elf, nor to those who
upheld the right of the Parliament to have a predominant control of
every branch of expenditure of the public money. The feeling that the
whole of the royal income and expenditure should be placed on a
different footing was general, and the fall of the Duke of Wellington's
ministry had been immediately caused by the success of a proposal that,
before fixing the new sovereign's Civil List, Parliament should refer
the matter to a committee, that inquiry might be made into every part of
it. Lord Grey's ministry were bound to act in conformity with a
resolution on which they had, as it were, ridden into office; and the
arrangement which they ultimately effected was one in which common-sense
and the royal convenience and comfort were alike consulted. That portion
of the Civil List of his predecessor which was voted by Parliament
amounted to nearly L850,000 a year; but, besides that sum, George IV.
enjoyed the income already mentioned as derived from Crown Lands,
Droits, etc., while a farther large sum was furnished by the ancient
revenue of the crown of Scotland, and another was received from Ireland.
The ministers now proposed that all these sources of income should be
handed over to the Treasury, and that the Civil List should henceforward
be fixed at L510,000, being at the same time relieved from all the
foreign and extraneous charges on it which had invidiously swelled the
gross amount, without being in any way under the control of the
sovereign, or in any way ministering to his requirements, either for
personal indulgence or for the maintenance of the state and magnificence
imposed on him by his position.

Such a change was on every ground most desirable. It was clearly in
accordance with our parliamentary constitution that grants of money made
by the Parliament should express distinctly and unmistakably the objects
to which they were really to be applied; and that the charges of
departments connected with the government, the administration of
justice, or the foreign service of the country, should not be mixed up
with others of a wholly different character, so as to make what was, in
fact, the expenditure of the nation wear the appearance of being the
expenditure of the sovereign. Moreover, the assignment of many of the
charges to the Civil List even gave a false character to the
appointments themselves. If a sovereign was to pay ambassadors and
judges out of what seemed to be his private income, t