PENSION, a payment, generally made annually or at some other shorter and regular period.
Before the reigu of Queen Anne, the kings of England alienated or encum bered their hereditary possessions at pleasure. By the 1 Anne, c. 7, the power of burthening the revenue of the crown by improvident grants, to the injury of the successors of the throne, was materially abridged. This statute, after reciting that " the necessary ex penses of supporting the crown, or the greatest part of them, were formerly defrayed by a land revenue, which bath from time to time been impaired and diminished by the grants of former kings and queens of this realm," enacts that no grant of manors, lands, &c. shall be made by the crown from and after the 25th of March, 1702, beyond the term of thirty-one years, or for three lives, re serving a reasonable rent. As this clause applied only to the land revenue, it was enacted by another clause, that no por tion of other branches of revenue, as the excise, post-office, &c., should be alien able by the crown beyond the life of the reigning king. On the accession of George III., in consideration of the surrender of the larger branches of the hereditary revenue, a civil list was settled ou his majesty, amounting originally to 800,0001., and afterwards illereased to 300,0001., on which the pensions were charged. There were no limits, except the Civil List itself, within which the grant of pensions was confined ; and at various times, when debts on this list had accumulated, parliament voted con siderable sums (Sir Henry Parnell, in his work on Financial Reform, says "some millions") for their discharge. In February, 1780, during the administra tion of Lord North, Mr. Burke in troduced his bill for the better security of the independence of parliament, and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments. In this bill it was recited that the pension lists were excessive, and that a custom prevailed of granting pensions on a private list during his majesty's pleasure, under colour that in some eases it may not be expedient to divulge the names of persons on the said lists, by means of which much secret and dangerous corruption may be here after practised. Mr. Burke proposed to reduce the English pension list to a maximum of 60,0001., but the bill, as passed, fixed it at 95,0001. This act (22 Geo. III. c. 82) asserted the principle that distress or desert ought to be considered as regulating the future grants of such pensions, and that parliament had a full right to be informed in respect to this exercise of the prerogative, in order to ensure and enforce the responsibility of the ministers of the crown. Mr. Burke's speech on introducing his bill is in the third volume of his Works,' ed. 1815.
Up to this time the Civil List pensions of Ireland, the pensions charged on the hereditary revenues of Scotland, and the pensions charged on the 44 per cent. duties, had not been regulated by par liament.
In Ireland the hereditary revenue of the crown was used as a means of political corruption, the English act of I Anne, already cited, not being ap plicable to Ireland. In a speech of Mr.
Hutchinson, secretary of state, made in the Irish House of Commons, in June, 1793, he stated that the gross annual hereditary revenue of Ireland amounted to 764,6271., reduced by various charges to 275,1021. only : that the disposition of this revenue was in the hands of the king ; that "his letters and seals were the only authority for using it, and the only voucher allowed by the Commissioners of Accounts, and by the House of Com mons ;" and that there was no Board of Treasury executing their functions under the authority of parliament. The Irish parliament, in 1757, had come to a unanimous resolution, " That the grant ing of so much of the public revenue in pensions, is an improvident disposition of the revenue, an injury to the crown, and detrimental to the people." The Irish pensions then amounted to 40,0001.: in two years after the above resolution was passed, an addition of 26,0001. was made to them; and in 1778 they were nearly double the amount at which they stood in 1757. In 1787 leave was refused to bring in a bill to limit the amount of pensions, and to disable persons holding pensions for a term of years, or during pleasure, from sitting and voting in par liament. Mr. Forbes, who moved this bill, stated that " it was a practice among certain members of the house to whom pensions had been granted, to carry them into the market and expose them for sale." In 1790 Mr. Forbes again moved resolutions, stating " that the Pension List amounted to 101,0001., exclusive of military pensions ; that the increase of pensions, civil and military, since Feb ruary, 1784, had been 29,0001.; and that many of these pensions had been granted to members of parliament during the pleasure of the crown." These resolu tions were not adopted. In 1793, when the whole policy of the Irish government was changed, among other beneficial measures introduced and recommendes. on the authority of the lord-lientenant, was a bill to limit the amount of pen sions and to increase the responsibility of the Treasury, which was passed into a law. By this act (33 Geo. III. c. 34, Irish statutes), the pensions on the Civil List in Ireland were limited to 80.0001., allowing a sum of 12001. only to be granted in each year, until such re duction was effected. Grants held during the pleasure of the crown, and converted into grants for life to the same parties and to the same amount, were exempted from the limitations of the act. This act effected a surrender of the hereditary revenues for the life of the king, and the principle of appropri ating money by parliamentary authority. These restraints on the crown were not, however, equal in efficiency to those contained in the English statute of Anne. At the time of the act 33 Geo. III, being passed, the Irish pensions amounted to 124,0001., and the amount was not re duced to 80,000/. until 1814. By the 1 Geo. IV. c. 1, the Irish Pension List was further reduced to 50,0001., no grants exceeding 12001. to be made in any one year until the list was so reduced.