treasuries as much as I can together, that I brought the _ordnance
office_ before you, though it is properly a military department. For the
same reason I will now trouble you with my thoughts and propositions
upon two of the greatest _under-treasuries_: I mean the office of
_paymaster of the land forces_, or _treasurer of the army_, and that of
the _treasurer of the navy_. The former of these has long been a great
object of public suspicion and uneasiness. Envy, too, has had its share
in the obloquy which is cast upon this office. But I am sure that it has
no share at all in the reflections I shall make upon it, or in the
reformations that I shall propose. I do not grudge to the honorable
gentleman who at present holds the office any of the effects of his
talents, his merit, or his fortune. He is respectable in all these
particulars. I follow the constitution of the office without persecuting
its holder. It is necessary in all matters of public complaint, where
men frequently feel right and argue wrong, to separate prejudice from
reason, and to be very sure, in attempting the redress of a grievance,
that we hit upon its real seat and its true nature. Where there is an
abuse in office, the first thing that occurs in heat is to censure the
officer. Our natural disposition leads all our inquiries rather to
persons than to things. But this prejudice is to be corrected by maturer
thinking.
Sir, the profits of the _pay office_ (as an office) are not too great,
in my opinion, for its duties, and for the rank of the person who has
generally held it. He has been generally a person of the highest
rank,--that is to say, a person of eminence and consideration in this
House. The great and the invidious profits of the pay office are from
the _bank_ that is held in it. According to the present course of the
office, and according to the present mode of accounting there, this bank
must necessarily exist somewhere. Money is a productive thing; and when
the usual time of its demand can be tolerably calculated, it may with
prudence be safely laid out to the profit of the holder. It is on this
calculation that the business of banking proceeds. But no profit can be
derived from the use of money which does not make it the interest of the
holder to delay his account. The process of the Exchequer colludes with
this interest. Is this collusion from its want of rigor and strictness
and great regularity of form? The reverse is true. They have in the
Exchequer brought rigor and formalism to their ultimate perfection. The
process against accountants is so rigorous, and in a manner so unjust,
that correctives must from time to time be applied to it. These
correctives being discretionary, upon the case, and generally remitted
by the Barons to the Lords of the Treasury, as the test judges of the
reasons for respite, hearings are had, delays are produced, and thus the
extreme of rigor in office (as usual in all human affairs) leads to the
extreme of laxity. What with the interested delay of the officer, the
ill-conceived exactness of the court, the applications for dispensations
from that exactness, the revival of rigorous process after the
expiration of the time, and the new rigors producing new applications
and new enlargements of time, such delays happen in the public accounts
that they can scarcely ever be closed.
Besides, Sir, they have a rule in the Exchequer, which, I believe, they
have founded upon a very ancient statute, that of the 51st of Henry the
Third, by which it is provided, that, "when a sheriff or bailiff hath
begun his account, none other shall be received to account, until he
that was first appointed hath clearly accounted, and that the sum has
been received."[38] Whether this clause of that statute be the ground of
that absurd practice I am not quite able to ascertain. But it has very
generally prevailed, though I am told that of late they have began to
relax from it. In consequence of forms adverse to substantial account,
we have a long succession of paymasters and their representatives who
have never been admitted to account, although perfectly ready to do so.
As the extent of our wars has scattered the accountants under the
paymaster into every part of the globe, the grand and sure paymaster,
Death, in all his shapes, calls these accountants to another reckoning.
Death, indeed, domineers over everything but the forms of the Exchequer.
Over these he has no power. They are impassive and immortal. The audit
of the Exchequer, more severe than the audit to which the accountants
are gone, demands proofs which in the nature of things are difficult,
sometimes impossible, to be had. In this respect, too, rigor, as usual,
defeats itself. Then the Exchequer never gives a particular receipt, or
clears a man of his account as far as it goes. A final acquittance (or a
_quietus_, as they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained. Terrors and
ghosts of unlaid accountants haunt the houses of their children from
generation to generation. Families, in the course of succession, fall
into minorities; the inheritance comes into the hands of females; and
very perplexed affairs are often delivered over into the hands of
negligent guardians and faithless stewards. So that the demand remains,
when the advantage of the money is gone,--if ever any advantage at all
has been made of it. This is a cause of infinite distress to families,
and becomes a source of influence to an extent that can scarcely be
imagined, but by those who have taken some pains to trace it. The
mildness of government, in the employment of useless and dangerous
powers, furnishes no reason for their continuance.
As things stand, can you in justice (except perhaps in that over-perfect
kind of justice which has obtained by its merits the title of the
opposite vice[39]) insist that any man should, by the course of his
office, keep a _bank_ from whence he is to derive no advantage? that a
man should be subject to demands below and be in a manner refused an
acquittance above, that he should transmit an original sin and
inheritance of vexation to his posterity, without a power of
compensating himself in some way or other for so perilous a situation?
We know, that, if the paymaster should deny himself the advantages of
his bank, the public, as things stand, is not the richer for it by a
single shilling. This I thought it necessary to say as to the offensive
magnitude of the profits of this office, that we may proceed in
reformation on the principles of reason, and not on the feelings of
envy.
The treasurer of the navy is, _mutatis mutandis_, in the same
circumstances. Indeed, all accountants are. Instead of the present mode,
which is troublesome to the officer and unprofitable to the public, I
propose to substitute something more effectual than rigor, which is the
worst exactor in the world. I mean to remove the very temptations to
delay; to facilitate the account; and to transfer this bank, now of
private emolument, to the public. The crown will suffer no wrong at
least from the pay offices; and its terrors will no longer reign over
the families of those who hold or have held them. I propose that these
offices should be no longer _banks_ or _treasuries_, but mere _offices
of administration_. I propose, first, that the present paymaster and the
treasurer of the navy should carry into the Exchequer the whole body of
the vouchers for what they have paid over to deputy-paymasters, to
regimental agents, or to any of those to whom they have and ought to
have paid money. I propose that those vouchers shall be admitted as
actual payments in their accounts, and that the persons to whom the
money has been paid shall then stand charged in the Exchequer in their
place. After this process, they shall be debited or charged for nothing
but the money-balance that remains in their hands.
I am conscious, Sir, that, if this balance (which they could not expect
to be so suddenly demanded by any usual process of the Exchequer) should
now be exacted all at once, not only their ruin, but a ruin of others to
an extent which I do not like to think of, but which I can well
conceive, and which you may well conceive, might be the consequence. I
told you, Sir, when I promised before the holidays to bring in this
plan, that I never would suffer any man or description of men to suffer
from errors that naturally have grown out of the abusive constitution of
those offices which I propose to regulate. If I cannot reform with
equity, I will not reform at all.
For the regulation of past accounts, I shall therefore propose such a
mode, as men, temperate and prudent, make use of in the management of
their private affairs, when their accounts are various, perplexed, and
of long standing. I would therefore, after their example, divide the
public debts into three sorts,--good, bad, and doubtful. In looking over
the public accounts, I should never dream of the blind mode of the
Exchequer, which regards things in the abstract, and knows no difference
in the quality of its debts or the circumstances of its debtors. By this
means it fatigues itself, it vexes others, it often crushes the poor, it
lets escape the rich, or, in a fit of mercy or carelessness, declines
all means of recovering its just demands. Content with the eternity of
its claims, it enjoys its Epicurean divinity with Epicurean languor. But
it is proper that all sorts of accounts should be closed some time or
other,--by payment, by composition, or by oblivion. _Expedit reipublicæ
ut sit finis litium_. Constantly taking along with me, that an extreme
rigor is sure to arm everything against it, and at length to relax into
a supine neglect, I propose, Sir, that even the best, soundest, and the
most recent dents should be put into instalments, for the mutual benefit
of the accountant and the public.
In proportion, however, as I am tender of the past, I would be provident
of the future. All money that was formerly imprested to the two great
_pay offices_ I would have imprested in future to the _Bank of England_.
These offices should in future receive no more than cash sufficient for
small payments. Their other payments ought to be made by drafts on the
Bank, expressing the service. A check account from both offices, of
drafts and receipts, should be annually made up in the
Exchequer,--charging the Bank in account with the cash balance, but not
demanding the payment until there is an order from the Treasury, in
consequence of a vote of Parliament.
As I did not, Sir, deny to the paymaster the natural profits of the bank
that was in his hands, so neither would I to the Bank of England. A
share of that profit might be derived to the public in various ways. My
favorite mode is this: that, in compensation for the use of this money,
the bank may take upon themselves, first, _the charge of the Mint_, to
which they are already, by their charter, obliged to bring in a great
deal of bullion annually to be coined. In the next place, I mean that
they should take upon themselves the charge of _remittances to our
troops abroad_. This is a species of dealing from which, by the same
charter, they are not debarred. One and a quarter per cent will be saved
instantly thereby to the public on very large sums of money. This will
be at once a matter of economy and a considerable reduction of
influence, by taking away a private contract of an expensive nature. If
the Bank, which is a great corporation, and of course receives the least
profits from the money in their custody, should of itself refuse or be
persuaded to refuse this offer upon those terms, I can speak with some
confidence that one at least, if not both parts of the condition would
be received, and gratefully received, by several bankers of eminence.
There is no banker who will not be at least as good security as any
paymaster of the forces, or any treasurer of the navy, that have ever
been bankers to the public: as rich at least as my Lord Chatham, or my
Lord Holland, or either of the honorable gentlemen who now hold the
offices, were at the time that they entered into them; or as ever the
whole establishment of the Mint has been at any period.
These, Sir, are the outlines of the plan I mean to follow, in
suppressing these two large subordinate treasuries. I now come to
another subordinate treasury,--I mean that of the _paymaster of the
pensions_; for which purpose I reënter the limits of the civil
establishment: I departed from those limits in pursuit of a principle;
and, following the same game in its doubles, I am brought into those
limits again. That treasury and that office I mean to take away, and to
transfer the payment of every name, mode, and denomination of pensions
to the Exchequer. The present course of diversifying the same object can
answer no good purpose, whatever its use may be to purposes of another
kind. There are also other lists of pensions; and I mean that they
should all be hereafter paid at one and the same place. The whole of
the new consolidated list I mean to reduce to 60,000_l._ a year, which
sum I intend it shall never exceed. I think that sum will fully answer
as a reward to all real merit and a provision for all real public
charity that is ever like to be placed upon the list. If any merit of an
extraordinary nature should emerge before that reduction is completed, I
have left it open for an address of either House of Parliament to
provide for the case. To all other demands it must be answered, with
regret, but with firmness, "The public is poor."
I do not propose, as I told you before Christmas, to take away any
pension. I know that the public seem to call for a reduction of such of
them as shall appear unmerited. As a censorial act, and punishment of an
abuse, it might answer some purpose. But this can make no part of _my_
plan. I mean to proceed by bill; and I cannot stop for such an inquiry.
I know some gentlemen may blame me. It is with great submission to
better judgments that I recommend it to consideration, that a critical
retrospective examination of the pension list, upon the principle of
merit, can never serve for my basis. It cannot answer, according to my
plan, any effectual purpose of economy, or of future, permanent
reformation. The process in any way will be entangled and difficult, and
it will be infinitely slow: there is a danger, that, if we turn our line
of march, now directed towards the grand object, into this more
laborious than useful detail of operations, we shall never arrive at our
end.
The king, Sir, has been by the Constitution appointed sole judge of the
merit for which a pension is to be given. We have a right, undoubtedly,
to canvass this, as we have to canvass every act of government. But
there is a material difference between an office to be reformed and a
pension taken away for demerit. In the former case, no charge is implied
against the holder; in the latter, his character is slurred, as well as
his lawful emolument affected. The former process is against the thing;
the second, against the person. The pensioner certainly, if he pleases,
has a right to stand on his own defence, to plead his possession, and to
bottom his title in the competency of the crown to give him what he
holds. Possessed and on the defensive as he is, he will not be obliged
to prove his special merit, in order to justify the act of legal
discretion, now turned into his property, according to his tenure. The
very act, he will contend, is a legal presumption, and an implication of
his merit. If this be so, from the natural force of all legal
presumption, he would put us to the difficult proof that he has no merit
at all. But other questions would arise in the course of such an
inquiry,--that is, questions of the merit when weighed against the
proportion of the reward; then the difficulty will be much greater.
The difficulty will not, Sir, I am afraid, be much less, if we pass to
the person really guilty in the question of an unmerited pension: the
minister himself. I admit, that, when called to account for the
execution of a trust, he might fairly be obliged to prove the
affirmative, and to state the merit for which the pension is given,
though on the pensioner himself such a process would be hard. If in this
examination we proceed methodically, and so as to avoid all suspicion of
partiality and prejudice, we must take the pensions in order of time,
or merely alphabetically. The very first pension to which we come, in
either of these ways, may appear the most grossly unmerited of any. But
the minister may very possibly show that he knows nothing of the putting
on this pension; that it was prior in time to his administration; that
the minister who laid it on is dead: and then we are thrown back upon
the pensioner himself, and plunged into all our former difficulties.
Abuses, and gross ones, I doubt not, would appear, and to the correction
of which I would readily give my hand: but when I consider that pensions
have not generally been affected by the revolutions of ministry; as I
know not where such inquiries would stop; and as an absence of merit is
a negative and loose thing;--one might be led to derange the order of
families founded on the probable continuance of their kind of income; I
might hurt children; I might injure creditors;--I really think it the
more prudent course not to follow the letter of the petitions. If we fix
this mode of inquiry as a basis, we shall, I fear, end as Parliament has
often ended under similar circumstances. There will be great delay, much
confusion, much inequality in our proceedings. But what presses me most
of all is this: that, though we should strike off all the unmerited
pensions, while the power of the crown remains unlimited, the very same
undeserving persons might afterwards return to the very same list; or,
if they did not, other persons, meriting as little as they do, might be
put upon it to an undefinable amount. This, I think, is the pinch of the
grievance.
For these reasons, Sir, I am obliged to waive this mode of proceeding as
any part of my plan. In a plan of reformation, it would be one of my
maxims, that, when I know of an establishment which may be subservient
to useful purposes, and which at the same time, from its discretionary
nature, is liable to a very great perversion from those purposes, _I
would limit the quantity of the power that might be so abused_. For I am
sure that in all such cases the rewards of merit will have very narrow
bounds, and that partial or corrupt favor will be infinite. This
principle is not arbitrary, but the limitation of the specific quantity
must be so in some measure. I therefore state 60,000_l._, leaving it
open to the House to enlarge or contract the sum as they shall see, on
examination, that the discretion I use is scanty or liberal. The whole
amount of the pensions of all denominations which have been laid before
us amount, for a period of seven years, to considerably more than
100,000_l._ a year. To what the other lists amount I know not. That
will be seen hereafter. But from those that do appear, a saving will
accrue to the public, at one time or other, of 40,000_l._ a year; and
we had better, in my opinion, to let it fall in naturally than to tear
it crude and unripe from the stalk.[40]
There is a great deal of uneasiness among the people upon an article
which I must class under the head of pensions: I mean the _great patent
offices in the Exchequer_. They are in reality and substance no other
than pensions, and in no other light shall I consider them. They are
sinecures; they are always executed by deputy; the duty of the principal
is as nothing. They differ, however, from the pensions on the list in
some particulars. They are held for life. I think, with the public, that
the profits of those places are grown enormous; the magnitude of those
profits, and the nature of them, both call for reformation. The nature
of their profits, which grow out of the public distress, is itself
invidious and grievous. But I fear that reform cannot be immediate. I
find myself under a restriction. These places, and others of the same
kind, which are held for life, have been considered as property. They
have been given as a provision for children; they have been the subject
of family settlements; they have been the security of creditors. What
the law respects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of law should be
broken down, upon ideas of convenience, even of public convenience, we
shall have no longer anything certain among us. If the discretion of
power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to determine
whose power and what discretion it is that will prevail at last. It
would be wise to attend upon the order of things, and not to attempt to
outrun the slow, but smooth and even course of Nature. There are
occasions, I admit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident,
that they supersede all laws. Law, being only made for the benefit of
the community, cannot in any one of its parts resist a demand which may
comprehend the total of the public interest. To be sure, no law can set
itself up against the cause and reason of all law; but such a case very
rarely happens, and this most certainly is not such a case. The mere
time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice of a principle of
law. Individuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and
stable. The difference, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to
private people is immense, to the state is nothing. At any rate, it is
better, if possible, to reconcile our economy with our laws than to set
them at variance,--a quarrel which in the end must be destructive to
both.
My idea, therefore, is, to reduce those offices to fixed salaries, as
the present lives and reversions shall successively fall. I mean, that
the office of the great auditor (the auditor of the receipt) shall be
reduced to 3000_l._ a year; and the auditors of the imprest, and the
rest of the principal officers, to fixed appointments of 1,500_l._ a
year each. It will not be difficult to calculate the value of this fall
of lives to the public, when we shall have obtained a just account of
the present income of those places; and we shall obtain that account
with great facility, if the present possessors are not alarmed with any
apprehension of danger to their freehold office.
I know, too, that it will be demanded of me, how it comes, that, since I
admit these offices to be no better than pensions, I chose, after the
principle of law had been satisfied, to retain them at all. To this,
Sir, I answer, that, conceiving it to be a fundamental part of the
Constitution of this country, and of the reason of state in every
country, that there must be means of rewarding public service, those
means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insufficient for that
purpose, if there should be no further reward for that service than the
daily wages it receives during the pleasure of the crown.