required £78,750 additional, to complete this monstrous undertaking, which does not include the charge for furnishing the palace.* The formation of Regent-street was estimated to cost £368,000. From first to last it has cost £1,833,000. The rents of the houses do not exceed £36,000, being under 2 per cent. per annum on the outlay. Had not this undertaking been left to the management of Mr. Nash, it might, by this time, have produced three or four times the present rental. The Charing-cross improvements were estimated to cost £850,000, they have already cost £1,147,000. The Strand improvements are estimated to cost £748,000, but Mr. Arbuthnot now admits there will be an exceeding on this estimate of £95,000. With the purpose of the street-improvements no fault can be justly found. Some of them already are, and others no doubt will be, both useful and ornamental to the Metropolis; and if the land-revenue had not be drawn upon, recourse must have been had to the consolidated fund. The chief objections that can be urged against them are the disproportion between the original estimate and the expenditure; the questionable taste displayed in some of the plans, and to the individuals employed to superintend their execution. For example, Mr. Nash, according to the report of a parliamentary committee," became a lessee of the Crown while acting as its agent and surveyor, and in his capacity of the crown-surveyor actually reported on the buildings erected by himself, upon the ground of which he was the lessee."t Other and more serious charges have been alleged against this gentleman, but as they have not been so clearly established we pass them over. Throughout we have used the term crown lands; they are in fact not the lands of the Crown, but of the public. Ever since the reign of Queen Anne a life-annuity has been granted to the sovereign in lieu of the produce of the hereditary revenues. Hence results the mal-appropriation in lavishing these funds in aid of the royal expenditure. Surely the civil list of the late King was ample enough, not only to defray his personal outgoings, but to maintain his own establishments. The The palace jobs have yielded splendid pickings to the upholsterers. Messrs. Morel and Seddon's estimates for furnishing Windsor Castle amounted to £143,000, which were paid to them; but the bills they delivered were for £203,963, leaving a balance of £60,963. A parliamentary committee demurred to the payment of so large a balance over the estimates. Certain persons, deemed competent judges, were appointed to examine the charges for selected articles of furniture which the committee thought would be a criterion whereby to judge whether the general charges of the bills were extravagant. But the gentlemen nominated by the Treasury to appraise, after a preliminary inspection, declined the task, the furniture being of that peculiar sort, they were incapable of forming an estimate of its value. Messrs. Morel and Seddon next delivered a statement of the sums actually expended by them in materials, labour, and trade charges, and the profit accruing, which statement was verified by an inspection of their books by Mr. Abbott, an accountant. Witnesses were then examined as to the FAIR PROFIT which ought to be charged by upholsterers, and the result was the bill of Morel and Seddon, originally £203,963: 6:5, was reduced to £179,300; 13: 9. + Parl. Paper, No. 343, vol. iii. Session 1829. acts of parliament, establishing the administration of the Woods and Forests, require that the revenues arising therefrom shall be expended in objects of public utility. Was the purchase of Claremont, as a residence for Prince Coburg, or the giving of a slice off Hyde-park to the Duke of Wellington, to round the area of Apsley-house, objects of this nature? Or can the parks and palaces be considered such? These last are often very haughtily and insultingly described as solely for the use, recreation, and enjoyment of the King. Let the King then defray, we say, the expense of them. During the late extravagant reign the people were very contemptuously treated as regards these matters. They were often capriciously excluded from the parks; prohibited from being seen in certain walks-restricted from entering here or walking there- and all these fantastic regulations to interdict the enjoyment of their own property, and the expense of maintaining which was defrayed out of their own pockets. Waterloo-place, Regent's Park, and Windsor-park, afford examples of royal or official whims which will be easily recollected. Under William IV. there appears a disposition to conciliate popular feeling, but the treatment of the public by his predecessor was intolerable. We shall now lay before the reader a return of the present income and expenditure on account of the crown lands. It is for the year ending 5th January, 1829, and it is abstracted from the last triennial Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. After that we shall subjoin an estimate of the present value of the crown estates, submitted, by Mr. Harvey, to the House of Commons, March 30th, 1830. INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE LAND-REVENUES. Total income for the year ending January 5, 1829.... £525,750 0 ORDINARY EXPENDITURE. Ancient stipends, including payments to schools, chapels, churches, &c .... Collection of rents, including allowances to receivers Local disbursements by receivers, and allowances to tenants ... ... Expenses of the establishment of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, surveyors, officers, &c..... Salaries to auditors and assistants.. Law-charges .... Payments to architects, surveyors, &c. expenses of jour- Fees on acts of parliament, enrolling of leases, &c. Total ordinary expenditure. 3 St. James's, Greenwich, Hyde, Windsor, and other royal parks...... In purchase of estates and payments to Board of Works for Buckingham-palace.. Transferred to the Regent-street fund Balance, 5th January, 1829 ESTIMATE of the Value of the Crown Lands, independently of the Woods and Forests, and of that Portion which may be considered to belong exclusively to the Royal Person. ...... ...... £130,000 15,000,000 One hundred and thirty manors and royalties, at £1000 rents at £50,000 per annum. 360,000 Carried forward......£17,490.000 Mr. Harvey committed an oversight in estimating the Middlesex groundLast year they produced £105,000, and when the leases fall in will be worth, according to the estimate of Mr. Huskisson, £500,000. Instead of two, their present worth is, at least, four millions. Brought forward....£17,490,000 Waste lands in forests not fit for oak timber, 86,000 acres, at £5 per acre Church livings Fee-farm-rents, and other unimproveable payments, in England Irish estates 430,000 100,000 150,000 242,500 2,000,000 Total......£20,412,500 N. B. The above estimate is exclusive of mines of coal, tin, and copper, and also of the Duchy of Lancaster, £30,000. Davenant, in his Treatise on the Lands of England, estimates the common rights of the Crown at 300,000 acres. The estimate of the value of the land-revenues does not include the royal forests. In some of these are intermingling rights, and the Crown has no property in the soil. Such are New Forest and the forests of Epping, Sherwood, and Dean Forest; all the rights possessed by the Crown consist of the right of herbage for the deer, although in the great forest of Sherwood, comprising a sheet of land of 95,000 acres, not a single deer is kept. In the New Forest, out of 90,000 acres, the Crown has the right to enclose periodically 6,000 acres, which may be dissevered from the pasturage for the growth of timber. The most valuable property undoubtedly consists of the estates and leaseholds alone worth upwards of twenty millions sterling. These might be sold without encroaching on any possession in the least conducive to the dignity and enjoyment of the sovereign. What dignity, indeed, can there be in the king or his servants being jobbers in land, or hucksters in the sale of houses, leases, and ground-rents? It is not, however, the dignity nor the comfort of the king, but the patronage of his ministers, that is at stake. The preceding narrative has shown what an endless source of jobbing the crown-lands have been for centuries; of jobbing the most foul, rapacious, and iniquitous. Not only have the commons, but the distinguished names of the peeragethe great historical cognomens-been implicated in these peculating transactions. This description is not limited to the times of the Edwards and Henries, when there was no law to contravene the sovereign's pleasure, or the sordid practices of his servants, but applies to the period subsequent to the Revolution, when the constitution is supposed to have been purified and perfected. Acts of parliament, indeed, were passed prescribing the minimum of rent (relatively to the full value) at which the crown-farms should be let,-namely one-third before the reign of George III. and one-eighth after the accession of the said king, stating, too, that, under the former regulation, two-thirds of the valued rack-rent, and, under the latter, seven-eighths should be paid in the shape of fine. But what of these statutory restraints? They were all set at nought; the "creatures were at their dirty work" again; and, in most cases, the rents reserved and the fines exacted were merely nominal. May it not be said, after this, that ministerial responsibility is a farce, and that it is sheer fatuity to expect justice will be enforced against public defaulters, when the accused and his judges are alike participant in the delinquency? The sale of the crown-lands would not only cut off a dangerous source of ministerial influence, but render them more conducive to national wealth, and effect a saving in the public expenditure. That costly establishment, the Board of Woods and Forests, is in future, it appears, (House of Commons, Dec. 9, 1831,) to be consolidated with the Board of Works, whereby the expense of two boards will be saved. Mr. Huskisson long depastured in this retreat, and retained to the last a singular partiality for the existing mode of administering the crown property. In the debate on Mr. Harvey's motion, he observed that the House had no right to dispose of the hereditary revenues of the Crown without its consent. No one could gainsay this constitutional truism. No doubt an act of parliament would be requisite, and every one knows an act of parliament is not law till it receives the royal assent. In this, then, there is nothing peculiar. But the importance ascribed by this wily and selfish politician to the fact, that the royal forests formed a valuable nursery for the growth of timber, seemed a little inconsistent with his favourite principles of free trade. England depends much more on the produce of her looms and steam-engines than of her woods and forests; though we should be sorry, for the sake of merely increasing national capital, to see, throughout the country, the latter entirely superseded by the former. Agreeably with the dogmas of the school of which Mr. Huskisson was long a professed disciple, our supply of timber would be most advantageously obtained from the wastes of Canada and Norway, where it can be cheapest produced; while our own acres are best appropriated to the growth of cheap bread for the artisan and manufacturer. DROITS OF THE CROWN AND ADMIRALTY. The next and most important branch of the hereditary revenues of the Crown is the droits of admiralty. These droits, or rights, are received by the king in his capacity of lord high admiral; the duties of which office are discharged by five lords commissioners. The principal sources whence the droits are derived are the following:-all sums arising from wreck and goods of pirates; all ships detained previously to a declaration of war; all coming into port, either from distress of weather, or ignorant of the commencement of hostilities; all taken before the issuing of proclamation; and those taken by non-commissioned captors are sold, and the proceeds form droits of the crown and admiralty. From this description of the sources whence the droit revenue is constituted, it evidently appears little better than buccaneer or piratical plunder, obtained under circumstances little creditable to any government to sanction. Ships detained previously to a declaration of war, coming into port ignorant of hostilities, or taken before the issuing of a proclamation, are all considered lawful prizes: the sufferers, in these cases, violate a law of which they are ignorant, and of which it is impossible they should have any knowledge. They are caught in a spider's |