Compensations and Retired Allowances.

A most indefensible principle has long been acted upon by the Government,—namely, if a person has only once been so fortunate as to have had the fingering of the public money, he shall for ever after be supported out of the public purse. It is exactly the principle of the poor-laws; let a man obtain a settlement, and he thenceforward claims subsistence from the parish, and let a placeman once get into a government office, and he immediately, and for ever, sets up the pauper’s claim of being fed and clothed at the charge of the community.

Exactly upon this principle was framed the infamous Act of 1817; most of the pensions, we have seen, were granted conditionally; provided the parties were not in office, then they should receive their £1000, £1500, or £3000 per annum, as a trifling allowance, to keep the poor creatures from starving while unemployed! What a pity such old and faithful servants should perish of hunger, especially as they could not possibly have had an opportunity, from the lowness of their wages, to lay up a store for a rainy day! Still we like even-handed justice to all mankind. Many object to that mode of administering the poor laws, which allows a labourer in health and strength his parishpay, merely because he happens to be out of work. But why not extend the same rule to state paupers? Why should such able-bodied men as Croker, Planta, and Courtenay entail upon the industrious classes such heavy rates, merely because they are just now in want of a job?

The practice of granting compensations and retiring allowances is just as indefensible as granting pensions. We have now before us two official returns of the session of 1830, the bare titles of which are enough to make one sick: one is—“Returns of all Persons who receive Compensation Allowances for the loss of their Offices until otherwise provided for;” the other a “Return of the Number of Clerks and Officers who have been superannuated, and who have been again introduced into the service.”

What practices are these? on what principle can they be justified? A merchant or banker retires from business, reduces his establishment, or is forced into the Gazette, by alterations in the currency, or commercial vicissitudes, and what compensation does he give to his clerks and servants thrown out of employment? None: nor do they expect any, having previously received salaries equivalent to the value of their services. Let us revert to our former illustration; suppose that, by the discovery of a new machine, a certain manufacture can be carried on at a cheaper rate, and, of course, the public be benefited by its substitution for manual labour, owing to the less price at which they could obtain the manufactured articles. Again; suppose that, by some new mode of managing the business of government, a number of offices may be abolished, and, of course, their salaries saved to the community. Here, then, are two cases exactly similar; in one, a number of working people are thrown out of employment; and, in the other, a number of the officers of government. The public is benefited alike in both cases: in one, by saving of salaries; and, in the other, by the less price at which it purchases commodities. But how differently these two classes of sufferers have been treated. One receives a pension or compensation, perhaps to the amount of his salary; and the other is suffered to perish for want of employment, and his privations aggravated by contributing to the maintenance of persons whose claims at all events are not greater than his own.

The same gross injustice is perpetrated in lord Brougham’s Bankruptcy Court Act. Under this act, the monstrous sinecures of patentee of bankrupts and clerk of the hanaper, held by the Rev. Thomas Thurlow, and yielding £11,000 a-year, are abolished; but then the reverend sinecurist is to be compensated during his natural life by an equivalent annuity, payable out of bankrupt estates. This is not the worst part of the arrangement. Lord Eldon had granted these valuable sinecures in reversion to his son, William Henry John Scott, or William Henry Scott, (for with admirable precision he is called by both names in the 52d clause of the statute,) on the death of Thomas Thurlow; and thus during two lives the public will have to pay £11,000 per annum, without even the pretext of service, and when these lives drop, probably some device will be hit upon for inserting a third, in the same manner as the Dead Weight and other government annuities are perpetuated. Even the commissioners of bankrupts, many of whom had only just finished eating their commons, and whose very names were offensive as synonymous with all that is sponging, imbecile, and parasitical—even these are to receive pensions for life. And last, and not least, the purse-bearer to the Lord Chancellor is to be compensated by an equivalent life annuity. Only think of this, the lord chancellor having a purse or sack-bearer to carry his fees—just as if we lived in the time of the Henries or Edwards, and such a contrivance as bank notes had never been heard of. Really we are startled at the Gothic barbarisms of the system at every turn, whether we look into the law-courts, the Exchequer, the royal household, or the Church Establishment, and we almost despair of ever seeing it brought into usefulness and symmetry.

Much as we desire to see legal reforms, we had rather they were altogether postponed than accompanied with such interminable incumbrances. A bill is now in the house for abolishing fines and recoveries, but a long train of vested interests and expectances are to be satisfied and compensated before it can be carried. Our opinion is, we had better stop at once than proceed at this rate; we are evidently in a slough, and the further we go, the deeper we are in the mire. It is obviously better policy to leave abuses in a state of sufferance than to sanction their existence by act of parliament.

It was chiefly by a profuse grant of pensions and compensations to the members of the Irish parliament—which immaculate body Mr. O’Connell is so anxious to see revived—that Mr. Pitt, through the agency of lord Castlereagh and marquis Cornwallis, was enabled to accomplish the Union. From page 488, it appears that more than £75,000 is annually paid to persons for the loss of office, in consequence of that legislative movement. Sir Jonah Barrington relates that, “Among other curious claims for Union compensations, appears one from the Lord-lieutenant’s rat-catcher at the castle, for decrease of employment; another from the necessary-woman of the privy council of England for the increased trouble in her department; with numerous others of the same quality.” Besides compensations, there was super-added a liberal grant of peerages, and £1,500,000 was raised to compensate refractory members for loss of boroughs; Lords Ely, Shannon, Clanmorris, Belvidere, and Sir Hercules Langrishe, received £143,000, the first noblemen being paid £90,000 for their six members!

It is, however, to the fatal wars of the Aristocracy we are principally indebted for the immense number of compensations, as well as every other national calamity. The vast extent of our establishments, during the period of hostilities, and their reduction since the peace, has made one very considerable portion of the community sinecure dependents on the other for support; and the extent to which the public is now burthened, in providing for non-effective services, is almost incredible.

It appears from the inquiries of Sir H. Parnell’s committee, that the non-effective of the army, navy, and ordnance costs the country £4,904,499 a-year; while the effective of the same costs £15,616,354: so that nearly one-third, or thirty-three per cent., is paid for no manner of service whatever. Again, in the civil departments of the government, the sum of £4,371,000 is paid for salaries, and other effective services; and £440,000 for compensations, and other non-effective services, the latter being actually one-tenth part of the former.

Such a monstrous system could never have grown up, except under a most negligent and lavish administration, directly interested in the corruptions it tolerated. It would be easy to cite examples of the most shameless abuses, in granting compensations and retired allowances. The attempts to fasten the sons of Earl Bathurst and Lord Melville on the public, under these denominations, must be still remembered. In the official returns, to which we have alluded, we find Mr. Penn, a clerk of the customs, was superannuated upon £750 a-year for his important services; but though superannuated for the customs, he was made agent for Ceylon, at a salary of £1050. In 1822, Alfred Johnson, agent-victualler at the Cape of Good Hope, retired on a pension of £400, and reappeared in 1826 as secretary to the commissioners of the navy at Plymouth. Thomas Alexander, store-keeper at Martinique, was superannuated in 1815, at £175 a-year, and just ten years after debouched again as store-keeper at Mauritius, at £400 salary.

Of those who are receiving compensations until otherwise provided for, the following may be taken as specimens. Henry Hallam, Esq. late commissioner of stamps, £500 a-year; Charles Jolly, examiner of taxes, £230; J. D. Smith, landing waiter, £375; Alexander Cleghorn, inspector of imports, £416; John Hughes, an unattached barrack-master, £182; W. R. Marshall, clerk of survey, Woolwich, £450; Pierce Edgecumbe, clerk, Chatham-yard, £416. Separately these pro tempore allowances are not of much consequence; but when the number of them comes to be considerable, it raises the total amount to a serious sum. After all, it is not clerks and other small fry whom we first wish to see cut down; it is the great consumers of taxes—the high Aristocracy, who, with extensive domains, enjoy valuable sinecures, and receive enormous salaries, and especially such pensioners as Eldon, Bexley, Grenville, Wynford, Sidmouth, and others of that calibre, whom we desire to see curtailed.

Commissioners of Inquiry.—These form a numerous and burthensome class, most of them receiving salaries of from £1000 to £1500. They are a sort of servants of servants; being set on foot by those who ought to be the servants of the people, to do the work which they themselves have been deputed to perform. The ostensible objects of most of the commissions now in operation are, to inquire into the laws and judicial administration, to inquire into the state of public charities, the national records, the duties, salaries, and emoluments in courts of justice in Ireland, the management in certain branches of the revenue in Great Britain, and the state of the Scotch Universities. The labours of some commissions, it cannot be denied, have been productive of the most beneficial results; others have been instituted merely as pretexts for jobs, to extort more plunder from the people. The unpaid services of parliamentary committees have contributed, more than any other form of inquiry, to the exposition and amendment of public abuses.