Sinecures, Reversions, and Pensions.

Sinecures are offices without employment! The bare description is sufficient to decide the fate of appointments like these; but how infatuated the government must be, which obstinately retains them amidst a discontented and famishing population. Let us shortly inquire into the origin and present state of these corruptions.

Sinecures have mostly originated from changes in the usages of society, from alterations in the management of the revenue, the administration of justice, and partly from the unions of the three kingdoms. They ought all to have ceased with the duties attached to them; but have been kept up for sake of patronage. Of the first description of sinecures, the office of master of the hawks, in the royal household, held, with a salary of £1,392, by the Duke of St. Albans, is an example. The chief-justices in Eyre, with salaries amounting to £4,566, have been kept up for centuries, after such a mode of administering the laws had terminated. In Scotland and Ireland is a host of offices of which the holders, without employment or responsibility, have only to receive their salaries and emoluments. Of this class are the offices of Vice-admiral of Scotland, held by general Lord Cathcart; the Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, held by the late first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville; the offices of Keeper of the Signet and Register of Sasines, held by the brother of Lord Melville: the office of Chancellor of Scotland, held by lieutenant-general the Earl of Rosslyn; and the office of Justice-general of Scotland, held by the late Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Montrose. All these are absolute sinecures, with salaries varying from £1500 to £5000 per annum. The offices of Chief Justices-in-Eyre, now held by Lord Clarendon and the Right Hon. T. Grenville, are to cease with existing interests; but when that will be no one can tell, since many of these lucrative appointments have been made hereditary in particular families, or patent offices granted for a long term of years.

Next to absolute sinecures are offices of which the salaries are vastly disproportioned to the employment, and of which the duties are discharged wholly by deputy. This forms a very numerous class. As specimens may be mentioned, the Auditorship of the Exchequer, held by Lord Grenville, with a salary of £4000; the Registrarship of the Admiralty, held by Lord Arden, with an income, during the war, of £10,500; the four Tellerships of the Exchequer, each with salaries of £2700; and the four Clerkships of the Pells, with salaries of £1500, held by the Bathursts, Dundasses, and Percevals. In the departments of the Army, the Navy, and Revenue, are numerous sinecures, which ought to have been long since extinguished.

But the courts of justice present the most rank and unweeded garden of lucrative offices without employment, or of which the employment is executed by deputy. Among the foremost of these is Lord Ellenborough, who is clerk in the Court of King’s Bench, with an income of £9,625; he is also custos brevium of the same court. This pompous man threw out an insolent threat, last session, on some comment being made on the heavy contributions levied by legal sinecurists on suitors for justice. Lord Kenyon is joint custos brevium with Lord Ellenborough, with an income of £2,696; and his lordship’s brother, the Hon. Thomas Kenyon, is filazer and clerk of outlawries, with emoluments averaging £7,000 a year. Next, is the Duke of Grafton, sealer in the King’s Bench, £2,888, though we dare say his grace never sealed a writ in his life, nor ever once entered the dark and dirty hole in Inner Temple Lane, where that function is performed by his representative. Charles Short, clerk of the rules and orders of the King’s Bench, receives from fees, £5,172 per annum. What can be the grave and responsible duties of Mr. Short to entitle him to this enormous tribute, we cannot precisely state. Again; there is John Waters, clerk to the chief justice, from fees, £2,169. Lord Tenterden receives £10,000 a year as chief judge of this court; but his lordship’s office is no sinecure, whatever may be the offices held by his son and nephew, who receive, respectively, £2,985, and £1,000 per annum.

Let us next step into the Court of Common Pleas; we pass over the judges, whose salaries are well known, and perhaps not greatly to be complained of. Not so with others. The three prothonotaries have returned their emoluments at £7,800, “or thereabouts,” arising from “ancient fees, payable solely by suitors.” Mr. Mansfield, filacer of the court, receives £1,450 for filing writs and affidavits, taking bail, and other small matters. Keene Fitzgerald, Esq. clerk of the warrants, £1,252; W. Woodroffe, Esq. associate of the chief justice, £1,198; the custos brevium, Sir E. Mostyn and partners, from fees on actions, £1,122; and last, and not least, William R. H. Brown, Esq. warden of the Fleet Prison, “£2,000, or something upwards,”—the words of the return. The Court of Chancery has been called the “Mint of justice;” but it is, in fact, a mint for coining into enormous fees the effects of minors, legatees, bankrupts, widows, orphans, and lunatics. The office of the chief fee-gatherer of the court is about to be regulated; that is, in lieu of gleaning £15,000 a-year from writs, petitions, supersedeas, &c. the Lord Chancellor is to be paid a fixed salary to an equal amount. The emoluments of the Rev. Thomas Thurlow amounted, in the year 1830, to £8,502, as patentee of bankrupts; and the emoluments of the same Reverend Person, in the same year, as clerk of the hanaper, amounted to £2,500. The sinecures, or offices nearly sinecures, in this court, are so numerous, that we must be content with indicating them in clusters, referring to the List of Places for particulars. The ten masters, whose chief duties consist in three or four hours’ attendance per day, in adjusting accounts and swearing affidavits, receive each, on the average, £4,500 per annum; and their chief clerks, each, £1,400 a-year. The Six Clerks, as they are termed, are nothing more than sinecurists, and their incomes average £1,200 each. The Registrar levies £4,861 in fees, for copying proceedings in equity, and the master of the Report Office as much, though his duties are of the same humble description, performed by hireling quill-drivers, who receive less than a curate’s stipend. Our task would never be finished, were we to pursue our inquiries minutely through the entire labyrinth of law in the United Kingdom. Edinburgh presents similar enormities in judicial administration, in the fees and emoluments of keeper of signet, and register of sasines, the clerks of sessions, sheriffs’ clerks, &c. Dublin has also her flight of vultures perched on the temple of Astræ, under the denomination of masters in chancery, prothonotaries, clerk of the hanaper, and clerks of papers, and what not. In the provinces justice is impeded by clerks of the peace, appointed by lords lieutenant of counties, and who have princely emoluments. Then what purlieus of sinecurism there are in the counties palatine and duchy courts of Lancaster, Durham, and Cornwall, in the nominal capacities of chancellors, registrars, receivers, attorney and solicitor-generals, auditors, king’s counsel, ushers, and other mimicry of the regal and imperial government!

Knowing, as we do, what a gradation of pillage the course of justice is in this country; knowing how the unfortunate suitor is fleeced at every step of his proceeding, by the harpies of the law; knowing all this, we do often wonder at the proneness of our countrymen to litigation, and cannot behold, without both surprise and indignation, the readiness with which they furnish pabulum to the monstrous legal extortions we have shortly indicated. We hear much said about the “hells” of St. James’s-street, and of the “hells” of Bond-street, where brainless creatures are stripped of their fortunes; but are these more ruinous and plundering than others, under a very different name, in the vicinity of Chancery-lane, Temple-bar, and Palace-yard?

We pass on to another description of sinecures, under the titles of governors, lieutenant-governors, town-adjutants, town-majors, constables, gunners, wardens, lord-wardens, and God knows what beside, of the cities, towns, forts, castles, garrisons, &c. of Great Britain and Ireland. Berwick-on-Tweed, Chester, Hull, Blackness-Castle, Dover-Castle, Edinburgh-Castle, Walmer-Castle, and Tilbury-Fort, are examples of these appointments, and which cost the country upwards of £35,000 per annum. Numerous commissioners of revenue, comptrollers, inspectors of taxes, and distributors of stamps, are little more than sinecurists, the duties, where any exist, being discharged by deputies. But the chief nidus of sinecures is in the Colonies. The duties of nearly all offices in the West Indies, civil or judicial, are discharged by deputy, while the principal resides in England. They form an immense branch of patronage to the crown. It is impossible to estimate correctly their total value, the incomes being paid in fees, received by the deputy, who stipulates to pay a fixed annual sum to the principal. The total value of colonial sinecures, exclusive of those at the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, and Malta, has been estimated at £76,546.

The subjoined statement, taken from the Supplementary Report of the Committee of Public Expenditure in 1809, shews the net value of the principal sinecures in the gift of the Crown, and otherwise. It is now twenty-two years since this report was made; and during that long iuterval, we doubt whether the profits of a single sinecure have been saved to the public: some which we have noticed are to cease on the termination of existing interests. The offices of patentee of bankrupts, and clerk of the hanaper, and of justice-general in Scotland, and a few more, have been abolished; but then the holders are to have compensations; so that, we repeat, we doubt whether, by the extinction of sinecures, the community has been saved a farthing; and this monstrous abuse is just as flagrant as ever, to the everlasting reproach of the members of both houses of parliament, who have not raised their voices, not only once but many times, against the further toleration of this shameless robbery, under any shape or pretext. Here is the return to which we have referred:—

Having spoken of Sinecures, we come next to their natural offspring—Reversions. It was very natural that the holders of situations, to which large emoluments and no duties were attached, should not only wish to preserve them during their lives, but also, if possible, transmit them to their relatives and friends after death: hence originated grants in reversion. Another reason, however, may be assigned; ministers not having situations in sufficient abundance to satisfy all their adherents, endeavoured to satisfy them by anticipation. Those for whom they could not immediately provide, they satisfied by obtaining grants from the king, making them the heirs of places at the death of the present possessors. Sometimes these reversions were granted to two or three persons at once; first to one, and if he or she should die, to another; and if he or she should die, to another; in this way have been granted most of the places on the Irish establishment for sixty or seventy years to come, and many of the most valuable legal sinecures in England.

The absurdity of this practice is sufficiently obvious. Nothing could be more ridiculous than to appoint persons to offices who were, perhaps, yet in the nursery, and of whose future capabilities it was impossible to have any knowledge. To be sure, many of these reversionary situations had no duties attached to them, and, of course, it could not be of much importance by whom they were discharged.

From the large emoluments of Sinecures, and the granting them in reversion, have originated some ludicrous incongruities. Many noble lords and their sons, right honourable and honourable gentlemen, fill the offices of clerks, tide-waiters, harbour-masters, searchers, gaugers, packers, craners, wharfingers, prothonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these offices are filled by women and some by children. The Countess of Mansfield receives £1000 a year from the Barbadoes planters; and the duchess dowager of Manchester £2928 a-year, as late collector of the customs outwards! Not long since a right honourable lady, a baroness, was sweeper of the Mall in the Park; another lady was chief usher in the Court of Exchequer; and the Honourable Louisa Browning and Lady B. Martny were custos brevium: some of these offices, we see, from the Law List, have been recently merged in and executed by the husbands and children of these high-born dames. Then of noble Lords; the Beresfords hold the appropriate offices of wine-tasters, storekeepers, packers, and craners, in Ireland; the Duke of Grafton, and Lords Ellenborough and Kenyon, with deputies to help, are clerks, sealers, and keepers of writs. Lord Henley is master in chancery; the late lord Walsingham was in the petty office of comptroller of first fruits in the Court of Exchequer; and Lord Wm. Bentinck, now located in India as governor-general of Bengal, is clerk of the pipe, part of whose office it is to attend or assist the man who holds up Lord Chancellor Brougham’s train!

We could enumerate a great many more, but they will be noticed in our List; we shall pass on to Pensions.

As nearly as can be collected from the various official returns submitted to Parliament, it would appear there are upwards of fifteen hundred pensioners, who receive about £805,022 per annum. This is exclusive of colonial pensions, and of all grants, allowances, half-pay, and superannuations for civil, military, and naval services. We subjoin a statement of the objects and sources from which this vast sum is paid.

The funds out of which pensions are paid are so numerous that we are not sure, though we have all the official returns about us, some of them have not escaped our researches. However, we had rather be under the mark than be accused of exaggeration. Exclusive of sinecures, and the millions expended on objects nearly as unjustifiable, a Pension Roll, in times like these, to the amount of £805,022, is enough to make a man start from his seat, especially if he reflect, for one moment, on the dreadful state of the labouring population of the empire. In our humble opinion the salaries of public servants ought to be their only reward, and the granting of pensions is altogether unjustifiable, unless for casualties in the service of the country; but when they are squandered on persons of whom the public knows nothing, nor for what, they are an unbearable grievance. Who, for instance, knows any thing of the services of the Giffords, the Cockburns, the Bathursts, Arbuthnots, Hays, Fitzhums, and scores more who are living on the earnings of the industrious. Foreigners, too, are on the Pensions List; men have been brought from all parts of the earth, from America, from Germany, from France, and myriads from Scotland, to eat our bread, and devour the wages of labour and the profits of trade and agriculture.

It would be quite impossible, within reasonable limits, to enter into an analysis of the Pension List; but there is one class of pensioners who have got upon our backs in such a peculiar way, and they have such peculiar claims on national gratitude, that we must needs crave the reader’s patience while we shortly describe their origin and pretensions.

In the year 1817, there was a pretty general call for retrenchment, and a Select Committee of Finance, consisting mostly of placemen and pensioners, recommended as a sort of tub to the whale, the abolition of a few of the more obnoxious sinecures. Three acts were accordingly introduced to abolish certain useless offices; as supervisor of his Majesty’s printing-press, compiler of the Dublin gazette, master of the revels, chief justices in Eyre, clerk of the pipe, receiver of the bishop’s rents, and some others were to be abolished: all which are subject to existing interests. But mark the sequel: having recommended the abolition of these sinecures, the committee next recommend the creation of others; having cut down the places without any duties to perform, they create so many new pensions of retirement and superannuations, as actually to entail a greater burthen on the country after this mock retrenchment than before!

With this view, the 57th Geo. III. c. 65, was introduced. The act begins by reciting that, “the abolition and regulation of various offices, which deprive the crown of part of the means by which his Majesty has been heretofore enabled to recompense the service of persons who have held high and efficient civil offices;” and it modestly enacts, that, from henceforth and evermore, all the high and low “efficient public officers” of the country, from the first lord of the treasury down to the secretaries of the treasury, under-secretaries of state, clerk of the ordnance, first and second secretaries of the Admiralty, all included, shall be supported by pensions paid out of the pockets of the people. This was reforming with a vengeance! A committee, appointed expressly to abolish useless places, finishes by recommending the purchase of them, and the establishing of a perpetual fund to reward the holders thereof; most of the members of the committee themselves being the parties to be benefited by this admirable mode of retrenchment.

This truly extraordinary Pension Act assumes, as a principle, that the different sinecures are the absolute property of our hereditary legislators and their dependents; and thence concludes, because these offices are abolished, they have a claim to be provided for in some other way. “Here is a considerable mass of property,” they say, “taken from our grasp, and it must be made up to us by equivalent pensions.” This is exactly the principle, and what must the constitution of the government be which sanctions, by its authority, so monstrous an assumption?

What right had these “high and efficient public men” to compensation at all? The sinecures were abuses, and they ought to have been swept away without equivalent. If other classes are injured by reform or improvement, what compensation do they receive for their loss? The workman suffers by the substitution of machinery, the merchant and manufacturer by the vicissitudes of commerce, and the farmer by alterations of the currency; but they receive no equivalent; no fund is provided to make up the loss of their capital and industry. How many individuals have been ruined by the introduction of the steam-engine; yet no one thinks of making up the loss of the sufferers. No one thinks of establishing a perpetual fund to compensate the loss of the stocking-weavers, printers, cloth-dressers, or coach-proprietors: no one would think of compensating the loss of the publicans and brewers, from the throwing open of the beer trade. Yet the rights of all these classes are as sacred as those of the pensioners and sinecurists. They have all vested interests in their pursuits; they have all served apprenticeships or laid out their capital: and if the sacrifice of their property be a public good, they are as much entitled to compensation as the “high and efficient public men.”

Absurd as the principle is, it pervades the whole system: all abuses are private property, and you cannot reform them without raising an outcry that the interests of some class or other are violated. If you meddle with tithe, you are violating the property of the church. If you attempt reform in courts of justice, you are attacking the emoluments and patronage of the judicial classes. If you attack the rotten boroughs, you are accused of invading the property of the aristocracy. And, lastly, if you touch sinecures, they are the property of our “high and efficient public” men.

Under such a system there can be no reform; there can be only transformation of abuse; you can only transmute a sinecure into a pension, or an enormous salary into a superannuation; but, as to extirpating the evil altogether, it is chimerical. That can only be done by a reformed Parliament, which shall have no vested interests in the abuses it undertakes to remove.

Having explained the origin and principle of the Pension Act, let us next glance at some of the worthies who, up to this time, under the designation of “high and efficient public men,” have fastened their greedy talons on the earnings of the industrious. First on the list is Lord Sidmouth, £3000 a year for life: his lordship, besides, has Richmond-park Lodge, and for many years has been receiving, as deputy-ranger, from £1000 to £2000 per annum, out of the rents and profits of the crown lands. The sinecure of clerk of the pells was many years held by his son; and there are several other Addingtons in the church, and on foreign missions. Altogether £5000 a year may be put down as the reward of the famous circular, the memorable letter of thanks, to the Manchester magistrates, for the massacre of the 16th of August, and other high and efficient public services of Henry Viscount Sidmouth.

The next is the honourable Robert Ward £1000, late auditor of the civil list, we believe, and who has run through various ranks and degrees as clerk of the Ordnance, M.P. for Haslemere, &c. This gentleman is only to receive half his pension, if he hold office of less annual value than twice its amount.

The right honourable Henry Goulbourn £2000, the Duke’s luminous and most efficient chancellor of the Exchequer. Then follows a Mr. Hamilton £1000, of whom we know nothing, unless he be a late consul or clerk of the Treasury. Afterwards we have Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, M.P. for Totness, colonial agent for the Cape of Good Hope, and late secretary of the India Board. This is the “family man,” with a wife and fourteen children, for whom Canning once made so melting an appeal to the guardians of the public purse;—they must be provided for. Mr. Courtenay is the cousin of a peer—let him be put down for £1000, and his sons have the first vacancies in the Mint, the Treasury, or Exchequer!

Now, right honourable John Wilson Croker, come forth; don’t be ashamed; who can begrudge any thing to the paymaster of the widows’ charity, and a twenty-one years’ secretary of the Admiralty, with £3000 per annum. Put John down for £1500 a year for life—but stop; do not let him receive his pension, any more than his brother pamphleteer, Peregrine Courtenay, if he hold offices yielding £3000 a year.

Joseph Planta, Esq. we congratulate you; enrolled among the high and efficient public men; a secretary of the Treasury, with £3500 a year, and a pension for life of £1000 a year. Mr. Planta, you are a happy man; your calling and election are sure, and you are now placed beyond the risk of accident, by “flood or field.” Next to Castor and Pollux, whom you have so good a right to follow, you have been one of the most humble and industrious labourers in the borough vineyard.

We pass over Canning and Huskisson; at the time of their death, each was down for £3000; they were amongst the most greedy and audacious of corruptionists; but they are gone to their audit elsewhere;—not, however, without leaving long trails of calamities behind, of which more hereafter.

Next is a Hobhouse £1000; but we pass over him also to come to the last and greatest of our “high and efficient public men,” the right honourable Lord Bexley. How ought a statesman like this to be rewarded: the great Sieur Vansittart, the steadfast coadjutor of the “Thunderer,” the astounding financier, the man of infinite resource, who, in the period of our greatest tribulations, did, by the mere force of native genius, make a pound note and a shilling equal to a guinea, when the former was depreciated thirty per cent. Put Nicholas down for £3000 a year for life, and make him a Lord!

Here ends the muster-roll of “high and efficient public men.” There are other names; but these are enough to illustrate the application of the Pension Act of 1817, and the supplementary act to it in 1825, and which acts ought to have been long since repealed by the Whig ministry.

There is another description of pensioners whom we must shortly touch—the noble and learned lords:—Here is Lord Eldon still preying upon us, at the rate of £4000 a year. Surely £15,000 a year, and upwards, for more than a quarter of a century, and a disposition naturally parsimonious, afforded the means of making a comfortable provision for old age. Lord Manners, another ex-chancellor, draws £3,892 a-year; Wynford £3,756. Then there is lord Tenterden impending, and Bayley and others menace us in the distance. Lyndhurst for a time hung out a flag of distress, but, after receiving £505 : 14 : 111/4 (Finance Accounts, p. 122) as temporary relief, he retreated into the court of Exchequer. Brougham, or his friends for him, have put in a claim for £6,000 as a retiring pension,—but avast there, good lord! Surely such doings must have an end! At this rate the whole Bar may file through the judgeships, and come upon us, after a quarter’s service, for pensions for life, each of which, at the present rate of labourers’ wages, would maintain eight hundred persons.