CROWN LANDS FEW errors seem stranger, yet commoner, than a certain prevalent error concerning the revenues which uphold the dignity of the Crown of England. Statesmen, or others who manage those revenues, or students of constitutional history, inform themselves necessarily on the subject. But does not one oftentimes hear it asserted, even in educated circles, that the Queen and royal family, being the recipients of fixed salaries from the national purse, contract thence the obligation to discharge the duties of royalty, precisely in the same manner as judges, generals, and ordinary officials receiving government pay, undertake each the duties of their several offices? And if any better-educated listener venture to deny the parallel, is not the correction usually met with a smile of incredulity, to say the least? Passing strange it seems, in a country where publicity becomes the fate, often the courted fate, of all things governmental— where private acts cast their privacy when they touch public interests -where a competent knowledge of political affairs knocks at the door of the humblest member of the community-that a topic of general interest like the Crown lands and their actual adaptation should be so seldom understood, or rather so universally misunderstood. Doubtless, upon the sovereign of these realms the burdens of constitutional royalty do devolve in all fulness. Noblesse oblige, and, by stronger reason, royauté. Constitutionally also, it cannot but be evident that, failing the working of the principle of British royalty, the right to the British Crown must lapse from whomsoever its holder. Still, as such an eventuation would only change the sum and mode of maintenance of the ex-sovereign and family, or confiscate the source of income accidental to their governing, and not alienate their substance from them, it falls equally beyond dispute that the generic term 'salary,' with corresponding duties attached, cannot apply to the grants, either regular or exceptional, which for so many generations our Parliament has voted to our reigning family. Brief, the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland stands bound to fulfil her regal office solely because she is queen, and not, according to the vulgar error, on account of salary received; the farther truth being, that, so far from really receiving a salary, she contributes more money to the Treasury by cession of the Crown lands than the nation returns to her by parliamentary grants. A capitulation of the historical facts will effectually put out of court any doubt upon the question. In these days an English sovereign is enabled to support the honour and dignity of the Crown by the help of those parliamentary votes which, at the outset of each reign, secure a stipulated lifeannuity to the new king or queen, together with promise of adequate provision for royal consorts, royal children, their consorts, and their children to come. Although this constitutional practice has obtained, despite its ephemeral character, during an elongated period of English history, and will probably become perpetual, it was not always so amongst us. Neither should those grants of our Parliament be confounded with apparently similar grants of foreign legislative bodies. The difference is very material, and lies in that the French, to take an example, set apart in their annual budget what amounts to an impromptu subsidy from France towards the domestic wants of its Emperor; whereas we English simply transact from year to year the details of a composition, the essentials of which have previously been effected between our queen and ourselves. What brought about that composition? How does it work? The whole subject of the Crown lands resolves itself into an answer to this twofold query. While overlooking historically the personalty of the English sovereigns, one needs to bear three leading points in mind: first, that it consisted in its origin chiefly of lands, which were the private though entailed property of the sovereign, and to which other regal rights merely came in aid, more rights increasing as the wants of the age increased and as the lands of the Crown diminished; secondly, that the sovereign, thus aided by the nation, used to be therefore chargeable with its outgoing of every description—a rule which, howsoever modified in successive reigns, only fell completely into disuse under the present reign; thirdly, that, notwithstanding the indisputable personal right of the royal family to the Crown lands, never at any epoch did the nation entirely fail to claim some sort of voice in their control, but, on the contrary, having regard to the circumstances under which those royalties were acquired, advanced it the more as time unfolded our constitution, until the moot-point finally settled down into an act of legal compromise. The old common law of Europe held that all the land of a kingdom belonged by origin or by seisin to the Crown, either to give away or to spend its proceeds, and, in those ages, almost irresponsibly. Hence, when the Norman conquerors came over, they succeeded to the hereditary lands reserved as royal by their Saxon predecessors, and also to immense tracts either forfeited by the conquered nobility, or which had till then remained personally unbestowed, or which hitherto had been suffered to serve as public commonage and moorage. There were ceded to them, besides, all the royal prerogatives usual at that period-such as the profits of purveyance (what they could make by the trade of governing), fines upon leases and licenses, fees, excise and customs, first-fruits and tithes, not to mention escheats or forfeitures to the Crown in cases of war or crime. Receiving all, however, the sovereign had to pay all, and to sustain the whole expense of government. Such at least was the theory. Practically, it long amounted to little more than supporting the royal household. For instance, the king, in his quality of feudal chief, commanded the service of his vassals, each with a body of retainers equipped and kept at the sole cost of their immediate lord. To phrase it in a homely way, our early Norman kings were uncommonly well off. The nation might have its claims. to being heard in advice. As a fact, either it had yet to learn how to call that claim out of abeyance, or the sovereign was still strong enough to resist every control upon his expenditure.* Times changed. The royal lands constituting the only fund on which succeeding kings could draw to reward or satisfy their adherents, so much had those alienations frittered away, so prodigious had been the waste of the once ample demesnes of the Crown, that at length King Henry III. is found complaining of his inability to provision his own table.† The remedy of a wrongful resumption of granted lands, unjust confiscations, and other methods fraught with confusion and misery, were tried by that king and by several of his successors, in order to amend their impecuniosity, to retrieve their indiscreet prodigality, and enable them to make the two ends meet.' But the repetition of plans which scarcely cured a transient evil was certain to be repudiated as feudalism waned and our constitution began to grow. It required the thrift and exacting spirit of King Henry VII. to repair the losses to the English Crown of former years. King Henry VIII. again embroiled the Crown worse than ever. Notwithstanding his wholesale plundering, roundly computed at over 30,000,0001. sterling, he left the royal treasury empty; and, what was worse, those whom he had enriched by the spoliation took care to hold fast to their new possessions. The revenue coming in to King James I. hardly touched 70,000l. a-year, whilst that monarch's debt at one time exceeded 1,000,000l. When King Charles I. could no longer obtain subsidies from parliament, he sold or mortgaged the Crown lands right and left.§ And when, afterwards, Parliament itself disposed of the rest of the royal estates, they fetched barely sufficient to pay the outstanding debts of the revolutionary government. At the Restoration most of the Crown lands were recovered. Nevertheless their squandering and dispersion recommenced. || King Charles II. actually reduced by one-half the income accruable to him from land; but to his reign also one turns for the first precedent of a surrender on the part of the sovereign of some of his hereditary revenues.¶ Our history teems with records of national * St. John's Observations on the Land Revenues of the Crown. Erskine May's Const. Hist. vol. i. c. 4. Knight's Hist. of England, vol. ii. pp. 166-7. || Clarendon, iii. 131; Pepys's Diary, 1666. § Scobell, part ii. pp. 51, 227. 12 Car. II. c. 24. disquietude at the mismanagement of the Crown lands. The English monarchs being not less the sole paymasters than the sole payees of the nation, who could tell to what purposes they had devoted either their land-revenues or their other royalties until they might choose to come to parliament for additional supplies? There ap peared to be no sort of check upon them in money matters short of the extreme measure of a parliamentary stand against the sovereign, or of the dread fate which befell King Charles I. Such a jealousy had been created through the never-ending diminution of the Crown property, that constitutional power began to be severely tested by the bringing in, under Kings Charles II., James II., and William III., of several bills which aimed at resuming all grants of land made by those monarchs, and at preventing all farther alienation.* Under Queen Anne the interposition of Parliament was eventually successful, but not till too late to save more than a small remnant of the Crown lands.† The land-possessions of the English Crown, which at varying epochs bade fair to become enormous, had by that time sunk so low and were producing so little, that the queen's majesty confessed to the nation their total inadequacy, even when assisted by her royalties, towards the carrying on of her government and the proper sustentation of her throne. Yet it were a grave error to imagine all this waste to have lacked in compensating value to us as a nation. Who dare soothsay to what political lee-shore we might not have drifted, with a royal family immoderately rich and independent of parliament? Thus did the very improvidence of our sovereigns compel them betimes to lean upon the nation; until their personal requirements, and the ever-increasing necessities of the state, subjected them in turn to parliamentary control, and so helped England on her way to the freest and best of constitutions. As aforesaid, the original revenue of the English Crown consisted of the rent derivable from hereditary land, from feudal tenures. and dues, and from taxes voted to the reigning king or queen on their beginning to reign. Down to the Restoration, however, the taxes had always been voted in a lump, no statute fixing their application. Under Kings Charles II. and James II. attempts were made. to insist on the tax-money being both rightfully applied and audited; but, like many another measure of the times, with indifferent suc *Journals of the House of Commons, 1697, 1699. It will be understood, that with the land-property of the Crown here under review are not included the Crown lands of the British colonies. As anciently in the United Kingdom so in our colonies, the Crown claimed original disposal of all ceded or seized land within their territories. In point of fact, however, no Crown land extern to the United Kingdom was ever adapted for the personalty of the British sovereign. It was always made serviceable to local expenditure or improvement, with responsibility, ad interim, to the home government; the Crown of England finally transferring its royalties and its rights of sale or other disposal to the colonial government, according as each colony severally received its constitution. 1 Anne, c. 7, s. 5. cess, the Stuarts generally contriving to elude official inspection, and to spend their incomes as iniquitously as they chose. Not till the era of William and Mary do we hear of a regular civil-list, which was still, however, very far from representing either the royal receipts or the expenditure of more recent periods. During the two previous reigns, for the first time in English history, a standing army had been introduced, or, to write more accurately, the experiment of keeping up the old parliamentary army had been tried and approved. But when King William III. came to settle with his parliament, it was arranged that thenceforth the military and naval forces of the kingdom should be provided for by a yearly vote of the House of Commons, the sovereign to be wholly exonerated from the charges of either army or navy.† There has been no retrogression since, and of course there never will be. Parliament voted to King William III., over and above that relief, a civil-list of 680,000l. in aid of the Crown lands, to assist him to find the nation—1. in a royal household worthy of it; 2. in the items of the privy-purse, and in the maintenance of the royal palaces; 3. in secret-service money, pensions, and irregular claims; 4. in the support of other members of the royal family; 5. in-what is most noticeable—the salaries of the lord-chancellor, judges, ministers of state, and ambassadors. During Queen Anne's reign matters continued nearly on the same footing, except that she had more ground for appealing to parliament than had King William III., as is probable from her message already quoted. Kings George I. and George II. found themselves in a still sorrier plight. Those sovereigns gave up scarce anything farther of their royalties. Yet the exigences of their civil-lists caused the subsidies to rise gradually to 800,000l. Moreover, several extraordinary grants were made by parliament in excess of its annual grant, and in favour of both Anne and the first two Georges, expressly to relieve the overcharged civil-lists of the time. For example, in 1746 parliament paid a debt of 456,000l., which King George II. said he had incurred for civil-list purposes-consequently on his private income falling short to that amount. The accession of King George III. inaugurated a change, if not radical, yet so important, relatively to the king's revenues, as to form quite an era in the management and disposition of the British Crown lands. Since the Revolution the English monarch had enjoyed, beside the rent of his lands supplemented by different parliamentary grants, certain royal revenues derived from fees, tithes, and suchlike, to which had accrued the profits of the then recent institution of the post-office, and that part of the excise which, immediately after the Restoration, had been yielded up to King Charles II. and his successors for ever, in lieu of the feudal service due to our *Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 279. + Chambers's Encyclopædia, vol. iii. p. 57. |