he Civil List for the year 1786, (which may be
seen in Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue,) are four separate
charges for this mummery office of Chamberlain:

[Illustration: table110]

From this sample the rest may be guessed at. As to the Master of the
Hawks, (there are no hawks kept, and if there were, it is no reason the
people should pay the expence of feeding them, many of whom are put to
it to get bread for their children,) his salary is 1,372L. 10s.

1 See note at the end of this chapter.--_Editor._

And besides a list of items of this kind, sufficient to fill a quire of
paper, the Pension lists alone are 107,404L. 13s. 4d. which is a greater
sum than all the expences of the federal Government in America amount
to.

Among the items, there are two I had no expectation of finding, and
which, in this day of enquiry after Civil List influence, ought to be
exposed. The one is an annual payment of one thousand seven hundred
pounds to the Dissenting Ministers in England, and the other, eight
hundred pounds to those of Ireland.

This is the fact; and the distribution, as I am informed, is as follows:
The whole sum of 1,700L. is paid to one person, a Dissenting Minister
in London, who divides it among eight others, and those eight among such
others as they please. The Lay-body of the Dissenters, and many of their
principal Ministers, have long considered it as dishonourable, and have
endeavoured to prevent it, but still it continues to be secretly paid;
and as the world has sometimes seen very fulsome Addresses from parts of
that body, it may naturally be supposed that the receivers, like Bishops
and other Court-Clergy, are not idle in promoting them. How the money is
distributed in Ireland, I know not.

To recount all the secret history of the Civil List, is not the
intention of this publication. It is sufficient, in this place, to
expose its general character, and the mass of influence it keeps alive.
It will necessarily become one of the objects of reform; and therefore
enough is said to shew that, under its operation, no application to
Parliament can be expected to succeed, nor can consistently be made.

Such reforms will not be promoted by the Party that is in possession of
those places, nor by the Opposition who are waiting for them; and as
to a _mere reform_, in the state of the Representation, the idea that
another Parliament, differently elected from the present, but still a
third component