With the exception of the first sum, the remainder are taken from the estimates of 1816, which are the latest submitted to parliament. The total exhibits the personal expense of the chief magistrate, without including the charge for diplomatic service, the salaries of the judges, or other extraneous outgoing. It is the cost of a king, upon which we shall make no reflections, institute no invidious comparisons with the United States, nor contrast the unmeaning ceremonies, the irksome etiquette, the costly pageantry of royalty, and the few vapid sentences dropped at the opening and closing of every session of parliament, with the simple dignity and utility of the presidential office, and the able annual exposé of the American president; neither shall we surmise, for a moment, whether the country would be better or worse, supposing we had no king at all; the expenditure applied to relieve public burthens, and the government carried on, both in name and reality, by the ministers of the Oligarchy." When we see," says Rabelais, "the print of Garagantua, that has a mouth as large as an oven, and swallows at one meal twelve hundred pounds of bread, twenty oxen, a hundred sheep, six hundred fowls, fifteen hundred horses, two thousand quails, a thousand barrels of wine, six hundred peaches, five hundred pine-apples, &c. &c. who does not say-That is the mouth of a KING?"

The subject is far from being exhausted; and, indeed, it is not easy to give a clear view of the various branches of the royal expenditure. The civil list allowance, as settled on the late king, agreeably to the extravagant estimate of lord Castlereagh in 1816, was £1,057,000; more than half of which was expended as above, the remainder in salaries and allowances. In this expenditure is not included the annuity of £50,000 per annum to Prince Coburg, nor various pensions and grants to the royal family. Besides which is another gross item called civil list contingencies, of uncertain amount, consisting of charges for repairs of public buildings, presents to foreign ministers, and the expense of entertaining them; the outfit and charges of ambassadors and consuls, and the expenses of commissions of inquiry: all these sums form what may be properly called the civil list expenditure. In 1817, parliament voted £500,000 for civil list contingencies; in 1818, £700,000; in subsequent years £300,000; and in the last year this outgoing was reduced to £167,354. The whole expenditure in the departments, either now or formerly appertaining to the civil list, when this branch of the public service was last settled, may be thus classed, from the Annual Finance Accounts for the year ending 5th of January, 1821.

Pensions on Hereditary Revenue of Excise and Post-Office
Mint .....

27,700

13,800

Civil Government in Scotland (Pensions and Salaries).
Permanent Charges in Ireland

132,081

381,504

Total....£2,631,253

A few of the items comprised in the Civil List Contingencies of the past year will sufficiently illustrate this branch of the public expenditure.

Sums expended under the Head of Civil List Contingencies in the year 1829. Parl. Paper, No. 127, Session 1830.

Lord Heytesbury, ambassador at the court of Russia; in reimbursement of the expenses incurred by him in his journey from London to the head quarters of his Imperial Majesty on the Danube, from thence to Odessa, and during a protracted stay in that city, besides various incidental expenses incurred whilst accompanying his Imperial Majesty in the field..

Ditto; for post-office charges at Odessa and at St. Petersburgh, travelling expenses from Odessa to St. Petersburgh, expense of putting the establishment of the embassy into mourning on the death of the Empress Mother, and allowances to the paid attaché and chancery messenger to the embassy, in the four quarters ended 30th September, 1829..

Henry W. W. Wynn, envoy at the court of Denmark; for post-office
charges and expenses of illuminations on the marriage of Prince
Frederick and Princess Wilhelmina, in the three quarters ended
31st March, 1829 ..

Lord Erskine, envoy at the court of Bavaria; for post-office charges, and
in a journey performed by his lordship on his Majesty's service, in
the six quarters ending 30th September, 1829....
E. C. Disbrowe, envoy at the court of Stutgardt; in reimbursement of
the expenses incurred by him in transporting from London to Studgardt,
his baggage and effects

George Bosanquet, chargé d'affaires at the court of Spain; for post-
office charges, expenses of two general illuminations at Madrid, the
actual expense incurred by him for the rent of the house for the British
mission at Madrid beyond the allowance granted to him under that
head, journeys performed by him on his Majesty's service, loss by
exchange on his salary, expense attending his Catholic Majesty at
Aranjuez, and in repairing and painting the royal arms affixed to the
house of the British minister at Madrid, in the five quarters ended
30th September, 1829

£1,348

1,305

252

381

272

1,585

The amount issued to reimburse his Majesty's ministers residing at foreign courts, the fees paid at the Treasury and Exchequer offices, on the receipt of their respective salaries, for the year and a half ended 5th July, 1829

....£11,108

Robert Gordon, to provide for expense of outfit and equipage, as ambassador to the Ottoman Porte

2,125

2,500

...

Henry Unwin Addington, to provide for expense of outfit and equipage,
as envoy at the court of Spain
Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, in discharge of their bill for gold snuff-
boxes, &c. as presents from his Majesty to foreign ministers
The expense incurred for a diamond aigrette, furnished as a present from
his Majesty to the Grand Signior

4,554

2,100

The amount expended for furniture, ironmongery, matting, papering,
lamps, &c. for public offices in Whitehall and Westminster..
Ditto, for colours for the Foot Guards..

2,798

1,278

Ditto, for chapel plate and furniture for the governors of Tobago,
Barbadoes, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Bermuda, and Grenada
Ditto, for furniture for his Majesty's yacht the Royal Sovereign
Ditto, for furniture for the Prince Regent

1,670

48

10

Ditto, for the attendance in the House of Lords of the gentleman usher
of the black rod, and for repairing the crown and the black rod
Ditto, for robes, collar, plate, &c. for knights of the several orders,
badge for marshal of the ceremonies, picture for his Majesty's
ambassador at St. Petersburgh, &c. ...

The charge for lighting St. James's Park with gas, in the year ended 25th December, 1827

126

1,169

835

The commission for inquiring into the state of the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Mauritius, on account of salary and contingent expenses 9,184 The commission for inquiring into and reporting upon the administration of criminal law in the West Indies, on account of salary and contingent expenses .... The sub-commissioners of records and their assistants, in reward for the duty performed by them in methodizing the public records, under the orders of the commissioners on public records, as recommended by those commissioners

........

For the conveyance, in H. M. ship Aurora, of the Bishop of Barbadoes and suite, for the purpose of his lordship's visiting the southern part of his diocese.....

....

To defray the expense of house-rent for the Lord Bishop of Barbadoes,
from the 28th January, 1828, to the 12th August, 1829
The amount paid for relief of certain distressed Spanish subjects residing
in this country, wholly without the means of subsistence, who had been
employed with the British army, or under British authorities in Spain,
or who had otherwise rendered service to our military operations in
that country

3,427

6,624

94

508

... 18,040

Amount issued to Sir Robert Chester, in lieu of the per centage which the master and assistant-master of the ceremonies formerly received upon presents made by his Majesty to foreign ministers, &c. in the year 1828

Amount issued to Mr. P. Grillon, being the balance due to him for the entertainment of her Majesty the Queen of Portugal and suite, at his hotel in Albemarle-street..

Payment in Ireland to sundry persons, as of his Majesty's bounty, for the years 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829

650

611

2,386

The Civil List Act of the last reign is worthy of the profligate administration from which it proceeded. The principle of the regulation was to prevent future arrear in the royal expenditure; and this was

accomplished, first, by relieving the civil list of all public charges of an expensive and fluctuating amount; and, secondly, by granting to the king an allowance framed on the most extravagant scale of expenditure ever known in this country, and such as experience had shown to be adequate to his most lavish demands. By these precautions, and with the hereditary revenues always ready to meet any unexpected outgoing, it would have been wonderful had not the scheme realised the expectations of the projectors. Another feature in lord Castlereagh's bill was the appointment of an entire new officer under the name of auditor of the civil list. The latter regulation can excite no surprise; for it is mostly observed, in any attempts at reform and retrenchment, ministers generally contrive to keep up the same amount of patronage by some new creations. An instance of this was afforded in the consolidation of the revenue departments of England and Ireland, when a vice-treasurer and his deputy were appointed, with a salary of £3000 a-year, apparently for no other object than to keep up the influence of the Crown. Again, when the further granting of pensions from the Leeward-Islands-fund was prohibited, ministers set up the West-India church-establishment. The functions of the auditor of the civil list are to superintend the accounts of the lord chamberlain, lord steward, and master of the horse; but certainly these were the duties which ought to have been performed by the heads of these departments, and for which they receive their salaries. Were it probable the public would be better secured against profusion in the royal expenditure when confided to the watchful vigilance of a commoner than when confided to three peers of the realm? The precaution was futile; but answered the purpose of a pretext for dipping into the pockets of the people. Mr. Herries was the first auditor appointed; his previous office, commissary-in-chief, had been abolished, and, we presume, ministers were at a loss how otherwise to dispose of him.

EXPENDITURE

AND ROYAL DEBTS DURING THE LATE REIGNS.

The state of the civil list has varied so much during the reigns of George III. and IV., that it may be useful to give a brief sketch of the total amount of public money applied to the support of this department of expenditure, and in extricating the Crown and the members of the royal family from pecuniary embarrassments.

At the commencement of the reign of George III. the king accepted the fixed sum of £800,000 per annum in lieu of the hereditary, temporary, and other revenues. This sum was successively augmented by parliament as follows:

Surplus of exchequer fees, applied by 23 Geo. III. c. 82..
Surplus of Scotch revenues, applied by 50 Geo. III. c. 87..

£50,000 10,000

In 1804, when £60,000 was added, the civil list was relieved of annual charges to the amount of £82,000. The debts of the king, paid by parliament, were as follows:

Parliament granted, towards the extraordinary expenses of 1814, £100,000, making £3,213,061; and in January, 1815, there was a further debt on the civil list to the amount of £421,355. To these grants to the king must be added the monies granted to the royal family, and to defray those charges of which the civil list had been relieved, amounting to £9,561,396.* Besides which there was applied, either in aid of the civil list, or to liquidate arrears thereon, £1,653,717 out of the hereditary revenues.t So far brings the royal expenditure to January, 1815. In the following year the civil list expenditure amounted to £1,480,000; making the total expenditure, from the accession of George III. to January, 1816, £64,740,032.

This brings us down to the period when there was a general parliamentary investigation of the civil list; and when it was settled on the basis on which it continued, without material alteration, till the recent demise of the Crown. As we have before explained the nature of lord Castlereagh's settlement, (p. 162,) and the vast augmentation the civil list received, we shall not repeat our statement, further than by recapitulating the chief provisions.

In 1816 the civil list was relieved of public charges to the amount of £255,768, and the future provision for it was fixed at the sum of £1,083,729. £100,000 more was granted for the support of the establishment of George III. at Windsor-castle, and £10,000 per annum to Queen Charlotte, afterwards continued to the Duke of York, for superintendence. In the same year £60,000 was voted for the establishment of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Coburg. With the exception of the saving of £10,000, by the premature death of the Princess of Wales, in 1817, all these arrangements continued until the

* Parl. Report on the Civil List, Session 1815.-Ordered to be reprinted July 6, 1830.

+ Ibid. p. 5.