The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-05-24 00:00:00

BANK CHARTER.

Lord Aurtionr• gave notice, that he would submit the ques-
tion of the Bank charter to the consideration of the house on
Friday se'nnight.
CIVIL IST PENSIONS.
Mr. D. W. HARVEY, in rising to submit a motion to the
house on the subject of the pensions paid out of the civil list,
said that his object was to put this question distinctly to the
house whether any portion of the public money was to be
received by any persons of either sex, for which some known
and adequate service had not been rendered. (Hear, hear.)
He did not mean to attack either military or naval sinecures,
for he knew that if he did he should have all the heroes in that
house rising up against him, (laughter,) and asking whether
the house was prepared to sacrifice, on mercenary grounds,
men who had risked their lives in defence of their country, and
who were associated with the brightest periods of our history.
His motion, therefore, would be confined solely to the pensions
on the civil list; but he trusted that the hon. member for Mid-
dlesex would not suffer the first session of the reformed Parlia-
ment (whose commencement, he could not avoid saying, had
been most gloomy and disheartening) to pass over without
moving an inquiry into the nature and extent of all our pay-
ments, whether consisting of half-pay, retired pensions, super-
annuations, or of any of the various and ingenious contrivances
by which the people of this country were defrauded of their mo-
ney. The noble lord opposite, and his colleagues, had honour-
ably consented to a deduction of 10 per cent. from their sala-
ries, and he (Mr. Harvey) would venture to say that if the
same deduction was made from the pensions on the civil list,
and from all the payments which came under the head of " half-
pa v," "superannuations," and "sinecures," a more than suf-
ficient sum would be realized to meet the loss occasioned by the
repeal of the assessed taxes. He held in his hand a statement
of the annual expenditure of the United Kingdom, in salaries,
pensions, sinecures, half-pay, superannuations, compensations,
and allowances • and he believed that the only reason why it
had been allowed to go on was, that the country
was totallyig-
norant of its amount. The annual sum paid under those various
and confused heads exceeded £9,000,000 sterling; and the fol-
lowing was a detailed account of the expenditure :
Salaries of 22,912 persons employed in the public offices.... £2,778,907
Retired full-pay, half-pay, superannuations, pensions, and
allowances in the army ................................ 2,939,652
Retired full -p.ay, half-pay, superannuations, pension', and
allowances to the navy .................................. 1,583,797
Retired full-pr-ti, half-pa serannuations, pensions, and
allowances in the ordnance........ 374,987
Superannuated allowances in the civil departments of Go-

verinneseTT. ... ...... . .. . . . . . 478,957
Pensions ....
Pensions in the nature of compensations for the loss of of-
fices in En7,land 12,020
Pensions iu Ireland, chiefly in consequence of the union 89,245
Annusl value of sinecure offices
Commissioners of inquiry

£9,457,985
He was ready to admit that government had gone to a consi-
derable extent in reducing the amount of this expenditure;
but allowing for all they had done in that way, he might with
safety state that the payments exceeded upwards of £8,000,000.
Previous to Mr. Burke's celebrated speech, which gave birth
to the -22 d Geo. 111., the Crown had no other restraint on its
liberality than the sense of shame. That statute restricted the
power of the Crown to grant pensions within certain limits.
Since that period several attempts had been made to get at the
motives for which these pensions were granted, but they had
always been resisted on the ground that the civil list was a sa-
cred fund, set apart for the purpose of enabling the monarch to
relieve those unfortunate individuals who might merit his grace
and commiseration. The authors of those unsuccessful motions
consoled themselves with the hope, that when a new monarch
ascended the throne, these things would come under revision of
the house. Such was the state of things when the noble lord
opposite opened the civil list. The noble lord's predecessor
had proposed that the entire amount of the civil list, English,
Sc
4144,000. The noble lord's plan
extendedandlrish,
th
esum shouldto be
(moo n
£75,000
being placed on
the civil list, and the remainder being
transferred to the con-
solidated fund, so that the latter payments, as they fell
in, might come under the control of the house. The
government was strong in that house—strong, not in the sup-
port, but in the fears, of. that house; yet a sentiment was
spreading throughout the country which no lover of it could
contemplate without apprehension, (hear, hear,) -and if the
government continued to pursue the course they had hitherto
followed with regard to the finances of the country, the reform
of that house, from which they all expected so mach benefit,
would turn out to be one of the greatest evils that could befal
the country. As long as that house was constituted as it had
heretofore been, the- people always looked to reform as the
means of securing good government; but if that expectation
should now be disappointed, to what must they look ? They
must look to themselves; and the events which had taken
place in that great metropolis, within the last week, plainly de-
monstrated that they were determined to look to themselves.
(Bear.) If the people found that reform disappointed them,
they must look to that for which those who disappointed their
just expectations must be responsible, revolution in the in-
stitutions of the country. (Hear.) He did not hesitate to say
that no one measure had been brought forward by the government
since the opening of the present Parliament which in any way
corresponded with the expectations,—not of giddy and extrava-
gant bodies of men, but of the sober and rational reformers of
the country; he meant the middle classes. Ministers had for-
rtplaonmdi applause pl wauhisceh Of the public. when out of
for-
forfeited the confidence of the national reformers of England,
obffiy
ctue,rn• hianag
etahrneiredbatch•kesmonthaellsuthpopsoe
They had made the term Whig a by-word, and had shown that
the worst species of Tory was aN in place. Had a motion
like the present been brought forward. when the Whigs were in
their old opposition places, what declamation they would hear
about the crying injustice of taxing the people for the support
of state paupers and unmerited pensionaries. As it was, he
trusted the noble Chancellor of the Exchequer would give some
intelligible reason for continuing a system of paving some of
the offshoots of the aristocracy, who had never rendered the
public any service in return. (near.)
The ho. nourable gen-
tleman concluded with moving for a return of all persons on
the English, Irish, and Scotch pension lists heretofore paid out
of the civil list; specifying with each name the sum received
by each individual, the period of the grant, the public grounds,
or other consideration, as far as prarticable, on account of
which they had been granted; distinguishing those who are
widows or orphans of deceased public servants, and such as are
in the receipt of any salary, profits, fees, and emoluments, from