Reductions of the Whig Ministry.

It is much more agreeable to our nature to praise than to blame, and we regret the subject of this section is not more copious. From some paragraphs in the newspapers we were led to infer the Whigs had effected great things in the public departments; but on examining more authentic sources of information we find that all they have effected is, to adopt the expressive phraseology of the Paymaster of the Forces, a mere flea-bite. It is only by a general reduction, as contended at the commencement of this chapter, of one-third or other fractional part in all public salaries, pensions, fees, and emoluments, that any material improvement can be accomplished. Next to this, a plan of direct taxation ought to be substituted for the expensive, trumpery, and inquisitorial fiscal system matured under Mr. Pitt and his successors. We have before alluded to this subject, and shall leave it to proceed to our more immediate object.

First, it appears that the salary of the Lord Chancellor is to be regulated, but it is not said it is to be reduced. We affirm, however, it ought to be reduced, and greatly too. It is monstrous that a man who, perhaps, the day before was squabbling at the circuit mess, or pleading some paltry cause for a five-guinea fee, should be at once thrust into an office worth £15,000 a year. It is an income enough for a king, and is a great deal too much for a king’s clerk. The salaries of the other equity judges, as also of the judges of the common law courts, ought all to be reduced; they are enormously too high, and wholly unsuited to the times.

The salary of the First Lord of the Treasury is to be continued at £5000 per annum, but if the office is held in conjunction with the chancellorship of the Exchequer, the salary of the latter is to be reduced one-half, making the net income of the two £7500. Here not a farthing is given up, but a contingent saving may be effected by the Whig successors in office, for whose benefit no doubt this admirable arrangmeent is intended.

The salary of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is £5,398: it is to be reduced to £5000 net—Here, John Bull, £398 is saved—take it and be thankful!

The junior lords of the Treasury are paid £1220 each: they are to be reduced to £1200—Here, John, is a whole twenty pounds saved. This is economy at any rate. Upon my word this is cutting away right and left in grand style! But here follows something more substantial. The joint secretaries of the Treasury are to receive £2500 in lieu of £3500; the three principal secretaries of State £5000 in lieu of £6000; and the under-secretaries of State £1500 in lieu of £2000. My Lord President of the Council is to receive £2000, by which £840 : 17 : 4 is saved—a sum not to be sneezed at in these times, and for which many a man would be truly thankful. My Lord Privy Seal, who is my Lord Grey’s son-in-law, is to receive the net income of his predecessor in office: but lord Durham is a noble-minded man, and has declined receiving any salary. The first Lord of the Admiralty to be reduced from £5000 to £4500; the first secretary from £3000 to £2000, with an addition of £500 after five years’ service. Nothing is said about the junior lords of the Admiralty. The income of the President of the Board of Control to be reduced from £5000 to £3500; that of the paid commissioners from £1500 to £1200; and that of the secretary from £1500 to £1200. The Judge Advocate General is to be reduced to a net salary of £2000, which is enough during peace, when standing armies are unlawful. The reductions at the Ordnance Board are too meagre to merit special notice. The salary of the Postmaster General is to be continued, in consideration of his real duties, and of the laborious duties of Sir F. Freeling, who is amply remunerated at the rate of £5000 a year. The rangership of the parks, a sinecure, to be abolished. The Master of the Mint to receive £2000 in lieu of £3000. The Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland to receive nothing except fees. The chief secretary of Ireland to receive £5500—a responsible office—but too highly paid and out of proportion with the incomes of the Premier and Home Secretary. The auditorship of the Civil List has been annexed to the Treasury, by which a saving of £1500 a year has been effected. The offices of receivers general of the taxes, except in the London district, have been abolished, and their duties annexed to the offices of inspectors of taxes. Other offices abolished or reduced, are considerable; among them the Vice-Treasurer, king’s Stationer, and Post-Master-General in Ireland; the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance and Clerk of Deliveries; Treasurer of the Military College and the Treasurer of the Military Asylum; sixty inferior offices in the Post-Office department; four Commissioners of the Navy and Victualling departments, two Commissoners of the Dockyards, seventy-one clerks, and the Paymaster of Marines; two Commissioners each of the boards of Excise and Customs: in all 210 officers have been reduced. Considerable savings have been made in diplomatic and consular charges and naval superannuations. The Board of Woods and Forests and Board of Works have been consolidated. Several offices too have been consolidated, which will be noticed in the List.

Upon the whole, after going more minutely into the subject than we had done at the commencement of this section, we are bound honestly to declare that the Whigs merit the gratitude and confidence of the country for the reductions effected; they have not been idle, and some allowance must be made for the momentous question they have had to battle in the Legislature, from the moment of first entering into office. They have, however, delayed too long the repeal of the vile Pension Act of 1817.

Having treated on the several subjects of this chapter, it only remains to recapitulate: the public documents, from which the several accounts have been taken, having been already cited, need not be repeated in the subjoined summary. It will also be observed, that the expenditure of the Crown and Royal Family is omitted, that having been fully detailed in a former part of this work.

Can any one believe that, in these few items, a saving of at least three millions might not be effected? And with a saving even to this amount, how many oppressive taxes might be repealed! If we further extend our view to other departments of the government, and to the courts of law, the civil list, the colonies, the monopolies of the Bank and East-India Company, the established church, and the corn-laws, what an ample field presents itself to our consideration for the relief of this suffering and oppressed community.

But will government ever avail itself of these vast resources as the means of national amelioration? Not under the existing system. Effective retrenchment, without a previous parliamentary reform, is a chimera. To retrench is to weaken; the true policy of the Oligarchy is to spend, not to save. There are, no doubt, scores, nay, hundreds of offices and establishments useless, indeed, to the people, but invaluable to their rulers. The greater the sinecure, the greater its importance to the Aristocracy; and the very reason urged by the people for its extinction, is the strongest argument for its retention by their oppressors. Could government only reward its servants according to their deserts, what inducement would there be to enter into its service? Who would incur the odium of such employment! How could it obtain adherents? How could it so long have had zealous supporters in every part of the empire, and carried on a detestable system, subversive of the rights, and incompatible with the happiness of the community?

Ever since the death of Fox and Pitt there has been scarcely an individual with the least pretension to the endowments of a statesman in the administration. Look over the roll of the Percevals, Vansittarts, Castlereaghs, Jenkinsons, Cannings, Sidmouths, Huskissons, and Scotts, and say, if there is one that did not deserve a halter, or whose proper place was not behind a counter, in lieu of directing the resolves of a legislative assembly. Yet by these, and such as these, were the destinies of this great empire swayed for upwards of twenty years. Can we wonder at the frightful results of their empyrical statesmanship? Can we wonder that they bequeathed to their successors, convulsion, decay, and death, in every fibre of the kingdom? But incapable, vile, and unprincipled as these men were, ignorant and reckless, as experience has proved them to be, of the ultimate issues of their measures; still these scions of the Pitt school were too sagacious ever to think that retrenchment and rotten boroughs were compatible elements of the constitution. They knew better; they had been too long familiar with the secret pulses and springs of the state machinery to commit so egregious a mistake. Their dependence was on force and corruption; on the bayonets of the military, and the annual expenditure of eighty millions of money. These formed the right and left hands, the master principles of their policy. The support they could not bribe they sought to intimidate. Such was their black and iron system; it lasted their time, or the time of most of the pillaging and hypocritical crew; and for any thing beyond they did not care a rush!

Let us hope that we are on the eve of better times, that we shall not be deluded by temporary expedients and professions, put forth merely to gain time for plundering, nor quack remedies to be followed by mortal maladies; in short, let us hope the Whig ministry will proceed on scientific principles, and that we shall have a parliamentary reform first, and next such an effective retrenchment and disposition of public burthens as will afford real national relief.

“Corruption wins not more than honesty;” and the true end of government is not difficult to attain. It is simply to augment social happiness—affording equal security to the property and persons of every individual,—protecting the weak against the strong,—the poor against the rich; in short, by guarding against the extremes of indigence and crime, luxury and vice, and spreading an equilibrium of comfort and enjoyment through all ranks, by good laws, wisely conceived, promptly and impartially administered.

It is a cheap and admirable contrivance, when established on the rights, and supported by the confidence of the public. There is then no need of standing armies in time of peace. There is no need of expending sixteen millions a year in support of naval and military establishments. There is no need of a Sinking Fund as a resource for future war. Government is strong in the affections of the people. It is prepared for every exigence, and must always be invincible against domestic foes and foreign aggressors. But, if government has not this support; if it is looked upon only as an instrument of rapacity and extortion; if it is looked upon as a legalized system of pillage, fraud, and delusion; if it is looked upon only as an artful cabal of tyrants united for plunder and oppression; then must such a government, instead of being a cheap and simple institution, be a complex and expensive establishment—strong, not in the people, but in its means of corruption, delusion, and intimidation.

The English government had been long approximating to the latter predicament. It had ceased to possess the respect and confidence of the people, and governed by over-awing the weak, deluding the ignorant, and corrupting the baser part of the community. The latter—its power of corruption—its means of rewarding its adherents by the spoil of the people, is the great lever by which it has operated. This power, its connexion and influence, as exhibited in the church-establishment, the judicial administration, the public offices and departments, chartered monopolies, and corporate bodies, we have fully exposed; and it only now remains to record the names and emoluments of those who chiefly profit by its abuses and perversions.