from such alienations, not resisted by the Parliament, and afterwards confirmed by long prescription. Some of the Anglo-Norman Sovereigns, holding the Crown by a doubtful or disputed title, found it necessary, or deemed it expedient, to purchase support by grants of this sort from their possessions to persons whose devotion to their interests they thought it important to secure. These grants were often large and even prodigal in extent, and were sometimes conferred with the view of fortifying the Sovereign in acts of oppression or extravagance against the opposition of some of the nobility. To guard against such an abuse of the regal power, the barons began early to approach the throne with their complaints, to recommend and even insist on the abrogation of gifts which they deemed improvident or dangerous to the public liberty.

These proceedings, though apparently hostile and seditious, were not always regarded by the Sovereigns as offensive interferences with the prerogative. The grants had, in some instances, been wrung from them by importunate suitors, and generally forced upon them by their immediate necessities. They were therefore not sorry to be furnished with a plea to recover their possessions. The resumptions cost them nothing. They told the holders they had not the legal power to part with what they had sold, and compelled them to make immediate restitution, even though they had paid for the estates the full value. There is, then, no difficulty in admitting, what this writer contends for on the authority of D'Avenant, that soon after the Conquest the Sovereigns found it necessary to make resumption of grants out of the hereditary revenues. It is, however, evident. from the testimony of the best historians, that at this very period the Sovereigns had a liberal discretion in the expenditure of the profits of the Crown estates, and, after providing for the public service, had large sums at their absolute command for objects of a private or personal nature, to which they often applied them. The resumptions were confined almost wholly to the grants of landed property and the rights connected with the regal estates. The profits or revenues derived from them were left to the King's discretionary disposal.

There is a remarkable fact connected with these resumptions, illustrative of this distinction, left untouched by the author, but of material importance, as indicating the limits fixed to them by the Sovereigns. When they judged it proper to yield to the applications to recal their grants, they made express stipulations for the exemption of certain gratuities and donations from the revenues of a personal and private, and often charitable nature, their right and authority to bestow which they held to be absolute and indisputable. The author could not have been ignorant of the fact. It is recorded by his great authority, D'Avenant, who refers to the Rolls of Parliament in which these exceptions are enumerated, and even inserts some of them in his pages. These exceptions are fully in point, and establish all that the distributors of the Parliamentary Grant could desire for the refutation of the argument he has attempted to raise against them from these resumptions. They prove to demonstration that the Sovereigns were

* Political and Commercial Works of Charles D'Avenant, LL.D., by Sir Charles Whitworth, 1771, Vol. III. p. 109.

in the habit, in the exercise of a power which was never questioned, when public rights were not invaded, or the public interests injured, of dispensing from their hereditary revenues, the surplus profits of their estates, pecuniary grants to persons whom, from motives of personal regard, or from considerations of benevolence, they wished to serve. From the instances cited by D'Avenant, not to advert to others, it is seen that these grants were often bestowed in the form of pecuniary presents, pensions for life, and annuities for joint lives of two or more persons, with benefit of survivorship,-a circumstance which would in some cases carry the payment into the reign of their successors.

Our limits forbid us to follow the author in his details on this part of the subject; but we may remark generally, that the same system of private donations and personal gifts and gratuities from the hereditary revenues continued to be acted upon until the Revolution of 1688, the whole of the public revenue, including the King's hereditary patrimony, being placed at the disposal of the Sovereign. A solitary exception is indeed found in the revolutionary proceedings in the seventeenth century. At that time, the Parliament seized and sold the whole of the Royal estates and revenues, and applied the proceeds to the public service. But, on the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II. took possession of the regal patrimony as a matter of course, the purchasers receiving no return for the money they had paid for them.

The author of the Reply maintains, that the hereditary revenues emanated, in part at least, from the people, who on that account had a right to control the appropriation of them. His proofs, however, by no means establish his position. He refers, first, to the impost on wool in the time of Edward I. As to this tax, it is a matter of controversy whether it were originally made by the arbitrary will of the King, or by a vote of the Legislature. But, if it was a tax levied by the Parliament, it must be considered, and has been represented by lawyers, as an equivalent paid to the Sovereign for the privilege of lodging the wool for exportation in one of his ports or staples. But though this was ranked at the time among the hereditary revenues, it lasted only till the eleventh year of Edward the Second, when the exportation of wool was prohibited by statute. The history of the hereditary excise is well known. Part of the ancient Crown revenues were derived from the profits of feudal military tenures, from the Court of Wards, and from the prerogative of purveyance and preemption. These payments being regarded as exceedingly troublesome, Charles the Second consented to relinquish them for ever for some less objectionable equivalent. The Parliament, therefore, by the statutes 12 Charles II. c. 24, 25, agreed to grant permanently to the Crown, in lieu of them, the excise on beer and liquors, which were designated the Hereditary Excise.† This was, therefore, no tax forced upon the people, but a voluntary grant emanating from themselves for the purchase from the Crown of an ancient obnoxious impost.

The author of the Reply observes, that when the hereditary revenues had been greatly reduced by the improvidence of the Sovereigns, the deficiencies were made up by Parliament, and that consequently * Blackstone's Comment., Vol. I. Book i. Chap. viii., article Customs, § i., edit. 1793, p. 313.

+ Book i. Chap. viii. § vi., p. 286.

their income was so far derived from taxation. But these were only occasional occurrences, and of temporary duration. By more careful management, the Crown properties became more productive, and rendered unnecessary these Parliamentary aids, so far as the expenses of the King's household were concerned, though perhaps continued in some cases to meet the extraordinary expenses of the civil government. The state of the Crown revenues under the house of Brunswick may be appealed to in illustration of this remark.

Before we quit this part of the subject, it may be satisfactory to see what D'Avenant, our author's great authority on Resumptions, asserts as to the power of the English Sovereigns over their hereditary revenues. "From the time of Rufus," observes this very respectable writer, "our Kings have thought that they might alienate and dispose of the Crown lands, and have acted on this impression."—"The Constitution seems to have left the Crown free, upon this tacit trust, as he has all his other powers, that he should do nothing which may tend to the destruction of the subject."-"The King always might make grants, and those grants, if passed according to the forms prescribed by law, were valid, and pleadable not only against him, but his successors.”*

Here, then, it is explicitly admitted, that the King might, out of the hereditary revenues, make such grants as are contended for, and that, if made according to the prescribed forms, such grants are binding, not alone on the grantor himself, but also on his successors, provided only that they were not hurtful to the public.

The author of the Reply contends further, that the Sovereign had no legal power to make private grants out of the hereditary revenues, because those revenues accompanied the Crown in all changes of succession, as public property at the disposal of the nation; and he refers for illustration to the circumstances which followed the Revolution of 1688. But it must be borne in mind, that these were extraordinary times, productive of events without precedent in the history of the country, and unwarranted by any existing law. When the nation cashiered James the Second, they broke the line of regal succession, and the Crown of England ceased for a season to be hereditary. The people made themselves the depositories of the sovereign power, but with no view of exercising that power themselves, by subverting the kingly government. They held it only until such time as it could be safely conveyed to another monarch. Accordingly, when the vacant throne was filled by the elevation of William III. to that dignity, they invested him with the sovereign authority in as ample a manner as it had been held by preceding Kings.

Con

With the sovereign power they took into their keeping the hereditary revenues of the Crown. But they claimed no right, like the Parliament in the seventeenth century, to dispose of them for the public benefit, or to apply them to the general expenses of the State. sidering them to be the rightful appendage of the Crown, the moment the throne was filled, they conferred them upon the new Sovereign, during life, with no restrictions whatever as to the employment of them, but with all the same rights of appropriation as had been possessed by his Royal predecessors.

* Political Works of Charles D'Avenant, ut supra, Vol. III. pp. 178, &c.

Before the Revolution, the entire of the public revenues were placed at the disposal of the King. But, to guard against the misapplication of the money, the Parliament now divided the public income into two branches. They first assigned a fixed sum, including the hereditary revenues, for the charges of the King's household and the maintenance of the dignity and honour of the Crown, which was called the Civil List, and next voted another sum to defray the public expenses of the State, which was specifically appropriated to particular branches of the public service. This revenue was placed under the direct supervision of the Parliament itself, but the income of the Civil List was left to the management and direction of the King; and a large sum, included in the Civil List under the name of the Privy Purse, was placed, as the name indicates, at the King's private and personal disposal. William III. soon evinced that he considered himself at liberty, after providing for the expenses of the Royal household, to indulge his benevolent feelings by grants for charitable purposes from the Privy Purse.

The hereditary revenues were in like manner assigned to Queen Anne, with the same power of appropriation. One of the most remarkable acts of her reign, in reference to her revenues, was to alienate for ever from the hereditary patrimony the important sums derived from the first fruits and tenths of the spiritual preferments of the kingdom, which, with the concurrence of the Parliament, were constituted a permanent fund, in the hands of Commissioners, for the augmentation of small livings, and designated Queen Anne's Bounty. But it is more to our present purpose to observe, that she gave large sums out of her income for important charitable objects, having no connection with the State and no dependence on Parliamentary sanction. She first contributed £1000 to relieve the distress of the poor Palatinates. In 1705, in consequence of the distressed condition of the Protestant refugees who had fled from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, she contributed out of the Privy Purse the munificent sum of £12,000 for their relief. There can be no question as to the purely eleemosynary nature of this grant, which is clearly shewn by the appropriation of the money, of which a very minute account has been published. It is true, the beneficiaries were sufferers on account of religion, and some of them even were ministers of religion, but the great body was composed of laity, comprising a great number of women and children in a condition of utter destitution. Will it be maintained, then, that this was, in the author's meaning, a State payment for the support or the endowment of religion?

Queen Anne, our readers need not be told, was no friend to Dissent or Dissenters. Her entire reign was to them a season of peril and alarm. Still she was not insensible to the sufferings of the poorer members of the body, and out of mere compassion offered to place a thousand pounds in the hands of Dr. Daniel Williams for the relief of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers. This excellent man refused to accept the donation, for reasons connected with the state of the times. But the fact that such an offer was made, shews the Queen's own opinion that she had a right to contribute from the revenues at her personal disposal such a charitable gift, quite apart from all considerations of political or religious opinions.

On the accession of George the First, the Parliament lost no time in

making the customary provision for the support of his dignity, and the hereditary revenues, with the other branches of the civil list, were settled upon him for life. It is true, as stated in the Address of the House of Commons, to which the Reply adverts, that he did not succeed to that ancient patrimony of the Crown" by an uninterrupted right of inheritance." But they tell him, that when he should take possession of the kingdom, he would find himself "equally established in these revenues." What could be meant by this language, but that he would then hold them with a power of appropriation equal to that which had been exercised by preceding Sovereigns? So, it is evident, the King understood the Parliament; for, in the use of that power, he followed the example of his Royal predecessors in making donations for charitable purposes. One of the earlier acts of this kind was the grant to the Protestant Dissenting Ministers of England and Wales, the subject of the present controversy. This is clearly one of the cases in which D'Avenant admits that the Sovereign grants, and render them binding on his successors. from Calamy's account, that the subject was canvassed by the King's Ministers, and the grant finally made from the Privy Purse, agreeably to the customary forms. In the same spirit, a few years subsequently, (June 14, 1726,) he imitated the conduct of Queen Anne, and bestowed upwards of eight thousand pounds for the relief of the distressed French Refugees. Both grants contemplated the same benevolent object-not a State endowment of religion, but the alleviation of pecuniary distress.

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may make For it appears

George the Second, on his accession, was invested with the hereditary revenues and civil list in precisely the same manner as the Sovereigns immediately preceding, and he acted in the same spirit in the appropriation of a part of his income to charitable purposes. It will suffice to remark here, that he continued the payment annually of the sum bestowed by George the First for the assistance of the poor French Refugees, and also of the grant to Protestant Dissenting Ministers. So far, then, we think it is perfectly evident that, notwithstanding the change which took place at the Revolution in respect to the hereditary revenues, by the practice of transferring them to successive Sovereigns for life, they were always held as the recognized appendage of the Crown, as freely applicable as at all former periods to such objects of beneficence as the Monarch might choose.

We have now reached the reign of George the Third. The Distributors, in their "Brief Statement," assert that, on the accession of George the Third, there was substituted for the hereditary revenues a fixed annual sum equivalent to them in amount; that out of this sum, forming the civil list, the grant to Dissenting Ministers was paid till 1804; that in this year the civil list, by an arrangement of the Legislature, was relieved of this payment and of the other Royal Charities, which were thenceforth provided for by an annual vote of the House of Commons, by which arrangement the Regium Donum became a Parliamentary Grant. Dr. Smith, in his Letter to the Patriot, represents the King as saying on this occasion, that the payment of these charities should be no burden on his people; that he had purchased it as a perpetual annuity by transferring to the representatives of the nation an amount of his hereditary revenue more than equal to the