1830.] C 9 ] 



THE BRITISH EMBASSIES, AMBASSADORS, AND THEIR SALARIES. 



THE commencement of the Duke of Wellington's administration, was 

 memorably distinguished by the number of its pledges pledges for the 

 support of the agricultural interest; of the manufacturing interest; of 

 the colonial interest; for the reform of the circulation, of the tribunals, 

 of the laws, and principally for the maintenance of the constitution, 

 and for that rigid principle of strict and wise economy in the national 

 expenditure, without which all constitutions are but a dead letter ; an 

 exigent government being always either a tyrant or a slave, and a bank- 

 rupt country only waiting for the conqueror that comes with bread in 

 one hand and chains in the other ; pledges of all kinds offered with 

 suspicious prodigality, and followed by niggard performance ; lofty 

 promises, dying with their echo ; and stately reforms, worth the ink that 

 wrote them down, and no more. 



Of the constitution, we shall now say nothing. There one promise of 

 another kind was kept to the letter. Mr. Peel declared that it was 

 to be broken in upon ; and if he shall ever be impeached of an utter 

 want of credibility, let this act of his political life stand up in vindica- 

 tion, and satisfy the world that he can keep his word. 



But, for the retrenchment we are to wait with an humble reliance on 

 ministerial good intentions, which is by no means realized by their his- 

 tory. Nothing has been done ; or worse than nothing ; a few clerks in 

 the lowest situations have been dismissed, and a few hundreds a year 

 saved for the government, which, in a multitude of instances, must be 

 paid to the workhouse. But the retrenchment that we desire to see 

 commenced, that we shall never see commenced under this administra- 

 tion of pledges ; and which is the only one capable of either light- 

 ening the pressures, or restoring the confidence of the country, is the 

 extinction altogether of those great official emoluments, which form the 

 trading stock of patronage in high places. 



We shall for the present advert to but one branch of this trading 

 stock ; glaring in its waste and worthlessness, yet but little known to 

 the public in its details ; capable of retrenchment with at once the 

 greatest possible fitness and the greatest possible ease ; and yet perfectly 

 secure of never being curtailed to the amount of a single shilling the 

 English embassies. 



Ambassadors. 



There are Seven Classes of Embassies. So much for the arts of sub- 

 division and contrivance, for the wants and wishes of political de- 

 pendency. Of those, the first class consists of five Paris, St. Peters- 

 burg, Vienna, Madrid, and the Netherlands; and for each the salary and 

 allowances are the same : the salary being eleven thousand pounds ster- 

 ling a year ! A sum of no less than four thousand pounds being allowed 

 for the ambassador's outfit, and one thonsand pounds a year being 

 allowed for house rent. But this is not all. The ambassador thus 

 showily provided for in money, must be provided for in brains ; and 

 this costs the salary of a secretary of embassy, at the rate of one thou- 

 sand one hundred pounds a year, and four hundred pounds a year for a 

 house, &c. 



In this statement, which is official, we have omitted the infinite minor 

 charges of all kinds, for journeys, estafettes, letters, snuff-boxes, douceurs, 

 the whole inferior tribes of attaches, &c. As it is not our purpose to 

 enter into minute matters here, we must limit ourselves to a few general 

 observations. 



M. M. New SerialVOL. IX. No. 49. C 



