But so little want was found
even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant'
in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant
* Letters between Dr.
even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant'
in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant
* Letters between Dr.
Edmund Burke
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?
FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM.
329them.
They are sinecures; they are always executed by deputy; the duty of the principal is as nothing.
They differ, however, from the pensions on the list in
some particulars. They are held for life. I think,
with the public, that the profits of those places are
grown enormous; the magnitude of those profits, and
the nature of them, both call for reformation. The
nature of their profits, which grow out of the public
distress, is itself invidious and grievous. But I fear
that reform cannot be immediate. I find myself under a restriction. These places, and others of the
same kind, which are held for life, have, been considered as property. They have been given as a provision for children; they have been the subject of family settlements; they have been the security of creditors.
What- the law'respects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of law should be broken down, upon ideas
of convenience, even of public convenience, we shall have no. longer anything certain among us. If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to determine whose power and what discretion it is that will prevail at last. It
would be wise to attend upon the order of things,
and not to attempt to outrun the slow, but smooth
and even course of Nature. ' There are occasions, I admit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that' they supersede all laws. Law, being only made
for the benefit of the community, cannot in any one of its parts resist a demand which may comprehend the total of the public interest. To be sure, no law can set itself up against the cause and reason of all law; but such a case very rarely happens, and this most certainly is not such a case. The mere time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice of a
? ? ? ? 330: SPEECH ON THE PLAN
principle of law. Individual's pass like shadows; but
the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The difference, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to private people is immense, to the state is nothing.
At any rate, it is better, if possible, to reconcile our
economy with our laws than to set them at variance,
- a quarrel which in the end must be destructive to
both.
My idea, therefore, is, to reduce those offices to
fixed salaries, as the present lives and reversions
shall successively fall. I mean, that the office of the
great auditor (the auditor of the receipt) shall be
reduced to 30001. a year; and the auditors of the
imprest, and th po. tof the principal officers, to fixed
appointments of 1,5001. a year each. It will not be
difficult to calculate the value of this fall of lives to
the public, when we shall have obtained a just account of the present income of those places; and we shall obtain that account with great facility, if the
present possessors are not alarmed with any apprehension of danger to their freehold office.
I know, too, that it will be demanded of me, how
it comes, that, since I admit these offices to be no
better than pensions, I chose, after the principle of
law had been satisfied, to retain them at all. 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, those
means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insuflicient 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.
Whoever seriously considers the excellent argu
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ment of Lord Somers, ih the Bankers' Case, will see
he bottoms himself upon the very same maxim which
I do; and one of his principal grounds of doctrine for
the alienability of the domain in England,* contrary
to the maxim of the law in France, he lays in 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 of honors. It is, indeed, the only genuine,
unadulterated origin of nobility. It is a great principle in government, a principle at the very foundation of the whole structure. The other judges who held the same doctrine went beyond Lord Somers
with regard to the remedy which they thought was
given by law against the crown upon. the grant of
pensions. Indeed, no man knows, when he cuts off
the 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 prove the worst mode of rob-'bing it. The crown, which has in its hands the trust
of the daily pay for national service, ought to have
in its hands also the means for the repose of public labor and the fixed settlement of acknowledged
merit. There is a time when the weather-beaten vessels of the state ought to come into harbor. They
must at length have a retreat from the malice of
rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and the
inconstancy of the people. Many of the persons who
in all times have filled the great offices of state have
been younger'brothers, who had originally little, if
any fortune. These offices do not furnish the means
* Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation
of land.
? ? ? ? 332 SPEECH ON'THE PLAN
of amassing wealth. There ought to be some power
in the crown of granting pensions out of the reach of
its own caprices. An entail of dependence is a bad
reward of merit. : I would therefore leave to the crown the possibility of conferring some favors, which, whilst they
are received as a reward, do not operate as corruption. When men receive:obligations from the crown,
through the pious hands of fathers, or of connections
as venerable as the paternal, the dependences which
arise from thence are the obligations of gratitude, and
not the fetters of servility. Such ties originate in virtue, and they promote it. They continue men in
those habitudes of friendship, those political connections, and those political principles, in which they began life. They are antidotes; against a corrupt levity, instead of causes of it. 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 economy of an empire, and promoted
the happiness and glory of his country! Why should
he be obliged to prostrate his honor and to submit
his principles at the levee of some proud favorite,
shouldered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender on 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.
Sir, I shall be asked, why I do not choose to destroy those offices which are pensions, and appoint
pensions under the direct title in their stead. . I allow
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that in some cases it leads to abuse, to have things
appointed for one purpose and applied to another. 1
have no great objection to such a change; but I do
not think it quite prudent for me to propose it. If I
should:take away the present. establishment, the burden of proof rests upon me, that so many pensions,
and no more, and to such an amount each, and no. more, are necessary for the public service. This is
what I can never prove; for it is a thing incapable of
definition. I do not like to take away an object that
I think answers'my purpose, in hopes: of getting it. backagain in a better shape. People will bear an old
establishment, when its excess is corrected, who will
-revolt at- a new one. I do. not think these officepensions; to be more in number, than sufficient: but. on that point the House will:exercise its discretion As to abuse, 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 paritiality has operated as a kind:of justice, and still
tit was service; that was paid. W7hen, we look over
this Exchequer list, we find it filled with the descendants of the Walpoles, of. the Pelhams, of the Townshends,-names to whom this country owes its liber ties, and to whom his Majesty owes his crown. It was
in one of these lines: that the immense and envied employment he now holds came to a certain duke,* 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:
~ Duke of Newcastle, whose dining-room is under the House of
Commons.
? ? ? ? 334 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
over his head. But he is the elder branch of an ancient and decayed house, joined to and repaired by the reward of services done by another. I respect the
original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth
and honor 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 refresh and fructify the
commonwealth for ages!
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, I should
be extremely desirous of reducing them. Others
may know of them: I do not. I am not possessed
of an exact common measure between real service
and its reward. I am very sure that states do sometimes receive services which is hardly in their power to reward according to their worth. If I were to
give my judgment with regard to this country, I do
not think the great efficient offices of the state to
be overpaid. The service of the public is a thing
which cannot be put to auction and struck down to
those who will agree to execute it the cheapest.
When the proportion between reward and service is
our object, we must always consider of what nature
the service is, and what sort of men they are that
must perform it. What is just payment for one kind
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 335
of labor, and full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud and discouragement to others. Many of the great offices have much duty to do, and much
expense of representation to maintain. A; Secretary
of State, for instance, must not appear sordid in the
eyes of the ministers of other nations; neither ought
our ministers abroad to appear contemptible in the
courts where they reside. In all offices of duty,
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.
I will even go so far as to affirm, that, if men were
willing to serve in such situations 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 honorable 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.
For 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 will
be increased to infinity. This is true in all the parts
of administration, as well as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition
over unpretending service; it might breed invidious
comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little
? ? ? ? 336 SPEECH. ON THE PLAN
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 disinterested-,
ness, 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?
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 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.
It may be expected, Sir, that, when I am giving my
reasons why I limit myself in the reduction of employments, or of their profits, I should say something of those which seem of eminent inutility in the state: I
mean the number of officers who, by their places, are
attendant on the person of the king. Considering the
commonwealth merely as such, and considering those
officers only as relative to the direct purposes of the
state, I admit that they are of no use at all. But
there are ma;ny things in the constitution of establishments, which appear of little value on the first view, which in a secondary and oblique manner produce
very material advantages. It was on full consideration that I determined not to lessen any of the offices
of honor about the crown, in their number or their
emoluments. These emoluments, except in one or
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two cases, do not much more than answer the charge
of attendance. Men of condition naturally love to be
about a court; and women of condition love it much
more. But there is in all regular attendance so much
of constraint, that, if it were a mere charge, without
any compensation, you would soon have the court
deserted by all the nobility of the kingdom.
Sir, the most serious mischiefs would follow from
such a desertion. Kings are naturally lovers of low
company. They are so elevated above all the rest of
mankind that they must look upon all their subjects
as on a level. They are rather apt to hate than to
love their nobility, on account of the occasional resistance to their will which will be made by their virtue, their petulance, or their pride. It must, indeed, be
admitted that many of the nobility are as perfectly
willing to act the part of flatterers, tale-bearers, parasites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of the lowest and vilest of mankind can possibly be. But they are not
properly qualified for this object of their ambition.
The want of a regular education, and early habits,
and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never
permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch,
a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands;
and the mischief increased every day till the decline
and final ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very
great importance (provided the thing is not overdone)
to contrive such an establishment as must, almost
whether a prince will or not, bring into daily and
hourly offices about his person a great number of his
first nobility; and it is rather an useful prejudice that
gives them a pride in such a servitude. Though they
VOL. II. 22
? ? ? ? 338 SPEECtH ON THE PLAN
are not much the better for a court, a court will be
much the better for them. I have therefore not attempted to reform any of the offices of honor about
the king's person.
There are, indeed, two offices in his stables which
are sinecures: by the change of manners, and indeed
by the nature of the thing, they must be so: I mean
the several keepers of buck-hounds, stag-hounds, foxhounds, and harriers. They answer no purpose of utility or of splendor. These I propose to abolish. It
is not proper that great noblemen should be keepers
of dogs, though they were the king's dogs.
In every part of the scheme, I have endeavored that
no primary, and that even no secondary, service of the
state should suffer by its frugality. I mean to touch
no offices but such as I am perfectly sure are either of
no use at all, or not of any use in the least assignable
proportion to the burden with which they load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with which they oppress the freedom of Parliamentary deliberation; for which reason there are but two offices, which are properly state offices, that I have a desire to reform.
The first of them is the new office of Third Secretary
of State, which is commonly called Secretary of State
for the Colonies.
We know that all the correspondence of the colonies had been, until within a few years, carried on by
the Southern Secretary of State, and that this department has not been shunned upon account of the weight of its duties, but, on the contrary, much sought on
account of its patronage. Indeed, he must be poorly
acquainted with the history of office who does not
know how very lightly the American functions have
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 339
always leaned on the shoulders of the ministerial Atlas who has upheld that side of the sphere. Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment was requisite in the management of the colony politics; but the official
detail was a trifle. Since the -new appointment, a
train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us
almost the whole correspondence of this favorite secretary's office since the first day of its establishment.
I will say nothing of its auspicious foundation, of
the quality of its correspondence, or of the effects
that have ensued from it. I speak merely of its quantity, which we know would have been little or no
addition to the trouble of whatever office had its hands
the fullest. But what has been the real condition of
the old office of Secretary of State? Have their velvet bags and their red boxes been so full that nothing more could possibly be crammed into them?
A correspondence of a curious nature has been
lately published. * In that correspondence, Sir, we
find the opinion of a noble person who is thought to
be the grand manufacturer of administrations, and
therefore the best judge of the quality of his work.
He was of opinion that there was but one man of diligence and industry in the whole administration: it
was the late Earl of Suffolk. The noble lord lamented
very justly, that this statesman, of so much mental
vigor, was almost wholly disabled from the exertion
of it by his bodily infirmities. Lord Suffolk, dead
to the state long before he was dead to Nature, at
last paid his tribute to the common treasury to which
we must all be taxed.
But so little want was found
even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant'
in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant
* Letters between Dr. Addington and Sir James Wright.
? ? ? ? 340 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
even in nomination and appointment for a year after
his death. The whole of the laborious and arduous
correspondence of this empire rested solely upon the
activity and energy of Lord Weymouth.
It is therefore demonstrable, since one diligent man
was fully equal to the duties of the two offices, that
two diligent men will be equal to the duty of three.
The business of the new office, which I shall propose
to you to suppress, is by no means too much to be
returned to either of the'secretaries which remain.
If this dust in the balance should be thought too
heavy, it may be divided between them both, -North
America (whether free or reduced) to the Northern
Secretary, the West Indies to the Southern. It is not
necessary that I should say more upon the inutility
of this office. It is burning daylight. But before I
have done, I shall just remark that the history of this
office is too recent to suffer us to forget that it was
made for the mere convenience of the arrangements
of political intrigue, and not for the service of the
state, -that it was made in order to give a color to
an exorbitant increase of the civil list, and in the
same act to bring a new accession to the loaded compost-heap of corrupt influence.
There is, Sir, another office which was not long
since closely connected with this of the American Secretary, but has been lately separated from it for the very same -purpose for which it had been conjoined:
I mean the sole purpose of all the separations and all
the conjunctions that have been lately made, - a job.
I speak, Sir, of the Board of Trade and Plantations.
This board is a sort of temperate bed of influence, a
sort of gently ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive salaries of a thousand a
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 341
year for a certain given time, in order to mature, at
a proper season, a. claim to two thousand, granted for
doing less, and on the credit of. having toiled so long
in that inferior, laborious department.
I have known that board, off and on, for a great
number of years. Both of its pretended objects have
been much the objects of my study, if I have a right
to call any pursuits of mine by so respectable a name.
I can assure the House, (and I hope they will not
think that I risk my little credit lightly,) that, without
meaning to convey the least reflection upon any one
of its members, past or present, it is a board which,
if not. mischievous, is of no use at all.
You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not mistaken,
if you reflect how generally it is true, that commerce,
the principal object of that office, flourishes most
when it is left to itself. Interest, the great guide of
commerce, is not a blind one. It is very well able to
find its own way; and its necessities are its best laws.
But if it were possible, in the nature of things,. that
the - young should direct the old, and the inexperienced
instruct the knowing, - if a board in the state was the
best tutor for the counting-house, - if the desk ought
to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the
place of the shuttle, -yet in any matter of regulation
we know that board must act with as little authority
as skill. The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate to the object; because all regulations are, in their nature, restrictive of some liberty. In the reign,
indeed, of Charles the First, the Council, or Committees of Council, were never a moment unoccupied with affairs of trade. But even where they had no ill intention, (which was sometimes the case,) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from their injudicious
? ? ? ? 342 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
tampering. But since that period, whenever regulation is wanting, (for I do not deny that sometimes
it may be wanting,) Parliament constantly sits; and
Parliament alone is competent to such regulation.
We want no instruction from boards of trade, or
from any other board; and God forbid we should give
the least attention to their reports! Parliamentary
inquiry is the only mode of obtaining Parliamentary
information. There is more real knowledge to be obtained by attending the detail of business in the committees above stairs than ever did come, or ever will come, from any board in this kingdom, or from all of
them together. An assiduous member of Parliament
will not be the worse instructed there for not being
paid a thousand a year for learning his lesson. And
now that I speak of the committees above stairs, I
must say, that, having till lately attended them a good
deal, I have observed that no description of members
give so little attendance, either to communicate or to
obtain instruction upon matters of commerce, as the
honorable members of the grave Board of Trade. I
really do not recollect that I have ever seen one of
them in that sort of business. , Possibly some members may have better memories, and may call to
mind some job that may have accidentally brought
one or other of them, at one time or other, to attend
a matter of commerce.
This board, Sir, has had both its original formation
and its regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, and in a -job its mother brought it forth. It
made one among those showy and specious impositions which one of the experiment-making administrations of Charlis the Second held out to delude the people, and to be substituted in the place of the real
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 343
service which they might expect from a Parliament
annually sitting. It was intended, also, to corrupt
that body, whenever it should be permitted to sit. It
was projected in the year 1668, and it continued in
a tottering and rickety childhood for about three or
four years: for it died in the year 1673, a babe of as
little hopes as ever swelled the bills of mortality in
the article of convulsed or overlaid children who have
hardly stepped over the threshold of life.
It was buried with little ceremony, and never more
thought of until the reign of King William, when, in
the strange vicissitude of neglect and vigor, of good
and ill success that attended his wars, in the year
1695, the trade was distressed beyond all example of
former sufferings by the piracies of the French cruisers. This suffering incensed, and, as it should seem, very justly incensed, the House of Commons. In this
ferment, they struck, not only at the administration,
but at the very constitution of the executive government. They attempted to form in Parliament a board for the protection of trade, which, as they planned it,
was to draw to itself a great part, if not the whole, of
the functions and powers both of the Admiralty and
of the Treasury; and thus, by a Parliamentary delegation of office and officers, they threatened absolutely to separate these departments from the whole system
of-the executive government, and of course to vest
the most leading and essential of its attributes in this
board. As the executive government was in a manner convicted of a dereliction of its functions, it was with infinite difficulty that this blow was warded off
in that session. There was a threat to renew the
same attempt in the next. To prev'ent the effect of
this manoeuvre, the court opposed another manceuvre
? ? ? ? 344 SPEECH. ON THEI PLAN
to it, and, in the yesr 1696, called into life this
Board of Trade, which had slept since 1673.
This, in a few words, is the history of the regeneration of the Board of Trade. It has perfectly answered
its purposes. It was intended to quiet the minds of
the people, and to compose the ferment that was then
strongly working in Parliament. The courtiers were
too happy to be able to substitute a board which they
knew would be useless in the place of one that they
feared would be dangerous. Thus the Board of Trade
was reproduced in a job; and perhaps it is the only
instance of a public body which has never degenerated, but to this hour preserves all the health and
vigor of its primitive institution.
This Board of Trade and Plantations has not been
of any use to the colonies, as colonies: so little of
use, that the flourishing settlements of New' England,
of Virginia, and of Maryland, and all our wealthy
colonies in, the West Inips, Were of a date prior to
the first bo~d 6'f Charles thie eondd. Pennsylvania
and Carolina were settled during its dark quarter, in
the interval between the extinction of the first and the
formation of the second board. - Two colonies alone
owe their origin to that board. Georgia, which, till
lately, has made a very slow progress, - and never did
make any progress at all, until it had wholly got rid
of all the regulations which the Board of Trade had
moulded into its original constitution. That colony
has cost the nation very great sums of money; whereas the colonies which have had the fortune of not
being godfathered by the Board of Trade never cost
the nation a shilling, except what has been so properly spent in losing them. But the colony of Georgia, weak as it was, carried with it to the last hour,
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 345
and carries, even in its present dead, pallid visage,
the perfect resemblance of its parents. It always had,
and it now has, an establishment, paid by the public of
England, for the sake of the influence of the crown:
that colony having. never been able or willing to take
upon itself the expense of its proper government or
its own appropriated jobs.
The province of Nova Scotia was -the youngest and
the favorite child of the Board. Good God! what
sums the nursing of that ill-thriven, hard-visaged,
and ill-favored brat has cost to this wittol nation!
Sir, this colony has stood us in a sum of not less than
seven hundred thousand pounds. To this day it has
made no repayment, - it does not even support those
offices of expense which are miscalled its government; the whole of that job still lies upon the patient, callous shoulders of the people of England.
Sir, I am going to state a fact to you that will
serve to set in full sunshine the real value of formality and official. superintendence. There was -in'the province of Nova Scotia one little neglected corner, the country of the neutral French; which, having the good-fortune td escape the fostering care of both France and England, and to have been shut out
from the protection and regulation of councils of
commerce and of boards of trade, did, in silence,
without notice, and without assistance, increase to
a considerable degree. But it seems our nation had
more skill and ability in destroying than in settling
a colony. In the last war, we did, in my opinion,
most inhumanly, and upon pretences that in the eye
of an honest man are not worth a farthing, iroot out
this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter
inability to govern, or to reconcile, gave us no sort
? ? ? ? -346 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
of right to extirpate. Whatever the merits of that
extirpation might have been, it was on the footsteps
of a neglected people, it was on the fund of unconstrained poverty, it was on the acquisitions of unregulated industry, that anything which deserves the name of a colony in that province has been formed.
It has been formed by overflowings from the exuberant population of Now England, and by emigration
from other parts of Nova Scotia of fugitives from the
protection of the Board of Trade.
But if all of these things were not more than sufficient to prove to you the inutility of that expensive
establishment, I would desire you to recollect, Sir,
that those who may be very ready to defend it are
very cautious how they employ it, - cautious how,they employ it even in appearance and pretence.
They are afraid they should lose the benefit of its
influence in Parliament, if they seemed to keep it up
for any other purpose. If ever there were commercial points of great weight, and most closely con,
nected with our dependencies, they are those which
have been agitated and decided in Parliament since I
came into it. Which of the innumerable regulations
since made had their origin or their improvement in
the Board of Trade? Did any of the several East
India bills which have been successively produced
since 1767 originate there? Did any one dream of
referring them, or any part of them, thither? Was
anybody so ridiculous as even to think of it? If ever
there was an occasion on which the Board was fit to
be consulted, it was with regard to the acts that were
preludes' to the American war, or attendant on. its
commencement. Those acts were full of commercial
regulations, such as they were: the Intercourse Bill;
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 347
tile Prohibitory Bill; the Fishery Bill. If the Board
was not concerned in such things, in what particular
was it thought fit that it should be concerned? In
the course of all these bills through the House, I observed the members of that board to be remarkably cautious of intermeddling. They understood decorum
better; they know that matters of trade and plantations are no business of theirs.
There were two very recent occasions, which, if the
idea of any use for the Board had not been extinguished by prescription,- appeared loudly to call for their interference.
When commissioners were sent to pay his Majesty's and our dutiful respects to the Congress of
the United States, a part of their powers under the
commission were, it seems, of a commercial nature.
They were authorized, in the most ample and undefined manner, to form a commercial treaty with America on the spot. This was no trivial object. As
the formation of such a treaty would necessarily have
been no less than the breaking up of our whole commercial system, and the giving it an entire new form, one would imagine that the Board of Trade
would have sat day and night to model propositions,
which, on our side, might serve as a basis to that
treaty. No such thing. Their learned leisure was
not in the least interrupted, though one of the members of the Board was a commissioner, and might, in mere compliment to his office, have been supposed to
make a show of deliberation on the subject. But he
knew that his colleagues would have thought he
laughed in their faces, had he attempted to bring
anything the most distantly relating to commerce or
colonies before them. A noble person, engaged in
? ? ? ? 348 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
the same commission, and sent to learn his commercial rudiments in New York, (then under the operation of an act for the universal prohibition of trade,) was soon after put at the head of that board. This
contempt from the present ministers of all the pretended functions of that board, and their manner of
breathing into its very soul, of inspiring it with its
animating and presiding principle, puts an end to all
dispute concerning their opinion of the clay it was
made of. But I will give them heaped measure.
It was but the other day, that the noble lord in
the blue ribbon carried up to the House of Peers two
acts, altering, I think much for the better, but altering in a great degree, our whole commercial system:
those acts, I mean, for giving a free trade to Ireland
in woollens, and in all things else, with independent
nations, and giving them an equal trade to our own
colonies. Here, too, the novelty of this great, but
arduous and critical improvement of system, would
make you conceive that the anxious solicitude of the
noble lord in the blue ribbon would have wholly
destroyed the plan of summer recreation of that
board, by references to examine, compare, and digest
matters for Parliament. You would imagine that
Irish commissioners of customs, and English commissioners of customs, and commissioners of excise,
that merchants and manufacturers of every denomination, had daily crowded their outer rooms. Nil
horumrn. The perpetual virtual adjournment, and the
unbroken sitting vacation of that board, was no more
disturbed by the Irish than by the plantation commerce, or any other commerce. The same matter
made a large part of the business which occupied the
House for two sessions before; and as our ministers
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were not then mellowed by the mild, emollient, and
engaging blandishments of our dear sister into all
the tenderness of unqualified surrender, the bounds
and limits of a restrained benefit naturally required
much detailed management and positive regulation.
But neither the qualified propositions which were
received, nor those other qualified propositions which
were rejected by ministers, were the least concern of
theirs, or were they ever thought of in the business.
It is therefore, Sir, on the opinion of Parliament,
on the opinion of the ministers, and even on their
own opinion of their inutility, that I shall propose to
you to suppress the Board of Trade and Plantations,
and to recommit all its business to the Council, from
whence it was very improvidently taken; and which
business (whatever it might be) was much better
done, and without any expense; and, indeed, where
in effect it may all come at last. Almost all that deserves the name of business there is the reference of the plantation acts to the opinion of gentlemen of the
law. But all this may be done, as the Irish business
of the same nature has always been done, by the
Council, and with a reference to the Attorney and
Solicitor General.
There are some regulations in the household, relative to the officers of the yeomen of the guards, and the officers and band of gentlemen pensioners, which
I shall likewise submit to your consideration, for the
purpose of regulating establishments which at present are much abused.
I have now finished all that for the present I shall
trouble you with on the plan of reduction. I mean
next to propose to you the plan of arrangement, by.
which I mean to appropriate and fix the civil list
? ? ? ? '350 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
money to its several services according to their nature: for I am thoroughly sensible, that, if a discretion wholly arbitrary can be exercised over the civil list revenue, although the most effectual methods
may be taken to prevent the inferior departments
from exceeding their bounds, the plan of reformation
will still be left very imperfect. It will not, in my
opinion, be safe to permit an entirely arbitrary discretion even in the First Lord of the Treasury himself; it will not be safe to leave with him a power of diverting the public money from its proper objects, of
paying it in an irregular course, or of inverting perhaps the order of time, dictated by the proportion of.
value, which ought to regulate his application of payment to service.
I am sensible, too, that the very operation of a plan
of economy which tends to exonerate the civil list of
expensive establishments may in some sort defeat the
capital end we have in view, -- the independence of
Parliament; and that, in removing the public and
ostensible means of influence, we may increase the
fund of' private corruption. I have thought of some
methods to prevent an abuse of surplus cash under
discretionary application, - I mean the heads of secret
service, special service, variousspayments, and the like, -
which I hope will answer, and which in due time I
shall lay before you. Where I am unable to limit
the quantity of the sums to be applied, by reason of
the uncertain quantity of the service, I endeavor to
confine it to its line, to secure an indefinite application to the definite service to which it belongs, - not
to stop the progress of expense in its-line, but to confine it to that line in which it professes to move.
But that part of my plan, Sir, upon which I prin
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 351,
cipally rest, that on which I rely for the purpose of
binding up and securing the whole, is to establish a
fixed and invariable order in all its payments, which it
shall not be permitted to the First Lord of the Treasury, upon any pretence whatsoever, to depart from.
I therefore divide the civil list payments into nine
classes, putting each class forward according to thp
importance or justice of the demand, and to the inability of the persons entitled to enforce their pretensions: that is, to put those first who have the most efficient offices, or claim the justest debts, and at the
same time, from the character of that description of:
men, from the retiredness or the remoteness of their
situation, or from their want of weight'and power to
enforce their pretensions, or from their being entirely
subject to the power of a minister, without any reciprocal power of awing, ought to be the most considered,
and are the most likely to be neglected, - all these I
place in the highest classes; I place in the lowest
those whose functions are of the least importance, but
whose persons or rank are often of the greatest power
and influence.
In the first class I place the judges, as of the first
importance. It is the public justice that holds the
community together; the ease, therefore, and independence of the judges ought to supersede all other
considerations, and they ought to be the very last to
feel the necessities of the state, or to be obliged either
to court or bully a minister for their right; they ought
to be as weak solicitors on their own demands as strenuous assertors of the rights and liberties of others.
The judges are, or ought to be, of a reserved and retired character, and wholly unconnected with the
political world.
? ? ? ? 352 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
In the second class I place the foreign ministers.
The judges are the links of our connections with one
another; the foreign ministers are the links of our
connection with other nations. They are not upon
the spot to demand payment, and are therefore the
most likely to be, as in fact they have sometimes been,
entirely neglected, to the great disgrace and perhaps
the great detriment of the nation.
In the third class I would bring all the tradesmen
who supply the crown by contractor otherwise.
In the fourth class I place all the domestic servants of the king, and all persons in efficient offices whose salaries do-not exceed two hundred pounds a
year.
In the fifth, upon account of honor, which ought to
give place to nothing but charity and rigid justice, I
would place the pensions and allowances of his Majesty's royal family, comprehending of course the queen, together with the stated allowance of the
privy purse.
In the sixth class I place those efficient offices of
duty whose salaries may exceed, the sum of two hundred pounds a year.
In the seventh class, that mixed mass, the whole
pension list.
In the eighth, the offices of honor about the king.
In the ninth, and the last of all, the salaries and
pensions of the First Lord of the Treasury himself,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the other Commissioners of the Treasury.
If, by any possible mismanagement of that part
of the revenue which is left at discretion, or by any
other mode of prodigality, cash should be deficient for
the payment of the lowest classes, I propose that the
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 353
amount of those salaries where the deficiency may
happen to fall shall not be carried as debt to the account of the succeeding year, but that it shall be entirely lapsed, sunk, and lost; so that government will be enabled to start in the race of every new year
wholly unloaded, fresh in wind and in vigor. Hereafter no civil list debt can ever come upon the public.
And those who do not consider this as saving, because
it is not a certain sum, do not ground their calculations of the future on their experience of the past.
I know of no mode of preserving the effectual execution of any duty, but to make it the direct interest
of the executive officer that it shall be faithfully performed. Assuming, then, that the present vast allowance to the civil list is perfectly adequate to all its purposes, if there should be any failure, it must be
from the mismanagement or neglect of the First Commissioner of the Treasury; since, upon the proposed
plan, there can be no expense of any consequence
which he is not himself previously to authorize and
finally to control. It is therefore just, as well as
politic, that the loss should attach upon the delinquency.
If the failure from the delinquency should be very
considerable, it will fall on the class directly above
the First Lord of the Treasury, as well as upon himself
and his board.
some particulars. They are held for life. I think,
with the public, that the profits of those places are
grown enormous; the magnitude of those profits, and
the nature of them, both call for reformation. The
nature of their profits, which grow out of the public
distress, is itself invidious and grievous. But I fear
that reform cannot be immediate. I find myself under a restriction. These places, and others of the
same kind, which are held for life, have, been considered as property. They have been given as a provision for children; they have been the subject of family settlements; they have been the security of creditors.
What- the law'respects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of law should be broken down, upon ideas
of convenience, even of public convenience, we shall have no. longer anything certain among us. If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to determine whose power and what discretion it is that will prevail at last. It
would be wise to attend upon the order of things,
and not to attempt to outrun the slow, but smooth
and even course of Nature. ' There are occasions, I admit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that' they supersede all laws. Law, being only made
for the benefit of the community, cannot in any one of its parts resist a demand which may comprehend the total of the public interest. To be sure, no law can set itself up against the cause and reason of all law; but such a case very rarely happens, and this most certainly is not such a case. The mere time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice of a
? ? ? ? 330: SPEECH ON THE PLAN
principle of law. Individual's pass like shadows; but
the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The difference, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to private people is immense, to the state is nothing.
At any rate, it is better, if possible, to reconcile our
economy with our laws than to set them at variance,
- a quarrel which in the end must be destructive to
both.
My idea, therefore, is, to reduce those offices to
fixed salaries, as the present lives and reversions
shall successively fall. I mean, that the office of the
great auditor (the auditor of the receipt) shall be
reduced to 30001. a year; and the auditors of the
imprest, and th po. tof the principal officers, to fixed
appointments of 1,5001. a year each. It will not be
difficult to calculate the value of this fall of lives to
the public, when we shall have obtained a just account of the present income of those places; and we shall obtain that account with great facility, if the
present possessors are not alarmed with any apprehension of danger to their freehold office.
I know, too, that it will be demanded of me, how
it comes, that, since I admit these offices to be no
better than pensions, I chose, after the principle of
law had been satisfied, to retain them at all. 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, those
means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insuflicient 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.
Whoever seriously considers the excellent argu
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ment of Lord Somers, ih the Bankers' Case, will see
he bottoms himself upon the very same maxim which
I do; and one of his principal grounds of doctrine for
the alienability of the domain in England,* contrary
to the maxim of the law in France, he lays in 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 of honors. It is, indeed, the only genuine,
unadulterated origin of nobility. It is a great principle in government, a principle at the very foundation of the whole structure. The other judges who held the same doctrine went beyond Lord Somers
with regard to the remedy which they thought was
given by law against the crown upon. the grant of
pensions. Indeed, no man knows, when he cuts off
the 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 prove the worst mode of rob-'bing it. The crown, which has in its hands the trust
of the daily pay for national service, ought to have
in its hands also the means for the repose of public labor and the fixed settlement of acknowledged
merit. There is a time when the weather-beaten vessels of the state ought to come into harbor. They
must at length have a retreat from the malice of
rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and the
inconstancy of the people. Many of the persons who
in all times have filled the great offices of state have
been younger'brothers, who had originally little, if
any fortune. These offices do not furnish the means
* Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation
of land.
? ? ? ? 332 SPEECH ON'THE PLAN
of amassing wealth. There ought to be some power
in the crown of granting pensions out of the reach of
its own caprices. An entail of dependence is a bad
reward of merit. : I would therefore leave to the crown the possibility of conferring some favors, which, whilst they
are received as a reward, do not operate as corruption. When men receive:obligations from the crown,
through the pious hands of fathers, or of connections
as venerable as the paternal, the dependences which
arise from thence are the obligations of gratitude, and
not the fetters of servility. Such ties originate in virtue, and they promote it. They continue men in
those habitudes of friendship, those political connections, and those political principles, in which they began life. They are antidotes; against a corrupt levity, instead of causes of it. 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 economy of an empire, and promoted
the happiness and glory of his country! Why should
he be obliged to prostrate his honor and to submit
his principles at the levee of some proud favorite,
shouldered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender on 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.
Sir, I shall be asked, why I do not choose to destroy those offices which are pensions, and appoint
pensions under the direct title in their stead. . I allow
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that in some cases it leads to abuse, to have things
appointed for one purpose and applied to another. 1
have no great objection to such a change; but I do
not think it quite prudent for me to propose it. If I
should:take away the present. establishment, the burden of proof rests upon me, that so many pensions,
and no more, and to such an amount each, and no. more, are necessary for the public service. This is
what I can never prove; for it is a thing incapable of
definition. I do not like to take away an object that
I think answers'my purpose, in hopes: of getting it. backagain in a better shape. People will bear an old
establishment, when its excess is corrected, who will
-revolt at- a new one. I do. not think these officepensions; to be more in number, than sufficient: but. on that point the House will:exercise its discretion As to abuse, 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 paritiality has operated as a kind:of justice, and still
tit was service; that was paid. W7hen, we look over
this Exchequer list, we find it filled with the descendants of the Walpoles, of. the Pelhams, of the Townshends,-names to whom this country owes its liber ties, and to whom his Majesty owes his crown. It was
in one of these lines: that the immense and envied employment he now holds came to a certain duke,* 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:
~ Duke of Newcastle, whose dining-room is under the House of
Commons.
? ? ? ? 334 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
over his head. But he is the elder branch of an ancient and decayed house, joined to and repaired by the reward of services done by another. I respect the
original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth
and honor 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 refresh and fructify the
commonwealth for ages!
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, I should
be extremely desirous of reducing them. Others
may know of them: I do not. I am not possessed
of an exact common measure between real service
and its reward. I am very sure that states do sometimes receive services which is hardly in their power to reward according to their worth. If I were to
give my judgment with regard to this country, I do
not think the great efficient offices of the state to
be overpaid. The service of the public is a thing
which cannot be put to auction and struck down to
those who will agree to execute it the cheapest.
When the proportion between reward and service is
our object, we must always consider of what nature
the service is, and what sort of men they are that
must perform it. What is just payment for one kind
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 335
of labor, and full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud and discouragement to others. Many of the great offices have much duty to do, and much
expense of representation to maintain. A; Secretary
of State, for instance, must not appear sordid in the
eyes of the ministers of other nations; neither ought
our ministers abroad to appear contemptible in the
courts where they reside. In all offices of duty,
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.
I will even go so far as to affirm, that, if men were
willing to serve in such situations 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 honorable 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.
For 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 will
be increased to infinity. This is true in all the parts
of administration, as well as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition
over unpretending service; it might breed invidious
comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little
? ? ? ? 336 SPEECH. ON THE PLAN
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 disinterested-,
ness, 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?
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 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.
It may be expected, Sir, that, when I am giving my
reasons why I limit myself in the reduction of employments, or of their profits, I should say something of those which seem of eminent inutility in the state: I
mean the number of officers who, by their places, are
attendant on the person of the king. Considering the
commonwealth merely as such, and considering those
officers only as relative to the direct purposes of the
state, I admit that they are of no use at all. But
there are ma;ny things in the constitution of establishments, which appear of little value on the first view, which in a secondary and oblique manner produce
very material advantages. It was on full consideration that I determined not to lessen any of the offices
of honor about the crown, in their number or their
emoluments. These emoluments, except in one or
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two cases, do not much more than answer the charge
of attendance. Men of condition naturally love to be
about a court; and women of condition love it much
more. But there is in all regular attendance so much
of constraint, that, if it were a mere charge, without
any compensation, you would soon have the court
deserted by all the nobility of the kingdom.
Sir, the most serious mischiefs would follow from
such a desertion. Kings are naturally lovers of low
company. They are so elevated above all the rest of
mankind that they must look upon all their subjects
as on a level. They are rather apt to hate than to
love their nobility, on account of the occasional resistance to their will which will be made by their virtue, their petulance, or their pride. It must, indeed, be
admitted that many of the nobility are as perfectly
willing to act the part of flatterers, tale-bearers, parasites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of the lowest and vilest of mankind can possibly be. But they are not
properly qualified for this object of their ambition.
The want of a regular education, and early habits,
and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never
permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch,
a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands;
and the mischief increased every day till the decline
and final ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very
great importance (provided the thing is not overdone)
to contrive such an establishment as must, almost
whether a prince will or not, bring into daily and
hourly offices about his person a great number of his
first nobility; and it is rather an useful prejudice that
gives them a pride in such a servitude. Though they
VOL. II. 22
? ? ? ? 338 SPEECtH ON THE PLAN
are not much the better for a court, a court will be
much the better for them. I have therefore not attempted to reform any of the offices of honor about
the king's person.
There are, indeed, two offices in his stables which
are sinecures: by the change of manners, and indeed
by the nature of the thing, they must be so: I mean
the several keepers of buck-hounds, stag-hounds, foxhounds, and harriers. They answer no purpose of utility or of splendor. These I propose to abolish. It
is not proper that great noblemen should be keepers
of dogs, though they were the king's dogs.
In every part of the scheme, I have endeavored that
no primary, and that even no secondary, service of the
state should suffer by its frugality. I mean to touch
no offices but such as I am perfectly sure are either of
no use at all, or not of any use in the least assignable
proportion to the burden with which they load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with which they oppress the freedom of Parliamentary deliberation; for which reason there are but two offices, which are properly state offices, that I have a desire to reform.
The first of them is the new office of Third Secretary
of State, which is commonly called Secretary of State
for the Colonies.
We know that all the correspondence of the colonies had been, until within a few years, carried on by
the Southern Secretary of State, and that this department has not been shunned upon account of the weight of its duties, but, on the contrary, much sought on
account of its patronage. Indeed, he must be poorly
acquainted with the history of office who does not
know how very lightly the American functions have
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 339
always leaned on the shoulders of the ministerial Atlas who has upheld that side of the sphere. Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment was requisite in the management of the colony politics; but the official
detail was a trifle. Since the -new appointment, a
train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us
almost the whole correspondence of this favorite secretary's office since the first day of its establishment.
I will say nothing of its auspicious foundation, of
the quality of its correspondence, or of the effects
that have ensued from it. I speak merely of its quantity, which we know would have been little or no
addition to the trouble of whatever office had its hands
the fullest. But what has been the real condition of
the old office of Secretary of State? Have their velvet bags and their red boxes been so full that nothing more could possibly be crammed into them?
A correspondence of a curious nature has been
lately published. * In that correspondence, Sir, we
find the opinion of a noble person who is thought to
be the grand manufacturer of administrations, and
therefore the best judge of the quality of his work.
He was of opinion that there was but one man of diligence and industry in the whole administration: it
was the late Earl of Suffolk. The noble lord lamented
very justly, that this statesman, of so much mental
vigor, was almost wholly disabled from the exertion
of it by his bodily infirmities. Lord Suffolk, dead
to the state long before he was dead to Nature, at
last paid his tribute to the common treasury to which
we must all be taxed.
But so little want was found
even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant'
in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant
* Letters between Dr. Addington and Sir James Wright.
? ? ? ? 340 SPEECH ON THE PLAN
even in nomination and appointment for a year after
his death. The whole of the laborious and arduous
correspondence of this empire rested solely upon the
activity and energy of Lord Weymouth.
It is therefore demonstrable, since one diligent man
was fully equal to the duties of the two offices, that
two diligent men will be equal to the duty of three.
The business of the new office, which I shall propose
to you to suppress, is by no means too much to be
returned to either of the'secretaries which remain.
If this dust in the balance should be thought too
heavy, it may be divided between them both, -North
America (whether free or reduced) to the Northern
Secretary, the West Indies to the Southern. It is not
necessary that I should say more upon the inutility
of this office. It is burning daylight. But before I
have done, I shall just remark that the history of this
office is too recent to suffer us to forget that it was
made for the mere convenience of the arrangements
of political intrigue, and not for the service of the
state, -that it was made in order to give a color to
an exorbitant increase of the civil list, and in the
same act to bring a new accession to the loaded compost-heap of corrupt influence.
There is, Sir, another office which was not long
since closely connected with this of the American Secretary, but has been lately separated from it for the very same -purpose for which it had been conjoined:
I mean the sole purpose of all the separations and all
the conjunctions that have been lately made, - a job.
I speak, Sir, of the Board of Trade and Plantations.
This board is a sort of temperate bed of influence, a
sort of gently ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive salaries of a thousand a
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year for a certain given time, in order to mature, at
a proper season, a. claim to two thousand, granted for
doing less, and on the credit of. having toiled so long
in that inferior, laborious department.
I have known that board, off and on, for a great
number of years. Both of its pretended objects have
been much the objects of my study, if I have a right
to call any pursuits of mine by so respectable a name.
I can assure the House, (and I hope they will not
think that I risk my little credit lightly,) that, without
meaning to convey the least reflection upon any one
of its members, past or present, it is a board which,
if not. mischievous, is of no use at all.
You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not mistaken,
if you reflect how generally it is true, that commerce,
the principal object of that office, flourishes most
when it is left to itself. Interest, the great guide of
commerce, is not a blind one. It is very well able to
find its own way; and its necessities are its best laws.
But if it were possible, in the nature of things,. that
the - young should direct the old, and the inexperienced
instruct the knowing, - if a board in the state was the
best tutor for the counting-house, - if the desk ought
to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the
place of the shuttle, -yet in any matter of regulation
we know that board must act with as little authority
as skill. The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate to the object; because all regulations are, in their nature, restrictive of some liberty. In the reign,
indeed, of Charles the First, the Council, or Committees of Council, were never a moment unoccupied with affairs of trade. But even where they had no ill intention, (which was sometimes the case,) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from their injudicious
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tampering. But since that period, whenever regulation is wanting, (for I do not deny that sometimes
it may be wanting,) Parliament constantly sits; and
Parliament alone is competent to such regulation.
We want no instruction from boards of trade, or
from any other board; and God forbid we should give
the least attention to their reports! Parliamentary
inquiry is the only mode of obtaining Parliamentary
information. There is more real knowledge to be obtained by attending the detail of business in the committees above stairs than ever did come, or ever will come, from any board in this kingdom, or from all of
them together. An assiduous member of Parliament
will not be the worse instructed there for not being
paid a thousand a year for learning his lesson. And
now that I speak of the committees above stairs, I
must say, that, having till lately attended them a good
deal, I have observed that no description of members
give so little attendance, either to communicate or to
obtain instruction upon matters of commerce, as the
honorable members of the grave Board of Trade. I
really do not recollect that I have ever seen one of
them in that sort of business. , Possibly some members may have better memories, and may call to
mind some job that may have accidentally brought
one or other of them, at one time or other, to attend
a matter of commerce.
This board, Sir, has had both its original formation
and its regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, and in a -job its mother brought it forth. It
made one among those showy and specious impositions which one of the experiment-making administrations of Charlis the Second held out to delude the people, and to be substituted in the place of the real
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service which they might expect from a Parliament
annually sitting. It was intended, also, to corrupt
that body, whenever it should be permitted to sit. It
was projected in the year 1668, and it continued in
a tottering and rickety childhood for about three or
four years: for it died in the year 1673, a babe of as
little hopes as ever swelled the bills of mortality in
the article of convulsed or overlaid children who have
hardly stepped over the threshold of life.
It was buried with little ceremony, and never more
thought of until the reign of King William, when, in
the strange vicissitude of neglect and vigor, of good
and ill success that attended his wars, in the year
1695, the trade was distressed beyond all example of
former sufferings by the piracies of the French cruisers. This suffering incensed, and, as it should seem, very justly incensed, the House of Commons. In this
ferment, they struck, not only at the administration,
but at the very constitution of the executive government. They attempted to form in Parliament a board for the protection of trade, which, as they planned it,
was to draw to itself a great part, if not the whole, of
the functions and powers both of the Admiralty and
of the Treasury; and thus, by a Parliamentary delegation of office and officers, they threatened absolutely to separate these departments from the whole system
of-the executive government, and of course to vest
the most leading and essential of its attributes in this
board. As the executive government was in a manner convicted of a dereliction of its functions, it was with infinite difficulty that this blow was warded off
in that session. There was a threat to renew the
same attempt in the next. To prev'ent the effect of
this manoeuvre, the court opposed another manceuvre
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to it, and, in the yesr 1696, called into life this
Board of Trade, which had slept since 1673.
This, in a few words, is the history of the regeneration of the Board of Trade. It has perfectly answered
its purposes. It was intended to quiet the minds of
the people, and to compose the ferment that was then
strongly working in Parliament. The courtiers were
too happy to be able to substitute a board which they
knew would be useless in the place of one that they
feared would be dangerous. Thus the Board of Trade
was reproduced in a job; and perhaps it is the only
instance of a public body which has never degenerated, but to this hour preserves all the health and
vigor of its primitive institution.
This Board of Trade and Plantations has not been
of any use to the colonies, as colonies: so little of
use, that the flourishing settlements of New' England,
of Virginia, and of Maryland, and all our wealthy
colonies in, the West Inips, Were of a date prior to
the first bo~d 6'f Charles thie eondd. Pennsylvania
and Carolina were settled during its dark quarter, in
the interval between the extinction of the first and the
formation of the second board. - Two colonies alone
owe their origin to that board. Georgia, which, till
lately, has made a very slow progress, - and never did
make any progress at all, until it had wholly got rid
of all the regulations which the Board of Trade had
moulded into its original constitution. That colony
has cost the nation very great sums of money; whereas the colonies which have had the fortune of not
being godfathered by the Board of Trade never cost
the nation a shilling, except what has been so properly spent in losing them. But the colony of Georgia, weak as it was, carried with it to the last hour,
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and carries, even in its present dead, pallid visage,
the perfect resemblance of its parents. It always had,
and it now has, an establishment, paid by the public of
England, for the sake of the influence of the crown:
that colony having. never been able or willing to take
upon itself the expense of its proper government or
its own appropriated jobs.
The province of Nova Scotia was -the youngest and
the favorite child of the Board. Good God! what
sums the nursing of that ill-thriven, hard-visaged,
and ill-favored brat has cost to this wittol nation!
Sir, this colony has stood us in a sum of not less than
seven hundred thousand pounds. To this day it has
made no repayment, - it does not even support those
offices of expense which are miscalled its government; the whole of that job still lies upon the patient, callous shoulders of the people of England.
Sir, I am going to state a fact to you that will
serve to set in full sunshine the real value of formality and official. superintendence. There was -in'the province of Nova Scotia one little neglected corner, the country of the neutral French; which, having the good-fortune td escape the fostering care of both France and England, and to have been shut out
from the protection and regulation of councils of
commerce and of boards of trade, did, in silence,
without notice, and without assistance, increase to
a considerable degree. But it seems our nation had
more skill and ability in destroying than in settling
a colony. In the last war, we did, in my opinion,
most inhumanly, and upon pretences that in the eye
of an honest man are not worth a farthing, iroot out
this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter
inability to govern, or to reconcile, gave us no sort
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of right to extirpate. Whatever the merits of that
extirpation might have been, it was on the footsteps
of a neglected people, it was on the fund of unconstrained poverty, it was on the acquisitions of unregulated industry, that anything which deserves the name of a colony in that province has been formed.
It has been formed by overflowings from the exuberant population of Now England, and by emigration
from other parts of Nova Scotia of fugitives from the
protection of the Board of Trade.
But if all of these things were not more than sufficient to prove to you the inutility of that expensive
establishment, I would desire you to recollect, Sir,
that those who may be very ready to defend it are
very cautious how they employ it, - cautious how,they employ it even in appearance and pretence.
They are afraid they should lose the benefit of its
influence in Parliament, if they seemed to keep it up
for any other purpose. If ever there were commercial points of great weight, and most closely con,
nected with our dependencies, they are those which
have been agitated and decided in Parliament since I
came into it. Which of the innumerable regulations
since made had their origin or their improvement in
the Board of Trade? Did any of the several East
India bills which have been successively produced
since 1767 originate there? Did any one dream of
referring them, or any part of them, thither? Was
anybody so ridiculous as even to think of it? If ever
there was an occasion on which the Board was fit to
be consulted, it was with regard to the acts that were
preludes' to the American war, or attendant on. its
commencement. Those acts were full of commercial
regulations, such as they were: the Intercourse Bill;
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tile Prohibitory Bill; the Fishery Bill. If the Board
was not concerned in such things, in what particular
was it thought fit that it should be concerned? In
the course of all these bills through the House, I observed the members of that board to be remarkably cautious of intermeddling. They understood decorum
better; they know that matters of trade and plantations are no business of theirs.
There were two very recent occasions, which, if the
idea of any use for the Board had not been extinguished by prescription,- appeared loudly to call for their interference.
When commissioners were sent to pay his Majesty's and our dutiful respects to the Congress of
the United States, a part of their powers under the
commission were, it seems, of a commercial nature.
They were authorized, in the most ample and undefined manner, to form a commercial treaty with America on the spot. This was no trivial object. As
the formation of such a treaty would necessarily have
been no less than the breaking up of our whole commercial system, and the giving it an entire new form, one would imagine that the Board of Trade
would have sat day and night to model propositions,
which, on our side, might serve as a basis to that
treaty. No such thing. Their learned leisure was
not in the least interrupted, though one of the members of the Board was a commissioner, and might, in mere compliment to his office, have been supposed to
make a show of deliberation on the subject. But he
knew that his colleagues would have thought he
laughed in their faces, had he attempted to bring
anything the most distantly relating to commerce or
colonies before them. A noble person, engaged in
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the same commission, and sent to learn his commercial rudiments in New York, (then under the operation of an act for the universal prohibition of trade,) was soon after put at the head of that board. This
contempt from the present ministers of all the pretended functions of that board, and their manner of
breathing into its very soul, of inspiring it with its
animating and presiding principle, puts an end to all
dispute concerning their opinion of the clay it was
made of. But I will give them heaped measure.
It was but the other day, that the noble lord in
the blue ribbon carried up to the House of Peers two
acts, altering, I think much for the better, but altering in a great degree, our whole commercial system:
those acts, I mean, for giving a free trade to Ireland
in woollens, and in all things else, with independent
nations, and giving them an equal trade to our own
colonies. Here, too, the novelty of this great, but
arduous and critical improvement of system, would
make you conceive that the anxious solicitude of the
noble lord in the blue ribbon would have wholly
destroyed the plan of summer recreation of that
board, by references to examine, compare, and digest
matters for Parliament. You would imagine that
Irish commissioners of customs, and English commissioners of customs, and commissioners of excise,
that merchants and manufacturers of every denomination, had daily crowded their outer rooms. Nil
horumrn. The perpetual virtual adjournment, and the
unbroken sitting vacation of that board, was no more
disturbed by the Irish than by the plantation commerce, or any other commerce. The same matter
made a large part of the business which occupied the
House for two sessions before; and as our ministers
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were not then mellowed by the mild, emollient, and
engaging blandishments of our dear sister into all
the tenderness of unqualified surrender, the bounds
and limits of a restrained benefit naturally required
much detailed management and positive regulation.
But neither the qualified propositions which were
received, nor those other qualified propositions which
were rejected by ministers, were the least concern of
theirs, or were they ever thought of in the business.
It is therefore, Sir, on the opinion of Parliament,
on the opinion of the ministers, and even on their
own opinion of their inutility, that I shall propose to
you to suppress the Board of Trade and Plantations,
and to recommit all its business to the Council, from
whence it was very improvidently taken; and which
business (whatever it might be) was much better
done, and without any expense; and, indeed, where
in effect it may all come at last. Almost all that deserves the name of business there is the reference of the plantation acts to the opinion of gentlemen of the
law. But all this may be done, as the Irish business
of the same nature has always been done, by the
Council, and with a reference to the Attorney and
Solicitor General.
There are some regulations in the household, relative to the officers of the yeomen of the guards, and the officers and band of gentlemen pensioners, which
I shall likewise submit to your consideration, for the
purpose of regulating establishments which at present are much abused.
I have now finished all that for the present I shall
trouble you with on the plan of reduction. I mean
next to propose to you the plan of arrangement, by.
which I mean to appropriate and fix the civil list
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money to its several services according to their nature: for I am thoroughly sensible, that, if a discretion wholly arbitrary can be exercised over the civil list revenue, although the most effectual methods
may be taken to prevent the inferior departments
from exceeding their bounds, the plan of reformation
will still be left very imperfect. It will not, in my
opinion, be safe to permit an entirely arbitrary discretion even in the First Lord of the Treasury himself; it will not be safe to leave with him a power of diverting the public money from its proper objects, of
paying it in an irregular course, or of inverting perhaps the order of time, dictated by the proportion of.
value, which ought to regulate his application of payment to service.
I am sensible, too, that the very operation of a plan
of economy which tends to exonerate the civil list of
expensive establishments may in some sort defeat the
capital end we have in view, -- the independence of
Parliament; and that, in removing the public and
ostensible means of influence, we may increase the
fund of' private corruption. I have thought of some
methods to prevent an abuse of surplus cash under
discretionary application, - I mean the heads of secret
service, special service, variousspayments, and the like, -
which I hope will answer, and which in due time I
shall lay before you. Where I am unable to limit
the quantity of the sums to be applied, by reason of
the uncertain quantity of the service, I endeavor to
confine it to its line, to secure an indefinite application to the definite service to which it belongs, - not
to stop the progress of expense in its-line, but to confine it to that line in which it professes to move.
But that part of my plan, Sir, upon which I prin
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cipally rest, that on which I rely for the purpose of
binding up and securing the whole, is to establish a
fixed and invariable order in all its payments, which it
shall not be permitted to the First Lord of the Treasury, upon any pretence whatsoever, to depart from.
I therefore divide the civil list payments into nine
classes, putting each class forward according to thp
importance or justice of the demand, and to the inability of the persons entitled to enforce their pretensions: that is, to put those first who have the most efficient offices, or claim the justest debts, and at the
same time, from the character of that description of:
men, from the retiredness or the remoteness of their
situation, or from their want of weight'and power to
enforce their pretensions, or from their being entirely
subject to the power of a minister, without any reciprocal power of awing, ought to be the most considered,
and are the most likely to be neglected, - all these I
place in the highest classes; I place in the lowest
those whose functions are of the least importance, but
whose persons or rank are often of the greatest power
and influence.
In the first class I place the judges, as of the first
importance. It is the public justice that holds the
community together; the ease, therefore, and independence of the judges ought to supersede all other
considerations, and they ought to be the very last to
feel the necessities of the state, or to be obliged either
to court or bully a minister for their right; they ought
to be as weak solicitors on their own demands as strenuous assertors of the rights and liberties of others.
The judges are, or ought to be, of a reserved and retired character, and wholly unconnected with the
political world.
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In the second class I place the foreign ministers.
The judges are the links of our connections with one
another; the foreign ministers are the links of our
connection with other nations. They are not upon
the spot to demand payment, and are therefore the
most likely to be, as in fact they have sometimes been,
entirely neglected, to the great disgrace and perhaps
the great detriment of the nation.
In the third class I would bring all the tradesmen
who supply the crown by contractor otherwise.
In the fourth class I place all the domestic servants of the king, and all persons in efficient offices whose salaries do-not exceed two hundred pounds a
year.
In the fifth, upon account of honor, which ought to
give place to nothing but charity and rigid justice, I
would place the pensions and allowances of his Majesty's royal family, comprehending of course the queen, together with the stated allowance of the
privy purse.
In the sixth class I place those efficient offices of
duty whose salaries may exceed, the sum of two hundred pounds a year.
In the seventh class, that mixed mass, the whole
pension list.
In the eighth, the offices of honor about the king.
In the ninth, and the last of all, the salaries and
pensions of the First Lord of the Treasury himself,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the other Commissioners of the Treasury.
If, by any possible mismanagement of that part
of the revenue which is left at discretion, or by any
other mode of prodigality, cash should be deficient for
the payment of the lowest classes, I propose that the
? ? ? ? FOR ECONOMICAL REFORM. 353
amount of those salaries where the deficiency may
happen to fall shall not be carried as debt to the account of the succeeding year, but that it shall be entirely lapsed, sunk, and lost; so that government will be enabled to start in the race of every new year
wholly unloaded, fresh in wind and in vigor. Hereafter no civil list debt can ever come upon the public.
And those who do not consider this as saving, because
it is not a certain sum, do not ground their calculations of the future on their experience of the past.
I know of no mode of preserving the effectual execution of any duty, but to make it the direct interest
of the executive officer that it shall be faithfully performed. Assuming, then, that the present vast allowance to the civil list is perfectly adequate to all its purposes, if there should be any failure, it must be
from the mismanagement or neglect of the First Commissioner of the Treasury; since, upon the proposed
plan, there can be no expense of any consequence
which he is not himself previously to authorize and
finally to control. It is therefore just, as well as
politic, that the loss should attach upon the delinquency.
If the failure from the delinquency should be very
considerable, it will fall on the class directly above
the First Lord of the Treasury, as well as upon himself
and his board.
