The CIVIL List.

Having fully explained the nature, amount, and application of the ancient hereditary revenues, we next come to the modern parliamentary grant, substituted in lieu of them, denominated the Civil List, which is a sum yearly set apart from the general income for the personal maintenance of the sovereign, and to support the honour and dignity of the Crown.

Since the Revolution of 1688, it has been usual, at the commencement of a new reign, to enter into a specific arrangement with the king, by which the hereditary revenues of the Crown are surrendered in exchange for an equivalent life-annuity. A similar course has been pursued in respect of William IV.; but before explaining the alterations and arrangements introduced into the new civil list, it will be convenient to premise some explanations of the chief departments of the royal expenditure,—the king’s household establishment; the privy purse; pensions on the civil list, and other branches of disbursement; and conclude with some observations on the character and policy of the last two monarchs, and the total expense their profusion entailed on the country.

The first and most important charge on the civil list is the royal household. This forms a ponderous establishment, and affords, by a reduction of useless offices and extravagant salaries, scope for retrenchment. It is the great nursery of indolence, parasites, and courtiers. It is formed upon manners and customs that have long since expired,—upon old baronial customs and arrangements. It not only retains traces of its feudal origin, but it is formed also on the principle of a body corporate; and has its own law-courts, magistrates, and by-laws.

In ancient times, these establishments were supported on a system of purveyance and receipt in kind! The household was then vast, and the supply scanty and precarious. The king’s purveyor used to sally forth from under the gothic portcullis, to purchase provisions, not with money, but power and prerogative. Whole districts were laid under contribution by the jackals of the royal table, who returned from their plundering excursions loaded with the spoils, perhaps, of a hundred markets, which were deposited in so many caverns, each guarded by its respective keeper. Every commodity being received in its rawest state, it had a variety of processes to pass through before it was prepared for the king and his guests. This inconvenient mode of receipt multiplied offices exceedingly; and hence has arisen the butchery, buttery, pantry, and all that “rubble of places,” which, though profitable to the holder, and expensive to the state, are almost too mean to mention.

Let us hear what Burke said on this subject, in his reforming days:—“But when (says he) the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burthen of them. This is superstitiously to embalm the carcass, not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to preserve it. It is to burn precious oils in the tomb: it is to offer meat and drink to the dead,—not so much an honour to the deceased as a disgrace to the survivors. Our palaces are vast inhospitable halls: there the bleak winds, ‘there Boreas, and Euras, and Cauras, and Argestes, loud,’ howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of deserted guard-rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up the grim spectres of departed tyrants,—the Saxon, the Norman, and the Dane; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries,—who stalk from desolation to desolation through the dreary vacuity and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. When this tumult subsides, a dead and still more frightful silence would reign in the desert, if, every now and then, the tacking of hammers did not announce that those constant attendants on all courts, in all ages, jobs, were still alive; for whose sake alone it is that any trace of ancient grandeur is suffered to remain. These palaces are a true emblem of some governments; the inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and magistrates still flourish. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us that this was once a place of trade, and sounding with the ‘busy hum of men,’ though now you can only trace the streets by the colour of the corn; and its sole manufacture is in members of parliament.” The royal abodes at present, we apprehend, are neither so ghostly, chill, nor comfortless, as here described, otherwise the public has been saddled with the enormous bills of Messrs. Wyattville, Nash, and Seddon, to very little purpose.

The great branches of the household are under the direction of the lord chamberlain, the lord steward, and the master of the horse. The office of the lord chamberlain is to take care of all the officers and servants belonging to the king’s chambers, except those belonging to the king’s bed-chamber, who are under the groom of the stole. He has the oversight of the officers of the wardrobe, of tents, revels, music, comedians, handicrafts, and artizans; and, though a layman, he has the oversight of all the king’s chaplains, heralds, physicians, and apothecaries. It is his office to inspect the charges of coronations, marriages, public entries, cavalcades, and funerals; and of all furniture in the parliament-house, and rooms of address to the king.

The lord steward has the estate of the household entirely committed to his care, and all his commands in court are to be obeyed; his authority reaches over all officers and servants of the king’s house, except those of the king’s chamber and chapel. The counting-house, (where the accounts of the household are kept,) the treasurer of the household, comptroller, cofferer, and master of the household, clerks of green cloth, &c. are under his control.

The master of the horse has the charge and government of all the king’s stables and horses. He has also the power over equerries, pages, footmen, grooms, farriers, smiths, saddlers, and all other trades any way connected with the stables. He has the privilege of applying to his own use one coachman, four footmen, and six grooms, in the king’s pay, and wearing the king’s livery. In any solemn cavalcade, he rides next behind the king.

Beside these officers, is the lord privy seal, whose office is to put the seal to all charters, grants, and pardons, signed by the king. Before the privy seal is affixed to any instrument, it receives the royal sign manual; it then passes under the signet, which is a warrant to the privy seal; after the privy seal, it receives the great seal from the lord chancellor, which is the finale. The performance of these different formalities costs the public, perhaps, £20,000 a-year, while the whole of the duties might be discharged as well by any honest man and his clerk for about £400 a-year. The remaining functionaries are the lord president of the council, whose office is to manage the debates in council, to propose matters from the king, and to report to him the resolutions thereupon; the commissioners of the treasury are also considered part of the household: but these, as well as some of the preceding officers, more properly appertain to the civil departments of government, and have been so considered in the new arrangement of the civil list.

The little necessity for this immense household establishment was evident during the limitations on the Regency. At that time the regent discharged all the duties of the executive with only his establishment as Prince of Wales. It did not appear then, no more than now, there was any want of attendance to give dignity and efficiency to the first magistrate. Burke mentions, in his time, that at least one-half the household was kept up solely for influence. He also mentions that one plan of reform, set on foot by lord Talbot, was suddenly stopped, because, forsooth, it would endanger the situation of an honourable member who was turnspit in the kitchen! Whether the duties of this important office continue to be discharged by a member of the honourable house we are not sure; but, in looking over a list of the household, we observe that two noble lords occupy situations little inferior in dignity and utility: the duke of St. Alban’s is master of the hawks, salary £1372, and the earl of Lichfield is master of the dogs, salary £2000. These offices sound rather degrading to vulgar ears; but “love,” as the poet says, “esteems no office mean;” and no doubt it is the love of the sovereign rather than £3000 of the public money which actuates these noble personages. In 1811 there were no fewer than twenty-six peers and four commoners who held situations in various departments of the household.

The parade of useless offices is not less great, and still more ridiculous, in the counties palatine of Durham and Chester, and the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the principality of Wales. These have all separate establishments, sufficient for the government of a kingdom, while their jurisdiction is confined to a few private estates. There are courts of chancery, ecclesiastical courts, chancellors, attorney-generals, solicitor-generals, privy councillors, registrars, cursitors, prothonotaries, auditors, and all the other mimicry of royal government. They bring nothing into the public treasury, but greatly add to the patronage of the Crown, whose dignity they degrade. In one part of his kingdom the sovereign is no more than Prince of Wales; go to the north, and he dwindles down to the duke of Lancaster; turn to the west, and he appears in the humble character of earl of Chester; travel a few miles farther, the earl disappears, and he pops up again as count palatine of Lancaster. Thus does the king, like Matthews in the play, perform all the different characters in his own drama.

Before the reign of George III. no such thing as a privy purse was known. The king’s income was always considered public property attached to the office, but not to the person of the monarch. The first time any mention is made of the privy purse, is in Mr. Burke’s bill, in 1782, and then again in the 39th of Geo. III.; but it was not till the time of the regency, when it was vested in the hands of commissioners, that it was recognised as a fixed annual sum, the private property of the king. But though this anomaly has been only recently acknowledged by any public act, it has been deemed a fixed charge on the civil list for the last seventy years. When the sum of £800,000 was set apart for the royal expenditure, the king was at liberty, with the advice of his ministers, to apply what portion of it he thought proper for his private use. The sum at first set aside for this purpose was £48,000; and the king’s family increasing, it was extended to £60,000. No part of this fund is applied to defray the expense of the household, nor of any other function of the regal office; it is limited entirely to personal expenses, and may be more properly denominated the king’s pocket money than his privy purse. Why it should be separated from the general income of the civil list, unless to gratify a puerile avarice in the monarch, it is not easy to conjecture. From this source, and the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the private property of the king is supposed to accumulate.

The next considerable charge on the civil list consists of pensions payable chiefly to servants of the household, and to the personal favorites of the sovereign and his ministers. Up to the time of the 22 Geo. III. commonly called Mr. Burke’s act, court pensions were granted without limit and controul. In that act it was provided the amount granted on the English civil list should be reduced to £95,000; the same principal of limitation was subsequently applied to the Scotch and Irish civil lists; the pensions to be granted on the former being limited to £25,000, and on the latter to £50,000, making the total amount of pensions chargeable on the civil lists of the United Kingdom £170,000. At this amount the civil list pensions stood on the accession of the king. After the death of George IV. the Court Pension list was published, and excited in the public mind a considerable sensation. Most of the “splendid paupers” inscribed upon it had never been heard of beyond the purlieus of the court; two thirds of them were females; many were the late king’s personal friends, or the apothecaries, relatives, and attachés of successive viceroys of Ireland, and of the great burghmonger of Scotland; some were the mothers, sisters, and nieces of peers, ministers of state, and great borough proprietors in England: but in the whole number there was hardly one (Robert Southey perhaps excepted) eminent for science, literature, or the arts, or distinguished by any kind of public worth or claim. Worthless, however, as the elect of court favour were, their annuities have been continued to them during their lives, under an impression that to rescind them might be productive of individual distress, and a departure from established usage on the accession of a new sovereign. But in the sequel it will be seen that the Court Pension list, in future, is not to exceed £75,000 per annum.

The remaining charges on the civil list consist of certain ancient payments for charity; a sum for special service at the disposal of the lords of the Treasury; and the secret service money of the Treasury.

Other charges heretofore paid out of the civil list have been transferred to the consolidated fund; such were the payments to the judges, to the lords of the Treasury, to foreign ministers, to the speaker of the House of Commons, to the universities, and various miscellaneous items to the city of London, and corporations in the country. The amount of these, and also the expenditure under the several heads of the civil list we have described, will appear from the official documents which will be subjoined to this article. At present let us give a brief summary of the progress and augmentation of the civil list, and an account of its present settlement.

From the year 1804 to 1811, the average annual expenditure of the civil list amounted to £1,102,683. On the commencement of the Regency, this branch of expenditure increased enormously. From 1812 to 1816, the average annual expenditure of the civil list was £1,371,000, being an increase of £268,317 over the expenditure of George III. This augmentation arose chiefly from the profusion in the royal household; from the expense of furniture and tradesmen’s bills; of upholsters, jewellers, glass and china manufacturers, builders, perfumers, embroiderers, tailors, and so on. The charge for upholstery, only for three quarters of a year, was £46,291; of linen-drapery, £64,000; silversmiths, £40,000; wardrobe, £72,000. To provide for these additional outgoings, Lord Castlereagh introduced the Civil-List-Regulation-Bill of 1816. By this Bill, no check is imposed on the profusion of the court; it only provides that various fluctuating and other charges, heretofore paid out of the civil list, should be transferred to the consolidated fund, or provided for by new grants from parliament: in other words, that the civil list should be augmented to the amount of its increased expenditure. By this arrangement, an additional burden was imposed on the public, amounting to £255,768, being the total of the charges of which the civil list was relieved.

Among the charges transferred from the civil list was £35,000, payable to the junior branches of the royal family, and which was to be paid out of the consolidated fund; also salaries, to the amount of £3,268, to certain officers and persons. All the charges, for the outfit of ministers to foreign courts, or presents to foreign ministers, incidental expenses in the Treasury, deficiencies of fees to secretaries of state, and in the law department, amounting to £197,000, were to be provided for by new grants from parliament. Various charges for furniture and other articles, heretofore provided by the lord chamberlain for public offices; the expense of collars, badges, and mantles for the orders of the Garter, Bath, and Thistle; and all expenses for repairs of public offices and buildings at the Tower, Whitehall, and Westminster; for works in St. James’s Park and private roads, estimated at £25,000, were to be provided for by new grants; the total deduction of charges being, as before stated, £255,768.

Now it is obvious that to the amount of these charges the income of the Crown was augmented, and that the scale of extravagant expenditure, in the first four years of the Regency, from 1812 to 1816, formed the basis on which the civil list of George IV. was provided. On the accession of the late king, in 1820, no alteration was proposed in the Civil-List-Regulation-Bill of 1816; it passed, as is observed by the writer of a ministerial pamphlet of the day, with “the entire approbation of all parties; that is, “all parties,” without inquiry or examination, concurred in making a permanent addition to the king’s income of a quarter of a million over that enjoyed by his predecessor.

But to judge of the immense disproportion in the incomes of the two sovereigns, it is necessary to advert to the alteration in the value of money. The average expenditure of George III. from 1804 to 1811, was £1,102,683. The average price of wheat, from 1804 to 1811, inclusive, was 87s. 6d. per quarter. The average price of wheat, during the ten years of the last reign, from 1820 to 1830, was 58s. 4d. per quarter; indicating a rise in the value of money, as measured by corn, of above 33 per cent. The price of labour, profits, tithes, rents, and interest, all fell in nearly the same proportion; so that it would not be too much to reckon an income of £67 equivalent to an income of £100 in the period selected for comparison; and, consequently, that the expenditure of George III. of £1,102,683, in a depreciated currency, was not more than an expenditure of £638,797 at the value of money during the last reign. Had, therefore, the civil list of George IV. been fixed at the same nominal amount as the civil list of George III. it would have been virtually 33 per cent. greater; but, besides being fixed at nearly the same nominal amount as that of his predecessor, one-fourth less was to pay out of it; so that the real addition to the income of George IV. was not less than fifty-eight per cent.—an arrangement, we are told, with the “entire approbation of all parties.”

The extravagant nature of the settlement of the civil list of George IV. must be plain: we have compared it with the latest expenditure of George III. and, allowing for the alteration in the currency and the charges transferred to other funds, the difference was more than half a million. George III. was by no means a cheap sovereign; but in considering his expenditure, it ought to be borne in mind that he was liable to many outgoings from which his successor was exempted. Of this nature, were a large family—sums expended in the improvement of Windsor-castle—the charge of furnishing and decorating the apartments in the palaces for the princesses—their removal to and from Windsor, estimated at £20,000—the journeys to Weymouth about general Garth’s affair—and furnishing apartments in Kensington-palace for the Princess of Wales; all which tended to swell the royal expenditure in the seven years selected for comparison.

But it is proper to observe respecting this pattern-king, as many considered George III., that his income never equalled his expenditure. Allowing for the sums granted by parliament to liquidate the debts of the civil list during his reign, amounting to upwards of three millions and a half, it renders the disparity between his actual expenditure and that of his successor less than we have mentioned. George IV. incurred no debts after the settlement of his civil list, and the course adopted to avoid future incumbrances was first, by relieving the civil list of all public charges of an expensive and fluctuating amount; and secondly, by granting to the king an allowance framed on the most extravagant scale of expenditure ever known in this country, and such as experience had shewn to be adequate to his most lavish demands. By these precautions, and with the hereditary revenues always ready to meet any unexpected outgoing, it would have been wonderful had not the scheme realised the expectations of the projectors. Another feature in lord Castlereagh’s bill was the appointment of a new officer under the name of auditor of the civil list. The latter regulation can excite no surprise, for it cannot be forgotten that in all attempts to economize by Tory ministers they generally contrived to keep up the same amount of patronage by new creatins. An instance of this occurred on the abolition of certain sinecures in 1817, when a bill, the 57 Geo. III. was immediately introduced to provide pensions in lieu of them. Another instance was afforded in the consolidation of the revenue departments of England and Ireland, when a vice-treasurer and his deputy were appointed, with a salary of £3000 a-year, apparently for no other object than to keep up the patronage of the Treasury. Again, when the further granting of pensions from the Leeward-Islands-fund was prohibited, ministers set up the West-India church-establishments. The ostensible functions of the auditor of the civil list were to superintend the accounts of the lord chamberlain, lord steward, and master of the horse; but certainly these were the duties which ought to have been performed by the heads of these departments, and for which they receive their salaries. Was it probable the public would be better secured against profusion in the royal expenditure when confided to the watchful vigilance of a commoner than when confided to three peers of the realm? The precaution was futile, but answered the purpose of a pretext for dipping into the pockets of the people. Mr. Herries was the first auditor appointed; his previous office, commissary-in-chief, had been abolished, and, we presume, ministers were at a loss how otherwise to dispose of him.

The Whig ministry have annexed the auditorship to the Treasury, by which a saving of more than £1500 a-year has been effected.