ESSAY III.

ON THE ECONOMICAL REFORMERS.

THE state economists have for some years past excited much discussion in parliament, and considerable interest in the public. The attempts which they have made toward the abolition of reversionary grants and sinecures have been the most popular of their proceedings; the former might well have been conceded to them, as a practice peculiarly liable to abuse, and which mortgages the influence of the crown, at the same time that it offends the feelings of the people. Sinecures also have been made offensive to the people; but the necessity of some mode of remuneration for public services was fully admitted by Mr. Bankes, and there can be no doubt, as was objected to him, that under whatever name remuneration may be awarded, the same feeling toward it would exist as long as any party in the country should think proper to raise a cry against the expenditure and the existing circumstances of government. Some mode, however, must exist, under any form of government*, which does not, like that of

The consequences of the Superannuation Act of 1810 (50 George III. c. 117), which passed on occasion of Mr. Bankes's motion, are very instructive, inasmuch as the result of injudicious reform cannot be better illustrated. In the year 1821, returns were made to parliament

ancient Carthage, confine public offices exclusively to the wealthy. Aristotle, comparing together the several forms of polity then in the world, praises the institutions of that commercial state above all others, excepting only this limitation of

which exhibited a profusion of superannuations, especially in the Customs and Excise, in which the great number of inferior officers personally unknown to the commissioners at the head of these departments had, perhaps, led to improper grants of this kind. The government of 1822, feeling themselves considerably pressed by repeated motions for economy and retrenchment, and being aware of a mistake in the scale of superannuations established by the Act of 1810, amended it by a new act, and therein sought popularity, by creating a superannuation-fund: that is, by deducting 24 per cent., or in some cases 5 per cent., from all official salaries, and 10 per cent. from the amount of all other official emoluments. The sacrifice excited little notice, and the Act (3 George IV. c. 113.) received the royal assent in August, 1822. But it did not remain long in force. Mr. Stuart Wortley (afterwards Lord Wharncliffe) presented a petition against it in May, 1824, when a conversation ensued of some length, in which this unfortunate Act was almost universally reprobated as a partial and therefore unjust income tax; and it was urged successfully that liberal superannuation allowances were quite as much for the benefit of the public as of the officer. Heretofore, it was said, when a clerk became old or infirm, he was enabled to retire upon his earnings from the fees of office, accumulated and reserved by his own prudence for that purpose; or the head of the department, in meritorious cases, might be able to appoint him to some sinecure office. But fees and sinecures being abolished, superannuation allowances became necessary for the efficiency of the public service; because it was become impossible in common prudence for a veteran clerk willingly to retire; and almost equally impossible, in moral feeling, to dismiss him in old age to penury and distress. Hence the public officers could not but, in the course of a few years, be reduced to a state of decrepitude, unless a liberal superannuation act were kept in full force, in lieu of the abolished fees and sinecures.

This reasoning was so conclusive, that the repeal of the Act of 1822 experienced no difficulty; and the discomfiture of false economy was so complete in this instance, that all sums of money retained under the Act of 1822, were required by the Act of 1824 (5 Geo. IV. c. 104.) to be repaid to the contributors, their executors or administrators.'

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office, and the right of the populace to interfere when the senate was not unanimous: from these causes that prince of philosophers, the most sagacious man whom the world has yet produced, seems to predict the downfall of that flourishing commonwealth; and its downfall was in fact produced by them. The French are fond of reminding us of Carthage; we should do well ourselves to bear in mind the history of its fall, . . not with any reference to external danger, which we may despise as long as we have sense and virtue to defy it,.. but with a view to those internal circumstances in which some analogy may be found to those which brought on the ruin of the Carthaginians.

The mere object of commuting sinecures for pensions, if it had not engaged the attention of parliament, would be too trifling to deserve consideration, being obviously a change of name, and of nothing else. In what form the reward is bestowed, the people care not, provided it be well bestowed. The vote of money for the Nelson estate, the pension to Lord Wellington, and the sinecure which Mr. Pitt possessed, were regarded by the people with equal satisfaction; however bitterly Mr. Pitt was attacked by his political enemies, that he was warden of the Cinque Ports was never objected to him as one of his offences. By the mere change nothing could be gained, and something is always lost by an unsuccessful attempt at currying favour with a party whom it is not possible to conciliate. Upon the point of economy, the warmest advocates of the measure do not pretend that much is to be gained; the

probability in fact is on the other side, and as the arguments for the abolition of sinecures lie on the surface, it so happens that we need not go deeper for the arguments against it.

The emoluments of office, almost in every department, and especially in all the highest, are notoriously inadequate. Suppose a man capable of assuming the reins of government, and conducting the nation to prosperity and glory,. . a man endowed with those powers of mind which Mr. Pitt was supposed to possess; and like him without such an hereditary fortune as allows of idleness, or precludes the necessity of increasing it. If to such a man an office be offered, he hesitates at quitting his profession to accept it, because the salary is not adequate to the expenses which the situation brings with it; in the changes of politics he may be driven out, and find himself a ruined man. To these objections, while sinecures remain, there is this reply; time and chance happen to all,.. take the office, no doubt some sinecure will fall, and you will be provided for in case of dismissal. This argument will generally be successful, though not exactly what it ought to be; but national affairs must be conducted upon general rules, and the love of chance is inherent in all men; daily experience evinces this, the price of a lottery ticket being double its real value. A sinecure is a prize in the official state lottery, and the uncertainty of the contingency augments accordingly its intrinsic value. It is therefore the most frugal mode of tempting men of talents into the service of the state.

Except the two tellerships of the Exchequer

(which expire with the present possessors), there are not more than sixteen sinecures which amount to 3000l. a-year each; and this, considering the superior income of so many of our merchants and shopkeepers, cannot be thought too much for a retired statesman. The two unregulated tellerships are worth 20,000l. a-year each, in time of war, and the manner in which the emoluments of this office have become unreasonable is worthy of detail. The Exchequer itself is the most curious piece of official antiquity in Europe, being still conducted as in the time of the Norman kings, with a solemn apparatus of tellers and tallies, pipes and pells, and a moderate consumption of parchment, oak-sticks, and bad Latin; the last of these articles is so contrived, that a man may write the language all his life in the Exchequer, without knowing a word of the grammar, the termination of all declinable words being omitted, as formerly by the provincials of the Roman empire. The auditor's office alone is now of real importance, all the sums received from various taxes being classed there, and the national accounts annually prepared for parliament. The tellers must formerly have been essential in any kind of Exchequer; but they have been rendered useless by paper money, though the polished scale-beams for weighing 1000-guinea bags of money are still suspended, awaiting another golden age. Neither was the fee of the tellers exorbitant at 1 per cent., while they were compelled at their own risk to receive money ad numerum, pondus, et arsuram,' by number, weight, and assay, and that too when every principal town was allowed to have a mint of its own.

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