THIRD READING. (Hansard, 14 May 1866)

§ MR. AYRTON

said, that among the other provisions of this Bill was one giving power to Her Majesty to retain Claremont for her life. He had wished a few nights ago to make a few remarks when the Report on that Bill was considered; but having understood that it was not intended on that occasion to proceed with the Bill, his accidental absence had deprived him of an opportunity of doing so. He now, however, wished the House to consider seriously what they were about to do in this matter. They were violating a very important principle which had been laid down with reference to the disposal of public property and public revenue by the Crown. It was a long time since the Crown had possessed the power of disposing at its pleasure of the lands or the revenues which constituted its hereditary revenue. It was found that so many abuses had crept in through the freedom in that respect which had been reserved by the Sovereign, and that he was liable to so many importunities, that Parliament was at last compelled to enact that no grants should be made of Crown lands to any person except under the most stringent conditions. But the general revenue was also in former times left to a large 922 extent at the disposal of the Crown; and that likewise was liable to so much abuse that at length Parliament determined that the whole of the revenue should be paid into the Exchequer, and that only a certain sum should be placed at the disposal of the Sovereign for the purposes of the civil Government, or, as it was described, for the expenditure of the Civil List. In the early part of the reign of George III. even that modified system still left the door open to very great practical abuses. It was found to be so difficult for the Sovereign to resist the arts and importunities of persons about the Court that large sums had been granted by way of pensions, and that all sorts of secret contrivances were resorted to to conceal them from the knowledge of the public. It was therefore determined that the best mode of securing the due appropriation of the money set apart as a Civil List for the benefit of the Sovereign and the use of the nation was, as far as possible, to repress the practice of allowing the Sovereign to grant any monies or pensions to any person whatever except under conditions then laid down, of the most precise and stringent character. One mode of checking abuse was to prevent any pension being granted secretly, to be paid in a covert manner; and it was required that every pension should be paid to the Exchequer. It was further provided that no grant should be made except upon a Message sent by the Crown to Parliament, in order that it might be patent to the public to whom any such grant was made. That extended, however, only to the larger class of pensioners; and all those under £1,200 were still left at the absolute discretion of the Crown. But, to restrict the power of the Crown to grant these pensions, the Civil List was divided into classes, and a certain sum only was placed at its disposal to be appropriated according to its pleasure for pensions or other gratuities. That state of things continued, with some modifications, until the accession of the present Queen, when a new arrangement was entered into, by which the practice of putting a large sum in the gross at the service of the Crown for pensions was abolished, and the still more precise method was adopted of allowing the Queen to grant pensions to persons who had earned them by some kind of merit to an extent not exceeding £1,200 in any one year. That system, therefore, having been found necessary in order to prevent the misappropriation of the public revenue, it had resolved itself 923 into this—that Her Majesty should not have the power of granting away any part of the public revenues except upon a public announcement in the House of Commons of the person to whom the grant was to be made; and it was necessary to have the assent of the House in all cases save those coming under the provision that he had mentioned; while, on the other hand, where any discretion was left to the Queen respecting the grant of the smaller pensions, those pensions were made under the very stringent conditions of a Resolution of the House of Commons, which was incorporated in the Act passed for the settlement of the Civil List upon the accession of Her Majesty. Now, without any regard to these proceedings, it was proposed that an estate of £1,200 a year, being part of the land revenue that nominally belonged to the Crown, should be placed at the unfettered discretion of Her Majesty without the House having any communication whatever of the objects and purposes for which that grant was to be made. Probably the precedent in respect to Frogmore, which had ceased to be occupied by a member of the Royal family, but was afterwards resumed, would be relied upon in that case. But when the application for Frogmore House for the use of Her Majesty was made, it was distinctly represented that it was absolutely necessary for the convenient enjoyment of Windsor Castle that the Frogmore property should be deemed and taken to be part of the honour and manor of Windsor, inasmuch as it would be extremely disagreeable if that property were let out to a stranger who might become a very near neighbour of Her Majesty, almost participating in the enjoyment of Windsor Park. On that representation the House was pleased to acquiesce in the Bill by which the mansion and domain of Frogmore was not granted to Her Majesty as a separate estate, but was annexed to Windsor Castle, to be held and enjoyed as part of that property for the personal use of the Queen. All these facts were stated most precisely in the Act of Parliament to show the ground on which such a grant was made in addition to the settlement of the Civil List. But on the present occasion there was no statement whatever in the Bill of the reason why the grant was to be made, and they were entirely departing from all the principles which had regulated the management of the Civil List since the measures of economical reform passed at the instance of 924 Mr. Burke. Before they opened the door to the abuses of former times they ought to have a clear explanation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They had been told that that grant was not exactly for the personal use of Her Majesty, but for the use of somebody or other; but, in accordance with the spirit of the Acts to which he had referred, the House was entitled to have a distinct statement of the persons and purposes to which that property was to go, and also of the circumstances under which it was proposed to reverse their past policy and legislation in these matters. His object was that there should be an emphatic declaration on the part of Parliament that the property was to be granted only to some person who had a claim upon the nation on account of meritorious services rendered to the State. If granted as a matter of private favour, it was the bounden duty of the Minister to communicate to the House before the grant was completed the object and purposes for which Her Majesty desired that this property should be placed at her disposal. It was with that view that he moved that the Bill be re-committed.

§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he had no complaint to make of the history fraught with constitutional lore which had been given by his hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets. The practical question to which his hon. Friend referred was one of great importance—namely, how the revenues for the support and enjoyment of the Crown had been made by other persons a means of private enjoyment and public abuse. He quite admitted if his hon. Friend could show that there was anything in the proceeding now proposed that bore any affinity to that subject he would be entirely justified in asking the House to adopt his proposal. But the first objection he had to make to the proposition of his hon. Friend was, that it would be, in his opinion, entirely inoperative. As far as he could judge, the section of the Act of 1 &c 2 Vict., which related only to grants of pensions—that is, of money—would not be applicable to any grant by Her Majesty under the Bill, not of the revenues of Claremont, but simply of the use of the 925 House. Nevertheless, he could not agree to the insertion of the words of his hon. Friend's Resolution, for reasons which he endeavoured on the previous occasion briefly to state, but which he feared he had not conveyed to his hon. Friend. He did not mean to impute that circumstance to a want of apprehension on the part of his hon. Friend, particularly on a night when a very high and just eulogium had been passed upon him by a distinguished authority in that House. That eulogium would entirely secure his hon. Friend from any censure from him upon that occasion. His hon. Friend complained that there was no recital in the Bill determining the motives of the grant. But the reason was that there was no analogy between this grant of Claremont and any previous grants. In the case of Frogmore, for example, it was proposed to make an addition, for the sake of Her Majesty's own comfort, to the number of palaces, houses, and mansions, which were at the disposal of Her Majesty, and were to be maintained for Her Majesty at the public charge. That might fairly be called an uncompensated grant to the Crown, and if there wore now any intention to make such a grant, it would be right to give a full explanation to the House. But the case of Claremont was a peculiar case in this respect—that it had been a place of residence of Her Majesty in the earlier portion of her life, and had for a long time been enjoyed by the late King of the Belgians under peculiar circumstances; because, while entitled by Act of Parliament to an income of £50,000 a year, some £35,000 a year had been regularly paid back into our Exchequer for a long series of years. The consideration that it would have been painful to the King of the Belgians that his palace at Claremont would be made a mere matter of merchandize for the purpose of obtaining a small sum for the public revenue was one which if it were necessary to dwell upon would have great weight with the House. But the ground upon which Her Majesty's Government had asked this grant from the House was extremely simple—it was, in fact, a mere matter of business. It was that the grant formed part of an Act which was highly beneficial to the public—an Act in which questions of great importance connected with the Crown lands were solved to the public advantage. Questions relating to improvements of the Crown lands and to their minerals would for the future be decided upon principles common to set- 926 tled estates. The bargain would be for the benefit of the public, and he hoped also of the Crown Estates. But that arrangement could not have been legally made without the full and free consent of Her Majesty. Then there was the question of foreshores—that long-vexed question not only in that House, but in the country. In Scotland at this moment it formed a subject of very 3erious controversy. Well, that question of foreshores would be put in a train of settlement most satisfactory to the interests of the public by the provisions of the Bill. There would be no longer any rights of the Prince of Wales as reversioner of the Crown Estates—those rights would no longer interfere with those arrangements which, on the ground of public policy, might be thought best by the Government of the day. It was well known that upon many occasions when they had been debating in that House the management of the Crown lands it had been the duty of the Government to urge upon the House—and the House had never been slow to admit the fact—that, whatever might have been true as to the propriety or necessity of the renewal from time to time of the arrangements which placed his property in the hands of the public, yet, while the rights of the reversioner remained, they were bound to respect them absolutely; but that absolute respect in many instances had been a bar to their taking measures which, on the grounds of public policy, would be perfectly justifiable. But the difficulty with respect to the foreshores would be removed by this Bill. Again, these arrangements with respect to the New Forest would be mutually beneficial with respect to the shooting, as it would confer the rights necessary to give to Estates of the Crown in the New Forest their full market value. That arrangement would have the effect of bringing revenue to the Exchequer which it did not now enjoy. It was a part of this plan that in consideration of these great benefits the Government felt themselves justified in doing that which they would not otherwise have felt justified in asking Parliament to do—namely, to make over to Her Majesty the use and enjoyment of Claremont for her life. This, however, would not involve any new demand on the liberality of Parliament. The concession made by this Bill would not entail any burden whatever, and it would not he necessary to ask an annual Vote from Parliament for the maintenance of the house and grounds. As an 927 act of policy advantageous to the public interest it was recommended to this House, and he felt sure it would not be the less acceptable because it was also agreeable and convenient to Her Majesty and the Royal Family. It was obvious, therefore, that the grounds upon which the proposal stood were entirely new and distinct, and he hoped his hon. Friend would be satisfied with that explanation, and would not press his Motion to a division.