PITT’S FINANCIAL MEASURES.
Pitt proposed his budget for the year, on the 6th of May. In doing so he expressed great satisfaction at the flourishing state of our finances; stating, that although some extraordinary expenses had been incurred by the events of last year, yet, such was the improved condition of the revenue, that it afforded means of providing for all the services which had been voted, without any loan or new taxes, and without the slightest interruption to the action of the sinking-fund. This he proved by a statement of figures, and although Sheridan attempted to controvert his statements, they could not be proved fallacious. Of all men in the house, indeed, Sheridan was the most unfit to enter into financial computations, for his genius rather lay in rhetoric than in figures. In the supplies, 18,000 seamen were voted, and about 29,000 land-forces, beside those that were on foreign service.
ADDITIONS MADE TO THE BILL FOR TRYING CONTROVERTED ELECTIONS.
During this session Mr. Grenville proposed and carried certain amendments and additions to his father’s hill, for better regulating the trial of controverted elections. The principal of these related to the interruption of public business, by frivolous petitions, to obviate which the election committee were empowered to adjudge that a party prosecuting or supporting any such petition should pay reasonable costs. By these amendments, also, a rule was laid down for re-establishing the rights of election, and rendering them immutable.
CLAIMS OF THE AMERICAN ROYALISTS, ETC.
At the conclusion of peace, commissioners had been appointed to inquire into the losses of the American loyalists, and during this session Pitt submitted to the house a plan of liquidation. The loyalists were divided by him into three classes: those who resided in America at the beginning of the war, and from motives of duty to their sovereign had abandoned their estates and property; those who at the commencement of the war had been resident in England, and consequently had not been driven from America; and those who having enjoyed places or exercised professions in America, were compelled to leave that country by the war. Pitt rested their claims on the ground of national generosity and compassion, rather than of strict justice; and he proposed to pay to the two first classes the whole of their claims, if they did not exceed £10,000 and beyond that sum, to deduct from them a per centage, greater in the case of the second class than in the first; and to the third class he proposed to allow pensions, proportionate to the incomes which they had relinquished; those whose incomes had not exceeded four hundred pounds, receiving one half, by way of annuity. A sum amounting to about £1,340,000 was voted for this purpose. Pitt also, with the entire concurrence of the house, settled the case of the East Florida claimants, who had been obliged to quit their habitations and property, when their country was ceded to Spain. As their losses had arisen from the voluntary act of government, Pitt thought that they should be indemnified for their losses, and the sum of £113,952 was voted to them. Another measure of mercy was a bill for granting to the Earl of Newburgh, grandson of Charles Radcliffe, beheaded in 1746, for his share in the rebellion of 1715, a clear rent-charge of £2,500 out of the estates forfeited by the said Charles Radcliffe, and his brother James, third Earl of Derwentwater, who forfeited his life on the same account in 1710, which estates had been settled upon Greenwich Hospital. This bill afforded great relief to an amiable and deserving nobleman.