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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 962: MAJORITY AGAINST MINISTERS FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CIVIL LIST.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

MAJORITY AGAINST MINISTERS FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CIVIL LIST.

It was now obvious that the duke’s administration had received a shock from which it could not recover. The opposition made a final and successful attack upon it on the 15th of November, when the chancellor of the exchequer stated to the house his arrangement for the civil list, which he proposed to raise to the annual sum of £970,000. They insisted that government in many of its departments was extravagant, and, above all, that the portion which was incurred on the personal account of the monarch ought to be kept apart from every other item. Sir Henry Parnell moved, “That a select committee be appointed to take into consideration the estimates and accounts, presented by command of his majesty, regarding the civil list.” The debate on this proposition was brief. Messrs. Calcraft and Hemes, both members of government, opposed the motion, chiefly on the ground that it had never been customary to submit the civil list to a committee, and that retrenchment and simplification had been earned as far as was practicable or prudent. The motion was supported by Lord Althorp and Messrs. Bankes, Wynn, and Holme Sumner, three of which members would in other times have been loath to lend their votes to unseat a Tory ministry; and on a division there appeared a majority in its favour of two hundred and thirty-three against two hundred and four, thus defeating ministers. The consequence of this vote was that on the next day the Duke of Wellington in the lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the commons, announced that they had tendered, and his majesty had accepted, their resignations, and that they continued to hold their offices only until successors should be appointed. They afterwards declared that they came to the resolution not so much on account of the vote on the civil list as from anticipation of the result of a division on Mr. Brougham’s proposition for reform, which stood for the day on which this announcement was made. But if the civil list question had not been deemed important enough to justify a resignation, the majority that decided it showed a settled and stern system of opposition, which must have convinced ministers that they could no longer rule the country. At the request of his friends, Mr. Brougham postponed his motion for reform till the 25th of November, professing to do so with reluctance, “because he could not possibly be affected by any change in administration.” He pledged himself to bring forward his motion on the day appointed, whoever might be his majesty’s ministers. He repeated the same declaration on a motion made by Sir M. W. Ridley to postpone the consideration of election petitions till after Christmas; but two days afterwards Mr. Brougham was gazetted as lord high chancellor of Great Britain with a peerage.