248 The Opening of the Session of* Parliament. [MARCH, 



value of 4,000/. a year ? Or what services of any kind has he done 

 during the last fifteen years ? Has he not lived in total absence from 



Eublic exertion during those money-making years ? Yet his tranquil- 

 ty, varied only by his transits from one country seat to another, from 

 the Wilderness to the Priory, and from the Priory to the Wilderness, (as 

 the newspapers take the trouble to tell us) has cost the public purse, 

 within those fifteen years, the sum of no less than 60,0001. 



And there remain a whole tribe of sinecures, equally corpulent, and 

 equally well earned. Is there nothing to be done with the pension list 

 of England and Ireland, but to pay them ? The English pension list is 

 not less than 100,000/. a year ; the Irish is 80,000/. Is there no ground 

 for asking questions in this rich department of national liberality ? Let 

 justice be done, say we. Let the man of genius, the man who has bled 

 for the empire, the public servant of the country, or even of the crown, 

 who has laboured until he can labour no longer, be rewarded, or rescued 

 by the state from the degradation of povery. But let none other be 

 suffered to live upon the sinking resources of the empire. 



Let the whole enormity of reversions be cut away. Lord Ellen- 

 borough is a clerk in the court of King's Bench, a court in which we 

 never heard of his Lordship's soliciting any of the labours of patriot 

 industry ; and yet from this easy function, his Lordship receives 1,500 

 a year. The reversionary places in Ireland were of old a rich harvest 

 for the minister, and they still have some very tolerable things, suffi- 

 ciently acceptable to persons of condition on both sides of the water. 

 Let those be lopped down to the ground. There can be no right to 

 their possession now, where there could have been no right from the 

 beginning. The prodigality of a minister, or the corruption of a 

 minion, can constitute no right ; and if the holders set up a clamour, 

 the true answer to them is, " You have fattened on the public vitals 

 till you have sickened and exhausted the public strength ; be content 

 with your past plunder, and be thankful that you are not compelled to 

 refund every shilling of it !" 



The undeniable fact is, that the abuses of patronage, through the 

 whole extent of office, have been monstrous. We, of course, cannot 

 lay the blame of this upon the present ministry, the evil is of old stand- 

 ing ; it has been the scandal and the crime of every successive adminis- 

 tration, and it singly has gone further to degrade and vilify the powers 

 of government in the public mind than all the other errors or crimes of 

 public men. Here the reform must begin. Here is the deepest root of the 

 whole national discontent, and here the steel must strike. England is 

 too high-minded to hesitate at the largest sacrifices, where she feels 

 them essential to her honour. In a righteous cause, she knows no limit 

 to her liberality. But it is the sting, to think that her liberality may be 

 given to support the waste and luxurious insolence of a class whom she 

 cannot recognize as among her active and honourable citizens. Every 

 shilling lavished on the sinecurist is not simply so much thrown away, 

 but it is the infusion of a new portion of distrust and repulsion into the 

 national heart, until that heart refuses to be drained any longer. 



But when the whole finance of sinecurism shall have been rigidly 

 shorn away and in this we include the inordinate payments annexed 

 to inadequate services in every department of the State the premier 

 will have another noble opportunity for the exercise of his saving 

 virtues. The British army amounts in troops of the line to no less 

 than 91,000 men; or, reckoning depots, staff, waggon-train, and the 



