Scotch CIVIL List—gibraltar Duties—escheats—duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster—fines and Penalties.

The Scotch Hereditary Revenue forms a fourth fund at the disposal of ministers, over which, previously to the accession to office of lord Grey’s ministry, there was no legislative control further than when grants had been irrevocably made from it, they were, pro forma, submitted to parliament. It yields, annually, above £100,000, and accrues chiefly from crown-rents, customs, hereditary excise, fines, and forfeitures. About two-thirds of the produce are paid in pensions, the remainder in donations to the episcopal clergy, to the Caledonian hunt, for providing coach-houses and stables for the barons of the Exchequer, and other objects of apparently no public utility. Scotland has lately got rid of the Tory incubus by which she was long deluded and oppressed. Prior to this relief she seldom petitioned for political reform, and the spring of her scribbling and clamouring loyalty may be easily divined, since in no other part of the United Kingdom was loyalty so well paid, for in no other part were there such ample funds to reward devotion to ministers. The annual value of places and pensions shared among Scotch freeholders and burghmongers was estimated at £1,750,000, equal to half the rental of the kingdom. In the Third Report of the Committee on Public Expenditure, in 1808, it is remarked that Scotch pensions, which, at the commencement of the reign of George III. amounted only to 19, in the year 1797 had swelled to 185, and, in 1808, to 351, two-thirds of these pensions being granted to females!

A fifth source of royal income is the surplus of the Gibraltar Duties. It is provided, by the original charter, granted to this place, by Queen Anne, in 1704, that, for the augmentation of trade, no duty or imposition shall be imposed upon any vessel trading or touching at the port; and that the goods and chattels of the inhabitants shall enjoy an immunity from taxation. In violation of these chartered privileges various taxes have been imposed, and the chief portion of the proceeds therefrom, during the late reign, were paid over to Sir William Knighton for the use of the king’s privy purse. These taxes were levied without the authority of parliament, merely on the authority of the governor; and some recent impositions appear a tax on liberty of conscience,—one being a capitation-tax, of ten dollars each, imposed on Roman Catholics and Jews. Taxes have also been imposed on licenses to sell spirits, fishing-boats, lighters, and billiard-tables. The surplus of the Gibraltar Duties produced, over and above salaries and charges from 1760 to 1830, nearly two hundred thousand pounds; in the year ending 5th of January, 1830, they produced £11,498, of which £5000 was paid into the privy-purse. The collector of these imposts resides, we believe, in Lincoln’s Inn, and executes his duty by deputy.

The estates of lunatics, bastards, and others dying intestate and without heirs, form a sixth branch of the casual revenues of the Crown, under the denomination of Escheats. The proceeds from this source are considerable, amounting, in the reign of George III. to £323,424. The King’s share of the estate of Mr. Newport, a lunatic, amounted to £113,000. Poor Troutback’s money shared a similar fate—but here “hangs a tale,” which we must explain, and for which purpose we shall first call in Mr. Waggoner.

“Mr. Frederick Matthew Waggoner called in and examined.

Do you know any thing of the proceedings that have been had with respect to Mr. Troutback’s will?—I do; he bequeathed £2000 for erecting an Orphan Hospital, and the whole of his money, amounting, with accumulations, to upwards of £100,000, to trustees, for erecting an additional wing, or separate building, to the charity school of St. John of Wapping, and for maintaining and educating poor children of that parish.

Are there as many poor children as would require the funds to educate?—Yes; more within the parish.

Do you think £5000 a-year would not educate the poor of the parish?—The will is for the education, clothing, and maintenance.

What has been done with respect to it?—We understand that it has been set aside by the Court of Chancery; and that the testator having no next of kin, the money has gone to the Crown.”—Report of the Education Committee, 1816, page 289.

Sure enough the “money has gone to the Crown.” The will was set aside by Lord Eldon, and the property applied to liquidate the royal debts. It was a windfall to the Sovereign, of which, as Mr. Tierney remarked, the public would never have obtained any knowledge, had not the civil list been in arrear, and it became necessary to apply to parliament for an additional allowance. How the civil list became in arrear it may be worth while explaining. In 1816 the late King, then Regent, had incurred an enormous debt in consequence of living, as he mostly did, in a profuse and riotous manner. The Lord Chamberlain applied to the Lords of the Treasury to know how this debt was to be discharged. The Lords of the Treasury, after much consultation, determined that the debt, amounting to £277,000, should be defrayed partly out of the money bequeathed by Mr. Troutback, for charitable uses, partly out of the Droits of Admiralty. Thus, the money piously left to clothe, educate, and maintain poor children, was applied to pay the furniture-bills, tailor-bills, haberdasher-bills, and bills perhaps of a still less creditable description, of the Prince Regent. It vexes one to see to what base purposes the best of things may be perverted. How many poor children of Wapping the money of Troutback would have preserved from the gallows and transportation it is impossible to say; but it is certain, had George IV. been more frugal, or a Prince who thought the welfare of his subjects of more importance than vicious indulgence, the money of Troutback, notwithstanding any informality in his will, would have been suffered to go to the noble objects for which it had been so generously bequeathed.

A seventh source of royal income is from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. When there is no Prince of Wales, or during his minority, and there is no Duke of Cornwall of a proper age to receive the revenues amounting to £15,000 a-year, they are claimed by the crown. The duchy of Lancaster yields an income to the King of £10,000 per annum. Both sums are paid into the privy-purse—the nature of which will be explained in the next chapter.

The remaining branches of the Crown-revenues are too unimportant to claim particular exposition. They accrue principally from fines and forfeitures in courts of justice, from green-wax money, from the sale of spices in the Molucca Islands, and from quit-rents and confiscated estates in the West Indies. We shall subjoin a statement of the produce of these and other branches of the Crown-revenues during the entire reign of Geo. III. from Parliamentary Paper, No. 1, Session 1820.

In the reign of George IV. the same sources of casual income yielded about a million and a half, forming, with the income from the Crownlands, during the period from 1760 to 1830, a total sum of at least thirty-five millions. All this mass of unappropriated revenue was left at the disposal of the minister of the day, and the parliament exercised no control over it, further than that, for the last ten years, it was permitted, as matter of courtesy, annually or triennally, to look at the accounts after the money had been expended or granted away. The manner in which these great funds were managed and dissipated has been, we trust, sufficiently illustrated in the course of this chapter. With the exception of the sums expended in metropolitan improvements, they have been expended in additional grants to the royal family and in pensions to the aristocracy, to ministers, their friends and supporters. They have formed a practical branch of the English government, of which Mr. Justice Blackstone failed to give any account to his readers, and we have little hesitation in affirming that they had no inconsiderable influence in the ruinous policy of the late reigns. The royal expenditure always formed a gulph which no man could fathom, and the hereditary revenues were a never-failing source for supplying the prodigality of the king and his servants. Of the studied mystery maintained on these matters we shall cite an instance. In 1777, during the American war, the king’s debts amounted to £618,000; papers were produced containing a disguised statement how this incumbrance had been incurred: vast sums were expended in secret service money, and half a million was stated under the head of the board of works: but then, as Mr. Belsham observes, no one could tell on what palace, garden, or park, the money had been laid out. In short, there is too much reason to suppose that the debts of George III. were mainly contracted in support of the system of war and injustice in which ministers were engaged, in obtaining the baneful influence which silences all opposition, which swept away all traces of public liberty, and laid the foundation of present distress and embarrassments.

The parliament of 1820 was guilty of a culpable dereliction of duty in not seizing the opportunity, presented by the commencement of a new reign, to bring under its immediate cognizance and control the hereditary revenues. Instead of availing itself of the occasion, they were left, as before, to the irresponsible disposal of ministers. After what has been said, it will not be difficult to divine the reasons for this omission; but the people had another and opposite interest. To the misapplication of the Crown-revenues may partly be ascribed the long postponement of the great measure of Parliamentary Reform; and, therefore, the public cannot help feeling grateful to William IV. in having patriotically surrendered, during his life, to public uses, nearly the whole of these abused funds, in lieu of leaving them to be lavished on court favourites and hireling legislators.