The Express.
London, England, 1848-06-23 00:00:00

OE THE EXCHEQUER that no discourtesy to
the Irish members was meant, and no evasion
of their question contemplated. The honourable
member for Clare, there can be little doubt, will,
after the cool reflection of the morning, be ready to
admit that he was a little precipitate. It is not how-
ever Sir Lucius O'BRIEN but Lord G. BENTINCIOUId
his friends who are to blame for waste of time occa-
sioned by railing imputations as absurd as they were
dishonest. That the strangely constituted intellect of
Lord G. HENTINCE might possibly construe Lord J.
RUSSELL'S somewhat curt declaration that govern-
ment would not be influenced by the intentions of
Irish members. but by their own sense of what was
due to tie public, into evidence of a collusive bargain
between the patties, is barely possible; but that Mr.
DISRAELI and Mr. NEWDEGATE, and others of the
party really shared in the hallucination, or t‘.at for
the sake of prolonging a discreditable squabble they
affected to do so, transcends belief.
Passing from irrelevant imputations and person-
alities to the merits of the case, it must be confessed
that the policy of goverament in proposing, without
preface or explanation, to reduce the differential duties
on rum front 9d. to 4d., looks very like infatuation.
No farther beck than last session the qui stion was
fully discussed in both houses of parliament, atter an
earnest canvass and repeated statements of their re-
spective cases both by the West Indians and the home
distillers. So s.rong was the conviction of the legis-
lature that the diffaential duty of 9(1. on rum was a
fair and equitable arrangement, that in the House of
Lords only 48 members, and in the House of Commons
only 69, could be got to vote—not for a lower duty,
but for referring the question to a select com-
mittee. To call upon-parliament to unvote what it had
last year deliberately voted looks like courting defeat.
If reasonable conviction may be supposed to have
dictated the vote, nothing new has emerged to make
our legislators renal it. if powerful interests are
believed to have prevailed it cannot be imagined
that they are less vigorous or less on the alert now
than they were twelve months ago. We repeat that
the whole affair looks like courting defeat; and is cal-
culated to inspire a suspicion that the measure called
of West India Relief, has been iutroduced to conciliate
the West Indians by an appearance of trying to do
something for them, but framed in a manner to insure
its rejection.

IT has been said of SHAKESPEARE that you cannot
open his volumes without finding something to in-
struct and amuse. In one respect the miscellaneous
estimates resemble the works of SHAKESPEARE; open
where you will, instruction as to the manner in which
the public money is got rid of abounds. But amusing
they are not—at least not for tax-payers.
One chapter of this Black Book bears the title of
"superannuation and retired allowances and gratui-
ties for charitable and other purposes." And among
these we find an item of 6,6601. for miscellaneous
allowances formerly defrayed from the Civil List.
The Civil List is certainly sufficiently ample, and
yet we find scattered through all sorts of pub
lie accounts little clandestine additions to it.
Some time ago we pointed out a payment
for the travelling expenses of the King and the
Queen of the Belgi,ns when on a visit to this country
—for the hospitality exercised by her Majesty to-
wards her own relations. And now we find her
Majesty's charity overflowing the bounds of the civil
list for 2,0321., expended upon indigent and necessi-
tous persons in Scotland—including " her Majesty's
bedesmen," the representatives of Edie Ochiltree,
charged to the national account. Among the miscel-
laneous allowances formerly defrayed from the civil
list, is also an "annuity (.700/.) granted by King
A Cnntes IL to the ancestor of the late Sir THOMAS
CLARGE3, in fee, and charged upon the coal duties."
This same civil list has been a bad bargain for the
country. Parliament was persuaded to settle it upon
the crown in lieu of the hereditary revenues which, it
was promised, were to be transferred to the general
public income. The transference has not been honestly
effected. The money paid by a railway company for
leave to cut and carve upon some outskirt of Windsor
Park, is claimed as the private property of the crown,
all the same as if no civil list were paid. No intelli-
gible account is ever given of the management of the
royal forests, or the income derived from them, or its
expenditure. We have been told—the Woods and
Forests can tell us whether with truth or not—that
among the charges upon the income from the forests
for one year only, is to be found one of some
thousand pounds for pheasants' eggs. The nation
does not make battue3 in the forest, and
for its amusement these pheasant eggs were
not purchased. The honour and dignity of
the Crown require that so long as the country duly
pays the civil list, so long shall the whole revenue of
the Woods and Forests be honestly credited to the
country. Some economists have complained that the
civil list is toe large. Ministers appear to think it
not large enough ; otherwise they surely would not
be found appropriating part of the revenue of the
Woods and Forests to promote the sylvan amusements
of the Court ; or charging in the miscellaneous: esti-
mates items most creditable to the royal benevolence
if defrayed from the royal purse. Between those
who think the civil list too large and those who think
it too small, we are not in a condition to decide.
But since such difference of opinion exists might
it not be advisable to submit the civil list to a revi-
sion ? If it can be shown to be too small, let it be
augmented, instead of allowing the crown to be so
unworthily treated by its servants as it has been by
their clandestinely appropriating in its name part of
the alienated hereditary revenues, and by their smug-
gling part of the privy purse expenditure into the
Miscellaneous Estimates.
But whether the Civil List is to be augmented or re-
duced, why continue to charge either it or the general
revenue with the annuity of :5001. to the CLARGES
family? Lord JOHN RUSSELL, when similar annuities
(much larger in amount) paid to the Dukes of Mum-
BOROUGH and GRAF-TON, were challenged in the
House of Commons, expatiated eloquently upon the
services done to the country by the Duke of MARL-
BOROUGII. Ile wisely kept silence as to the °Barron
services, and it would puzzle him to explain what
were the services of Sir THOMAS CLARGES.
Even with regard to the great duke, there is reason
to believe that in so far as the services he rendered
the country can be repaid by money, Blenheim, and
his gains in the commissariat department (which, inl
those days, afforded pretty pickings) amply repaid
him. But what services has any Duke of GRAFTON,'
or any Sir THOMAS CLARGES, ever rendered to the
nation, that the nation should continue to be taxed to
all posterity for the support of their descend-
ants? The taxes of a country are sacred to
the government expenses of that country
it is a perverted application to squander
them upon private individuals. Even in the Marl-
borough case the grant can only be palliated on the
analogy of what is done by humane and grateful
masters, who pension off the widows or children of
faithful servants. But we never heard of even the
liberal house of BEDFORD granting a perpetual an-
nuity to the descendants of a body-servant or butler,
however deserving. We never heard of such pen-
sions granted, except in cases of destitution or
poverty. Are the Dukes of MARLBOROUGH and
GRAFTON, and the descendants of Sir Thomas
CLARGES, so poor as to need national alms? Or if
so, 'why are their eleemosynary allowances ex-
empted from that searching investigatism and re-
trenchment, which was so unsparingly administered
some years ago, in the case of those (also sanctioned
by statute) paid to paupers of less elevated rank

WE find in the most ultra protectionist Jamaica
journal of the 13th of May, the Dispatch (which
has long been recognised as the planters' organ),
the following statement, which we commend to
the consideration of both sides of the House of
Commons, to the free-trade party as evidence
that the act of 1846 is producing one of its
natural results, increased energy and exertion on the
part of the sugar planters: to the anti-free-trade
party as some little proof that the case of the West
Indies under competition in the home market is not
quite so desperate as their timidity has pourtrayed.
The passage runs thus:—
We learn that some barrels of fine sugar have been shipped
to Baltimore by the Glamorgan, for the purpose of trying
the United States markets, and ascertaining how far it is
practicable to consign similar produce to America. It
may not be amiss to observe that all the charges
of transport to the United States are extremely moderate,
when compared with those which a shipment to England
entails on the producer. The freight for example, in the
fine packet briars consigned to Mr. Robert Taylor is only Is. a
cwt., or about 2s. a barrel. The duty is 30 per cent. ad valorem.
Now the present price of sugar in England scarcely realises
more than 13s. a cwt. Sugars thus invoiced would pay a
duty in the United States of about 3s. 7 id. Add Is. for
freight and Is. for other charges, and the cat attending •
cwt. of sugar in Baltimore would be about 6s. 71d., or rory