HC Deb 19 May 1817 vol 36 cc691-701

On the motion for the second reading of this bill,

Sir Robert Heron

declared it to be his intention to give this measure all the opposition in his power. He was not desirous of singling out this particular bill, but was willing to consider it as only part of one entire proceeding, which he could view in no other light than a gross, although he hoped a vain attempt to delude the public. The reports of the finance committee professed but little, and did not perform what they professed. They had declared that there were offices which required regulation, but, with courtly politeness, they left it to the treasury to determine to what extent and in what manner. He doubted not the treasury would act as they had done in regulating the household and the civil list; that is, that they would add new appointments, and enlarge former salaries. It was with feelings of pain he disagreed with some of his hon. friends upon particular points connected with this subject; but he could see no reason why an abuse which had existed ten years, should be allowed to continue twenty more. Our ancestors had frequently reversed the improvident grants of the Crown, and never did the circumstances of the country so imperiously require the observance of a similar conduct on the part of parliament. When the question was, to rob the people of those rights which constituted their most valuable possession, the delay of a few days was considered to be too much; but when the question was to take away pensions from those who rendered no service, and were entitled to no reward, the House was told that they must wait till the grants expired which was not till those expired who enjoyed them. As if even these tardy benefits were envied, the present scheme of compensation was devised; a scheme which described no natural bounds, and which would, therefore, probably be carried much farther than its letter allowed. To him it seemed as if a conspiracy had been formed to induce the people to petition for the continuance of sinecures, as the lesser of the two evils. The bill was altogether founded upon a fallacy. For the first time in the history of the country, he found the principle avowed, that places of high political power were a fit object of pecuniary speculation. He was aware that tellerships of the exchequer and other appointments, had been conferred on eminent characters and great law-officers, as the reward of great and laborious services; but he had understood, that they now received pensions as a more proper mode of remuneration. He never had heard it said in that House, that sinecures were the great source of the public grievances; nor did he believe that it had ever been asserted, except by an ephemeral orator in Palace-yard, a great favourer of the designs of his majesty's ministers, but of whom we now heard very little. He regretted much that the committee should have lent itself to the wishes of those ministers, because what those wishes were might be discovered at a single glance over their conduct during the last and present sessions. They began the former session by a promise of economy from the throne; a promise that was at once an insult on the illustrious person exercising the functions of sovereignty, and a mockery of the distresses of the country. Whilst these honied words still dwelt upon their ears, they proceeded to raise the salaries of offices, the labours of which were diminished, and at a moment when the value of money was augmented. They proposed no retrenchment themselves, and resisted whatever proceeded from others; nor was it till those members who were accustomed to support them, much to their honour, compelled them to attend to economy, that they showed any disposition to appoint a finance committee. He had thought that the committee, when at length formed, would have directed its attention, in the first place, to the expenditure of the civil list. It was from this point that the example of retrenchment was expected to proceed. There, where all were looking however, for reduction, an additional debt of 260,000l. had been contracted. He knew that an equal amount of arrears had been before provided for, not under the sanction of parliament, but from those equivocal funds, the droits of the Admiralty, the fruits of national injustice, and the prey of royal piracy. The public had expected some sacrifice of that vain parade and pageantry, which conferred no real comfort on the prince, and which great princes detested and despised. This was a proceeding, however, which an administration that subsisted by corruption could not be expected to recommend. He could sec nothing in the military reductions which savoured of substantial retrenchment, so long as our peace establishment exceeded every former one in the most prosperous periods. When he beheld us retaining colonies from our allies, the Dutch, which we did not want, and which required a large force to defend them, he feared the real object was the maintenance of something like a military government at home, in order to support the system of taxation, and keep down the discontent which it generated. He would prefer throwing all the bills out together to the passing that which was immediately under consideration.

The gallery was cleared for a division, and strangers were excluded. On our readmission we found the debate proceeding, and

Mr. Brougham

in possession of the House. He considered that application ought to be made to parliament, to enable the Crown to make provision for public services, as each case should arise, and be examined on its own peculiar circumstances. He objected to the present plan, because it was systematic and prospective, investing the Crown with an annuity of about 42,000l. in addition to the pension list of the country. It had been well said, that this was the first time in which the idea was embodied into an act of parliament that politics were a trade. Pie entreated his hon. friends, before they gave their approbation to this measure, to go with him into a scrutiny of it. The pretence on which it was founded was undoubtedly plausible: it was, that a power should be reserved to the Crown of rewarding effective services, now that a large share of its former influence was to be taken away. He denied, however, as a proposition of fact, that this influence would be so diminished as not to leave the Crown possessed of ample means of rewarding meritorious exertions. The amount of the pension list in 1809, a year when the 4½ per cent, fund fell extremely short, was 220,000l. Upon that list were to be found the names of persons who had rendered no service; persons who belonged to families not more distinguished for their antiquity and rank, than for their wealth and splendour, and whose only title to their pensions, he presumed, was their invariable support of the ministers of the Crown, whoever those ministers might be. As long as one such considerable pension remained, so long there would exist a fund applicable to the reward of meritorious service. The present bill ought to be entitled a bill to enable the Crown to continue the misapplication of funds which the constitution had vested for public purposes, not for the indulgence of its private bounty, gratitude, or charity. It was monstrous, in the present state of the country, that such an object should be contemplated. He saw on the opposite benches some hon. members who enjoyed pensions of 800l. or 1,200l. a year, which he regarded as nothing more than the fair remuneration of their official labours; but this only served to prove that for this purpose the Crown was already in possession of adequate funds. It was not enough to show that some patronage had been taken away; it should be proved that enough had not been left for the due reward of efficient service. The old grounds on which these sinecures were defended, were, that they were necessary to the splendour of the Crown, to its weight in the country, and its influence in both Houses. It was said also, that there was something in their antiquity that made them dear to some people: but it had of late been discovered that they had another merit, which was that of constituting an useful provision for a certain class of men of great talents, but of small private fortunes. This was just as unfounded as any of the other topics of justification, and must appear so, if it could not be denied that they never had been so applied. He would show this by referring separately to a few of them; and he would begin with the wardenship of the Cinque Ports, and governorship of Dover Castle, because this came nearest to the description in the use which had been made of it. At the commencement of the present reign, it was held by the duke of Dorset, and then by the earl of Holderness. To him succeeded lord North, at an early period of his political career, Mr. Pitt, and the earl of Liverpool. With respect to the offices of the chief justices in eyre, he should be happy to meet his hon. friend, the chairman of the committee, on this point. The first of those very poor and humble adventurers was, as in the case of Dover Castle, the head of the Dorset family. Why, then, he would ask, were such persons to be compensated? Was it on the principle that they had relinquished a lucrative profession? This was impossible, because a peer could not go into a lucrative profession. Of the 60 persons who had held the chief justiceships in eyre there were only five commoners, of whom only two were known to recent times, Mr. Grenville and Mr. Villiers. Not one single individual had held those offices who could reasonably apply to the Crown for any compensation on the principle of being poor individuals. Of the lords justices general there had been 33, and only three that had not been persons of great rank. The offices of lord registrar and the keeper of the great seal of Scotland had also, since the union, been held by wealthy peers, except perhaps in one instance. After this statement, then, he would ask the House, whether they were prepared to say that the argument of compensation by the Crown was founded in good faith, or would bear to be examined? The Crown had the means of rewarding effective services from the pension-list; and they might safely take away all those sinecures without preventing poor persons from becoming statesmen, except in one or two instances, in two or three centuries. He requested the House to observe what a great proportion of those offices had been held by wealthy persons since the American war. The argument that men should be paid for public services was of very recent date; and he would ask, why it should be laid clown that statesmen must look for compensation from the Crown, when they remembered the Sommerses, the Godolphins, and all that class of illustrious statesmen who had devoted themselves to the service of their country? What new light had come over this age, that we were to take men into the pay of government, merely with a view to reward them on their retirement from office? When chancellors were remunerated, the case was very different. The man who was promoted to that elevated station had been a barrister; and when he went to the bar, he went to it for no earthly purpose but to advance his fortune, just as a merchant or a tradesman goes into his counting-house or behind his desk. He was, therefore, to be treated as a professional man to the end; and when he retired, we should give him half-pay, in the same mariner as we rewarded the man who had served in the field. This was the principle that was applied to the discharge of clerks in office, and he sincerely wished that they had more. He objected, however, to considering men in the higher situations of life as mere traders in office. Had a statesman no higher view? Was his conduct influenced by no better motive than the prospect of a pension on retirement? He could not, he would not believe, that any man sincerely desirous of serving his country, or of preserving the high reputation which his talents might gain, could be actuated by principles of so low and sordid a nature. But, supposing for a moment, that men got into parliament, or even into office, with such interested motives, was it decorous in that House to tell it to the world? Was it politic in them to proclaim it to the country by act of parliament, in the black letter of a statute, that men entered into parliament as a trade? that they took a brief with a retaining fee, and then retired into their original penury? Were these the principles upon which the illustrious statesmen of former times had acted? Was this the way in which England had attained her pre-eminence over every other country? No; it was by having a race of high-minded, sound-principled men, who stated their opinions in parliament because they were their opinions; who were not picking up pelf on every occasion that presented itself, but who did that which their eon-sciences and their principles directed them to do. But he denied the argument of compensation upon another ground. He said, that there lurked in this argument neither more nor less than a gross fraud. What could be more shocking or mischievous, or delusive, than the argument that public men were to be treated as if they were traders in politics? To declare that we must give the Crown the power of compensation in such cases, was a fraud on the constitution and on the people.— But the principle of this compensation bill was not that which it pretended to be. It did not call forth persons into the public service. It did not enable men in inferior circumstances to engage in politics. It did not secure to them a compensation for so doing. He admitted that it did draw forth one class of public men. But who were they? Was the state served only by men in office? Did no man serve the country but him who had been six years in office? Did the man who gave up his days and nights to his attendance in that House, and to the studies necessary to make that attendance valuable, confer no benefit on the community? These indeed served their country—the others served themselves. He saw surrounding him persons who had toiled long and hard in the discharge of their duty to the country; who had on many occasions rendered it the most essential service; but who, in the whole of their political lives, had not been above eleven or twelve months in office. Was he to be told on that account that their labours had not been eminently beneficial to the public? Was it to be established as a principle that he only was a public servant who held an office? The great business of government in this country was carried on not behind desks and in cabinets only, but in the great council of the nation. There had been many instances in our history—even during those periods of the administration of sir Robert Walpole, of lord North, of Mr. Pitt, at which their power was the most uncontrolled—when the course taken by the great machine of the state was not wholly the result of the force impressed upon it by the government, but partook largely of the counteracting impulse of their opponents. Many bad measures had been adopted notwithstanding that opposition, but many worse had been altogether prevented. The effect which the efforts of those individuals who were not in office, had in modifying the measures proposed by those who were in office, no one could possibly doubt; and it established his position, that the substantive business of government was carried on in parliament. Here, then, was the inconsistency of the bill. Under the pretence of calling forth generally the exertions of statesmen, it only tended to call forth the exertions of those who were devoted to government. It was true that to the nature and capacity of such individuals, the rewards held out by the bill were peculiarly adapted. And yet office wanted no such charms. He appealed to the experience of the gentlemen opposite, and to the observation of the gentlemen surrounding him, whether, in their time, at least, there had been any fear of a scarcity of individuals ready to hold official situations? Notwithstanding all that had been said of the little value of office, that it was hardly worth having, that it had lost all its attractions, &c. he did not perceive any symptom of a lack of candidates for it. Why, then, offer a bounty to persons to enter that House for the purpose of running an official career? If done—if the patronage of the Crown must be strengthened for such an object, at least let the object be called by its plain name—let its real character be exhibited—let it at once be stated to be to enable poor men to serve the Crown. In his opinion office was not a situation for a poor man; who might more effectually serve his country by continuing in his original and proper sphere, and performing the humble duties which belonged to it. The aim of a statesman should be of a more exalted character; although the gentlemen opposite did not seem capable of forming a conception of a man devoting himself to public life, without the hope of lucre, they could not conceive the possibility of making the business of the state any thing but a matter of trade and gain to the individuals transacting it. The hon. and learned gentleman concluded by recapitulating his objections to the bill. They were, first, that the Crown already possessed sufficient means of compensating public service; secondly, that the proposed addition to those means would only lead to their misapplication; thirdly, that under the pretence of encouraging individuals to devote themselves to the public service, the bill merely tended to draw such men from their respective avocations in life as were desirous of becoming office bearers; and lastly, that it was the first time of proclaiming to England by act of parliament, that politics had become a trade.

Mr. Bankes

was of opinion, that the present bill, enabling the Crown to compensate meritorious services, whilst it was deprived of the sinecure offices which were heretofore at its disposal, instead of proving injurious, would be found beneficial to the country. He agreed that the quantum of compensation to be granted was a fit subject for consideration, and he was ready to go into this, when the bill arrived at the committee. The hon. and learned gentleman had contended, that the Crown had already sufficient means for rewarding meritorious services, and that more were unnecessary. He (Mr. Bankes) was of a different opinion. When it was remembered that the power of the Crown in this respect was limited in 1782, the decrease in the value of money considered, it could not be a matter of surprise that more should be now wanted. In some of the hereditary revenues of the Crown there had been a falling off. The; effect of the present bill would be to prevent Pensions being granted in future but for the reward of meritorious services. He appealed to the House if it was fair to take at once from the Crown so large a portion of the means it had at present for rewarding meritorious services, or for tempting men of talent to devote their time to the public without rendering something to the Crown in return? The question had been argued as if unlimited powers of compensation were to be given to the Crown. This was not correct. They were to be limited in the committee. It would then be seen what they could take away and what they ought to give. He was anxious, on the one hand, not to strip the Crown of its power too much, nor to put too large sums in its hands on the other. The propriety of providing for those who might give up their professions for the public service, when circumstances should make it incompatible with their views to remain in office, was, he thought, clearly established. This was shown in the case of Mr. Pitt. Had he not engaged in the public service, could it be thought that his circumstances would have been such as they were at the time of his death? The salaries of the higher officers of the state, though raised to two or three times their present amount would not make the holders of them gainers in money. He was satisfied more was frequently lost in them then was gained. The manner in which sinecure offices had heretofore been given, made them odious to the public. Bestowed in the way proposed by this bill, the people would never object to them. On the merits of those who participated in the debates in that House, it would ill become him to say any thing in opposition to what had fallen from the hon. and learned gentleman. He, however, knew of no mode, by which the government could be prevented from giving the offices at the disposal of the Crown to their friends. It was natural to suppose they would not be bestowed on those who met their measures with systematic opposition. The report of Mr. Burke's committee on sinecure offices had admitted that it was necessary that meritorious services should be rewarded by pensions, as they could not be adequately remunerated by emoluments arising from situations held during pleasure. Sinecure offices had, perhaps, heretofore been as often capriciously as worthily bestowed. This evil was endeavoured to be corrected by the present bill, which took out of the hands of the Crown the power of doing so. The hon. baronet had, among other grievances, complained of the sums expended on what he called an unnecessary war. The debts incurred in the prosecution of that contest could not cease with it, but the sinecures might. He was surprised that the hon. and learned gentleman should not concur in the propriety of attempting to remove them. The petitions for parliamentary reform differed from each other in many respects, but in one point they all agreed—in the propriety of abolishing sinecures. These, instead of being the evils they had been, would, in his opinion, if regulated in the manner proposed, become one of the most salutary parts of the constitution. He was friendly to the principle laid down on this subject by Mr. Burke, and by other distinguished statesmen, and from that principle he hoped the House would never depart.

Lord A. Hamilton

opposed the present bill, as he thought no compensation ought to be granted for offices like those which were to be taken from the Crown, since, in his opinion, they ought never to have formed a part of its patronage. Without these sinecures it appeared to him the Crown possessed sufficient means of rewarding meritorious services. But he would ask, if there was nothing in the present circumstance of the country, that ought to call upon ministers to curtail the public expenditure? Could it be supposed that the people would be satisfied with what was now proposed to be done? His opinion was, that they would not, and thinking the power of the compensation proposed, to be given quite unnecessary, he should vote against the bill.

Mr. J. H. Smyth

did not rise to vindicate his own consistency, as he should vote on the present occasion as he had done in 1812. From the Crown it was intended to take certain sinecures, which it had long had the right of granting, and therefore to him it appeared that some compensation ought to be given for that which was now to be put under the regulation of parliament. Feeling that the bill was founded on strict justice and sound policy, it would have his support.

Mr. Douglas

objected to the whole of the bills, and the principle on which they proceeded, which went to denude the Crown of the means which it ought to possess of rewarding public services. The consequence of these bills must be to make every man carry with him into office the character of a pension. He thought that too much weight had been given to the popular expression throughout the country against sinecures, and that for the purpose of maintaining the good opinion, and the good wishes of the country, members not unfrequently acted in a manner which could not but have a most prejudicial effect on the public mind? What effect, for instance, could be produced by the late offer of part of the salaries of men in office but the leading the people to suppose that public services were too highly rewarded, whereas the contrary was well known to be the case? By such measures as the present the country was not to be relieved, and he therefore gave his decided opposition to the bill.

The House then divided:

For the second reading 105
Against it 45
Majority — 60

List of the Minority.
Atherley, Arthur Martin, John
Aubrey, sir John Mathew, hon. M.
Baillie, sir E. Milton, visc.
Barnett, James North, D.
Barnard, visc. Newman, W. R.
Brand, hon. T. Osborne, lord F.
Campbell, gen. D. Ossulston, lord
Carter, John Parnell, sir H.
Duncannon, visc. Proby, hon. capt.
Douglas, W. Keith Phillimore, D.
Fergusson, sir R. C. Rancliffe, lord
Gordon, Robert Rowley, sir Wm.
Guise, sir Wm. Russell, lord Wm.
Hammersley, H. Sharp, Richard
Howorth, Hum. Sefton, earl of
Hughes, W. L. Talbot, R. W.
Hurst, Robt. Tavistock, Marquis
Jervoise, J. P. Waldegrave, hon. W.
Lefevre, C. S. Webb, E.
Lyster, R. Wilkins, Walter
Mackintosh, sir J. Williams, sir R.
Maitland, hon. A. TELLERS.
Marjoribanks, sir J. Brougham, Henry
Martin, Henry Heron, sir R.