which had been represented. It was a gross delusloir which bad been practised upon the peokrle. When he should state that the whole amount of the expense of those Offices, which had been the objects of in quiry, did not excrel £lOO,OOO, it would be seen that without sweeping away the whole, and many of them were not Sinecures, the saving could not bear much on the d stresses of the country.-- What would be the amount of the future savings which might be effected, it was impossible exactly to ascertain, as it would be necessary first to settle the salaries ef the persons who were to replace with in leriUr emoluments the holders of offices attended with real dames. He should object to the measure it it were one intended to limit the patronage of the Crown in such a degree ai"tia deprive it of the power of re warding services. And there was a feeling in the Committee that if the measure were only one of abo lition, and did not tend to replace the Crown in pop session of a certain degree of patronage, to arise from the substitutions made, it would operate on a wrong principle. It was impossible not to feel how the orb , lic mind had been poisoned with regard to the inflo race of the Crown, and the belief that if sinecures were abolished, relief would immediately grow out to the country, and the public &stress would be re moved. There certainly had been offices, the emo luments of which had increased to an amount which! had not been originally ;wended. But they had at tracted the notice sit Parliament by which they had been regulated. Only one remained at the beginning of the Session, that of Teller of the Exchequer, and a Noble Friend of his bad relieved the public from all anxiety on that occasion. He thought the present motion a salutary one, as it would tree tile mind of the people hom its gross delusion, and would disarm those who wished to deceive of their accustomed means. As to the principle of economy, it had been carried as tat as it possibly could be. The Com mittee were pr 10-k to the system . .ot pensions as a kind of equivalent to the Crown fot the offices which had hither to beer, used to reward othritorious services. Nothing was to be more deprecated in establishing the system of pensions with respect to the higher offi. cers, than the danger of exposing them to the suspi cions of vulgar minds, as to the motives by Which they were actuated in taking office. It was on that account that the Committee fixed two years as the shortest time of service at which persons in high offices might receive pensions. Oo this general view of the subject he felt anxious that the measure should meet wiih the approbation of the House, and he 'thought that no individual who had voted for a for mer motion of a similar kind could object to the pre sent measure. It should have his decided support. Mr. J. P. GRANT could not agree either with the Noble Lord or the Learned Chairman (Mr. D. Gil bert), in the opinions which they had expressed. He thought that when this measure was fully understood, it would reflect no credit on those who had brought it forward, and yield no satisfaction to the country. The Noble Lord had revealed the reasons which in duced him to support that measure. It was not be cause it tended to diminish the influence of the Crown or tp attain economy s fur he had avowed that it would do neither; but because the public mind had been poisoned with respect to . Sinecures;aqd;he hopcji the proposed abolition or correction of a few, would remove the impression. The Noble Lord thought the country would give him credit for a measure, which neither tended to reduce the imflueace of the Crown, nor to diminish Expenditure, and he was glad to carry public favour by taking advantage at that feeling which he had represented as the elect of poison !—(Near, Isear).—The Committee had been formed to examine into the income and expenditure of the country. The Noble Lord himself had come 'forward to prove its necessity, and to demand inquiry into the finances of the State; but that was in order to take the investigation into his own hands--(Hear, hear).—That Committee had now sac within three days of three months, and what had it produced ? After its long period of gestation, and many throes, it had comedown with the present Report Ought, not use Members to have first considered the Income' and Expenditure of the Country, the branches which had failed, and those %Stitch had improved, that the House might know the situation of the State ? But no—they had brought forth one Report on Sinecures, ! and snot :r on the Army Estimates—(Hear, hear). I The next would probably be en the Ordinance Eai otates, and the last on the means re making the pub• • tic income and expenditure meet ! Was that what ought to have been expected from such a Commit-1 tee? If the House had thrught that it wc.uld con fine its 14bours to such objects, would it not have ap pointed another ? The Committee in 1791, which had entered into a most lab•srious investigation, made its report in a month. In short, in every former Financial Committee, the report had been made in a shorter time than the present, which, notwithstand. ing the time bestowed oo it, carried on the face of it the greatest marks of haste, and the greatest number of inaccuracies. The Committee, in fact, had begun with that which ought . to have been the last object of their inquiries. The first thing which ought to have occupied their attention was a general view of the finances of the country, of the public debt, and the 'expenses of managing it. But, instead of that the Committee at once involved itself in those details as to the minor branches of expenditure, which ought to have been the last taken into its consideration. ' The Report was liable to a variety of verbal criti. cisms, with which he would not trouble the House. One of the strongest peculiarities which distinguished it was, thot it did not state any reason on which its recommendations were fouoded. r instance, as to the offices of the two Chief Justices in Lyre, they are recommended to be abolished, and all that the Re port says, by way of reasou on which the recommen . dation was founded, w a s, 't that the view wh ich the Corrtmittee took was, that they might be abolished." And afterwards, as if mightily satisfied with the strength of this reason, the Report, noticing the office of Auditor of the Exchequer, says, " reasons cf the same nature induce your Coi 1111 l ittee to recum mend the abolition of the offices of the Auditors of the Exchequer." Now he would defy any man to find out from the Report what the reasons were. He then contended that the office of Auditor of the Ex chepter was one of the very last that ought to be abo. fished, and that the former Finance Committee had., deemed it a necessary office and one which ought not to, be abolished. In like manner, without assigning any reason, the offices of Walden of the Cinque Ports, And Governor of Cinque Ports, and one of the Joint Paymasters of the Forces, came within the scope of the offices which the Report advised should be alio fished, but it was the first for the abolition of which any thing like a reason Was assigned. But then it was curious to observe, that the Committee recom mend, that from the saving to be made by the aboli. 'min of this office, the what y 'attached to the office of Vice-President of the baud of Trade should he in creased So that there would, as to this office ( which was almost the only one fur the aboloicit of which the Committee assigned any reason) —in reality be 114 sa ving, for the salary was to receive a different direct*. In Scotland, the office of Keeper of ;he Great Seal is recommended to be kept up, and to the salary tegulated at re 2,000 a.year ; but why it shouts be continued, or why the salary should be exactly 02,000 A-year, is not stated. In t he same 'way the Committee dealt with the ciffice stf Keeper of the Privy Seal, the salary - of which, without any reason being assigned,• is fixed at £l,OOO a year. The of fice of Justice-General of Scotland is also disposed of without any reason being assigned. But one of the most whimsical parts of the Report was what re lated to the offices of the four Sin feyors of Crown Lends in Ireland, the duties of which the Committee thought ought to be transferred to ,buildings—(4 lamb).—As to the whole saving to be effected by acting on the Report, he would enableohe House to judge, by giving the following short abstract of the Report :—lt recommended the abolition of 28 offices in England. and 18 in Scotland. By the abolition of these a saving of 0;51,178 annually would be made, and on this saving the Committee proposed to grant pensions to the amount of de:Wel° per annum. So that the utmost saving to the country which c. old be effected even, it all was done that the Committee recommended, was €20,000 a•year. He differed entirely from the Noble Lord (Castlereagh) as to the influence• of the Crown ( Iltar, hear, luar).— He thought it had increased, and that it was now ex ercised to a most unconstitutional extent, not merelj as exercised in this House or in returning Members to ihe'l-Lnise, but as in the patronage affolded by the immense number of offices in the gilt of the Crown. But at the same time he would not excite the popular feeling on this subject. He would not, like the Noble Lord, seek to curry favour with the people, by seem ing to comply with their wishes and prayers when, in reality, he only wished to thwart them. But when he saw a Government which had reduced the country to a state of bankruptcy, trying to gain popular credit by a paltry saving, he could not but do all in his power to expose the deceit. It was impossible for any man to view the financial state of the country without acknowledging it to be one of the utmost peril, Last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer took credit for £8,500,000 towards the supplies sf the year from the surplus of the Censolidated Fond. And how did the returns of this year bear out this ? It appeared, that instead of any surplus, there was this year a defalcation to the amount of A 0,600,000. It appeared, that, in fact, for defraying the charge of the public establishmeats, there remained only from the Customs, Excise, and the War Taxes, a sum of .10,500,000 ; and yet, in this state of things, 1:c would ask the Committee what they had been doing all this time ; when in their Report not one word was said as to the general state of our finances. (Hear.) : This should have been the first and primary object to which the labours of the Committee shOuld have been directed; and yet it was that which they had put last in the order of their investigation. Instead of being the earliest object to attract their attention, as being the most important, it wirthat to which, at the very end of the Session, when theliouse would be in its thinnest state, then it was, that in order of its arrange ment, the Committee would come forward with that which ought to have been ~.the first object of its la boors. He did not wish to take a melancholy view of the subject, but he did say the preient state of things could not last. When the situation of the Government came to be such that it could no longer raise the supplies necessary. to meet the expenditure, 'it was finite evident that some change in the system 'on which Government acted must take place. p. did not rise to oppose the motion, for to him it ws s ,, matter of perfect indifference whether it was carn..l or whether it was lost. But in this he hoped I;e so i l l not find himself deceived—that the Norte I would not he rewarded with the popularity s-emed to expect Irons these nii itsares.—('t ,-Gentlenian sat down amid loud cheering trim, h, Opposition Betides.) Mr. HUSIUSSON felt not a lisle turprzt•2 the speech of the Honourable and Learned Getalt man, when he recollected that he now so stter i a"o y animadverted on and disregarded the vsry nteastr n that in the year IPI4 he supported by his vote-- Weary—lt was, too, rather extracttinary to hs cr such aspersions against the present Committee, ceeding from a Gentleman who was not in atter.d.%, in his duties to that House when the Committee aos appointed, and who, for the first tine this Se s si on, made his appearance amongst them since the Easter recess— (Scar, hear).—lt Was not from such ter, he must confess, that he could expect to hav e such a lecture read on the want of diligence in th ? Committee —a Committee that has sat during the ate sence of that Learned Gentlerian, most assiduouslr, from day to day, in the discharge of a laborious duty —(Haar, bar).—lt was true, such an attack as t'ist Learned Gentleman (Mr. Grant) made, woold nr3 be very consistent from the Honourable Gentlemen who surrounded him, because it 'must he in the re. collection of the House, that at the time the Com mittee was in agitation, it was re-echoed horn the opposite side, that it was not an inquiry into the ir.. come an expenditure that was d4resi—that, said, wXt familiar to the whole House—it was the teach of every man ; indeed, it he was not taken, a Right Honourable Gentleman, not mos is - his place (Mr. Tierney) stated, that if that was only object of inquiry, he was sire the Right fin. insurable the Chancellor of the Exclieqiier had the Report cut and dry in his pucket—(l-/eur, Ikar).-. At that time also, the Honourable Gentlemen oppo. site w ere, night after night, presenting Petitions cal. ing for the a'aolitioo of those very sinecures as tlie main grievance, and the abolition of which wou:d have the effect, if not of relieving the public ciismrs, at least of convincing the petitioners that izs corn. nuance Was not attributable to that House. .1 verbal criticistns on the Report he was not bound t s , explain—they could little aff.tt the arginnent. Pat lie must say in answer, tfos with the lahours .if t ti.cr - • Committees before their', it was wanly ttlinecesury to enter into a full detail of all those reasons of ssl lout the House were already its possession. He must al :a be allowed to say, that no Report was ever beate submitted to-that House that bore bstter the char•:. ter of economy, and was in het an i.optovenstnt to lormer measures. S'r J. NEWPORT remarked, that the Cirritree had been appointed on t h e fith rebrnary, ai.d m tde its Report on the 25th of ?larch. And %h at was the Nnin of the labour s f the Cerni , littve during this large portion of tiros! ? Truly, no more thin to adopt, w.th some modifit dittos, tie meas , ires !min:oy proposed by .he Hon. hlernber for COI to CASIL: Backe.), and these modifications were, for t!:e mutt part, of such a nature as to do away with :dl that la. goad in Mae original measure. In the Repoit theta were evident usarks of its having been drawn tir great haste, for it aboune.ed wida unpardon It iaac curacies. As to pensions, the amount of the pention fund was already sufficiently great for the tetuunet. , .• flan of all ihose services which came to be rewarded under this head. It would have been well for the Corrimitteolo have considered that, in regulating the scale of pensions, it was not enough merely to consi• der the value' of the services, but also how much the distressed state of the Country could afford. 'lnce was",-in fact, ritulting itithe whole Report that would make any one.think that . it was the matured produr• non of %ix •weekvlaboura Mr. MA R WYATT wished to say a few wilrrh to what had been done by the Commivee with rorect to colonial offices... He'Woulel apply his observatic..f to one colony—Demerara. While that colony was is the possession of: the Dutch, there were no sinectit.: offices in that colony, and no offices tilled by nonresident officers. But as sOOll as Great Bti tam obtamed possession of it the case was entirely changed ; the•whole • system of the adruinOtration it public office was altered, sinecures were created, ail persons paid for offices in the colony who never !t• sided there. The consequence WA, thiAt to MAilit2.2 these cifiices increased saltlr;es wen! necessary,lad to supply the salaries, an inert a,e of t..xa!ioti Was una voidable. In this colony, the amount of taxes leinal had increased wonderfully. He knew one Gentlenitio who held an estate in. that colony, who had lately itt• formed him that while the colony was in the sion of the Dutch, he had paid oily three hur..:hol pounds for taxes, wheieas now he paid seven hunahol pounds a year on the same prape: ty. This so 4nough to shew the necessity of thoroughly revion; the system on which colonial offices were now rec." fated. The Report no* befete the 'douse shewtl that the Committee had not the information n'•:c* airy to make such a revision. In tact, all that Committee had dom.- i w.t.l respect to our cuf , ••i•ll v.: 6 * tem was qrshe superficial ; and what he withiid to F o o t upon the House was the necessity ot such A row a being undertaken. Mr. W. FREEqh.N I'LE olikr:ted to the Tete!: mendations contained in the Report, because the :ra ces which they wished to be 'abolished could mit :r• abolished without injustice, and the saving to in made by abolishing tiiem would be quite insignibcalii:' The Hon. Mr. F. ROBINSON, referring to Ile speech of the fionoutabie Member (Mr. MarryAtt) said, it was unfair and unwise to select parlicular ...- stances as objects of tepri.batiou on the diming: 9l a general measure like that now under c onsidtratilr.• Iri the present case it was particularly 'IMAM, beci . !•it not one of the abut s complained of by the Hong able Gentleman nnkv existed ; for the Honottraiiie Gentleman seemed to forget that an Act was ' , Aiwa three years ago which made residence a •nezessary condition for holding an office in any ot the Colo niet.—(Hear, hear.) Lord MILTON objected to the Ripon as OM gibing far erfough. The Committee had the spescl of Mr. Burke in 1792 hefore them, and, it they has attended to the doctriues coettined in it. they wouid have found that they might hav e gone mitah firiber than what had been done in 178'd. It WAS hits torn .conviction, that if • all the recommendations of :tln• Burke had been attended to, much, if not all, o f tst