THE DUKE OF KENT'S LOTTERY.

HC Deb 02 July 1819 vol 40 cc1508-14

Mr. Alderman Wood

brought up the report of the committee on the duke of Kent's petition, which stated that the petitioner had not obtained any parliamentary allowance till he was 32 years of age, and that, previously to that time he had been put to considerable expenses and subjected to heavy losses in Canada, and compelled to contract considerable debts, and to raise money by way of annuity; but that by subjecting himself to the strictest economy, and living in foreign parts, he had reduced his debts to 70,000l. That to discharge this sum, he was anxious to dispose of the property of which he was possessed; that the only part of his property which he was enabled to dispose of, was his mansion at Castlebar-hill, and the furniture, which was valued at 60,000l., but which in the present state of the market, could not be sold but at a considerable loss. That he was willing, however, to sell this property rather than that the payment of his creditors should be longer delayed, or his royal consort be compelled to submit to privations; as he was desirous that no part of the allowance granted him by parliament should be expended in foreign parts, and that his daughter, newly born, should be from her earliest years educated in the language and customs off this country. He therefore prayed that he might be allowed to dispose of this property by way of lottery.

Mr. Alderman Wood

said, that in moving to bring in a bill be should offer a few words. This lottery was not open to the objections to which, lotteries in general were liable. The property to be disposed of in this case was of the full value stated in the petition. He. was assured from the highest authority that it had cost 120,000l. The gentlemen opposite to him might object to it, because the sale of the tickets of the state lottery might be injured; but he assured them that this would not be the case; for such was the popularity of the duke of Kent in the city, that the tickets might be said to be already sold, There were persons would be ready to advance the whole sum on the passing of the bill. Why did the character of the duke of Kent stand so high? Because he had raised dormant charities, and created an immense number of new institutions. He was at the bead of every institution con- nected with poverty and disease, and aided them not by his name only, but by his constant labour and attendance. After detailing the several precedents for a lottery of this kind, the worthy alderman concluded with moving for leave to bring in a bill.

Mr. Grenfell

felt it his duty to resist this proposition, upon this ground, that its adoption would serve to create a very improper precedent; for if the duke of Kent were authorised by parliament to dispose of his property by lottery, what was to prevent any individual from applying to parliament for an act to authorize the disposition of his private property in the same way, instead of resorting to the ordinary means of sale in the general market; and the consequences likely to result from the toleration of such a system, were of such a nature as he did not think it necessary to describe.

Mr. Hume

hoped the House would give him the opportunity of offering that explanation which the part he had taken enabled him to give, both of the motives which actuated his royal highness to take the course he had done, and the measures which had been actually taken. Having enjoyed the friendship of his royal highness for ten years, and been intimately acquainted with his public conduct and private affairs, what he should offer as to the transactions of that period, he could pledge himself for, and he should state no prior transactions that could be contravened. On the 10th ult. (said Mr. Hume) I waited on the chancellor of the exchequer to inform him, that the duke of Kent had been advised to apply to parliament for leave to allow his trustees to dispose of his house and lands at Castle-bar-hill, by lottery. The chancellor desired a memorial to be laid before the Treasury by the duke for their sanction. This was done, and by orders of the Prince Regent referred to the lord chancellor and others of the privy council, who disapproved of the plan, alleging that it would be a most dangerous precedent. A second memorial was presented with like success, and the chancellor candidly informed the gentlemen who waited on him that they would leave the bill to the House. If the decision had been founded on fact, he should have bowed to the decision: but he contended, that the precedent of the Adelphi, Pickett-street, and Sunder-land bridge lottery were in point, all to enable trustees to raise money to pay off debts. He would add, that the Pigot diamond had been sold by a lottery granted to a private subject. Was it, then, because the duke of Kent was the petitioner on this occasion, that the House would refuse the request? Would they refuse to him what had been granted to others? The duke only asked for the lottery to enable him to pay off debts contracted under circumstances which he could neither direct nor control. He was confident the history of the duke's difficulties were not known, or they would influence gentlemen to think differently of the course now adopted by that illustrious individual. He should, as shortly as possible, put the House in possession of the facts. The duke, in 1785, at the age of 18, left England for Hanover, where he joined the Guards, and served with them for two years; he then went to Geneva, where he studied for two years. Whilst abroad, he met with his countrymen, whose society he naturally courted, and whose habits he naturally followed. The duke was only allowed, during these four years, two pistoles a week. He did not intend in any way to reflect on the parental conduct of the king in keeping the duke at this time of life so short of money; but the fact was so, and the consequence that followed may be easily anticipated by every gentleman. The duke got in debt, and could not do otherwise. At the age of 23, therefore, he had contracted debts to the amount of 20,000l., which he expected to pay off from the first parliamentary allowance, which he expected to receive at the age of 24. In 1790, the duke was appointed to the queen's regiment at Gibraltar, and joined accordingly, without receiving any allowance whatever as an outfit. In 1791, he embarked with his regiment for North America, where he remained with his corpsuntil 1794;,when in January he received the commands of his majesty to join the forces then under sir Charles Grey, in the West Indies. He did not delay as many would have done, under all the difficulties of the season and the country, to travel, but proceeded by land across to Boston, and embarked with considerable hazard for Martinique. In this journey, all his baggage was lost in one of the lakes, and he was put to very great expense to re-equip himself for the service he was on. After the termination of that campaign, expensive as it was honourable to him as a soldier, he returned to Halifax, and being appointed a major-general on the staff, served there till Oct. 1798, when a fall from his horse obliged him to return to England for his health. On an allowance of 5,000l. a year which he received, and of which he was paying 1,000l. or 1,500l. a year as interest of his former debts, it is easy to conceive the rapid accumulation of his pecuniary difficulties. In 1799, he returned to Halifax as commander-in-chief, having then first obtained his parliamentary allowance of 12,000l. His majesty, as he (Mr. H.) was assured, had promised to pay the debts of the duke contracted from 1785 to 1790; but owing to his absence on the service of his country, and various unfavourable circumstances at the time, that was never done, and all the exertions of the duke could not discharge the debt. Ill health compelled his return in the following year to England, having lest baggage and military equipments to the amount of 23,000l. In 1802, his majesty appointed the duke to the command of Gibraltar, as a reward for his military services, and he joined the garrison accordingly. The duke was sent out to Gibraltar, with special instructions, and he had a difficult duty to perform, to reclaim the troops to habits of sobriety and discipline; but he did effect the object, though attended with symptoms of mutiny in part of the troops. By the suppression of the public-houses, to repress the drunkenness, he reduced the fees of the governor from 6,000l. to 2,000l. a year. He had been promised before he left England, that any sacrifice of emolument that the duke might make, to accomplish the discipline and sobriety of the garrison, should be made up to him. But that had never been done. During the nine years previous to, and including the year the duke commanded at Gibraltar, the average fees received were 7,000l. a year, and the duke, whilst absent, was fairly entitled to one-half, or 3,500l. a year for the 16 years past. But he has not got one pound, although his share amounts to 56,000l. Now, I would ask, what has become of those fees since the duke's departure? Was it unreasonable for the duke of Kent to ask from this fund to be placed on the same footing as other governors are placed? Mr. Pitt had promised to take the claims of the duke into consideration, but his death, and the indisposition of his majesty, had prevented any thing being done. In 1815, the duke urged his claims for the arrears of his parliamentary allowance and fees from Gibraltar, but without success, and seeing no hopes of any aid but from his own resources, he did then nobly and honourably resolve, by economy, to pay off his debts. Of the allowances of every kind which he received, he gave 17,000l. a year to pay his debts, and lived on 7,000l, a year for the three years that followed, and until his marriage, which altered his establishment. If the duke of Kent were now placed on the same footing as to parliamentary allowance, as the duke of Clarence, elder-only by two years, he would have to receive 96,000l. or 12,000 for eight years, from the age of 24 to 32, when he did not receive any. If he were placed on a footing with the duke of Sussex, he would receive 29,000l. As all these applications had failed, his own retrenchment has extinguished half of his debt; but being married he cannot live on the same reduced establishment as he did before. Having conveyed to trustees the house and grounds of Castlebar-hill, valued at a sum equal to all his remaining debts, he was anxious to have that property sold for the benefit of his creditors, and as the trustees had not been able to sell it at a fair valuation in the ordinary way of sale, he had been 6trongly advised to dispose of it by lottery, never doubting that this House would refuse to him what it had granted to others for like purposes. He did not approve of lotteries, but he considered the present plan as free from almost all the evils incumbent on money-prizes.

Lord Castlereagh

observed, that if the present motion were agreed to, he knew not where the practice of lotteries for the disposition of private property could stop. It could not possibly be imagined that any disposition existed to make an exception to any proposition, because that proposition was agreeable to the wishes, or favourable to the interests of a prince of the blood; but really, the present proposition was of this peculiar nature, that he was the more disposed to resist it because he would not in such a case consent to establish a precedent in the person of a member of the royal family. The worthy alderman had indulged in a panegyric upon the exertions of the royal duke to promote the interest of public charities. But no judicious friend of his royal highness could possibly advert to those exertions, with the view of making an appeal to the eleemosynary bounty of the public, or to interest their feelings, so as to induce them to purchase tickets in the proposed lottery. This, indeed, was not the course becoming the advocates of the duke of Kent. But he was peculiarly sorry to hear the statement into which the hon. member had thought proper to enter, and he was quite at a loss to imagine upon what authority that hon. member had ventured to insinuate that there was any undue partiality in the mind of his majesty towards any one of his children. Nothing could be more ungracious than the invidious contrast which the hon. gentleman, had drawn between the treatment of the duke of Kent and that of his other brothers. If it were deemed necessary to submit such a question to the consideration of parliament, it would have been much more appropriately brought forward when the advanced allowance to the several members of the royal family was under discussion, or when a further advance was made to the duke of Kent upon his marriage. Having omitted to bring forward this subject on either of those occasions, it appeared to him really too bad to press it unexpectedly upon the attention of the House, on a motion of this nature. The revenue of the duke of Kent at present was little short of 32,000l. a year, which was about 11,000l. a year more than that enjoyed by his elder brother, to whom, according to the hon. gentleman, an undue partiality was manifested. The noble lord concluded with expressing his conviction that the best friends of the duke of Kent would lament much what had been said that night, and that they would revolt at the idea of proposing the present measure as a mode of rewarding his royal highness for his exertions in favour of public charities.

Mr. Forbes

expressed his regret that the case of the duke of Kent did not meet with more attention from that House. But whatever might be the fate of the motion under discussion, he trusted that the mover and seconder would not fail to bring forward, early in the next session, some distinct proposition for compensating the duke for the various losses which he had suffered in the service of his country. The whole of the conduct of this illustrious personage was what became an honest and patriotic Englishman. Such was the partiality of his royal highness to England, that he had come home, much to the inconvenience of his beloved princess, and at an expense of perhaps 2 or 3,000l.; in order that his child should be a native of this country.

Lord Lowther

expressed a hope that the hon. member would withdraw his motion, as the discussion of such a motion could only serve to cast discredit upon the royal family.

Mr. Alderman Wood

disclaimed the idea of bringing forward this measure with any such view as that of rewarding the duke of Kent for his exertions in the cause of public charity. For those exertions, his royal highness was entitled to a higher and more dignified reward. But his royal highness himself had, in fact, no concern whatever in bringing forward this measure; for it was pressed upon him (alderman W.) by others; namely, by the trustees for liquidating the duke's debts. The worthy alderman concluded with expressing his consent to withdraw the motion.

Lord Castlereagh

was glad to find that the illustrious personage alluded to was no party to a measure of this nature.

The motion was withdrawn.