490 The Session of Parliament. [MAY, 



West Indies are kept in a state of fretful anxiety, which in the first dis- 

 turbance with America threatens the total abscission of those invaluable 

 possessions. And what has been done ? Nothing. The Commander 

 in Chief, we should say the first Lord of the Treasury, has galloped a 

 good deal between Windsor and Whitehall, and secured his own salary 

 and that of his military staff in the House : he has shot pheasants and 

 filled up places ; and beyond those eminent national services we cannot 

 for our souls discover what he has done ; unless it be that he has made 

 a protest against the attack on Algiers with more than a certain number 

 of troops, which protest the French Cabinet seem to have treated with 

 the same scorn as his protest against their expedition to Greece ; and that 

 he has proposed Prince Leopold for the Greek throne ; the dullest of 

 men for the most difficult of situations ; the most unpopular of men for 

 a situation where popular manners are essential ; and the most penurious 

 of men for a situation where the most generous liberality would not be 

 more than enough to conciliate a people at once impoverished, insubor- 

 dinate, and suspicious of all European interposition. 



Let us then hear no more of the wisdom of the field-marshal states- 

 man. He has one knowledge that every third man he meets is 

 only waiting to be corrupted; and for the lust of power this is enough. 

 But we in vain solicit any one proof of his powers beyond that of turning 

 a loud-tongued adversary into a silent slave ; in swelling the ministerial 

 train from the ranks of pseudo-patriotism ; and in turning nobles with 

 many sons, and lawyers with few clients, into the worshippers of the 

 man who declared, that " he would be mad to think of being minister !" 



A sketch of the principal topics of the session will amuse our readers. 



Mr. Whittle Harvey for in the present house this person is a pro- 

 minent member, and has actually a right to be a prominent member 

 brought forward the fruits of his inquiries into public jobs, by a motion 

 on what he called the gross mismanagement of the Crown-lands, and 

 those under the charge of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. 

 The chief part of the Crown-lands had originally been either the estates 

 of the great English families who had in their turn succeeded to the 

 throne, or the estates of the monasteries, and forfeitures of the great 

 nobles in the wars. On the accession of Anne it was determined to give 

 up their possession to the people, a civil list being granted in return. 

 A statute was made for their management, by which no lease of the lands 

 was to be given for a longer term than thirty-one years, nor of the 

 houses for longer than fifty ; the rent being always one third of the 

 value, and the other two thirds being paid by a fine. 



This arrangement, of course, let in a large number of interests, almost 

 the whole of which were jobs ; and the underlings of Government carved 

 the Crown-lands at their pleasure. Enormous trusts were let for a 

 merely nominal rent, and the fine went into the pockets of office, where 

 it was not thought more lucrative to carve an estate out of the lands. 

 But the job now forms an enormous amount, if we take the actual 

 value of the whole of the Crown-lands ; independently of the Woods and 

 Forests, and that portion which might be considered to belong ex- 

 clusively to the royal person. " There were 130 manors worth 1,000/. 

 each ; there were freehold estates producing an annual rental of500,000/. 

 which, at twenty-five years' purchase, would produce 12,500,000/. ; there 

 were ground-rents in various parts of London, producing upwards of 

 50,000/. a-year, which, at forty years' purchase, would bring 2,000,000/.; 



