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• Scotch Reform; Considered With Reference to the Plan Proposed In the Late Parliament, For the Regulation of the Courts and the Administration of Justice In Scotland: With Illustrations From English Non-reform: In the Course of Which, Divers Imperfectio
• Advertisement.
• Letters to Lord Grenville, On the Proposed Reform In the Administration of Civil Justice In Scotland.
• Letter I.
• Letter II.: Proposed Division of the Court of Session.
• Letter III.: Proposed System of Pleading.
• Letter IV.: Proposed Trial By Jury.
• Letter V.: On the Bill Called Lord Eldon’s.
• Summary View of the Plan of a Judicatory, Under the Name of the Court of Lords’ Delegates, Proposed For the Exercise of Those Judicial Functions, the Adequate Discharge of Which By the Whole House Has, For These Six Or Seven Years, Been Rendered Confe
• The Elements of the Art of Packing, As Applied to Special Juries, Particularly In Cases of Libel Law.
• Advertisement to the First Edition.
• Part I.
• Chapter I.: Occasion of This Work.
• Chapter II.: Juries—their Use As a Check to Judges.
• Chapter III.: The Check How Done Away By Influence.
• Chapter IV.: Special Juries, a Special Engine of Corruption.
• Chapter V.: Jury Unanimity Increases the Corruption.
• Chapter VI.: Purposes to Which Influence On Juries May Be Made Subservient.
• Chapter VII.: Chief Purpose, Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter VIII.: The Exchequer Packing Office Suffices.
• Chapter IX.: Instruments For Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter X.: Want of Adequate Obsequiousness Morally Impossible.
• Chapter XI.: Such Juries Worse Than None.
• Part II.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1808.
• Chapter I.: Introduction—two Reforming Shrievalties.
• Chapter II.: The Sheriff to the Lord Chief Baron—notices.
• Chapter III.: Lord Chief Baron to Sheriff Sir Richard Phillips—avowries and Defences.
• Chapter IV.: Observations On the Lord Chief Baron’s Defences.
• Chapter V.: Special Jury Corruption—devices By Which It Was Protected.
• Chapter VI.: Learned Advice From the Temple.
• Chapter VII.: Advice From Lincoln’s-inn.
• Chapter VIII.: Maxims Concerning Reform, Deduced From the Above Letter.
• Chapter IX.: Transactions At the Remembrancer’s.
• Part III.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1809.
• Chapter I.: Commons’ Debate, 24 Th April 1809. Packing and Cutting.
• Chapter II.: Double-fee Abuse, Plain and Embroidered.
• Part IV.—: Remedies Proposed. *
• Chapter I.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Constitution In Regard to Juries.
• Chapter II.: State of Jury Package In Scotland.
• Chapter III.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Authority of Parliament.
• “swear Not At All:” Containing an Exposure of the Needlessness and Mischievousness, As Well As Anti-christianity of the Ceremony of an Oath: a View of the Parliamentary Recognition of Its Needlessness, Implied In the Practice of Both Houses; a
• Advertisement.
• Editor’s Note
• Swear Not At All. Mat. V. 34.
• Section 1.: Oath. Incongruity of the Assumption, On Which Its Supposed Beneficial Efficiency Is Grounded.
• Section 2.: Mischievousness of This Instrument Considered In a General Point of View.
• Section 3.: Its Inefficiency In the Character of a Security Against Deceptious Incorrectness and Incompleteness In Evidence.
• Section 4.: Recognition of Its Inutility By Lords and Commons.
• Section 5.: Mischiefs —1. Contributing to the Mendacity-licence Granted By Judges.
• Section 6.: Mischief 2— Weakening In Various Ways the Efficiency of the Laws.
• Section 7.: Mischief 3— Bewildering and Enslaving the Consciences of Jurymen.
• Section 8.: Mischief 4— Giving Aid and Force to the Enterprises of Malefactors.
• Section 9.: Mischief 5— Furnishing Pretence For Misrule By Abuse of Prerogative.
• Section 10.: Misrule, How to Perpetuate—coronation Oaths Amended.
• Section 11.: Mischief 6— Corrupting the National Morals and Understanding—oxford University Oaths.
• Section 12.: Mischief 6 Continued. —ii. Cambridge Oaths.
• Section 13.: Practice of Receiving Judicial Oaths, Its Repugnancy to the Precepts of Jesus.
• Section 14.: Succedanea—true Securities Substitutible to This False One.
• Section 15.: Cause and Origin of the Practice In Regard to Oaths.
• Appendix.
• Truth Versus Ashhurst; Or, Law As It Is, Contrasted With What It Is Said to Be.
• The King Against Edmonds and Others: Set Down For Trial, At Warwick, On the 29 Th of March 1820.
• The King Against Sir Charles Wolseley, Baronet, and Joseph Harrison, Schoolmaster, Set Down For Trial, At Chester, On the 4 Th of April 1820.
• Official Aptitude Maximized; Expense Minimized: As Shown In the Several Papers Comprised In This Volume.
• Paper I.—
• Paper II.—: Introductory View, &c.
• Paper III.—: Extract From the Proposed Constitutional Code; Entitled, Official Aptitude Maximized—expense Minimized. By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.
• Paper IV.—: Supplement to the Above Extract.
• Paper V.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
• Paper VI.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable George Rose.
• Paper VII.: Observations On Mr. Secretary Peel’s House of Commons Speech, 21 St March 1825, Introducing His Police Magistrates’ Salary Raising Bill, ( Date of Order For Printing, 24 Th March 1825.)
• Paper VIII.: Indications Respecting Lord Eldon, Including History of the Pending Judges’-salary-raising Measure.
• Paper IX.—: On the Militia.
• Paper X.: On Public Account Keeping.
• Paper XI.: Constitutional Code—table of Contents As Shown By Titles of Chapter and Sections.
• Commentary On Mr. Humphreys’ Real Property Code, By Jeremy Bentham. From the Westminster Review, No. XII., For October 1826.
• *∗* the Following Note Was Prefixed to the Article By the Editor of the Westminster Review: —
• Commentary On Humphreys’ Real Property Code.
• I.: Deed of Sale.
• II.: Deed of Mortgage. 1
• III.: Marriage Settlement Deed.
• Outline of a Plan of a General Register of Real Property: Contained In a Communication to the Commissioners Appointed Under Letters Patent, of Date the 6 Th June 1828, to Inquire Into the Law of England Respecting Real Property, and First Printed I
• Justice and Codification Petitions: Being Forms Proposed For Signature By All Persons Whose Desire It Is to See Justice No Longer Sold, Delayed, Or Denied: and to Obtain a Possibility of That Knowledge of the Law, In Proportion to the Want of Which T
• Justice and Codification Petitions.
• Advertisement.
• Preliminary Explanations Necessary to Be First Read.
• Petition For Justice.
• Abridged Petition For Justice.
• More Abridged Petition For Justice.
• Supplement, Which May Be Added Or Not to Any One of the Three Or Any Other Proposed Petition.
• Petition For Codification.
• Lord Brougham Displayed: Including I. Boa Constrictor, Alias Helluo Curiarum; II. Observations On the Bankruptcy Court Bill, Now Ripened Into an Act; III. Extracts From Proposed Constitutional Code.

PAPER V.—

DEFENCE OF ECONOMY

AGAINST THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EDMUND BURKE.

first printed in 1817.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The paper here presented to the reader under the title of Defence of Economy against the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, together with another containing a defence of the same more useful than welcome virtue against the Right Honourable George Rose, were written as long ago as in the year 1810. At that time the joint destination of the two papers was—to form a sequel to a tract of no great bulk, having for its title Hints respecting Economy. For its subject, it had taken the whole of the official establishment, and for its objects, two intimately connected practical operations, viz. minimizing official pay, and maximizing official aptitude: operations the mutual subservience of which, in opposition to the universally convenient, universally received and acted upon, and in truth but too natural opinion, of their incompatibility, was maintained. The circumstance, by which the publication of it, and in some degree the completion of it, was suspended, was the expectation of obtaining certain documents, which in the way of exemplification and illustration afforded a promise of being of use. Meantime, the turn of affairs produced some incident or other, by which the author’s attention was called off at the moment to some other quarter; and thus it is, that altogether the three papers have been till now lying upon the shelf.

As to the two objects in question, so it was, that the plan, which had presented itself to the author as that by which both of these objects might be secured, and the only one by which either of them could be so in any degree approaching to perfection, having the misfortune to find itself reprobated with one voice by the two distinguished statesmen above mentioned, the removal of the impediment opposed by so strong a body of authority, presented itself of course as an object of endeavour altogether indispensable.

In the order at that time intended, a statement of the principles which had presented themselves as claiming the direction of practice would have preceded the examination here given of the principles which it was found necessary to combat:—hence the reference which may here and there be found to portions of matter, which neither in any other place in which they could be referred to have made, nor in this place can make, their appearance. By a change in the order thus originally intended, that one of the two defences which will here be found (for in the present receptacle there was not room for the other)* cannot, it will therefore be evident enough, but appear under more or less of disadvantage. But, to the rendering them perfectly intelligible as far as they go, it did not seem that, to either of them, any of the matter which belonged to that by which they had been designed to be preceded, was necessary: and, by the forms of warfare, especially considering the situation and character of the person against whom it was unavoidably directed, the attention of many a reader (it has been supposed) may be engaged, whose perseverance would not carry him through the dry matter of a sort of didactic treatise, the principles of which are in a state of irreconcilable hostility to the personal interest of that class of persons which forms the subject of it—to which it cannot but look for the greatest number of its readers—and without whose concurrence, how far soever from being accompanied with any degree of complacency, it could not at any time be in any degree carried into effect.

At the time when these papers were penned, not any the slightest symptom of official regard for public economy was it the author’s good fortune to be able anywhere to recognise: everywhere it seemed an object of contempt—of contempt not only to those who were profiting by, but to those who were and are the sufferers from, the want of it. Under this impression, the wonder will rather be, how the author’s perseverance could have carried him so far into the subject as it did, than how it should happen that, by the sense of a slight deficiency, the suspension should have been commenced, and, by a series of intervening avocations, have been continued. At present, in this respect, for a time at least, matters seem to have undergone some change. Surely enough, if it does not at the present, small indeed must be its chance of obtaining any portion of public attention at any future point of time. But should it happen to the two, or either of them, to obtain any portion of favourable regard, the more favourable, the greater will be the encouragement afforded for the labour necessary to the bringing the plan to that degree of maturity which would be necessary to its producing any assignable effect in practice.

Short as it is, in the intimation above given of the nature of the plan, one circumstance will already be but too undeniably visible; viz. that not only without any exception in respect of the first of its two connected objects, viz. minimizing official pay, but likewise, and with very little exception in respect of the other, viz. maximizing official aptitude, nothing can be more irreconcilably opposite to the particular interest of that class of persons, without whose concurrence no effect whatever could be given to it. Yes; even in respect of this latter object: for if, in the instance of every office, so odd an effect as that of an exclusion put upon all who were not the very fittest for office, or even upon all who were not flagrantly unfit for it, were to be the result, an exclusion would thus be put upon all those, for whom—and their connexions, and the connexions of those connexions, and so on—for whom gentlemen are most anxious, because in every other way they find it most difficult, to provide. But if, on the part of the plan in question, the objection is grounded on the opposition of interests, and consequent unwillingness were to be regarded as a proof of impracticability, it would be a proof, not only that in government nothing good will ever be done, but moreover, that in government in general, and in our own in particular, of all the good that has ever been done, the greater part has not ever been done. Among the points on which government turns, some there are relative to which the interest of the ruling few, be they who they may, coincides with the universal interest; and as to all these points, in so far as it happens to them to know what that same universal interest is—as to all these points, gentlemen’s regard for that same universal interest may be reckoned upon without much danger of error, or much imputation on the score of credulity. Unfortunately, under most governments, and under this of ours in particular, other points there are, in which that partial and sinister interest is in a state of implacable hostility with the universal interest: and of this unfortunate number are the two just mentioned: and so far as this hostility has place, so far is the universal interest, as being the least condensed, sure of being overpowered by, and made a constant sacrifice to, that which is most so.

In this state of interests, the subject-many may deem themselves particularly happy, when, to make up a provision worthy of the acceptance of a member of the ruling few, nothing more than the precise amount of that same sum, with the addition of the expense of collection, is taken out of the pockets of the subject-many. An unfortunately more common case is—where, for each penny put into the privileged pocket, pounds to an indefinite number must be, and are accordingly, taken out of all pockets taken together: from privileged ones in this way, with more than adequate compensation—unprivileged, without anything at all. Thus it is, that, while wars are made to make places, places are made to secure commencement or continuance to wars: and, lest this should not be enough, distant dependencies—every one of them without exception productive of net loss—are kept up and increased. Yes; productive of net loss: for this is as uncontrovertibly and universally the case, as that two and two make four; for which reason, no man who has a connexion to provide for, or to whom power and glory, might, majesty, and dominion, in the abstract, are objects of concupiscence, can endure to hear of it.

As to war, so long as in the hands of those who have speech and vote in parliament, or of their near connexions, offices are kept on foot, with emolument in such sort attached to them, as to be materially greater in war than in peace, who is there that will venture to affirm that, of a parliament by which an arrangement of this sort is suffered to continue, the conduct is in this respect less pernicious in effect, or, when once the matter has been brought to view, less corrupt in design, than it would be if in that same number the members of that same body were, by masses of money to the same value, received under the name of bribes, engaged by one another, or by any foreign power, clandestinely or openly, thus out of an ocean of human misery to extract so many of these drops of comfort for themselves? In both cases, the same sums being pocketed—pocketed with the same certainty, and under the same conditions—in what particular, except in the language employed in speaking of them, and in that chance of punishment and shame which would have place in the one case, and has not in the other, do these two cases present any the smallest difference? Tell us, good Sir William!—tell us, good your lordship, lord of the freehold sinecure!—exists there any better reason, why emoluments thus extracted should be retained, than why bribes given and received to the same amount, and by the same means, without disguise, should, if received, repose in the same right honourable pockets?

In a certain sensation called uneasiness, Locke beheld, as his Essays tell us, the cause of everything that is done. Though on this occasion, with all his perspicuity, the philosopher saw but half his subject (for happily neither is pleasure altogether without her influence,) sure it is, that it is in the rougher spring of action that any ulterior operation, by which the constitution will be cleared of any of its morbific matter, will find its immediate cause.

Yes:—in the returning back upon the authors some small portion of the uneasiness which the sufferers have so long been in the experience of—in this necessary operation, for which the constitution, with all its corruptions, still affords ample means—in this, if in anything, lies the people’s hope.

The instrument by which the god Silenus was made into a poet and a prophet—it is by this, if by anything, that noble lords and honourable gentlemen will be fashioned into philosophers and patriots: it is by this, if by anything, that such of them whose teeth are in our bowels, will be prevailed upon to quit their hold.

Submission and obedience on the one part are the materials of which power on the other part is composed: whenever, and in so far as, the humble materials drop off, the proud product drops off along with them. Of the truth of this definition, a practical proof was experienced in 1688 by King James, in the case of England and Scotland: in 1782 it was experienced by King George and his British parliament, in the case of Ireland. In the character of ancient Pistol eating the leek, in that same year was the first Lord Camden seen and heard in the House of Lords by the author of these pages, demonstrating, by the light of an instantaneous inspiration, to ears sufficiently prepared by uneasiness for conviction, the never till then imagined reasonableness of the termination of that system, under which that island was groaning, under the paramount government of a set of men, in the choice of whom it had no share; in the same character, in the event of a similar expediency, might his most noble son be seen in one house, and his right honourable grand nephew in the other, holding in hand—the one of them a bill for the abolition of sinecures, useless places, needless places, and the overpay of useful and needful places; the other a bill for such a reform in the Commons House of Parliament, as may no longer leave the people of Great Britain, in a number more than twice as great as the whole people of Ireland, in a condition, from which the people of Ireland were liberated, as above, at the instance of the learned founder of an illustrious family, which was, in one instance at least, not ill taught: in a word, such a reform as, by divesting the ruling few of their adverse interest, by which, so long as they continue to grasp it, they are rendered the irreconcilable enemies of those over whom they rule, will leave to them no other interests than such as belong to them in common with the people, who are now groaning under their yoke.

What belongs to the only effectual remedy which the nature of the case admits of, viz. a restoring change (for such in no small degree it would be) in the constitution of the House of Commons—may perhaps be spoken to elsewhere: it belongs not directly to this place. What does belong to it is the nature of the principles established on the subject of public expenditure: principles not only acted upon, but avowed: not only avowed, but, from the connected elevations—the alas! but too closely connected elevations—the mount of the houses and the mount of financial office, preached. In these principles, it was long ago the fortune of the author to behold causes of themselves abundantly adequate to the production of whatever sufferings either are felt or can be apprehended: and if it be without any very great demand for our gratitude, yet will it be seen to be not the less true, that to two distinguished statesmen, one of whom is still in a condition to answer for himself, we are indebted for the advantage of beholding these same principles in a tangible shape—in that tangible shape in which they have been endeavoured to be presented to view, in two separate yet not unconnected tracts; viz. in the present Defence of Economy, and in the other with which it is proposed to be succeeded.

November 1816.

TITLES OF THE SECTIONS.

• I.Defence of Economy against Burke.
  • Sect. I. Burke’s Objects in his Bill and Speech.
  • II. Method here pursued.
  • III. Propositions deduced from Burke’s Economy Speech.
    • 1. Concerning Public Money—what the proper Uses of it—Propositions 1, 2, 3. ☞ See Defence against Rose, § 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9.
  • IV. Concerning Title to Reward—Proposition 4.
  • V. Concerning virtuous Ambition, Gratitude and Piety—Propositions 5, 6, 7, 8.
  • VI. Concerning Party Men and their Principles—Propositions 9, 10.
  • VII. Concerning Ministers and their Duty to themselves—Propositions 11, 12, 13, 14.
  • VIII. Concerning Gratuitous Service and the Profligacy involved in it—Propositions 15, 16.
  • IX. A Prophecy, and by Burke—The King will swallow up the whole Substance of the People—Proposition 17. ☞ See Rose for the manner how.
  • X. Gratuitous Service, Burke’s Objections to it examined.—Necker.—Burke’s East-India Bill.
  • XI. Burke’s Objections to the Application of the Principle of Competition to this Purpose—its Frivolousness.
  • XII. Concluding Observations.—Burke, why thus examined.
• II.Defence of Economy against Rose.
  • Sect. I. Introduction.
  • II. Mr. Rose’s Pleas in Bar to Economy.—Plea 1. Vastness of the Expenditure.
  • III. Plea 2. Need of Provision for Decayed Nobility, &c.
  • IV. Plea 3. Need of Subsistence for Official Persons.
  • V. Plea 4. Need of Money for making Fortunes for Official Persons and their Families.
  • VI. Plea 5. Need of Money for buying Men off from Professions.
  • VII. Digression concerning the Value of Money.
  • VIII. Plea 6. Need of Money as a Stimulus to Official Exertion.
  • IX. Plea 7. Need of Money for the Support of Official Dignity.
  • X. Plea 8. Concerning the late Mr. Pitt’s Expenditure:—the Impropriety of Economy how far proved by it.
  • XI. Concerning Influence.
  • XII. Concerning Pecuniary Competition—and the Use made of the Principle.

DEFENCE OF ECONOMY AGAINST BURKE.

SECTION I.

BURKE’S OBJECTS IN HIS BILL AND SPEECH.

I begin with Mr. Burke: and this, not only because, as compared with that of any living statesman, the authority of a departed one unites the advantages that are afforded to authority of the intellectual kind by anteriority and by death; but because it seems but natural that, in the delivery of his own opinions, the junior and survivor should have drawn upon his illustrious predecessor, for such assistance, if any, as, in the way of argument, he may have regarded himself as standing in need of.

Such, as they will be seen to be, being the notions advanced by the orator—such their extravagance—such their repugnance even to the very measure they are employed to support,—what could have been his inducements, what could have been his designs? Questions these, in which, if I do not much deceive myself, the reader will be apt to find at every turn a source of perplexity in proportion as the positions of the orator present themselves to view, stripped of those brilliant colours, by the splendour of which the wildest extravagances and the most glaring inconsistencies are but too apt to be saved from being seen in their true light.

In the hope of affording to such perplexity what relief it may be susceptible of, I shall begin with stating the solution which the enigma has suggested to my own mind:—showing what, in my view of the ground, was the plan of the orator’s campaign—what the considerations by which he was led thus to expose his flanks, laying his principles all the time so widely open to the combined imputations of improbity and extravagance. Here then follows the statement by way of opening. On the mind of the intelligent and candid reader, it will make no ultimate impression any farther than, as to his feelings, the charge stands in each instance sufficiently supported by the evidence.

Needy as well as ambitious—dependent by all his hopes on a party who beheld in his person the principal part of their intellectual strength—struggling, and with prospects every day increasing, against a ministry whose popularity he saw already in a deep decline, the orator, from this economical scheme of his, bill and speech together, proposed to himself, on this occasion, two intimately connected, though antagonizing objects; viz. immediate depression of the force in the hands of the adversary, and at the same time the eventual preservation and increase of the same force in the hands of the assailants, in the event of success, which on the like occasions are, by all such besiegers, proposed to themselves, and, according to circumstances, with different degrees of skill and success pursued.

For the more immediate of the two objects, viz. distress of the enemy, it was, that the bill itself was provided; and to this object nothing could be more dexterously or happily adapted. Opposition it was certain of: and whatsoever were the event, advantage in some degree was sure. Suppose the opposition completely successful, and the whole plan of retrenchment thrown out together: here would be so much reputation gained to the promoters of the measure, so much reputation lost to the opponents of it. Suppose the plan in any part of it carried, in proportion to the importance of the part so carried, the reputation of its supporters would receive an ulterior increase: while that of its opponents, the weakness betrayed by them increasing in proportion to the conquests thus made upon them, would, in the same proportion, experience an ulterior decrease.

But as it is with the war of hands, so it is with the war of words. No sooner is the conquest effected, than the weakness of the vanquished becomes in no inconsiderable degree the weakness of the conquerors—of the conquerors, who from assailants are become possessors. To this eventual weakness an eventual support was to be provided.

To this service was his speech directed and adapted: we shall see with what boldness, and—in so far as the simultaneous pursuit of two objects, in themselves so incompatible, admitted—with what art.

Such in truth were the two objects thus undertaken to be recommended—recommended at one and the same time—to public favour: a practical measure (a measure brought forward by his bill)—a measure of practice, and in the same breath a set of principles with which, necessary as they were to the main and ulterior purpose, the measure, so far as it went, was in a state of direct repugnancy.

The problem, therefore, with which his ingenuity had to grapple, was—so to order matters, as that the economical measure should be pursued, and even if possible carried, with as little prejudice as possible to the necessary anti-economical principles.

Of principles such as these which have been submitted to the reader* —of principles really favourable to frugality and public probity—of principles in which waste and corruption would equally have found their condemnation, in whatever hands—in the hands of whatever party—the matter of waste and means of corruption were lodged,—of any such principles the prevalence would, by its whole amount, have been in a proportionable degree unfavourable to the orator’s bright and opening prospects. Once in possession of the power he was aiming at, the only principles suitable to his interests, and thence to his views, would be such principles as were most favourable to the conjunct purposes of waste and corruption. So far as was practicable, his aim would therefore be, and was—to preserve for use the principles of waste and corruption in the event of his finding himself in possession of the matter and the means—to preserve them in undiminished, and, if possible, even in augmented, force.

For this purpose, the only form of argument which the nature of the case left open to him was, that of concession or admission. Such, accordingly, as will be seen, was the form embraced by him and employed.

By the portion, comparatively minute as it was, of the mass of the matter of waste and corruption, of which his bill offered up the sacrifice, his frugality and probity were to stand displayed: by the vast, and as far as depended upon his exertions, the infinite mass preserved—preserved by the principles let drop, and as it were unwillingly, and as if wrung from him by conviction in his speech, his candour, his moderation, his penetration, his discernment, his wisdom,—all these virtues were, in full galaxy, to be made manifest to an admiring world.

All this while, an argument there was, by which, had there been any lips to urge it, this fine-spun web, with purity at top and corruption at bottom, might have been cut to pieces. If of the precious oil of corruption a widow’s cruise full, and that continually drawn upon, be so necessary as you have been persuading us to believe, why, by any such amount as proposed, or by any amount, seek to reduce it?

True: had there been any lips to urge it. But, that there were no such lips, was a fact of which he had sufficient reason to be assured: to urge it, probably enough, not so much as a single pair of lips:—to listen to it, most assuredly, not any sufficient number of ears: and where ears to listen and eyes to read are wanting, all the lips in the world to speak with, all the hands in the world to write, would, as was no secret to him, be of no use.

Thus, then, by the craft of the rhetorician, were a set of principles completely suited to his purpose—principles by a zealous application of which, anything in the way in question, howsoever pernicious, might be done—anything, however flagrantly pernicious defended—collected together as in a magazine ready for use: a magazine, too, the key of which was in his own pocket, and with an adequate assurance, that, on the part of no enemy whom he and his need care for, would any attempt ever be made to blow it up.

Suppose now the orator seated at the treasury board—the Marquis of Rockingham on the seat of the first lord, looking great and wise—the orator himself thinking and writing, and speaking and acting, in the character of secretary. Let him fill his own pockets, and those of his favourites and dependents, ever so rapidly, ever so profusely, no man can ever say to him, You have belied your principles: for, as will be seen, so long as there remained in the country so much as a penny that could be taken in a quiet way, his principles were such as would bear him out in taking it.

All this while, honourable gentlemen on the other side might have grumbled, and would of course have grumbled. Undeserved! undeserved! would have been the exclamation produced by every penny wasted. But Well-deserved! well-deserved! would be the counter-cry all the while: and, the ayes being in possession, the ayes would have it. Unprincipled! unprincipled! would be an interjection, from the utterance of which honourable gentlemen would, by their principles—their real principles—their operating principles—not their principles for show—but their principles for use—be on both sides alike (as lawyers say) estopped.

As to the principles thus relied upon by the orator, they will be seen to be all of them reducible to this one, viz. that as much of their property as, by force or fraud, or the usual mixture of both, the people can be brought to part with, shall come and continue to be at the disposal of him and his;—and that, for this purpose, the whole of it shall be and remain a perpetual fund of premiums, for him who on each occasion shall prove himself most expert at the use of those phrases by which the imaginations of men are fascinated, their passions inflamed, and their judgments bewildered and seduced; whereupon he—this orator—whose expertness in those arts being really superior to that of any man of his time (to which perhaps might be added, of any other time) could not but by himself be felt to be so, would in this perpetual wrestling-match or lottery—call it which you will—possess a fairer chance than could be possessed by any other adventurer, for bearing off some of the capital prizes.

SECTION II.

METHOD HERE PURSUED.

Thus much as to the purpose pursued by the orator in this part of his speech. A few words as to the course and method pursued in the view here given of it.

The passages to which the development of the principles in question stand consigned, are contained, most if not all of them, in that part of the speech which, in the edition that lies before me, occupies, out of the whole 95 pages, from 62 to part of 68 inclusive. This edition is the third—year in the title-page, 1780; being the year in which the bill was brought in; and, as between edition and edition, I know not of any difference.

My object is to present them to the reader in their genuine shape and colour, stripped of the tinsel and embroidery with which they are covered and disguised.

For this purpose, the course that happened to present itself to me was—dividing the text into its successive component and distinguishable parts,—to prefix to each such part a proposition of my own framing, designed to exhibit what to me seemed the true and naked interpretation of it. Next to this interpretation—that the best and only adequate means for forming a correct judgment on the correctness of it, may not in any instance be for a moment wanting to my reader—comes the correspondent passage of the text; viz. that passage in which, as appeared to me, the substance of the interpretation will be found to be more or less explicitly or implicitly contained.

Lastly follow in general a few observations, such as seemed in some way or other conducive to the purpose of illustration, and in particular as contributing, and in some instances by means of extraneous facts, to justify the preceding interpretation, and clear it of any suspicion of incorrectness to which at first view it might seem exposed.

In some instances, the truth of the interpretation will, I flatter myself, appear as soon as that portion of the text which immediately follows it has been read through; in other instances, two or three such extracts may require to have been read through, before the truth of the interpretation put upon the first of them has been fully proved: in others, again, this or that extraneous fact may to this same purpose seem requisite to be brought to view, as it has been accordingly, together with a few words of explanation or observation, without which the relevancy of the facts in question might not have been altogether manifest.

As to the order in which the propositions here succeed one another, should it present itself to the reader as differing in any respect from that by which a clearer view of the subject might have been exhibited, he will be pleased to recollect, that the order thus given to the effusions of the rhetorician, is the order given to them by himself; and that, by their being exhibited in this order of his own choosing, the thread of his argument is delivered unbroken, and the parts of it untransposed.

Having thus before him two sets of principles,—one of them, in the preceding part, suggested by a perfectly obscure—the other, in this present part, laid down by a transcendently illustrious hand,—the reader will take his choice.

SECTION III.

PROPOSITIONS DEDUCED FROM BURKE’S ECONOMY SPEECH.*

1.

Concerning Public Money—what the proper Uses of it. Propositions 1, 2, 3.

Proposition 1. On condition of employing, upon occasion, in conversation or elsewhere, the word reward, in phrases of a complexion such as the following; viz. “furnishing a permanent reward to public service,”† public money ought, at the pleasure of kings and ministers, to be habitually applied to the purpose of making the fortunes of individuals; and that in such manner as to raise their families to a state of grandeur and opulence.

Proposition 2. To this power of parcelling out the property of the public among the nominees of kings and ministers, there ought to be no limit: none to the quantity capable of being thus put into the hands of each nominee; none to the whole quantity of public property thus disposed of.

Proof. “Whoever (says he) seriously considers the excellent argument of Lord Somers in the banker’s case, will not he bottom himself upon the very same maxim which I do? and one of his principal grounds for the alienability of the domains in England, contrary to the maxim of the law in France, he lays in the constitutional policy of furnishing a reward to public service; of making that reward the origin of families, and the foundation of wealth as well as of honours.”

Then, to the word England, comes a note, which says, “before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of land.”

OBSERVATIONS.

Proof. At the time of this excellent argument of Lord Somers,” (7th Will. III.) the whole of this domain was alienable; alienable to the utmost farthing; and, so faithfully and efficiently had it been applied to this its destined, and, as we are desired to persuade ourselves, properly destined, purpose, as to have brought the subject-matter of it to that state, of which a description may be given in the words of the existing committee on finance.*

“The right of the crown over its own demesne lands was formerly” say they, 3d Report, p. 127, “as complete as its power of conferring offices; and yet the use which was made of that part of its prerogative occasioned parliament frequently to interpose; and particularly, after the crown had been greatly impoverished, an act passed, whereby all future grants, for any longer term than thirty-one years, were declared void.”

“The misfortune,” continue they, “is, as Mr. Justice Blackstone remarks, that the act was made too late, after every valuable possession of the crown had been granted away for ever, or else upon very long leases.”

Such was the observation suggested by the case to Mr. Justice Blackstone; viz. that “it was made too late.”

But, according to the excellent argument of the excellent Lord Somers, it was made too soon; for the use of it—the “principal” use—at least if the excellent Mr. Burke is to be believed, was, in the conception entertained on the subject by the excellent Lord Somers, the supplying the requisite matter for this “constitutional policy” to operate upon;—viz. “the constitutional policy of furnishing a permanent reward to public service; of making that reward the origin of families, and the foundation of wealth as well as honours.”

Now, of this statute of Queen Anne (as far as it went) the effect was to counteract the “constitutional policy,” and render it, together with the excellent “maxim” on which the excellent law lord is said to have “bottomed himself,” incapable of being pursued; and, to a plain and un-law-learned understanding, they cannot both be good, viz. the policy and the statute: the policy by which the alienation of the property in question for that purpose was prescribed, and the statute by which the alienation of that same property, for that or any other purpose, was prohibited.†

Proposition 3. The progress of this revolution ought not to be stopped, till it has received its consummation as above described, i. e. so long as any part of the property of the public (understand of the people) remains unapplied to the purpose of giving effect to this “maxim” with its “constitutional policy;” viz. “the furnishing a permanent reward to public service; of making that reward the origin of families, and the foundation of wealth as well as honours.”

Proof. (Observations.) For, already, at the time of this excellent argument, had this quiet and gradual revolution made such progress, that within a trifle, the domain in question—a mass of property originally sufficient for the peace establishment of the country—had been thus disposed of.

There remained, it is true, and still remains, in part at least as yet undisposed of in the same unconstitutional way, the private property of individuals.

But a principle adequate to this purpose had already been established—established by the same or another provident set of hands—and, at the time of this excellent oration, still continued to be acted upon; yes, and still continues to be acted upon, under the eye and cognizance, and without censure from the above-mentioned existing committee, by which a diamond from this same excellent oration has, without acknowledgment, been picked out,—picked out and employed in giving additional lustre to the jewel for which we are indebted to their hands.*

SECTION IV.

CONCERNING TITLE TO REWARD.

Proposition 4. In the course of the disposition thus made of the whole property of government, with the growing addition of the whole property of the people, the plea of its having for its use and object the furnishing a reward to public service, ought never to be any other than a false pretence: at any rate, nothing ought ever to be done to prevent its being so.

Proof. (Observations.) Four modes of disposing of the public money, under the notion of reward for public service—extraordinary public service—all of them in frequent use, lay open to the rhetorician’s view:—1. Remuneration by act of parliament; 2. Allowance out of secret service money; 3. Pensions granted by the crown without concurrence of parliament; 4. Sinecure offices granted by the crown without concurrence of parliament.

In the case of remuneration by act of parliament, everything is open to view; everything is open to discussion:—1. The nature and reality of the service supposed to have been performed; 2. The part taken by the person in question, in the rendering of that service; 3. The importance of the whole service, and of the part taken by him in the rendering it; 4. The magnitude of the proposed reward.

In the case of remuneration out of secret service money, all these particulars are left in darkness; and in time of war, and thence at all other times (since there are none in which the approach or danger of war may not be imminent,) it being necessary that in the hands of the administration there should exist means of purchasing services, such as under any apprehension of disclosure would be unobtainable: hence a fund for this purpose ever has been, and ever ought to be, on foot.

In the case of pensions, some of the above four particulars are open to discussion: two of them, and two only, are open to view; viz. 1. The person on whom so much of that matter, viz. money, which is in use to be applied, and in this case is applied, to the purpose of remuneration, has been bestowed;—2. The quantity of that matter thus bestowed. What is not open to view is—whether it is under the notion of his having rendered any public service, that the money has been bestowed; much less whether such notion, supposing it really entertained, be in any degree just or no.

4. In the case of sinecures, he saw all these helps to misapplication having place, and, as compared with the case of pensions, acting in much greater force. In the case of a pension, what is bestowed constitutes a new article, put upon an already existing list: a list which, if not already public, is liable to become so at any time;—a list which, in the meantime, whether made known or not to the public, cannot but be kept constantly in view by various members of administration, if it were only lest the fund on which it is settled should be overloaded;—a list such, that no fresh article can ever be placed on it, without producing a fresh sensation, as constituting a manifest addition to the mass of public burthens; and in relation to which it is impossible but that to many persons the question must occur—on what grounds, and with what propriety, has this addition been made?

In the case of sinecures, not one of these spurs to attention had, in his view, any more than they have at present, any existence. Sinecure list, none: no, nor so much as a future possibility of making out any such thing, without a course of intricate inquiry, such as even now, in the fourth year of the sitting of a second finance committee, has not been completed. A sinecure office falling vacant, the vacancy is in case of this inefficient, as in the case of any efficient sort of office, filled up in course—filled up under no other impression than the general one, viz. that in the list of offices, as often as one name drops out, another must according to usage be put in the room of it.

In two different situations, he saw the same set of hands, viz. those of the servants of the crown, habitually employed in disposing of the property of the public, whether to the purpose, real or supposed, of remuneration, or to any other purpose. In two different situations, viz. out of parliament and in parliament: in parliament, since without their concurrence, even in parliament, no such power can, under the established rules, be exercised. Of this difference, what is now, what in his view could have been, the consequence? Disposed of in parliament, the money had never been disposed of, but that to the misapplication of it there had been some check, though how far from being so effectual a one as might be wished, is but too notorious. Disposed of out of parliament, as in the shape of a sinecure emolument, the misapplication of it had never experienced, nor in the nature of the case was capable of experiencing, any check whatever. It is in this shape that we see him defending it.

Of this state of things, the consequence was and is as obvious and natural as the existence of it is incontestable. When, at the expense of the people, on the ground of service rendered to the people, a case can, it is supposed, be made, be it ever so weak a one, recourse is had to parliament, and parliament is the hand by which the favour is bestowed. When no such case can be made—when the very mention of public service might be regarded as mockery and insult, when the annihilation of the precious matter thus bestowed would be a public blessing, a secret hand acting out of parliament, is the hand occupied in such service: windfalls are waited for, tellerships are bestowed.

Whatever you want in force of reason, make up in force of assertion. Whatever is wanting in merit, make up in eulogy. Maxims these, the use and value of which are perfectly understood by sophists of all classes.

Our rhetorician goes on: “It is indeed” (meaning by it the principle which prescribes the dividing the substance of the people—among great families, and families that are to be made great by such means)—“it is indeed the only genuine, unadulterated origin of nobility.” Peculation the only genuine and unadulterated origin of nobility! What a character of nobility!—what a plea for the House of Lords!—what a lesson to the people!

“It is,” continues he, “a great principle in government—a principle at the very foundation of the whole structure.” O yes! such a principle exactly as a running stream would be, running under the foundation of a structure erected on a quicksand.

SECTION V.

CONCERNING VIRTUOUS AMBITION, GRATITUDE, AND PIETY.

Propositions 5, 6, 7, 8.

Proposition 5. When ambition is virtuous, nothing but money is capable of acting with effect as an incitement to it: power in whatever shape—power of management—power of patronage; dignities, honours, reputation, respect—by whatever cause created, are all without effect.

Proof. “Indeed no man knows,” continues the rhetorician, “no man knows, when he cuts off the incitements” (“the incitements,” i. e. the sole incitements) “to a virtuous ambition, and the just rewards of public service, what infinite mischief he may do his country through all generations. Such saving to the public may be the worst mode of robbing it.”

“The incitements;” meaning those alone which are composed of money. For thereupon comes a panegyric on the virtue of money—an eulogium composed of a string of phrases, which in the commonplace book of a university poem-maker, might, if the subject of the poem were the virtues of money, perform the sort of service performed to genius in the bud in that useful manual called the Gradus ad Parnassum, under the head of synonyms or phrases.

“The means for the repose of public labour”—“The fixed settlement of acknowledged merit”—“A harbour into which the weather-beaten vessels of the state ought to come; a retreat from the malice of rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and the inconstancy of the people.”

How pitiable, under this view of it, must be the condition of every man, who without a certainty of raising a family into overgrown opulence at the expense of the people, employs his time, or any part of it, in any branch, at least in any of the higher branches, of the public service!—of every member of parliament, at least (for to honourable gentlemen of this description do the regards of the rhetorician appear on this occasion to have confined themselves)—of every member of parliament who ventures his bark in any such stormy latitude, without the certainty of a “harbour” in the shape of an auditorship, or a cut-down tellership at least!

Storms and tempests, forsooth! Yes, such as we see on canvas at Covent Garden, and hope to see again at Drury Lane. Labour as severe almost as what is undergone on the cricket ground or at the card table, and standing about as much in need of remuneration at the expense of the people: labour such as, without receiving the value of a farthing from any hand that did not itself cheerfully take the money out of its own pocket, Mr. Gale Jones and his company would have undergone, and continued to undergo, if the Honourable House could have prevailed upon itself to suffer them: labour far short of that which on the same ocean the newspaper reporters were in the habit of undergoing, and if Mr. Yorke and his honourable and worthy nephew had suffered them, would have continued to undergo, without ceasing: and even (how “incomplete” soever, “and indeed wholly insufficient for that purpose,” “for that public service must” (as Mr. Burke says) “be those means of rewarding” that “public service”) yes, even without “further reward for that service than the daily wages received during pleasure:—daily labour beyond comparison more compulsory, more assiduous, more severe, than that which, besides so many contingent sweets, has present honour for a sweetening to it;—daily labour without pension of retreat, without provision for superannuation—provision, actual or eventual, for widows or mistresses, children or grandchildren, uncles or aunts, brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces; without power either of management or patronage—without either possession or prospect of honour, dignity, reputation, or respect, in any shape.

Proposition 6. So as the place be permanent, the hope of receiving it, how large soever the mass of emolument attached to it, “does not operate as corruption”—does not produce “dependence.”

Proof. “Many of the persons who in all times have filled the great offices of state, have,” says he, “been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any, fortune. There ought to be,” continues he, “some power in the crown of granting pensions out of the reach of its own caprices.”—Caprices! The hand by which the whole property of the people is thus to be disposed of, has it then its caprices? O yes, for the moment, and for the purpose of the argument. What is it that it may not happen to a thing to have or not have, for the purpose of the argument? “The entail of dependence,” continues he, “is a bad reward of merit.”

“I would therefore leave to the crown,” says he (viz. to the “caprices” of the crown) “the possibility of conferring some favours, which, whilst they are received as a reward, do not operate as corruption;—as if, to this purpose, call it a good, call it a bad one, a pension might not be made to operate with the same effect as a sinecure, both being equally for life.

Proposition 7. When a man is in parliament, whatsoever be the conduct of the servants of the crown, and whatsoever be the quantity of money he may gain or hope to gain by giving them his indiscriminating support, virtue requires that, to protect him against the charge of corruption, he be provided with the plea of gratitude; which plea pleaded, acquittal follows of course.

“When men receive obligations from the crown through the pious hands of a father, or of connexions as venerable as the paternal, the dependencies” (says he) “which arise from them are the obligations of gratitude, and not the fetters of servility. Such ties” (continues he) “originate in virtue, and they promote it.”

Proposition 8. When a man happens to have children, “piety” on his part consists in filling their pockets with public money.

Proof. The epithet “pious” applied with so much unction to paternal hands thus occupied.

Observations. In the wolf’s bible, piety would indeed naturally enough consist in providing lamb, as much as she could lay her paws upon, to feed her cubs with. But in the shepherd’s bible, at least the good shepherd’s bible, piety will probably be found rather to consist in keeping the lambs from being disposed of to such pious uses. The orator, though not a no-popery-man, was fond of his bible, and here we have a sample of the uses he was fond of making of it.

SECTION VI.

CONCERNING PARTY-MEN AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

Propositions 9, 10.

Proposition 9. Men, who have at any time joined together in the way of party, ought not ever, any one of them, to differ from any other; nor therefore to act, any one of them, according to his own conception of what is right. Sinecures, if not absolutely necessary, are highly conducive at least, and thence proportionally useful, to the purpose of preventing all such differences.

Proof. “They” (“such ties” as above) “continue men” (says he) “in those habitudes of friendship, those political connexions, and those political principles” (we have seen what principle) “in which they began life. They are antidotes against a corrupt levity, instead of causes of it.”

Observations. Sinecures, according to this account of them, seem to be as necessary to secure fidelity at the expense of sincerity in parliament, as test oaths and subscriptions are to secure various good things, at the expense of reason or sincerity, there and elsewhere.

Two things here call for notice: the proposed end, and the proposed means. Proposed end; each man’s persevering in the principles (whatever is meant by principles) in the professions and habits, right or wrong, in which he “began life;” i. e. which it happened to him to have imbibed from the instructors under whom it had happened to him to be placed, and the society in which it had happened to him to have lived. Proposed means; his having got into his hands as much public money as his parents and other connexions could contrive to put into them by means of sinecures. Means and end, it must be acknowledged, are not ill matched.

Proposition 10. On a change of ministry, were it not for the sinecures, the comers-in would cut the throats of the goers-out; whereupon “the “sons” of the goers-out would “cringe” to the same comers-in (now ins) and “kiss their hands.”

Proof. “What an unseemly spectacle would it afford—what a disgrace would it be to the commonwealth that suffered such things, to see the hopeful son of a meritorious minister begging his bread at the door of that treasury from whence his father dispensed the happiness and glory of his country? Why should he be obliged to prostrate his honour, and to submit his principles at the levee of some proud favourite, shouldered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender, in the very spot where a few days before he saw himself adored?—obliged to cringe to the author of the calamities of his house, and to kiss the hands that are red with his father’s blood? No, Sir!—these things are unfit, they are intolerable.”

Observations. And so there are, it seems, such things as proud favourites. But if so, what sort of food is their pride fed upon? Sinecures? And if so, is not one of these proud favourites on every occasion a dangerous rival to the hopeful son of a meritorious minister? But the plan was—that there should be enough of them for everybody: and thus everything would be as it should be.

SECTION VII.

CONCERNING MINISTERS AND THEIR DUTY TO THEMSELVES.

Propositions 11, 12, 13, 14.

Proposition 11. The danger of a man’s being too bountiful to himself, when, in and by the adjudication of reward claimed on the ground of service said to have been rendered to the public, he is allowed to be judge in his own cause, affords no reason, at least no conclusive reason, against the allowing him to act in that character.

“As to abuse,” says he, “I am convinced, that very few trusts in the ordinary course of administration have admitted less abuse than this. Efficient ministers have been their own paymasters. It is true. But their very partiality has operated as a kind of justice; and still it was service that was paid. When we look over this Exchequer list, we find it filled with the descendants of the Walpoles, of the Pelhams, of the Townsends, names to whom this country owes its liberties, and to whom his Majesty owes his crown.* It was in one of those lines that the immense and envied employment he now holds, came to a certain Duke,” (“the Duke of Newcastle,” says a note) “whose dining-room is under the House of Commons, who is now probably sitting quietly at a very good dinner directly under us, and acting high life below stairs, whilst we his masters are filling our mouths with unsubstantial sounds, and talking of hungry economy over his head.”

For merited wealth and honour he declares his “respect:” “respect” which accompanies it “through all its descents, through all its transfers, and all its assignments.” In plain English, the object of his respect is wealth itself, whatever hands he sees it in. As for “original title,” and “first purchase,” and the epithet “merited,” prefixed to “wealth,” all this is for decency and delusion. For as to merited, the orator’s notions about merits have surely by this time become sufficiently apparent.

And as to title—what is it that on the subject of title, specific title, so much as asserted, not to speak of proved, he ever drops so much as a hint of his looking upon as requisite? No: with him, to the purpose of approbation, though without reason, as in a lawyer’s point of view, to the purpose of protection, for the best reason, possession of wealth, acquired at the public expense, is regarded as proof of title: and that proof not only presumptive and provisional, but conclusive.

As for transfer and assignment—wealth, sure enough, is transferable and assignable. But merit? is merit too a subject of bargain and sale? A manor? yes. But manners, those “manners” which, in the language of Edward the Third’s chancellor, “maketh man,” are these manners with an e, appendages and appurtenances that by the attraction of cohesion adhere to, and are rendered inseparable from, the manors with an o?

Wealth or power, wherever you see them, “prostrate” yourself before them: “cringe to” them, and though they be “red with” your “father’s blood,” “kiss the hands” that grasp them. This is what you are “obliged” to do: and that which is matter of obligation, how can it be matter of blame? Such are the precepts which call for the observance of that pupil whose preceptor is Edmund Burke.

After the predilection thus declared—pre-dilection for vicarious reward—in short, for anything that can afford to political rapacity a colour or a cloak to complete the system of corruption and tyranny, what more can be wanting than a like declaration in favour of vicarious punishment?

Observations. “But,” continues the orator, “he is the elder branch of an ancient and decayed house, joined to, and repaired by the reward of services done by another.” Thus far the orator.

“Done by another.” Yes, done by George the Second’s old favourite minister the Duke of Newcastle, whose culinary profusion and political inaptitude were alike proverbial—whose inefficiency the efficiency of the first Pitt had for such a length of time to struggle with—and whose services consisted in the sacrifice made of his patrimony to his palate and his pride.

“I respect,” continues the rhetorician, “the original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth and honour through all its descents, through all its transfers, and all its assignments. May such fountains never be dried up!—may they ever flow with their original purity, and fructify the commonwealth for ages!”

May such fountains never be dried up! exclaims the ejaculation, poured forth with fervency, with almost the solemnity, and with at least the sincerity, of a prayer. “May such fountains never be dried up!”—as if he had not all this while in full view a fountain of this sort, the patrimony of the crown, all but dried up, and that almost a century before the utterance of this prayer: as if anything could operate more speedily, or more effectually, towards the drying up of all such fountains, than the acting up to those laws of profusion, to the keeping of which it was the object of this prayer to incline men’s hearts.

Proposition 12. If it be admitted that the masses of emolument, respectively attached to the great efficient offices, are not excessive, this admission will be sufficient to justify the possessors of them in putting into their pockets additional masses of emolument to an unlimited amount, on condition of creating or keeping on foot inefficient offices, to which such additional masses of emolument shall respectively stand attached.

Proof. “If I were to give judgment,” says he, “with regard to this country, I do not think the great offices of the state to be overpaid. When the proportion between reward and service,” resumes he, “is our object, we must always consider of what nature the service is, and what sort of men they are, who are to perform it. What is just payment for one kind of labour, and full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud and discouragement to others.”

Observations. True enough. But what is it to the purpose? and what is it that it amounts to? and what is it that by volumes of phrases thus floating in the air would be proved?

“Not overpaid.” For the purpose of the argument, let it pass.

“Not overpaid!” Admitted. But does it follow that they are underpaid? £4000 a-year, or £6000 a-year, not excessive? Good: but does it follow that £23,000 a-year, or that £38,000 a-year, must be added?

Proposition 13. To justify the leaving to the possessors of public offices, in an unlimited number, the power of putting each into his own pocket, and into the pockets of his relatives, and friends, and dependents, and their respective descendents, such supplemental masses of emolument, each to an unlimited amount, it is sufficient to point out one office and one class of offices, which present a reasonable claim to larger masses of emolument than what are attached to the rest.

Proof. “Many of the great officers have much duty to do, and much expense to maintain.

“A secretary of state, for instance, must not appear sordid in the eyes of ministers of other nations.

“Neither ought our ministers abroad to appear contemptible in the courts where they reside.

“In all offices of duty,” continues he, “there is almost necessarily a great neglect of all domestic affairs. A person in high office can rarely take a view of his family-house. If he sees that the state takes no detriment, the state must see that his affairs should take as little.”

Proposition 14. In the case of a real efficient office, no mass of emolument which either is or can be attached to it, ever is or ever can be too great.

Proofs. “I am not,” says he, “possessed of an exact measure between real service and its reward.”

“I am,” continues he, “very sure that states do sometimes receive services, which it is hardly in their power to reward according to their worth.”

“I do not,” continues he, “think the great efficient officers of the state to be overpaid:” he, Edmund Burke, who in so many words has just been saying, “If I knew of any real efficient office which did possess exorbitant emoluments I should be extremely desirous of reducing them. Others,” continues he, “may know of them. I do not.”

Observations. Of the sincerity of this declaration, no question need be made. If so it had been, that any such office, “possessingemoluments,” which in his eyes were “exorbitant,” had been known to him, a “desire,” and that an “extreme” one, “of reducing” those exorbitant emoluments would have been the result of such knowledge. But in his eyes no such emoluments could be exorbitant. Therefore, in his breast the formation of such desire must, notwithstanding the extreme desire he could not but have had to form such a desire, have been impossible.

At that moment, and for the purpose of the argument, such was the ignorance of Edmund Burke that he “was not possessed of,” i. e. he knew not of, “an exact common measure between real service and its reward.” But except Edmund Burke, no man is thus ignorant, any more than Edmund Burke himself could be at any other time than that in which such ignorance had its convenience.

Between “real service and its reward,” the exact common measure is the least quantity of the matter of reward that he who is able to render the service consents to take in return for it. This is the measure of all prices: this is the measure of the value of all good things that are at once valuable and tangible. This is the measure of the value of all labour, by which things tangible are produced: as also of all labour by which, though nothing tangible is produced, valuable service in some other shape is rendered. This was the common measure, by which the exact value had been assigned to the coat he had on his back. This was the exact common measure of the value of those real services which had been rendered him by the person or persons by whom his coat had by means of one kind of brush, and his shoes by means of two others, been qualified for their attendance on the lips, by which this brilliant bubble was blown out.

But (says the sophist, or some disciple for him) there is no analogy (says he) between the service rendered to the public by a minister of state, and the service rendered to one individual, by another individual, who removes extraneous matter from his coat, or puts a polish upon his shoes.

O yes, there is—and, to the purpose here in question, analogy quite sufficient:—

1. They stand upon the same ground (the two services) in point of economy. There is no more economy in paying £38,000 a-year for the wearer of the coat, if he can be had for nothing, than in paying £20 for a coat itself, if it can be had for £10.

For the wearer of the coat—I mean, of course, for his services: his services—I mean his services to the public, if so it be that he be capable of rendering any.

But the misfortune is, that when once the “reward for service” has swelled to any such pitch, any question about the service itself—what is it? what does it consist in? who is it that is to render it? what desire, or what means, has he of rendering it? of rendering to the public that sort of service, or any sort of service? Any question of this sort becomes a joke.

Where sinecures, and those “high situations” in which they have now and then become the subjects of conversation among “great characters,” are taken for the subject of conversation among little characters in their low situations, questions and answers are apt to become giddy, and to turn round in a circle. What are sinecures of £38,000 a-year good for?—to maintain the sinecurists. What are the sinecurists good for?—to maintain the sinecures. Thus on profane ground. Thus again, on sacred ground:—What are bishopricks good for?—to support bishops. What are bishops good for?—to support bishopricks.

2. So again, as to probability of efficiency, and meritoriousness on the part of the service. Competition—preference given to the best bidder among candidates bidding upon each other, under the spur applied by that incentive—competition, affords, in the instance of the party chosen, a better chance of fitness for the office and its services, than will in general be afforded by preference given, either without a thought about fitness for the service, or about merit in any other shape, or with thoughts confined to such merit of which parliament is the only theatre, and in the composition of which, obsequiousness is the principal ingredient, and that an indispensable one. But of this proposition the truth, it is hoped, has been rendered sufficiently apparent elsewhere.*

SECTION VIII.

CONCERNING GRATUITOUS SERVICE, AND THE PROFLIGACY INVOLVED IN IT.

Propositions 15, 16.

Proposition 15.— If a man were to decline receiving at the public expense, money which it were in his power to receive without danger either of punishment or of disgrace, it would be a conclusive proof that his designs were to endeavour to filch money from the public, in some mode that would subject him to danger in one or other of the two shapes, or in both.

Proof. “I will even go so far,” says he, p. 67, “as to affirm, that if men were willing to serve in such situations” (viz. offices of duty, “all offices of duty,” p. 66) “without salary, they ought not to be permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say, that that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues, will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess.”

Observations.—“If men were willing to serve in such situations without salary, they ought not,” says he, “to be permitted to do it.” Here we have the theory—the waste-and-corruption-defending sophist’s theory. What says experience? In Part I.* of this tract may be seen a list, nor that yet a complete one, of men of various classes serving in such situations; and not merely without salary, but without neat emolument in any shape: and as for the not permitting them to do so, whether in such non-permission, in whatsoever manner effected, whether by prohibition or otherwise, there would be any, and what use, let the reader, if any such there be, on whom this rhapsody has passed for reason or for reasoning, learn from it, if he be able.

“Ordinary services,” says the orator, “must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity.” In Part I.* the reader, it is hoped, has already seen, that for the securing of ordinary service, to furnish any motive whatever is not in the nature of salary: that in so far as ordinary service comes to be rendered, it is by apprehension of eventual punishment that it is produced—that all that by salary can ever be done towards the production of it, is by engaging a man to subject himself to such eventual punishment; and that, if so it be, that without salary he is content to subject himself to such eventual punishment, the service (it being ordinary service) is not merely as likely, but more likely, to be produced without salary than with it.

“That state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues,” says the orator, meaning (for there is nothing else to which the word “virtues” can have any application) the disposition manifested by him who “without salary is willing to serve in such situations.” Now, in a disposition of that sort, though there be great use, there is nothing that can bear the name of virtue. For (as is sufficiently proved by every morsel a man puts into his mouth, and every draught or sip he takes) so it is, that out of mere utility, even though it rise to the height of absolute necessity, no such thing as virtue can be made. Not that in these “situations,” or any of them, whether “served in,” “with or without salary,” virtue rising even to heroism may not perhaps by accident be displayed: but any such accidental display is quite another business.

Now, if even by actual service in such situations, no “virtue” at all is displayed, or, by the man himself, who thus serves, is so much as conceived to be displayed, whether in the mere willingness so to serve there be any room for “rare or heroic virtue,” may be left to any reasonable person to pronounce.

Proposition 16. In any office of duty, “to be willing to serve without salary,” is to pretend to “rare and heroic virtue,” and is a “sure” indication of “the basest profligacy and corruption.”

Proof. “In all offices of duty,” says he, p. 66, “there is almost necessarily a great neglect of all domestic affairs. A person in high office can rarely take a view of his family house.”—“I will even go so far as to affirm,” continues he, p. 67, “that if men were willing to serve in such situations without salary, they ought not to be permitted to do it. I do not hesitate to say,” continues he, “that that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption.”

Observations. In Part I. of this publication* may be seen a list, though by no means a complete one, of offices “willingly served,” not only without salary, but even without emolument; as also a list of others, by and for the obtainment of which, men are found who are willing to be out of pocket.

Observations. The office of Member of the House of Commons—the office of delegate of the people in parliament—is that, or is it not, in the number of his “offices of duty?” Is that, or is it not, in the number of his “high offices?” Members of the House of Commons as such—the members of the House of Commons taken together—have they not, in conjunction with their duty, more power than the members of administration taken together? In the members of the House of Commons taken together, do not the members of administration taken together, behold their judges, to whom, for their conduct as such, they are continually accountable, and by whom, under the form of an address to the king, they are in effect displaceable? This assertion, then, to the absurdity of which men are to be made to shut their eyes, by the violence, the unhesitating and audacious violence, with which it is endeavoured to be driven down their throats—try it, try it in the first place upon the members of the House of Commons.

A member of the House of Commons, who, in that his office, “is willing to serve without salary, ought not to be permitted to do it.” Whoever does serve on any such terms, is a most “base and corrupt profligate.”

From this charge of base and corrupt profligacy, having for its proof the fact of a man’s performing public duty without salary, the impossibility of obtaining any portion of this his specific against corruption may, it is hoped, according to the orator’s system, serve in the character of an extenuation, in a case where the inability is real and unaffected.

But, within the compass of his knowledge, what man, public or private, can be at any loss to find public men—men of distinguished talents—men even of distinguished eloquence—who in that very station have served, and for a long-continued course of years, with as much assiduity as it is possible for men to bestow, even for and with the most overflowing measure of reward?—serving and toiling with an assiduity equal to that of the most assiduous minister all the time, yet without factitious reward in any shape—all the time having at command rewards to the highest amount, and even at the public expense?

Of these base and corrupt profligates, as Edmund Burke called them, and would have persuaded us to think them, I had even began a list—none of them unknown even to Edmund Burke—when I was stopped at once by a concurring cluster of considerations: the personality of the detail, my own incompetency for it, the room it would have occupied, and, as it seemed to me, the superfluity of it.

As between individual and individual, that without expectation of money or money’s worth, in any shape, in return, it may not happen to an individual to render a service to another—nay, even to persevere as towards him in a course of service of any length and degree of constancy, and this, too, without any sort of prejudice to probity, not to speak of base and corrupt profligacy, is surely more than any man, even the orator himself, was ever heard to assert: why not then to the public at large—to that all comprehensive body, of which individuals taken together are component parts?

For the labour or the self-denial necessary to the rendering the service to the individual, pure sympathy, pure of all self-regarding considerations, is frequently the sole, and being at the same time the efficacious, is thereby the self-sufficient motive. But when the public is the party to whom the service is rendered; in this case, in addition to whatsoever emotion of sympathy is called forth by the contemplation of the welfare of this aggregate body, in aid of that purely social spring of action, comes the prospect of gratification to the self-regarding affection—love of reputation, accompanied or not with the love of that power, which, whether put to use or not, reputation brings with her in her hand.

Besides the shape in which he would receive payment for the service, if no more than a single individual were the better for it, he who renders service to the public receives, or at least may not unreasonably expect to receive, payment for it, in those two other shapes besides. Yet, in the eyes of the orator, if he is to be believed, so unnatural and incredible is the disposition to be on any occasion content with this treble payment, that should any such disposition find any man to manifest it, what the orator is quite “sure” of, and insists upon our believing, is, that that man belongs to the list of “base and corrupt profligates.” Such is his sincerity, or such his knowledge of human nature.

After an answer thus conclusive, it may be matter of doubt, whether the inanity of the arguments, considered with reference to the state of things the orator saw at that time before him, be worth touching upon.

As in a magic lantern, the scene shifts every moment under his hands. On the occasion in question, to be of any considerable use, the view taken, it was necessary, should embrace the whole field of official emolument—the whole field of office. So, in his hands, but a page or two before, it accordingly did. Now, and without warning, the extent of it is shrunk, perhaps to that of half a dozen offices, perhaps to that of a single office. To a single office confined it must be—to a single office, viz. that of the chief minister, if, of the plan of hypocrisy he speaks of, the sort of despotism he speaks of is, in case of success, to be the consequence.

“Unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition over unpretending service,”—“invidious comparisons,”—“destruction of whatever little unity and agreement may be found among ministers:”—all these words, what is it they amount to?—words, and nothing more.

Realized they might be—all these supposed disasters; and still, on the part of the people, the question might be—what then? what is all that to us?—how is it that we should be the worse for it?

1. Says A, I don’t want all this money. Says B, I do. Here the thing which A is ambitious of is power, and power only: the thing coveted by B is the same power, with the money into the bargain. On the part of A, where now is the ostentation, where the ambition, more than on the part of B: and, if there were, where would be the specific mischief of it in any tangible shape?

2.Invidious comparisons! What is choice without comparison? And if invidious meant anything, where is the comparison, which being made for the purpose of choice, is not invidious? What is parliamentary debate—what is any debate, but a topic of invidious comparisons?

3.Destruction of unity and agreement among ministers! According to circumstances, such destruction is either a misfortune or a blessing. Misfortune to be sure it is, and nothing else, with reference to the ten or a dozen persons spoken of: but with reference to the people and their interests, a “destruction” of this sort is perhaps the most efficient, though it be but a casual, check upon misrule. In case of that system of misconduct, which it is so constantly their interest, and almost constantly in their power to persevere in, it affords the only chance—of punishment it cannot be said; for of that never, for this last half century, has there been any chance,—but of exposure. And in this character, the people, thanks to able instructors, begin to be not altogether insensible to its value.

But a government in the quondam Venetian style—a government in which, under the guidance of upstart Machiavelism, titled and confederated imbecility should lord it over king and people, and behind the screen of secresy, waste, oppression, and peculation, should find themselves for ever at their ease; such was the Utopia of Edmund Burke.

To dispose men, if it be possible, to distinguish from solid argument, empty froth, such as this of Edmund Burke’s—to distinguish it, and, whenever found, to cast it forth from them with the scorn which is its due, such has been the object; such, if they have had any, has been the use, of these four or five last paragraphs.

SECTION IX.

A PROPHECY, AND BY BURKE—THE KING WILL SWALLOW UP THE WHOLE SUBSTANCE OF THE PEOPLE.

Proposition 17. The King, with the advice and consent of Lords and Commons, will “infallibly,” one of these days, possess himself of the whole property of the country.

Proof. “For,” says he, p. 67, “as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other: and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means,” (continues he, but the argument, it will be seen, required him to say, those “profits”) “will be increased to infinity. This is true,” continues he, “in all the parts of administration, as well as in the whole.”

Observations. Of these doctrines—I mean of the exposure thus made of them—the use is, to show what extravagances imagination is apt to launch into, where, to bring down an ignis fatuus for the defence of an indefensible proposition, it mounts without rudder or compass into the region of vague and aërial generalities.

The result, to any such extent as that in which, for the purpose of the moment, the sophist tried, or pretended, to regard it as infallible, is as far, let us hope, from being in any degree a probable one, as at another time he would have been from speaking of it as such.

In the situation of chief minister, or in any other situation, if, by means of an artifice, which, long before it had travelled any considerable length in the tract of success, must have become transparent and visible to the whole people, it depended upon a single individual to possess himself of the whole “power,” and by means of it, the whole “wealth” of the country, what is it that should have prevented this conquest of the whole wealth from having been achieved—achieved ages ago, by those who have had the whole power in their hands?

To the power, that exists in the hands of the members of the sovereignty as such—to this power is to be ascribed, as to its cause, the aggregate mass of the several portions of the matter of wealth, which, in their individual capacities, are at any given point of time respectively possessed by them. To the power itself there are not any legal limits: there ought not to be any. But to the aggregate mass of wealth actually possessed by them, how excessive soever, limits there always are: limits comparatively narrow: and, at all times, seeing what that mass is, we see what those limits are. The King, with the advice and consent of the Lords and Commons, might, if such were his pleasure, might, viz. by act of parliament, take into his hands the whole wealth of the country, and share it between himself and them. Nothing could be more correctly lawful: but, as few things would be more manifestly inexpedient, it is what never has been done, and what nobody, sane or insane, is afraid of seeing done.

Not but that the advances made towards this point of consummation have been somewhat nearer than could have been wished: and in this way, as in every other, in the eyes of those who profit by what is wrong, “whatever is, is right:” yes, and not only right, but necessary.

But of the necessity where lies the proof? Here, as elsewhere, it lies in the existence of the practice: which, where the thing to be proved is the necessity of that same practice, is, according to the logic of practical men, proof abundantly sufficient.

Pressing on the people with so heavy a pressure as this vast portion of their burthen does, on what ground is it that it is concluded to be, to wit, in the whole of it, necessary? On this ground, viz. that it is—that in the whole of it, it is—customary. And how came it to be customary? Because those whose interest it was to make it as great as possible, as great as the people would endure to see it made, found they had power, and without preponderant inconvenience, in the shape of danger to themselves, viz. from discontent on the part of the people, to make it what it is.

This power—the word power being here taken in the practical sense—is all that, to the purpose here in question, has ever been attended to. As to need, demand in respect of public utility—of that utility which is such with reference to the interest of the whole people—need or necessity in this sense, never is—never has been—felt to be worth a thought.

As to all those things, in respect to which it is the interest of rulers that the mode of government should be bad, it of course always has been and of course always will be, as bad as, in their judgment, the people will quietly endure to see it.

This economy bill of Edmund Burke, for example, was it produced by virtue, by public spirit, on the part of Edmund Burke? No: nor so much as by policy alone—if by policy be meant any spontaneous policy on his part, how personal soever and pure of public spirit. Towards the production of this measure, such as it is, prudence, meaning apprehension of nearer inconvenience, howsoever assisted by policy, meaning hope of more or less distant power, with its concomitant sweets, operated, and with no small force, as it should seem, on his mind. The proof is in certain petitions which he speaks of.

As to these “petitions,” they are such as could not have been all of them of his calling forth, at least not all of them of his dictating, since some of them were troublesome to him. Amongst the things called for by them was, in the instance of several of them, the thing which in this place is more particularly in question, viz. “the reduction of exorbitant emoluments to efficient offices.” This, though spoken of by him as an article, “which seems to be a specific object in several of the petitions,” is an object with which he expressly declares himself “not able to intermeddle.”*

SECTION X.

GRATUITOUS SERVICE, BURKE’S OBJECTIONS TO IT REPUTED.—NECKER.—BURKE’S EAST-INDIA BILL.

The orator continues—“If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might,” continues he, p 67, “give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition over unpretending service; might breed invidious comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little unity and agreement may be found among ministers. And, after all, when an ambitious man had run down his competitors by a fallacious show of disinterestedness, and fixed himself in power by that means, what security is there that he would not change his course, and claim as an indemnity ten times more than he has given up?”

To these arguments, such as they are, against gratuitous service, my answer, so far as regards the plan above alluded to, is a simple and decisive one. To the plan of adequate salary, coupled with sale so far as applicable, for the account of the public, with the benefit of competition they have not, any of them, any application. For “ostentation,” under that plan there is no room: the retrenchment, whatever it may amount to, being to all competitors matter of necessity—to none more than another, matter of choice: and if it be in this ostentation that the two other alleged mischiefs, whatever they may be, meant to be denoted by the words “invidious comparison,” and “destruction of unity,” have their supposed source, the ostentation being out of the case, so will these other supposed mischiefs be likewise.

Here (to speak in his own words) there would be no such “declining”—no such “unfair advantage”—no such peculiarly “invidious comparison”—no such mischievous “destruction of unity and agreement”—no such “running down of competitors” (for one and the same call would be given to all competitors)—no such “self-fixation” of one man alone “in power,” and by means peculiar to himself.

And after all,” continues he, as above, “and after all, when an ambitious man had run down his competitors by a fallacious show of disinterestedness, and fixed himself in power by that means, what security is there that he would not change his course, and claim as an indemnity more than he has given up?”

Gratuitous official service—and, under the name of gratuitous official service, reduction of official emolument being the object still contended against, here we have a quite new argument. Till now, it was in other shapes, though indeed in all manner of shapes other than that of frugality, that, in case of any such reduction, the service was to suffer: now it is in the shape even of frugality itself. Whatsoever a man (the sort of man in question) gives up in appearance, in reality (says our sophist) he will take to himself “ten times more.”

To the above proposed plan of retrenchment, the objection, such as it is, has not, it must have been seen already, and for the reasons already given, any the slightest application. But even with reference to the then existing state of things, what could be more extravagant?

On the part of the orator, suppose on this occasion any the smallest particle of thought, and at the same time of sincerity, what must have been the opinion entertained by him of the state of government in this country, and how profound at the same time his indifference to it? The state of government such, that on so easy a condition as the giving up a mass of lawful emolument for a time, a man might make sure of gaining, in the way of “base profligacy and corruption,” ten times “as much” in the long run! and this sort of speculation, promising and feasible enough, not only to be worth guarding against, but to be necessary to be guarded against, and that at such an expense as that of making an all-comprehensive addition to the mass of official emolument! and this too an addition without bounds!

Oh no! (cries the orator) not make sure—those were no words of mine: “claim” was my word,—“claim,” and nothing more. Oh yes, Mr. Orator, “claim” was indeed the word you used; but make sure was the idea it was your object to convey by it: for, sure enough, where public money is the subject, it is only by what a man gets, and not by what he claims, and without getting it, that any mischief can be done.

In writing, no man ever weighed his words in nicer scales; no author ever blotted more, to find, for each occasion, a set of words that shall comprehend two meanings—one for attack, another in case of necessity for retreat and self-defence; such throughout is the study of the rhetorician, whom devotion to a party reduced to that species and degree of servitude, with which sincerity is incompatible.—In this sinister art, no man ever laboured more—no man surely ever made a greater proficiency—no man, one may venture to say, ever made so great a proficiency, as this Edmund Burke.

Here we have a picture (shall we say?) or a plan of Machiavelism, sketched out by his own hand. In itself it is but a loose sketch, for by anything like a complete and correct draught, too much would have been brought to view. But in its exact shape, no small part, and in outline the whole, was already in his own breast. Nor, so far as concerned his own portrait, was it from fancy, but from the looking-glass, that he drew.

The treasury bench—the castle of misrule—stood before him. Sham-economy, an instrument of “Young Ambition,” the ladder by which it was to be scaled. Already the ladder was in his hand. A bill for “independence” and so forth—and for “economical reformation” and so forth—was the name—the wordy name—he had found for it.

At the end of a long contest, the ladder performed its service. But when the fortress was in his hands, a buttress was deemed necessary to enable him to maintain his ground. The buttress fell, and he in it, and along with it; the buttress fell, and great was the fall thereof.

And what was this buttress? Few readers can be at a loss for it.

Four years after, when under the pressure of the mass of corruption, in the hands of the secret advisers of the [Editor: illegible word] they betook themselves for relief, he and his party, not to the legitimate influence of the people, as it would have been manifested in an equalized representation, accompanied with the exclusion of dependent votes, but to a counter-mass of corruption, to be drawn from the East Indies—it was to the “fallacious show of disinterestedness” made by this his Economy Bill, already carried and turned into an act, that he trusted for that blind support, which he had looked for at the hands of a supposed blinded people. The result is known to everybody.

As to the picture we here see him drawing, it was, at the time of his thus drawing it, half history, half prophecy: the prophetic part left unfinished, as everything in the shape of prophecy must necessarily be.

The picture dramatized, the characters and other objects in it might stand as follows:—

1. “Ambitious man,” Edmund Burke.

2. “Fallacious show of disinterestedness:” the show made by this economy bill of his, with the inconsiderable retrenchments (£60,000 a-year, or some such matter) effected by it.

3. “Competitors run down” by means of it (in addition to the force derived from other sources, such as the unpopularity and ill success of the American war, together with the exertions of arbitrary vengeance in the case of Wilkes, &c.) Lord North and his ministry then in power, with the secret advisers of the crown for their support.

4. Instrument attempted to be made for the “fixing himself in power,” Burke’s East India bill: a steadiment, containing in it a sort of pump, contrived for drawing from the East Indies the matter of wealth, to be applied in the character of matter of corruption, by hands of his own choice, to the purpose of engaging a sufficient number of workmen for the fixing him and his party as above, to wit, with such a force of resistance as it should not be in the power of the secret advisers of the crown, with all the assistance they could get from the people, to overcome.

As to the particular “course,” which, for the purpose of reaping the fruits of his conquest, had this machinery of his succeeded, it might have happened to him to take, and with the word indemnity in his mouth, the quantity of public money he might have claimed,—so it is, that his grand instrument of steadiment and “fixation” having failed, all these, together with so many other quondam future contingencies, remain in darkness inscrutable. But, supposing the indemnity no more than “ten times” the amount of the sacrifice, still would it have fallen short, as anybody may see, of the ground prepared for it by this his speech.

Some years after, viz. about the year 1790, a decent quantity of public money, even though not in office, he did contrive to get: but forasmuch as for this donation there was a pretence made out of a pamphlet, with the help of which the embers of war between Britain and France were blown into a flame, and, for security against anarchy, the good people of Great Britain driven, as far as by his pious endeavours they could be driven, into the arms of despotism, so it was, that the bread of sinecure—the sacred shew-bread, destined and appropriated to the chief priests of the temple of corruption—was not, any part of it, profaned and diverted to this use: reward in the ordinary shape of pension being regarded as applicable to, and sufficient for, this ordinary service.*

SECTION XI.

BURKE’S OBJECTION TO THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPETITION TO THIS PURPOSE—ITS FRIVOLOUSNESS.

After denying that the great efficient offices are overpaid, “The service of the public.” continues he, “is a thing which cannot be put to auction, and struck down to those who will agree to execute it the cheapest.”

Cannot! Why cannot it? Upon the face of it, the proposition bears not so much as the colour of reason; nor in the sequel is either substance or colour so much as attempted to be found for it. Of possibility, what is the sort of evidence that in this case he would require? Would fact have been regarded as admissible? “The service of the public is a thing which,” a year afterwards, after the orator had been in, and out again, Pitt the Second did “put up to auction”—“did strike down to those who would agree to execute it the cheapest:” and this to such an extent, that, in comparison of the saving thereby effected, whether money or improbity be the article considered, the utmost saving so much as projected by this our sham-reformer, shrinks into insignificance.†

This, it is true, the pseudo-reformer had not as yet witnessed. But there was nothing in it that was not in the most perfect degree obvious: what difficulty there was in the business consisted not in the thinking of it, but in the doing of it.

But what the sophist trusted to was the word auction, and the sentiment of ridicule which, if applied to the subject in question, he hoped to find prepared for the reception of it in men’s minds. Mention the word auction, the image you present is that of a man with a smirk upon his countenance, mounted on the burlesque of a pulpit, with a wooden hammer in his hand, expatiating upon the virtues—sometimes of statues and pictures—sometimes of chairs and tables.

The hyperboles employed by orators of that class, while expatiating on the virtues of the vendible commodities consigned to their disposal, are, as he in common with everybody else must have remarked every now and then, such as, while in some parts of the audience they produce the desired impression, excite in the minds of others the idea of the ridiculous.

But no panegyric that was ever bestowed by any such orator, on the picture or the screen of a marquis or a duke, had more of exaggeration in it than the pictures which this vender of puffs was so expert at drawing, naming them after this or that one of his most noble patrons and originals. His piece of still life, called the Marquis of Rockingham—his Duke of Portland, into the picture of which a Kneller or a Reynolds would have put more thought than nature and art together had been able to force into the original—that original whose closest resemblance to a picture that had thought in it was the property of being vendible—that puppet, whose wires, after playing for a time so easy, ran rusty at last under the hand of Mr. Canning—viewed through the raree-show glass of Edmund Burke, these and so many other “great characters” appear no less fit for their “high situations” than the counsellors of King Solomon, when, with Punch for their interpreter, on the drawing up of the curtain, they are displayed in the act of paying tributes of wisdom to the wise.

Competition.—This word would not, as auction so well did, serve the sophist’s purpose. To the word competition no smirk stands associated—no pulpit—no hammer:—competition—a power, the virtues of which had already been so well displayed by Adam Smith, not to speak of Sir James Stewart: in competition he beheld that security against waste and corruption which would have been mortal to his views.

SECTION XII.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.—BURKE, WHY THUS EXAMINED.

Erasmus wrote an eulogium on folly: but Erasmus was in jest: Edmund Burke wrote an eulogium—he wrote this eulogium—on peculation:—and Edmund Burke was serious.

In thus exhibiting the orator in one of those fits of extravagance to which he was but too subject—in exhibiting the orator’s own figure, according to the monstrous caricature we have seen him drawing of himself, viz. that of a man, in whose estimation nothing but money has any value—a man by whom all breasts that have anything in them that is not sordid, are to be marked out as fit objects of abhorrence,—let me not be accused of wasting time and paper.

It is out of this his book—meaning always such parts of it as are found suitable, that our statesmen of the present day may be seen taking their lessons. It is out of this his garden of sweet flowers, that the still existing finance committee—and without acknowledgment—have culled, as we have seen, a chaplet wherewith to decorate their brows. It is in this his school, that, by another right honourable teacher of economy, those maxims have certainly been found, and to all appearance learnt, which we shall come to presently.

Had the purpose of his argument, or of his life, required it—here, in this very place, instead of declaiming and writing for money, and trying to persuade men that nothing but money is of any value, the orator might, and naturally would, have declared against money,—shown in the way that so many other declaimers have shown, that it is of no value, that it is even worse than useless, and that, without “the basest profligacy and corruption,” no man—no public man at least—can ever get, or try to get, any of it.

In exaggerations, improbity or folly may behold a use on either side; but to common honesty, nothing is here needful but common sense.

Money is a good thing—a very good thing indeed: and, if it were not a good thing, scarce would anything else be; for there are few good things which a man may not get by means of it—get, either in exchange for it, or (what is still better) even without parting with it.

But the misfortune is, that from us the people, for paying orators of the class of Edmund Burke, it is not to be had without our being forced to part with it: and if the orator suffer in case of his not having it—in case of his never having got so much of it as he could have wished, we the people, who, after having had it, find ourselves, for the use and benefit of the orator, forced to part with it, suffer still more.

Thence it is, that if there be anything else, which, the people not feeling themselves forced to part with it, the orator can persuade himself to be satisfied with, so much the better. Upon this plan, everybody is satisfied—orator and people both: whereas, upon the orator’s plan, only one of the parties is satisfied, viz. the orator—the orator, who is the agent and spokesman of the ruling few; while the other party, viz. we the people, are suffering and grumbling, and as it should seem not altogether without reason; for we are the many; and in our number consists our title to regard: a very unpretending title, but not the less a good and sufficient one.

[* ]This tract was first printed in the Pamphleteer (No. XIX.)

[* ]Of the matter of these principles, a portion more or less considerable would probably be found in that part which concerns Reward, of the work not long ago (1811) published in French by Mr. Dumont, under the title of Theorie des Peines et des Récompenses, from some of the author’s unfinished manuscripts. (See the Rationale of Reward, in this collection.)

[* ]“Speech on presenting, on the 11th of Feb. 1780, a plan for the better security of the independence of parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments.” Dodsley, 1780, 3d edition. The part from which the following extracts are made is contained in pages from 62 to 68 inclusive.

[† ]Page 63.

[* ]This was in March 1810.

[† ]After all, it was not by the “excellent” Lord Somers that this profundity of policy was, or, considering the side taken by him, could consistently have been displayed. It was to another “excellent” law-lord, though not noble lord, viz. the Lord Chief-Justice Holt, that the glory of it should have been ascribed.

“Rewards and punishments,” says he “are the supporters of all governments:—and for that reason it is that there ought to be a power in all governments to reward persons that deserve well:”a —proof sufficient to the excellent Lord Chief-Justice that it was no more than right and fitting, that it should always be, and so long as anything was left, remain in the King’s power, to give away, to anybody he pleased, whatsoever part of the people’s money he could contrive to lay his hands on.

“But it is to be objected,” says the excellent Lord Chief-Justice, “that the power in the King of alienating his revenues may be a prejudice to his people, to whom he must recur continually for supplies.” But to this objection, the excellent Chief-Justice had his answer ready:—“I answer,” says he, “that the law has not such dishonourable thoughts of the King, as to imagine he will do anything amiss to his people in those things in which he has power so to do.” Reason sufficient with the excellent Chief-Justice to trust the King thus in the lump, with the arbitrary and uncontrouled disposal of men’s properties;—reason not less sufficient might it have been, for trusting the same royal person, on the same terms, with their liberties and their lives. This was Whig common law. What more could a King have had or wished for, from Tory common law?

This theory, then, which to the views of our orator being so convenient, was in the judgment of the orator so “excellent:”—this theory was the theory—not of the excellent Lord Keeper, but of the excellent Lord Chief-Justice. Not that by this mistake of John for Thomas any very material injustice was done to the excellent Lord Keeper; for, in this instance, if anything was wanting in theory (not that any such deficiency appears) it was made up in practice.

To the profits of the office—those profits, for an eventual supplement to which even Lord Eldon required, or at least obtained, not more than a floating £4000 a-year—these profits not being sufficient for “making reward the origin of that family;” for affording to it a sufficiently broad “foundation of wealth as well as of honours,”—a pension for life of £4000 a-year was added: £4000 a-year, then equal at least to £12,000 a-year now. This, as not being in fee, being still insufficient, an estate,b which was and is in fee, was added: an estate which, according to his own admission and valuation made for the purpose, was producing at that time no more than a poor £2100 a-year, if the statement thus given in general terms by the learned and noble grantee for the purpose of his defence against an impeachment, is to be taken for correct: how much at present, is best known to some noble or not noble proprietor or other, related or not related, into whose hands it has passed.

But this £4000 a-year, and this £2100 a-year, and this £12,000 a-year, more or less, these et cæteras, were they, any of them, ever begged for by the excellent lord? Oh no: so he himself expressly assures us:—begged for, no more than the tellership was begged for by Mr. Yorke. These are of the number of those gracious designs, which, till the very moment of their taking effect, are never known of. While the eyes of the right honourable person are, as usual, fixed on heaven, the grant is slipped into his pocket, and when, putting in his hand by accident, he feels it there, his astonishment is not inferior to his gratitude.a

Note, that for no such expense as this, in so rare an article as wisdom, was there any the smallest need. In the time of Charles the Second (the Bank of England not as yet born or thought of) money to the amount of “above a million,” (a vast sum in those days) part their own, part that of their customers, having been lent to the King by a set of bankers, was by him, the said King, converted to his own use: in court English, “the Exchequer was shut up.”

In a succeeding reign, viz. that of King William, the question was, whether there was power in the crown, sufficient for applying a particular branch of its revenues in part restitution of the profit of this robbery. Yes, says this Lord Chief-Justice: for the branch in question (a new one—a portion of the excise) was given to the King in exchange for an old branch, viz. the branch called “wards and liveries.” Whoever has an estate in fee, may alienate it: in the “wards and liveries” the King had an estate in fee!—the excise was by act of Parliament given to him in lieu of those “wards and liveries:” and what is more, by the express words of the act, he was and is empowered to alienate it. This, supposing the construction put upon the act not inconsistent with the words of it, might, one should have thought, have sufficed for argument. But this would not have sufficed to show the learned lord’s acquaintance as above with the depths of policy: nor yet the “honourable thoughts” entertained of the King by the law:—and so, ex abundantiâ, the sage reasons that have been seen were added.

Whatsoever money the King could contrive to lay his hands upon, that the virtuous Whig Chief-Justice was content to see him waste. Why? For this plain reason: because “the law has not”—(i. e. he, his predecessors and colleagues, had not) any such dishonourable thoughts of the King “as to imagine he will do anything amiss to his people in those things in which he has power so to do.”

And what was the incident that called forth their effusion of faith and confidence? It was that of a king having robbed his subjects: robbed them of so much money—and for what? to hire men with, for robbing in conjunction with their enemiesa —for robbing and murdering their allies.b

Now, therefore, in my humble conception of the matter—whosoever it was that went thus far, whether it was the excellent Lord-keeper, whether it was the virtuous and intrepid Whig Chief-Justice went so far, it is no very easy matter to imagine how the learned colleagues of the Chief-Justice, or any of them, should (as Edmund Burke says they did) “go further:” and that for any imaginable set of existing circumstances, for any imaginable purpose of accommodation, convenience, reward of merit, reward of eminent services, and so forth—not to speak of reasonable, useful, and honest purposes:—it went far enough of all conscience.

Of these “honourable thoughts” one effect was to reduce to such a state of debility the learned thinker’s learned imagination, as to disable it from representing to him as possible, a state of things which his memory, if consulted upon the occasion, could not but have represented to him as realized, and that no more than seven years before: that state of things expressed—the half of it by the lawyer’s word abdication, the whole of it by the people’s word revolution, but for which (I mean the revolution,) his master could not have been a King, nor himself a Lord Chief-Justice. This master of his was now King: and now, whatsoever power the King has, is become incapable of being used amiss; misuse being in such hands either the same thing as use, or (what comes to the same thing) converted into use.

This is the way the sort of a thing called common law is made. Not content with exercising the power which he has, nothing will serve a man but he must display the wisdom which he has not: he bewilders himself and raves: and his ravings as often as it happens to them to suit the interest or the humour of those that come after him, these ravings of his become law.

Principles and practice together, nothing could be better matched: practice found by the excellent Lord-Keeper—principles by the excellent Lord Chief-Justice.

Note, that while lawyers as well as favourites were thus fattening (for the reign of William, though a reign of salvation for England and for Europe, was a reign of waste and favouritism,) the State, for want of common necessaries, was continually on the brink of ruin: expense unprecedented, ways and means scanty, deficiencies abundant, losses distressing, credit at death’s door.

[* ]Burke. p. 62, in the paragraph immediately preceding the one above quoted:—“I know, too, that it will be demanded of me how it comes, that since I admit these offices” (sinecures) “to be no better than pensions, I chose, after the principle of law had been satisfied,” (meaning the principle, with how little propriety soever it can be termed a principle of law, the principle of policy and humanity, that forbids the abolition of them, though it be by the legislature, to the prejudice of existing rights of property, i. e. without adequate compensation) “I chose to retain them at all.” This being the question, now, reader, whether you have, or have not, read Part I. of this Tract, Chapter III. On Sinecures,a be pleased to observe the answer—“To this, Sir, I answer, that conceiving it to be a fundamental part of the constitution of this country, and of the reason of state in every country, that there must be means of rewarding public service, these means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insufficient for that purpose, if there should be no further reward for that service than the daily wages it receives during the pleasure of the Crown.”

Thus far Edmund Burke: and thus far, and without inverted commas, or any other token of adoption, the existing Committee on Finance, (3d Report, p. 126,) substituting only for the words—“To this, Sir, I answer, that conceiving” the words “at the same time regarding.”

Here we see what, according to the logic of the rhetorician, constitutesa sufficient reason why the quantity of annual emolument in question should not be put into the shape of pension, but be continued in the shape of sinecure. And this is the flourish which, with the question between sinecures and pensions before their eyes, the committee copy: and though like the orator in the way of concession, exhibit not the less in the character of a “fundamental part of the constitution of this country.”

This principle consists in the habit, which under common law is the same thing as the power, of creating offices, with fees annexed to the same, and receivable by the officers successively invested with the same: of creating these fee-gathering offices, or, what comes to the same thing, annexing more and more fees to offices of this sort already created; fees that, as taxes, are exacted by the sole authority of some official person or persons, without allowance, special or general, from the representatives of the people in parliament.

This principle may be seen flourishing to this day, and with unabated vigour; for so long as the word tax is not mentioned, and instead of a contribution to a tax, the money levied is called a fee, and instead of the pocket of the public, the pocket it goes into is that of the imposer, and the assembly in the composition of which the people have some share, have no share in the imposition of it, nothing can exceed the acquiescence and complacency with which the good people of this country, as well as its parliament, are content to view it; especially when the tax thus imposed, is imposed upon that class of the community which is composed of the distressed members of all the other classes, and by so fast a friend to the rights of the people and to liberty, and to juries, and to the laws which forbid the levying money upon the people without consent of parliament, and to the magna charta which forbids the delaying of justice, and to the magna charta which forbids the sale of justice, and to the magna charta which forbids the denial of justice (whether by putting a price upon it beyond what they have to give, or otherwise) as the noble Ex-Chancellor, then Chancellor, legislating with the advice and consent of his right honourable subordinate, whose experience in equity business found such a contrast to that of the common-law-learned novice.† —See note †, next page.

Thus, from this Table, it appears, that of the four great Westminster-Hall Courts, there is not one in which the principle of taking the property of the distressed to make fortunes for court favourites, or, in the orator’s language, to “make it the origin of families, and the foundation of wealth and honours,” was not applied,—not one in which the application of it is not to this very day continued. A natural question here is—how in so great a length of time it comes to have made so small a progress? The answer is—that in the hands of the King, this mine having, soon after its discovery, been worked too openly and too rapidly, the consequence was, that the thus working of it received the check we hear so much of, and care so little about; and that from that time it was given up to those useful servants of his, whose professional dexterity was now become necessary to enable a man, when working under the Rose, to make a living profit out of it.

The earliest instance, of which any effect or memory is now remaining is, as the table shows, of as early a date as the reign of Henry the Second. Soon after him came King John, whom, besides his Magna Charta, so many details that have come down to us on record prove to have kept an open shop for the sale of the commodity which went by the name of justice, and in which the prices were not then in any sort, as at present they are in some sort, fixed. In King John’s reign comes this Magna Charta, and thenceforward, so far as concerned the sort of “public service” rendered by the Gavestons, the Spencers, and the Mortimers, this source of “permanent reward to public service” was nearly dried up; and for what few drops have here and there been collected by the successors of those accomplished gentlemen, they have been forced to enter into a sort of partnership with the gentlemen of the long robe.

Had it not been for the obstruction just mentioned, the present amount of that part of the produce of the stamp duties which is levied upon those who are distressed, whether by or for want of the commodity sold under the name of justice, would have composed but a part, and that a small one, of that part of public money which would have followed the fate of the crown lands, under and by virtue of the principle thus maintained by Holt, and fattened upon by Somers.—

I say, but a small part: for had the mine continued in individual hands, with the power and capital of the King openly employed, as under King John, in backing them, it would have continued to be worked with that zeal and consequent success, by which labour in private is, so much to its advantage, distinguished from labour on public account: and supposing any remnants of it, as of the crown lands, to be still remaining, the Percevals of the present day, instead of being occupied in the augmentation of those taxes on distress for the benefit of rich and poor together, defending inch by inch, and not always without loss, those parts of the produce which stand appropriated to the enrichment of the rich, would have been exclusively employed in the more agreeable occupation of giving additional breadth to “the foundation of wealth as well as honours” upon the plan here sketched out by Edmund Burke, and with as little reserve or mystery as was found necessary by King John, in the halcyon part of his days.

In the court of Chancery there exists a set of men called from their number the sixty clerks, whose situation is something compounded of or intermediate between, that of an officer of the court, and that of an attorney.

They are officers of the court, inasmuch as, through an intermediate nomination, they are nominated by a subordinate judge of the court (the Master of the Rolls,) and inasmuch as in every cause the parties on each side are obliged to employ one or other of them: they are attorneys, inasmuch as they are agents of the parties, and, on each side of a cause, the party or parties, through the medium of their respective attorneys (called here solicitors,) have their choice which of them to employ.

In the same court there exists another set of men called the six clerks, whose situation seems to be purely that of an officer of the court. To each of these six clerks belongs the nomination of ten out of the sixty clerks; which nominations he either sells or gives, whichever mode of disposition happens in each instance to be most for his advantage.a

Of these six clerks, the nomination belongs to the Master of the Rolls for the time being: which nomination, like the Lord Chancellor and Chief Justices of the King’s Bench, and Common Pleas, he in like manner either sells or gives, according to the mode of disposition that happens to be most to his advantage.

The greater the annual value of a sixty clerk’s place, the greater the value of the place of a six clerk who has the gift or sale of it. The greater the value of a six clerk’s place, the greater the emolument of the place of the Master of the Rolls who has the gift or sale of it.

By order of the Court of Chancery, dated 26th February 1807, signed by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Erskine, and by the Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant, by whose advice and assistance he states himself as acting therein, a new “schedule of fees” is established and authorized to be taken by each one of those sixty clerks:—fees described in so many articles, 43 in number, and the amount avowedly increased in the instance of each article.

A prior instance had been found, in which, in like manner, viz. by a law enacted in the same way by the joint authority of the two judges, bearing the same offices, money had in this way, about the middle of last century, been levied upon those children of distress called suitors without consent of parliament. Coupled with power, sinister interest begets precedent, and precedent begets, or rather precedent is, law.

Of the two modes in which, without consent or privity of parliament, law is made by the sole authority of the King’s nominees in the character of judges, this (it must however be confessed) is beyond comparison the least mischievous; it not involving, as the other does, the attribute of uncognoscibility, and the tyranny of an ex post facto law.

[* ]Their co-operators within doors by hundreds, and without doors by millions, he would have us believe, having had no share in the business, or at least no merit in it. These men stand up in a room (absit verbo invidia) and pronounce a set of phrases, and by these men alone (we are desired to believe) by these men alone it is, that everything that is done, is done.

[* ]Part I. [Vide Advertisement, p. 278.]

[* ]Vide Advertisement, p. 278.

[* ]That the thread of the rhetoric may be under view in its entire state, and without a break, here follows the whole passage:—

“Sir, I think myself bound to give you my reasons as clearly and as fully, for stopping in the course of reformation as for proceeding in it. My limits are the rules of law; the rules of policy; and the service of the state. This is the reason why I am not able to intermeddle with another article, which seems to be a specific object in several of the petitions; I mean the reduction of exorbitant emoluments to efficient offices. If I knew of any real efficient office which did possess exorbitant emoluments”—continues he; and then comes the profession of the hypothetical and hypocritical wish to reduce them, as above.

“Rules of law,”—“rules of policy,”—“service of the state,”—all these quiddities may here be seen held up to view, as so many distinct limits, serving as bars to reformation, let down, on this occasion, for the particular purpose of stopping the reduction of exorbitant emoluments: precious bars composed of rhetorical jargon, void of meaning. “Rules of law,”—no attempt to bring forward any such rule: nor could any such attempt have been other than an absurd one. “Rules of law?” Yes, to a judicatory. But to the legislator, what sort of a bar can that be, which is removed or broken through of course, at every step he takes.—“Rules of policy,” and “the service of the state,”—the same idea; as, in a strolling company, the same performer brought on upon the stage twice over, in two different dresses.

[* ]“This rule,” continues he, p. 67, “this rule, like every other, may admit its exceptions. When a great man has some one great object in view, to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads, and, if his fortune permits it, to hold himself out as a splendid example. I am told,” continues he, “that something of this kind is now doing in a country near us. But this is for a short race—the training for a heat or two, and not the proper preparation for the regular stages of a methodical journey. I am speaking of establishments, and not of men.”

As to the splendid example he was here alluding to, it was that of Necker; and here, as the sequel showed, the orator was completely in the wrong. What he could not make himself believe, or at least could not bear that others should believe, was, that this training of Necker’s (meaning the serving in the office of finance minister without salary) could last for more than “a heat or two.” It lasted, however, during the whole of “journey,” nor that an “unmethodical” one. He did more than serve the public without being paid for it: he trusted the public, that child of his own adoption, with his own money—with the greatest part of his own money: and that public—that “base and profligate,” though, in a pecuniary sense, not in general corrupt, trustee of his, betrayed its trust.

[† ]Viz. in the instances of loans, lotteries, and victualling contracts.—See Mr. Rose’s Observations, &c. pp. 26 to 31.

[† ]After all, it was not by the “excellent” Lord Somers that this profundity of policy was, or, considering the side taken by him, could consistently have been displayed. It was to another “excellent” law-lord, though not noble lord, viz. the Lord Chief-Justice Holt, that the glory of it should have been ascribed.

“Rewards and punishments,” says he “are the supporters of all governments:—and for that reason it is that there ought to be a power in all governments to reward persons that deserve well:”a —proof sufficient to the excellent Lord Chief-Justice that it was no more than right and fitting, that it should always be, and so long as anything was left, remain in the King’s power, to give away, to anybody he pleased, whatsoever part of the people’s money he could contrive to lay his hands on.

“But it is to be objected,” says the excellent Lord Chief-Justice, “that the power in the King of alienating his revenues may be a prejudice to his people, to whom he must recur continually for supplies.” But to this objection, the excellent Chief-Justice had his answer ready:—“I answer,” says he, “that the law has not such dishonourable thoughts of the King, as to imagine he will do anything amiss to his people in those things in which he has power so to do.” Reason sufficient with the excellent Chief-Justice to trust the King thus in the lump, with the arbitrary and uncontrouled disposal of men’s properties;—reason not less sufficient might it have been, for trusting the same royal person, on the same terms, with their liberties and their lives. This was Whig common law. What more could a King have had or wished for, from Tory common law?

This theory, then, which to the views of our orator being so convenient, was in the judgment of the orator so “excellent:”—this theory was the theory—not of the excellent Lord Keeper, but of the excellent Lord Chief-Justice. Not that by this mistake of John for Thomas any very material injustice was done to the excellent Lord Keeper; for, in this instance, if anything was wanting in theory (not that any such deficiency appears) it was made up in practice.

To the profits of the office—those profits, for an eventual supplement to which even Lord Eldon required, or at least obtained, not more than a floating £4000 a-year—these profits not being sufficient for “making reward the origin of that family;” for affording to it a sufficiently broad “foundation of wealth as well as of honours,”—a pension for life of £4000 a-year was added: £4000 a-year, then equal at least to £12,000 a-year now. This, as not being in fee, being still insufficient, an estate,b which was and is in fee, was added: an estate which, according to his own admission and valuation made for the purpose, was producing at that time no more than a poor £2100 a-year, if the statement thus given in general terms by the learned and noble grantee for the purpose of his defence against an impeachment, is to be taken for correct: how much at present, is best known to some noble or not noble proprietor or other, related or not related, into whose hands it has passed.

But this £4000 a-year, and this £2100 a-year, and this £12,000 a-year, more or less, these et cæteras, were they, any of them, ever begged for by the excellent lord? Oh no: so he himself expressly assures us:—begged for, no more than the tellership was begged for by Mr. Yorke. These are of the number of those gracious designs, which, till the very moment of their taking effect, are never known of. While the eyes of the right honourable person are, as usual, fixed on heaven, the grant is slipped into his pocket, and when, putting in his hand by accident, he feels it there, his astonishment is not inferior to his gratitude.a

Note, that for no such expense as this, in so rare an article as wisdom, was there any the smallest need. In the time of Charles the Second (the Bank of England not as yet born or thought of) money to the amount of “above a million,” (a vast sum in those days) part their own, part that of their customers, having been lent to the King by a set of bankers, was by him, the said King, converted to his own use: in court English, “the Exchequer was shut up.”

In a succeeding reign, viz. that of King William, the question was, whether there was power in the crown, sufficient for applying a particular branch of its revenues in part restitution of the profit of this robbery. Yes, says this Lord Chief-Justice: for the branch in question (a new one—a portion of the excise) was given to the King in exchange for an old branch, viz. the branch called “wards and liveries.” Whoever has an estate in fee, may alienate it: in the “wards and liveries” the King had an estate in fee!—the excise was by act of Parliament given to him in lieu of those “wards and liveries:” and what is more, by the express words of the act, he was and is empowered to alienate it. This, supposing the construction put upon the act not inconsistent with the words of it, might, one should have thought, have sufficed for argument. But this would not have sufficed to show the learned lord’s acquaintance as above with the depths of policy: nor yet the “honourable thoughts” entertained of the King by the law:—and so, ex abundantiâ, the sage reasons that have been seen were added.

Whatsoever money the King could contrive to lay his hands upon, that the virtuous Whig Chief-Justice was content to see him waste. Why? For this plain reason: because “the law has not”—(i. e. he, his predecessors and colleagues, had not) any such dishonourable thoughts of the King “as to imagine he will do anything amiss to his people in those things in which he has power so to do.”

And what was the incident that called forth their effusion of faith and confidence? It was that of a king having robbed his subjects: robbed them of so much money—and for what? to hire men with, for robbing in conjunction with their enemiesa —for robbing and murdering their allies.b

Now, therefore, in my humble conception of the matter—whosoever it was that went thus far, whether it was the excellent Lord-keeper, whether it was the virtuous and intrepid Whig Chief-Justice went so far, it is no very easy matter to imagine how the learned colleagues of the Chief-Justice, or any of them, should (as Edmund Burke says they did) “go further:” and that for any imaginable set of existing circumstances, for any imaginable purpose of accommodation, convenience, reward of merit, reward of eminent services, and so forth—not to speak of reasonable, useful, and honest purposes:—it went far enough of all conscience.

Of these “honourable thoughts” one effect was to reduce to such a state of debility the learned thinker’s learned imagination, as to disable it from representing to him as possible, a state of things which his memory, if consulted upon the occasion, could not but have represented to him as realized, and that no more than seven years before: that state of things expressed—the half of it by the lawyer’s word abdication, the whole of it by the people’s word revolution, but for which (I mean the revolution,) his master could not have been a King, nor himself a Lord Chief-Justice. This master of his was now King: and now, whatsoever power the King has, is become incapable of being used amiss; misuse being in such hands either the same thing as use, or (what comes to the same thing) converted into use.

This is the way the sort of a thing called common law is made. Not content with exercising the power which he has, nothing will serve a man but he must display the wisdom which he has not: he bewilders himself and raves: and his ravings as often as it happens to them to suit the interest or the humour of those that come after him, these ravings of his become law.

Principles and practice together, nothing could be better matched: practice found by the excellent Lord-Keeper—principles by the excellent Lord Chief-Justice.

Note, that while lawyers as well as favourites were thus fattening (for the reign of William, though a reign of salvation for England and for Europe, was a reign of waste and favouritism,) the State, for want of common necessaries, was continually on the brink of ruin: expense unprecedented, ways and means scanty, deficiencies abundant, losses distressing, credit at death’s door.

[* ]Burke. p. 62, in the paragraph immediately preceding the one above quoted:—“I know, too, that it will be demanded of me how it comes, that since I admit these offices” (sinecures) “to be no better than pensions, I chose, after the principle of law had been satisfied,” (meaning the principle, with how little propriety soever it can be termed a principle of law, the principle of policy and humanity, that forbids the abolition of them, though it be by the legislature, to the prejudice of existing rights of property, i. e. without adequate compensation) “I chose to retain them at all.” This being the question, now, reader, whether you have, or have not, read Part I. of this Tract, Chapter III. On Sinecures,a be pleased to observe the answer—“To this, Sir, I answer, that conceiving it to be a fundamental part of the constitution of this country, and of the reason of state in every country, that there must be means of rewarding public service, these means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insufficient for that purpose, if there should be no further reward for that service than the daily wages it receives during the pleasure of the Crown.”

Thus far Edmund Burke: and thus far, and without inverted commas, or any other token of adoption, the existing Committee on Finance, (3d Report, p. 126,) substituting only for the words—“To this, Sir, I answer, that conceiving” the words “at the same time regarding.”

Here we see what, according to the logic of the rhetorician, constitutesa sufficient reason why the quantity of annual emolument in question should not be put into the shape of pension, but be continued in the shape of sinecure. And this is the flourish which, with the question between sinecures and pensions before their eyes, the committee copy: and though like the orator in the way of concession, exhibit not the less in the character of a “fundamental part of the constitution of this country.”

This principle consists in the habit, which under common law is the same thing as the power, of creating offices, with fees annexed to the same, and receivable by the officers successively invested with the same: of creating these fee-gathering offices, or, what comes to the same thing, annexing more and more fees to offices of this sort already created; fees that, as taxes, are exacted by the sole authority of some official person or persons, without allowance, special or general, from the representatives of the people in parliament.

This principle may be seen flourishing to this day, and with unabated vigour; for so long as the word tax is not mentioned, and instead of a contribution to a tax, the money levied is called a fee, and instead of the pocket of the public, the pocket it goes into is that of the imposer, and the assembly in the composition of which the people have some share, have no share in the imposition of it, nothing can exceed the acquiescence and complacency with which the good people of this country, as well as its parliament, are content to view it; especially when the tax thus imposed, is imposed upon that class of the community which is composed of the distressed members of all the other classes, and by so fast a friend to the rights of the people and to liberty, and to juries, and to the laws which forbid the levying money upon the people without consent of parliament, and to the magna charta which forbids the delaying of justice, and to the magna charta which forbids the sale of justice, and to the magna charta which forbids the denial of justice (whether by putting a price upon it beyond what they have to give, or otherwise) as the noble Ex-Chancellor, then Chancellor, legislating with the advice and consent of his right honourable subordinate, whose experience in equity business found such a contrast to that of the common-law-learned novice.† —See note †, next page.

Thus, from this Table, it appears, that of the four great Westminster-Hall Courts, there is not one in which the principle of taking the property of the distressed to make fortunes for court favourites, or, in the orator’s language, to “make it the origin of families, and the foundation of wealth and honours,” was not applied,—not one in which the application of it is not to this very day continued. A natural question here is—how in so great a length of time it comes to have made so small a progress? The answer is—that in the hands of the King, this mine having, soon after its discovery, been worked too openly and too rapidly, the consequence was, that the thus working of it received the check we hear so much of, and care so little about; and that from that time it was given up to those useful servants of his, whose professional dexterity was now become necessary to enable a man, when working under the Rose, to make a living profit out of it.

The earliest instance, of which any effect or memory is now remaining is, as the table shows, of as early a date as the reign of Henry the Second. Soon after him came King John, whom, besides his Magna Charta, so many details that have come down to us on record prove to have kept an open shop for the sale of the commodity which went by the name of justice, and in which the prices were not then in any sort, as at present they are in some sort, fixed. In King John’s reign comes this Magna Charta, and thenceforward, so far as concerned the sort of “public service” rendered by the Gavestons, the Spencers, and the Mortimers, this source of “permanent reward to public service” was nearly dried up; and for what few drops have here and there been collected by the successors of those accomplished gentlemen, they have been forced to enter into a sort of partnership with the gentlemen of the long robe.

Had it not been for the obstruction just mentioned, the present amount of that part of the produce of the stamp duties which is levied upon those who are distressed, whether by or for want of the commodity sold under the name of justice, would have composed but a part, and that a small one, of that part of public money which would have followed the fate of the crown lands, under and by virtue of the principle thus maintained by Holt, and fattened upon by Somers.—

I say, but a small part: for had the mine continued in individual hands, with the power and capital of the King openly employed, as under King John, in backing them, it would have continued to be worked with that zeal and consequent success, by which labour in private is, so much to its advantage, distinguished from labour on public account: and supposing any remnants of it, as of the crown lands, to be still remaining, the Percevals of the present day, instead of being occupied in the augmentation of those taxes on distress for the benefit of rich and poor together, defending inch by inch, and not always without loss, those parts of the produce which stand appropriated to the enrichment of the rich, would have been exclusively employed in the more agreeable occupation of giving additional breadth to “the foundation of wealth as well as honours” upon the plan here sketched out by Edmund Burke, and with as little reserve or mystery as was found necessary by King John, in the halcyon part of his days.

In the court of Chancery there exists a set of men called from their number the sixty clerks, whose situation is something compounded of or intermediate between, that of an officer of the court, and that of an attorney.

They are officers of the court, inasmuch as, through an intermediate nomination, they are nominated by a subordinate judge of the court (the Master of the Rolls,) and inasmuch as in every cause the parties on each side are obliged to employ one or other of them: they are attorneys, inasmuch as they are agents of the parties, and, on each side of a cause, the party or parties, through the medium of their respective attorneys (called here solicitors,) have their choice which of them to employ.

In the same court there exists another set of men called the six clerks, whose situation seems to be purely that of an officer of the court. To each of these six clerks belongs the nomination of ten out of the sixty clerks; which nominations he either sells or gives, whichever mode of disposition happens in each instance to be most for his advantage.a

Of these six clerks, the nomination belongs to the Master of the Rolls for the time being: which nomination, like the Lord Chancellor and Chief Justices of the King’s Bench, and Common Pleas, he in like manner either sells or gives, according to the mode of disposition that happens to be most to his advantage.

The greater the annual value of a sixty clerk’s place, the greater the value of the place of a six clerk who has the gift or sale of it. The greater the value of a six clerk’s place, the greater the emolument of the place of the Master of the Rolls who has the gift or sale of it.

By order of the Court of Chancery, dated 26th February 1807, signed by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Erskine, and by the Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant, by whose advice and assistance he states himself as acting therein, a new “schedule of fees” is established and authorized to be taken by each one of those sixty clerks:—fees described in so many articles, 43 in number, and the amount avowedly increased in the instance of each article.

A prior instance had been found, in which, in like manner, viz. by a law enacted in the same way by the joint authority of the two judges, bearing the same offices, money had in this way, about the middle of last century, been levied upon those children of distress called suitors without consent of parliament. Coupled with power, sinister interest begets precedent, and precedent begets, or rather precedent is, law.

Of the two modes in which, without consent or privity of parliament, law is made by the sole authority of the King’s nominees in the character of judges, this (it must however be confessed) is beyond comparison the least mischievous; it not involving, as the other does, the attribute of uncognoscibility, and the tyranny of an ex post facto law.

[a ]Modern Reports, Vol. V. pp. 54, 55; 7 Will. III. The banker’s case.

[b ]The manor or manors of Rygate and Howleigh, which according to the Tory House of Commons were at that time worth upwards of £12,000, but according to the noble and excellent defendant “far short” of that “value:” though how far short, he was not pleased to say: also divers other good gifts, the amount of which became the matter of so many disputes, which, the impeachment of the excellent lord not having come to a trial, was never settled.—Vide State Trials, Vol. V. pp. 350, 351, 352.

[a ]Of the relative quantity of the slice thus taken, relation being had to the quantity left, some conception may be formed from a note of Mr. Rose’s, in his “Observations respecting the public expenditure and the influence of the crown,” 2d edition, 1810. “In fifteen years to 1715, the whole income from crown lands (says he) including rents, fines, and grants of all sorts, was £22,624, equal to £1,500 a-year.”—Journals of H. C., Vol. XX. p. 520.

[a ]The French.

[b ]The Dutch.

[a ]See Advertisement p. 278.

[† ]No. I. List of Law Sinecures, granted in fee, with the masses of emolument respectively attached to them; gleaned and put together from the reports of the Finance Committee of the year 1797-8 and 1807-8: distinguishing as well the different descriptions of the Offices and Officers in question, as the different masses of emolument respectively received at the two different periods, as exhibited by the two committees: with references to the Nos. of the Appendixes and pages of the two Reports; the Reports being—of those of the committee of 1797-8, the 29th, and of those of the committee of 1807-8, the 3d.

[a ]Harrison’s Chancery, I. 61, Ord. Can. 83.