1831.] Europe, and the British Parliament. 247 



patriot king. An impoverished nation is no honour to any king, let his 

 prerogative be however vigorous, or his pension list however well 

 stocked. But the fact is, that in nine instances out of ten, the king has 

 no more to do with the pension list than he has with the list of bank- 

 rupts. It is a ministerial machine, a government purse, a treasury tool, 

 and the minister is the man whose prerogative is endangered by the 

 popular demand for its reduction. The pension list in its present state 

 has been pronounced, on the most competent authority, to be one great 

 job : and it remains to be seen whether the nation will endure the lavish 

 distribution of its hard-earned money among the families of noble pau- 

 pers. Lists of those paupers have been published. We find among 

 them names of the most notoriously haughty personages, male and 

 female, in the empire ; keepers of sumptuous equipages, and opera-boxes, 

 givers of feasts which figure among the memorabilia of the London win- 

 ter ; making progresses through the kingdom, from one country-seat or 

 watering-place to another, all of which they consider of sufficient impor- 

 tance to the public, to register them duly in the newspapers. We 

 find other names, of more than equivocal reputation, from which no 

 demand of the public can extract the most trifling reason for their draw- 

 ing an income from the national purse ; honorable ladies, if not ladies of 

 honour, and a crowd of others, for whose claims we can account only 

 under one supposition. Is all this as it should be? Is the public demand 

 that those pensions should be cut away, an offence to the king's cha- 

 racter? Quite the contrary. We think that the purer the nature of the 

 public expenditure, the more honour redounds to those by whom it is 

 regulated. 



But we will go further, and say, that the Nobility are deeply interested 

 in seeing this list abolished. They are not in high odour at present. If 

 some individuals of unimpeachable integrity exist, the great majority 

 have shewn themselves as willing slaves to the minister for the time 

 being, as ever the Grand Turk found in his viziers and pashas. They 

 are cravers for the public money, almost with a more voracious appetite 

 than the most plebeian hanger-on of office. One of the newspapers 

 observes : 



" It ought not to be forgotten, that, besides the pensions already published, 

 there is a host of beings who, in addition to the enjoyment of those provisions, 

 are accommodated with suites of apartments in the different palaces, rent and 

 taxes free ; whilst the people who supply the taxes to defray the support of 

 those State paupers, are exposed to both. The Seymour family or, as they 

 stupidly style themselves, the Saint Maurs alone afford a striking proof of 

 this. The Chairman of the Excise, Captain Seymour, R.N., who is the 

 Serjeant at Arms and Keeper of the Robes ; Horace Seymour, M.P., who is 

 Deputy-Keeper of the Robes, are domiciled in Hampton Court Palace, not- 

 withstanding the pay and emoluments they derive from those situations ; and 

 such is the detestation in which these gross perversions of the public money is 

 viewed, that Hampton Court Palace is as often called Seymour Place as it is 

 by its proper name ; and, to the eternal disgrace of the Wellesley family,, 

 their venerable mother is suffered to reside there as a State pauper." 



We suppose the cry of " vested interests," and such nonsense, will not 

 be suffered on this occasion. The meanness of this wretched dependence 

 on the national purse is boundless, and all who can by any possibility 

 avail themselves of the plunder, do it without the slightest respect for 

 their own rank, reputation, or income. A noble lord of 20,000 a year, 

 will struggle as eagerly for the retention of some beggarly pension, or 



