The Sun.
London, England, 1831-02-05 00:00:00

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expenditure ; but, in our days, whet_ ie sup-
port the Sovereign and the whole of the expenses of
Government, the mixing up the expence of the public
service with the private expences of the King can only
answer purposes of concealment and mystification. The
Civil List is now to be restricted to the proper expendi-
ture of his Majesty, so that it will no longer be possible
to class expences which it may be convenient to keep as
much as possible from the public eye among the expences
of the Sovereign. Lord Althorp proposed to divide the
Civil List into five classes :-Ist. The Privy Purse, and
the allowance to her Majesty. 2d. The Service of the
Household. 3d. The Expences of the Household. 4th.
The sums appropriated to the Royal Bounties. And, sth,
The Pensions. For the first class, the charge is 110,0001. ;
for the second, 1`30,3001.: for the third, 171,500/ ; for
the fourth, 234,0001. ; and for the fifth, 75,0001. The
fifth class is that on which the greatest reduction is pro-
posed.
It was the intention," said his Lordship, "of the Duke of
Wellington to lessen it to 144,0001. in the following manner :-
- Pensions were lo be allowed out of the Civil List of—
England, to the amount of - - £74,200
Ireland
Scotland 40,000
----- - - 30,000

£144,200
Still that sum would, in my view, be too much.—(Hear, hear.)
—My proposition is, to bring the English, Irish, and Scotch
Pensions into one sum, which would much simplify and im-
prove the amount.—(Hear, hear.)—l propose that the House
should grant, for this purpose, no more than 75,000/., making a
reduction of GO,OOO/.—(Much cheering.)
Pensions are to be taken by sinecurists from the existinz
lists to the amount of 75,0001., and placed on the Civil
List; the others are to be thrown on the public, which
will reap the benefit of their extinction as they fall in.—
With respect to a point on which the public feel a great
deal of interest—the continuance of the pensions—his
Lordship declared--
" It is certainly true—and no man is more ready to assert it
than I am—that many of the pensions on the list are such as
ought never to have been granted.—(Hear, hear.) But, after the
best examination I have been able to give to the subject, I am
able to say, that the majority are merely and purely pensions of
charity. I willingly admit that we have the legal right to put an
end to all those pensions ; they expire, by law, with the demise
of the Crown, and it has no right to renew them. But though
we may have a legal right, I doubt if we have an equitable right
to abolish them ; because they were undoubtedly always granted
on the supposition that the party receiving them obtained them
for life."

The difference shortly stated between the plan of Mr.
Goulburn and that of the Noble Lord is, that Mr. Goul-
burn proposed that 970,000/. should be granted for the
Civil List, over the disbursements of which the House
could exercise no controul ; whereas his Lordship's plan
is, that only .510,000/ should be so circumstanced—all
beyond this being open to the examination and controul of
Parliament. It has been usual to grant a large sum for
the outfit of the Queen. On the marriage of King
George 111. 54,0001. was granted to the Queen for her
jewels, besides the outfit, and it was in the contemplation
of the Duke of Wellington to propose an outfit for her
present Majesty; but it was announced by his Lordship,
and received by loud cheering from all parts of the House,
that his Majesty, with that considerateness which renders
him so attentive to the wishes of his subjects, and with
that solicitation for the public welfare which has already
given so much satisfaction, declines to accept it. Mr.
Goulburn charged Lord Althorp with the guilt
(which niu4t sit heavy on his soul) " of a depar-
ture from the principle upon which every Government has
hitherto acted i❑ the settlement of the Civil List." As
might be expected also, the Right Hon. Gentleman oh-

jects to the reduction of pensions to 73,000/. a year, his
opinion being that the prerogative of the Crown will thus
he unduly and unfairly restricted. Considering the many
claims of the Right Hon. Gentleman to popularity, his
more than Roman virtue in renouncing them last night is
not a little wonderful—" I never have been, and never
will be, the slave of popularity." It would have been a
long time, we suspect, before popularity would have made
the Right Hon. Gentleman Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and quartered him on the public for a handsome retirine-
pension. Lord Bathurst and his colleague, Lord Mel':
ville, were also determined not to be slaves of popularity,
when they endeavoured b obtain such handsome super-
annuations for their sons. I hate being the slave of
sobriety, says the drunkard, who reels home in the morn.
ing from his orgies. As long as the higher ranks can
quarter their needy relatives on the public, as pensioners,
they will all show the same noble disdain for popularity,
We confess that we so far differ with Mr. Goul-
burn, that we think that every exercise of the prerogative
which cannot be defended on the ground of furthering
the public service, is injurious to the Monarchy, as forcing
on the people the consideration that there are burthens in-
cident to Monarchy from which no benefit is derivable.
But the truth is, that the prerogative is invoked by Mr.
Goulburn, when he ought to have invoked the Aristo-
cracy. It is the Aristocracy, and not the King, which
has an interest in the extension of the amount of pensions.
Ever since the Revolution, the Aristocracy have shared
with the King the Sovereignty, and the Pension List is
only one of the many means to which they have resorted
for maintaining themselves and families at the expence of
the public. The King and his prerogative, in this case,
are merely a blind to deceive the public. They vote what li
money they please ; and, as far as the public is concerned,
it is a matter of moonshine whether they first vote a Civil
List, and take the pensions out of that List, or vote them
directly, except that the direct mode enables the public to
have a better insight into the working of the political ma-
chine. On the other hand, Sir Henry Parnell, though he
complimented Ministers on their plan, which would tend
both to the simplification (if public accounts and to the due
controul of the disbursements of the public money, akt,the
same time expressed his disappointment at not finding. the
Noble Lord make any reductions below the statement of
the late Chancellor of the Exchequer.
" To one branch of expenditure he felt (he said) decided ob-
jections—the salaries of the household officers; the emoluments
of the Lord Chamberlain, of the Master of the horse, and of one
or two more, were certainly too large. In not makin,, some re-
ductions when they had the opportunity, Ministers had cxhibited
an absence of that spirit of economy by which they ought to be
governed in the present circumstances of the country."
Mr. Hume objected strongly to the pensions. "It was
their duty to consider (he said) that the distresses of the
country bad been occasioned by the pressure of taxation,
of which so great a part was imposed for the maintenance
of the pauper Peers." The Estimates, having been
examined by a Committee, will afterwards become the sub-
ject of discussion in the House. Several Members pro-
fessed their inability at present to form a correct judgment
respecting them.—Morning Chronicle.

Tux Cam LIST. —The Chancellor of the Exchequer
submitted to the House of Commons last night an abstract
of the new arrangement of the Civil List. The estimates
proposed by the late Administration excited the ire of
their Whig opponents as exorbitant and unwarrantable,
and ultimately cost them their places ; it was natural to
expect therefore that the party now in power would have
acted up to the principles they avowed when on the left
hand of the Speaker, and having the opportunity, would
hasten to effect all those improvements in the arrange-
ment for which they were lately so urgent. Let us exa-
mine the result. The Civil List proposed by the late
Ministers amounted to 970,000/. ; that proposed by the
present Ministers amounts to 510,0001. But how is
this reduction effected ? Simply by transferring
the difference to the other funds, an expedient by
which not a shilling will be s ived to the country !
As regards the details, the most extraordinary fea-
ture in the present plan is that of the Pencion List. The
Pension Lists of England, Ireland, and Scotland, amount
respectively to 74,2001., 53,9244., and 31,252/. They
are now to be united and the whole is to amount to only
75,000/. How is this to be effected? By little better
than a juggle. The senior Pensions, to the amount of
75,000/, are to remain a part of the Civil List, while the
difference, or the later Pensions, to the amount of 69,000/.,
are to be chargeable on the Consolidated Fund. The Pen-
sions in the former class are thus renewable by his Majesty
as they full in;
those belonging to the latter will in pro-
cess of time become wholly extinct. By this dexterous ap-
portionment it is evident that the ability of his present Ma-
jesty to grant pensions will be little if at all restricted, since
the great majority of those that fall in for many years to come
will in the course of nature belong to the former class;
and it is equally evident that the present Ministers will
suffer little or no diminution of patronage. The saving
proposed to the country cannot in all probability com-
mence till after many years, and immedi ate relief is said
to be wanted; but when the lapse of time shall have
effected the contemplated reduction, in what a situation
will succeeding Sovereigns find themselves placed ? A
contemptible pittance of 75,000/. will be all that proud
and wealthy England will allow to her Monarch for the
purposes of benevolence ! 'We cannot believe that such a
plan will be suffered to reach maturity. To attempt
to justify it on the exaggerated plea of the distress
and poverty of the country is ridiculous ; the de-
claimers on this score argue as though the Civil List
were a burden imposed exclusively upon the most ne-
cessitous classes ; we maintain, on the contrary, that
the utter annihilation of the Civil List would be
attended with no sensible relief whatever. With the ex-
ception of this portion of the arrangement, the estimates
proposed last night arc liable to no objection as to their
amount; neither the dignity of the Monarchy nor the
comfort of the Sovereign is neglected. So far, therefore,
`hone censuring the present Ministers for having the
courage to recede frem the erroneous views they supported
when in opposition, we applaud the course they have
adopted, than which, it should also be observed, a .more
favourable commentary could not have been part upon the