MOTION RESPECTING THE DUTY ON THE LEEWARD ISLANDS.
On the 9th of June Mr. Creevey called the attention of the house to a grievance under which the Leeward Islands were oppressed, by what was called the four and half per cent. duty. He held petitions in his hands from five of these islands, setting forth their distress, stating their utter inability to bear such a tax, and throwing themselves on the liberality of parliament. Mr. Creevey proposed the abolition of this impost; an impost on which were saddled so many pensions granted to the aristocracy. He thought it hard that these five islands should maintain so many ladies and gentlemen in England. He was, he said, the last man to interfere with the private arrangements of the royal family, but the king had given pensions to two of his sisters at the expense of the unfortunate Leeward Islands, and why these islands were singled out for such a purpose he could not conceive. Then there were pensions of £500 each to the Misses Fitzclarence; and there were also gentlemen high in office who condescended to allow the Leeward Islands to support their families. Right honourable gentlemen, he continued, could not say that they were ignorant of the colonies; their own acts proved their knowledge of the fact. They could support the colonies and urge their distress in a particular way; they could tax East India sugar, and the consumer of West India sugar in England; but they could not abate that tax out of which their own pensions were derived. Mr. Canning, who received one of these pensions, replied at great length, objecting to this motion as affecting the right of the crown to this branch of revenue, and its right of appropriating the same in any manner deemed suitable by his majesty’s government. With respect to his own case, to which Mr. Creevey had made allusion, he remarked:—“It was true that many years ago he had held an office; on retiring from which, by uniform practice, and that sanctioned by law, he became entitled to a pension of £1200 per annum. He had waived his claim to that annuity; and it was true that such right was afterwards commuted for a pension of half the amount for a person who had direct claims on him for protection. It was certainly open to parliament to deliberate on particular instances in the disposal of this fund, and he would not complain of the manner in which the right honourable gentleman had exerted his right in the present instance; yet he well knew that he could be taunted with the names of persons in the same situation, and connected with parties whom he highly respected. That mode, however, was too invidious to follow: the house had a right to examine into supposed abuses as to the application of this as well as any other branch of the revenue; but the honourable gentleman had not made out any case calling for censure.” The motion was lost by a majority of one hundred and three against fifty-seven.