CIVIL List of William IV.

Having adverted to the civil lists of the two last reigns, let us next advert to the civil list arrangement concluded with the present King. William IV. is so deservedly popular for his firm and enlightened adherence to the great renovating measure of parliamentary reform, that we are sure the people will not begrudge his Majesty any income conducive to his personal comfort and real dignity. But it is not our province to act the part of parasites, who mislead monarchs and ruin empires, but to submit to our readers the truth, and nothing but the truth. We shall then briefly state the arrangement of the civil list established by I Will. IV., c. 25., and which received the royal assent April 22, 1831.

The leading principle of the framers of the act was to relieve the civil list of every charge not strictly connected with the royal expenditure. Hitherto many expenses had been included in the civil list which had no immediate connexion with the king’s household or the regal office; expenses which, in fact, were the expenses of the civil government of the country, and as such ought always to have been under the cognizance, and subject to the control of parliament. All charges of this description have been dissevered and transferred to the consolidated fund, to be provided for out of the general produce of the taxes. In lieu of the civil list consisting of nine classes of payment, they have been reduced to the five following; first, the privy purse of the King, £60,000, and the establishment of the Queen, £50,000, making the total sum allotted to this class £110,000 per annum. Second, the salaries of the royal household, including the departments of the lord chamberlain, £64,450, lord steward, £36,500, master of the horse, £28,500, and master of the robes £850, making the total sum allotted to this class £130,300. The third class consists of the expenditure in the several departments in the second class, amounting to £171,500. The fourth class consists of royal bounty, alms, payments to the poor of London, special service, and home secret service money, amounting to £23,200. The fifth and last class is pensions, which is limited to £75,000. The mode in which the reduction has been effected under this head, was by consolidating the three pension lists of England, Ireland, and Scotland in one alphabetical list, and by providing that pensions to the amount of £75,000 on the first part of the alphabetical list should be charged on the civil list, and the remainder, to the amount of £95,000, be charged on the consolidated fund. By this arrangement the public will receive the benefit of the pensions which fall in from that part of them which are charged on the consolidated fund, while the King has the advantage of the vacancies which occur in those payable from the civil list.

An important question now arises—What is the amount of saving effected by the new arrangement? There has been a shifting of weights we have seen, there has been a transfer of charges from one fund to another, but the vital question to the public is, how much less will the support of the new king cost than the old. Let us enquire.

The civil list granted to William IV. is £510,000; the civil list granted to his predecessor (the Irish civil list included) was £1,057,000; the difference is £547,000. But the saving is by no means to the amount of this difference. The civil list of the King has been relieved of four entire classes of disbursement, the expenditure in which amounted to upwards of £400,000, and which are now provided for by annual grants from parliament. Notwithstanding this, we find, on comparing the corresponding classes of the two lists, that there has been an absolute and positive reduction. In the second class the reductions have been to the amount of £10,300; in the third class to the amount of £37,500; in the fourth class to the amount of £3000; and in the fifth class to the amount of £95,000. In the first class there has been an augmentation to the amount of £50,000 on account of the establishment of the Queen. The net reduction in the royal expenditure, below the amount in the preceding reigns, is £95,000.

We have now submitted, as clearly and correctly as we are able, from the official returns to parliament, the new arrangement of the civil list. In our opinion, it is a material improvement on those which have preceded it, and does credit to Earl Grey’s administration. It is simpler in form and more economical. The cutting down of the infamous pension list is not only a saving, but a constitutional improvement in the executive government, by destroying the miasm of the court atmosphere. Other advantages have accrued: the masses of revenue, the nature of which was explained in the last chapter, have been withdrawn from the irresponsible disposal of ministers. By the transfer of charges to the consolidated fund, a sum of no less than £696,000 has, for the first time, been brought within the cognizance and control of parliament, and which cannot fail, ultimately, to lead to a very considerable reduction of expenditure.

Against these advantages we have only two drawbacks to mention. First, it does not appear from the civil list act, the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have been included in the surrender of the hereditary and casual revenues of the crown. The income from these royal appanages, we believe, is about £25,000 per annum. The king enjoys the revenue of the former in the absence of a Prince of Wales, and of the latter in his own right as Duke of Lancaster. They are considered by some as the private property of the sovereign, and, as such, not within parliamentary cognizance any more than the income of his grace of Norfolk, or any other nobleman. But we cannot see the reasons for this construction. The king is only known in his public capacity of chief magistrate, and we apprehend the revenues of Lancaster and Cornwall might have been as legally surrendered as the casual and hereditary revenues. The duchies are notoriously great nurseries of abuse and sinecurism, and have long wanted bringing before the public.

The second objection we have to urge is, our apprehension lest the hereditary revenues have not been sufficiently secured from ministerial grasp. In the twelfth section of the Civil List Act various powers are reserved to the Crown, among others, to grant rewards out of the admiralty droits for meritorious conduct. May not this leave a door open for the future encroachments of the servants of the king on these funds? However, this is a contingency, which can only occur from the supineness of the legislature.

We repeat, therefore, in spite of these drawbacks, that the Whig civil list is a substantial improvement on its predecessors. Many, however, will still think, and we think so too, that the allowance of more than half a million per annum for the maintenance of one man is a very great sum. But it is necessary to bear in mind the state and institutions of the society in which we live. No one can reasonably expect that a king of England should have a less annual income than the greatest of his subjects. Before reducing lower the royal income, we must reduce the incomes of the grandees of the church and aristocracy, by the amputation of tithes and corn laws. Till then we do not imagine his Majesty could well discharge the duties of his high station with a smaller revenue; especially while he has the gorgeous civil list of the citizen king of the French to keep him in countenance. While, therefore, the monarchical and aristocratic institutions of the country subsist, the people will be compelled to make a great pecuniary sacrifice to mere state and graduated rank, and be under the necessity of declining the tender of the worthy Scotchman, who offered to discharge all the duties of the regal office for £300 a year, and find good security for the performance!