Explanations. (2)

The subjoined List has been principally prepared from the Parliamentary Papers Nos, 480, 479, 95, 273, 587, and 58, of the Sessions, 1830; from Nos. 23, 42, and 56 of Session, 1830-1; and from Nos. 345, 249, 167, 55, 108, and 337 of the Session of 1831. We have been also indebted to the Annual Finance Accounts, and to other official returns for pensions payable by the East-India Company, and out of the fee-funds of the public departments.

The same system of mystification and perplexity is observable in the payment of salaries and pensions as in other departments of the public accounts. The incomes of placemen, for example, arise partly from salaries paid by government and partly from fees paid by individuals. Pensions are paid out of at least half a score of different funds and by nearly as many different authorities. Some are parliamentary pensions charged on the revenue of taxes; others are court pensions, charged on the Civil List; others are ministerial pensions, charged on the 41/2 per Cent. Leeward Island Duties; and other pensions are granted under the authority of the 57 Geo. III. and 6 Geo. IV.; and then again an immense number of pensions have been granted under authority of 50 Geo. III. c. 117, which empowers the lords of the Treasury to award pensions payable out of the fees received in the public offices. These are exclusive of pensions payable by the East-India Company, and out of the colonial revenues of Ceylon, Mauritus, and other dependencies. Some individuals have been fortunate enough to obtain pensions on several funds; others again have had two or three or four pensions granted in succession, charged on the same fund. This complication of funds and payments has been the growth of centuries; it has been partially remedied during earl Grey’s ministry, but the disorder is of too long standing and too widely spread to admit of easy and effectual cure.

To the people the distinctions of the Civil List, Consolidated Fund, 41/2 per Cent. Fund, Fee Fund, Regium Donum, &c. are comparatively unimportant; it is sufficient for them to know that all salaries, pensions, fees, compensations, and allowances, by whomsoever granted, or out of whatever fund paid, ultimately proceed from the produce of industry, and that the misapplication of them for any other than effective public services, or for services that have been already sufficiently remunerated by patronage or emolument, is nothing better than peculation and robbery, whether committed by the king, his ministers, or the houses of parliament.

We thought at first of giving separate lists of the members of the Privy Council, the House of Peers, and the House of Commons, holding places, pensions, commissions, or emoluments, but on this plan the reader might have been often at a loss under what head to look for individuals; whereas, having adopted an alphabetic arrangement, every facility is afforded for direct reference to any name or title. All the sums put down, whether salaries, pensions, compensations, or other denomination, are annual payments, and with respect to salaries they are the amount agreeably to the scale of reduction of the present Ministers. Where a date is inserted, it refers to the year when the place was obtained or the pension first granted. From the salaries and pensions returned have been deducted all exchequer fees and duties, and they are the net amount actually received. It is unnecessary to observe that all the salaries are not exorbitant, nor all the pensions undeserved, but this is a point we leave to the reader’s discrimination.

The List is corrected to Feb. 1832 without the alteration of a single item in the official returns, further than by the omission of the shillings and pence, with which, though the honourable and right honourables have condescended to receive them, we did not think necessary to occupy our pages. In our illustrative notes of the pensioners we have been much aided by the searching expositions of Colonel Jones.

A copious introduction to the Place and Pension List renders unnecessary many observations at the conclusion. We might have multiplied notes, but made a point of passing over the Grenvilles, Sidmouths, and other individuals already sufficiently known, whose merits have been canvassed and long since settled in public estimation. Many names illustrate themselves, others by juxta position; and really we cannot help thinking that our alphabetical arrangement has been the means of our performing a task very usual at certain seasons of the year—that of assembling families together—from the royal household, the colonies, courts of law, army, navy, and public offices, exhibiting them face to face, their incomes, emoluments, relationships, and prospects.

Our List has one striking advantage over every other previously given to the public. All the individuals enrolled upon it are living, or were living within a few months of the period of publication. From it the people will be able to learn who receive exorbitant emoluments, and the amount of them in every branch of the public service—civil, judicial, naval, and military. Since the last edition, issued within the preceding twelvemonths, many names have disappeared through death, some few have voluntarily resigned their annuities; those have of course been omitted, except in the latter case, two or three have been retained, purposely to remark on such a rare example of disinterestedness.

With respect to the pensions generally, though their claims appear at present recognized by the settlement of the Civil List, we apprehend they will ultimately have to undergo the ordeal of another examination. There are some deserving objects, but they are only a grain of sand on the sea-shore—the mass are too vile for description, and their plunderings must speedily have an end. We are told, indeed, “to pause before we plunge noble families into distress.” But if noble families can only maintain their nobility by living on the public, perish their nobility. Surely tithes and corn-laws are sufficient for the maintenance of the Order, or, if they be still indigent, let them appear in their proper character, and not assume to rank above other paupers. What claim have the Mulgraves, Manchesters, Mansfields, Arbuthnots, Grevilles, Courtenays, Crokers, Herries, and Bathursts; or the lady Anns, Emilys, Bettys, and Jennies, of any titled beggar, to the money wrung from the labours and necessities of the industrious and now deeply depressed people. If they think carriages and fine clothes, titles and fine houses, essential to their existence, let them pay for them out of their own purses; if they cannot pay for them, what right have they to them? or what right have they to make the people pay for them? The whole affair is a gross insult to common sense; and those silken creatures, and their dandy brothers, etherial and exquisite as they may be, must do like others, earn their bread by honest industry, or have no bread to eat. Noble families have long been under a delusion, and seem to think they have a hereditary right to be fed and clothed at the public expense, whatever be their improvidence, folly, or worthlessness; but they must be undeceived:—no more lordly plunderings by the sons and daughters of corruption; if they cannot support themselves by useful services, they must descend from their fictitious rank and learn the duties of their proper station in society. They will gain a great deal by the change, lose nothing in point of real dignity, or perhaps comfort; for there can be no dignity not founded in justice, nor comfort in enjoying the rewards which no desert has required.