cessary at any time to fill up, should belong to her. The vacancies among the inferior attendants he proposed should be filled up by the groom of the stole. The expenses of this establishment he proposed should be submitted to parliament, that they might have an opportunity of seeing that no improper expenditure was made. From the best calculation he had been enabled to make, he thought it might be estimated at 100,000l. ayear, to be paid quarterly, comprehending in that sum both the bills and salaries to the officers. The ground of this calculation was the amount of the expenses at Windsor for the last year; and when the proper restrictions were made in articles now rendered superfluous, at least to the extent there charged, particularly in the articles of equipages and horses, he was satisfied it would be brought within the calculation. From the accounts on the table, the Windsor expenses, even as matters were at present carried on, did not exceed from 104,0001. to 108,000l. a-year. The next point to which he wished to direct the attention of the house was the situation of her majesty; and in the condition in which she was placed, it could hardly be expected that she should continue totally to confine herself to that state of seclusion in which she had preferred hitherto to remain. In the situation in which his majesty was placed, she was deprived of the assistance she looked for from him; and in proposing to make an addition to her allowance of 10,0007. out of the civil list, he was satisfied he did not name an unreasonable sum, or one more than sufficient to meet the extraordinary expenses to which her majesty must be exposed. In the last year care had been

1812.

taken to provide for the payment of the pensions which his majesty had been in the use of granting out of the privy purse, to the amount of 60,0001, a year. The house had felt it necessary last year to make the persons who had been in the habit of receiving those pensions, certain that they should continue to receive them. He felt it to be necessary, however, that the sum should not be left without some account being taken of it for an unlimited time, but that provision should be made to secure the audit of it. He should, therefore, in another part of his statement, suggest what he esteemed the proper mode of audit, and should propose a secret committee to inquire into the actual extent of expenses with which it was burdened. Another article of expense attendant on his majesty's unfortunate state, was that neces sarily to be paid to his medical attendants; but this he (Mr. Perceval) thought might safely be charged on the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster, or any other private funds belonging to his majesty, to which, in other circumstances, his majesty would naturally have looked to defray the expenses to be paid to his medical attendants. Supposing this sum to amount to 10,000l. a year, the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster were fully adequate to that burden. The right hon. gentleman was in expectation of shortly receiving the opinion of the queen's council, what should be the provision made for the medical attendance of his majesty, which would afford the house more accurate data on which to proceed; but of this he was satisfied, that if any further sum were required than that which could be supplied out of the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster, there were other funds C

belonging

belonging to his majesty which might properly be applied to this purpose. He had thus stated all the sums which it would be necessary, in pursuance of these arrangements, to take out of the civil list, namely, 100,000/. for the establishment for his majesty's personal comfort and accommodation; 10,000/. additional to her majesty; and 60,000%. as payable out of his majesty's privy purse, amounting these several sums to 170,000%. ayear, besides the sum for medical attendance, which he proposed should be paid out of the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster. Of this sum of 170,000l. with which the civil list was thus burthened, he intended, as already said, to propose, that, to replace it in part, the sum of 70,000%. should be granted by a vote of the house, after which the civil list would devolve on his royal highness the prince regent less than it had been possessed by his majesty to the amount of 100,000. He should propose that the privy purse, to which he had already alluded, should be put under the management of a commission of three, of whom the archbishop of Canterbury, or some such person, should be one, the other two being appointed by the queen and by the prince regent. To them he would propose to intrust the payments from that fund, and the duty of paying the balance into the civil fist. To them persons laying claim to small pensions that used to be paid to them, should direct their applications; and these commissioners should act under an oath of secrecy. Having stated all that was necessary as to his majesty, he now came to that part of his proposition which concerned the prince regent, on whom, as he already said, the civil list would devolye 100,000

a-year less than it had been when possessed by his majesty. The question then was, in what manner things could be so arranged as to make this deficiency be felt as little as possible by his royal highness? Gentlemen might no doubt say, if this was the object, the easiest way to effect it would be at once to vote to him this additional sum of 100,000l. But he begged it to be understood, that in that case it would become necessary to make a grant also to the princess of Wales: and, in the situation in which his royal highness the prince regent was placed, it was well known that he had reason to expect that his income, payable to him out of the exchequer, would continue to be paid to him till he mounted the throne. It was highly important to his royal highness, that the income arising to him from the exchequer should continue to be paid to him. He had, on the faith of it, entered into obligations, which it was of the greatest consequence to him he should be enabled to fulfil, but which no addition to the civil list could furnish him with the means of discharging. What the right honourable gentleman, therefore, had to propose was, that his royal highness should, out of his exchequer income, add 50,000l. ayear to the civil list, which would then be only 50,000l. a-year less than it had been when possessed by his majesty, a sum which might be supposed in some respect made up when the difference in number be tween his majesty's family and that of the prince regent was taken into consideration. These were the general outlines of the proposition, which it became his duty to submit to the house, and the details of which might be more fully gone into in the different stages of the

bill, on its passage through the house. He should here have to conclude his statement, and to leave his propositions to the consideration of the house, were it not that he must have felt that his royal highness the prince regent, and his royal highness's servants, had been unfairly dealt with, had he left it to be supposed that the civil list was equal, even as possessed by his majesty, to the charges upon it. If it was not equal to the charges upon it with the larger sum, it must be still more inade, quate with the smaller sum; but, if it was notorious that it was not so, it would have been a great disappointment if he had left the case without that statement. To avoid this, he had procured to be laid before the house an estimate and charge for every year since 1804.In the year 1805, there was an excess of charge above the estimate to the amount of 120,000,; in the year following, to the amount of 160,000/.; in the last year to the amount of 110,000/.; and taking an average of the whole, to the amount of from 123,000l. to 124,000l. a year. This deficiency had been made up from year to year by other unappropriated revenues of the crown, and by application of sums arising from the droits of the admiralty. He submitted, that in the year 1804, when this excess was first seen, and on every subsequent year, an account of such excess should have been laid before the house. On the contrary, however, from that time to this, no notice had been taken of the circumstance, but things had gone on as if the expence had not exceeded the estimate. He should propose, on this subject, that so long as there were other unappropriated funds belonging to his majesty, out of

which such excess could immediately be defrayed, that in that case there should be no necessity for applying to parliament; but that whenever there should be an excess, after exhausting such unappropriated funds, to the amount of 10,0007. that that should be suffi cient to lay the necessity of a notice to parliament. He had one other resolution to propose to the committee. He thought that pro. vision ought to be made for defraying such expense as would unavoidably be incident on the assumption of royal authority by the prince regent; and he should propose, therefore, that the sum of 100,0002. should be voted to his royal highness for that purpose. The house would see that this sum was only for one year, and merely calculated to meet the expenses of the assumption of a permanent regency.Having said thus much, he should now submit to the house a series of resolutions, which he conceived it would be proper for them, under all the circumstances of the case, to adopt.

Upon the first resolution being proposed,

Mr. Ponsonby observed, that he rose with no disposition to criticise any thing in the plan which the righthonourable gentleman had just submitted to the committee; but still, with deference to him, he must say, that what the right honourable gentleman had stated, appeared to him a matter of more complexity than any thing which he had ever before heard submitted to parliament, notwithstanding that the subject appeared to be one of almost the greatest possible simpli. city. The right honourable gentleman had told them, that the civil list was not sufficient to defray the charges to which it was C 2

liable,

liable, and that it would be necessary for them to calculate upon a permanent annual excess of the charges over the means provided to answer them. All this might be very true; but for his part, as he was ignorant of the causes which rendered the civil list inadequate, it was impossible for him to come to the conclusions of the right hon. gentleman; for he must have proof that the present amount was insufficient to meet the expenditure, and not the mere allegation of the chancellor of the exchequer that it was so. It was the duty of the house to know how that excess had taken place, and that it had not taken place from extravagance, but had arisen from just and necessary causes. They had voted a sum for the maintenance of the dignity of the crown, and for supporting the expenses of government; in that provision certain dispositions had been thought proper to be made by them: but these revenues were now, by the unfortunate event which had taken place, necessarily transferred to him, who as regent was substituted in the place of him who wore the crown, to the person who was in the exercise of the functions of sovereignty. The crown was at present provided for, and the heir-apparent was also provided for. The most natural way of proceeding, therefore, was, to give him who exercises the functions of sovereignty all that is deemed necessary for the support of the crown; and give to the heirapparent all that parliament may have also thought necessary for the support of his dignity. He should have thought it necessary, there fore, that the amount of the other branches of revenue, with the proposed deductions from them, should have been stated, and then the

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amount of the revenue which the prince had a right to as heir-apparent, so that it might at once be seen whether the amount of the latter exceeded or fell short of these deductions; and if it fell short, it was then the duty of the house to vote such a specific sum to his royal highness as would make the reve nue to be possessed by him as good as what was possessed by his father when reigning sovereign of this country. But instead of this simple and obvious mode of proceeding, the right honourable tleman, by first taking so much from the civil list, and then taking so much from the revenue of the prince of Wales, had introduced such a complexity into his whole plan, that, for his part, he was not ashamed to say, he could form no accurate conception of it. The right honourable gentleman had stated to them, on the authority of the evidence of the physicians, that it would require a considerable sum of money to keep up such a state of splendour as might render the situation of his majesty comfortable. Whatever sum might be necessary for that purpose, no man could more cheerfully consent to grant than himself, for no man could feel more for the distresses of his sovereign, or be more sincerely disposed to contribute to their allevia tion; but he could find nothing in the evidence of the physicians, and he had attended the committees from the beginning to the end of their examination, which in the least justified the supposition of the right honourable gentleman. He had contemplated the possibility of his majesty recovering to a sort of middle state; a state which would neither be perfect sanity nor yet insanity; a state in which he might remember his former situation, and entertain

entertain just views on many of the ordinary occurrences of life, and yet not possess such a degree of judgement as to render him fit for the resumption of the royal function; a state which he might safely say would certainly be the most calamitous to his majesty that it is possible for the mind of man to conceive for what could be a greater calamity than to be restored to such a degree of sensibility as might render him alive to all the horrors of his unhappy state, and add to his other miseries the consciousness of his degradation? But there was nothing in the evidence of the physicians to justify this supposition. The right honourable gentleman had attended the committee as well as himself, and this middle state must have been equally present to his mind at that time as at the present: but he would put it to him, if he had put any question to the physicians respecting the possibility of this intermediate state, or had obtained any evidence from them on the subject. All the phy sicians, with the exception of doctor Simmons, had said that his majesty's recovery was extremely improbable; one of them had said that it was all but hopeless, and another of them had said that it was all but impossible. But what evidence was there of this sort of non-descript state anticipated by the right honourable gentleman? What was there in the peculiar situation of his majesty, he would ask, which could make the existence of such a large establishment necessary to his comfort? Could he see the splendour with which it was proposed to surround him? That was impossible. Were there attendants to be retained familiarly to approach him? This the nature of his case would not allow. What was then necessary to his majesty?

Was it such an establishment as mightenable him, on his return to a happier state, to resume, without dif ficulty, his royal functions? This was the consideration by which the house had last year been influenced; but the case was widely altered at present, when, from the concurring evidence of all the physicians, little or no hope of this return was left. But if this happy return should ever take place, the exercise of the royal power would also return to him, and all the functions of royalty would necessarily revert to him. There was another part of the statement of the right honourable gentleman, to which he could not help adverting, and that was, that on account of the diminished domestic state of the king, a smaller number of coaches and horses would be rendered necessary, and 10,000l. additional should, on this account, be granted to her majesty, the queen; that is, because his majesty requires fewer coaches and horses, an additional income became necessary to the queen.But how could the diminution of the expense necessary to his majesty create an additional increase of expense to the queen? When his majesty was in the possession of health, he used these things for his own purposes; and when he was out of health, they were not necessary to the comforts of the queen. Because the king was not in a state to enjoy his usual comforts, it was not surely necessary to put her majesty the queen to any additional expense. This was a mode of reasoning which he confessed himself utterly unable to comprehend. There was another head of expense to which the right honourable gentleman alluded, respecting which he had also to profess himself entirely ignorant, and that was the 100,000 necessary to defray