EXTRACTS. WHIGS PROFESSION FOR LOYALTY. [From the " Times,"]

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 495, 11 January 1851, Page 3

EXTRACTS. WHIGS PROFESSION FOR LOYALTY. [From the " Times,"]

There is a deep fund of loyalty in the Whigs. It it true that they decapitated one King, and drove out •nother ; they confiscated the estate! of the Crown, u>d, at propor intervals, have sufficiently vindicated the interests and majesty of the people. But, once charge them with the dignity of the Crown, and they prove themaelvei its best possible guardians. " Office shows the man," and office always makes a courtier out of a Whig. We can only say that the present Duke of Cambridge ii a monstrous lucky fellow. His lot is fallen under a ministry which shows a most an.mbte 1 anxiety to make things pleanant. Besides various trifles under tbe late Duke's will, amounting eventually to near .£3,000 a-year, besides various military appointments, we should think to as great, if not a greater amount, the youog Duke Uto have an allowance of a-year, charged on the consolidated fund. How much more he is to have in other forms, what wardenihips, rangerships, and governsbipx, when he is to be made a Field Marshal, and perhaps Com-mahder-in-Chief, is not announced as yet, and probably depends on the time when these things may happen to fall vacant. Lord John, too, expressly desires to say nothing at piesent as to a possible addition of £6,000 a-year in the event of the young Duke forming * matrimonial alliance. Much less has he permitted his thoughts to wander to that remote period when the house of Cambridge will have given fresh pledges to fortune and the country. Putting these contigenciea out of the question, the new Duke of Cambridge, besides his professional income, is to have ,£12,000 ayear. John Bull must not grumble. He saves £3,000 a-year by the change. The late duke had jC27,000 i-year. Under the new arrangement the Duchess has £6000 a-year, the two daughters 4?3 00 i each, and the son 12,000 which makes up .£24,000 a-year, leaving the British public, as aforesaid, better by .£3,000 a-year. Did all the circumstances of the case permit us, nothing would give us more pleasure than to indulge a romantic loyalty, and vote away the money of the nation to descendants, of George Hi., even to the third and fourth generation. But, unfortunately, we cannot so easily forget what is passing about m. Here we aie screwing, pinching, cheeseparing, starving, cutting down, aboljsbing, appropriating, and all but cheating, tn every direction. Not a day without some niggardly act, which nothing but necessity can reconcile to the conscience and taste of a gentleman. A committee has been sitting on official salaries, which is about to recommend a heap of reductions to the amount of some £20 000 or £30,000 a-year. If a judge now receives £7,000 a-year, his successor is to receive £6,000 and and so iv proportion ; besides that various incomes are to be wholly extinguished. Some scores, ay, hundreds of persons, will, in due time, succeed to offices with perhap* augmented duti 8, equal position, but diminished income. Already the chi 1 blast of retrench* raent has passed over every department of the public service, blighting preaent salary and future promotion* Only last night, immediately after the above vote, the Hou,e heard the case of more than a hundred clerks in the Money -order Department of the Poit-office, who, out of £70 a«year have to pay a substitute for every day of absence over and above the regulation 3 days' holyday in the year. In fact, the public service is becoming about the worst a man can take, and is even losing itt old character fur certainty. Now, wh?n the first lawyers in the land are to devote their days and nights to the pubic on short allowance, and many thousand small officials are to maintain wives and families, and have good coats on their backs, on pay varying from £70 to £3'JO a-year, with here and there a prize of £800 attainable by one man in a thousand,— under these miserable circumstances, we think with our old iriend, the member for Montrose, that 87,000 a-year for the Duke of Cambridge would, <o say the least, have from much more suitable to the spi it and necessities of our times. Ungracious as it may seem, yet the truth must be told. The late Duke, with his £27,000 a-year (or so many years, and his numerous other sources of income, not to speak of his long Viceroyalty in Hanover, ought to have made ample provision for all his children ; nor can we admit any extent of lavish generosity in private alms or public subscriptions at an excuse for the prior obligations of justice to his children and his countiy. But it will be said, are the children to suffer for the improvidence of the father ? It is so in every other class of life, Nay, Her Majesty heraeif has cheerfully undergone no trifling amount of inconvenience and selfdenial, which was all the heritage she ever hud from her father. The young Duke of Cambridge should have been made aware that the country will not always go on replacing the children in the ex « net position of their fathers. Under the arrangement so hastily sanctioned last night, it is very probable that eventually the Duke of Cambridge will be more burdensome iv the second generation than in the first, whereas the very most that can be expected is that the original grant should be kept up for two or three lives. For some other very telling considerations we must refer to the debate. If the second Duke of Cambridge is to have £12,030 besides many other sources of incomet what are the Queen's children to hare as they grow up ? It might have been expected that the Whigs would have had warning enough from the scandal ere ated by Queen Adelaide's 100,000 a-year, and from the untimely|fate of the £50,000 a year they proposed for Prince Albert. There was a time when statesmen might bribe Royalty with no less of credit to either party, but it is not bo now. The age professes purity, honesty, independence, and economy. Never before were such enormous sacrifices demanded and exacted in the name of public good. Whole classes have been ruined for the sake of principle. Rank, property, life itself, have been held of no account when an act ol national justice or national repentance was to be performed. We are reducing our prelates to apostolic dimensions. Once or twice n-year the nation sees the catastrophe of a noble house with great equanimity. Never, in fact, did public good assume so stern an air. In the midst of this ju»t severity a Whig Government procures fur the grandson of a King a larger settlement than was thought sufficient in the last century for the 40ns of a King, though the former is wholly out of the reach of the succession. If the precedent of the Duke of Glouceslor was to be followed, it would be well to carry it out by a more gradual ascent to the maximum. That, however, would not have of laid the young Duke under a pet mauent obligation to Her Majesty's present advisers. Happily we can afford to inflict a momentary uneasiness, and therefore we venture to tell his Grace chat we would much lather have seen him win his way to his father's position, than lifted into it by an obliging Minister,