respondent, excited some degree of irritation. Of the public there are, I believe, very few indeed who think with him; but, his opinions are certainly not entitled to less attention on that account; for, it not unfrequently happens, that what is called popular opinion, is, particularly upon subjects of this sort, decidedly hostile to sound political principles. His opinions ought, therefore, and, in my eyes, they do, stand upon their intrinsic worth, and the décision ought to turn solely upon the reason, the cool and dispassionate reason of the case.- -I am asked, whether I go the length of maintaining, that all sinecures whatever ought to be abolished? To which I answer, that I do not. The sinecures have grown out of the changes which time has produced in the manner of conducting the affairs of the nation, and of providing for the maintenance of the dignity and the splendour of the throne. They now serve, or ought to serve, the purpose of rewarding public services, services well-known and unequivocally acknowledged; and, which is not less essential to the maintenance of the monarchy and the welfare of the state, for the purpose of upholding and cherishing those amongst the ancient nobility and gentry, who, otherwise might fall into a state that would inevitably bring disgrace upon rank, and would, thereby, leave us no aristocracy but that of wealth, ten thousand times more grinding and inso·lent than the lords of the worst of feudal times. With this notion of sinecures in my mind, it is impossible, that I can be an advoIcate for their indiscriminate abolition; unless it shall, indeed, appear, that they have been and are likely always to be, perverted from their wholesome use. That, for a long, long time, they have been so perverted, no one will, I think, attempt to deny. Let the list be looked over. Let any one examine the pretensions of the present holders of those offices, and of those to whom very many of them are pledged in reversion down to the third generation; let him look at a thousand a year for life given, in various shapes, to a man merely because he had been the under editor of a publication, the chief object of which was to answer the party purposes of the minister and to asperse the characters of his opponents; let him look at the great proportion of them which have been granted merely as the means of procuring and insuring party support to the minister of the day; let him compare the number and amount of the places which have been given for real public services and for the laudable purpose of supporting the sinking nobility and gentry, with the number and amount of

those which have been granted for the purpose of exalting upstarts to nose and to trample upon every thing that was once noble and dignified; let him do this, and then let him say, whether the existence of sinecures may not be regarded as a thing of doubtful policy, without justifying the imputation of rashness in the person who views it in that light; especially, and this is the main point, supposing that the principles, upon which they have, for the last twenty years, been bestowed, are still to be acted upon; a sup position, however, upon which I should be very sorry to proceed.Applying what has been said to the sinecure of Lord Gren ville, as a prop to sinking nobility, exhausted by the drains of taxation and weighed down by the hand of commercial opulence created by that very taxation, this sinecure was not wanted; but, upon the score of public services, I am by no means inclined to deny, that it was justly and judiciously bestowed; and, as long as it could have been retained without any departure from the principles upon which it was granted and held and ac knowledged to be justly held, very few men in the kingdom would, I believe, have expected or wished to see it relinquished. But, when his lordship chose to accept of another place of as great or greater emolument, was it, upon that very principle, the principle of a reward after public services, not inconsis tent to retain it? And, is not the inconsis tency greatly heightened, when we consider the circumstance of incompatibility? Am I told, that, the office of First Lord of the Treasury was of uncertain duration; that, when that should cease, the permanent emolument would be irrecoverable; and, that, therefore, it behoved his lordship not to give up a certainty for an uncertainty. But, to say nothing about the notions upon which reasoners in this way must proceed, was it to give us a favourable impression of his lordship's views and hopes, so to act at the out-set, as if he doubted that his future services would entitle him to a lasting reward? Was the acting upon the notions and the policy of one of those, who, like Huskisson and so many others, secures, while in place, a contingent. pension, the thing to be wished for in the man who stands forward as prime minister in times like the present, when the mischiefs of a long predominance of selfishness are to be counteracted and overcome as the very foundation of future hope?--Still, however, the te tention of the Auditorship would have been a measure less objectionable, had it not been accompanied with circumstances that discovered so decided a disposition to retain. T

give up is one thing, and to let a place fall away of itself is another. The place of Auditor, legally speaking, became vacant upon his lordship's accepting of that of First Lord of the Treasury, We have seen, and felt, too much from the giving up or the ostentatious forbearance of taking sinecures, as the reader has been reminded in the first pages of the present sheet. But, here there was no danger of incurring the charge of ostentatious and cajoling disinterestedness. The plan and the emolument would naturally have ceased of themselves; the suffering them to cease would have demanded no noisy and empty applause; but, in the minds of all thinking men, it would have been a proof of the absence of an interested disposition, and, as all such proofs do, would, in due time, have produced a suitable effect. But, instead of this, when the disposition to retain is so strong as to resort to the exertion of the highest degree of power in order to gratify it, though in the teeth of acknowledged incompatibility, what must be the decision of every impartial mind?—Nor must I omit again to give weight to the circumstance that led to that singular case in our civil jurisprudence, which arose out of the crime of ASTLETT. The people, and surely the people are something; nay, all men of reflection, saw with profound grief, that an act of parliament was then necessary to render legal those evidences of property to an immense amount, which were illegal, only because Lord Grentille had not done the trifling business which his office of Auditor required of him; what are, nay, what must be, their feelings, then, when they see a second act of parliament passed for the sole and avowed purpose of securing to him for life the great emoluments of that very office; and this, too, just at the moment when he is entering upon another office, incompatible with the former, and equal to it in point of emolument ? In those feelings I participate, and so participating, I think it not only my right, but my duty also, to express what I feel; but, with the full force of these feelings upon iny mind, there is one insinuation, to which this unfortunate transaction has given rise, that I think it a duty in me no less imperious to endeavour to counteract; because it is highly injurious to Lord Grenville, and more especially, because reason, and, indeed I may assert, a knowledge of the facts, convince me that it is unjust. I allude to the notion, not inertly inculcated, and not confined in the extent of its circulation, that, a refusal on the part of Mr. Pitt to suffer Lord Grenville to retain the Auditorship together with an active of

fice of great emolument, was the real cause of his lordship's refusing to come into the views of Mr. Pitt in the spring of 1804, when the last miserable ministry was patched up. With those who observe that, in case of Lord Grenville's then joining Mr. Pitt, there would have been no ground whatever for Mr. Pitt's objecting to the retention of the Auditorship, that office not being at al incompatible with any other that Lord Grenville would have held; to those who recollect, that his lordship had, in a ministry with Mr. Pitt, held the Auditorship before while he held another high office in the state; to those who recollect these circumstances, and who, in the letters of Lord Grenville to Mr. Pitt, at the time reverted to, saw the real grounds of their disagreement upon the subject of forming a new ministry; to such persons, nothing need be said to convince them of the falsehood, not to say the malice, of those who are endeavouring to circulate this insinuation so injurious to Lord Grenville and so complimentary to the memory of Mr. Pitt; but, as these circumstances may not, at first, present themselves to every one, I have thought it necessary thus to furnish the effectual means of counteracting the effects of the insinuation. The remark, short,

slight, and merely parenthetical, as it was, upon the subject of the talents and mental faculties of Lord Grenville, has also become a subject of complaint with my correspondent. Of those talents I spoke precisely as I thought; I expressed an opinion not hastily formed, not founded upon any single instance, but upon the result of long and no very careless observation of what had come to me, in common with other men, through the channel of his parliamentary speeches, in which, though I have always perceived a great degree of good sense and of plain dealing added to that sort of accuracy which is the fruit of public zeal manifested in sedulous research, I have never discovered any evidence of talents of the first rate; and I have, as to matters of political economy, perceived a course of thought obviously proceeding from a source which I never could bring myself to regard as profound. But, this is merely a matter of opinion. My opinion may be wrong; those who differ from me may possibly see their opinion confirmed by events; the right, however, that I have to express my opinion they cannot deny, and my fairness in exercising it they cannot question, when they consider, that I therein risk the danger of being shown to be in error, and, fu ther, that the channel for the circulating of my opinion is

always open for the circulation of theirs. As to the policy, or, perhaps, we should call it, the fitness, of exercising this right, that, too, must depend entirely upon my own judgment, and is attended, in respect to those who disapprove of my publishing the opinion, with all the circumstances counterbalancing the expressing of the opinion itself. So that, in whatever light we view the matter, there appears, on the side of the friends of this nobleman, no good ground of complaint; unless, indeed, they should have entertained, and should now be proceeding upon, the notion, that, from some cause or other, I do not, with regard to the present ministry, and especially with regard to Lord Grenville, possess the right of freely expressing and publishing my opinions, than which I will venture to say, that a notion more erroneous never entered into the mind of man. I have before (page 199) stated the principles, upon which, with regard to observations on public men and public measures, I think every writer ought to regulate his conduct, and upon which I always have, and, I trust, always shall, regulate my conduct. Upon those principles I have proceeded in this case; I have acted under a conviction, that the promulgation of my opinion with regard to Lord Grenville would tend to the public good, and so convinced, should I not, leaving duty and conscience out of the question, remembering only what I have so repeatedly declared to be the sole ground for hoping for any good from a change of ministry, and observing what but too evidently appears to be the intention of the Grenville part of the new ministry; thus remembering and thus observing, should I not, in suppressing my opinions upon any subject therewith connected, act a part worthy of the most shameless slave that ever disgraced the human form? Ten years have I now been a public writer. During the whole of that time have I been, to the best of my judgment, labouring for the welfare and the honour of England, and, thereby, hoping to lay the foundation of fair and permanent fame; and never have I, in any one instance that I can recollect, been tempted by my pressing and accumulated difficulties and distresses, to yield one particle of that independence of mind, which, as it was my birth-right, it behoves me never to part with. In my personal intercourse with public men, an intercourse never sought by me, I have acted upon the principles that I have always professed. In no case was I ever an intruder. Encouragement and kindness never rendered me forward or familiar; but, whilst, towards birth and station I have constantly and strict- 1

who,

ly observed, as well in my address as in the whole of my demeanour, that respect which I have held to be due to the persons whom I have approached, I have, with regard to the exercise of my judgment and the expression of my opinion, been as free as if I were still amongst my companions of the green. By halves I never love, or hate; and, therefore, any circumstance that would sever me from those whose friendship I have so highly valued, could not fail to be severely felt and deeply lamented. But, Í must, at the same time, feel that something is due to myself; to my own character and weight in the country; this, indeed, I may have far over-estimated, but, by that estimate, whatever it may be, my conduct must be swayed; and, if there be any persons, who regard 'this estimate as bevond all the bounds of modesty and of justice; who, looking back at the humbleness of my origin and of my progress from the ranks of the army onwards through a bookseller's shop to the editorship of a newspaper, think that I bear a mind formed for nothing but servitude; from the habit of estimating the pretensions of men by the length of their purse, the mode of their garments, and the grace of their bow, have inferred that my pretensions extend not beyond a sufficiency of food and of raiment; who, considering a newspaper as an article of commerce, and as the means of obtaining not only victuals and drink and clothing, but also as the means of obtaining money to lay by, naturally suppose that the utmost of my ambition must be so to push on the thriving trade as to swell the proceeds to a plum; who, from observing, that, amongst courtiers and politicians, a forwardness to claim their due is seldom a quality in which they are wanting, have imagined, that, though the Register may have produced some effect, the effect is to be ascribed to the subjects of its panegyric, and not to the talents of its author; who, ascribing my respectful deference for birth and station, not to the operation, upon my mind, of a fixed and frequently declared political principle, but to a due and becoming sense of inferiority in one born for nothing else but to honor and obey; if there be any persons, who, from all, or from any of these premises, have drawn such a conclusion; if they have hitherto regarded me as one of those political silk-worms, who, in the emphatical description of Swift, are content io spin out their existence in the weaving of robes for beings ot a superior order, such persons may, for aught I shall assert to the contrary, have formed a correct estimate of my talents and my worth, but certain I am that they have egregiously mistaken my views.

VOL. IX. No. 10.]

[PRICE 10D.

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SUMMARY OF POLITICS. SWEEPING OF OFFICES.The Courier newspaper, of the 6th instant, complains most bitterly of the "sweeping," down to the very clerks, which has taken place, in the public offices, in consequence of the change in the ministry; upon which the first observation to make is, that it is false. Very little sweeping has taken place; no clerks have been removed, that I have heard of; and, as to Under Secretaries, there certainly has not been sweeping enough. In truth, the fault is, that, in almost every department, there appears a disposition to retain as many as possible of the creatures of Mr. Pitt; and, in the Treasury Department, this disposition is evidently very strong indeed. We all know how much, when we come to the execution of an office, depends upon the secondary officers; and, therefore, it must be matter of concern with the friends of the new ministry, to see so many of these officers remain; and, further to see, that in the removals, care seems to have been taken to avoid, as much as possible, touching the close adherents of the late minister, whose intentions, as to appointments, have, it is said, as far as comes under one great officer of the new cabinet, been punctually fulfilled. I once observed, that, upon the grounds whereon the Pitts and Dundases had been supported, for many years past, I did not see why they might not bequeath us at their death! So far, then, from the Pitts having reason to complain of a sweeping disposition in the new ministry, it appears to me, that the public has a right to complain, that there has been nothing worthy of the name of sweeping taken place. Too many of the odious old names are continually occurring, as we read or talk of the offices of government: Old habits must still be indulged in. It is quite impossible, while we see these men in office, that we should believe, that such a change has taken place as we could have wished; or, which is worse, that such a change is intented to take place. Mr. Fox is, in the above-mentioned paper, most bitterly reproached with the changes that he has nade in his office; and, after what has been

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said above, I have only to add, that the subject for regret is, that his example has not been more generally followed. There are, indeed, certain offices which, generally speaking, are, and ought to be considered as being too low to be liable to feel the effect of ministerial revolutions; yet, this must always be a matter to be left to the judgment of the superior officers; for, it not unfre quently happens, that an inferior officer has power to do great mischief; and, if he has been a devoted tool of the late minister, it is quite silly to hope for any change of that system from those by whom such tool is retained in office.

That,

MINISTERIAL PROFESSIONS. however, which has given the most alarm to all the real friends of the new ministry, is, the latitude, or supposed latitude, of their professions, now made in parliament, with regard to measures, which they have hereto fore so decidedly condemned. Of the uses, which the friends and adherents of the Pitt system are making of these professions, a specimen offers itself in the following res marks from the Courier newspaper of the 3d. instant." This reasoning" (meaning the reasoning contained in Mr. Fox's expla nation, on the 17th ultimo, of what he had said, a few days before, in dissapprobation of the Union with Ireland) "This reasoning will enable Mr Fox to abandon all his opposition doctrines, and we are happy to see Mr. Fox have recourse to it, as it gives assurance that he will not be the dangerous man in power it was apprehended, "that he will not advocate the plans of "Sir FRANCIS BURDETT, or promote the

"day be severely felt. He seems fully a66 ware of the mischief he has done, and has made a second declaration in Parlia"ment to counteract it. In the debate on "India Affairs on Tuesday, alluding both to "Ireland and India, ""He agreed we

were not now to revert to original the"""ories; but when we were examining ""into the causes of important events "" which were extremely complicated in "their nature, it was somewhat difficult

"to do so without, in some measure, ad"❝verting to such original theories. He,

"however, did not mean to say that any ""alteration ought at present to take place "" in the general system of Indian Go""vernment as now by law established. ""He had occasion to state, at a former "" time, that there was a wide difference ""between disapproving of measures at "" their commencement, and afterwards rescinding them when they had "" been some time in practice. This "" he had said with regard to the Union with Ireland. He had strongly disapproved of that measure when it was 88 66 proposed, because he was then con"vinced it was a bad one, and was still

government. It was, in his opinion,

a bad one from the beginning; but as "" it had been adopted and acted upon, it "" was not now to be lightly rescinded. "In ninety-nine cases of this nature out "" of a hundred, it was better to put up

with many inconveniencies arising from the first adoption of a measure, than 66 "hazard worse evils by premature and "ill-considered alterations and innova""<tions." -The above declaration of

moment so inauspicious as the present. "Under these circumstances we shall" hope "for the best," without very minutely in"vestigating the minor appointments in the government."- -As an enemy of the new ministry, and particularly of Mr. Fox and his friends, this writer has managed well his statement; has turned his materials to good account. But, his inferences are false. Not only are they false in fact; but, they do not fairly flow from the premises, which he himself has stated. The passage of Mr. Fox's speech, quoted by this writer, is, I must confess, more liable to misconstruction than I could have wished. As to the measure of the Union, it is one, which cannot now be undone without throwing the country into confusion. It is, in point of magnitude, somewhat approaching to a change of dynasty. But, because a measure like this cannot be undone; or, at least, because it cannot be undone without producing effects of almost a revolutionary cast; is this any reason why a change, yea, a complete change, should not take place as to the mode of governing and conducting the affairs of our colonies in the East-Indies; especially when we are now convinced, when the proof is before parliament itself, that the present mode is subversive of all the ends for which colonies ought to be held? Every man is now convinced, that the deplorable state of the East-Indies and the East-India Company's affairs, never forgetting the hea vy taxes which have thereby been, and will again be, brought upon the nation; èvery man is now convinced, that all this has proceeded from the Pitt system of governing India: and, if we are to be told, that it is better for us still to put up with these mischiefs and calamities, "than to hazard worse "evils," when, and in what case are we, a God's name,' to hope for any benefit at all from the change which has taken place in the councils of his Majesty! That no "pre"mature and ill-considered alterations and

of sense will agree; and, it was only in the applying of the remark, relative to the Union, to the mode of governing India; it was only in making such an application of that remark as seemed to extend it to all cases whatsoever, and to shut the door against all change; it was in this only, that Mr. Fox furnished a handle for the sarcastic observations of his enemies, and that he excited alarm amongst his friends; alarm, however, which I am confident the result will prove to have been perfectly groundless. -Along with these professions of Mr. Fox, there, unfortunately comes, too, the awk