THE QUEEN’S INCOME, AND COST OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 106, 2 October 1874, Page 3

THE QUEEN’S INCOME, AND COST OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY.

In the course of an article on the above subject, the Home News says;—lf now wc are asked to ascertain the cost of monarchy, the task is by no means difficult. Her Majesty receives, as we have seen, a Civil List of £.'185,000 a year. To this wc must add £31,000, the revenue derived from the Duchy of Lancaster, and £17,000, the annual cost of maintaining the places in the occupation of the Crown (such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle), which is provided for in a vote of Parliament. These items amount to £433,000. The Prince of Wales has £IOO,OOO a year, of which £60,000 is derived from the Duchy of Cornwall, and £40,000 from an annuity on the Consolidated Fund ; the Princess of Wales, £IO,OOO ; the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur, £15,000 each ; Royal or Crown Princess of Germany, £8000; Princesses Alice, Helena, and Louise, £6OOO each ; the Duke of Cambridge, £12,000 ; the Duchess of Cambridge, £6OOO ; and the Princess Teck and Princess Augusta of Mecklenburg-Stre-litz, £SOOO and £3OOO each respectively. These annuities amount to £132,000, and adding this, with the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall, to our former total, we reach a total charge of £625,000 a-year. Now the Grown lands produce a profit of £375,000, and the other branches of hereditary revenue about £13,000, which sums are carried to the exchequer. Thus the net result of the system we are discussing is that Royalty costs the British taxpayer less than a quarter of a million a year. Now, taking Professor Levi’s estimate that the taxation of the working classes amount to 124 per cent of their taxable incomes, and calculating the proportion which the cost of Royalty bears to the general expenditure of the nation, we arrive at this result, that in the case of a skilled artisan with a taxed income of £IOO a year, the maintenance of Royalty costs costs him ninepence a year. Such, then, is the outcome of the constitutional contract the nation has made with its sovereign.