BILL FOR PROHIBITING THE GRANT OF OFFICES IN REVERSION, ETC.
As the bill for prohibiting the grant of offices in reversion was now about to expire, Mr. Bankes introduced a new bill in order to render the measure permanent. This was opposed on the second reading by Mr. Perceval, and thrown out; and then Mr. Bankes proposed a bill for the same purpose, but limited to two years. This met with no opposition in the commons, and it was carried through the lords after the rejection of an amendment proposed by Earl Grosvenor for continuing its operation to 1840. At a later date Mr. Bankes brought in a bill for utterly abolishing many sinecure places, and this was carried against ministers by a majority of one hundred and thirty-four against one hundred and twenty-three. On the 7th of May Mr. Creevey also called the serious attention to the tellerships of the exchequer, now held by the Marquess of Buckingham and Lord Camden, which offices were as old as the exchequer itself, and conferred a vested right, with which it was held parliament could not interfere. He moved a series of resolutions, the last of which declared:—“That it is the duty of parliament in the present unparalleled state of national expenditure and public calamity, to exercise its rights still further over the fees now paid out of the public money at the exchequer, so as to confine the profits of the two tellers to some fixed and settled sum of money more conformable in amount to the usual grants of public money for public services, etc.” Ministers opposed this motion, and it was lost without a division. An amendment, likewise, proposed by Mr. Brand, for appointing a committee to inquire into precedents, was rejected by a large majority. In these debates the greater part of the opposition took the part of ministers, but in the minority were Whitbread, General Fergusson, Lord Tavistock, Lord Archibald Hamilton, and Mr. Brougham. But though parliament would not interfere in these vested rights, in November of this year the two noble tellers intimated their intention of appropriating to the public service a third of their salary and fees from the 5th of January next to the end of the war: this was an act of true patriotism. Before the session closed an attack was made upon another patent place, that of the office of registrar of the admiralty and prize courts. A bill for regulating this office was brought in by Mr. Henry Martin, but it was rejected by a majority of sixty-five against twenty-seven. In the course of this last debate it was made to appear that Lord Arden, the registrar, whose fees amounted to about £12,000 a year, had made £7000 a year more by interest and profits of suitors’ money, and that he had sometimes above £200,000 of such money employed at interest. A bill, however, proposed by Mr. Perceval himself, which declared that the registrar should be entitled to one-third part only of the fees of his office, and that the remaining two-thirds should go to the consolidated fund, was carried, though not without some opposition. This was noble conduct on the part of Mr. Perceval; for this office had been granted in reversion to his elder brother, Lord Arden, and after Lord Arden’s death it was to revert to Mr. Perceval himself. Its merits were, however, lowered by the consideration that the reductions of emoluments were not to take place till after the expiration of the existing present and reversionary interests; that is, till after the deaths of Lord Arden and Mr. Perceval.