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able to the present condition of the country. The honourable Member then read his Resolutions, and the first being put, namely, "That the office of Tellership of the Exche quer was executed entirely by deputy, and granted to the present possessors of it for services done by their respective fathers,"

The Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to state his determination of moving the previous question, in order to get rid of all the introductory Resolutions, and of negativing the last. The first Resolution, he observed, might be affirmed without any hesitation, except so far as would imply, perhaps, an intention on the part of the House to entertain the rest. With regard to the speech of the honourable and learned. Member, it seemed to him peculiarly open to refutation. He seemed to think that the persons holding the office in question had no vested rights in that office; but, that they had vested rights in the grant was undoubted.The office, indeed, was coeval, he might say, with the Exchequer itself, and that alone proved the right of the Crown to grant it. If then the grant was legal, could it be maintained, for a moment, that they had no legal rights in that grant? But the honourable gentleman had endeavoured to establish a difference with regard to offices and estates granted by the Crown; he believed, however, it would not be possible to adduce any case in which that difference could be clearly made out.-The right honourable gentleman then proceeded to contend, that the right of the office was in no way involved in the extent of the emoluments derivable from it. In 1782 the principle had been laid down, because all the regulations then established had a prospective operation, and did not at all interfere with vested rights. This was the reason why offices said to be useless, and even burdensome, were not abolished till at least after the death of the then existing holders. He concluded by moving the previous question.

Mr. Ponsonby differed from some positions laid down by his honourable friend (Mr. Creevey)-He contended, that by the law of England an estate in office might be, and was in many cases, as much private property as any other species of property could be. They who doubted this position. might turn to the first law authorities of the country, and from them get that information of which they seemed to be so ignorant (Hear, hear!) There were offices in fee descending to heirs general, and he should be glad to know what

right Parliament could have to touch them? The power, no doubt, they had, but the power was not the right. He thought that where an office was legally granted to a legal grantee, Parliament could have no right in the abstract to interfere with that office; any proceeding on the part of the Executive, in avowed hostility to private right in favour of public benefit, could not be looked at with too much caution (Hear, hear!)-because there was no saying where such a principle should stop. It might be argued upon such a principle, that the bishops could discharge their episcopal duties, though their sees were more limited in point of revenue; the same reasoning might be brought to bear against the holders of tythes. The truth of it was, that if power were allowed them to act against private right, there would be an end to property. (Hear, hear, hear!) He be lieved it, on the whole, better for the public, that the two personages in question should continue to receive the usual emoluments, than that, by the abolition of those offices, a new principle should be introduced, which might go to ha zard the permanency of those existing regulations by which property is secured to the legal owners. He was aware that the sentiments which then fell from him might be censured as unpopular. He should regret that they were so; but no regret or apprehension of that nature should ever, deter him from the public avowal of those principles which appeared to him to be essential to the real interests of the country. (Hear, hear!)

Mr. Brand said, that there could be no doubt of the purity of the motives which influenced the opinions of the right honourable gentleman on that and every other public ques tion; he regretted, therefore, to differ from him, as he did, upon the present question. He thought the introductory Resolutions could have no tendency to invade private right, and as to the concluding Resolution, when the preceding ones were disposed of, it was his intention to move an Amendment.

Lord A. Hamilton was far from disputing the principles laid down by the two right hon. gentlemen (Messrs. Perceval and Ponsonby), as to the propriety of affording every sanction and support to private property. Even the doctrine laid down by his right hon. friend (Mr. Ponsonby), that offices were to be considered as in the nature of estates, he did not feel himself called on to dispute. That the offices in question, however, were to be put on a footing with

offices in the Church, he was not so thoroughly convinced. In the Church there were great and important duties to perform. The Church had grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength; whereas the offices in question had only grown and increased with the burdens and distresses of the country, by which they were fed and nourished, and through which alone they now produced such enormous emoluments, as to have suggested to his honourable friend the propriety of the present motion. According to the doctrines laid down by his right honourable friend, whatever might at any time be the amount of the emoluments of these offices, the House could not interfere to regulate or restrain them. If by the lapse of time, supposing Lord Camden to live 30 or 40 years longer, and supposing the amount of the offices to increase in the same proportion as they had hitherto done, still it would be equally incompetent for the House to interfere then as now. If the House could not now interfere, the amount to which the fees of office might increase, however exorbitant, could make no difference. If, instead of 30,000l. a year, which these Tellerships now produced, they should amount up to 130,000/ still, on the principles on which his right honourable friend argued the question, the House had no right to interfere! This was a doctrine to which, as a guardian of the public purse, he could not suffer himself to agree. When the two noble lords alluded to were appointed to those offices, they yielded about seven thousand pounds a year each, and now they produced, to each of the noble lords, about 30,000l. a year. (No, no, only 23,000l. from the Ministerial bench.) His lordship rejoiced to hear the right honourable gentlemen opposite object to this, because, if they admitted that the amount had any thing to do with the question, then they admitted the force of his argument, and conceded, that if the emolument did exceed what was reasonable, if,. for instance, they should amount to 60,000l. a year, then it would be fit for the House to interfere. For his own part, he would never consent to give his vote that the House could not interfere to the effect of regulating the amount of the emoluments arising to any public officer. The only question, he conceived, was, whether the House could or could not interfere? and if called to give his vote on this subject, he must give it in behalf of the public.

Mr. Whitbread begged shortly to state his sentiments on the present question; differing, as he was sorry to do, en

tirely from his right honourable friend near him (Mr. Ponsonby), not on the principles laid down by him, but in the application of them. His right honourable friend talked of the legal rights of parties holding offices which might be even heritably secured to them, and of which not even the most minute perquisite could be touched without the consent of the parties. This he should be sorry to dispute with his right honourable and learned friend. He should admit that the Crown had the power to appoint a Teller of the Exchequer, and to give him certain fees of office; he should admit too, that the Exchequer existed before the Norman conquest. The power to grant or to withhold money, however, had been asserted long since by that House; and that being the case, was the Crown to tell them, that besides the necessary supplies, they must raise another certain sum to an officer whom the Crown had created for the purposes of emolument? It was also in the power of Parliament to say, whether, besides the sum for the public exigencies, they would also raise a further sum to be paid to any such officer? He was confident, that if the House went into the Committee, it would be seen that they had on former occasions regulated those offices, both with and without the concurrence of the 'Tellers themselves. As to the fund for the liquidation of the national debt, and the other enormous sum raised for war taxes, how could it be contended that fees ought to be paid, as a matter of right, to any officer through whose hands they chanced to pass? If, when Mr. Pitt first thought of raising the taxes for carrying on the war within the year, any person had thought of proposing that the sum so raised should be exempted from the payment of these Ex chequer fees, he was convinced no one could have objected to it. And if the principle could be interfered with at all, so far from being a principle which was inviolable, he submitted it must be held to be no principle at all. It was for the House, then, to say what was to be done; and though he (Mr. Whitbread) was prepared to go the whole length of the Resolutions, yet if the amendment was preferred, he had no objection to agree to it. He was convinced there was not a subject in the realm who would not lament if those officers were above the controul of the House. Let the services of the late Earl Camden, or of Mr. George Grenville, be as meritorious as they could be imagined, he could not help being persuaded that they would be amply rewarded even by the amount of emolument drawn by the late First

Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Yorke) as Teller of Exchequer. He thought there could be no doubt that Parliament, if it chose, might order that the sums to be raised in taxes for the present year should pass through the Exchequer, without paying any fees whatever.

Mr. Horner was desirous of stating his reasons for the opinion he entertained on this subject. Nothing, he conceived, could be so clear as this, that in all regulations for economical purposes, vested rights must be sacredly protected. If there was even a solitary precedent, as had been alleged, in the year 1740, in which a contrary line of proceeding had prevailed, still he should have held that to be a bad precedent, and one which ought not to be followed. No man could deny the right of the House to regulate, reform, and even abolish offices; but still that must be done subject to regulations. He was prepared to go as far in regulations which had economy for their object, as any man; but in doing so, the rights of those having vested interests in such offices were to be kept sacred. The property of the state was not to be protected at the expence of private property. All property was the creature of the law, and equally depended on it for protection. If this principle were once broken through by the House, temptation would grow upon them, and there would be no end of it.

He

Mr. Bankes fully agreed in the propriety of preserving inviolate the private rights of parties. Let not the House, however, in an over consideration for private interest, forget that they had also the public interest to look after. He was of opinion that the emoluments of the offices in question had increased infinitely beyond what was reasonable. thought if the House, as the guardians of the public purse, saw a mode of paying out the public money equally secure with that now resorted to, of paying it, in the first place, into the Exchequer, there could be no doubt that they might do 60. The emoluments of those offices, as already said, were excessive, and if the House chose to apply a cure, he thought they had the power of doing so without giving to any human being a right to complain. He did not wish this, however, to be done by compulsion, but by an agreement between the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the public, on the one hand, and these Tellers of the Exchequer on the other.

Mr. Bathurst rose amidst loud cries of question. He admitted that the fees received by the Tellers of the Exchequer were now much larger than at the time of the creation of the VOL. III.-1812.

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