994l

Updated: May 12, 2025

"That, in reverting to the cause of the disgraceful acts revealed and demonstrated during this inquiry, this meeting cannot help observing, that in the Act of Parliament, commonly called the Act of Settlement, in virtue of which Act only His Majesty's family were raised to the throne of this kingdom, it is declared, 'That no person who has an office or place of profit under the King, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a Member of the Commons' House of Parliament: but that, notwithstanding the wise precautions of this Act, which is one of our great constitutional laws, and which, as its preamble expresses, was made for the further limitation of the Crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject, it appears from a report laid before the House of Commons, in the month of June last; in consequence of a motion made by Lord Cochrane, that there are in that House EIGHTEEN placemen and pensioners, who, though part of what they receive was not stated, are in the said report stated to receive 178,994l. a year, out of the taxes paid by the people, and out of that money, to watch over the expenditure of which they themselves are appointed.

Henry Hunt - Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. — Volume 2