coming dignity, or fill in
the public eye a position inferior to some of the nobles of the
land. Nor will I insist upon what is unquestionably the fact, that
the revenues of the crown estates, on which our sovereign might live
with as much right as the Duke of Bedford, or the Duke of
Northumberland, has to his estates, are now paid into the public
exchequer. All this, upon the present occasion, I am not going to
insist upon. What I now say is this: that there is no sovereignty of
any first-rate State which costs so little to the people as the
sovereignty of England. I will not compare our civil list with those
of European empires, because it is known that in amount they treble
and quadruple it; but I will compare it with the cost of sovereignty
in a republic, and that a republic with which you are intimately
acquainted--the republic of the United States of America.

Gentlemen, there is no analogy between the position of our sovereign,
Queen Victoria, and that of the President of the United States. The
President of the United States is not the sovereign of the United
States. There is a very near analogy between the position of the
President of the United States and that of the prime minister of
England, and both are paid at much the same rate--the income of a
second-class professional man. The sovereign of the United States is
the people; and I will now show you what the sovereignty of the United
States costs. Gentlemen, you are aware of the Constitution of the
United States. There are thirty-seven independent States, each with a
sovereign legislature. Besides these, there is a Confederation of
States, to conduct their external affairs, which consists of the House
of Representatives and a Senate. There are two hundred and
eighty-five members of the House of Representatives, and there are
seventy-four members of the Senate, making altogether three hundred
and fifty-nine members of Congress. Now each member of Congress
receives 1,000 pounds sterling per annum. In addition to this he
receives an allowance called "mileage," which varies according to the
distance which he travels, but the aggregate cost of which is about
30,000 pounds per annum. That makes 389,000 pounds, almost the
exact amount of our civil list.

But this, gentlemen, will allow you to make only a very imperfect
estimate of the cost of sovereignty in the United States. Every
member of every legislature in the thirty-seven States is also paid