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indignant observations he had a few days ago drawn upon himself. This much he found himself bound to say in order to avoid further misconstruction; but before he proceeded to notice the details of the bill, he could not help adverting to the grounds upon which the noble earl who moved the bill had called upon their lordships to support it. The noble earl had stated, that the death of her late most excellent majesty would allow some reduction in the expense of the establishment provided for his majesty; for had it not been for the arrangement which subsisted until her majesty's death, she would have had an equitable claim to the enjoyment of her dower. When the noble earl made that statement, he heard it with great surprise, for it was the assumption of a perfectly new ground. Did the journals of parliament, or any of the acts which had been adopted, afford any trace of such a principle? On the contrary, the act of the 52d of the king stated in the preamble, as the ground for passing it, the necessity of making further regulations for the maintenance of his majesty's household, and to enable the queen to meet the additional expenses to which she might be exposed for that object. The sum of 100,000l. was then directed to be paid for the maintenance of his majesty's household; and the details in confirmation of the preamble proved that it was the intention of the legislature to apply the whole of that sum to expenses connected with his majesty's per

son.

To remove all possible

doubt, a clause was inserted for rendering an account of the application of the money to the commissioners of the revenue ; and it was provided, that if there should be any surplus, it was to go to the aid of the civil list. The clause which gave to her majesty 10,000l. for her own use, was a further proof that the other

sum

was exclusively designed for supporting his majesty's establishment. He could come to no conclusion on the subject, but that the ministers of the crown, after strenuously opposing for a considerable time any reduction in the establishment for the king, and having at length found that they must reduce it, had, in order to avoid the appearance of inconsistency, invented this argument, that they might put forward the death of her majesty as a reason for the reduction, although no reason had all along existed why this establishment should not have been reduced.

He now came to that part of the subject on which it was the most painful for himself to touch, but which it would be inconsistent with his duty to overlookthe grant of 10,000l. to the duke of York. He could not but think that ministers had acted most unwisely and injudiciously in thus dragging forward the duke of York to incur a considerable degree of unpopularity in consequence of their making such a

proposition at a period of great public distress like the present. The noble earl then went through the reasons by which this appropriation had been attempted to be justified; and he argued against the necessity of such a grant at

this period. In making these objections, he said, he had performed a painful, though a necessary duty; but when a measure was brought forward which interfered with his duty to the public, he must oppose it, though connected with his royal highness's name. He would now merely add, that when they came to that clause of the bill which referred to the grant of 10,000l. to the duke of York as custos, he should move an amendment.

The Earl of Liverpool said that he would endeavour to follow the noble earl into all his statements and arguments, and would answer them in the same order. The noble earl had begun with stating his concurrence in the reductions of his majesty's household, but had at the same time brought a charge against the king's ministers for their tardiness in opposing those reductions when urged by himself and his friends. Now, nothing could be more unfounded than this latter accusation. From the year 1812, when the establishment was fixed by act of parliament, to the last session, the subject was never brought forward. A bill was then introduced by a right hon. friend of his in the other House, which was rendered necessary by the state of her late majesty's health, and then, for the first time, during eight years of the continuance of the act of 1812, was any objection made to its provisions. In the last session of parliament, it is true, objections to the Windsor establishment had been pressed, but he felt, that reduction in the state of her late ma

jesty's health would have been most unbecoming and indelicate. He had a right, therefore, to say, that last session was not the proper time for the reductions now proposed.

He had now to follow the noble earl into another part of his speech, in which he accused him of changing his ground in the defence of the establishment at Windsor. The noble earl had said, that on the second reading of the present bill, he had stated a different reason for the expenses incurred under the Regency act, and in justification of the continuance of the Windsor establishment, from what had been stated in the act itself, or had ever been employed in its defence-namely, that the establishment was for the support of the queen's dignity, as well as that of his majesty; and that if provision had not been made for her in that way, as queen consort, she must have put the nation to nearly as much expense by providing the dower to which she would have become entitled on the demise of his majesty. I, said the earl of Liverpool, am prepared to support this position; nor do I think that I am involved in any inconsistency. His lordship then, in a train of argument which we shall excuse ourselves from particularly discussing, went through the whole ground of his defence.

The conclusion of the noble earl's (Grey) observations adverted to that clause of the bill which provided the grant of 10,000l. to the custos. The earl of Liverpool, in encountering his antagonist, strongly con

tended

tended that the privy purse was as much the king's private property, as any of their lordships' estates were theirs, and ought no more to be violated than the property of his meanest subject. He further said, that to meet contingencies, parliament had declared that the custos ought to have 10,000l. a year; and the question therefore was, whether in the teeth of an unanimous resolution, they would resume the

grant which they had previously voted.

After several lords had spoken on the occasion, and Earl Grey had made his concluding speech, in which he declared himself unconvinced by the arguments brought against him, the clause for granting to the duke of York 10,000l. a year was agreed to without a division; and the bill went through the committee without any amendment.

CHAP.

CHAPTER III.

Mr. Tierney's Motion for a Committee on the State of the Circulating Medium, and on the Continuance of the Bank Restriction. Lord Castlereagh's Motion for a Select Committee.

N the 2nd of February, Mr. of a notice he had given, to propose to the House a resolution for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the effects produced on the exchanges with foreign countries, and the state of the circulating medium by the restriction on payments in cash by the Bank, and to report whether any and what reasons exist for continuing the same beyond the period now fixed by law for its termination. It would be recollected that, from time to time, ministers had promised that cash payments should be resumed; and from time to time the hopes of the country had been disappointed by renewed restrictions which had now continued for more than one and twenty years. The preamble of the last bill stated that various unforeseen circumstances rendered the continuance of the restriction necessary, and the nation had been within a few days informed that various other unforeseen circumstances made it expedient that the issue of specie should be again postponed until the 20th of March 1820. Having already spoken of the importance of the question, he would not trouble the House with another word

upon that point. It had pressed

and was now looked to with anxiety by all classes of society.

The first part of his motion had been rather dictated by a sense of fairness than by any other consideration. For his own part, he was ready frankly to avow, that the principles laid down by the bullion committee, of which his late excellent friend, Mr. Horner, had been chairman, constituted his creed, and that he had as yet heard or seen nothing to lead him to forsake it. The question, indeed, had now become one of a totally different nature: it was no longer one of exchanges on the transmission of gold from one country to another, or on the dangers to which the Bank might be exposed: the only real point of decision was, whether the old circulation ought or ought not to be restored to those limits to which legitimate circulation was formerly confined in this kingdom. The doctrine on this subject he had heard without surprise, because it was a doctrine which had been foretold not only by himself, but by much wiser men: the House had been warned, over and over again, not to proceed in such a destructive system: it had been

told

told, that if the restriction were prolonged, it would be impossible, without great hazard, to return to the point whence it had started and it now turned out, by the confession of all, that the habits of the patient had been so vitiated, that he had not strength to bear the only remedy for his disorder. There existed in this kingdom a strong money party, whose only object was, to avail themselves of their wealth to continue the present system, and whose ultimate view was, to control the deliberations of the legislature, and the acts of the Bank itself. This party was composed of persons of different descriptions. Some of them were men of the largest fortune, and of the most undoubted integrity, who lent themselves to this object most conscientiously, thinking they were doing what was right. The others were men of a different description, and who might be considered as the tail of the party. It was against this tail that his present motion was directed; and he was this night declaring war with the whole body of gamblers, speculators in the funds, stock-jobbers, and all those who were living upon the losses of the honest and industrious. In what he was doing he could have no possible view but the public good. He had taken upon himself a duty not less laborious than painful, but it was a duty which he was bound to perform for his country.

Alluding to the money specu latists, Mr. Tierney said, that their hour of extinction would arrive at the moment the circulating medium was brought back

to its legitimate state; but unfortunately, that hour had been so long postponed, that those who, a few years ago, were merely contemptible, had grown bolder as they acquired wealth, and confident as they procured allies. This introduced him to the person against whom their operations had been carried on with too much success-the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. gentleman (he said) had not acted voluntarily, but upon compulsion: he had merely been an instrument with which others had worked their ends, while his own good understanding had been cowed and subdued into subserviency by their machinations. His whole course of finance-for system it was not had rested solely upon paper. What was the country to think of a finance minister, who, year after year, had done nothing but resort to contrivances to glide over from session to session without inquiry. His object had been constantly to hold out the expectation that things would mend; that if the House would but wait a little, it would find that the income and expenditure of the country would balance each other: in the mean time, the nation was to take his word for the promised improvement; and while the sinking fund was cutting off one portion of debt at one end, he was adding to it in equal proportion at the other by exchequer bills. This course had now been pursued for several years, in a way very pleasant to the chancellor of the exchequer, but very fatal to the country. If, then, it was of importance that

the

.

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