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Not only the salaries of the great officers of the household, but those also of the ministers, ambassadors, and of the judges, were paid out of it, as well as those of many place-holders of various classes, and pensions to a large amount.
Not only were the necessaries of life taxed in America, for the benefit of the red-tapists and other place-holders of the Imperial government, but a stamp Act was passed through the Imperial Parliament, ordaining that instruments of writing bonds, deeds, and notes executed in the colonies, should be null and void, unless executed upon paper stamped by the London Stamp Office.
At any rate, in the midst of these usages we discover no demand that the terms of office be made permanent, and that the place-holders be put beyond the reach of a removal.
These commissions by their reports and findings directly interfered with many place-holders who were doing inefficient work, and their reports and the action taken thereon by the Administration strengthened the hands of those administrative officers who in the various departments, and especially in the Secret Service, were proceeding against land thieves and other corrupt wrong-doers.
At present, among the representatives of the counties and great commercial towns, whose seats were to be preserved in the new united Parliament, there were not above five or six who held offices; and, though it was impossible to estimate the possible number of place-holders with precision, he thought what would he most fair for him to propose would be, that "no more than twenty of the Irish members should hold places, and that if it should happen that a greater number did hold places during pleasure, then those who had last accepted them should vacate their seats."
On March 8th, therefore, the attack was renewed, Lord John Cavendish bringing forward a resolution which concluded with the words, "That the chief cause of all these misfortunes has been the want of foresight and ability in his Majesty's Ministers." The Government were still able to depend on their place-holders, and averted a direct defeat by carrying the order of the day by ten votes.
By presents the chief justices bought their places from the crown or a royal favorite; by presents the puisne justices, registrars, counsel bought place or favor from the chief; by presents the attorneys, sub-registrars, and outside public sought to gain their ends with the humbler place-holders. The meanest ushers of Westminster Hall took coins from ragged scriveners.
This public discontent was due to the inordinate exactions of judges and place-holders rather than to the conduct of barristers and attorneys; but popular displeasure seldom cares to discriminate between the blameless and the culpable members of an obnoxious system, or to distinguish between the errors of ancient custom and the qualities of those persons who are required to carry out old rules.
'We want recruits most of all among the thinking classes. If we are ever to make headway against the banded monopolies against the place-holders, the land-grabbers, the labour-taxers, the robbers of the poor we must first secure the perfect undivided confidence of the brain-workers, the thinkers, and the writers.
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