that reduction is forever impossible; though the like affirmation was made before the present government proved its falsehood. That their Majesties must have a household on a liberal scale is true; but that there are no sinecures in the royal households remains to be proved. And if such sinecures there must be, it also remains to be proved that they would not be equally well filled if they were merely honorary offices.
That the members of the royal family, precluded as they are by their position from being independent, must submit to be maintained by a pitying people, is also true. It is a lot so full of mortification, that a Christian nation will soften the necessity to them to the utmost; cheerfully paying as much as will support them in decent splendour, but not so much more as will expose them to the taunts of their supporters.
This regard to their feelings is their due, till their day of emancipation arrives,—till the customs of society shall allow them the natural rights of men and women,—the power of social exertion, and the enjoyment of social independence. Their case, however, is peculiar in its hardships. No other class in society is precluded from either enjoying ancestral property or accumulating property for themselves; and it is too much to expect the nation to approve or to pay for the infliction of a similar humiliation on any who have not, in their own persons or in those of their very nearest connexions, served the people for an otherwise insufficient reward. Let the soldier and sailor who have sacrificed health or member in the public defence be provided for by a grateful people; but there is no reason why the descendants of civil officers, or diplomatists retired from already overpaid services, should receive among them far more than is afforded to naval and military pensions together. As for the proportion of these naval and military pensions to the expenditure for effective defence, it is to be hoped that a long abstinence from war will rectify,—if they must not be otherwise rectified,—such enormous abuses as that of the number of retired soldiers far exceeding that of the employed, and of the expenses of the non-effective service being considerably greater than the maintenance of the actual army. Monstrous absurdities! that the factitiously helpless class should cost the nation more than those who advance some plea,—more or less substantial,—of civil services, rendered by themselves or their connexions! that these last should cost the nation more than the whole body of its maimed, and wounded, and worn-out defenders! and that these again should cost the nation more than its actual defenders! What wonder that they from whose toils all these expenses must be paid talk of a national militia,—of arming themselves, and dispensing with a standing army? It is no wonder: but when we let them be as wise as they desire to be, they will perceive that their best weapons at present are the tongues of their representatives. It has not yet been tried whether these tongues may not utter a spell powerful enough to loosen this enormous Dead-Weight from the neck of the nation.
But how goes the 15,000,000_l._ for actual service?
“_Of the 15,000,000l. required for active service, three and a half are expended on the collection of the revenue. Eight and a quarter on defence. Law and justice swallow up three-quarters of a million. Another million is required for civil government, and the expenses of legislation. Diplomacy and the colonial civil service are discharged by half a million. About half a million is spent on public works. The remaining odd half million out of the fifteen, is expended on the management of the debt, and for miscellaneous services,” &c._ So we, a most Christian nation, with abundance of Christian prelates, and a church which is to watch over the state with apostolic care,—we, strenuous professors of a religion of peace and enlightenment,—spend eight millions and a quarter on Defence, and——how much on popular Education? I suppose the latter forms some little item in one of the smaller accounts, for I can nowhere see it. Eight millions and a quarter on Defence, and three quarters on Law and Justice! Eight and a quarter on Defence, and one on Government and Legislation! Eight millions and a quarter on Defence, and half a million on Public Works! O, monstrous!—too monstrous a sin to be charged on any ruler, or body of rulers, or succession of bodies of rulers! The broad shoulders of the whole civilized world must bear this tremendous reproach:—the world which has had Christianity in it these eighteen hundred years, and whose most Christian empire yet lays out more than half its serviceable expenditure in providing the means of bloodshed, or of repelling bloodshed! The proportion would be enormous, even if all the other items were of righteous signification,—if the proper proportion of the three and a half millions for Collection went to Education; if Law were simple, and Justice cheap; if the real servants of Government were liberally paid, and all idle hangers-on shaken off; if there were no vicious diplomatic and colonial patronage; and no jobbing in the matter of Public Works. If all else were as it should be, this item might well make us doubt what age of the world we are living in, and for what purpose it is that Providence is pleased to humble us by leaving such a painful thorn of barbarism in the side of our majestic civilization.
Long must it be before it can grow out. Meantime, let us not boast as if the whole body were sound; or as if we were not performing as humbling and factitious a duty in paying our defence-taxes as the bondman of old in following the banner of the cross to the eastern slaughter-field. The one was the bondman’s duty then; and the other is the citizen’s duty now; but the one duty is destined to become as obsolete as the other.—What glory in that day, to reverse the order of expenditure!
Education, Public Works, Government and Legislation, Law and Justice, Diplomacy, Defence, Dignity of the Sovereign. When this time shall come, no one can conjecture; but that we shall not always have to pay eight millions a year for our defence is certain; if the voice of a wise man,—(which is always the voice of an awakening multitude,)—say true.
“Human intelligence will not stand still: the same impulse that has hitherto borne it onwards, will continue to advance it yet further. The very circumstance of the vast increase of expense attending national warfare has made it impossible for governments henceforth to engage in it, without the public assent, expressed or implied; and that assent will be obtained with the more difficulty, in proportion as the public shall become more generally acquainted with their real interest. The national military establishment will be reduced to what is barely sufficient to repel external attack; for which purpose, little more is necessary than a small body of such kinds of troops as cannot be had without long training and exercise; as of cavalry and artillery. For the rest, nations will rely on their militia, and on the excellence of their internal polity; for it is next to impossible to conquer a people, unanimous in their attachment to their national institutions.” Nor will any desire to conquer them while our example of the results of conquest is before the eyes of nations. Then the newspapers will not have to give up space to notices of military reviews; and gentry whose names have no chance of otherwise appearing in print will not have the trouble of looking for themselves in the list of army promotions. The pomp of defence will be done away, while the support will remain in the hearts and hands of the people.
What a blessed thing it is that as soon as the people do not choose to pay for pomp, pomp will be done away! What a blessed thing that they cannot be put out of the question, as Henry VIII.’s people were, by sending their representatives to the wars as often as they disliked paying for the King’s gold and silver beards, or the Lady Mary’s fool’s cap and bells! What a blessing that they can be no longer feared and yet defied, as when Charles II. did without a parliament because he was afraid to tell them of the bribes he had taken, and the loans he had asked, and the cheats he had committed, and the mad extravagance of his tastes and habits! Here, I see, we are content to pay for “_Robes, collars, badges, &c., for Knights of the several Orders._ ”_Repairing the King’s crown, maces, badges, &c., and gold and silver sticks._ “_Plate to the Secretary of State._ ”_Plate and various equipage money to the Lord Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor of Ireland._" This is the people’s own doing. No grown man can be supposed to care for crowns and gold sticks, and robes and collars, in themselves. It is the people who choose to preserve them as antiquarian curiosities. So be it, as long as their taste for antiquities takes this turn, and they can find grown men good-natured enough to dress up to make a show for their gratification. But, in another reign or two, it will be necessary to have dolls made to save busy and grave legislators the toil and absurdity of figuring in such an exhibition; or perhaps cheap theatres will by that time be allowed, where those who now act pantomimes, will not be above exhibiting these other mummeries on Christmas nights.
Meantime, if the people choose to have their functionaries surrounded with pomp and parade, they must pay the purchase money with thanks.
Whenever they shall become disposed to dispense with guards, trappings, and pageantry, to respect simplicity, and obey the laws for the sake of something more venerable than maces and wigs, they have only to say so, and doubtless the King will feel much relieved, and his ministers very thankful. The laws will work quite as well for the judges looking like other people; in the same manner as it is found that physicians’ prescriptions are worth full as much as formerly, though the learned gentlemen now wear their own hair. We tried this method of simplicity in our own North American Colonies, less than a century ago. Their total expenditure was under 65,000_l._ per annum. We shall not have held those colonies for nothing if we learn from our own doings there how cheap a thing government may be made, when removed from under the eyes and the hands of a born aristocracy.
What a rich, stirring, happy-looking country this is before my eyes, where the people hold up their heads and smile,—very differently, I fancy, from what they did when the proud Cardinal made a progress through it, or when whispers of the sale of Dunkirk circulated in advance or in the rear of the sovereign who bartered away his people’s honour! How times are changed, when, instead of complaining that the King and his Ministers sacrifice the nation to their own pomps and vanities, the people only murmur at an insufficiency of courage and despatch in relieving them of the burdens imposed by the maladministration of a former age! What a change, from being king-ridden, ridden, less courtier-ridden, priest-ridden only while it is our pleasure to be so, and ruled by a ministry, every tittle of whose power hangs upon the breath of the people! One may bear even the debt, for a short space, with patience, while blessed with the sober certainty that the true instrument of rectification,—the responsibility of rulers to the ruled, is at length actually in our hands. One might almost wish long life to the sinecure pensioners, and be courteous about the three millions and a half consumed in tax collecting, if one rested in a comparison of the present with the past. But there is enough before one’s eyes to remind one how much remains to be done before the nation shall receive full justice at the hands of its guardians. By small savings in many quarters, or by one of the several decided retrenchments which are yet possible and imperative, some entire tax, with its cost of collection, might ere this have been spared, and many an individual and many a family who wanted but this one additional weight to crush them, might now have been standing erect in their independence. What a list of advertisements is here! Petitions for relief,—how piteous! Offers of lodging, of service, literary, commercial, and personal, how eager! What tribes of little governesses, professing to teach more than their young powers can possibly have achieved! What trains of servants, vehemently upholding their own honesty and accomplishments,—the married boasting of having got rid of their children to recommend themselves to their employers,—ay, even the mother advertising for sale the nourishment which God created for her first-born! There is no saying how much of all this is attributable to the weight of public burdens, or to the mode of their pressure: but it is enough that this craving for support co-exists with unnecessary public burdens. It is enough, were the craving aggravated a thousand-fold, and the needless burden extenuated to the smallest that could be estimated,—it is enough to prove that no worthless pensioner,—worthless to the nation at large,—should fill his snuff-box at the public charge, while a single tax-payer is distressed.
For my part, I have no doubt that many of the cases in this long list of urgent appeals owe their sorrow to this cause. I have no doubt that many a young girl’s first grief is the seeing a deeper and a deeper gloom on her father’s brow, as he fails more and more to bear up against his share of the public burden, and finds that he must at length bring himself to the point, and surrender the child he has tenderly nurtured, and dismiss her to seek a laborious and precarious subsistence for herself. I have no doubt that many of these boasting servants would have reserved their own merits to bless their own circle, but for the difficulty that parents, husbands and brothers find in living on taxed articles. While these things co-exist with the needless expenditure of a single farthing, I, for one, shall feel that, however thankful we may and ought to be for our prodigious advance in freedom and moral dignity, we have still to pray, day and night, that the cry of the poor and the mirth of the parasite do not rise up together against us. Too fearful a retribution must await us, if we suffer any more honest hearts to be crushed under the chariot wheels of any ‘gay, licentious proud’—who must have walked barefoot in the mud, if their condition had been determined by their deserts.
What place _is_ this? I was not aware that these pretty villas, and evergreen gardens, and trim causeways stretched to so great a distance on any London road. Bless me! where can we be? I know that old oak. I must have been dreaming if we have passed through Croydon without my perceiving it. I shall be early at G.’s after all. No! not I! It is some two hours later than I thought. Travelling alone is the best pastime, after all. I must tie up these newspapers. It is a wonder they have not been claimed for the Blue Lion yet.
My wife would say this is just the light for the Abbey; but she has said so of every light, from the broadest noon sunshine to the glimmer of the slenderest crescent at midnight. Long may the Abbey stand, quiet amidst the bustle of moving life, a monitor speaking eloquently of the past, and breathing low prophecies of the future! It is a far nobler depository of records than the Tower: for here are brought into immediate contrast the two tribes of kings,—the sovereigns by physical force, and the sovereigns by moral force,—the royal Henries, and the thrice royal Shakspeare and Locke and Wilberforce;—and there remains also space for some one who perchance may unite the attributes of all;—who, by doing the highest work of a ruler in making the people happy, may discharge the commission of a seraph in leading them on to be wise. Let not the towers totter, nor the walls crumble, till such an one is there sung to his rest by the requiem of a virtuous people! But the noblest place of records can never be within four walls, shut in from the stars. There is one, as ancient, may be, as the Abbey; and perhaps destined to witness its aisles laid open to the sunrise, and its monuments to the shifting moonlight,—the old oak that we passed just now. My wife pities it, standing exposed in its old age to the glare and the dust, when it was perhaps, in its youth, the centre of a cool, green thicket. But it is worth living through all things to witness what that oak has seen. If no prophetic eye were given to men, I think I would accept the _elixir vitæ_ for a chance of beholding the like. As soon as that oak had a shade to offer, who came to court it? The pilgrim on his painful way to the southern shrine,—turning aside to pray that the helpless might not be ravaged by the spoiler in his absence? The nun who mourned within her cell, and trembled in God’s sunshine, and passed her blighted life in this sad alternation? The child who slept on the turf,—safely, with the adder in the neighbouring grass, and the robber looking down from the tree in envy of its innocence; innocence which, after all, was poisoned by a worse fang than the adder’s, and despoiled by the hand of a ruder bandit,—tyranny?—Who came in a later age?—The soldier reeking from the battle, and in search of some nook in which to pray for his little ones and die? The maiden, fleeing from royal lust, and her father outlawed by royal vengeance? What tales were brought when the neighbouring stems mouldered away, and left space for the winds to enter with their tidings from afar? Rumours of heaped battle-fields across the sea, and of the murmurings of the oppressed in their comfortless homes, and the indignant remonstrance of captives silenced in their proclamation of the truth? And then, did weary sailors come up from the sea, and, while they rested, talk of peace? And merchants of prosperity? And labourers of better days?—And now that the old oak yields but a scanty shade,—children come to pick up its acorns, and to make a ladder of its mouldering sides; and even these infant tongues can tell of what the people feel, and what the people intend, and what the King desires for the people, and what the ministers propose for the people. The old oak has lived to see the people’s day.—O! may the breath of heaven stir it lightly;—may the spring rains fall softly as the wintry snow;—may the thunderbolt spare it, and the flash not dare to crisp its lightest leaf, that it may endure to witness something of that which is yet to come!—of the wisdom which shall issue sternly from the abyss of poverty, smoothing its rugged brow as it mounts to a milder and brighter region; and of pleasure descending from her painted cloud, sobering her mien as she visits rank below rank, till she takes up her abode with the lowliest in the form of content. If every stone of yonder Abbey can be made to murmur like the sea-shell to the awakened ear, disclosing echoes of the requiems of ages, yet more may this oak whisper from every leaf its records of individual sorrows, of mutual hopes, and now of common rejoicing;—a rejoicing which yet has more in it of hope than of fulfilment. The day of the people is come. The old oak survives to complete its annals,—the Abbey has place for a record—whether the people are wise to use their day for the promotion of the great objects of national association,—public order and social improvement.
It was too late to dine at G.’s; so Reid turned into the Abbey, and staid there till his own footfall was the only sound that entertained the bodily ear.
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this volume._ It is necessary to the security and advancement of a community that there should be an expenditure of a portion of its wealth for purposes of defence, of public order, and of social improvement.
As public expenditure, though necessary, is unproductive, it must be limited. And, as the means of such expenditure are furnished by the people for defined objects, its limit is easily ascertained.
That expenditure alone which is necessary to defence, public order, and social improvement, is justifiable.
Such a direction of the public expenditure can be secured only by the public functionaries who expend being made fully responsible to the party in whose behalf they expend.
For want of this responsibility, the public expenditure of an early age,—determined to pageantry, war, and favouritism,—was excessive, and perpetrated by the few in defiance of the many.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure of an after age,—determined to luxury, war, and patronage,—was excessive, and perpetrated by the few in fear of the many, by deceiving and defrauding them.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure of the present age,—determined chiefly to the sustaining of burdens imposed by a preceding age,—perpetuates many abuses: and, though much ameliorated by the less unequal distribution of power, the public expenditure is yet as far from being regulated to the greatest advantage of the many, as the many are from exacting due responsibility and service from the few.
When this service and responsibility shall be duly exacted, there will be— Necessary offices only, whose duties will be clearly defined, fully accounted for, and liberally rewarded: Little patronage, and that little at the disposal of the people: No pomp,—at the expense of those who can barely obtain support: but Liberal provisions for the advancement of national industry and intelligence.