1780.

THE PENSION LIST.

7

that he should not fail to bring forward the same measure in the course of the next year.

It is greatly to the honour of Burke's integrity and firmness, considering the vehement popular outcry at the time, that, while proposing to restrain and regulate the future Pension List, he forbore- and he gave his reasons for forbearing to resume or curtail, or lay any tax upon, the pensions already granted. This defect (for so it might seem to heated partisans) was supplied by several auxiliary or rival motions. Colonel Barré thundered against the men of overgrown wealth still permitted to hold unreduced places of vast emolument, and rioting in the Army Extraordinaries. On another day, he said, he should propose a Commission of Accounts. But Lord North, dexterously coinciding in this proposal, drew the appointment of the Commission, greatly to Barré's indignation, into his own hands. Sir George Savile moved that the names at least of the holders of all pensions for life, or patent places, should be laid before the House. His motion was supported by Fox with his now customary eloquence and powers of both argument and ridicule, but was resisted by Lord North. "To expose," said the Minister, "the necessities of ancient and noble "families to the prying eye of malignant curiosity — to "hold up the man who has a pension to the envy and "detraction of him who hates him because he has none "to prepare a feast for party writers, and furnish materials "for magazines and newspapers which would magnify "and misrepresent every circumstance, - these are the "bad effects; but I know of no good ones that could "result from such indiscriminate exposure, since the "Civil List money was granted freely, and without re"striction or control, to the person of the King." *

Able speeches to the same effect were delivered by two other members of the Government - by the LordAdvocate, Henry Dundas, and by Wedderburn, the Attorney-General. Their defence provoked from

From

* Debates in the Commons, February 15. and 21. 1780. a subsequent discussion in the Lords (Parl. Hist., vol. xxi. p. 229.) we may gather that, as the Pension List then stood, the Scottish Peers, or their family connections, were suspected to have obtained the lion's share of it.

Colonel Barré (besides the lie direct which he gave to Wedderburn) a most unworthy sarcasm, quite in accordance, however, with the illiberal spirit of that time. Not one Englishman, he said, dares to stand forth in defence of the Minister: he has only two Scots! Lord North had moved an amendment, limiting the motions to all pensions "payable at the Exchequer," so as to exempt those depending solely upon the Civil List; but even thus he prevailed in the division by a majority of only two votes.

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Speaking on the same side, and in the same debates, Lord Nugent had exclaimed, "There are many Lady Bridgets, Lady Marys, and Lady Jennys who would "be much hurt at having their names entered in our "proceedings as pensioners of State." In this lighter strain Lord Nugent scarcely did justice to his own opinions. When in 1838 the Pension List was thoroughly sifted by a Committee of the House of Commons, and the cause of every pension, with the circumstances of the holder, so far as they could be traced, were made public to the world, there were found undoubtedly some cases of ladies in which high birth combined with poverty had been held as sufficient recommendations to the Royal Bounty. But cases are far more numerous of ladies for whom a pittance had been worthily earned by the public service of a kinsman, and who were not always protected by that pittance from severe distress. No instance of the kind can be stronger than that of the Hon. General Carey, a descendant of the heroic Falkland, who in this very year, 1780, was killed at the taking of St. Lucia from the French, leaving behind him an infant family of daughters. To each of these daughters a yearly pension of 801. was granted by the King. Two of them survived till the Pension List inquiry of 1838, when the one, a lady then sixty-seven years of age, and belonging, as she says, to "that despised and degraded class called pensioners," found it requisite to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in vindication of their claims. She first points out how ill, even in a worldly sense, their pensions had atoned for a father's early care; how they had come forth as orphans without a friend or protector, and since had struggled on "in something nearly allied

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1780.

66

DUEL FOUGHT BY FOX.

9

66 to want. I must not, however," she adds, "allow this "melancholy enumeration to make me forget that which "I must ever remember with gratitude, namely, that this "pension, which in these dear times furnishes me with little 'more than daily bread, and obliges me, to obtain that, "to live in banishment, was yet the means of procuring "me that religious and solid education adapted to my "fortunes, which has enabled me to bear up against all "the sorrows of them. I have, indeed, enjoyed it long"perhaps the gentlemen of the Committee will think too "long-but that has been the will of God, and not my "fault; and it is true that, as it is my only resource, I "should be glad to retain it if I can be allowed so to do "with honour and without reproach, and to receive it "with that dignified thankfulness with which the daughter "of a usefully brave British officer may accept a national 'testimony of her father's deserts; but if this cannot be, "and his services are considered as having been long remunerated, why, then, Sir, I can cheerfully resign "that which I shall hope may lessen the distress of some younger and weaker child of affliction; and being, by "God's blessing, able, both in body and mind, to seek my 66 own subsistence in the education of the children of some more fortunate family, I may, perhaps, find an answer to the quarterly question of my mind whether "such wages as I should then receive for my honest ser"vice were not more honourable than the degrading "reception of a pension so grudgingly bestowed."*

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The personal tendency of many of the questions discussed in the Session of 1780 may be traced in the personal conflicts that they provoked. An altercation between Mr. Fox and another member of Parliament, Mr. William Adam, was followed by a duel, in which Mr. Fox was slightly wounded. Some months later, in the Lords, the Earl of Shelburne thought proper to complain that the command of one of the new-raised regiments had been bestowed on a mere civilian member of Parliament, Mr. Fullarton; and that gentleman having

* This touching and beautiful letter is dated Vienna, January 11. 1838. It is printed at length in the proceedings of the Committee, p. 6. (Parl. Papers.)

term COMMIS.

formerly been attached to the British embassy at Paris, Lord Shelburne applied to him, in contempt, the French Colonel Fullarton, with rather too much of the fire of his new profession, not only retaliated upon Lord Shelburne in the Lower House, but fought him in Hyde Park; on which occasion the noble Peer was shot, though not dangerously, in the body. With good reason. might Sir James Lowther take up the subject that same evening in the Commons. If, he said, there are to be these constant appeals to arms, the Parliament of England will become no better than a Polish Diet. Yet certainly such meetings were not uncongenial to the temper of that time. We find the strongest arguments in their defence alleged on Dr. Johnson's high authority.* We find even Sir James Lowther, in reproving them, careful to explain that he did so only when they trenched on freedom of debate. He had himself, he said, been more than once engaged in conflicts of that nature upon other grounds, and whenever he was called upon he trusted he should show himself ready. No disapprobation of the duel as such was expressed by the Corresponding Committees, though some of them were eager to insinuate that Lord Shelburne, from his zeal in their behalf, had been singled out for vengeance by the retainers of the Government.

Another altercation of that period might have led no less to conflict but for the graver and more nearly judicial character of one of the parties concerned. There had been for some time a growing alienation between the Court and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Fletcher Norton; but when the rumour rose, that applications had been made to the Chief Justice (De Grey) to retire, so that the Attorney-General might be seated in his place, Norton could no longer restrain himself. He took occasion, when the House was in Committee on Burke's Bill for Economical Reform, to complain that this very post of Chief Justice had been held out to him by the

* Life by Boswell, under the dates of April 10. 1772, and April 19. 1773. Foote, at the same period, writing with the exaggeration which we might expect from him, makes his Major of Militia, when aggrieved, exclaim, "I will get our Chaplain to pen "me a challenge!" (The Mayor of Garratt, act ii.)

1780.

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THE SPEAKER'S COMPLAINTS.

11

Duke of Grafton as an inducement to accept meanwhile the Speaker's chair. It was enough for Lord North to answer coldly, that he was not bound by a promise of his predecessor. He likewise disclaimed all knowledge of any such negotiation with the Chief Justice as the Speaker had supposed. But Wedderburn, stung at Sir Fletcher's mention of his name, poured upon him, in reply, with most powerful effect, a torrent of wit and invective. He reminded the House, that the Speaker had not disdained to accept, in requital, nay, in anticipation, of his services, one of the richest of the sinecuresa Chief Justiceship in Eyre. He added, and surely with much force and truth, "When the Right Honourable gentleman quitted Westminster Hall to slide first into "the enjoyment of a great sinecure, and afterwards to "be exalted to the high situation he still holds, he left "behind him many who continued to labour with "industry and assiduity in hopes that the line of prefer"ment would be open to them. It is rather hard, there"fore, that the Right Honourable gentleman should "throw his mantle over those whom he has left to toil "behind him, and secure to himself an exclusive claim to "return to the profession, not for the purpose of joining "in the toil of it, but merely to enjoy those posts of "dignity and honour which other men in the daily routine "of business had laboured to merit, and expected in their "turn to receive."*

The cry for Economical Reform, which had taken its rise in the distresses of the country, drifted more and more, as impelled by party spirit towards distrust of the Crown. See, it was exclaimed, both in and out of Parliament, how vast the influence, how irresponsible the power, which that army of inferior placemen can command! Mr. John Crewe, member for Cheshire, brought in a Bill which had once been Mr. Dowdeswell's, to disable revenue-officers from voting at elections; he was supported both by Fox and Conway; but on the motion

* See the Parl. Hist., vol. xxi. p. 274. and Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vi. p. 136.; the last containing an account of Wedderburn's speech as derived from the first Lord Melville.