§ On the motion for the second reading of tin's bill,
§ Mr. Boswellexpressed his unwillingness to strip the Crown of the means of rewarding public services. That public services ought to be rewarded, was the opinion of the finance committee. There might be a difference of opinion on the manner in which those rewards should be conferred, but in the propriety of granting them, none could be entertained. Weak as he was himself, his ideas on this subject were supported by the authority of that great champion of retrenchment, Mr. Burke. When he brought forward his bill in 1782, he did not look to those sweeping measures which were now contemplated. He would go farther back, to the year 1780. In his speech, delivered at that time, which was on record, so far from condemning those offices, as injurious to the public, he considered it a matter of vital importance to retain them: and observed, that it was right the Crown should have the means of rewarding public services, in a way which even its own caprice could not afterwards recall. Those, he said, who retired from the bustle of public life, should be put beyond a precarious reliance on political friends; and, above all, beyond the operation of the inconstancy of princely favour. The committee had discovered but four classes of individuals, containing twenty-one persons, who were entitled to be rewarded for their services, by the sovereign. He decidedly objected to the conclusion to which the committee had come, in thus contracting the power of the Crown in one of its most grateful departments. The criterion of service was now the length of time during which office had been enjoyed. But, looking to the history of the country, individuals might be found, who had done more real public service in a short period, than 690 others had performed in a long lapse of years. He denied that the influence of the Crown had increased to any undue or alarming extent. Favouritism had not placed Nelson in the command of a fleet, or conferred on lord Wellington the conduct of our army. In this instance, they were about to ask the Crown to give its assent to a bill, which condemned the exercise of its free will and discretion, in granting rewards during all time past. He thought, with the great statesman whom he before alluded to, that if, in compliment to popular clamour, they did away all incentive to honourable ambition, no man knew what infinite mischief they might inflict on the country through all ages. As he was one of those who wished public services to be properly rewarded, and as he desired to see public men, at the close of their political life, honoured with some mark of the gratitude of their country, he could not, and he would not, give his support to any one of these bills.
§ Lord Miltonwished only to say a few words on a measure which he thought would have met with no opposition; and he would not have said any thing at all, had he not been induced to animadvert on some parts of the hon. gentleman's speech. He had quoted Mr. Burke's speech on the civil list; but he had totally misapprehended him. If he (lord M.) had any fault to find with the committee, it was because they had not viewed the whole subject so comprehensively as Mr. Burke, but had taken scraps and shreds of his principles. The hon. gentleman had said, that Mr. Burke was against the abolition of sinecures, and quoted a part of his speech that seemed to countenance that idea; but had he read the whole, he would have seen that Mr. Burke, in advising the alienation of the Crown lands, contemplated the abolition of this very office of the justices in eyre, as one of the beneficial consequences of that measure. "Thus," said he, "would fall the justiceship in eyre," &c. Mr. Burke thus not only recommended the abolition of these sinecures, but the removal of the very foundation on which they rested. The hon. gentleman had said, that the proposed system of abolition would make inroads on the constitution, but these sinecures, were no parts of the constitution. As efficient offices, they were parts of our government formerly; as sinecures, they were now none. He was as little disposed to yield 691 to the clamour of which the hon. gentleman had spoken as any man, but it was not clamour only that was against sinecures! all the middling ranks of society, and even the highest order of the public out of doors, had expressed a decided opinion against them; and God forbid that he should oppose the universal and decided sense of the country!
§ The bill was read a second time.