1780. THE PENSION LIST. had thought, with due regard to vested interests, to newmodel an old and complicated system. The House, by degrees, grew weary of the subject; and at length, towards the close of the Session, the Bill was demolished by a sideblow in Committee, Burke declaring, however, 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 ex"posure, since the Civil List money was granted freely, and "without restriction or control, to the person of the King."* * Debates in the Commons, February 15. and 21. 1780. From a sub Able speeches to the same effect were delivered by two other members of the Government - by the Lord-Advocate, Henry Dundas, and by Wedderburn, the Attorney-General. Their defence provoked from 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. Speaking on the same side, and on 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 the 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 80l. was granted by the King. Two of them survived till the Pension sequent 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 connexions, were suspected to have obtained the lion's share of it. 1780. CASE OF MISS CAREYS. 9 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 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 "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 service were not more "honourable than the degrading reception of a pension so "grudgingly bestowed."* *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.) 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 formerly been attached to the British embassy at Paris, Lord Shelburne applied to him, in contempt, the French term COMMIS. 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. *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. THE SPEAKER'S COMPLAINT OF LORD NORTH. 11 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 AttorneyGeneral 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 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 sinecures a 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 after"wards to be exalted to the high situation he still holds, he "left behind him many who continued to labour with indus"try and assiduity in hopes that the line of preferment "would be open to them. It is rather hard, therefore, that "the Right Honourable gentleman should throw his mantle 66 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.”* แ แ * See the Parl. Hist., vol. xxi. p. 274. and Lord Campbell's Lives of |