A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) by Edmund Burke

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12)




The king's household has not only several strong traces of this
_feudality_, but it is formed also upon the principles of a _body
corporate_: it has its own magistrates, courts, and by-laws. This might
be necessary in the ancient times, in order to have a government within
itself, capable of regulating the vast and often unruly multitude which
composed and attended it. This was the origin of the ancient court
called the _Green Cloth_,--composed of the marshal, treasurer, and other
great officers of the household, with certain clerks. The rich subjects
of the kingdom, who had formerly the same establishments, (only on a
reduced scale,) have since altered their economy, and turned the course
of their expense from the maintenance of vast establishments within
their walls to the employment of a great variety of independent trades
abroad. Their influence is lessened; but a mode of accommodation and a
style of splendor suited to the manners of the times has been increased.
Royalty itself has insensibly followed, and the royal household has been
carried away by the resistless tide of manners, but with this very
material difference: private men have got rid of the establishments
along with the reasons of them; whereas the royal household has lost all
that was stately and venerable in the antique manners, without
retrenching anything of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment.
It is shrunk into the polished littleness of modern elegance and
personal accommodation; it has evaporated from the gross concrete into
an essence and rectified spirit of expense, where you have tuns of
ancient pomp in a vial of modern luxury.

But when the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to
preserve nothing but the burden of them. This is superstitiously to
embalm a carcass not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to
preserve it. It is to burn precious oils in the tomb; it is to offer
meat and drink to the dead: not so much an honor to the deceased as a
disgrace to the survivors. Our palaces are vast inhospitable halls.
There the bleak winds, there "Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus, and
Argestes loud," howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the
doors of deserted guardrooms, appall the imagination, and conjure up the
grim spectres of departed tyrants,--the Saxon, the Norman, and the
Dane,--the stern Edwards and fierce Henrys,--who stalk from desolation
to desolation, through the dreary vacuity and melancholy succession of
chill and comfortless chambers. When this tumult subsides, a dead and
still more frightful silence would reign in this desert, if every now
and then the tacking of hammers did not announce that those constant
attendants upon all courts in all ages, jobs, were still alive,--for
whose sake alone it is that any trace of ancient grandeur is suffered to
remain. These palaces are a true emblem of some governments: the
inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and magistrates still
flourish. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, where the representatives,
more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us that this
was once a place of trade, and sounding with "the busy hum of men,"
though now you can only trace the streets by the color of the corn, and
its sole manufacture is in members of Parliament.

These old establishments were formed also on a third principle, still
more adverse to the living economy of the age. They were formed, Sir, on
the principle of _purveyance_ and _receipt in kind_. In former days,
when the household was vast, and the supply scanty and precarious, the
royal purveyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to
purchase provision with power and prerogative instead of money, brought
home the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that could be seized
from a flying and hiding country, and deposited their spoil in an
hundred caverns, with each its keeper. There, every commodity, received
in its rawest condition, went through all the process which fitted it
for use. This inconvenient receipt produced an economy suited only to
itself. It multiplied offices beyond all measure,--buttery, pantry, and
all that rabble of places, which, though profitable to the holders, and
expensive to the state, are almost too mean to mention.

All this might be, and I believe was, necessary at first; for it is
remarkable, that _purveyance_, after its regulation had been the subject
of a long line of statutes, (not fewer, I think, than twenty-six,) was
wholly taken away by the 12th of Charles the Second; yet in the next
year of the same reign it was found necessary to revive it by a special
act of Parliament, for the sake of the king's journeys. This, Sir, is
curious, and what would hardly he expected in so reduced a court as
that of Charles the Second and in so improved a country as England might
then be thought. But so it was. In our time, one well-filled and
well-covered stage-coach requires more accommodation than a royal
progress, and every district, at an hour's warning, can supply an army.

I do not say, Sir, that all these establishments, whose principle is
gone, have been systematically kept up for influence solely: neglect had
its share. But this I am sure of: that a consideration of influence has
hindered any one from attempting to pull them down. For the purposes of
influence, and for those purposes only, are retained half at least of
the household establishments. No revenue, no, not a royal revenue, can
exist under the accumulated charge of ancient establishment, modern
luxury, and Parliamentary political corruption.

If, therefore, we aim at regulating this household, the question will
be, whether we ought to economize by _detail_ or by _principle_. The
example we have had of the success of an attempt to economize by detail,
and under establishments adverse to the attempt, may tend to decide this
question.

At the beginning of his Majesty's reign, Lord Talbot came to the
administration of a great department in the household. I believe no man
ever entered into his Majesty's service, or into the service of any
prince, with a more clear integrity, or with more zeal and affection for
the interest of his master, and, I must add, with abilities for a still
higher service. Economy was then announced as a maxim of the reign. This
noble lord, therefore, made several attempts towards a reform. In the
year 1777, when the king's civil list debts came last to be paid, he
explained very fully the success of his undertaking. He told the House
of Lords that he had attempted to reduce the charges of the king's
tables and his kitchen. The thing, Sir, was not below him. He knew that
there is nothing interesting in the concerns of men whom we love and
honor, that is beneath our attention. "Love," says one of our old poets,
"esteems no office mean,"--and with still more spirit, "Entire affection
scorneth nicer hands." Frugality, Sir, is founded on the principle, that
all riches have limits. A royal household, grown enormous, even in the
meanest departments, may weaken and perhaps destroy all energy in the
highest offices of the state. The gorging a royal kitchen may stint and
famish the negotiations of a kingdom. Therefore the object was worthy of
his, was worthy of any man's attention.

In consequence of this noble lord's resolution, (as he told the other
House,) he reduced several tables, and put the persons entitled to them
upon board wages, much to their own satisfaction. But, unluckily,
subsequent duties requiring constant attendance, it was not possible to
prevent their being fed where they were employed: and thus this first
step towards economy doubled the expense.

There was another disaster far more doleful than this. I shall state it,
as the cause of that misfortune lies at the bottom of almost all our
prodigality. Lord Talbot attempted to reform the kitchen; but such, as
he well observed, is the consequence of having duty done by one person
whilst another enjoys the emoluments, that he found himself frustrated
in all his designs. On that rock his whole adventure split, his whole
scheme of economy was dashed to pieces. His department became more
expensive than ever; the civil list debt accumulated. Why? It was truly
from a cause which, though perfectly adequate to the effect, one would
not have instantly guessed. It was because _the turnspit in the king's
kitchen was a member of Parliament_![36] The king's domestic servants
were all undone, his tradesmen remained unpaid and became
bankrupt,--_because the turnspit of the king's kitchen was a member of
Parliament_. His Majesty's slumbers were interrupted, his pillow was
stuffed with thorns, and his peace of mind entirely broken,--_because
the king's turnspit was a member of Parliament_. The judges were unpaid,
the justice of the kingdom bent and gave way, the foreign ministers
remained inactive and unprovided, the system of Europe was dissolved,
the chain of our alliances was broken, all the wheels of government at
home and abroad were stopped,--_because the king's turnspit was a member
of Parliament_.

Such, Sir, was the situation of affairs, and such the cause of that
situation, when his Majesty came a second time to Parliament to desire
the payment of those debts which the employment of its members in
various offices, visible and invisible, had occasioned. I believe that a
like fate will attend every attempt at economy by detail, under similar,
circumstances, and in every department. A complex, operose office of
account and control is, in itself, and even if members of Parliament had
nothing to do with it, the most prodigal of all things. The most
audacious robberies or the most subtle frauds would never venture upon
such a waste as an over-careful detailed guard against them will
infallibly produce. In our establishments, we frequently see an office
of account of an hundred pounds a year expense, and another office of an
equal expense to control that office, and the whole upon a matter that
is not worth twenty shillings.

To avoid, therefore, this minute care, which produces the consequences
of the most extensive neglect, and to oblige members of Parliament to
attend to public cares, and not to the servile offices of domestic
management, I propose, Sir, to _economize by principle_: that is, I
propose to put affairs into that train which experience points out as
the most effectual, from the nature of things, and from the constitution
of the human mind. In all dealings, where it is possible, the principles
of radical economy prescribe three things: first, undertaking by the
great; secondly, engaging with persons of skill in the subject-matter;
thirdly, engaging with those who shall have an immediate and direct
interest in the proper execution of the business.

To avoid frittering and crumbling down the attention by a blind,
unsystematic observance of every trifle, it has ever been found the best
way to do all things which are great in the total amount and minute in
the component parts by a _general contrast_. The principles of trade
have so pervaded every species of dealing, from the highest to the
lowest objects, all transactions are got so much into system, that we
may, at a moment's warning, and to a farthing value, be informed at what
rate any service may be supplied. No dealing is exempt from the
possibility of fraud. But by a contract on a matter certain you have
this advantage: you are sure to know the utmost _extent_ of the fraud to
which you are subject. By a contract with a person in _his own trade_
you are sure you shall not suffer by _want of skill._ By a _short_
contract you are sure of making it the _interest_ of the contractor to
exert that skill for the satisfaction of his employers.

I mean to derogate nothing from the diligence or integrity of the
present, or of any former board of Green Cloth. But what skill can
members of Parliament obtain in that low kind of province? What pleasure
can they have in the execution of that kind of duty? And if they should
neglect it, how does it affect their interest, when we know that it is
their vote in Parliament, and not their diligence in cookery or
catering, that recommends them to their office, or keeps them in it?

I therefore propose that the king's tables (to whatever number of
tables, or covers to each, he shall think proper to command) should be
classed by the steward of the household, and should be contracted for,
according to their rank, by the head or cover; that the estimate and
circumstance of the contract should be carried to the Treasury to be
approved; and that its faithful and satisfactory performance should be
reported there previous to any payment; that there, and there only,
should the payment be made. I propose that men should be contracted with
only in their proper trade; and that no member of Parliament should be
capable of such contract. By this plan, almost all the infinite offices
under the lord steward may be spared,--to the extreme simplification,
and to the far better execution, of every one of his functions. The king
of Prussia is so served. He is a great and eminent (though, indeed, a
very rare) instance of the possibility of uniting, in a mind of vigor
and compass, an attention to minute objects with the largest views and
the most complicated plans. His tables are served by contract, and by
the head. Let me say, that no prince can be ashamed to imitate the king
of Prussia, and particularly to learn in his school, when the problem
is, "The best manner of reconciling the state of a court with the
support of war." Other courts, I understand, have followed his with
effect, and to their satisfaction.

The same clew of principle leads us through the labyrinth of the other
departments. What, Sir, is there in the office of _the great wardrobe_
(which has the care of the king's furniture) that may not be executed by
the lord chamberlain himself? He has an honorable appointment; he has
time sufficient to attend to the duty; and he has the vice-chamberlain
to assist him. Why should not he deal also by contract for all things
belonging to this office, and carry his estimates first, and his report
of the execution in its proper time, for payment, directly to the Board
of Treasury itself? By a simple operation, (containing in it a treble
control,) the expenses of a department which for naked walls, or walls
hung with cobwebs, has in a few years cost the crown 150,000_l._, may
at length hope for regulation. But, Sir, the office and its business are
at variance. As it stands, it serves, not to furnish the palace with its
hangings, but the Parliament with its dependent members.

To what end, Sir, does the office of _removing wardrobe_ serve at all?
Why should a _jewel office_ exist for the sole purpose of taxing the
king's gifts of plate? Its object falls naturally within the
chamberlain's province, and ought to be under his care and inspection
without any fee. Why should an office of the _robes_ exist, when that
of _groom, of the stole_ is a sinecure, and that this is a proper object
of his department?

All these incumbrances, which are themselves nuisances, produce other
incumbrances and other nuisances. For the payment of these useless
establishments there are no less than _three useless treasurers_: two to
hold a purse, and one to play with a stick. The treasurer of the
household is a mere name. The cofferer and the treasurer of the chamber
receive and pay great sums, which it is not at all necessary _they_
should either receive or pay. All the proper officers, servants, and
tradesmen may be enrolled in their several departments, and paid in
proper classes and times with great simplicity and order, at the
Exchequer, and by direction from the Treasury.

The _Board of Works_, which in the seven years preceding 1777 has cost
towards 400,000_l._,[37] and (if I recollect rightly) has not cost less
in proportion from the beginning of the reign, is under the very same
description of all the other ill-contrived establishments, and calls for
the very same reform. We are to seek for the visible signs of all this
expense. For all this expense, we do not see a building of the size and
importance of a pigeon-house. Buckingham House was reprised by a bargain
with the public for one hundred thousand pounds; and the small house at
Windsor has been, if I mistake not, undertaken since that account was
brought before us. The good works of that Board of Works are as
carefully concealed as other good works ought to be: they are perfectly
invisible. But though it is the perfection of charity to be concealed,
it is, Sir, the property and glory of magnificence to appear and stand
forward to the eye.

That board, which ought to be a concern of builders and such like, and
of none else, is turned into a junto of members of Parliament. That
office, too, has a treasury and a paymaster of its own; and lest the
arduous affairs of that important exchequer should be too fatiguing,
that paymaster has a deputy to partake his profits and relieve his
cares. I do not believe, that, either now or in former times, the chief
managers of that board have made any profit of its abuse. It is,
however, no good reason that an abusive establishment should subsist,
because it is of as little private as of public advantage. But this
establishment has the grand radical fault, the original sin, that
pervades and perverts all our establishments: the apparatus is not
fitted to the object, nor the workmen to the work. Expenses are incurred
on the private opinion of an inferior establishment, without consulting
the principal, who can alone determine the proportion which it ought to
bear to the other establishments of the state, in the order of their
relative importance.

I propose, therefore, along with the rest, to pull down this whole
ill-contrived scaffolding, which obstructs, rather than forwards, our
public works; to take away its treasury; to put the whole into the hands
of a real builder, who shall not be a member of Parliament; and to
oblige him, by a previous estimate and final payment, to appear twice at
the Treasury before the public can be loaded. The king's gardens are to
come under a similar regulation.

The _Mint_, though not a department of the household, has the same
vices. It is a great expense to the nation, chiefly for the sake of
members of Parliament. It has its officers of parade and dignity. It has
its treasury, too. It is a sort of corporate body, and formerly was a
body of great importance,--as much so, on the then scale of things, and
the then order of business, as the Bank is at this day. It was the great
centre of money transactions and remittances for our own and for other
nations, until King Charles the First, among other arbitrary projects
dictated by despotic necessity, made it withhold the money that lay
there for remittance. That blow (and happily, too) the Mint never
recovered. Now it is no bank, no remittance-shop. The Mint, Sir, is a
_manufacture_, and it is nothing else; and it ought to be undertaken
upon the principles of a manufacture,--that is, for the best and
cheapest execution, by a contract upon proper securities and under
proper regulations.

The _artillery_ is a far greater object; it is a military concern; but
having an affinity and kindred in its defects with the establishments I
am now speaking of, I think it best to speak of it along with them. It
is, I conceive, an establishment not well suited to its martial, though
exceedingly well calculated for its Parliamentary purposes. Here there
is a treasury, as in all the other inferior departments of government.
Here the military is subordinate to the civil, and the naval confounded
with the land service. The object, indeed, is much the same in both.
But, when the detail is examined, it will be found that they had better
be separated. For a reform of this office, I propose to restore things
to what (all considerations taken together) is their natural order: to
restore them to their just proportion, and to their just distribution.
I propose, in this military concern, to render the civil subordinate to
the military; and this will annihilate the greatest part of the expense,
and all the influence belonging to the office. I propose to send the
military branch to the army, and the naval to the Admiralty; and I
intend to perfect and accomplish the whole detail (where it becomes too
minute and complicated for legislature, and requires exact, official,
military, and mechanical knowledge) by a commission of competent
officers in both departments. I propose to execute by contract what by
contract can be executed, and to bring, as much as possible, all
estimates to be previously approved and finally to be paid by the
Treasury.

Thus, by following the course of Nature, and not the purposes of
politics, or the accumulated patchwork of occasional accommodation, this
vast, expensive department may be methodized, its service proportioned
to its necessities, and its payments subjected to the inspection of the
superior minister of finance, who is to judge of it on the result of the
total collective exigencies of the state. This last is a reigning
principle through my whole plan; and it is a principle which I hope may
hereafter be applied to other plans.

By these regulations taken together, besides the three subordinate
treasuries in the lesser principalities, five other subordinate
treasuries are suppressed. There is taken away the whole _establishment
of detail_ in the household: the _treasurer_; the _comptroller_ (for a
comptroller is hardly necessary where there is no treasurer); the
_cofferer of the household_; the _treasurer of the chamber_; the _master
of the household_; the whole _board of green cloth_;--and a vast number
of subordinate offices in the department of the _steward of the
household_,--the whole establishment of the _great wardrobe_,--the
_removing wardrobe_,--the _jewel office_,--the _robes_,--the _Board of
Works_,--almost the whole charge of the _civil branch_ of the _Board of
Ordnance_, are taken away. All these arrangements together will be found
to relieve the nation from a vast weight of influence, without
distressing, but rather by forwarding every public service. When
something of this kind is done, then the public may begin to breathe.
Under other governments, a question of expense is only a question of
economy, and it is nothing more: with us, in every question of expense
there is always a mixture of constitutional considerations.

It is, Sir, because I wish to keep this business of subordinate
treasuries as much as I can together, that I brought the _ordnance
office_ before you, though it is properly a military department. For the
same reason I will now trouble you with my thoughts and propositions
upon two of the greatest _under-treasuries_: I mean the office of
_paymaster of the land forces_, or _treasurer of the army_, and that of
the _treasurer of the navy_. The former of these has long been a great
object of public suspicion and uneasiness. Envy, too, has had its share
in the obloquy which is cast upon this office. But I am sure that it has
no share at all in the reflections I shall make upon it, or in the
reformations that I shall propose. I do not grudge to the honorable
gentleman who at present holds the office any of the effects of his
talents, his merit, or his fortune. He is respectable in all these
particulars. I follow the constitution of the office without persecuting
its holder. It is necessary in all matters of public complaint, where
men frequently feel right and argue wrong, to separate prejudice from
reason, and to be very sure, in attempting the redress of a grievance,
that we hit upon its real seat and its true nature. Where there is an
abuse in office, the first thing that occurs in heat is to censure the
officer. Our natural disposition leads all our inquiries rather to
persons than to things. But this prejudice is to be corrected by maturer
thinking.

Sir, the profits of the _pay office_ (as an office) are not too great,
in my opinion, for its duties, and for the rank of the person who has
generally held it. He has been generally a person of the highest
rank,--that is to say, a person of eminence and consideration in this
House. The great and the invidious profits of the pay office are from
the _bank_ that is held in it. According to the present course of the
office, and according to the present mode of accounting there, this bank
must necessarily exist somewhere. Money is a productive thing; and when
the usual time of its demand can be tolerably calculated, it may with
prudence be safely laid out to the profit of the holder. It is on this
calculation that the business of banking proceeds. But no profit can be
derived from the use of money which does not make it the interest of the
holder to delay his account. The process of the Exchequer colludes with
this interest. Is this collusion from its want of rigor and strictness
and great regularity of form? The reverse is true. They have in the
Exchequer brought rigor and formalism to their ultimate perfection. The
process against accountants is so rigorous, and in a manner so unjust,
that correctives must from time to time be applied to it. These
correctives being discretionary, upon the case, and generally remitted
by the Barons to the Lords of the Treasury, as the test judges of the
reasons for respite, hearings are had, delays are produced, and thus the
extreme of rigor in office (as usual in all human affairs) leads to the
extreme of laxity. What with the interested delay of the officer, the
ill-conceived exactness of the court, the applications for dispensations
from that exactness, the revival of rigorous process after the
expiration of the time, and the new rigors producing new applications
and new enlargements of time, such delays happen in the public accounts
that they can scarcely ever be closed.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Various - "The Unity of Civilization"

A Lady - "The Young Lady's Mentor"

Robert Barr - "The Sword Maker"

Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim - "Christopher and Columbus"

Review: The Dying Game by Melanie King
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Review: Hang the DJ edited by Angus Cargill
Review: The Dying Game: A Curious History of Death by Melanie King

Review: Bait by Nick Brownlee
Review: Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists edited by Angus Cargill