CIVIL LIST ACTS.

HC Deb 30 July 1838 vol 44 cc792-809

The House in Committee on the Civil List Acts.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer

rose for the purpose of bringing under the consideration of the House what he hoped would prove a final and satisfactory settlement on the subject of pensions, and he approached that question on the present occasion with a deep feeling of interest and anxiety, and with a fervent hope that the House would accede unanimously to the resolutions with which he intended to conclude. The different turns which the debate took on the Pension List at the time when it occurred were too fresh in the memory of the House to require him to detail them at length and were besides set out in the report at present upon the table. It was therefore only necessary for him to state, that in the month of December last a committee was appointed to inquire into this subject, a committee which included the names of several gentlemen who were accustomed to take a strict and economical view of the pensions on the civil list, and who formed collectively a tribunal that was perfectly impartial and independent of all control. When he said that the committee was impartial, he did not mean to deny, that it was constituted of gentlemen of one particular view in politics, but that had been no fault of his, for he had been anxious to secure the services of several hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, but they, having opposed the inquiry altogether, felt that they should be acting inconsistently if they sat upon the committee which was to conduct that inquiry, and therefore declined to become members of it. That determination upon their part deprived him of the services of several gentlemen on whose authority both the House and himself would have placed great reliance. The Committee, however, had met and sat 35 days. It was attended by the great bulk of the Members appointed to serve on it, and he rejoiced that in consequence of a recent regulation of the House, not only the attendance of members, but also the different votes which they had given, were exhibited in the report; indeed, he might say, that the report was agreed to unanimously, for 16 Members were present when it was agreed to, and, looking at the names of the members who were absent and at the votes which they had given on the different divisions at which they had been present, he had no hesitation in saying, that had they been present, they also would have agreed in the report with the same unanimity as those did who were present. He thought also that when the House read over the names of the members who agreed to the report, it would be of opinion that the public was fairly represented in that committee. He must now inform the House, that as soon as the committee was appointed, he had addressed to every individual on the pension list a circular letter, stating that he should be happy to receive from them any communication with which they might please to honour him as to the origin of their pensions, and as to the necessity for the continuance of them. He had made this as a private communication, because he felt that he had no right, as the House had determined to afford an inquiry to place any limit upon that inquiry. He believed, that there was not one individual to whom that circular was addressed who did not consider it as written with a view to do justice to them on the one hand, and to satisfy the just expectations of the public on the other. Early in the month of February it was thought necessary, with a view of facilitating the business of the committee, to classify the pensions. The first question which the committee had to consider was, whether they should call for a justification of those pensions which appeared to have been granted as rewards for services. On this there were several divisions, but not on the merits of the cases, but as to the resolution to which the committee should come—namely, whether they should put a pension in class No. 1 where those pensions were put on which no doubt then existed, but which were to be open to further evidence, or in class No. 2, where those pensions were placed which were expressly reserved for inquiry at a future time. After having completed the first branch of the inquiry, the committee resumed the examination of the pensions reserved for further consideration, and went through them with the utmost industry and attention. Indeed, he must take the liberty of saying on behalf of the committee that nothing could have been more industrious or sedulous than their discharge of the very delicate duties intrusted to them. Having gone through the whole list, they proceeded to classify the pensions according to the system detailed in page 13, of the report under the heads of the services to which they were referable, distinguishing army, navy, and judicial pensions, as well as those connected with the departments of the civil service, with literature and the arts, with private services rendered the Royal family, with the exercise of the royal bounty and charity, with compensations awarded for forfeited estates, and with miscellaneous matters not included in those designations. It was true that some pensions could not be strictly said to have been granted in return for the services mentioned above, but they bore more or less relation to them. He believed he might say, that the classification having been made, the committee had acted most fairly and correctly in the investigation of the individual cases. They had considered all the services rendered by the pensioner himself and his family which could be taken as justifying the pensions, and he must say with great pride that the list of services contained in the appendix did the greatest honour to those connected with the various branches of the public service, and even if no other result had flowed from the inquiry (though it had most important and useful results), it would at least have produced a valuable memorial of the merits of public servants, which could not be unacceptable either to the House or the public. He could refer, if it would not be improper to occupy too long the attention of the committee, to various classes of services, which he could wish to see brought before the public. He had pleasure in saying, now that the inquiry was completed, that nothing had passed to cause him to regret in the slightest degree the step he had taken in proposing it. On the contrary, he might appeal to those Members of the Committee who had conducted the examination, who were the least disposed to approve of the pension list, to say whether many of the objections they originally entertained to it had not been removed in the progress of the inquiry, and whether the suspicion of abuse that had existed was not, to the honour of the pensioners themselves and of the various Governments who had administered this branch of the Royal prerogative, materially lessened, and in the pensions of recent date entirely removed. If such had been the result, if a branch of the public expenditure to which suspicion, jealousy, and reproach formerly attached, had been cleared from these imputations by a free and honest examination, surely the service thus rendered was most imporant to the public, and to the individuals themselves, who had been subjected to great and unmerited reproach. He should not occupy the attention of the Committee, more especially as he hoped there would be no difference of opinion on this subject, with any prolonged examination of the various cases, but, he could not avoid referring to one or two in order to show the benefits that had resulted from the inquiry. There was no part of the subject which had attracted more censure than the pensions given to foreigners, inasmuch as that was thought to be a diversion of the public funds from their legitimate use. If anything could add to the suspicion and reproach thus engendered, it would be the circumstance of the foreigner being a lady. There were two foreign ladies on the list, relative to whose claims the public had no opportunity of judging before the inquiry was instituted, who bore the illustrious name of Biron. It had been found in this case that the grant of the pension, so far from affording ground for reproach, merited the warmest approbation. The ladies were daughters of the late Marèchal Biron. When the celebrated Lord Rodney, a short time before he proceeded to his command in the West Indies, was residing at Paris, being in circumstances of great pecuniary embarrassment, he was arrested for debt, and thereby prevented from discharging his professional duties. Marèchal Biron, hearing of the fact, and feeling that it would be unworthy of a great nation to deprive a gallant officer, though an enemy, of the opportunity of performing his duty to his country, stepped forward and paid the amount of the debt. Lord Rodney was thus allowed to return to this country, where he was appointed to a command in the West Indies, and shortly afterward met the French fleet in that memorable battle by which he so much signalized himself, and achieved so great a triumph for Britain. Many years after this, when the calamities of the French revolution had passed, the family of Marèchal Biron were residing, poor and defenceless, in London. When his Majesty George the 3rd. was informed of their condition, the Monarch sent for them, and acquainted them that he felt England owed a debt of obligation to Marèchal Biron, and granted the pension. He need not say that a pension more honourably merited as the tribute of a nation's gratitude for services done to the country over which the donor ruled could not possibly exist. Thus it turned out that a pension than which none might appear more open to censure had been found worthy of the greatest praise. Of the various communications laid before the committee there were many which did the greatest honour to those who had made them, and none more so than the letter he should now take the liberty of reading, which would be found in the sixth page. It was from the daughter of General Carey, who fell while commanding the troops of his Majesty, in the West Indies. The pension, he would merely premise, was one of those which might seem most open to objection, and respecting which there was no document in any public office that could give the wished-for information. It was as follows:— Vienna January 11, 1838. Sir,—Living, on account of the smallness of my income, in the most retired manner at the above place, I have nothing to offer in justification of the liberty I take in addressing you but the information I have received through the medium of the newspapers, that all of that despised and degraded class called pensioners are desired to send to you, Sir, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, an account of their several claims to the pensions they have hitherto received. Taking it then for granted that I am rightly informed, I beg your patience to the enforced recital. My father the hon. General Lucius Ferdinand Carey, commanded at the taking of the Island of St. Lucia from the French, in the year 1780, and died of his wounds on the day of its capture. The pension which was granted to his daughters was not obtained through the favour of any Minister, but was given by the voice of Parliament, and the consent of our ever-respected Sovereign George the 3rd.; it consisted of 80l. each, and was bestowed as some small remuneration for the incalculable evils which fell upon a family of infant daughters by the loss of a father just as he became able to provide for them—by the loss of a father's protection and all the comforts of a father's house; nor did the wide-spreading evil end here; the neglected, almost as if (by high and rich connections) unacknowledged, children, in process of time became patronless young women without friends, protector, or introduction; and, to make the measure of their affliction quite full, were deprived of their rank as viscount's daughters by the premature death of their parent, and left to wander about the world in helpless degradation, and something nearly allied to want. I must not, however, suffer this melancholy enumeration to make me forget that which I must ever remember with gratitude—viz., that this pension, which in these dear times furnishes me with little more than daily bread, and obliges me, to obtain that, to live in banishment, was yet the means of procuring me that religious and solid education adapted to my fortunes, which has enabled me to bear up against all the sorrows of them. I have, indeed, enjoyed it long; perhaps the gentlemen of the committee will think too long; but that has been the will of God, and not my fault; and it is true that, as it is my only resource, I should be glad to retain it, if I can be allowed so to do with honour and without reproach, and to receive it with that dignified thankfulness with which the daughter of an usefully brave British officer may accept a national testimony of her father's deserts; but if this cannot be, and his services are considered as having been long remunerated, why then, Sir, I can cheerfully resign that which I shall hope may lessen the distress of some younger and weaker child of affliction; and being, by God's blessing, able, both in body and mind, to seek my own subsistence in the education of the children of some more fortunate family, as I was obliged to do in Mr. Pitt's time, when the pensions were at times four, five, or six quarters in arrears, I may, perhaps, find an answer to the quarterly question of my mind, whether such wages as I should then receive for my honest service, were not more honourable than the degrading reception of a pension so grudgingly bestowed. Leaving this weighty matter, under your sanction, in the hands and choice of the gentlemen of the committee, I beg leave to subscribe myself, Sir, your most obedient humble servant, LAVINIA MATILDA CAREY MORTIMER, Aged 67. Would any one deny, that this letter furnished a beautiful proof how nobly the daughter of a British officer could assert her claim to the bounty of the nation—how nobly and proudly she could speak of his services? This was not the only commendable letter that had proceeded from some who, before the inquiry, were considered to belong to a class of degraded persons; and the publication of these documents in the report, was well calculated to rescue them from unmerited reproach. A similar letter had been received from the widow of the late gallant Sir Home Popham, admirable for the calm and dispassionate, though earnest manner, in which it referred to his services. The letter concluded in these words:— I do not undervalue, by any means, the pecuniary advantages of the pension; with my family and my wants that were impossible; have I not, ere this, borne heavier privations? and for my country! I have. But I do value high, and above all, the touching testimony to the merits and to the memory of Sir Home Popham borne in the continuance of that pension by a grateful country, ministered by a Royal hand to his widow, and that because he was as true an officer as ever left a widow in a nation's care. He might multiply instances in which the publicity given to services hitherto not generally known, would dispel the delusion that existed on this subject more, perhaps, than on any other question which had engaged the public attention. It was not merely in the naval or military professions that brilliant services had been performed which fully entitled those who rendered them to the public gratitude, for in the civil departments of administration, pensions had been earned by services as important as any that had been performed on the field of battle. He had alluded, on a former occasion, and he could not avoid doing so again, to the case of his lately deceased friend, Colonel Stewart, who was not more distinguished for his military than for his civil services, and who might be said to have perished in the service of his country as truly as if he had died in battle. The acknowledgment of the public gratitude, in the shape of a pension to his surviving daughter, was not more just than in the case of pensions connected with the names of Wellington, Hill, Beresford, and Lynedoch. Services performed in the humbler branches of administration were not to be overlooked more than the great actions of those who had filled a high place in the eye of their country and the world. Of this class, were those of Mr. Cumming, of the India Board, and Colonel Edwards, of the Colonial-office, who also might be said to have perished in the public service. Such, too, were those of the rev. Mr. Proctor, mentioned at page 83, to whose widow a pension had been granted. The Forest of Dean was an extraparochial district, and had been left without a provision for the religious and moral instruction of the inhabitants. Mr. Proctor devoted much of his time and labour to an unrequited discharge of professional duty among them, as was stated with great beauty and simplicity by his widow whose letter would be found in the report. To the care of the inhabitants of the forest he sacrificed his health and time, and this pension was given to his widow as a tribute to his merits. Nothing could dispel more effectually than these cases the suspicion of public or private corruption, or prove more satisfactorily that the administration of the Royal bounty had been, on the whole, equitable and becoming; and, therefore, he said, that the publication of their details would be a service to the pensioners and the public. He had stated, when doubts were expressed as to the course that might be taken by the committee, that if he could imagine the consequence of appointing it would be the recommendation of any act of injustice, he would be as adverse to it as any one could be; but that he had confidence that a Committee of that House would conduct the inquiry, not only with strict fidelity to the public, but with the greatest sympathy and consideration for all parties concerned. He must say, that the result of the examination had fully confirmed those anticipations. It had been insinuated with regard to those pensions that had been abandoned by their holders, that there was something disingenuous in the reference made to them in the Report. It had been said, that Lord Auckland, Mr. Drummond, and Lord Elphinstone, who resigned their pensions on being appointed to the offices they now filled, had, in point of fact, only done so under the pressure of the examination of the Committee. Never had there been a greater misstatement, to use no stronger term. Lord Auckland had resigned his pension on his appointment to the office of President of the Board of Trade, formerly filled by him; Mr. Drummond had given up his when appointed to his situation in the Irish Government; and Lord Elphinstone had abandoned his when he was made governor of Madras. Others had subsequently surrendered their pensions. But he must say he thought it would not be just or generous to say of the individuals who had thus surrendered, that what they did was done under apprehension of this examination. He knew, that previously many persons holding pensions were withheld from surrendering by the apprehension, lest if they did so they might be considered as throwing discredit on the motives of those who did not. But when the Committee was appointed, it was immediately felt that Parliament having sanctioned the principle of inquiry, there no longer existed any reason why they should not surrender, which they accordingly did. This was undoubtedly the reason of surrender with some. Another point to which he wished to call attention was this:—The Committee had considered with respect to a certain class of pensions, that although no case might be made out for the withdrawal of the pension, yet the circumstances of the parties made the continuance of the charge of their pensions on the public no longer necessary. These pensions had been originally conferred, not for services, but out of the royal bounty, in consideration of the impoverished circumstances in which the parties were then involved, and which no longer existed. The Committee thought, that where such was the case the pension should cease and determine. And it was only right to observe, that many persons had acted on this principle. Thus, Lord Sidmouth, on becoming entitled by bequest to a large property, immediately resigned the pension he enjoyed. On the same principle the late Lord Farnborough, Mr. Moore, Mr. Marsden, and Mr. Charles Bathurst, had surrendered their pensions. The same had been done by several others, and among the rest the Duchess of Newcastle had some years ago voluntarily parted with her pension. Another class was that of pensions which the Committee recommended should be suspended during the continuance of the present circumstances of the holders, but they thought, that the contingent reversion of those pensions—contingent upon the event of a change of those circumstances, that was to say—should be preserved to the parties, but that only on the responsibility of Government and if absolutely necessary. The third class was the reverse of the former, and comprehended many persons to whom the Committee were of opinion the existing pensions should be continued for the present, but in which the term of the original grant should be limited to another, and generally a shorter period. The last class was one through which the Committee had gone with great reluctance, as it comprised those cases in which they thought it expedient that the pensions should altogether cease. But the class was not a numerous one. Indeed, there were but very few names on it. The groundwork on which these parties were thus classed was, that their pensions should hereafter cease, and undoubtedly he could have wished, and the same was the feeling of the Committee, that the result of the examination had been not only to limit the class, but to dispense with it altogether. But if, under all the circumstances, the Committee had abstained from making this recommendation to the House, they would not have possessed any claim to the confidence either of the House or of the public, and their report, without this portion of it, instead of having afforded any grounds for the settlement of the question, would only have provided new elements of reproach, that which they called a settlement of the question being in reality no such thing. Before he sat down he thought he ought to state to the house what had taken him and the Committee wholly by surprise—he meant the state of the law respecting pensions. The law was, that the Crown was debarred from making grants of pensions which should be binding on their successors to the throne. This was enacted by a statute of Anne, But that statute did not extend to Scotland and Ireland, and, consequently, the Crown had been accustomed to exert the power of granting pensions by patent, payable out of the Irish and Scotch revenues—in Ireland to a large extent, in Scotland to a small extent. These grants the Committee, to their surprise, found were not only binding on the Crown, but every way valid in point of law. For when they first discovered the fact, they took the joint opinion of the law officers of the Crown, both of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and thence ascertained the law to have been at the time of these grants as he had stated. Now, with respect to this, the Committee could not bring into question the existing law, and therefore they concluded that pensions founded on patent should be respected, and they would not go further into the examination of them. He wished now to press upon the House the consideration of what would be the practical working of the new arrangements recommended by the Committee in the savings which would be gained on the whole Pension list at the end of a certain period of years. The House would find this statement at the beginning of the report, and he had every reason to believe it correct, on the authority of Mr. Finlaison, a gentleman who was employed to calculate the Government annuities. Taking into account new pensions that might be granted, the maximum of saving would amount in the month of June of the year 1839 to 4,935l. per annum; in 1844 the savings, or decrease per annum of the pensions below the present amount, to 34,334l.; in 1849, to 67,295l.,; in 1854, to 90,904l., and the savings in twenty years from this time, or 1858, would amount to 104,874l. per annum on the amount in 1839. The pension list of that period would be 106,023l. less in amount than at present, and 130,523l. less than the Pension-list in 1830. The whole charge in 1858 would not exceed 34,877l. This, he must beg it to be observed, was the maximum amount of the savings, and that amount was given owing to the great difficulty of arriving at precision, in consequence of the ages of the parties being unknown. And while on this point he must beg to throw from himself on the Committee the responsibility of having instituted the inquiry respecting ages of parties, against which so much had been said and written. He was innocent of this charge, especially so far as referred fo the cases of ladies. He threw from himself therefore the responsibility of this step to which he only agreed when he found from the chairman of the Committee that it was essential to the whole investigation that this inquiry should take place. He could assure the House that they had found extraordinary difficulty in arriving at these ages. Some cases presented the most startling anomalies. In one case the age of the pensioner was represented as considerably less than the number of years during which the party had been in receipt of the pension. Such were the difficulties they had to contend with in the returns of ages: but it was not merely in these returns that such difficulties were found; for the gentlemen who made up these returns had stated to him that cases of a similar nature occurred in the office of the commissioners for the purchase of Government annuities. A lady desirous of purchasing had given her age as forty—no, thirty-nine, for thirty-nine he believed was the more popular age than forty—on which the clerk said, "Four years ago you gave your age as thirty-nine." She said, "I know that; but though I know that if set down as thirty-nine I shall give more, yet the public will gain so much the more, and at all events it is no business of yours." In point of fact, however, the age was of no great consequence to the public, the death of the parties being the important element. But he could not set down without referring to the recommendations of the Committee at the conclusion of the report. These he thought were of considerable importance, and they were agreed to unanimously by the Committee, and as frankly adopted by Government. They would prove, he hoped, additional checks and safeguards on the expenditure in pensions. The first recommendation was very important, but its importance could only be fully estimated by one who had served on the Committee. The recommendation was, that in case of all future civil list pensions, the warrant, or instrument of appointment, should contain on the face of it the cause for which the pension was conferred, What could be more simple than to state on the face of the warrant the grounds on which the pension was granted? And if that principle had been proceeded on in regard to all the old pensions, as it had been in the cases of perhaps some half dozen, much of the obloquy with which the pension list and pensioners had been branded would never have arisen; and if a Committee had sat to examine into the subject, they would have accomplished the object in as many hours as they lately spent days. The second recommendation was, that where pensions were granted for services to persons other than the individual by whom the services were rendered, care should be taken, if these pensions were granted for younger lives, that the amount of the pension should be reduced so as to prevent any undue increase of charge to the public. The next recommendation was, that where pensions were bonâ fide gifts of the royal bounty in relief of distress, not in reward of services or of literary or scientific merits, such pensions should be granted with the distinct understanding that they should cease when the circumstances of the parties no longer required their continuance. The next recommendation was not important in point of money, but possessed considerable constitutional importance. That recommendation which was the fourth, said that for the future the mere combination of poverty and a peerage should not without service form the groundwork of a pension. He thought it was important to the honour and credit of the Peers that this should be acted upon; for in his opinion nothing could be more detrimental to the influence of the peerage than any appearance of the Crown's acting upon the principle that the combination of poverty with hereditary rank constituted a claim to a pension. At the same time the Committee thought it would be most unjust to deprive the peerage of any of the ordinary inducements to public services which all other classes were entitled to claim; but they did not think it fitting to place the Peers in a situation to which the usage is attached that merely hereditary rank if held with a reduced fortune should give a claim to a public pension. That was the opinion of the Committee, and in that opinion Her Majesty's Government entirely coincided. The fifth resolution merely extended to Scotland and Ireland, what had been already done in England, with respect to limiting the re-grant of civil list pensions. Lastly the Committee recommended that all pensions to be granted should be held liable to deduction or suspension, in the event of the parties being appointed to office in the public service, thus rendering the continuance of the pensions unnecessary either for a time or permanently. This had been done in some cases of pensions submitted to the Committee. He did not say, that it ought to be done in all those cases; but they were all held liable to the application of that principle. He should only advert to one point more. Now that this inquiry was complete, he thought he might say, without presumption, that the Government had endeavoured to procure for the Committee whatever they might require, and that no effort had been employed on their part to create delusion or to check the Committee in the full exercise of their discretion. He would say that the Government had done all for the Committee they could do. The Committee had recommended that the question should be finally settled by placing on the consolidated fund all pensions which might be regranted subsequent to this examination. The Committee had made this recommendation, because they did not think it rested with them to grant or regrant any pensions, but that they ought to be granted by funds set apart for that purpose by Parliament, but distributed at the discretion of the Crown. All, then, that the House had to decide was whether, on the information which he had given from the report, they were prepared to grant her Majesty a sufficient sum to enable her to regrant these pensions. But he must entreat the House and the public, if they wished to obtain full information on the subject, to turn to the report and the appendix. They had heard remarks put forth tending to create great distrust and jealousy of the proceedings of this Committee. He would entreat them therefore to compare the allegations which had been made on the subject of the pension list with the report of the Committee, and see whether or not on public grounds they were not justified in making this examination, and whether the result was not such as must be satisfactory to all parties. He moved "That it is expedient that provision be made out of the consolidated fund to defray the charge of pensions granted prior to the accession of her Majesty."

Sir C. Lemon

found, that in all previous inquiries of this kind the pensions granted on the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, were always made the first branch of inquiry. In 1689 an investigation of this kind took place, in which it appeared that the Bishop of Exeter had a pension of 30l. a-year on those revenues; the Earl of Bath 3,000l. a-year; Sir Peter Killigrew the same sum. In 1694 the pension list amounted to 5,630l. altogether. He was quite aware that his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he laid on the table the bill for the better administration of the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall which he had promised, would have an opportunity of clearing up that mystery which had often been mentioned in that House as hanging over those revenues; he was aware of this, and he presumed that his right hon. Friend intended to put off till that opportunity the supplying this omission in his present speech.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer

It was no omission, the Committee declined entering on that subject.

Mr. Warburton

thought hon. Members ought to have had the report in their hands, at least a sufficient time to allow the paper to dry. He had not had half an hour to make himself master of the recommendations of the Committee, and to look for the different claims of the different classes of pensioners on whose cases they were about to resolve, If any hon. Member would support him, he would move the adjournment of the further consideration of this matter until such a day as might be suitable.

Sir E. Wilmot

, in excusing himself for not having attended the Committee, said, that shortly after they had commenced their sittings he was taken ill and confined to bed for a fortnight, and that, on recovering, he would have resumed his attendance, but that he did not wish to vote for a report of which he could have known nothing, and which was then prepared.

Sir R. Peel

begged to say, without entering into a discussion on the merits of the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he still retained all the opinions which he had before expressed upon the subject. He thought it would have been infinitely better, as they were about effectually to prevent any future abuse, and place the Pension List upon a new footing, had the principle of secession hitherto pursued on the demise of the Crown been adhered to. Even though that principle had not been adopted, he thought it would have been better, when the opportunity presented itself of revising those grants, that the inquiry should have been conducted by the Crown, as likely to be conducted with more justice and consideration than it could possibly be by a Committee. He had not the slightest doubt that this Committee had faithfully and honestly discharged its obligations to the country, while it dispassionately and fairly considered individual claims. His objection was not so much to the proceedings of the Committee as to the original constitution of it. There were various reasons which would make him distrust individual claims; but if he entered upon that question, he would be liable to the objection he was urging against the Committee. He was bound to say, however, that he could not understand the grounds upon which, in some instances, the pensions had been continued, and in others discontinued. He was afraid that such a consequence would inevitably flow from the circumstance, that while in some cases the number of Gentlemen, on the Committee, for and against, being equally balanced, it remained with the chairman to decide; in others there was a large majority, although they might be cases perfectly analogous. Thus, as it appeared to him, former decisions were at variance with decisions subsequently come to. He must say, therefore, that he could not acquiesce in the withdrawal of those pensions. He did not feel himself at liberty to enter into the particulars of those cases; at the same time, were he to do so, it would not be with any desire to make any charge against the Committee. The consequence he had referred to was, he conceived, almost inevitable in dealing with delicate questions of this kind. The right hon. Gentleman, in the conclusion of his speech, said, that the parties receiving pensions, would still look to the Crown as the authority by which they so received them. Now, if the Committee had thought proper to continue every pension on the list, surely no one could say, that it was the Crown which had decided that they should be granted. Had the inquiry been conducted by the Treasury, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer as an adviser of the Crown would have had the power to recommend the continuance of pensions, in all which cases, no doubt, the Crown would have granted them, yet the party receiving the pension would still have to acknowledge that it was to the liberality of the Crown it owed the continuance of it. In this case it was very different. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for instance, advised a certain pension to be continued, it would be, or might be, overruled by the Committee, contrary to his sense of justice, or at least of enlarged liberality. On the other hand, those parties whose pensions were withdrawn, must feel that they were not withdrawn by the deliberate act of the Crown, but by the House of Commons, or rather a portion of the House of Commons, overruling the opinion of the Minister of the Crown. He therefore could not concur in the proposal; and he was very much afraid that the opinion of the pensioners would, inevitably be, that their claims had been confirmed or rejected, not by the authority or will of the Crown, but according as their several cases happened to make a favourable or unfavourable impression on the Committee.

Mr. A. Sandford

having upon all former occasions given his support to propositions for the appointment of a Committee of this kind, now felt bound to state, that the result of the inquiry confirmed his opinion as to the propriety of instituting such an investigation. He was now more strongly convinced than ever, that the investigation in every sense of the word was most correct and proper, not only as regarded the public but the pensioners themselves. He thought, that the report and the appendix would have a powerful effect in disabusing the public mind as to the manner in which these pensions had been given. It was certainly satisfactory to hear, that the right hon. Baronet did not accuse the Committee of any wilful injustice. All that the right hon. Baronet said was, that he thought the investigation would perhaps have been conducted with more justice by the Treasury than it could possibly be by a Committee of the House of Commons. He (Mr. Sandford) wished that circumstances would have permitted the Committee to have placed their report in the hands of the House for a longer time before the present discussion arose; but that was impossible. He would only add, that the Committee had endeavoured as far as possible to carry out the principle upon which it was appointed, and so to conduct the inquiry as to do at once full justice to the public, and to the parties whose names were found upon the Pension-list. It was not without regret, that one single pension had been removed, and it was certainly very gratifying to him, and, he believed, to the other Members of the Committee also, to find upon minute investigation that the great mass of persons whose names were upon the list had a strong claim for the pensions they received.

Resolution agreed to. House resumed.