Do they answer any purpose to the king? The principality of Wales was given by patent to Edward the Black Prince, on the ground on which it has since stood. Lord Coke sagaciously observes upon it, "That in the charter of creating the Black Prince Edward prince of Wales, there is a great mystery-for less than an estate of inheritance, so great a prince could not have, and an absolute estate of inheritance in so great a principality as Wales (this principality being so dear to him) he should not have; and therefore it was made, 'sibi et heredibus suis regibus Angliæ,' that by his decease, or attaining to the crown, it might be extinguished in the crown."

For the sake of this foolish mystery, of what a great prince could not have less, and should not have so much, of a principality which was too dear to be given, and too great to be kept-and for no other cause that ever I could find-this form and shadow of a principality, without any substance, has been maintained. That you may judge in this instance, (and it serves for the rest) of the difference between a great and a little economy, you will please to recollect, Sir, that Wales may be about the tenth part of England in size and population; and certainly not a hundredth part in opulence. Twelve judges perform the whole of the business, both of the stationary and itinerant justice of this kingdom; but for Wales, there are eight judges. There is in Wales an exchequer, as well as in all the duchies, according to the very best and most authentic absurdity of form. There are in all of them, a hundred more difficult trifles and laborious fooleries, which serve no other purpose than to keep alive corrupt hope and servile dependence.

These principalities are so far from contributing to the ease of the king, to his wealth, or his dignity, that they render both his supreme and his subordinate authority, perfectly ridiculous. It was but the other day, that that pert, factious fellow, the duke of Lancaster, presumed to fly in the face of his liege lord, our gracious sovereign; and associating with a parcel of lawyers as factious as himself, to the destruction of all law and order, and in committees leading directly to rebellion -presumed to go to law with the king. The object is neither your business, nor mine. Which of the parties got the better,

The duchy of Lancaster, and the county palatine of Lancaster, answered, I admit, some purpose in their original creation. They tended to make a subject imitate a prince. When Henry the 4th from that stair ascended the throne, high-minded as he was, he was not willing to kick away the ladder. To prevent that principality from being extinguished in the crown, he severed it by act of parliament. He had a motive, such as it was; he thought his title to the crown unsound, and his possession insecure. He therefore managed a retreat in his duchy; which lord Coke calls (I do not know why) par multis regnis. He flattered himself that it was practicable to make a projecting point half way down, to break his fall from the precipice of royalty; as if it were possible for one who had lost a kingdom to keep any thing else. However, it is evident that he thought so. When Henry the 5th united, by act of parliament, the estates of his mother to the duchy, he had the same predilection with his father, to the root of his family honours, and the same policy in enlarging the sphere of a possible retreat from the slippery royalty of the two great crowns he held. All this was changed by Edward the 4th. He had no such family partialities, and his policy was the reverse of that of Henry the 4th and Henry the 5th. He accordingly again united the duchy of Lancaster to the crown. But when Henry the 7th, who chose to consider himself as of the House of Lancaster, came to the throne, he brought with him the old pretensions, and the old politics of that house. that house. A new act of parliament, a second time, dissevered the duchy of Lancaster from the crown: and in that line things continued until the subversion of the monarchy, when principalities and powers fell along with the throne. The duchy of Lancaster must have been extin

guished, if Cromwell, who began to form ideas of aggrandizing his house, and raising the several branches of it, had not caused the duchy to be again separated from the commonwealth, by an act of the parliament of those times.

What partiality, what objects of the politics of the House of Lancaster, or of Cromwell, has his present Majesty, or his Majesty's family? What power have they within any of these principalities, which they have not within their kingdom? In what manner is the dignity of the nobility concerned in these principalities? What rights have the subject there, which they have not at least equally in every other part of the nation? These distinctions exist for no good end to the king, to the nobility, or to the people. They ought not to exist at all. If the crown (contrary to its nature, but most conformably to the whole tenor of the advice that has been lately given) should so far forget its dignity, as to contend, that these jurisdictions and revenues are estates of private property, I am rather for acting as if that groundless claim were of some weight, than for giving up that essential part of the reform. I would value the clear income, and give a clear annuity to the crown, taken on the medium produce for twenty years.

If the crown has any favourite name or title, if the subject has any matter of local accommodation within any of these jurisdictions, it is meant to preserve them; and to improve them, if any improvement can be suggested. As to the crown reversions, or titles upon the property of the people there, it is proposed to convert them from a snare to their independence, into a relief from their burdens. I propose, therefore, to unite all the five principalities to the crown, and to its ordinary jurisdiction, -to abolish all those offices that produce an useless and chargeable separation from the body of the people,-to compensate those who do not hold their offices (if any such there are) at the pleasure of the crown, to extinguish vexatious titles by an act of short limitation,-to sell those unprofitable estates which support useless jurisdictions, and to turn the tenant-right into a fee, on such moderate terms as will be better for the state than its present right, and which it is impossible for any rational tenant to refuse.

As to the duchies, their judicial economy may be provided for without charge. They have only to fall of course into the

common county administration. A commission more or less made or omitted, settles the matter fully. As to Wales, it has been proposed to add a judge to the several courts of Westminster-hall; and it has been considered as an improvement in itself. For my part, I cannot pretend to speak upon it with clearness or with decision; but certainly this arrangement would be more than sufficient for Wales. My original thought was to suppress five of the eight judges; and to leave the chief justice of Chester, with the two senior judges; and, to facilitate the business, to throw the twelve counties into six districts, holding the sessions alternately in the counties of which each district shall be composed. But on this I shall be more clear, when I come to the particular bill.

Sir, the House will now see whether, in praying for judgment against the minor principalities, I do not act in conformity to the laws that I had laid to myself, of getting rid of every jurisdiction more subservient to oppression and expence, than to any end of justice or honest policy; of abolishing offices more expensive than useful; of combining duties improperly separated; of changing revenues more vexatious than productive, into ready money; of suppressing offices which stand in the way of economy and of cutting off lurking subordinate treasuries. Dispute the rules; controvert the application; or give your hands to this salutary measure.

Most of the same rules will be found applicable to my second object-the landed estate of the crown. A landed estate is certainly the very worst which the crown can possess. All minute and dispersed possessions, possessions that are often of indeterminate value, and which require a continued personal attendance, are of a nature more proper for private management, than public administration. They are fitter for the care of a frugal land steward, than of an office in the state. Whatever they may possibly have been in other times, or in other countries, they are not of magnitude enough with us, to occupy a public department, nor to provide for a public object. They are already given up to parliament, and the gift is not of great value. Common prudence dictates even in the management of private affairs, that all dispersed and chargeable estates should be sacrificed to the relief of estates more compact and better circumstanced.

If it be objected, that these lands at pre

sent would sell at a low market; this is answered, by shewing that money is at a high price. The one balances the other. Lands sell at the current rate, and nothing can sell for more. But be the price what it may, a great object is always answered, whenever any property is transferred from hands that are not fit for that property, to those that are. The buyer and seller must mutually profit by such a bargain; and, what rarely happens in matters of revenue, the relief of the subject will go hand in hand with the profit of the exchequer.

As to the forest lands, in which the crown has (where they are not granted or prescriptively held) the dominion of the soil, and the vert and venison; that is to say, the timber and the game, and in which the people have a variety of rights, in common of herbage, and other commons, according to the usage of the several forests; 1 propose to have those rights of the crown valued as manerial rights are valued on an inclosure; and a defined portion of land to be given for them; which land is to be sold for the public benefit.

As to the timber, I propose a survey of the whole. What is useless for the naval purposes of the kingdom, I would condemn, and dispose of for the security of what may be useful; and to inclose such other parts as may be most fit to furnish a perpetual supply; wholly extinguishing, for a very obvious reason, all right of venison in those parts.

The forest rights which extend over the lands and possessions of others, being of no profit to the crown, and a grievance, as far as it goes, to the subject; these I propose to extinguish without charge to the proprietors. The several commons are to be allotted and compensated for, upon ideas which I shall hereafter explain. They are nearly the same with the principles upon which you have acted in private inclosures. I shall never quit precedents where I find them applicable. For those regulations and compensations, and for every other part of the detail, you will be so indulgent as to give me credit for the present.

The revenue to be obtained from the sale of the forest lands and rights, will not be so considerable, I believe, as many people have imagined; and I conceive it would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, or even to suffer bidders to enhance, according to their eagerness, the purchase of objects, wherein the expence of that

purchase may weaken the capital to be employed in their cultivation. This, I am well aware, might give room for partiality in the disposal. In my opinion it would be the lesser evil of the two. But I really conceive, that a rule of fair preference might be established, which would take away all sort of unjust and corrupt partiality. The principal revenue which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes, is to spring from the improvement and population of the kingdom; which never can happen, without producing an improvement more advantageous to the revenues of the crown, than the rents of the best landed estate which it can hold. I believe, Sir, it will hardly be necessary for me to add, that in this sale I naturally except all the houses, gardens, and parks, belonging to the crown, and such one forest as shall be chosen by his Majesty, as best accommodated to his pleasures.

By means of this part of the reform, will fall the expensive office of surveyor general, with all the influence that attends it. By this will fall two chief justices in eyre, with all their train of dependents. You need be under no apprehension, Sir, that your office is to be touched in its emoluments; they are yours by law; and they are but a moderate part of the compensation which is given to you for the ability with which you execute an office of quite another sort of importance; it is far from overpaying your diligence; or more than sufficient for sustaining the high rank you stand in, as the first gentleman of England. As to the duties of your chief justiceship, they are very different. from those for which you have received the office. Your dignity is too high for a jurisdiction over wild beasts; and your learning and talents too valuable to be wasted as chief justice of a desert. I cannot reconcile it to myself, that you, Sir, should be stuck up as an useless piece of antiquity.

I have now disposed of the unprofitable landed estates of the crown, and thrown them into the mass of private property; by which they will come, through the course of circulation, and through the political secretions of the state, into our better understood and better ordered revenues.

I come next to the great supreme body of the civil government itself. I approach it with that awe and reverence with which a young physician approaches to the cure of the disorders of his parent. Disorders,