THE PRINCE OF WALES'S AFFAIRS

Globe, Volume II, Issue 161, 10 December 1874, Page 3

THE PRINCE OF WALES'S AFFAIRS

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.') It is sometimes the most prudent course for princes as well as for other people to put an end to gossip, whenever that is possible, by the fullest disclosure of facts, and we therefore welcome with satisfaction the statement which the Times made on Thursday, presumably on authority, with reference to the Prince of Wales's affairs. In any case the announcement would have been timely and well-advised now that rumour has for some time been so busy with the Prince's supposed embarrassments ; but in the present case it is particularly so, inasmuch as it proves that those embarrassments do not really exist. So far from his being £OOO,OOO in debt, as has been confidently stated in certain journals, English and foreign, the unpaid claims before the Prince's controller amount to little more than a third of his annual income, and, "with the exception of one or two accounts unsettled from peculiar circumstances, there is at present no bill on the list of more than one year's standing." We are further told that the payments, which are periodically audited by Sir William Anderson, " are regulated by the balances in the banker's hands, and the balance on the Ist of October will be more than sufficient to meet every claim on the Prince." This statement of course disposes altogether of the idea of indebtedness, at any rate in the sense of embarrassment. A person in enjoyment of a fairly good income, whose debts did not amount to more than one-third of it, would certainly not be described as in embarrassed circumstances, and there is no longer, therefore, any excuse for the idle gossip which has lately crept from the clubs into the newspapers. At the same time, there is another abpect of the matter which ought not to be left unnoticed. Though the Prince's expenditure has not seriously exceeded his income, it is still the fact that it has exceeded it, and has dore so annually for some years past. The £IOO,OOO a year which the Prince derives from the annual grant made under .the authority of Parliament and from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall he has found insufficient to meet the various calls upon him, aud a sum of £IO,OOO or £20,000 has been aunually required to meet the deficit. This is obtained by drawing upon the accumulations of the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall which accrued during the Prince's minority ; so that in fact he is supplementing his income by living upon his capital. Such an expedient is, of course, not financially commendable, though it is of course better than allowing the annual deficits to mount up in the shape of an aggregation of debt ; and it would be more satisfactory if the annual debtor and creditor account could be made to balance each other out of income alone. We hare no doubt, however, that this result is difficult of at>ainmeut under existiug circumstances. Economy is, of course, a virtue which we have a right to expect from Princes as from other people ; but it must be borne in mind that a Prince cannot economise on the same scale as other people, or at least that he can only do so at a cost in other respects, political as well as personal, which is not to be measured by money. And if. as we are told is the case, and as indeed might have been presumed, the annual deficit is largely due to the expenses incurred by the Prince in representing the Queen, and in defraying the cost of the hospitalities which he dispenses to foreign potentates in that capacity, retrenchment would be even undesirable. We cannot well afford either to limit the number of these hospitalities, nor can it be suggested that the Prince should dispense them on a scale unbefitting the dignity of his position. But the cost of discharging these duties in a fitting manner is clearly not justly chargeable upoa anincome which was settled without any reference to such duties; and it would therefore be desirable, we humbly submit, that some family arrangement should be made whereby these expenses might be met out of funds appropriated to the purpose,