to institute a Commission to ascertain by artists, or others, the best mode of checking the crime of forgery.

In order to prevent loss of time, and to render the measure as beneficial to the country as possible, he was satisfied that his right honourable friend had proposed the best course for the House to adopt. The other mode would only create delay, and thereby defeat the object which it sought to obtain. It was not, therefore, because he was insensible of the existence of the numerous inconveniencies and evils which the learned gentleman had so eloquently described, that he should support the amendment. Indeed, he thought it necessary that some measures should be immediately adopted; for although the Bank, and those who issued their notes, could ascertain whether they were good or not, it was beyond the power of the holder of them to say whether they were genuine or not, nor could he compel another to receive them in payment, if he conceived them not to be genuine. This was not the case with the coin of the realm.

He was surprised, however, to hear the honourable gentleman who spoke last say, that those who committed the crime of forgery, so far from being sensible of their guilt, considered their conduct as being almost meritorious. If the House were to have a Committee to inculcate such doctrine as this, they had better put an end to all transactions, except such as depended upon barter; inasmuch as men, in such a state of things, could only exist by defrauding and plundering one another. He was not then called upon to say, whether the crime of forgery ought or ought not to be punished with death; but if he were so called upon, he was free to confess that his opinion leaned the other way.

The House divided: For the Motion, 62. For the Amendment, 106.

CARE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PERSON-WINDSOR

ESTABLISHMENT.

Feb. 22, 1819.*

The House having resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the Report from the Select Committee, to whom the establishment of her late Majesty, and the estimate of the expenses of the proposed establishment of his Majesty's future household at Windsor were referred-Lord Castlereagh moved, "That in lieu of the sum of 100,0007. directed to be issued and paid by an act of the 52d of his present Majesty, the annual sum of 30,0007. shall be issued and paid out of the civil list revenues, and which shall be paid in like manner, and be applied to the same uses and purposes, as are directed by the said Act, with respect to the sum of 100,000." Mr. Tierney moved as an Amendment, "That any surplus arising out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the sum of 60,000l. a year granted to the Crown, as a privy purse, according to the Act of the 52d of the King, should (after payment of the sums already charged thereon), be applied to defray the expense attending the care of his Majesty's royal person." After the original motion had been supported by Mr. Peel and Mr. Wilmot, and the Amendment by Mr. Bankes and Mr. Protheroe,

MR. HUSKISSON rose. He said that he had listened with the greatest attention, and the utmost impartiality, to all that had been offered on both sides of the House; and he was persuaded, that the supporters of the amendment founded their arguments on an erroneous view of the sub

• The following is a List of the Ministry, as it stood at the opening of the new Parliament, on the 14th of January:

Cabinet Ministers.

Earl of Harrowby.........................................................Lord President of the Council.

ject. Before he proceeded, he wished to advert to what had fallen from the honourable gentleman who spoke last. The honourable gentleman had said, that the Duke of York had no friends, because the motion was persisted in. If the communication and the claim had not been made, his royal highness might, indeed, have said that he had no friends. It was his royal highness's duty as a subject and a son, not to accept the grant out of the privy purse. Ad

Right Hon. George Canning ......President of the Board of Control.

Right Hon. Charles Bathurst...{

Right Hon. W. W. Pole .........

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan

caster.

Master of the Mint.

Right Hon. F. J. Robinson............{sident of the Board of Trade.

Treasurer of the Navy, and Pre

Not of the Cabinet.

Viscount Palmerston ...............Secretary at War.

Right Hon. Charles Long .........Paymaster-General of the Forces.

Earl of Chichester

Marquis of Salisbury

............Joint Postmaster General.

Right Hon. Charles Arbuthnot
S. R. Lushington, Esq..........
..........

Right Hon. Thomas Wallace ... {

Secretaries of the Treasury,

Vice-President of the Board of
Trade.

Right Hon. Sir Thomas Plomer...Master of the Rolls.
Right Hon. Sir John Leach ......Vice-Chancellor.

Sir Samuel Shepherd ...............Attorney-General.

Sir Robert Gifford

.......

Right Hon. W. Huskisson

Earl Talbot

Lord Manners

....Solicitor-General.

Ministry of Ireland.

....Lord Lieutenant.

...Lord Chancellor.

Right Hon. Charles Grant .........Chief Secretary.

Right Hon. Sir George Hill, Bart.,,, Vice-Treasurer.

mitting, for the sake of argument, that the House had over stepped the fit line of private property on previous occasions, it was now the more necessary to retrace their steps; for all encroachments made for temporary purposes were to be looked at with jealousy and suspicion. It had been truly said, that the mere money- the 10,000l.—was a paltry consideration, compared with the great principle that was involved in it. The question was, whether the barriers of private property should be broken down; whether the private personal estate of his Majesty should be assailed ; whether vested and recognised rights were to be invaded?

There were three points on which honourable gentlemen must make up their minds, before they arrived at a conclusion first, whether the savings of the privy purse were to be considered the private personal property of the King; secondly, whether the office of custos was one of a public nature; and, thirdly, whether his royal highness the Duke of York, if invested with the office, ought, as a public officer, to be paid out of the King's private funds ? At the beginning of his Majesty's reign no such question could have arisen; because the whole of the civil list was at the disposal of the Crown. Parliament had no means of ascertaining either its amount or disposition; but the King, upon resigning this power, had had the privy purse conferred upon him; the savings of which were to be deemed the disposable property of his Majesty. It belonged to him and to his successors, just as much as the property of any private individual. In 1812, by means of a committee, appointed under peculiar circumstances, parliament had ascertained, that the surplus of the privy purse had been laid out in various ways, but chiefly upon objects of charity and benevolence; and in the Regency act it had been directed, that the physicians should be paid out of it, for the plainest of all reasons-because the King had constantly done so, up to the hour of his visitation. The honourable

member for Corfe Castle, had said a great deal about the provisions of that bill; but he did not recollect that, in 1812, the honourable gentleman had stood forward to move for any deductions from the privy purse; yet, at that period, the honourable gentleman was probably as much alive to the necessity of economy as he was at the present moment.

With regard to the office of custos, it was one which embraced the highest duties, and the heaviest responsibility. It was second to none but that of the Regent; and in considering this subject, he entreated the House to recollect, that though a regency might have been established, and a custos appointed, the King was still king, and attended by the love and the regrets of a grateful people. On this account, the situation of custos ought not to be looked on as a private office. It was not distinguishable from any other office in the Windsor establishment, except by its supe riority and general control: in principle it was the same, and it ought be paid in the same way.

It was useless to repeat the arguments so ably urged against those who insisted, that by taking 10,0007. from the privy purse, private rights would not be infringed; for they had remained, and would remain, unanswered. For his own part, he would rather reject the grant altogether, than derive the money from a fund which ought not to be touched. He preferred the minor injustice of not compensating his royal highness at all, than the greater injustice of employing the privy purse for that purpose. called upon the House to protect the honour of the Duke of York, and to protect its own honour, by acceding to the resolution of his noble friend; instead of breaking in upon vested rights, and applying to a source to which, for national purposes, no resort ought ever to be had.

He

The Committee divided: For the original resolution, 281. For the amendment, 186. Majority, 95.