324 Notes of the Monlh on [MARCH, 



stood that the candidates shall come single-handed, that their names 

 shall be rigidly suppressed, and that the officers of the society deciding 

 shall have nothing whatever to do with the competition. Yet here we 

 have the secretary in the compound. If the matter be not altogether 

 a jest passed upon the public, we should think it a very curious speci- 

 men of the new administration of the Royal Society. 



The whigs are shuffling about the pensions, but they may as well save 

 themselves the trouble. The pensions must go. With taxes, which crush 

 every honest man in the country ; which take the bread out of his chil- 

 dren's mouths, and extinguish the heart within himself; with the earn- 

 ings of his labour called for once a week by some grim personage, with 

 the Revenue's authority for the demand ; and three-fourths of the lower 

 population living on the parish ; the nation will not suffer the lords and 

 ladies of this earth, the silken countesses, and the accomplished gentle- 

 men who attend them to balls, and lounge in their drawing-rooms, to 

 feed upon the public bread any longer. In a late debate, Mr. Hume 

 touched upon a few of the fortunate and favoured children of English 

 bounty : 



" There is Lord Sidmouth, 3.000. ; Mr. Ward, ,1,000. ; Mr. Lushington, 

 1,000. ; 'Mr. Goulburn, 1,000.; Mr. T. P. Courtenay, 1,000.; LordBexley, 

 3,000. ; and Mr. Hobhouse, 1,000. Now, I venture to say, that the ser- 

 vices of all these pensioners together are not worth, and had never been worth, 

 3,000. Had it depended upon a vote of the House, not one of them would 

 have received one shilling. If I had the power, so far from granting them 

 pensions, I would have several of them impeached for their conduct." 



This list, brief as it is, is intolerable. On what principle of common 

 sense is it to be established, that the possession of a vast salary for a suc- 

 cession of years actually forms a claim to be supported for life at the 

 public expense ? Lord Sidmouth, for instance, was speaker for half his 

 public life, with emoluments little short of 10,000 a year. From the 

 speakership he was made prime-minister, with at least the same income, 

 and for the remainder of his political life was Home Secretary, at (5,000 

 a year, with various emoluments besides. He cannot have received in 

 the course of office less than 150,000! yet we now have him a pen- 

 sioner at 3,000 a year, for the last half-dozen years, and with a house 

 in Richmond Park besides. If we are to be told that he expended his 

 receipts on his office ; we demand the evidence we ask what instance of 

 public liberality was ever exhibited by his lordship ? What great pro- 

 ject of science, what man of talents did he patronize ? What public 

 work bears his name ? For all those purposes, he might as well have 

 been digging at the bottom of a Cornish mine. And yet this man is to 

 receive the enormous sum of .3,000 a year, from the pockets of a nation 

 oppressed with a debt of eight hundred millions! 



Lord Bexley is a man of large private fortune, yet his gratitude too we 

 must cherish at the rate of 3,000 a year. 



Then comes Mr. Goulburn, and his merits are, that after being hand- 

 somely salaried in English office for a number of years, he was made 

 secretary in Ireland, at 6,000 a year ; a calamity which this right 

 honourable person endured for three years ; and now finds his endurance, 

 after a two years' receipt of the salary of Chancellor of the Exchequer 

 besides, or 12,000, entitled to the further payment of 1,000 a year for 

 lif'i- ! This man's appliance to the public purse must have been at least, 



