Places, Pensions, Sinecures, Compensations, Reversions, Half-pay, and Superannuations.

So far we have penetrated into the recesses of the Oligarchy! Our first entrance was into Holy Church, passing, with fear and trembling, through the venerable cathedrals, the collegiate establishments, the stalls, chapters, cloisters, and parsonages—glancing, as we proceeded, at the lawn sleeves, silk aprons, shovel-hats, surplices, hat-bands, and gloves. Next we ventured into the precincts of royalty, surveying the pomp and gorgeous pageants of courts and palaces; loitering, as we went along, in the pleasant retreats, in the woods and forests, the manors, chases, and crown-lands; afterwards we entered the domains of feudality, looking over the inheritances and possessions of the Percys, the Wentworths, Cavendishes, Pelhams, and other lords of the soil. Next, we plunged into the rookery among the wigs and gowns, the owls and owlets of Westminster; passing over thence into the treasury, the exchequer, and admiralty; from which we proceeded eastward into the purlieus of the India House and Threadneedle-street; and finally concluded our exploratory researches among the muniments, charters, trusts and revenues of Companies, Guilds, and Corporations.

After all this long and devious tour, without mentioning sundry off-sets and ramblings by the way, our readers, we fear, are only yet imperfectly acquainted with the System; they comprehend only its geography—its general departments and divisions—and know nothing of the various living creatures—the birds and beasts, and creeping things it contains. Our next object, therefore, will be, to introduce them into the menagerie of placemen, pensioners, sinecurists, reversionists, compensationists, superannuationists, and what not; first, describing their classes, genera, and species; and, afterwards, concluding with a catalogue of their names and qualities. This department of our work will be found a museum of rarities, embracing every link in the human creation, every description of men, women, and children. Like the ark of Noah, there has been nothing too great or mean in nature to find admission. It exhibits all the vice, the caprice, and injustice, of aristocratic government: the highest services to the state almost without notice, and the greatest gifts of the Crown lavished on profligacy, servility, and intrigue. It exhibits indolence and luxury devouring the bread for which poverty and industry have toiled, and for which they are now starving. It exhibits the strength, arcana, and machinery of the English government. It is a real picture of our boasted constitution—if not by law, as by practice established; and is a source whence a foreigner may draw far more correct notions of the checks, balances, and supports of the government, than from the visionary and panegyrical descriptions of Blackstone and De Lolme.

Before giving a list of the public cormorants, let us briefly describe their orders and degrees, beginning with the host of placemen filling the public offices.

From returns to parliament, it appears there are 22,912 persons employed in the public departments, whose salaries amount to £2,788,907. This does not include the immense number of persons employed in courts of law, the royal household, nor the colonies, and which, if included, would almost double the number of functionaries and their emoluments. The following exhibits a statement of the principal branches of revenue, in which this vast army of tax-gatherers and collectors is distributed, and a comparison of their relative numbers and emoluments in 1797 and 1827.

An important consideration is the comparative remuneration of placemen in 1797 and at present. In the year 1797 there were 16,267 persons employed in the public departments; and they received £1,374,561 a year. In 1827 there were 22,912 persons, and they received £2,788,907: the average income of each individual was £84 in 1797, and about £121 in 1827, being at the rate of thirty-three per cent. increase of salary.

Now, can any just cause be assigned, why the whole mass of salaries should not be reduced to the rate of 1797, thereby effecting a saving of upwards of one-third in an expenditure of £2,788,907 per annum. All the reasons which have ever been alleged for an augmentation in the pay of public servants have ceased to exist. The price of wheat in consequence of the corn laws is rather higher in 1832 than in 1797; but manufactured articles and articles of domestic use are mostly one-third or two-thirds cheaper than in 1797. How much better circumstanced are placemen now than in 1810; in that year there were 22,931 persons receiving £2,822,727, averaging about the same income as in 1827: but, at the former period, wheat was 105s. a quarter; while, at present, it is 61s. a quarter. Why should those who live on the taxes enjoy such advantages over those who pay them? Rents, profits, wages, every description of income, the produce of industry and capital, has fallen at least one-third since 1810, and why should not those who are paid by the public be compelled to retrench in an equal ratio? Do not let a suffering community be insulted by the declaration, that there is no room for retrenchment—that it has already been carried to the utmost limit. Here is the proof to the contrary; here it is shown that, without the least injustice to individuals, in the single item of salaries, one million per annum might be saved, which is nearly equal to the produce of the window-duties, and more than double the produce of all the taxes on newspapers, advertisements, and knowledge!

After all, it is not the clerks—the mere underlings of office—that we wish to see exclusively curtailed; it is the vultures of the system whom we wish to see scotched—the chairmen of boards—the commissioners of stamps, of the excise, the customs, and assessed taxes—the joint secretaries of the Treasury—the tellers of the Exchequer—the great officers of the king’s household—the judges, masters, registrars, secretary of bankrupt, prothonotaries, filacers, and custos brevium in the courts of law—the comptrollers, paymasters, treasurers, solicitors of taxes, and solicitors of stamps: it is these, the great birds of prey, whom we first wish to be brought down, and then the inferior race may be pounced upon.

The increase in salaries is not confined to civil offices; it extends equally to military, naval, and ordnance pay and allowances. In all these branches of service, there has been a great augmentation in consequence of the rise in the price of provisions, which is a reason that can be no longer urged against reduction. In 1792, the pay of a private soldier in the regular infantry was only £9 : 2 : 6 for 365 days; it is now £18 : 5. The pay of the regular cavalry has been increased in the same proportion. The pay of a commander in the navy, in 1792, was 20s. per diem; in 1829, 60s. per diem. The allowance to the widow of a colonel, in 1792, was £50 per annum; in 1827, £90 per annum. A similar scale of augmentation has been applied to almost every other class; but the time has arrived when they ought all to be reduced to the rate before the war. The productive orders of society have long since been compelled to retrograde, and those who live on the produce of their industry must follow them. While the tide was at flood all officers and placemen were wafted too high on the beach; now the tide has fallen, they must either voluntarily glide or supinely wait to be forced into the common channel.

One of the greatest abuses in the public service is pluralities. When a single individual can adequately discharge the duties of half a dozen different offices, the duties of these offices must be either very small or unimportant, and consequently some of them might either be abolished or united, and the salaries saved or reduced. It is unnecessary to cite examples of either civil, judicial, or military pluralities; they will be found in abundance in our List of Places. The Whig ministers have consolidated some offices: they have also abolished some offices, and reduced the salaries of others: the changes they have introduced or contemplated we shall notice in a separate section; but it does not appear they have determined to act on the general principle of reducing all salaries and emoluments to the standard existing prior to the war. There is, however, no good reason why this course should not be followed. Look at the enormous fall in the prices of Sheffield cutlery and Birmingham hardwares recently published! All articles of domestic use and consumption, except bread, have fallen in a corresponding proportion, and many of them have fallen greatly below the prices they were at in 1797. In 1797 the average price of sugar, per cwt., was 60s.; in 1832 it is only 23s. per cwt.; in 1797 coffee was 124s., in 1832 it is 33s. 6d.; sheeting calicoes in 1797 were 1s. 6d. per yard, in 1832 sixpence; broad cloth 22s. 6d. per yard in 1797, in 1832 nine shillings; iron per ton in 1797 £23, in 1832 £5 : 10. While the prices of these articles have fallen from 60 to 75 per cent. below what they were in 1797, the price of corn has risen. In 1797, the average price was 44s. per quarter at Mark-lane; in January 1832 it was 61s. 6d. These are the different results of free and restricted trade—free, as respects manufactures—restricted as respects the produce of the soil.

The price of tea has been kept up from the same cause—monopoly in the East India Company. The high price of corn is no reason whatever for not returning to the standard before the war, because the high price is voluntary—the result of the selfish and pernicious policy of the Aristocracy—of those who chiefly profit not only by the exorbitant price of corn, which they have artificially created, but by exorbitant salaries.